These times are our times

I’ve been trying to write a super-duper, kick-off-the-year message that would inspire you in your quest to make your unique contribution and be your best self at work and at home. I’ve been coming up blank.  Writing something about the January-ness of it all – a new beginning, out with the old/in with the new, turn over a new leaf – seemed slightly off and out of sync with what we are dealing with personally, professionally, socially and even politically.  Maybe that feeling is just mine … read on and see what you think.

Close, but …

To crack my writer’s block, I rifled through multiple stacks of clippings around my desk for something that would spark my “this is worth talking about” criteria.  When I came across an HBR article about VUCA, a managerial acronym meaning volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, I felt close to what I was seeking, but not quite “it.”  I pawed through another stack and then I found it.

The ‘it’ is a message from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, an internationally recognized scholar, award-winning poet and author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.   Her message, entitled “Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times”, invites us, in a most compelling way, to recognize we are ready for these times and not to lose hope.

Choose:  S  or  s

As you read the letter (link below), please listen from your best Self (capital “S”), not your little self (small “s”).  The Self is the one who is self-aware, adaptive, always learning and willing to be the author of your experience.  The little self is one who is righteous, knows it all already and generally feels victimized.  If your little self shouts “Don’t read the letter! You’re not an activist!”— hear the warning as a signal you’re about to empower your best Self.  Of course, you get to choose.  Click here to read the letter. (My thanks to Nona Gandelman, Maven Productions, for curating Estes’ works.)

It is up to each of us to push our great, unique ship out from the harbor and create a fleet of possibility for all of us.

Onward, out to sea …

Camille