Your Marriage Is Worth Being Strengths-based--Don't Settle For Less

I was finishing a coaching session with a couple and decided to ask the question, "So which of your strengths would you like your partner to ask you to contribute to your marriage more often?" What followed was 45 minutes of profound, deep, honest, heartfelt sharing between both of them.

She stated that from the beginning of their marriage, when she had tried to organize and activate him around one of their tasks, he had told her not to nag him.

"I realized at that moment that because I never wanted to be a nag in our relationship, I simply stopped contributing my strong achiever strengths.  But I realize right now that I am extremely strong in being able to activate things, get things done and organized.  I really want you to ask me to use those strengths on our behalf as a couple, for our sake together."

He looked at her, some tears in his eyes, and said, "I can see that now - this is your area of powerful strength.  You were being sensitive to my feelings.  But now I want you to know that I deeply honor your strengths and I want to ask you to use them freely on our behalf, to make us even stronger than we are."

In turn, he said to her, "I want you to ask me - to trust my deeply relational strengths - to use my abilities to pull people in, to go deeper with people, to include and help build deeper relationships, even in our relationship with each other.  I want to know that you truly honor and respect these strengths and their wisdom in me.  I want you to ask me to use them even more."

I sat there, realizing that I was witnessing a powerful sacred moment - two people truly "seeing" each other, truly being seen by each other - two people honoring and respecting the pure goodness and strength in each other.

I've seen again and again that this is what happens when couples take the time to

• identify their top strengths,
• to share with each other what those strengths are,
• to affirm and validate each other's strengths and how each person is using them,
• to engage in dialogue and discovery about how their individual strengths can work together in creating the strongest, most authentic, and effective relationship,
• to apply this discovery to developing a relationship mission statement, along with specific ways (goals) to moving forward as a couple in building on that mission,
• and to truly honor who they are as a couple and the unique, relational presence they can have in the world around them.

It's a powerful things to observe!

That's why I'm offering a four hour workshop to help lead couples through this kind of experience and process together (and it also includes a personalized 90 minute skype session with me after the workshop).  The potential of building an even stronger relationship is powerful, especially when you focus on your strengths.  It's about learning how to leverage your strengths in a way that transforms your relationship from mere survival to thriving.  Who among us wouldn't want that for the most important relationship in our lives?

Go to the Events page on my site for more information.

No matter how long you've been in your committed relationship, no matter your age, no matter your hang ups, healthy and strong relationships take intentionality, focus, honesty, and energy.  This workshop will offer you that space and some important tools to engage with each other.  And it will be fun, informative, and possibly even transformational.

Both of you are worth it!  And so is your relationship!  Feel free to share this opportunity with others you know.

______________________________

Looking for a Speaker or Coach?

If you or someone you know in your organization is looking for a keynote speaker or workshop teacher for events in your company, congregation, or association gatherings, I would be happy to come speak on this theme or others like it.  And interested in strengths coaching?  Feel free to email me at greg@gregorypnelson.com or look at the Speaking or Coaching pages of this site.

Three Truths That Will Leverage Your Genius This Year

Albert Einstein once made the astute observation:

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

There are three points from Einstein's statement I want to unpack relating to what it means to living your strongest, most authentic life this new year.

First, everybody is a genius.  That means you.  That means me. That means the person next to you, too.

Does it feel that way to you?  Does this statement resonate as truth to you?

Perhaps we have difficulty believing this truth about ourselves and others because we live in a culture that equates genius narrowly with IQ.  Or we equate genius with a certain kind of thinking style (e.g. those who know how to work through complex mathematical equations or quick and astute problem solving).  Or we were raised in a family that emphasized a certain style or kind of learning and since we didn't match that, we felt stupid.  Or we were raised by emotionally stunted parents who were inherently insecure and took it out on us by putting us down and telling us we weren't worth much and wouldn't amount to much.

But I think Einstein is absolutely correct about people.  Everybody is a genius in some area, especially in the arena of their own strengths.

Second, we must start measuring the right things to ascertain genius.

Truth is, fish simply can't climb trees.  They're not designed for that (except for the Mangrove Killifish and several other types which wait out the dry season for several months on a low lying branch until the rainy season brings more water).

