Living On Purpose

Purposeful parenting doesn’t mean you have to be a perfect parent. It means you gather knowledge about best practices and do the best you can with what resources you have.

I’ve been thinking about all the things the American public school system does not teach my sons. Public school can teach our children how to add and divide, how to read and write. But unless your child hit the proverbial lottery by being assigned a fantastic caring teacher, public school doesn’t teach your children about making smart life decisions.

I want my sons to know how to choose food based on its nutritional value, not by which animated character endorses it. I want my sons to know how to reflect on their values and know how to tell what they really like to do just because it brings them joy, not because their friends badgered them into it. I want them to know what to do with their anger when it arises so they may be able to transmute it into creative energy for problem solving. I want them to spend their lives making sure their hearts are coherent.

My older son is smack in the middle of middle school. He’s right at the stage where the preteen morphs into the teenager and begins pulling away from Mom & Dad. If I haven’t done my job correctly by now, there’s no stopping him from doing what he wants. But I think I’ve done well. I’ve told him how I measure his progress; that even though I care deeply that he does well academically, I care more that he develops a good and caring character.

Do your sons and daughters know what you value most in their development? Make sure you tell them, or else they will guess.

I don’t open all my email. I look at the subject line and skim what has come in overnight. One that came in yesterday said this in the subject line: Carol Look on Abudnance, Shirley McLaine and Marianne Williamson WOW. Now, I had already heard the Marianne Williamson call last week, and it was awesome. I was guided to open this one to find out about why Shirley McLaine was in the newsletter.

I found a link to the “Living On Purpose Telesummit”. I did a double-take. Hey, I’m running a living on purpose blog, I thought as I clicked on the link. My email said Shirley McLaine will be a speaker at this telesummit, but she’s not listed on the web page. After glancing over the speakers to appear and realizing I only have heard of three of them, I have concluded that I’m absolutely no expert on living on purpose. So, I’ll give you the link so you can learn from the experts.

http://livingonpurposetelesummit.com/ The tagline says “Wake up inspired, live fearlessly.”

I believe the first step to living on purpose is to NOT live unconsciously. The first step involves catching yourself when you go on autopilot. Sounds simple. Just try to count the times you switch into autopilot during one day. You’ll lose count after a couple of hours unless you’ve cultivated laser focusing ability. I always say to start with small habits, like cleaning your own hair from the bathtub before you get out of the shower, or putting the toothpaste top on before you let go of the tube. (hmmph, can you guess my pet peeves? It’s like my housemates each thinks he has the whole house to himself and he’s not sharing a bathroom…)

Okay, so you’ve started small. You’ve brought a bit of awareness to your day. Expand it a bit, and begin thinking about the things that you normally gloss over. Where does that homeless man I pass each day sleep? How can everybody act like nothing’s wrong when there are natural disasters and wars happening all over the globe? I wish I could teach that mom not to be so harsh with her kids. Who integrates prisoners back into society once they’ve been released? EEK! What are you willing to do about those thoughts? That’s why it’s so much easier to gloss over them and store them away in the back of your mind.

I’m going to switch gears and give a short overview of Marianne Williamson’s presentation that I heard last week:

Those who hate, hate with great conviction. Some of us who love, though, do it when it’s convenient. It’s time to evolve the concept of love. As a mother says to her children, “that misbehavior won’t happen in my house,” so shall the women of America evolve to be able to widen the definition of our house to the community- we won’t have that (starving children) in our house (the city, state, country…). You cannot bomb away hate, but love can transform hate.

Marianne’s newest event in Los Angeles will be February 26 2010, and it’s called Sister Giant: Rousing the Sleeping Giant of American Womanhood. She’s going to force us to think about the things we normally gloss over. She’s going to ask us what we’re willing to do about those feelings that arise.

The two purposeful links I’ve brought you today both talk about waking up.  Let’s wake up on purpose.

By Michelle Casto, guest blogger. Originally posted on ArticleSnatch; keywords Soul Care and Self-Care

In today’s challenging times, there seems to be less and less time to do soul-nourishing activities. However, every ultra successful person knows a secret ingredient to success which is often over-looked, that of being “balanced” and taking plenty of down-time to rest, refresh and rejuvenate.

For many, the holidays can create added stress and pressure to an already full plate. Many suffer seasonal affective disorder, and just feel “blue.”

What follows are 5 simple ways to Care For Your Soul that if you start now will quantum leap you into the New Year feeling refreshed, focused, and fulfilled.

