Motivation and doing what you love
Dear Raffi,
Can't stand it anymore that your question has sat here since my birthday and not had an answer. So here i go...we are a circle of two at this point with lots of empty chairs for anyone to join who wants to.
So, motivation and doing what i love...well, my breakthroughs have all come from putting myself deliberately into situations that i was afraid of and that i was unsure i could succeed at. In other words, purposely confronting fear.
I think of lack of motivation as resistance. And resistance is most often about fear. Every time i confront mine, i learn a bit more about it and me, and i am less in its grasp. I am starting to make fear and pain my friends because of all the things they can teach me. And if i want to live in open space (as i understand it) this is necessary, because it is so tempting and so much easier to shut down to difficult feelings (even the good ones, like the inexplicable and unreasonable way i love all of you) than it is to push through the terrifying, but oh-so-thin veil of fear/pain that stands in the way of opening to the next possibility.
And what were some of those lessons?
Let's see..there was spelunking at River Bend Cave on Vancouver Island (5-hour trip including a 20ft belly crawl through wet gravel and a three-storey free climb over a 7-storey drop--btw never climbed or caved before) where i learned that in order to discover the delights over the next horizon you have to let go and trust the rope.
Model Mugging intensive course--full contact self-defense--where i learned that there was an inviolable place inside and that in the end i could commit 100% to myself and never give up.
10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat -- There were so many deep learnings at this one...a highlight? how to observe and not react--a special kind of discipline that is very helpful for overcoming old patterns, inertia, and resistance.
Toronto Airport last August where i got on my scheduled plane to OSonOS Halifax despite the turmoil of the morning after the crash--i learned the value of calm yet direct persistence and just how much energy achieving even a small goal can take!
Art of Hosting - Bowen Island - sitting with my fears of inadequacy around doing what i love -- discovering that the veil *is* thin and that the shortest way out of suffering is through the centre of it all.
At the Art of Hosting, we were asked a question; this question was also a breakthrough for me, as it connected my calling with my doing, as i realized that for me Open Space is, at its deepest level, about the liberation of the human spirit.
And so, i want to pass the question from that circle on to you:
What was the moment you knew you were called to Host?
Can't stand it anymore that your question has sat here since my birthday and not had an answer. So here i go...we are a circle of two at this point with lots of empty chairs for anyone to join who wants to.
So, motivation and doing what i love...well, my breakthroughs have all come from putting myself deliberately into situations that i was afraid of and that i was unsure i could succeed at. In other words, purposely confronting fear.
I think of lack of motivation as resistance. And resistance is most often about fear. Every time i confront mine, i learn a bit more about it and me, and i am less in its grasp. I am starting to make fear and pain my friends because of all the things they can teach me. And if i want to live in open space (as i understand it) this is necessary, because it is so tempting and so much easier to shut down to difficult feelings (even the good ones, like the inexplicable and unreasonable way i love all of you) than it is to push through the terrifying, but oh-so-thin veil of fear/pain that stands in the way of opening to the next possibility.
And what were some of those lessons?
Let's see..there was spelunking at River Bend Cave on Vancouver Island (5-hour trip including a 20ft belly crawl through wet gravel and a three-storey free climb over a 7-storey drop--btw never climbed or caved before) where i learned that in order to discover the delights over the next horizon you have to let go and trust the rope.
Model Mugging intensive course--full contact self-defense--where i learned that there was an inviolable place inside and that in the end i could commit 100% to myself and never give up.
10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat -- There were so many deep learnings at this one...a highlight? how to observe and not react--a special kind of discipline that is very helpful for overcoming old patterns, inertia, and resistance.
Toronto Airport last August where i got on my scheduled plane to OSonOS Halifax despite the turmoil of the morning after the crash--i learned the value of calm yet direct persistence and just how much energy achieving even a small goal can take!
Art of Hosting - Bowen Island - sitting with my fears of inadequacy around doing what i love -- discovering that the veil *is* thin and that the shortest way out of suffering is through the centre of it all.
At the Art of Hosting, we were asked a question; this question was also a breakthrough for me, as it connected my calling with my doing, as i realized that for me Open Space is, at its deepest level, about the liberation of the human spirit.
And so, i want to pass the question from that circle on to you:
What was the moment you knew you were called to Host?
posted by iyeshka farmer at 10:04 p.m.
