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Monthly archives for February, 2012
Bust your ripple blockers
Are you blocking your own potential?
I just read a post on ScoutieGirl taking a look at both the importance of both playing small (realizing what an impact the small things can have) and playing big.
The post got me thinking about all the way we block our own ripples.
As I say frequently, you have the potential to make a mind-bogglingly huge positive impact in the world. That impact comes via the ripples created by the choices you make and actions you take throughout your life. Your ripples change your world.
But those ripples can only change your world if you make them. And we all have “ripple blockers” coming out our ears. Here is a short list, off the top of my head, of things that can block our ripples.
- Not realizing that the small things matter.
- Not believing that we really are the kind of person who can step up and play big.
- Fear of failure.
- Surrounding ourselves with negative, pessimistic people.
- Letting our world view be colored by toxic media (e.g., the violence, fear, and hopelessness in the news).
- Letting our inner critic have the upper hand.
- Living our lives according to other people’s expectations.
- Limiting and destructive habits.
- Eating poorly (so you don’t have the energy to create those ripples).
This is just a quick free-flow of ideas. It’s by no means a comprehensive list. The common theme is that, in one way or another, all of these prevent you from making the choices and taking the actions that can make your world a better place.
They keep the ripples you could have made from spreading out and working their magic.
What are your ripple blockers?
It’s time to practice the fine art of addition by subtraction. Eliminating – or at least reducing – your ripple blockers will create more space for your ripples to happen.
More positive ripples = More positive change.
Try this: Sit down and make a laundry list of the ripple blockers in your life. Look at the internal blockers (like fear of failure) and the external blockers (like people around you who spew their pessimism on you).
For each of the ripple blockers you identify, ask yourself, “How could I eliminate or reduce this?” If you find the people around you are blocking your ripples with their pessimistic world view, for example, you might:
- Share with them what impact their pessimism has on you.
- Ask them not to make pessimistic comments about your ideas, actions, and dreams.
- Limit the amount of time you spend with them.
- Cut them out of your life entirely.
Explore as many ways to reduce the impact of each blocker as you can. Then do it! It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be complete.
Even if you only reduce the effect of a ripple blocker by 20%, you’ve just created 20% more potential to make a positive impact! Imagine the cumulative outcome of the resulting ripples over the course of your life.
Want to ratchet up your ability to have an impact? Make a habit of ripple blocker busting.
[image by Gianni Dominici]
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Give yourself permission to suck
One of the biggest things standing between each of us and the amazing potential we have is a rhino-strength aversion to sucking. Being a beginner can be hard on the ego.
Part of creating your Ripple Legacy is living more fully into that potential. So many of us are living lives of untapped gifts and untold stories. The question is, how do we open the door to them so both we and the world around us can benefit?
Ira Glass offers some valuable thoughts here on the importance of just allowing yourself to suck, and keeping at it despite the mounting piles of suckitude.
Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.
He’s talking specifically about creative endeavors here, but really that applies to anything we do in our lives.
Have a dream? Have a vision? You’re never going to get it off the ground without taking those first tentative, clumsy, suck-filled steps.
And it’s that very fact that limits most people. They try, and their ego says, “Screw it! Let’s do something we’re good at.” And yet another door to their potential slams shut.
If you want to bring the fullness of what you have to offer to the world, forget that. Let yourself suck! Remind yourself that the path to living into your full potential winds through the wilds of suckitude, but it doesn’t stay there.
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Energize your Ripple Legacy with changemaker stories
Creating your Ripple Legacy isn’t just about doing good. It’s also about keeping yourself energized and inspired.
One surefire source of fuel for my own Ripple Legacy efforts is the stories of others who are out there changing the world. I love the vision, drive, and creative spirit of changemakers who are making it happen.
Hearing other people’s stories always makes me want to dive in and do something myself.
One place I can always rely on for that is Britt Bravo’s superb interview series, Big Vision Podcast. If you’re looking for a fuel source for your own positive change efforts, stop by Britt’s podcast and check it out. A good place to start is this post listing all the changemakers she has talked to.
