by Ada Porat | Oct 30, 2013 | Conscious living, Cope with change, Fear and anxiety, Life transitions
Humanity has reached the most critical watershed period in its history. To survive this crucial era, we must deal with the consequences of our collective irresponsibility: unresolved global relations, monetary exploitation, misguided technological development, excessive human consumption, hyper-militarization, and exhaustion of environmental resources, to name a few. We are approaching absolute limits in nearly all vital areas, threatening the very survival of mankind. To survive, we need to tap into the transformative power of crisis.
This is the perfect storm of a defining era. It is not some futuristic horror scenario; it is happening in our lives now and we need to face facts. This is the moment to set aside complacency, analyze the evidence, and connect those critical dots. This is not a time for voicing opinions and platitudes; it is a time to tap into the transformative power of crisis by making drastic changes in our behaviors.
Futurist Hardy Schloer calls these times we live in the Consequence Era – a time that spans from 2010 to around 2050 and during which the consequences of past actions are coming due. It is payday and the very survival of our species will be determined by the actions we take now.
In a 2012 article published in the Club of Amsterdam Journal, Schloer outlines ten stages that all societies cycle through: from the first stage of irresponsible exuberance that fosters reckless behavior, to the collapse of unsustainable systems and rebirth of society in stage ten.
Schloer is not alone in his observations. Futurists and visionaries have been calling for urgent action since the 1980s. Recently, the BBC charted a list of changes anticipated in the next 150 years, along with the likelihood of each event occurring. It tracked developments in computing, politics, business, science nature, society and technology. The chart shows a clear shift towards increasing dystopia as we approach 2020, indicating a buildup of social pressure for obsolete systems to give way.
We are well into this Consequence Era and crises seem to everywhere. It is important to note that in our global community, these crises affect each one of us on this planet: rich and poor, North and South, East and West.
We know that the transformative power of crisis can be seen in individual transformations that tend to occur when people are pressed to make changes, often during crisis. Fewer transformations occur when things are going well and there is no apparent need to evolve, because we inherently resist change.
Nothing motivates like fear. Sometimes vision alone is insufficient. At such times, the juxtaposition of a frightening possibility and a sustainable alternative can team up to accelerate our shift to new states of consciousness and behavior.
It is time to look at the bigger milieu that forms the backdrop of our daily lives. We are connected to everything that happens in the world out there, for better and for worse. By connecting the dots of what is happening globally, we can tap into the transformative power of crisis to take effective action locally.
This process requires willingness: willingness to re-examine old assumptions, beliefs and attitudes; willingness to abandon old behaviors; and willingness to incorporate more beneficial practices. And this time, it is not just for the fun of personal growth; our survival depends on it. Are you willing to use the pain and discomfort in your life as fuel to grow?
I believe that we can tap into the transformative power of crisis globally to transform our minds, heal our lives and rebuild our world. It is time to muster the courage for meaningful change. We need to examine the bigger picture, educate ourselves about emerging potentials, and take appropriate action at the individual level. When we can do this, we will find creative ways to ultimately thrive during the Consequence Era.
©Copyright Ada Porat. For more information, visit adaporat.com. This article may be freely distributed in whole or in part, provided there is no charge for it and this notice is attached.
by Ada Porat | Sep 18, 2013 | Body Mind Spirit, Conscious living, Cope with change, Decision-making, Fear and anxiety, Life coaching, Life transitions
Every option seems to have a downside. How do I know what’s best? I’m so confused,” a friend recently complained.
My friend was caught in a quandary familiar to many of us. After losing a well-paying job and pounding the pavement for months to find another, an excellent opportunity had just come up – but it required moving out of state. Now a decision had to be made: stay on unemployment and hope for something to turn up locally, uproot the family to accept the offer out of state… or consider something different altogether?
Every option offered potential benefits as well as the potential for failure. The conversation reminded me of six principles of effective decision-making that the school of life taught me.
1. Decision-making is easy when there are no discrepancies in your value system
Fact is, there are decisions to be made every moment of life. Over time, these choices tend to unfold as failure or success, fulfillment or disappointment, or any of the myriad choices in between. So how can we optimize decision-making and minimize the downside?
A clear understanding of your core values will help you choose well at the decision-making junctions of life. These inner values and your emotions around them form an integral part of the decision-making process. Awareness of your core values makes it easier for you to choose options that are in harmony with those values. In the example above, a bit of probing help my friend recognize her core values, which includes being able to provide for her family. Once she recognized this core value, it was easier for her to embrace the idea of working out of town for a while instead of clinging to the security of the known.
