Category Archives: Personal Empowerment

Personal Empowerment

Paradox of Deception

By Shae Hadden | Bio

For a few hours yesterday, I was ‘spring cleaning’, clearing out the accumulated papers and possessions of the past. I always find such ‘mindless’ activities actually very mindful: they are the perfect opportunity to become present to many of the old internal conversations I’ve been having with myself. Each piece of paper or item draws up memories or images of who I was or what was happening in my life at the time. Yesterday, what kept appearing was the thought that I have been deceiving myself about who I am and what I want to do with my life for a very long time. A question followed—what value is there in deceit?

Conventional wisdom would have it that mastering deception is mastering the art of cheating someone or something other than ourselves. Yet, every self-deception influences our mood, choices and actions, and these can deceive others into believing we are not who we are. And every time we deceive others, we deceive ourselves into believing our own self-deception.

Deception hides us from our deepest desires: it’s as if we live in a castle of confusion, blind to the paradox we’ve

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Personal Empowerment

Redefining Success

By Shae Hadden | Bio

I’ve been thinking about how we define success, and observing how serene people become when they feel ‘successful’. For most of my life, I’ve focused my thinking on achieving the traditional symbols of success: significant recognition, meaningful associations with particular people, my own home, specific possessions. Something shifted in me a few years ago when I realized none of these ‘mean’ anything when we reach the end of our journey. They hold only peripheral interest for me now.

Life gets fired at us point blank. And I notice that my actions continue to be predicated on my old definition of success. So I need a new definition to provide a more empowering context for my future, one more in line with my current thinking. Here’s my first stab at a new ‘take’ on success. If I can live the following, I may be successful:

  • Sincerity – listening generously and speaking authentically
  • Understanding – learning about my self and others and our world
  • Commitment – being clear about what I’m committed to and acting on my commitments
  • Courage –acknowledging my fears…and being in action anyway
  • Empowerment – developing others to be who they choose to be (and myself as who I choose to be)
  • Standing – for others and the future I’m committed to
  • Serenity – surrendering to ‘what is’ and trusting intention

As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” So to be successful, I’m committing to these habits:

  • Smiling for no reason
  • Loving compassionately and unconditionally
  • Listening with my whole being
  • Speaking powerfully
  • Singing spontaneously
  • Playing with work
  • Sharing my joy and passion
  • Doing what’s necessary to be energized, healthy and serene
  • Expressing gratitude for the arrival of each new day, every new person, and all the ‘breakdowns’ in life.

So how do you define

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Personal Empowerment

Emptying House

By Shae Hadden | Bio

Spring is in the air today. The first crocuses blaze their yellow glory at me from across the lawn. I’m staring into the sky blue expanse above the mountain ridge, and wondering why I’ve chosen to move from this place. The quiet location and the natural environment were perfect for me when I moved in a year and a half ago. And now these four walls and many of the things gathered around me loom like barriers to living full out. The friendships I had before I moved have all, save for a few, disintegrated. Some people have dropped out of my life entirely. Others, still present, relate to me in very different ways than before. Similarly, the activities we used to do together have disappeared from the picture as well. I am changed.  My inner transformation has created outer changes in my circumstances and relationships. I find myself attracted to the ‘New Me’ and distracted by, even uncomfortable with, the ‘Old Me’. Holding on to anything from my past would seem to be an exercise in futility. I sense an overwhelming urge to ‘clean house’, to empty my life of what no longer serves. It’s said that, as we journey through life, we find ourselves letting go of people, places and things that no longer align with who we are. While I’m grateful for everyone and everything in my life today, I’m also realizing that transformation has a price: we must let go of who we have been and what we once treasured to become who we are choosing to be. I’ve decided I’m going to do a bit of spring-cleaning this afternoon. I just wonder what my empty house will fill up with next…?   read more
Personal Empowerment

Overwhelming Choice


By Rick Fullerton | Bio

What fascinates me most at the moment is my increasing interest in ‘everything’. Where in decades past I was consumed by my job, my family, or my professional pursuits, it seems now that my attention is drawn to all manner of things. As a result, I am considering how I make appropriate choices.

On reflection, I see several factors that contribute to this expanding range of interests:

  • As a self-employed and seasoned professional, much of my time is unstructured
  • The more I learn, the more I see connections and linkages with other areas
  • Being encouraged to live ‘in the moment’ legitimizes attending to whatever is present
  • I have earned the right to pursue “what interests me”, not what I should do  
  • Media and technology constantly remind me of new and important areas to explore
  • The clock is ticking.

So
for me (as for others), life occurs as this continuing stream of
experiences where we respond to what shows up for us and what interests
us moment to moment within the structures we find ourselves. The
challenge, it seems, is to gain a different perspective and
relationship with what’s happening.

To complicate things
further, along with the barrage of information and options

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Personal Empowerment

Moods

Moods are central to our lives. There isn’t a time when we are not in one mood or another. For most of us, our moods are organizing how we feel, what we do and how we explain just about everything to ourselves most of the time. For example, can you remember the last time you said, “I am happy” or “I am unhappy” without following the statement with “because”? No, we always have a story for why we are in whatever mood we’re in—whether it is a good one or a bad one.

I often ask

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Personal Empowerment

Keeping Score

It’s been said a lot of different ways that life is not a destination, but a journey. A lot of homespun wisdom and formal philosophy attempts to clarify ‘the purpose of life’ or various other questions about what we’re doing with our lives and why we do it. A good friend was recently seeking my advice about his relationship to money. He was somewhere between perplexed and depressed that he hasn’t been able to produce the financial results in his business that he wanted. This man is a

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Personal Empowerment

Good Days, Bad Days

I caught a Larry King interview the other night in which he
was speaking with a bunch of positive-thinking gurus about their
beliefs and theories. One of the questions he asked was, “Do you have
any bad days”? Most of them said they don’t have bad days, and a couple
said that they still have ‘bumps’ in the road but recover quickly. I
got to thinking about my own life and concluded that I too can claim
that I don’t have bad days, although some are more challenging than
others.

How

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Personal Empowerment

Agreement and Alignment

By Shae Hadden
Bio

In a recent conversation with my sisters, I was reminded that people don’t necessarily have to agree with the how, why or when of a particular possibility. But they do have to be aligned on the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ in order to move forward together—and the ‘who’ has to include a commitment from each person involved to the possibility of the ‘what’. In fact, disagreeing with the specifics of how to create a possibility adds value to the conversation and can inform and, in many cases, contribute to the success of the venture—whether it is the creation of something intangible (like a relationship) or tangible (like a product, project or organization).

For
most, agreement occurs when one person surrenders their point of view
to accept another point of view. Essentially, one perspective wins, the
other loses, within the context of agreement. An example: in
negotiations, the struggle for power is a struggle between perspectives
that has the winner take the dominant position at the head of the
table. Agreement is an either/or proposition. It does not allow space
for collaboration, respect or trust.

Alignment, on the other
hand,

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Personal Empowerment

Balance: My Choose-o-Meter

By Shae Hadden
Bio

I’ve had some further insights since my last post about Balance.

No matter what the extent of my commitments, I see ‘balance’ as my ability to be ‘grounded’ and ‘present’. In each moment, I’m doing what I’m doing…and just that. Nothing else. The whole idea of ‘balancing work and life’, as if they are polar opposites, makes no sense to me.

Life is everything I experience.

Work is what I choose to label as work. Pleasure is what I label as ‘play’. Both work and play are made up of the actions I take as I live.

Balancing

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