It is not in the knowing, it is in the doing!
And now let us welcome the New Year
Full of things that have never been.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
A couple of days before Christmas I found out that one of my coaching clients whom I had worked with for over three years had passed away. Days before her death she had texted me and in my busyness I had not gotten back to her even though in the innocent intention of my heart I had intended to. Unbeknownst to me Lana was to die days later. And now all I have left is the imprint of her words in a text ‘sending me love’ on my mobile phone.
Busyness is a disease. Not seizing the moment to connect, which would have been my final goodbye to Lana, a soul so gentle and sweet has left me numb. So I turned to the one medicine I knew would begin to melt the ice on my frozen feelings and started to write.
I have grown over the years to both trust and respect the way in which writing allows me to open up to what I am really feeling when those feelings are hard to reach. Lana’s death left me in a space of deep, inner reflection. Lana was born with a heart defect. She was not meant to live pass childhood yet life gave her 38 wholesome years. Lana had a dream to set up a television production called ‘Colourful People’. Against the physical toil of her health over the years she continued to work on this dream. Even though she was unable to see Colourful People to fruition the fact that she tended to her dream made her a success.
Not all our dreams will come true. That is a fact of life. But to leave our dreams unattended is far worse than attending to our dreams, bit by bit, chunk by chunk, failure by failure. More successes are birthed from numerous failures than the fairytale dreams of overnight success.
That’s why in the early hours of a morning this week I sat at my computer and typed out yet another letter to a publisher for my second book proposal. With over ten rejection letter received over the last four months I have no intention of stopping here. The show must go on. So I sat and typed my eleventh letter to a publisher as I told myself, ‘this could be the one and I won’t know until I take the action and send it’. And so the letter got typed, the envelope was sealed and the package got posted.
Taking action no matter how small is a powerful act. The power lies in the doing not in the knowing. We kid ourselves that the knowing is the clincher when the doing is really where it’s at. The last three years I have filled myself up with paper qualifications coming out of my ears. But when I sit with a friend, loved one or coaching client and I feel myself really there with them, it is this feeling, this energy of bring present that is more meaningful and valuable than all the qualifications I have accumulated over the years.
At a family dinner, just before Christmas a family friend who was present surprised me by telling me about her sister whom I did not know. She shared how some year’s back her sister attended one of my workshops. She left so inspired that she took action on her passion to set up a language school and now has two successful language schools to date. She sites my workshop as her turning point. I cite it as the doing, the action that she took once she left the workshop that created her turning.
When we take action we raise our energy levels, We call, sending strong signals to the forces and currents of synchronicity and serendipity and through the action that we take, they not only hear but respond to our call. At the same time we consciously and subconsciously feed ourselves the vital medicine that is needed to anoint many of our very much earlier wounded self-esteems. It is this practice of taking action that grows that tree of self- confidence that lives in each one of us.
As this New Year approaches why not take the time to tend to the personal garden of your creative dreams and wishes? Don’t sit back and leave life to chance. Don’t let life slip you by. I knew I wanted to call Lana. But I did not act on what I knew I wanted to do and was thereby robbed of my last goodbye to a cherished soul. None of us knows when our last breath will be taken so we best act as if we never know when we will be called to take leave from this apprenticeship called ‘Life’.
Light, Love and Laughter
Jackee