While you’re at it, check out her blog, Have Fun. Do Good. (“Ideas, inspiration and interviews for fun-loving do-gooders!”) Britt is a Ripple Revolutionary, through and through.
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Do a reality check with a fear journal
Fear is stealing the world blind.
Because of fear, we don’t step into our full potential. We don’t take risks and step into the new and unfamiliar. We don’t blast out of our comfort zone and dive into what’s possible.
I say that it’s stealing the world blind because, as a result of fear, so many of us are playing smaller than we need to. And that’s robbing the world of the true potential of our gifts.
Don’t let phantom futures stop you
Have you ever noticed how adept your mind is at manufacturing potential disasters? How it fills in the blanks with bad news and worst case scenarios?
And have you ever noticed how seldom those actually come to fruition? It’s like Mark Twain said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”
If you look at it statistically speaking, by far the vast majority of our fears never come to fruition. Which means that in most cases we let a phantom future reality stop us from living into our full potential.
Keep a fear journal
To paint a more realistic picture of how your fears and reality line up, try keeping a fear journal. On a regular basis, sit down and take stock of the predictions that your fear manufactures.
Include both the ones that come up in your day-to-day life and the ones kicked up when you step outside your comfort zone and try something new. If you’re like most of us, you’ll end up with a pretty hefty list
After some time has passed, check back in with your list. How many of the fears have actually come true? How many of the fears proved to be nothing but your imagination?
Over time, your fear journal will shine a light on how few of the fears that come up come true.
Get to know your fears
You can also use your fear journal to get to know your fears better. As you add to it over time you can go through and ask questions about the fears you have listed, such as:
- How likely is this to happen?
- What could I do to minimize the risk of this happening?
- On a scale of 1 – 10, how bad would it really be if this did happen? (If we’re objective, sometimes the fear that holds us back amounts to little more than wanting to avoid some discomfort.)
- If this happened, how could I deal with it? How could I minimize its negative impact?
- Where is this fear coming from? Is it really about the feared outcome, or is there something else going on?
When fear comes calling, it’s tempting to run the other way, or stick our head in the sand so we don’t have to acknowledge it. The better you get to know your fear, the less power it has over you.
[image by Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha]
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Set your compliments free!
Want an ultra-simple way to make the world a better place that you can put into action immediately?
Set your compliments free!
One of the things that inspires me about the Ripple Legacy concept is how little it takes to make an impact. We have the potential to change the world around us simply through the everyday choices we make and actions we take.
One of the easiest things you can do is give voice to the stream of compliments in your head that are already bouncing around in your head.
Think about it. As you go through your day, how often do you have a positive thought about someone? Maybe you like someone’s sweater. Or you think a co-worker did a great job with a presentation. Maybe you’re impressed by the way the barista at your local coffee shop treated a difficult customer in line in front of you.
Imagine if you made a commitment to setting your compliments free. When it feels appropriate, let that compliment out of your head and pay it to the person in question.
Now imagine doing that every day for the rest of your life. Think how many compliments would that be! And you never know what impact those compliments have. Not only that, it just plain feels good to do.
While you’re imagining, imagine the impact if 20% of the people out there started making this a habit. That would be a mind-bogglingly huge number of compliments set free! The cumulative positive potential of that is enormous.
What are you waiting for? Open the door and let those compliments fly!
[Photo credit: David Castillo Dominici]
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Are you creating your life by choice?
Have you ever looked around at your life and asked yourself, “How the hell did I get here?”
If you have, consider this: You got there by choice.
The choices that landed you there may not have been well thought out choices. They may not even have been proactive
choices (as that Rush song says, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”). But still, they were choices.
Sure, external events and circumstances happen over which we have no control, but even then we have a choice about what to do with it.
Mary Allen has a thought-provoking blog post looking at what she describes as the compounding effect of choice. Much like earning compounded interest on your money, the cumulative results of the choices you make pile on top of each other and create a compounded effect.
