40-Days Forward: Your Journey to a Life of Abundance and Meaning
Tara Rodden Robinson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 Tara Rodden Robinson
All rights reserved. This book or any portion of it may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews or mentions of the book.
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Parts of this book were previously published as blog posts on the author’s website.
‘’The Woodcarver’’ by Thomas Merton from THE WAY of CHUANG TZU. Copyright © 1965 by The Abbey of Gethsemani. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Conceived, written, and designed in the United States of America.
Book Design by Silvina De Brum.
For Douglas
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Day 4: Reflecting on the Truth
Day 10: What Are You Learning?
Day 11: What Are The Essentials?
Day 13: What Are Your Passions?
Day 14: Exploring Your Sense of Purpose
Day 16: What Will Try to Get in Your Way?
Day 17: Define Your Wheelhouse
Day 22: Letting Go of Limitations
Day 23: Letting Go of Having Your Own Way
Day 24: Letting Go of Being Right
Day 29: Let Go of Trivialities That Are Not the Point
Day 32: What Are You Giving Your Attention?
Day 34: Giving in a Time of Scarcity
Day 37: Giving Yourself Credit
Intro
This book is divided into four parts.
Part One: Rigorous Reflection. Reflection means taking a look at your life as it is now. Successful people are in touch with reality, not what they wish to see or hope might be real. The most successful organizations and people are those who are willing to face “brutal reality” without sugar coating it or turning away, yet continue to maintain a sense of optimism and can-do spunk. The result of rigorous reflection is the ability to see both opportunity and risk with equanimity and act from a solid foundation that is real and whole.
Part Two: Planning. The goals you create for yourself must be based on what you are passionate about, what you do best, and the fuel and resources that drive you. Your 40-Days Forward vision doesn’t stop there, however. Plans must be flexible, adaptable to changing circumstances. 40-Days Forward helps you to become more resilient so you can bounce back from adversity more rapidly. That means you’ll be more nimble in the face of change and ready to respond to whatever comes your way.
Part Three: Letting Go. Letting go is the third aspect of the journey into a great life. What might you let go? Tools that don’t work, activities that devour time and money with little or no return, and self-defeating mindsets are all things you might be leaving behind. Letting go is the most difficult part of 40-Days Forward, but once mastered, pays dividends for a lifetime.
Part Four: Giving Back. Giving springs from abundance, generosity, and gratitude. Giving—what and how to give—is a vital part of the path to a great life. That’s because a great life is one of abundance, rather than scarcity. Generosity, rather than hoarding or acquiring. Gratitude, rather than striving, grasping, or chasing. 40-Days Forward taps into the positive power of giving and teaches what real wealth is—how to get it and how to give it away.
There are ten exercises in each Part. The exercises build on each other so it’s best to do them in the order presented. I suggest that you begin your 40-Days Forward journey on a Tuesday or Wednesday, so that you’ll have a pre-programmed rest day that falls on a Saturday or Sunday, depending on your preference. The idea is to have time to refresh and regroup as you go along—after all, forty days is not a trivial length of time! And don’t worry if it takes you longer than forty calendar days in a row to complete the book. Some or all of the skills of reflection, visioning, letting go, and giving may be new to you, and the insights you gain may require some getting used to.
Because stating intentions can be very powerful, I’m inviting you to join me in creating a simple contract like the one below.
I, ____________________, commit to embarking on the 40-Days Forward journey by taking time to reflect on the present, assess my strengths, envision the future, consider letting go of habits that hold me back, and look for ways to experience greater abundance, generosity, courage, and confidence.
Signed ______________________
Date ________________________
Moving toward a big goal is not an overnight, immediate exercise. If you decided to run a marathon, for example, you wouldn’t go run one tomorrow. You’d need time to prepare, no matter what. Living a great life requires a similar approach.