When is the last time you went to an aquarium, looked at the fish, and remarked disgustingly, "Stupid fish.  Why aren't they up climbing trees!  Instead, they're just content to swim around here under the water.  Idiots!"

No, you and I don't judge fish for not climbing trees.  We don't measure the genius of fish by whether they are climbing trees or not.

But think about how our culture is fixated on weakness--parents spend more time focusing on where their kids are failing or what the kids aren't doing enough of, managers spend more time trying to fix employees' weaknesses, politics obsesses on leaders' inabilities and mistakes, media fixates on what's wrong.  Everybody gets judged for "not climbing trees."

When people are measured by the wrong standards, and they get judged by how far they are from that standard, what ultimately happens is people internalize this message "I'm stupid!"  I've coached people who have that mental tape that plays every time they do something and can't do it well.  "I'm stupid."

And they often never get to the possibility of realizing that in fact they're not stupid at all, they're simply being measured by the wrong standard.

We all have to do things we're not really good at.  We have to manage around our weaknesses in order to fulfill our obligations and responsibilities.

But if we focus more time and energy on trying to improve our weaknesses to the exclusion of operating within and leveraging our strengths, we are draining unnecessary energy from our brains.  And our emotional mood plummets.  Our self esteem ultimately hits rock bottom.  And the painful and vicious cycle spirals on.

And today, self esteem is at an all time low in individuals, organizations, and even regions.  We don't feel good enough.  We don't feel like we're ever measuring up.

Third, everybody is a genius in the arena of their strengths.

Coaching hundreds of people through the years, I've seen time and again that everyone is an expert in the area they're suppose to be an expert in, their strengths and how to use them.

One of the reasons why I love doing strengths coaching is because of the question we focus on:  instead of asking, what's wrong with people and how do we fix it, the question is, what's right with people and how can they leverage it?

Those of us who work with the StrengthsFinder assessment (developed by the Gallup organization) which identifies a person's top five signature strengths know that there's a 1:34 million chance that someone else has the same top five strengths in the same order as you.  This makes our individual genius amazingly unique and special.

Fish instinctively know how to swim and do underwater acrobats because they're designed and wired for underwater swimming.  Some fish are wired to even fly out of the water, but they always go back under.  They're water creatures and that's what we measure them by.

Once strengths are identified (and people do have to engage in the identification as they answer questions related to what behaviors they do that bring them energy and feelings of strength), everybody can increase their instinctive ability to know how to use them.  And with coaching, they are able to establish new ways to both notice and leverage their strengths---conscious competence.

Latest Research Confirming the Significance of Strengths Living

The point of strengths work centers on the well-researched fact that when we focus on our strengths, we are 8 times more likely to be more engaged and more productive in what we're trying to do.  We believe in ourselves more and live with more confidence which in turn increases effectiveness.

Here's some science to confirm this reality.

A recent blog post I read referred to some fascinating new studies using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to track neural activity showing how  focusing on your strengths

"arouses the parasympathetic nervous system, invoking cognitive, emotional, perceptual and behavioral openness and improving performance.  It also creates the conditions for neurogenesis, allowing people to learn and develop new healthy habits and competencies."

By contrast, focusing on weaknesses arouses the sympathetic nervous system which increases your heart rate, raises your respiration, moves blood from one place (e.g., your digestive system) to another (your muscles), etc. These responses are all "arousal" responses which get you ready to fight or flee in times of danger---good for short term survival; terribly damaging for long term health.

Ways to Be Strengths-focused This Year

I'm challenging you to make 2014 the year of living your strengths in unprecedented ways.  * Identify your strengths - take the test.  * Notice how you're using them - make a list.  * Establish how you can be even more intentional about using them in new ways (try planning goals this year around each of your strengths and keep track of how you're doing).  * Learn about the strengths of the people in your life (at home, at work - I do a lot of strengths coaching with couples as well as work teams - very profound).  * Affirm their use of their strengths every time you notice it.  * Hire a coach to guide you and support this revolutionary journey of growth and effectiveness.

I guarantee that if you take these steps, you'll notice radical improvement in your attitude, your self esteem, your energy, your focus, and even your whole body.

Einstein is right.  Everybody is a genius!  So go out and live your genius this year!  I'm cheering you on.

