Relationship is all there is, everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone. ---Margaret Wheatley

collaboration

When you have nothing left to give, and you have exhausted all of your resources, and are at your wits end, you sometimes end up performing better than ever. It's as though circumstances have contrived to pose questions not yet asked and to reveal resources hitherto unknown. At times like these you learn to ask for help, and also to give help to others, when before you might have said you were too busy, or that what you were doing was too important for you to interrupt the flow.

 

It has been said that our chief task as humans is to find meaning. We are meaning-making beings. Whether we recognize it or not, we are inspired to actions because of the meanings they give to our life. When the given meanings are fully congruent with our actions, we begin to FLOW. Call it creativity, awareness, happiness, productivity. It is never singular or static, and it usually manifests in multiple simultaneous ways. We have all experienced it!

Of course, when we, our organization or community, is incongruent and at odds with itself, when there is a conflict between intentions, meaning, actions, and outcomes it pervades everything we do. Unfortunately, most of us have experienced the discomfort of that too!!

 

If we define ourselves solely by what we have, or by what we have done, or by what hope we will do, we become empty, like insatiable ghosts. A simple shift in perspective turns us back into human beings again, embodied, working and living at our full potential. Nothing gets done by just imagining it. Yet, everything begins with the imagination. When we embody what we imagine, our actions emerge out of that fullness of being and a successful outcome is almost guaranteed—by what we ARE, not just by what we do.