While the length of time can be different for everyone—and you may want to take longer than 40 days—this period of time set aside for reflection, planning, letting go, and giving is not something to be rushed through. Not only that, but given the frenzied pace of life, putting the brakes on your momentum so you can reflect, plan, let go, and give requires some time.
Today, then, on this first of 40 days, I invite you to take five minutes to put on the brakes. Slow down. Get still. Be silent for a moment. Just breathe. Rest without planning, let go of worry, and give yourself a moment.
Learning to be reflective—thinking about your thinking, gaining objective perspective on your circumstances—is a vital skill, particularly in times of adversity. In his book Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales describes how survivors of disasters and crises defied impossible odds by “looking, seeing, and believing.” They looked at their situation as it was, without making up some story about it; saw what was real, not what they wished to see or wished was real; believed in what was right in front of them, not what fear or anger or pride or despair dictated.
Today, your challenge is to look. “Look” means to perceive, to direct your attention toward something. Take at least five minutes today to simply look. Screen out distraction and interruption. Simply look, resisting the temptation to describe, interpret, or act.
Today’s task is noticing. You might start by noticing something you’re resisting or a situation that provokes a reaction of outrage or disbelief. Stop and look.
Now see: what’s going on here? In two or three sentences, describe only what can be observed. List the facts. Stick to unarguable reality: only what any reasonable person would be able to see.
Day 4: Reflecting on the Truth
Reflection is sometimes referred to as “metacognition,” or, thinking about your thinking. That may sound daunting or narcissistic; it’s neither. Being able to stand back from your own thoughts is an incredibly powerful way to take control of your life. That’s because your thinking creates your perception of your world. Your perception—your belief about what is true—is your reality.
Your perceptions are real. However, your perceptions are not The Truth. The Truth is what you’d have if you were omnipotent and all knowing. Instead, what you have is your truth, and, with any luck, bits and pieces of other people’s truths. Reflection by stopping, looking, and seeing is part of learning to recognize your truth as part of, yet separate from, The Truth. It’s also part of learning to see yourself as you are, not as you wish to be—not as you imagine yourself to be.
Today, return to the situation you described yesterday and ask: “What am I telling myself about this?” Be alert for words like: always, never, everybody, nobody, people, they, must, should, have to. This is an exercise in hearing yourself: you may need to talk aloud to get the full effect.
40-Days Forward is designed to be a series of steps, a journey. As with any journey, you'll need to stop and rest from time to time, examining where you started, looking toward where you're headed, appreciating where you are right now.
Today, you are invited to stop and be present. To practice being present, I suggest you begin in a reasonably quiet public place where you won’t be interrupted, like a city park, a local library, or a coffee shop (but not the one where all your friends go; pick one where you’re unlikely to run into someone you know).
Situate yourself comfortably in your chair, both feet on the floor with your hands loosely in your lap, palms up. Take a deep slow breath and note the feeling of breathing. Name that sensation as breathing. You may notice the temperature of the air as it enters your nostrils. Name that sensation as cool. Listen to the noises that arrive at your ears. Name those sounds or simply note them as generic sounds.
For the next five minutes, silently name whatever comes up or comes by. It might sound like: “Itch behind left ear … Breath … Car alarm … Coffee smell … Man’s voice …” You’ll simply be naming what you see, hear, and feel by observing it and then letting it go. You don’t need to think about what the man’s voice might be saying. The words “grande latte” can just float through your head. If you find yourself thinking about grande lattes and how they taste, and your mind wanders off to other subjects, like the globalization of world markets, just bring yourself back to naming again. When five minutes are up, you’re done.
If you practice this technique regularly, you will learn how to view your thoughts and feelings with greater objectivity. Research shows that regular practice of this simple technique (yes, it's meditation) increases resilience to stress and greater calmness overall. Eventually, you may learn how to hold your reactions to all sorts of unpleasant stimuli—including difficult feedback—at arm’s length, giving you time to see what is really there. When you are skilled at being present, you possess greater power to hear what others are telling you without squirming or flinching. And that ability will supply you with more and more options for what to do, how to respond, and how to fully participate in living your life.