1. Honor Your Core Values
People, circumstances, and things that are not good for you cause you to constrict and withdraw your love, power, and passion. If you keep living a default life, you become more and more disconnected from your True Self and Source/God/Goddess. The more disconnected you are from Source, the more disappointing results you attract over and again.

Your nurturing soul stuff (like enjoying healthy positive relationships, doing work that has meaning for you, staying in balance, attracting financial abundance, having a spiritual practice) allows you to expand into your divine essence. You will always be adjusting to see what fits you now.

2. Nurture Your Soul With a Positive Environment
Identify the state of being that creates an environment of success for you. Now create supportive environments that honor your values (people, opportunities, places that inspire you and move you forward). Too many times we are fighting against-ourselves, other people, or circumstances that are contrary to our inner nature and then we wonder why it is so hard to make changes and become the human beings we are meant to become. Environments and associations (who we hang out with) are 100x more important than you realize—can pull you forward or drag you down.

3. Discover Your Life Purpose
You cannot talk about caring for your soul and not mention living with purpose. A native American saying is, “Everything on earth has a purpose. Every person a mission.” Just like a bird who has its own unique song, you, too have a song to sing. It may only be a little song but there are people who will like it. You were born to do something great and to help someone or perhaps a group of people. Your purpose often seems much bigger than you and affects others in a positive way. When you are on purpose, you help greater humanity.

4. Write Your Own Fairytale (complete with happy ending and all!)
Who remembers the fable Goldilocks and the Three Bears? What was the story—-three beds, certain bed, certain porridge. Not too hard, too soft, hot or cold, but just right. She had to try out various options before choosing one that suited her tastes. What I call a lot of research! You are the author of your own success story and can edit anytime you feel like it.

5. Receiving Support from a Trusted Mentor
When it comes to nurturing your soul, there is nothing more impactful than receiving emotional support from a coach or trusted mentor. If you need help with any of these ways to care for your soul, a professional life coach can help you look inside and identify what your soul is longing for. That is the purpose of a Life Coach, to support you in making the changes that help you to feel good and be happier.

These simple ways will help you to nurture yourself and care for your soul when you just take the time to practice them. Let me know if there is any way I can support you in taking better care of your SOUL.

Michelle Casto empowers you to accelerate your success on your path of purpose.
Visit www.brightlightcoach.com

Last week I introduced Michael Neill, who will be a speaker at The Big Chat on June 12, 2009.

Today, I have some great information on Bill Cumming, the other presenter/host of The Big Chat. A regular conversation for him is, “What can one person do?” Here is what he has found out:

The capacity to create the world we desire and the lives we dream about, exists within each of us. We have seen that when individuals experience themselves as valued and are treated with dignity and respect, they take better care of themselves and everything around them.

When people feel valued, they take better care of themselves. I like to read this line over and over. Every day, I meet anywhere from one to fifty new people,  in stores, commuting, at cash registers, delivering mail…you get the picture. When I take the above quote to heart and really, really ask myself if I helped them feel valued through my small interaction with them, many times the answer is no. Sure, I use my manners. Sure, I say please and thank you. But I’m not going out of my way to make sure that my acquaintances know that I value them. What if I did? What if I did that even if I were suffering in some way? Whose outlook on life could I change for the better?

Back to Bill…

The conversation “What One Person Can Do” is a class, and some of the clients for the  program include school systems, Job Corps programs, the Maine State Prison System, YMCAs, corporations and individuals.

The goals of the class are so powerful I decided to take them straight from Bill’s web site:

• To experience the power that resides within each of us.
• To experience our ability to create meaningful, productive, joyous, contributory lives.
• To experience our ability to create environments where others can choose to create meaningful, productive, joyous, contributory lives.
• To experience our ability to maintain our focus when it seems that no one else is interested or cares.
• To experience ourselves as powerful, capable and able, completely in charge of our own well being.
• To experience our ability to create an environment of exceptional support, communication and teamwork.
• To experience our ability to be master problem solvers.
• To experience our ability to see what is wanted and needed in any situation and know how best to produce that result.
• To develop a process of self-care that supports each participant, their families and producing brilliant work.

All I can say is wow. If I had all of these skills perfected….oh, what one person can do! But, I’m a work in progress and I’m partway there to experiencing all of these things. I see that the main keyword in this list is “experience,” which is very different from “learn.” Sure, I’ve “learned” that I have the ability to “create an environment of exceptional support, communication and teamwork.” I have not, however, had the experience of this kind of environment in every situation I come across.