______________________________

Looking for a Speaker or Coach?

If you or someone you know in your organization is looking for a keynote speaker or workshop teacher for events in your company, congregation, or association gatherings, I would be happy to come speak on this theme or others like it.  And interested in strengths coaching?  Feel free to email me at greg@gregorypnelson.com.

It's All About Energy Management!

Higher Demands, Less Energy The American culture is becoming increasingly a place of higher demands.  Employers are trying to squeeze more and more from their employees.  Expectations for productivity are higher than ever.  Competition is fiercer than ever.  And compensation isn't keeping up with the demands.

The average American worker is not only given less annual vacation time than counterparts around the world, he or she actually takes less of this time than the others.  Americans are working harder and longer than ever before.

A consistent theme I hear from the leaders and senior managers I coach is the insane amount of work they are engaging in on a daily basis - almost to the point of complete breakdown.  And they all feel somewhat trapped in this never-ending cycle.  It is definitely not a sustainable strategy.

Energy Is Renewable

One of the things I've learned is that life is all about energy management.  Truth is, time is a finite resource.  But energy is renewable.  We all have the opportunity to make choices that can actually increase our energy.  It all depends on how we manage this amazing resource.

I read a profound article in the Harvard Business Review written by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy, "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time" (Oct. 2007).  In the article, they suggest that "energy comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. In each, energy can be systematically expanded and regularly renewed by establishing specific rituals— behaviors that are intentionally practiced and precisely scheduled, with the goal of making them unconscious and automatic as quickly as possible."

I love this perspective because it provides hope that we all have it within our power to do something about our energy which is so often lagging and drooping from the incessant demands we face regularly:  we can learn to recognize the energy-depleting behaviors / activities we engage in; and we can learn what instead energizes us and so develop ways to more intentionally step into those.

It's all about energy management.

How Strengths Renew Energy

This is why I coach and consult people and organizations around strengths.  Strengths are in fact wired into us - they are our natural preferences - innate talents that come from the natural flow of electricity (energy) via certain neural pathways (each one leading to certain specific behaviors).  Because of the chemicals released in these pathways, the pathways become ingrained in us.  If they're our natural preference pathways, they're pleasant for us to stimulate so we tend to stimulate them more than others.  And the more we use them, the more we strengthen them.  It's a powerful feedback loop.

So when we pay attention to what our natural strengths are, and when we choose to use them more intentionally, we are putting ourselves in an energy flow that is not only more efficient and fulfilling but also more sustainable, renewable.  Using our innate resources (like strengths) actually increases energy because it's aligning with our unique individual biology - it's stewarding our brains effectively by leveraging those neural pathways with their accompanying electricity and chemicals.

When we are not using our natural preferences, according to neuroscientists our brains are actually expending 100x the energy than when we're leading with our natural preferences (our innate wiring and talents).  One hundred times!  So instead of making deposits, we're making massive withdrawals from our energy bank unnecessarily.  Our brains are wearing out.  And consequently, our whole feeling of energy lags and droops.  We're not being "fully alive."

It's all about energy management.

Take the StrengthsFinder Assessment

If you  haven't taken the strengthsfinder assessment yet to discover your top natural strength preferences, you need to!  There are two ways to take the test:  buy the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 from Amazon for $14.00, or go directly online to the Gallup site, pay $9.99, and take the test.  What a small price to pay to radically increase your ability to renew your energy!

My work as a coach and consultant is to unpack these results for people and organizations.  I give them opportunity to think through and strategize how they can be more intentional about using their strengths in every aspect of their lives - work, relationships, spirituality.  When people take this work seriously and really engage via their strengths, the results are always amazing - people have more energy, more fulfillment, more effective productivity, less stress, more of a feeling of flow, more of being, as Schwartz and McCarthy describe, "effortlessly absorbed."  Who wouldn't want all that??

It's all about energy management.

It's time for people to stop trying to simply work harder and start working smarter.  Leverage your natural preferences, your strengths.  Let your brain work effectively and efficiently the way it was designed to.  Learn what makes you unique from everyone else.  And then embrace it, step into it, stand in your truth, and let yourself be the powerful person you are.  Develop a truly sustainable life.