2. Effective decision-making deals decisively with fear
I’ve found that most folk who cling to the comfort and security of their known environment, are doing so from fear: fear of the unknown, fear of failing, fear of making mistakes. If you want to make great decisions, you absolutely need to evict fear from your life. It is a dream killer and a useless waste of energy!
3. Effective decision-making looks at content as well as context
Your inner values and desires constitute the immediate content of your decisions. Beyond that inner world of content, effective decision-making also requires you to consider relevant factors in your external environment. When external factors are ignored, even great decisions can lead to failure. In the example above, some of the external factors my friend needed to consider included the timing of the job offer, overall economic conditions, the availability of other opportunities, and how each decision might impact the family.
4. Effective decision-making requires you to be truthful
Decisions based on inner truth lead to empowerment. Choices that compromise your truth, lead to conflict and confusion.
Socrates observed that each of us chooses what we believe to be optimal, given our level of awareness and insight at the time. Our choices create a resonant frequency field which attracts resonant energies and repels dissonant frequencies. Over time, particles of probability in this attractor field evolve into possibilities that manifest as reality. Our thoughts and choices ultimately manifest as things, so it behooves us to focus on truth!
You cannot live an authentic life while dishonoring your inner truth. There comes a time for each of us when we must choose to honor our truth and let the chips fall where they may. As Marianne Williamson has said, our playing small does not serve the world.
The Course in Miracles teaches that Truth is not frail. Truth can withstand the demands of the ego. It can surmount envy, misconceptions and judgment, because it needs no defense.
True power lies in choosing from within, from the strength of having owned your fears, from the gentleness that you carry with grace. Each time you choose to honor your truth, you are creating more resonance to empower your journey.
5. Effective decision-making needs focused intention
Do you know what is really motivating you? A great way of drilling down to your true intention is by asking yourself effective questions. Answering these questions will help you uncover patterns of self-sabotage, fear or compromise so you can make clear decisions. Author Debbie Ford outlines great questions in her book, The Right Questions. Here are a few:
- Will this choice propel me toward an inspiring future or keep me stuck in the past?
- Will this choice bring me long-term fulfillment or short-term gratification?
- Am I standing in my power or am I trying to please another?
- Am I looking for what is right or for what is wrong?
- Will this choice add to my life force or rob me of energy?
- Will I use this situation as a catalyst to grow or as an excuse to beat myself up?
- Does this choice empower or disempower me?
- Is this an act of self-love or is it an act of self-sabotage?
- Is this an act of faith or is it an act of fear?
6. Effective decision-making requires involvement of body, mind and soul
Finally, sound decision-making requires that you listen to the subtle messages within you at all levels: body, mind and soul. You can learn to tap into your innate wisdom by cultivating healthy connections among your body, mind and soul. Each of these levels communicates in different ways. Take time for meditation or contemplation. It will help you stay centered and at peace. Remain aware of your spiritual core guiding you through the physical challenges of life, and you will become effective at decision-making.
Once you’ve made a decision, stay flexible and embrace ambiguity. As additional information surfaces, you may want to adapt to it. Remember, change is usually a messy process! Flexibility makes it easier to navigate through change so you can optimize outcomes.
©Copyright Ada Porat. For more information, visit adaporat.com. This article may be freely distributed in whole or in part, provided there is no charge for it and this notice is attached.
by Ada Porat | Jul 1, 2013 | Abundance, Conscious living, Cope with change, Decision-making, Life coaching, Life transitions
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
These words of poet Mary Oliver strike a cord with me. You see, I believe that you and I did not appear in this life by random chance. We are here to play a unique part in the ongoing circle of life. Whatever it is you plan to do, that path is already calling to you.
Question is, how do you find that path? How do you know where to go and what to do to have the most impact?
I’d like to offer you an app to help you find and stay the course.
This app is not for your Ipad or Android – it’s an app for your life. The acronym APP stands for ALIGNMENT, PASSION and PERSEVERANCE. Together, these three components will unlock the doors to success in your life, no matter where you go. Let’s take a look at each of them.
Alignment
The first part of the app is ALIGNMENT. It asks you to live a life that is aligned with your core values and goals. You will always have the most impact when you make decisions that are aligned with your core values and goals.
Betraying or compromising your core values may look like a shortcut. It may even bring the initial trappings of success, but it will always leave you feeling empty and unfulfilled. True peace of mind comes from living a life that is aligned with your values, truth and principles.