I read about the history of this One Person seminar, and I was further blown away. Bill was visiting a jail, trying to understand why in the world any man would rape his own daughter. He met a rapist and murderer who offered a sincere apology that Bill’s daughter had to go through a rape. Bill understood that people CAN be reformed; changed in their hearts.

“Ever since then all he has wanted to do is share with the world what he discovered to be true — that people who are well and know that they are loved do not damage other people or their environment.  All the damage in our society comes from people who do not feel well (healthy or whole in relationship to themselves).”

Everyone, I want to say how I, Jessica Alvarez, deeply feel. It is my mission and could very well be the mission of every human on the planet, to overcome past hurts through compassion, mindfulness, experiential knowing, and forgiveness. I must take charge of my becoming well, because I interact with other people on this planet. The legacy I want to leave is not that I have damaged the people around me through dysfunctional behavior, but that I have inspired the others around me to want to become well, too.

Bill went on to form the Boothby Institute, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization created to provide people the opportunity to experience ownership and responsibility in a climate of empathy and loving-kindness. And thus, the “What One Person Can Do” core program was born.

I’m pleased to announce that I will be meeting both Michael Neill and Bill Cummings in Los Angeles California for The Big Chat. Won’t you join me?

Parenting can be stressful for parents of children of any age.  When both parents keep educated on what to do in certain typical situations, they strenghten their relationship with each other and with their children. This is purposeful parenting.

I have two resources to share to help parents of younger to school-age children.

Dr. Robyn http://drrobyn.wordpress.com/
Dr. Robyn Silverman has a “POWerful Words” system to share with parents and educators. She shares helpful tips using video blog posts and has a newsletter and a coaching service. I found her site while searching for information on nutrition and children. She is an advocate of reducing sugar intake and offering healthy choices for best mood support. Her web site is a wealth of information on all topics related to parenting.

Gem Parenting http://www.gemparenting.com/
Grace Mauzy, M.A., Founder of GEM Parenting, is a parenting coach who teaches parents about intervention and natural self-esteem methods that make raising children less confusing and stressful; and that make children behave better. She has free advice newsletters, a Gem Parenting blog, and a podcast on all topics related to parenting.

They say peace begins at home. It really does; it begins in your own heart and thoughts. One has to make a concerted effort to cultivate and grow a peaceful heart.

Since I have joined Twitter, I found Levar Burton and subsequently, his web site about his newest documentary, The Science of Peace. Just to jog your memory, Levar Burton played Geordi in Star Trek the Next Generation. He was also the host and executive producer on Reading Rainbow. He has gone on to be the executive producer at Integrity Entertainment. It looks to me like he is seeking a sponsor to donate funds so he can finish his film, which promises to be as uplifting as it is inspirational, and would be a good addition to the spiritual cinema circle.

The Science of Peace with Levar Burton

I believe he will be talking about the following two projects dealing with peace:

Live on Purpose past blog post Global Consciousness Project

Live on Purpose past blog post Peace Intention

When web site developers are building code for an online application, like a proprietary shopping cart, they need to know exactly what the application is supposed to do before they even start. They need to know who the audience is, what the end goal is, whether there will be volume discounts, whether the opt-in email list will be offered before or after the sale, and exactly how many steps the user should see during checkout.

As the developers near completion, and testing begins, managers will ask for new functionalities that nobody anticipated in the beginning. This is called “scope creep.” Now the developers have to go back to square one and try to hack in the new function without completely rewriting the entire application. It’s a patch, because deadline is coming.

Then, two months after launch of the application, users are demanding their own control panel so they can change details about themselves easily (just pretend this wasn’t written in the first place). Now the developers have to take code from another source and make it work with their own application. It increases the “bugginess” of the application because of some loopholes and perhaps not enough time built into the project for testing.

After a year or two of changes to the code, the developers feel it would just be better to start over, taking into account all these new features, and rebuild from the ground up. It would be a cleaner application all around. But budget constraints disallow this approach, and the application must make do as-is.

This is my allegory for how today’s society has been built. Systems and governments and political divisions have all been put into place piecemeal. Our society is built patchwork style, with lots of loopholes and bugs. People are falling through the cracks. People are losing their lives, their livelihoods. The bugs in this system run so far down and there has been so much scope creep in the infrastructure of our daily lives that it only makes sense to me to make a fresh start.

