I was enjoying a most enlightening, as usual, conversation with my friend & mentor, DebbieStevens, today, and we got to talking about how the greatest place in life might just be when your business is such that you can choose the times that you go play IN it.
Deb was talking about how her life is at that stage now where her
business works without her, and she gets to choose when she is going to step into it and when she is going to be working on other things.
Have you seen the movie 'Storm Chasers'? Forget the corny love story part of it, and focus on the raw power of the tornado.
As Deb & I were talking, I saw this crystal-clear picture of her standing in the eye of the tornado; the calm at the centre of the storm, and I got to thinking what an awesome analogy the storm makes to many people's lives.
You see, Deb is one of the powerful people who fuel my life. Remember when Anita Bryant used to say that 'A Day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine'? Well, for my mental health, a week without Deb is like a week without sunshine. We click, and it does us both so much good. One of the things I truly love about her is her keen awareness of things, and her ability to open my eyes to things.
And so there we were, talking about where she is at in her life, and I saw her standing in the middle of this tornado. I saw the ground flat and brown around her feet, no movement of the dust. And I saw this seemingly impenetrable angry grey-black cloud swirling around her, getting wider the further up I looked, but never coming closer than about 3 feet at it's closest point. And in the angry grey-black cloud, I saw debris, a cow or two (courtesy of my fave scene of that movie), pieces of a house, and the occasional person trying to break through this wall of cloud.
And then we realized what a perfect analogy that is for how so many people let their lives go. They let themselves get caught up in the swirling clouds of other people's drama, and they get robbed of the energy to break through to the calm at the centre of their world, where they can observe and choose when to step back into the clouds.
We realized what a perfect analogy all the debris, flying cows, and pieces of houses are to the bits of your life.
And we talked about the strength of purpose it takes to break through that wall of angry cloud to get to the peace at the centre of it all. And how, when you're there, surrounded by this mind-blowing power, you can choose to move with the storm, esconsed in your calm area. Or, you can choose to break out of the calm, back into the angry clouds, and step back into the other part of life. But, we agreed, it's not difficult to go from the calm centre to the angry outside. And, once you know how, it's nowhere near as hard to get back into the calm centre of the storm.
Think about it for a minute. What makes up those grey-black angry clouds in your life? How do you like having those things keeping you away from the calm centre of the storm? What would it feel like if you didn't take on other people's drama in your life - would those clouds be as angry and formidable?
Talk to me. Tell me about your storms.
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