Monthly Archive for February, 2009

What’s Your Why?

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Hello, everyone!  This issue I have a great guest article from Michele Woodward.  Michele is a sister Martha Beck coach, and author of Lose Weight, Find Love, Declutter and Save Money.  This is from her weekly newsletter.

What’s Your Why? by Michele Woodward

Greetings!

Let’s face it. It’s a scary world out there. People are losing their homes, and losing their jobs. In fact, unemployment in the U.S. hasn’t been this widespread since 1974.

Think — babies born in 1974 are 35 years old today. Probably married. Probably a couple of kids. Couple of credit cards. Car payments. Mortgage. Bills.

Thirty-five year olds have no frame of reference for what’s going on now. My guess is they figured home values would always go up, as would salaries, bonuses and retirement plans. When up, up, up turns to down, down, down — it’s a frightening, unsettling experience.

Even folks with jobs who pay their mortgages on time are feeling beseiged, as if at any minute they could be in trouble, too. We feel powerless. The rug has been pulled out from underneath, or is about to be tugged violently. What’s the purpose of life if you lose everything you’ve worked your whole life to achieve? Where’s the meaning in that?

This week I picked up an old favorite to re-read — Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Dachau, and he writes eloquently about his harrowing experiences in the death camps. It was through unimaginable suffering that Frankl was able to find meaning not only in his life, but to fully understand how others find meaning in theirs.

Frankl suggests that meaning and purpose is derived from having a why. Why live? Why suffer? Why keep putting one foot in front of the other? In the camps, Frankl discovered, survival of the inmates was completely dependent on having a why: “Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why — an aim — for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence.”

Frankl says our why is always one of three things: doing something, loving someone, or rising above yourself by turning tragedy into triumph.

Now, I have to say this. Losing your job is not the same as being in Dachau. Even in 1974, people ultimately found new jobs. Losing your home? Not Auschwitz. But these are certainly tough times. To survive, you have to know your own personal why.

And if you’re stuck, struggling, hurting, depressed… you especially need to get in touch with your why and let it guide your life.

Ask yourself, what’s my reason for being here? Is there something you need to accomplish? Someone whose life you cherish? Is your why to parent your children into independent adulthood? Is it to love and support your spouse? Is it to take this very difficult time — to be willing to lose everything you’ve worked for — and emerge stronger, more confident, and wiser?

All of these are excellent whys. And when you have your why fixed firmly in your mind, you can do more than endure. You can move forward and thrive.

You not only can. You will.

Thanks, Michele, for letting me share this!  And if you want more from her, check out her blog at http://mwcoachingblog.blogspot.com/

Anna Paradox

Small Steps

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“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Neil Armstrong, as he placed the first footprint on the Moon.

This issue’s Small Step for Space:  What’s your why?

Devote twenty minutes to examining why you do what you do.  What truly motivates you?  Why do you support space exploration?  I like to do this with pen and paper.  Next time you face a challenge, you’ll have more strength to continue.

Book Recommendation

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Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams

Doran Falkner’s Earth is rich and largely depopulated.  With limitless power from a new type of generator and limitless life, Doran spends his days distracting himself - both from the shadows of his past and from his fear that nothing he does is truly meaningful.  Even so, he is reluctant to leave the comfort of his home.  When an old colleague offers him a chance at the last great mystery - faster than light travel - and time in the company of his greatest past love, he is drawn once again to discover what makes life worth living.

The One-Way Ticket

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on February 3, 2009
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Yesterday I used the last sheet of a notepad on my fridge.  We brought out another pad, and Doug helped me rearrange the magnets and notes on the fridge to make room for it.

The old notepad is done.  Tearing off the final sheet is irreversible.  In fact, every time I wrote a single stroke on the pad, it could not be undone.  Even if I wrote in pencil, and erased it as gently and as thoroughly as possible, a few molecules would have rubbed loose from the paper, and I would have been marked, however lightly, by the experience of writing and erasing.

We are born with a velocity of one day per day, and we travel through time at that speed until we die.  From birth to death, we cross many thresholds that we cannot uncross.  It’s like our entire lives are one-way turnstiles, and the universe is an immense clockwork, winding down inexorably over eons.

Sometimes writers look at that inevitable progress through time and wax romantically melancholic.  Today, I found myself strangely at ease instead.  The deadlines I have are all my own creations.  I chose them, and can free myself of them if I choose.  I have no ability to change my movement through time.  It is always one day per day, whatever we may do.  So why struggle against it?

Seeing time from that perspective is one more change that cannot be undone.  I am glad of it.  Today, at least for the moment, I am content with my arc through time.  I’m enjoying the sights along the track of my one-way ticket.

May you do the same.

Anna Paradox

Small Steps

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on February 3, 2009
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“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Neil Armstrong, as he placed the first footprint on the Moon.

This issue’s Small Step for Space:  Plan a Yuri’s Night Party

Yuri’s Night is a growing tradition of recognizing April 12th as a holiday.  It celebrates Yuri Gagarin’s milestone as the first human in space on April 12th, 1961.  This year, the celebration stretches from April 4th through April 12th.  Learn more at: http://yurisnight.net

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Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

This is one of the Nebula award winning books I had not previously read.  Earth has been destroyed.  Humanity survives on a handful of technological starships and a larger number of primitive colonies.  Mia Havero is twelve, and looming ahead of her is The Trial - a test of survival all ship children undergo at fourteen.  Those who return gain adult privileges.  Alexei Panshin tells her story in her voice, perceptively reflecting the self-centeredness of a twelve-year-old, and her growing empathy.  By the time she reaches her Trial, she cares if her classmates survive, and we care for her survival, too.