You want more energy?  Try managing and stewarding the energy you have.  I guarantee:  you'll find your energy is in deed a renewable resource.

______________________________

If you or someone you know in your organization is looking for keynote speakers or workshop teachers for events in your company, congregation, or association gatherings, I would be happy to come speak on this theme or others like it.  And interested in strengths coaching?  Feel free to email me at greg@gregorypnelson.com.

How to Vaccinate Yourself Against Spiritually Transmitted Diseases

So are there any spiritual vaccinations to bring protection and healing to the spiritual diseases we can fall victim to described in my last blog (10 Spiritually Transmitted Diseases)?  Let me suggest several. David R. Hawkins (MD, PhD) for the last several decades has been on the leading edge of the science of behavioral kinesiology which is the study of the relationship between thoughts-feelings and muscle strength.  Research repeatedly shows that our consciousness has a powerful impact on our bodies - some thoughts and feelings make our bodies go strong, others make us go weak.

If you haven't already, you can experiment with yourself and a partner.  You stand erect, your right arm relaxed at your side, your left arm held out parallel to the floor with the elbow straight and both hands open. Your tester faces you and places his left hand on your right shoulder to steady you. He then puts his right hand on your extended arm just above the wrist. Now, he tells you that he is going to try to push your arm down as you resists. He quickly and firmly pushes down on the arm, just hard enough to test the spring and bounce in the arm, but not so hard that the muscle becomes fatigued.  This is simply to test your basic resistance level with a neutral stimulus.

The testing continues with you holding a negative thought about yourself in your mind - what is a limited belief about yourself that you tell yourself from time to time?  Think about it and the negative feelings associated with it, hold it in your mind as your partner tests your muscle strength.  Repeat the testing with a positive statement about yourself that you hold in your mind.  Compare the results.

The point is, our thoughts and feelings do make a powerful difference with the way our bodies respond.

Dr. Hawkins, from his extensive research, has developed what he calls a "map of consciousness" - it charts the progression of the states of thoughts/feelings from the weakest to the strongest, along with accompanying worldviews, picture of God, primary emotions, and life processes for each state..  The results are quite profound.  If you click on the following Map (c), you'll see a bigger, clearer image of it.

Notice that the weakest state of thinking and feeling is shame (3rd row from the left, bottom), followed closely by guilt, apathy, grief, and on up the chart.  Courage is the tipping point toward everything strong.  Everything below Courage tests weak.  Courage and everything above test strong.

So what does all this mean?  Contemporary science is confirming what ancient science has been saying all along.  Notice these ancient observations:

"Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life."  (Proverbs 4:23)

"As a man thinks in his heart, so is he."  (Proverbs 23:7)

All of this science is suggesting a hugely significant spiritual reality - what we think impacts our life experience.  And Dr. Hawkins has mapped out the strongest kind of thoughts and feelings - courage, trust, willingness, acceptance/forgiveness, reason/understanding, love, joy, peace, enlightenment.  This list, describing the attributes of a strong life, are mirrored in another piece of ancient wisdom which describes the attributes of the divine life.  Notice the parallels:

"So what does living the divine life look like? God brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others (love), exuberance about life (joy), serenity (peace). We develop a willingness to stick with things (patience), a sense of compassion in the heart (kindness), and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people (goodness). We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments (faithfulness), not needing to force our way in life (gentleness), able to marshal and direct our energies wisely (self-control)." (Galatians 5:22-23)

According to both contemporary and ancient science, the process of life transformation involves choosing to reflect upon, contemplate, think about these powerful, divine-like traits and qualities.  The very act of spending time thinking about them brings about spiritual growth and change.  This is one of the primary vaccinations against the spiritually transmitted diseases I talked about in my last post.

Here's the way another piece of ancient wisdom describes this spiritual vaccination:

"Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on the divine life. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize this divine reality, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." (Romans 12:2)

Vaccination one is to make the choice to fix our attention on the strongest qualities and attributes and thoughts and feelings in life possible.  Look at that list often.  Repeat it to yourself often.  The very process of doing that, says Dr. Hawkins and scripture, begins to transform our thinking and feeling which in turn makes our bodies strong.