Reflection—the process of looking within—can be accomplished in numerous ways. But if reflection is meant to help you see yourself objectively, you will need to broaden your perspective. To begin to look, see, and believe from a new viewpoint, recall the situation you described on Day 4.
First, review what you are telling yourself about this situation—this is your current viewpoint. If you haven’t already, write down a statement (no more than two or three sentences) explaining why the situation is as it is, or what it means to you. Now, take out a sheet of paper and list a minimum of ten alternative explanations for why this is as it is.
For example, an original explanation might be: “She is out to get me.” Alternatives could be: “She’s afraid,” or “She’s an android operated by an alien living on another planet.” Get the picture? Without thinking too hard, write down at least ten new perspectives on your current situation. One final note here: if you think it’s all about you, ask yourself: “If it wasn’t about me, what would it be about?”
In Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales points out, “The human condition makes it easy for us to conceal the obvious from ourselves.” The obvious can be as simple as the first ugly incident that signals we’ve hired the wrong person, or as complex as an ignored o-ring seal that leads to a big (and quite literal) explosion. Either way, facing brutal reality, in the form of feedback, data, reflection, and red flags is crucial. If you ignore the data, you do so at your own peril. Yet people do ignore data about themselves and their situations every day. Often, they get away with it. But if the ignoring goes on long enough, divorces, bankruptcy, layoffs, and all sorts of other consequences eventually catch up. That’s the most compelling argument for reflection and getting feedback. Getting a new perspective may save your job, your business, or your life—not to mention the jobs, businesses, and lives of others.
If you’ve been following 40-Days Forward since Day 1, you’ve been working on an internal process of reflection. In yesterday’s exercise, you experimented with brainstorming alternative explanations for a situation you’re experiencing. But of course, the simplest way to get a shift in perspective is simply to ask someone else who’s involved. That simple strategy is not so easy, for two reasons. First, will the person you ask actually tell you what they really think? And second, do you truly want to know what they really think? The first is an issue of trust and the second is an issue of risk. These two issues are interrelated, but let’s talk about them separately.
Establishing trust is a long-term commitment. The first key to establishing trust is personal integrity and authenticity. Integrity means being the same person day in and day out. Authenticity means showing up as yourself, without pretending or hiding behind an agenda (which itself may also be hidden). The number one way that people learn to trust you is to watch you in situation after situation. If you behave consistently (in other words, if you demonstrate integrity), they decide what they can and can’t expect from you. This expectation, in part, allows them to predict how you’ll react to various situations. The worst-case scenario is the unpredictable person who is monumentally inconsistent in his or her behavior (imagine the worst boss you’ve ever had … times ten).
To establish the kind of trust that people need in order to tell you what they really think, however, requires that you put them at ease. That means that people feel that they can talk to you about yourself without fear of rejection, retribution, or other nasty consequences. The only way to get that kind of trust is to earn it by listening carefully and allowing the other person to be heard without flinching. Do this over and over and people will eventually realize that you’re not kidding and that they are not walking into a trap. Not easy. That kind of integrity and authenticity requires genuine strength and real mental toughness.
Today, your challenge is to engage in naked listening; that is, listen to another person without adding anything. Naked listening (done fully clothed!) means no rushing to solutions, no advice giving, no apologizing or excuse making. You will simply listen, ask questions to clarify your understanding, and at the end, say thank you. So this exercise won’t come out of left field, I suggest you find someone and tell them that you’re doing a course in professional development and need a partner for an exercise in improving your listening skills. Once you have agreement, set aside ten minutes together and ask, “What’s got your attention?” (If you need more instruction on listening, read the post at http://tararobinson. com/2009/07/the-art-of-active-listening.html).