When you make choices that are aligned with your core values and goals, you’ll be in integrity; you’ll be strong, and you’ll find a way around every obstacle until you reach your goals.
Passion
The second part of the life app reminds you to pursue your dreams with PASSION.
What is it that you feel most passionate about? What gets you out of bed with enthusiasm, lighting up your face when you talk about it? Pay attention to these signs, because the very things you care about passionately, are also the things you are hardwired for.
Before you choose a path, listen to your heart and align with what you feel truly passionate about. When you do that, you will stay in harmony within yourself. You’ll find the energy, motivation and drive to reach your goals.
Perseverance
The third part of the life app deals with PERSEVERANCE. You see, life’s great results usually reward not those who dream big or get lucky, but those who persevere in actively pursuing their dream. It is how you follow through and persevere, that separates winners from losers.
Perseverance is the ingredient that converts dreams into reality. The more perseverance you develop, the better your chances of success. Perseverance will require you to go out of your comfort zone and to practice self-discipline; it will quietly demand that you keep on keeping on, even when all the odds seem to be stacked against you!
Winners know how to persevere: They stay focused, take action daily toward their goals, and press on until the results show up.
Together, alignment, passion and perseverance make for powerful results! Let’s look at a few examples:
Wangari Maathai used this APP to bring about incredible transformation in Africa. She felt passionate about destruction of the land caused by deforestation in Kenya. She was touched by the needs of rural women who reported that their streams and food supplies were drying up, and they had to walk further and further to get firewood.
Wangari Maathai developed a vision of reforestation to help her people. She started to plant trees, and recruited other women to join her in the effort.
At first, community leaders laughed at her and dismissed her. But Wangari had a vision. She passionately believed in her cause, and she persevered.
She established the Green Belt Movement to conserve the environment and improve livelihoods. She organized rural women to grow seedlings and plant trees to bind the soil and stop erosion, to find ways together to store rainwater, provide food and firewood, and earn a decent living.
Wangari also started community education programs to advocate for greater democracy and leadership accountability. Since 1977, the Green Belt Movement has planted over 51 million trees in Kenya, effectively reversing destruction of the ecosystem in east and central Africa.
It all started with one woman who was aligned with her core values, who passionately believed in her vision to alleviate human suffering, and who persevered until the results showed up. Her ALIGNMENT, PASSION AND PERSEVERANCE brought about powerful results.
Fulfilling your life purpose may not call you to distant lands, but it will call you to live from your heart’s truth.
That is what happened to Jessica Jackley shortly after she graduated from college.
Jessica Jackley heard a speech by an economist from Bangladesh who had developed the idea of micro financing: loans offered to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans.
She was so completely blown away by this concept that she quit her job out, dropped everything and moved to East Africa to find out how she could help. There, she learned about the very real problems people face throughout the third world: A farmer in Tanzania who needs $25 for seeds to plant his crops, a seamstress in Peru who needs $100 for a new sewing machine to earn a living; a rice harvester in Cambodia who needs $50 for a bicycle to get his product to market.
Jessica saw the need, and she developed a vision to help. In 2005, she co-founded Kiva.org – an organization that allows people to lend money to entrepreneurs in the US and developing countries through the internet.
On Kiva, individual lenders like you and I can sort through profiles of potential borrowers and make loans to those we find most appealing. The minimum loan is only $25, and the interest rate is 0%. Risky loans? No, not really.
The repayment rate for loans is more than 99%, and since Kiva was founded in 2005 it has had an enormous impact: some 910,000 people have pledged almost 1/2 billion dollars in loans to more than 1 million people in 72 countries. About two-thirds of Kiva’s borrowers are women who are now able to break free from the cycle of poverty.
Jessica had a vision of how she could make a difference in the world. She used the APP of ALIGNMENT, PASSION and PERSEVERANCE to launch one of the fastest growing crowd-funding social benefit websites in history. Today, Kiva empowers people around the world to feed and educate their families, to make an honest living, and to restore their pride.
Wangari Maathai and Jessica Jackley have both made enormous contributions to society, and they used the same app I’m sharing with you now. They found something they felt PASSIONATE about, they made decisions that were ALIGNED with their core values, and they PERSEVERED until they succeeded.
If they could do it, so can you. Your future beckons, the choices are yours, and now you have this APP for life.
And so, in closing, I ask you again,
What is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
May you always live in alignment with your values, and may you pursue your dreams with passion and perseverance until they come true!
©Copyright Ada Porat. For more information, visit adaporat.com. This article may be freely distributed in whole or in part, provided there is no charge for it and this notice is attached.
