Tag Archives: Einstein

A Message to Late Bloomers: Why You Should Never Give Up

DSC_0598“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” –George Eliot

Hello friend,

POTENTIAL. What a wistful, fantastic, cursing, disappointing, and utterly pregnant word!

I have spent much of my life pondering this loaded concept. Many times have I thought or written, “The thing that saddens me most is wasted potential.” It has always broken my heart to see people settle or “underachieve” what I believed their potential to be (as though I had any right to be the judge of such things). I have, no doubt, written many times about it in my journal.

Here is one such instance, a small piece of a long entry I wrote one rainy night in Spain way back in 1997. I had been carrying on about how sometimes goals don’t push me but rather serve as limits to my growth, and I made the link as follows:

“It is all about what is possible. It leads to, or perhaps is the same as, the discussion of potential. In fact it is the same. There is that saying that God’s gift to you is your talent or potential, and your gift back to God is what you do with it. The saddest thing in the world is wasted potential (a.k.a. wasted gifts, wasted talent). I speak of this at every level, from mathematics to the ability to love to being the one to lead the big change in the world towards salvation. We must never settle! Never! That is the greatest tragedy. It pains my soul to see it. I see a girl like Marty in Beautiful Girls or Leah, and I just want to grab ahold of them and shake them, and simply say, “Never settle. There is so much inside of you. Do not be less than you can be.” It is everywhere, but I can see it in the girls of North Dakota, never seeing past the high school boyfriend, never giving themselves a chance. The tragedy. I hate to conjure that look of dead eyes in a woman that once had such a propensity for life. We must never settle!”

I have been pretty passionate about this idea over the years. I think that is what drew me to Life Coaching. You see, people don’t come to a Life Coach to be healed or fixed or made whole again. They don’t need all of their problems solved. No, they arrive whole and say, in essence, “I want to be my best. Let’s partner up to get me there!”  That makes my heart jump.

 Of course, the person on whom I have spent by far the most time and energy pondering, assessing, diagnosing, prescribing, monitoring, consoling, encouraging, and journaling about is myself. Like most people, I am probably my harshest critic. But, I am also the person I look to—usually via my journal—as the last one to believe in me and my potential when it feels like everyone else has forgotten or lost interest.

I have always believed that I have tremendous potential. I have daydreamed the biggest dreams of all for myself, things like truly saving the world with my ideas and actions. I have believed, at least once upon a time, that that power was in me.

Well, the bigger they are, the harder they fall! As I said, with great gifts come great responsibilities. Because I believed I had such magnificent gifts, my disappointment in myself—not to mention the guilt and shame—in not having made much of an impact on the world has been quite profound. I cannot believe, sometimes, how far off-track I have gone from where I once seemed to be heading. It is, when I take the time to fully consider it, quite disheartening. I have failed to honor my gifts by not using them to their fullest good. I have—shame of all shames—not lived up to my potential.

If you are at all like me and are wishing you would have done better, I have something to tell us both today:

It’s not over, friend! It isn’t. It is just starting, actually. Right now. In this beautiful moment. You have the amazing opportunity to start fresh and be better. No, not just better. You can be the person you have always—or even just once upon a time—imagined yourself to be. Look, I am not saying you are going to fly to the moon or play in the NBA; some dreams are time-specific, and you can actually miss your window. That stinks, I get it. But you are not too late for most things. Not even the DOING things. Want to learn the guitar (I do!)? Want to learn to speak Italian? Want to be better at your job? Want to get trained for a new job? Almost anything you can think of, you can still do. I wanted to have written several books by now. I haven’t. That’s disappointing, sure. But it’s not a death sentence. I still want to write them. So, I am using my failure up to this point to motivate me to be more focused going forward. Einstein said, “You never fail until you stop trying.” So get up, acknowledge that you haven’t hit every shot so far, and get focused on what you are going to be starting NOW. Notice I said “be.” Like I said, you can still DO most anything, too. You can start today, and things will still take lots of time and persistence. And there is value in the striving, of course. But the thing that is definitely yours for the taking in this very moment is your BEING. No matter how you have been so far in your life—selfish, impatient, unforgiving, greedy, unfocused, undisciplined, mean, weak, timid, insecure, afraid—you can choose to BE better and achieve it instantly. It is not as easy as it sounds—you have to KEEP choosing it over and over and over—but it is that simple. JUST CHOOSE TO BE HOW YOU WANT TO BE, AND KEEP CHOOSING IT. That is self-improvement. The DOING stuff will follow; I guarantee it. Imagine how choosing to be BRAVE would translate in your life. How would FORGIVING look on you? Picture yourself KIND. Try on AUTHENTIC (I love that one!). You can be what you see! Choose to be. This itself is an act of courage. But it is the greatest gift you will ever give yourself. So do it. Be courageous. Stand up for the greatness that you KNOW is inside you. Stop playing small. Sure, own your shortcomings. But don’t let them own you. Own your past. Just don’t live there. The old stuff doesn’t define you. YOU get to do that, starting now. And with every NOW that shows up, you get to redefine. So, make sure you define yourself as amazingly as you really are. Name it and claim it. It is time to play a bigger game. And the game starts NOW!!!

Okay, I admit that it feels much better to think about my life that way than it does when I lose myself in disappointment and regret for all I haven’t been and done. It is probably time to take my own advice. After all, despite my disappointment in my past, I truly have never stopped believing there is greatness in me. I think it is time that I rise to it. Better late than never!