One of the ways I've done this lately is to repeat these attributes of the divine life in my prayers, going over and over each quality in my mind and heart, asking for the divine spirit to grow that "fruit" in my life.  It's kind of a targeted prayer and meditation that helps to keep me focused, to fix my attention on the strength and power of the divine life.  You and I can exercise our ability to choose, our willingness to experience transformation by how we direct our thoughts and feelings.

Dr. Hawkins describes the dilemma of the human struggle as well as the antidote to it in this statement:  “The world of the ego is like a house of mirrors through which the ego wanders, lost and confused, as it chases the images in one mirror after another. Human life is characterized by endless trials and errors to escape the maze. At times, for many people, and possibly for most, the world of mirrors becomes a house of horrors that gets worse and worse. The only way out of the circuitous wanderings is through the pursuit of spiritual truth … At first, spiritual purification seems difficult, but eventually, it becomes natural. To consistently choose love, peace, or forgiveness leads one out of the house of mirrors. The joy of God is so exquisite that any sacrifice is worth the effort and seeming pain."

And this process leads to vaccination two. Here again contemporary and ancient science provide us with a profound and powerful transformation process.

In 1665 a Dutch Physicist and Scientist named Christian Huygens discovered what is now known in physics as the principle of entrainment.  It was during his research with pendulum clocks that Huygens noted the new physics concept. He found that when he placed two of them on a wall near each other and swung the pendulums at different rates, they would eventually end up swinging at the exact same rate. They fell into rhythm with one another. He realized that this concept applied to not just pendulum clocks, but as a basic law of physics:  the tendency for two oscillating bodies to lock into phase so that they vibrate in harmony. It's easier and takes less energy for systems to work in cooperation than in opposition.  So the powerful rhythmic vibrations from one source will cause less powerful vibrations of another source to lock into the vibration of the first, stronger source.

Entrainment happens all around us, all the time. It's like Newton's Law of Gravity. It just is. It occurs biologically, such as when women who spend a lot of time together find their moon cycles synchronizing. It occurs sociologically such as when people in the same cliques or communities or social groups dress and think similarly. It happens mechanically, like all of the grandfather clock pendulums in a clock shop swinging together in unison after a few days, even if they started off unsynchronized.  It can be found on emotional levels too, such as what happens when you walk into a room full of people who are laughing and light-hearted and your mood magically lifts to match theirs. Even our brain waves follow this physics principle. It happens when people are subjected to certain stimulus and their brain frequencies shift to calmer states.

Here's the power of this principle when it comes to our spiritual lives.  An ancient scripture describes it this way:

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we, who with unveiled faces all contemplate the attributes of the divine life, are being transformed into that likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."  (2 Corinthians 3:16-18)

When we deliberately and intentionally place ourselves in the presence of the divine life, as well as in the presence of those qualities being lived out in others, when we acknowledge our connection to God and reflect on the divine life and spend time in environments that reflect those qualities, we the weaker of the two energy sources are drawn into greater and greater synch with the stronger Energy which is God.  The result is increasing transformation into a likeness of the divine life.  The principle of physics results in profound spiritual growth.  The Spirit increases our freedom to become more and more of who are designed to be.

So how's your vaccination history?  Time for some more healthy antidotes?

It's so easy for me to allow my thinking to get lazy and distracted - to make an almost automatic choice to allow negative and unhealthy thoughts take over - to let my limiting beliefs about myself and others be my default mode.  But the good news is that life is like standing on the train station - our thoughts are the various trains set to leave the station to their destination.  When a negative trigger happens in our lives, and our automatic response tends to be to get on that negative train thought, you and I have the choice whether or not to get on the train.  We can actually let that train pull away from the platform without us.  We can instead choose to get on another more healthy train.  And when we make that significant choice, the ride ahead is much more enjoyable - for ourselves and for the others in our lives.

So here's to getting vaccinated!  And here's to getting on a good train for a good ride into the divine life!

[If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others - click on the share button to the right.  If you would like to receive each new blog post as an automatic email, please subscribe at the right.]

