“Don’t let what you cannot do
interfere with what you can do.”

– John Wooden

I don’t have many answers for the big questions you may be asking about the workplace of today, your own career path, your personal life, or what you see happening in the news.

I am observing, reading, researching, and taking it all in with everyone else. All of us are working from what we know, which is past experience. I regularly reflect with this question, “What is so valuable about my past experience that illuminates my future with respect to the changes that are occurring?”

Much of what I read is about how to navigate in complex and changing times. There is very little about what to do. I appreciate that the advice-giving is quieting down. I can teach and educate. I can query. I can offer support, encouragement, and a helping hand. But when it comes to ‘where we are going and where we will land?’ I don’t have any clear answers. I am learning how to take ‘one day at a time’ and embrace the day that I have been given.

I hope I do that with a sense of optimism, an open heart and mind, always being grateful and taking responsibility for myself. I don’t want to slog through each day with my head down, plowing through my lists. I still aspire to find my way with a spring in my step, a song in my head, and a kindness for everyone I meet. Yes, I still aspire to be like Mary Poppins. You can change everything around me, but I still manage my own attitude.

Keeping this in mind, I recognize my attitude can be variable. It goes up and down with what is and isn’t happening when what I want is for my attitude’s course to be steady and strongly spiraling upwards.

So, the questions of the day are:

• “What inspires you?”

• “Where do you find your inspiration?”

When I find something that sparks my interest and opens my heart, I tend to print it out and post it where I can see it. Quotes, song lyrics, photos, and the writing of other people. I have mushroom piles of books whose contents can transport me to a new place and refreshed attitude. Even the movies I choose can reset my mental direction.

I am taking in a wide, expansive source of stimulus while also enjoying the simplicity of a household chore, time outside, a conversation with a dog, and something not recorded on my many lists.

One of the watering holes of content that I peruse is Substack. The content on Substack has shifted in the past few months. Originally, it was a haven for writers. I follow Lisa Olivera, who writes about ‘HumanStuff.’ This post of hers struck a chord with me:

1 — There may not be a fix to what you fear; there may only be an opening to tend to it lovingly.

2 — You cannot do the part of millions; You can do your small part with as much heart as possible.

3 — You get to choose who you want to be, regardless of the outcome of anything.

4 — When you zoom out, beyond your own personal grievances or feelings, you get to see so much more clearly; you get to act so much more clearly.

5 — Look around you when you assume you must carry it all alone. Look at all the others doing the lifting alongside you. Look at the web you’re part of.

6 — Call upon seen and unseen guidance whenever you feel stuck trying to figure it out on your own. You are never truly on your own.

7 — Let the river of feelings be a current flowing through you instead of a stuck dam. Let the flow remind you everything begins and ends, sometimes again and again. Let it move you.

8 — Stay with the tenderness. It is not a problem; it is aliveness.

9 — You can trust what you know. You can let yourself not know.

10 — Your grief ever-deepens your capacity to become more present.

11 — There is beauty in your incessant desire to understand all sides, all opinions, all viewpoints, all perspectives. It grows your humanity.

12 — There is beauty in trusting your own opinions, your own viewpoints, your own perspectives, even when others do not agree.

13 — Your willingness to practice compassion in deep, abiding ways does not negate your rage, your anger, your betrayal, your hurt. Both get to exist.

14 — Your inherently imperfect practice of all of this isn’t a personal flaw you need to fix, but a reality you get to continuously learn to embrace with more accepting and open arms.

15 — Write cliché poems guided by your ancestors. Let those poems become prayers.

16 — Ask yourself what you notice; ask yourself what you can turn toward.

17 — Silliness is not a betrayal to what is serious, but a buoy to survive it.

18 — There are generous, kind, loving, compassionate, wise, tender, hopeful humans everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. I promise.

19 — You get to work on becoming one of those people every single day; what a gift.

20 — One breath. Then another. Then another. Then another.

And finally: stay with the heart. It tends to be the most loving guide there is.

Credited to Lisa Olivera

In the end, it was a listing that might feel like advice that calmed my spinning mind. I offer it up as a source of possibilities and inspiration. However, I am still very curious to find out “Where are you finding your inspiration?”

A friend reminded me that in the moment, nothing really had changed in my most immediate circumstances and that I still hold the key to how my day will unfold.

May you find every day rich with possibility.

Leslie

P.S. I have traveled back in time to Colonial Williamsburg to visit family and perhaps find some inspiration from the earliest years of our formation as a country.  Stay tuned.

“Iron rusts from disuse;
Water loses its purity from stagnation.
Even so, does inaction
Sap the vigor of the mind.”

— Leonardo da Vinci