For instance, I know that to combat depression, a person’s diet needs to be clean, and free of highly processed junk foods and refined sugars. To be free of depression, a person needs to be able to make a living doing what he enjoys, whatever gives him a sense of purpose in his life. To be free of depression, a person needs to be able to communicate with his family members calmly without fear of an emotional blowout (often these blowouts are due to poor nourishment in the first place, which predisposes a person to fits of rage…)

But when I try to envision living like that in this society, I draw a blank. I go to work, I want to eat lunch, but there are no alternatives to fast food; nothing I can grab in a half an hour that fits into a “feel-good” diet…unless I really work hard at preparing lunches at home, which I don’t. I send my children to school, but they also do not have a healthy choice for lunch at school and they’re overwhelmed by soda machines and candy sold in the school store. Anytime I want my family to watch TV, I have to subject them to false advertising, violence, foul language, lack of morals…ok I’m sure you get it by now. Unless I extricate us from society, how can I make healthy lifestyle changes work, especially when the rest of my family is resisting any changes?

This is what an “intentional community” is all about. Wouldn’t it be nice to build your own society with a higher purpose in mind? Yes, there are monasteries, there are ashrams. These are communities centered around spiritual growth and connection to God. What if you wanted to include anybody who is hurting because of today’s society, regardless of religious views? Could it work? It certainly gets complicated. In mentally building my own “simcity” I realize I’ll need stores that only stock whole foods; nothing refined. I’ll need either our own tv channel or no tv at all. I’ll need schools that don’t treat children as cattle moving towards the guillotine, but as real individuals with infinite potential. I’ll need a medical care system that is radically different from what we have now, with no insiders’ links to big pharmaceuticals. Hmm, get rid of the bribery, the lies, the coverups…Wow, we really need to start over it seems!

But then remember that everything is already just as it’s supposed to be, because of God’s divine plan. Of course, we have free will to do what we want with our lives. It is by our own choice that we come to a healthy lifestyle; not because our parents forced us to move into this intentional community far removed from society’s current reality. And it is by our own choice that we come to know God, or reject God, or deny God, or whatever. Once a viewpoint is forced upon us we tend to resist it, don’t we?

Take M. Night Shamalayan’s movie, The Village. click for a full synopsis–a spoiler.
Although fiction, we can see from this story that a forced intentional community can feel like paradise for a while, but then something always happens to spoil it! In the movie, the village elders “ferociously” protect the secret that their little idyllic village holds. And then the illusion they worked so hard to protect is shattered. They wanted to shelter their children from violence, and it was violence that shattered their world yet again.

So, while we live in our patchwork web application of a life here in society, we can bring positive intention to our selves. Truly, the answer to straightening out the twisted web of society is to love one another, then although the web of society remains the same, our perception of it is changed. To crawl out from the darkness of depression while encompassed within it seems very hard, much like you just need to start over; yes, a fresh start! But the way to do it is start by loving yourself, accepting yourself as you are, and exercise your free will to choose a better life for yourself.

Living a purposeful life has a lot to do with decision making skills. We are where we are right now because of our past decisions. Therefore, why leave this area of your life or your children’s lives to chance? School systems may carry one or two courses in critical thinking, and if a student is lucky, he will come across a teacher who can develop critical thinking in his students naturally.

If no attention is placed on a student’s method of reaching conclusions and making decisions, “he may use words and ideas, but not know how to think ideas through, and internalize foundational meanings.  He may take classes but cannot make connections between the logic of a discipline and what is important in life. Even the best students often have these deficiencies.” quote from Critical thinking.org

“Critical thinking is important, because it enables one to analyze, evaluate, explain, and restructure our thinking, decreasing thereby the risk of acting on, or thinking with, a false premise.” quote from Wikipedia

Critical Thinking Community. This resource offers plenty of books to buy for home study, from elementary to college level.

Critical Thinking essay at Wikipedia.

Critical Thinking on the Web. This is a huge directory of resources for developing critical thinking and logic skills.

Critical Reading This is a list of ways to tell if your student is a critical thinker.

Developing this skill takes some time and attention. I don’t think I’m going to leave it up to the public schools to turn my middle school student into a critical thinker – I’d rather supplement his education on my own. Some moms decide to homeschool, and there are plenty of resources online to help you develop thinking skills in your student.  I learned from Charles Fay, of the Love and Logic Institute, that a great way to respond to your children is to ask, “and how would that work out?” Then leave it up to the child to answer. This forces thinking about differing outcomes for the same event. Here are some other ideas from the Love and Logic Institute:

• Hope they make a poor decision. Children learn to make good choices by making poor ones and experiencing the consequences.
• Let empathy and logical consequences do the teaching. Empathy is the key! By being sad for our kids rather than being angry at them, they are allowed to focus on their poor choice rather than our anger.

