When I started working with Lynne, my coach, in 2005, I undertook to create an explicit statement of my values. It was not the first time I had explored what was important to me in my life, though it was the first time I had explored my values quite so fully and thoroughly. Every now and then I change a word here or there as I did recently. And still, I find that each change reinforces my original statement.
It was a couple of years later that a penny dropped for me as I realised that my values were pointing to an overall mission for my life. Capturing this mission in words has provided a clear guiding principle for me which is at once so simple and – for me, at least – profound. My mission is: to fall ever more deeply in love with my life.
What does this statement imply? As I write this morning I ponder this. The first thing that springs to mind is a quote of unknown origin, that “life is the sum of all our choices”. This mission guides me to make choices which bring me joy, and this in turn is a reminder that I do have choices. So, this is a statement which invites me to take responsibility for my life and to make it a life that I can, increasingly, enjoy.
This, in turn, implies for me that my life can be a matter of joy and that this is OK. I remember meeting a man who, after a successful corporate career, started to work for a not-for-profit organisation which was close to his heart. He was almost looking over his shoulder when he said to me that he wasn’t sure it was OK to enjoy himself as much as he was in his new career. I do wonder how much we come to believe that pain and suffering is our lot. For my part, I have chosen to embrace a different path and to create a life of joy and fulfilment.
To live in joy implies being connected to my own responses. For how can I know what brings me joy, if I am not able to sense my responses to my experiences? So, as I travel this path, I am becoming more and more attuned to my emotions and to the feedback my body gives me. I have found that this alone is not enough. For responding to such feedback requires skillful means. For this reason I have embraced learning as a core value. Attending to my responses and employing skillful means to choose my reactions help me to take steps on an ongoing basis towards I life I can truly love.
There is of course, one thing I have to be able to square in order to feel good about treading this path, living as I do in a world in which judgement (or ‘criticism’) is encouraged. Is it not utterly selfish to live in this way? As a student of nonviolent communication I have come to learn how much it matters to me to contribute to others and this is part of what gives me joy, especially when I can contribute from a place of willingness rather from a sense of obligation; especially when I give of the best of myself, rather than seek to muster a contribution which is somehow at odds with who I am and what I have to give.
There is so much more I can say. I am moved to add one last thing. This is about trends – about the overall trend in my life towards living in a way which brings me joy. To live my life in this way means that there is one thing I am able to offer to those who are seeking a different way of being in the world and doubting that it’s possible to be happy in this life. This is, of course, the conviction, borne of experience, that it is.