As she describes it, there are two main principles at work here:
Principle #1
“It is the simple disciplines (choices), that don’t seem to make any difference at all in the moment; HOWEVER repeated over time, the compounded affect makes all the difference in the world.”
Principle #2
“It is the simple errors in judgment, that don’t seem to make any difference at all in the moment; HOWEVER repeated over time, the compounded affect makes all the difference in the world.”
And lacking that perspective is exactly where people get in trouble. If you don’t have that compounded long-term view, the small choices seem fairly insignificant. But over the course of time they can have an enormous impact.
Mary shows a graph illustrating the effect of those choices, leading as she puts it to either Mastery or Mediocrity. That binary view yields an easy way to evaluate the choices we make. “If I made this choice repeatedly over time, would it lead me to mastery or mediocrity? Would it lead me to fulfillment or frustration?”
If you’re like most people, you’re making many of those choices on autopilot. And that’s good news, because the simple act of consciously asking that question consistently opens the door to a ready source of positive change.
TRY THIS: For the next week, notice the choices you’re making. They might be choices about how you interact with a loved one, how you eat, how much time you spend working, how you spend your free time, or any one of a bazillion other choices you make on an ongoing basis.
At the end of the day, scan back at the choices you made. Write them down as a list. Then go through them and ask that binary question. “Repeated over time, would this choice take me toward the life I want to create, or away from it?”
You don’t need to make any changes at this point. This is just an exercise in noticing. You might find that the changes come automatically. If they do, fine, but don’t make that the focus.
You create an energized life one choice at a time. And there’s no better time to start than right now.
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Say no to perfection. Evolve instead!
The way people perceive me is an important part of my livelihood. People have come to me for the last 11 years because they believe I can help them.
So I always feel some trepidation when I publicly admit that, while I’m really good at what I do, when it comes to my own life and my own path, I’m just another schlep trying to figure it. And that sometimes moving forward means taking imperfect, even blundering steps, doing the best I can and building on it.
But I can’t bring myself to pretend that schlepitude doesn’t exist and let people fill in the blanks with perfection. One of 
my biggest beefs with the “self-help guru” set is that, with a few exceptions, they don’t expose that vulnerable side. And that creates an unrealistic picture of what kind of people “make it.”
I don’t just want to teach the path, I also want to model it. And that means being real, not perfect.
I had the value of showing up authentically reinforced a couple days ago by an e-mail exchange with Shannon Noel, a subscriber to the Ripple Revolution newsletter (on a side note, check out her fabulous interiors at www.shannoel.com). Referring to watching my work evolve, she wrote:
I am inspired by both the results that are coming of it AND the ‘finding your way’ part. It is clear that you (and your work) are evolving by giving the best of what you’ve got in the moment, knowing that it will always be incomplete – always evolving … It gives me permission to put out there ‘the best of what I’ve got’ … in this moment … knowing that it doesn’t have to be the ultimate, perfect, exact right thing. It can NEVER be that – it will ALWAYS be evolving – AND this evolution will only happen by giving what I’ve got right now. The ‘someday-better’ version will happen automatically.
I read that and thought, yes! Yes! YES! A million times, yes! She captured it so perfectly, I asked if I could use it in a blog post.
The piece that really summed it up for me was “this evolution will only happen by giving what I’ve got right now.” How often do we perfect ourselves into inaction? How often do we cheat the world of what we have to offer because it’s not quite good enough yet?
Is your desire for perfection keeping you from creating the ripples you have the potential to make?
If it is, just take a step, give what you have right now in this very moment, and let yourself evolve!
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Happy Love Yourself Day!
As an unattached person on Valentine’s Day, there’s a temptation to give the day the finger, or, in my more enlightened moods, simply ignore it.
But I think there’s an opportunity today to shine a light on something even more important than the gooey, Hallmark card picture of love we get bombarded with.
I hereby declare February 14th Love Yourself Day!
Why do I think that’s so important? Because it’s a vital piece of the Ripple Revolution puzzle. It’s a key component of both living a fulfilling, energized life and maximizing what you have to give. (And not-so-coincidentally, it an integral aspect of being in a healthy, mutually gratifying, growth-inducing relationship.)
