To let go takes Love

To Let Go” doesn’t mean to stop caring it means I can’t do it for someone else.

“To Let Go” is not to cut myself off, it is the realization I can’t control another.

“To Let Go” is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.

“To Let Go” is to admit powerlessness which means the outcome is not in my hands.

“To Let Go” is not to try to change or blame another it is to make the most of myself.

“To Let Go” is not to care for but to care about, not to fix but be supportive.

“To Let Go” is not to judge but to allow another to be a human being.

“To Let Go” is to not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow another to affect their own destiny.

“To Let Go” is not to be protective; it is to permit another to face reality.

“To Let Go” is not to deny, but to accept.

“To Let Go” is not to nag, scold, or argue but instead to search out my own shortcomings and to correct them.

“To Let Go” is not to criticize and regulate anybody, but to try to become what I dream I can be.

“To Let Go” is not to regret the past but to grow and live for the present and for the future.

“To Let Go” is to fear less, and to love more…”

–  Robert Paul Gilles, Jr.

Book Recommendation : The Way Of Transition by William Bridges

When author Bill Bridges’s wife died from breast cancer, he began to question all his previous groundbreaking work on transitions. Having conducted seminars and written bestselling books (TransitionsManaging Transitions), Bridges had built a reputation as an expert on the topic. And yet, “I felt now that my words had totally failed to match in depth the experience of actually being in transition,” he explains.

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life remembers . . . and tries to remind us

In fact, the transitions that punctuate many people’s careers after the age of forty or forty-five are the unmarked ruins of this natural time of transition. Whether such transitions take the form of a time when everything “goes dead,” a time when things keep going wrong, a time when long-successful strategies suddenly stop working, or a time when the gray fog of depression covers whatever was once bright and interesting, this natural (if often delayed) time of transition starts with an ending, a sense of loss.

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Do you want to change the world?

IMG_1830“The trouble with people is that they’re busy fixing things they
don’t even understand. We’re always fixing things, aren’t we? It
never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed. They really
don’t. This is a great illumination. They need to be understood.
If you understood them, they’d change.”

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What is it time to let go of in my own life right now?

balloon3This question marks the first difference between change and transition, for the latter must start with letting go. Continue reading

“When spider webs unite, they can halt even the lion.”

Well, the subject of difficult negotiation reminds me of one of my favorite stories from the Middle East,of a man who left to his three sons, 17 camels. To the first son, he left half the camels; to the second son, he left a third of the camels; and to the youngest son, he left a ninth of the camels. The three sons got into a negotiation — 17 doesn’t divide by two. It doesn’t divide by three. It doesn’t divide by nine.Brotherly tempers started to get strained. Finally, in desperation, they went and they consulted a wise old woman. The wise old woman thought about their problem for a long time, and finally she came back and said, “Well, I don’t know if I can help you, but at least, if you want, you can have my camel.”So then, they had 18 camels. The first son took his half — half of 18 is nine. The second son took his third — a third of 18 is six. The youngest son took his ninth — a ninth of 18 is two. You get 17. They had one camel left over. They gave it back to the wise old woman.

What’s the point of doing the same things over and over again?

The work world knows all about competence. Most evaluations and rewards are determined by a person’s competence. Vocational guidance emphasizes it in testing which areas of work one would be most competent in. Transfers and promotions are based upon competence. In business and the professions, you get in and get ahead by demonstrating your competence. But somewhere along the way—as early as thirty-five for some people, but as late as fifty-five for others—competence begins to lose its force as a source of motivation. Continue reading

Tap into a renewed source of Energy


It
 is no wonder that a job, once a perfect fit with your talents and interests, ultimately becomes boring, or a career loses its power to take you where you want to go. Nor is it a surprise that in even the most rewarding and successful work life many people come to points where—often unexpectedly—they find themselves in transition.

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time-out

Think of transition as a process of leaving the status quo, living for a while in a fertile “time-out,” and then coming back with an answer. The British historian Arnold Toynbee pointed out that societies gain access to new energies and new directions only after a “time of troubles” initiates a process of disintegration wherein the old order comes apart. Continue reading

Turning Point

New Passages book cover

 

Passages was my word for those predictable “crises” or turning points that usher in a new stage, a crucial period of decision between progress and regression.

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