“Don’t just put in your time. That is not enough. You have to make great effort.”When the shine wears off the habits we’re trying to form, when we begin to merely show up rather than put in the hard work of consistent, effortful focus, we lose hold of the very skill we’re trying to develop. Trusting the process implies patience and that you’re aware you’re taking a long-view approach. But it also implies that you take very seriously the small micro-task in front of you. Do each step of the journey with your whole attention. While sometimes it is enough to just to “show up,” it’s a good reminder that on the path of personal transformation, you have to work at it.This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“Normally a job, fortune, or reputation has to be lost, a death has to be suffered, a house has to be flooded, or a disease has to be endured.”Rohr is pointing out a clear pattern that one of the primary ways we are ushered into the second half of life, of falling upward, is to experience failure or setback. It’s a part of life, and it is good to be reminded that these experiences will happen. What we do with them is the real story. Another way of stating it, “Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”The quote speaks for itself, but the book it comes from is an allegory for the breakdown of society, which is fueled in large part to our failure to “see” each other. The year 2020 has seen a global pandemic, and calls for increased attention to the issues of systemic racism. In large measure, we are called to perform radical empathy. Many refuse because it is too hard, uncomfortable, or threatening to their power. They remain blind.This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”Our meditation focus is often on the self, and that is no doubt where the work begins. But a huge follow-up step is naturally how we engage and work with others. We all want to succeed and we can’t do it without others. In fact, we spend so much of our time working with others to accomplish our very own goals, it’s important that we are able to work well with others on teams. Most of us want to collaborate. We are ready to share our ideas and work with others, and most of us don’t want conflict. This quote focuses on the power of a good team — but perhaps more importantly, that it is rare. As Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“The Enneagram is a tool that awakens our compassion for people just as they are, not the people we wish they would become so our lives would become easier.”Knowing my Enneagram number has deepened my self-awareness, and given me practical and specific tools for growth. It has also helped me better understand people who are wired entirely differently than me. The idea here is to also realize that for as much as we don’t like it when people have agendas for us, neither should have agendas for other people. Easier said than done of course, especially when it comes to our children, with greater understanding comes greater compassion for self and others.This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“In the morning he would sit down to work, finish his allotted task, then take the little lamp from the hook, put it on the table, get his book from the shelf, open it, and sit down to read. And the more he read, the more he understood, and the brighter and happier it grew in his heart.”There is a quiet simplicity in the life of the cobbler. He would perform his duties, and then he would read. There is no ostentation, no needing to share what he read, just the reading and the growing understanding or enlightening. As Joseph Campbell said, “Sit in a room and read — and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“Care of the soul is a fundamentally different way of regarding daily life and the quest for happiness.”Recognizing the soul within us helps us connect the spiritual with the material, the ineffable with concrete striving for the bottom line, it helps us examine our motives, and find joy in the ordinariness of our moments. Care means cultivating. Moore sees the soul as a bridge between ourselves. The care the soul needs begins deep curiosity about the ways our psyche reveals itself in ourselves in others.This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

"The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that’s why they broke down — just couldn’t stand the pressure — they had nothing within them to hold up against all of this.”This study revealed that the real source of resilience and strength comes from within.This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“With lovingkindness for myself I allow all the feelings of the irrational, perplexing, agonizing relationship to wash over me. Suddenly, I see it clearly: my whining, my sense that I’m trapped by this relationship, my seeming powerlessness over the irrationality of the Other are reenactments. And with that observation I’m suddenly free from the burden, the trap of trying to make the irrational rational. Not only is it completely irrational to argue with the Irrational Other, it’s irrational to try to alter them so that they make sense to me.”We all have an “Irrationational Other” in our lives. We have a choice to make when it comes to how we experience that person. We can remain stuck and let that person continue to provoke us or keep us locked up, or with love and self-understanding, we can wake up to the repetition, we can move past the pain or fear or shame and take a step on the path to awakening.This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.”We explore hope as optimism, as necessity, as beacon shining a light forward. One thing it should not function as is an “opiate for the masses.” Hope, like love and faith, is not a passive condition. I love the idea of how it can be a call to action in a time that should be viewed as an emergency. It asks us to look at situations with urgency rather than bland acceptance and resignation.This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“What I know now is that when we derive our worth from the relationships in our lives — the intimate ones, the social circles we belong to, the companies we work for — we give away our power and become dependent upon external validation. When that is taken away, our sense of value, and identity, goes with it.”This reaffirms a theme we explore from a variety of angles throughout this podcast. The idea that you are good enough for who you are, regardless of the relationships outside yourself, is important. It’s all the more impactful when it comes from someone who is achieving great success within those relationships and as an African American woman. It’s a message for everyone.This episode was brought to you by Big Self School. If you have been a part of the growing community from around the globe (30 countries by last count) that are following these daily meditations and ideas, we love your presence and are so glad you are listening. I hope that the process is making a difference in your life. If you would be so kind as to help our online visibility by giving us a review on Apple iTunes we would be deeply grateful. We’re starting this podcast from scratch and are bringing content and value to our listeners every single day without exception. Your support in even this one small way would make a big difference. Thank you!

“Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.”The mindset that life is supposed to be easy gets a lot of us in trouble. We want to avoid pain and struggle and as a result (perhaps ironically), we suffer. It may not be easy to embrace the struggle of being true to yourself, but in the end you will live a more fulfilled, joyful life. Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test. Thanks for tuning in today.

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”Sometimes our struggles transcend words, or our ability to articulate what is going on inside ourselves, whether or not we’re having a good day.Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test. Thanks for tuning in today.

“The technocratic illusion is that poverty results from a shortage of expertise, whereas poverty is really about a shortage of rights. The emphasis on the problem of expertise makes the problem of rights worse. The technical problems of the poor (and the absence of technical solutions for those problems) are a symptom of poverty, not a cause of poverty.In some ways it states the obvious, but it is an argument you rarely hear in today’s discourse on systemic racism, whether or not it exists, and why various impoverished communities remain with so few resources, opportunities, or people who rise from such conditions.Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test. Thanks for tuning in today.

“You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you are.”Pretend this book is a map, and you are looking at the point that says: You are here. That’s where you’re starting really all the time, from where you are. It doesn’t matter where you come from, where you think you are going, what job or career you have had or think you should have. You are not too late, and you’re not too early. But where are you? Strategic thinking can help you build your way forward from wherever you are, regardless of the life problem you are facing. But before you can figure out which direction to head in, you need to know where you are and what problems you are trying to solve.Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test. Thanks for tuning in today.

“We are triggered not by their behavior, but by our own unresolved emotional issues.”“Do you see me?” This is the big question your child is asking every day. “Can you recognize me for who I am, different from your dreams and expectations for me, separate from your agenda for me?”Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test. Thanks for tuning in today.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”This book teaches the powerful and resonating lesson that our perceptions create our reality. There are external events outside of our control that happen all the time. We can do nothing about that part of life, but the part we have complete control over is how we respond to circumstances. It is a mindset approach to all of life, and can lead us to how we respond to and handle failure, amongst other things. Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test. Thanks for tuning in today.

“Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante’s hell is the inscription: ’Leave behind all hope, you who enter here’.”There is a lot of darkness in our current historical moment, but there remains tremendous goodness. We live with the hope of a more just and equitable culture. Hope brings us to life. There are scientifically-based studies that investigate the concept of hope in people’s lives. It is also helpful to know theologians have done their own systematic research into the concept of hope. To hope is to want a better outcome. It makes the present situation more bearable, and motivates us to create the conditions for a better future. Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test. Thanks for tuning in today.

“It is by tracing things to their origin, that we learn to understand them; and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view, that we never forget them.”Paine had a provocative and idealistic sense of what we often should see as “self-evident” truths. It seems he was already tracing things to their origins, such as the basic rights of a peasant child compared with one of royal pedigree. If only these ideals had become reality through the Founders in the first place. For our purposes, too, we should think about how this quote applies to the self. Keep sourcing yourself for the core questions and you will get somewhere.Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test. Thanks for tuning in today.

“Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.”The emphasis is on feelings. Grief involves emotions, however intense the grief may be.Six common responses to loss that completely ignore emotional needs: (1) Don’t feel bad; (2) Replace the loss; (3) Grieve alone; (4) Just give it time; (5) Be strong for others; (6) Keep busy. Each of the misconceptions is examined in the book where this quote comes from and revealed for the damage it does.Go to Big Self School.com and take the stress test to find out just how stressed you really are. https://www.bigselfschool.com/stress-test.