This brings up a good point in reference to purposeful parenting. When our children make choices based on whether Mom or Dad will be angry, they are missing valuable chances to learn how to think critically. If anger is the motivating factor in any relationship, the communication suffers on both sides. So parents, think again before saying things like “just wait till your father gets home.” “Don’t make me angry!” and “If you do that, I’ll be so angry with you.”

Try to turn it around like this: “are you ready for the consequences?”, “I’m so sad you decided to do that, because now you will have consequences,” and “how will that work out for you?”

Try delving further with some of the resource links above for more information.

I have been a step-parent for about twelve years, and I’m also a mother, so I’ve had the chance to reflect on the differences between the two roles. I have encountered numerous frustrations with being a step-parent, and I have realized that in order to be comfortable in this role, you have to be okay with you first; or as I said it: “I have to be okay with me, and that’s very important.”

I say this because your step-children will be testing you from day one! As you encounter their teen years, there will be rebellion and contrary attitudes. Of course, your own birth children will also test you, and rebel when they are teens, but the step-children tend to use the “you’re not my Mom” approach and they may end up asking your spouse to take sides, or they may simply ignore your rules.

I have a friend who asked me, “Wow, you’ve got more experience than I do in parenting teens…what’s your advice for me? I have twins who are about to be teenagers!”

I told him, as I tell all of you, “You and your spouse have to be a united front when it comes to parenting decisions. If there is any division between you about how to parent your children, they will find it and use it against you! That means you actually have to have meetings with your spouse and talk about your differing parenting styles.” (How do you think I learned this? That’s right, because my husband and I have completely different parenting styles and the children saw it in our behavior–read in: bickering.)

So, why do I have to be okay with me? This phrase is something I learned from Bill Harris and the support materials that come with the Holosync CD meditation system. It implies self-forgiveness. Sure, I’ve messed up in the past. All I have is right now, and my best option for now is to be okay with myself as I am, so I can make the best decisions in regards to my children and step-children’s lives. My own guilt, fear, and negative reactions get in the way of effective parenting. Who knows, I may not even be very effective with my step-children, because they tend to come and go between their two parents, but in the long run, I hope that my “teaching by example” style will help them somehow.

When I’m stressed by the choices my children and step-children make, I say this prayer:

• God grant me right thought, right speech, and right action today.

When I’m calm, I say it like an affirmation:

• I demonstrate right thought, right speech, and right action.

And, of course, my time spent in meditation with the Holosync CD, linked above, helped me to “chill out” from my typical over-reactions to some of the distressing behaviors I noticed in the children. Now I lose my temper much less frequently than I did four years ago.

Here are some online resources to help step-parents with their blended families:

Blended Families

National Stepfamily Resource Center

A List of helpful links for stepfamilies

There is quite a vibrant discussion over at Steve Pavlina’s site about how to discover your life’s purpose in 20 minutes.

It outlines an excellent mental exercise to uncover your life’s purpose. However, that’s not what this site “Live on Purpose” is all about. I believe in mystery. I love that life is mysterious, God is mysterious, and you never quite know why God is calling you to do something.

You know, my father has told me that he knew in elementary school that he wanted to be a scientist. And now, he’s an analytical chemist, studying the makeup of molecules.

I, however, never had such a clearly defined sense of knowing what I wanted “to be” when I grew up. I couldn’t choose a major in college. I floated from interest to interest. And, yes, I wondered what in the world I was put on the Earth to accomplish. Perhaps it was to be my kids’ mommy. Perhaps it was to smile at that stranger on the ferry.

I found an audio recording of a classic self-improvement book called “As a man thinketh” and wrote an article about it. Author James Allen claims that it’s okay to have even material goals as our purpose, if only to start us on the “royal road to self control.”

So I don’t think it’s that important that we have a mission statement for our lives that’s so powerful it brings us to tears, although it would be helpful. It’s living in the moment, in the now, that lets us make purposeful decisions for now. When we can choose our reactions to everyday stressors, we’re living on purpose. When we can choose whether we want to put an item in a landfill or in a recycle bin, we’re living on purpose. And when we can choose right now how we will react to our children’s temper tantrums, we are living on purpose.