LIFE COACHING NEWSLETTER
MAY 2004
"Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his true self and not from the self he thinks he should be…. So remember these two things: you are talented and you are original."
Life is more than we’ve been led to believe.
No one tells us that we function socially on two levels:
As parts, we only play a role in the larger story of a family, a school, a city, a relationship, and a culture.
As wholes, we are the story — consciously driving our own narrative.
As parts, we are conditioned to believe that we exist in a cultural trap, a set-up: an "either/or " frame of reference. Either we Respond to or React against everything in our lives. As parts, we experience life a problem to be solved.
As wholes, we compose and live our own lives, artfully: full of beauty, challenge, purpose, and meaning. Artists don’t follow, copy, or imitate others. They are peerless and unsurpassed. They are one of a kind.
Parts follow a script and play minor roles in someone else’s story. We are born, live, and die without having discovered our own stupefying potentiality.
Recently, I went to a panel discussion on diversity because one of the panelists was Mel King, a friend of mine. Mel is a very tall and charismatic man of few words. During the Q&A, a woman spoke of her frustration in the face of the treatment she received at the hands of her fellow professionals. She asked for a comment from Mel.
"I can’t speak to other people’s behavior. For me, the issue is always about self-definition. Rosa Parks (the black woman who sparked the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama back in 1956) is my hero. When she refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, she claimed her own humanity. If it wasn’t for Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King would have remained an obscure preacher."
Our obsession with celebrity creates the lllusion that only special people are heroes, and the rest, of us merely spectators in life. The truth is that we are all the heroes in our own lives. But unless we consciously choose to live our lives out of our own centeredness, we will be reduced to the minor role of a spectator — just another face in the crowd.
The next Day of Self-Discovery is scheduled on June 6, 2004
