Ordinary Life, Extraordinary Living

Finding Inspiration in New Places

Inspiration is most appreciated when you least expect it.

Waking up this morning, after three days of travel for work, my mind was foggy and my body a bit sore. (Sitting on airplanes and lifting suitcases into overhead bins will do that.) But in going through my inbox, I found two things that immediately got me going, like the spiciness of a cup of bhakti chai.

A boundary crosser who I had blogged about a few years ago, Brian Schmidt, emailed me about a convention he started last year for his industry, GameSoundCon.  Brian composes music for video games. He's got undergraduate degrees in Music Composition and Computer Engineering, and a graduate degree in Computer Applications in Music. As the website states, "GameSoundCon is for composers, sound designers, audio engineers and others who want to learn what it takes to work in the video game music and sound industry."

Sounds pretty run of the mill....until you see the video of who showed up and what they talked about. See for yourself.

These are people who love what they do, are creative and practical at the same time, and take their work seriously. We need more people in the workplace like this. If you aren't bringing that kind of passion and sensibility to your work, maybe you should reconsider your profession.

My second jolt of inspiration this morning came via an email from Patricia Ryan Madson, author of the book, Improv Wisdom.  Patricia recently rejuvenated her blogging efforts with a year-long series of postings on everyday objects in her life.  Again, this doesn't sound like much. Until you see that Patricia is a woman who sees the world with a special lens, with the eye of a painter, the heart of an improvisor, and the mind of a writer. It's a powerful combination. Photo by Patricia Ryan Madson.

Where are you finding inspiration these days?

The Impact of Good Intentions

Recently, a participant from a program that I delivered several years ago emailed me, saying how much she enjoyed my ezine.  In the process of re-connecting, I asked her how she had fared in the recession as a small business owner. 

What she told me not only surprised me, it delighted me.

While financially it had not been a good year, she had a breakthrough in a long-standing dispute with an ex-husband. She attributed her ability to deal with her ex in a more effective way to what she had learned in my program. In her words, "Your classes helped make me strong so that I could do what I needed to do and what no lawyer had been able to do." Photo by greg westfall.

Here's the interesting part. The classes were designed to help small business owners operate with more ease and create greater wealth. This participant reported her best year ever in terms of revenues after taking the program.  However, I never imagined it helping her deal with a nasty ex. 

The nature of coaching is that working on one part of your life can't help but spill over to your entire life. Working with someone on how they show up in business gets to the core of who they are. 

Sometimes we don't like what we see. If you can accept what you see in the mirror, you have an opportunity to choose consciously, to get different results. This is the whack on the side of the head that can be the beginning of living a more authentic life. Photo by NightRPStar

While I used to blog a lot more about my experience being a coach, I've taken the "coaching life" for granted over the last few years. I forget that the impact of our good intentions (as well as our expertise) exists, even if we never have the benefit of hearing about it. In other words, our work, our best work, matters.  How we show up in large and small ways matters. How we interact with our family, colleagues, and clients matters. 

When have you been reminded of the impact you had on others?  And how do you keep yourself from forgetting, when the impact isn't immediately visible?