By PatSullivan
Have you ever worked hard to meet a goal, then found when you met it that it was the wrong goal? Like you worked hard to gain success in the wrong career, and you don’t have a clue what your right career is?
Career confusion is one key sign that you need a true vision from your heart and soul. That means you need something more than a goal set by someone else or even a brilliant idea that you activate before you discern whether or not it matches your true needs, dreams or desires. You need a clear, compelling vision that’s anchored in current reality and leads you to your most fulfilling future. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
How can reading or hearing the news be as much a part of your spiritual practice as studying sacred scriptures or everyday prayer? How can the news help you clarify your particular service work when the needs and opportunities are so great?
Praying the News Begins by Being Fully Present To It
“Reality shows” can be watched as entertainment. Genuine news demands that we be fully present to what is and allow it to affect us, even when there’s nothing we can do about it. That means honoring life as a mystery, not as a problem to be solved, but as a paradox where we are called to go deep into the heart of compassion without agenda or attachment to outcome. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
Earthquakes themselves kill very few people, despite popular movie images of the earth suddenly opening up huge crevices that swallow lots of people. Poorly constructed buildings, however, routinely kill many people. 99% of those deaths are in poor countries, like Haiti or India, which lack earthquake resistance know-how, strict building codes (like those that have been in place in California and Japan for decades) and/or a non-corrupt government to enforce those codes.
And, oh, yes, money. That’s particularly important in developing countries where very few people have the funds to make their new homes earthquake or storm resistant, once the international recovery funds dry up.
Some good news, reports earthquake engineer and founder of Build Change, Elisabeth Hausler, Ph.D., is that “in a place like Haiti, building a house to withstand an earthquake can also help it to withstand a hurricane, particularly by tying the roof down to prevent it from flying off in strong winds. For earthquake-resistant design, the roof is often tied to the walls to provide some kind of bracing effect for the walls.
When India was devastated by a January 26, 2001 quake that killed well over 20,000 people, Hausler was halfway through a civil engineering Ph.D. program at UC Berkeley. At the same time, she was undergoing an existential crisis: how could she do something truly meaningful with her training? How she turned that question into Build Change, which helps create safer housing in developing countries, is a textbook example of how the mind of a visionary works. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
As we start a new year, I find myself thinking about creativity – often an overused word, yet not well understood. I really believe that everyone can be creative, and feel sad when others tell me they are not creative. “I don’t paint or play music” they say as to why they don’t feel creative.
Let’s be creative with the word creative. Creativity isn’t just in what we do, but in who we are.
Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
After 20 years of studying how people either block or shape visions for work and life, I’ve concluded that
1) the potential to be visionary is in all of us, though visionary potentials like instincts, imagination and intuition are more likely to be quashed than developed;
2) the worlds of work and money and everything else that affects us are in sore need of real vision, not just same-old strategies or the newest shiny thing; and
3) being the visionaries we were born to be is a lot simpler than trying to live without vision. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
Sometimes, your best efforts just won’t bear fruit. No matter how hard you pray, how persistently you network, how creatively you market, the right job or client just isn’t there. If you’re fortunate enough to have a job or client, sometimes things just don’t work out in myriad painful ways.
St. John of the Cross called times like this “the dark night of the soul.” However the challenge manifests, there’s a sense that you’re at the end of your road. Whatever spiritual practices worked in the past don’t work now. Just when you need clear guidance, you’re more clueless than you may dare to admit.
That, as St. John wrote, is as it should be. Sometimes, the only way to deal with pain is to stop trying to understand it, and simply experience it. It’s as if we’ve taken all our spiritual wisdom to its edge, and the only way to find our next step is to go past all we think we know, into the darkness of unknowing. Only then can we see the faint light in our own heart, guiding us to whatever wisdom we need next. Continue reading this post »