The self-love continuum
Let’s get realistic. Most of us have times when we don’t love ourselves. I myself have a particularly savage inner critic that is definitely NOT coming from a place of self-love. So practicing self-love isn’t a black-and-white, either/or question. We live on a continuum, with self-love on the one extreme, and self-loathing on the other.
While it would be nice to simply sit soaking in 100% self-love, for most of us that’s probably not realistic. So instead of aiming for a non-stop state of self-love (and then beating up on ourselves when we don’t achieve it), we can direct our efforts at continually moving towards that end of the continuum.
That means catching ourselves when we slip towards self-loathing and finding a way to love ourselves. That slip might be how we talk to ourselves, or it might be the choices we make that we know are going to affect us adversely (that half-gallon of ice cream you just put down? Probably not going to move you toward the self-love end of the spectrum).
Loving yourself in practice
That’s all very good in theory, but if you’ve ever found yourself on that slippery slope towards the wrong end of the spectrum, you know that reversing your direction is easier said than done.
One of my favorite books on the matter is The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion. It’s so good that I keep a highlighted copy of it in my stack of books that I’m currently reading, just so I can pull it out and flip it open to see what it can remind me of that day.
A simple way to reverse the slide is to just start asking questions.
How can I be kind to myself right now?
What would feel nurturing right now?
Who can I reach out to right now?
Who could help me love myself right now?
Who or what can I help right now?
What would feel energizing right now?
What can I immerse myself in that I love doing (e.g., a hobby, fun exercise, etc.)?
It can also help to keep a book handy that has short, inspiring stories in it. I have a few listed at the end of the Revolution Resources section of this site if you’d like some suggestions.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking self-love is a flip-of-the-switch, find-it-once-and-your-done state. It’s a constant ebb and flow. And moving more fully into that state is a matter of continually, consistently recognizing the slides toward self-loathing and exploring ways to move back toward self-love.
You need it. The people around you need it. And quite frankly, the world needs it.
Happy Love Yourself Day!
p.s. What do you think? What helps you love yourself?
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What’s your ten-year legacy project?
As I develop this blog and discover my Revolutionary voice, I want to commit to authenticity. It’s tempting to position myself as the expert who has it all together and is just smoothly implementing his master plan, step-by-step.
The authentic truth, though, is that, while I am blessed to be gifted in a lot of ways, the Ripple Revolution sometimes feels like an idea that is bigger than my capabilities. I see so much potential for it to make such a wide-ranging positive impact, and I’m not sure how to get there from here.
A couple weeks ago I had the good fortune to have lunch with Jen Louden and Molly Gordon. I told them about the Ripple Revolution concept, and expressed my uncertainty about whether or not I was up to the task. Jen asked me if I really wanted to.
My response felt powerful and affirming. I said, “If I discovered that ten years from today I was going to drop dead, and I had to choose what I was going to focus on during that last ten years, this would be it. The Ripple Revolution would be the legacy I would want to leave behind. No question”
As I thought about that response later, it occurred to me what a powerful question that could become for all of us:
What would my ten-year legacy be? If I knew that I only had ten years left, starting today, what would I focus my energy on?
I love two things about that question. First, it focuses you and creates some sense of needing to start it now. Second, it creates a big enough space that it can be a vision to work toward, not just a big splash you have to make in the immediate future.
What would your 10-year legacy be?
If you don’t have an immediate picture of what it looks like, don’t worry. The important thing is simply that you start exploring it. Plant the seed of the idea by asking the question, and then give it space to grow.
Your ten-year legacy might be work-related, but it doesn’t need to be. The key is that you find something – whether with work, volunteering, your family, or something else – that energizes and inspires you when you think about putting your effort into it.
It doesn’t need to be big, and it doesn’t need to impress others (in fact, what others think of it couldn’t be less relevant). It simply needs to be something that feels meaningful and compelling to you. Because that’s where it all starts.
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