How about you? How have you done so far in relation to your potential? Open up your journal and start with a little report card of your life to this point compared to the expectations you had for it. Have you done the things you believed you could or should do? Have you been the kind of person you believed you would be? What things have you lived up to? Where have you fallen short? Of what are you most disappointed in yourself? Did you feel like you were one of the people I addressed my message to? Can you let the past go? Now, change gears. Write about your potential. What kinds of things do you see yourself doing? If your best self showed itself, what characteristics would you have? How different would that feel to you? Try them on! Imagine the feelings. How is it? Do you feel elevated? Happier? Do you believe that you have the power to choose those characteristics in this moment? Are you ready to make that choice? How much better do you choose to be? How excited are you about all of this? Leave me a reply and let me know: Are you ready to bloom?

Own your magnificence,

William

P.S. If today’s message resonated with you, I am so glad! Please pass it on. Let’s bloom together!!!

Is Awe Still In You?

DSC_0601“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”  –W.B. Yeats 

Hello friend,

A couple of weeks ago, I brought my kids downtown to see the skyscrapers. As suburbanites, I often point out “Big City” in the distance as we are driving, but never in their lives had I taken them there to see the tall buildings up close. We parked the car just out of downtown so that we could walk through a sculpture garden and park on the way to the buildings. To get there, though, we had to cross a walking bridge high above a busy freeway. We got to the top of the steps to cross, and my 3 ½ year-old son’s mouth dropped wide open. He stared in wide wonder as, right below him, cars and trucks went speeding by in several lanes side-by-side. He was absolutely mesmerized by the entire scene. Awestruck.

The look on his face was priceless, like a brand new world had just opened up and was flooding his senses. He was stunned, but giddy at the same time. It was, for me, one of those moments when time slows down and every image gets etched into my heart and mind. I was so glad to get to share in a really cool moment in his life that instantly became a really cool moment in mine, but for very different reasons.   For him, it was that he was being blown away by this amazing world and all of its magnificent offerings—like cars and motorcycles racing right under your feet—and for me it was pure gratitude: for him and for the idea that I could provide this jaw-dropping moment for him. The thought that really grabbed me in that moment–and hasn’t let go of me since–though, was “Oh, to be so lucky! To be completely in awe of so many things in this world that the rest of us walk right by. What I wouldn’t give to have the WONDER of a child. The susceptibility to AWE.” 

If you spend any time around little kids, you quickly learn how amazing our world is. They are excited about almost everything. Even when we don’t even leave my house and yard, I can’t tell you how many times a day my son hollers for me: “DAD!!! You GOTTA SEE THIS! This is TOTALLY COOL!!!” He could be talking about a leaf, or, just as easily, what he has just created in the toilet. But beyond mere excitement, this sense of awe is nearly as common. Children are so good at staying in the moment that so many things feel brand new to them every time, and that sense of novelty is the key ingredient in awe. You can stare in wide wonder at a world that is new to you and full of magic.

Regarding the Yeats quote I mentioned at the top, I think kids do a better job than us adults at keeping their senses sharp, i.e., being present and open to the magic that fills the world around us. Where and when do we go wrong, though? When do our senses dull? When do we stop being so awestruck by this place? Is it simply the repetitive nature of our lives, the fact that we see and do the same things over and over? Is it in how terribly busy we get as we grow, our minds trying to keep ourselves organized rather than stopping to smell the roses, or even noticing their presence?

I am trying to think of all the times I have been in awe as an adult. Sadly, it is a challenge to come up with examples. I was completely awestruck by my daughter when she was born. Simply her presence in the world, that this little living thing was breathing and crying and melting my heart when only moments before she was living inside my wife’s abdomen. That was truly amazing to me. I was in awe of her every development, in the first couple of years especially. I remember vividly, in the period of 18-24 months, being completely dumbfounded almost daily by the new intellectual feats. Human development is an astonishing thing. In the old days, when I spent all of my time on personal/spiritual enrichment and didn’t have a care in the world, I found many moments of awe in the Universe, most frequently when I was in nature. Put me by the ocean or a glacial lake in the mountains of Montana, and I ooze awe. What a wonderland we have been gifted with in which to live! Other moments of awe, for me, have happened at concerts, when the music and the artist stir my soul into a frenzy. The last one that comes to me is the head-over-heels falling-in-love phase of a relationship, being in awe not just of the other person but of the utter magnificence of existence now that you have found the key to the whole thing.

Babies, Nature, Art, and Love. These are the things that have dropped my jaw in adulthood. Four things? My son’s list is longer than that before breakfast! So how can I be more like him: amazed and excited by nearly every thing he comes upon? I think a big part of it is presence: simply staying in the moment and appreciating what is. I can also do better at taking an attitude of gratitude, being more mindful of the intricacy and interconnectedness of all Life in the Universe. When I consider the most minute details of how this place runs and all the conditions that had to fall exactly into place so that I could sit here and write this to you, I cannot help but be in awe. That awe makes me feel so much more alive. Einstein had it right when he said, “He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

So, how about you? What makes you “pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe”? Get out your journal and start writing. When was the last time you felt that wonder, that awe? How much do you envy children for their wide-eyed approach to the world? What is your biggest trigger, the thing that makes you most likely to feel amazement? What can you do to put yourself in position to feel it more often? Do you think it declines steadily with age, or does it rise and fall with your attitude and life circumstances? Be honest: do you sometimes think you might never feel it again? Leave me a reply and let me know: Is awe still in you?

Let your inner kid go out to play today,

William