Today, I’m going to invite you to take the step of asking someone who knows you to offer feedback. Asking for and receiving feedback can be intimidating. The focus is usually on finding problems, airing grievances, making complaints. The feedback you’ll be requesting has nothing to do with exploring weaknesses or shortcomings. Instead, you’re going to get some feedback about what you’re good at: your strengths.
To get started, I suggest you take a few minutes and complete the VIA Strengths Inventory (look for it under Engagement Questionnaires at www.authentichappiness.com). If you’ve got an hour or so, do the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire; if you’re short on time, take the Brief Strengths Test. Either way, you’ll wind up with a list of your top five strengths, things like love of learning, gratitude, kindness, and the like. Write these down and think about what each one means to you, then seek out someone who knows you reasonably well and with whom you feel comfortable. Tell them about the inventory and then ask for some feedback about your results. It’s that simple: just ask something to the effect of, “You know me; do these results seem accurate to you?” Don’t forget to practice the listening skills you worked on yesterday. Allow the person giving feedback to speak, and then thank them for taking the time to give you feedback.
Learning about your strengths (as you did yesterday) allows you to see yourself more accurately. Not only that, but keeping your strengths clearly in mind will help you carry out all your activities more skillfully and with greater enjoyment. By focusing on your strengths, you can quickly determine at which activities you will excel, bringing your strengths to bear on situations for which you may not feel very skilled or just plain don’t enjoy very much.
Today, I encourage you to use your strengths in a novel way. When you encounter a situation that seems stuck—something you’re resisting, look at your strengths. Is there a way to use one or more of your strengths to break the situation loose or to allow you to gain new perspective? For example, if one of your strengths is appreciation of beauty and excellence, you could step back and examine what’s going on by specifically looking for beauty or excellence. By focusing on what’s working, instead of what’s stuck, you may see a solution that was present but hidden from you.
Day 10: What Are You Learning?
Day 10 marks the end of your period of reflection. Congratulations on reaching this important milestone! If you started at the beginning, you’ve had ten days to examine your life: to look, see, and believe what’s there. You’ve practiced stopping, mindfulness, naked listening, and asking for feedback. You’ve learned about your strengths and perhaps even had a chance to use one of your strengths in a new way.
As you prepare to move into the next phase of 40-Days Forward: planning, I invite you to take stock and summarize your journey thus far. What are you taking forward with you into planning? What lessons have you learned? Insights gained? Surprises? Tomorrow, we’ll begin to take what you’ve learned from reflection to make plans for your future. If you’ve fallen behind on the journey, don’t despair. There is always time for reflection at any point along the way.
Day 11: What Are the Essentials?
Now that you’ve had the opportunity to reflect on your life as it is now, do some noticing and paying attention, identify some of your strengths, and seek some feedback, it’s time to take a look into your future. The planning you’ll do as part of the 40-Days Forward journey is a little different from the scheduling you may already be engaged in. This is big picture planning, done by determining what is essential to you. The goals you create for yourself must be based on what you are passionate about: what’s at the heart of your skills, strengths, talents, and gifts (in other words, in your “wheelhouse”), and the fuel and resources that drive you.
Think about the non-negotiables in your life. It could be family. Freedom. Justice and fairness. Review the thoughts you’ve captured so far, and look at your strengths. Likely, your non-negotiables—the must-haves in your life—have already peeked through. Today, make a list of your must-haves, the non-negotiables without which your life would be incomplete.
Today is a rest-and-catch-up day. If you’ve missed some exercises, pick one and complete it today. You might return to the mindfulness exercise from Day 5 and practice just observing. Look ahead in your calendar and set aside some time for the planning exercises you’ll find here during the coming week. Take a moment to stop, look around, and breathe.
Day 13: What Are Your Passions?
As you’ve reflected on yourself and your world over the past twelve days, you may have begun to notice some patterns: situations or circumstances or aspects of your life that seem to repeat over and over. As you proceed through the next few days of the journey, keep an eye out for a sense of yearning. The planning part of your journey is first focused on identifying your passion.