Building from the Core Out

Day #2

Hello Radiant Leaders,

If I were to put a 3D visual to our journey as leaders and mentors of the generations to come, rather than a tall towering building lifting up to the sky, I see us as a glowing, growing sphere, like the sun, with rays reaching far and wide, ever expanding. What makes this image powerful is the radiant center, from which all the beams of light and influence flow.

Radiating from Core is Key

When we think of any mass it is the center that is calmest (like the eye of a storm), hottest (like the sun), it is where energy is either suspended or at its peak. I make this analogy, because all that we are, if we have any hope of influencing those we long to inspire, must flow from that center, that place of stillness and concentrated (not chaotic) energy. We establish this core by knowing what drives us, what calls us, what sustains us when the winds are howling and the rains of wonder and doubt are driving hard.

For that past 12 years or so, I have been facilitating workshops on living your YES! life, from a place of center. Sounds a little ‘out there’ for the biz world, but teams upon teams stepped out and up to determine what grounds them, what excites them, what sustains them. All of it was based on values. If we align that which we value with the actions we take, we will without a shadow of a doubt, be living our own splendid version of our YES! life. Why? Because this value-understanding stems from our own innate wisdom and it is bang-on with what we need and what we are here to contribute to the planet.

So with the desire of empowering our children, and anyone in our realm, with YES!-power, we must determine FIRST what it is we value. We must determine what stills and ignites us at our core. And this, although we may think it to be logical self-knowledge, is often never really considered in full before building the road map for our lives. Many people spend more time planning a two-week vacation then they spend planning their lives.

This will never do when we are embarking on this one, extraordinary adventure called our life. And it will certainly never, ever do if we hope to authentically inspire our children and the world around us. So we begin by building from the core out.

I invite you to revisit your core values. What are your top 10 values? List them, look at them, consider them and then ask yourself, are you living them? If yes, YEA you! If there is tweaking to be done, tweak away. What one thing will you do this week to move one area of your life closer to what you value?

This is the work that must be done in order for us to radiate fully for all those who will be enlightened, calmed, enthused, overjoyed, by our ever-evolving rays.

By the way, consider, we leading-edge parents and mentors don’t love the idea of ‘rules’ necessarily, we love the concept of ‘flow’ and ‘living outside the box’, but we can have our cake and eat it too. Every system where structure is prominent has ‘rules’. Rules control people, rules ensure people either control themselves or their will be ‘consequences’. But what if, we never talked of rules, rather we talked of values and what we needed to do to uphold those values, and that knowledge lead everyone, by nature, to uphold that value. It would be the same outcome, but every person in it would feel less controlled, more empowered and would hold themselves accountable for an end result they desire for themselves and all. Hmmm…

Idealistic? Perhaps. But as a camp director for over 75 staff, I implemented such a Values-based setting and curfew (among other ‘rules’ that needed to be upheld by head office), was never once broken. The staff told me their values, we agreed on what needed to be done to uphold them and everyone kept each other accountable.

So this post-purpose is two-fold, consider and uphold your own values and then, when needing your family unit to flow in order, see if value-based conversation doesn’t shift the feeling around your home… or team for that matter:)

In gratitude for your glow in the world,

jenni

p.s. If you were wondering:) my core values are (they are not in any particular order after the first one):

Limitless, boundless love
Joy
Real & Present Relationship
Grace
Creative expression
Impractical peace (the ‘im’ part being because I believe and strive whole-heartedly to maintain peace and offer peace when many in the world would tell you that is ‘impractical’:)
Whole Health
Gratitude
Spiritual grounding and connection
Consistent contribution

Perhaps this sparks some ideas of your own. If you need more to review to initiate ideas, you can go to Values List (this is a pretty comprehensive one).

2-1 – please see LifeSchool Footnotesfor photo source

© Copyright – All Rights Reserved – Jennifer Maki, Project YES! Life, Center of YES!, Inc. All postings, writings, photos contained within this blog are subject to copyright. That being said, I would certainly appreciate your sharing excerpts and/or photos, but please do reference this blog http://www.lifeschoolinc.wordpress.com. Thank you:)