Quantum Physics, the Boomerang Effect, and Spirituality

[If you like these posts, feel free to share them with others - click on the share button to the right.  If you would like to receive each new blog post as an automatic email, please subscribe at the right.] I read an article last week by Stacy Corrigan, a personal and corporate financial health coach, referring to a highly significant spiritual and scientific law of life. Quantum physics has proven that the core building block for all material things, as we know them, is energy. In the scientific world energy is equivalent to light. And then she gave this illustration:  "When two beams of light join together they become much more intense than two individual beams. We know this to be true when we look at a satellite image of the earth at night from space. The cities that have many beams of light close together show up more readily on the image than the cities where the same number of light beams are spread far apart. The energy becomes greater the more there is in close proximity to like energy."

Remember, she says, all material things drill down to being just energy.  So everything you contribute to life - your specific acts of kindness, caring and compassion; your money; material things like food for those in need; etc. - is also energy.  Which means that the more you send out, the more powerful the energy becomes, and the greater opportunity it has to team up with similar energy so that it can grow and flow, contributing to what she calls the "boomerang effect" - what you send out comes back to you multiplied.

This quantum physics concept has a fascinating parallel with some deep spiritual realities.  Notice a few sacred scriptures:

“Whatever a person sows, that is what he will reap.” (Galatians 6:7)  In other words, the energy that a person puts out through whatever kind of actions, behaviors, or projected thoughts will return in kind.  Computereze says, "garbage in, garbage out."  We become what we give out because it returns to us and ultimately transforms us into what we're projecting.  Kind of the negative version of the boomerang effect.

Here's the way another text articulates this reality:  “A farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop.  But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop.” (2 Corinthians 9:6)  Fascinating that even in the agricultural arena the principle is true - and in this saying, the emphasis is on quantity of output determining the quantity of input.  Generosity produces generosity.  Scarcity produces scarcity.

The context of this last text is intriguing.  The author (Paul) is talking to Christian believers in one part of the Middle East, appealing to them to give money to the believers in another part of the region that has gone through a devastating famine.  He's trying to raise both consciousness and funding to help with this specific emergency need on behalf of hurting, suffering people.

So he is basically articulating the boomerang effect to motivate their giving by suggesting that their generous giving will come back to them in equally generous ways.  Here's how he describes this:

"You must each decide in your heart how much to give. And don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure … God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.  As the Scriptures say, 'They share freely and give generously to the poor.  Their good deeds will be remembered forever.'  For God is the one who provides seed for the farmer and then bread to eat. In the same way, he will provide and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you.  As a result of your generous service to them, they will pray for you with deep affection because of the overflowing grace God has given to you." 2 Corinthians 9:7-13.

Notice the powerful energy that circles around – it goes out (as believers in one region give generously to the needy in another region), combines with other energy (the divine energy of generosity that comes to each person making their giving possible in the first place), and then returns in greater form (as the helped believers return kindness through their prayers and support of those who gave) – and it keeps spiraling around, back and forth, around and around, increasing in energy and impact.  The boomerang effect.

I'm convicted about how easy it is to live life with a perspective of scarcity - I don't have enough myself to live very well, so how can I be expected to give generously to others!  But as this spiritual principle (and scientific reality) states, my attitude of scarcity only produces more scarcity.  And here's where it is all so counter-intuitive - but the more I give, the more I receive.  Generosity produces generosity.  When energy is combined with more energy (like the city lights seen from orbiting satellites shows), the combination creates even more energy.  So when we choose to work with others who also give and share generously, our combined energy creates even more impact.  And what returns to us in the form of positive energy is even more powerful and transforming.

This is why giving to and sharing with others is such a profound spiritual experience.  Here's how one author puts it:  “Those who gladly share with others feel themselves bathed by a constant inner stream of happiness.  Sharing is the doorway through which the soul escapes the prison of self-preoccupation. It is one of the clearest paths to God.” (Swami Kriyananda)

What a powerful boomerang effect - as I let go of my preoccupation with self and protecting my ego and hoarding my possessions to have control over my life, and give generously to others, I am actually drawn closer to God - my soul connects with God's soul - and I am liberated in transforming ways.  In fact, I become truer to my truest Self - I'm acting out who I really am - a loving and compassionate child of God.  And this choice to live in alignment with my true Self results in a life of greater confidence, security, and increased generosity.  Generosity produces generosity by connecting me to the heart of God which is pure love and selfless giving to others.

The boomerang effect - it works both ways.  So which boomerang do you want circling back to you?  Which harvest do you want to reap?