Day 7: Review and Plan

Take a few minutes to review your eighth week. Write about your accomplishments and what you need to work on. Did you:

• Brainstorm some goals, dreams, and exciting ideas that might help you to transform your world?

• Write about what you want your life to stand for - how you wish your world could change, what would make it better for everyone, and big and little problems in your life and in the world that you would like to see solved?

• Write a list of the choices and options you have for transformation now and in the future?

• Examine your Truth with a vision walk, to help expand your understanding of life, and give you greater clarity?

• Write a haiku mission statement for one project or goal that is rising to the top of your priorities?

• Prepare to seek clarity with a few others, either in a formal clearness process or an informal discussion, by writing a short essay introducing your mission, and a list of questions?

• Open the door to transformational love and accept that you will find the strength to carry out your mission?

• Map out your mission, set an intention, make a backwards calendar, and a full effort plan?

• Try a creative awareness process, using observation of your encounters with uncertainty, leaning in to encounters with uncertainty, your love journal to review encounters with uncertainty, and touching the river of Transforming Power to step out of the safety zone and make a shift to peace, strength, and joy?

Schedule your next week, Step 1: 

• Thursday - Adjust your Priority Grid for the month: Check off what you have completed, add new items you have thought of, and move anything down lower that no longer fits.
• Friday - Block in your schedule for the next week: Add events and blocks of time for your priority categories (such as an hour for committee work on Tuesday and Thursday).
• Saturday - Fill in the details: Schedule a daily time for all of your daily priorities, like exercising; choose days and times for the one-day tasks like sending that birthday card; and schedule in the chunks of those big task-driven projects. 

 

Evaluate your Ducks in a Row: If situations are constantly moving you away from your priorities and you feel dissatisfied and out of balance, make a note about why that is. Also, make a note of which of your priorities are getting left out of your life. 

Brainstorm new goals, dreams, and exciting ideas for your future.

Summary

You transform your world when you get clear on your missions, test your leadings, and open the door to creative risk-taking. No matter our limitations, we can produce the energy of love and extend it to the world so that it grows out in ripples.

 

Going forward, you will:

• Examine your Truth - often, in whatever way works for you (your journal, vision walks, a clearness process, ...?)

• Open the door to transformational love  - daily, for as long as live. 

Day 6: Take a Creative Risk

Nothing changes unless we change. All the work you have done to know yourself and understand others is interesting; but it's how you use it that takes it from interesting to transformative. You are now equipped with the knowledge to transform your thoughts and feelings by acting on your Truth and extending love to the world - you can simply tune into your values and principles, and draw on your strengths and the transforming power of love.

Transforming Power is a term coined by the Alternatives to Violence Project, which was started by Quakers and inmates at the Greenhaven Prison in New York in the 1970's, at a time of great unrest and violence. Together the inmates and the Quakers developed non-violence workshops inside prisons, which continue to this day, with town and inmate students, and town and inmate leaders.

In a nutshell, Transforming Power is a river of energy at your core, made up of your essential wisdom, strength, and goodness, which you can touch in with in order to experience a shift. It might be a shift from anger or resentment to peace; it might be a shift from fear and powerlessness to strength; it might be a shift from sadness or worry to joy. 

The shift you experience might be slow and steady or like a lightning bolt, but it will contain an element of love: You become part of the whole, no longer isolated. You will experience a self-acceptance and a sense of peace that allows you to connect with others without hesitation. It's this connection that transforms you: Your view of the world is transformed, everything is different. You see people and situations in a new light, are able let go of whatever was holding you back and act - one small step at a time.

The Alternatives to Violence Manual says, “'Transforming Power’ is not dogma nor is it an item of faith. It is simply a term to refer to something that participants often experience when they respect themselves, care for others, seek a non-violent path, think before reacting, or expect the best.” AVP gives every participant a little card to carry that lists the Guides to Transforming Power. I want to highlight three:

-Base your position on truth.

-When you are clear about your position, expect to experience great inward power to act on it.

-Do not expect that this response will automatically ward off danger. If you cannot avoid risk, risk being creative rather than violent.

The final habit we will practice is the habit of creative risk-taking. Creativity is our greatest super-power, the rich resource that leads us towards transformation. You've been practicing creativity all throughout this book - you've generated creative ideas with brainstorming (which is, remember, to freely think outside the box and generate ideas without the fear of criticism); you have creatively visualized your path forward with vision walks; and then you created a map of your future.

Day 5: Open the Door

At the start of this second section I asked you to center your living in love. Our main purpose on earth is to grow in love; our world needs more love. With more love, we could do away with war- we would have no prejudice, oppression, or violence of any kind. Everyone would have enough food because we would feed each other. We would care for the environment because we love our planet, and the animals, and our children too much to harm it.

How, then, do we create more love in the world? We simply need to open our hearts wide as often as we can, wider and wider, calmly throw open the door to love. 

If you have a leading to act in love, and you have gone through all the stages of discernment, you might be clear on your next steps. That's where we are often stuck, though - we might hear the Truth, but still have doubts about its absoluteness; we might hear the Truth and see our path forward but struggle against apathy, or mind-numbing fear.

Ed Bacon says, “But however Truth comes, it bears with it just enough of its own sense of rightness to overcome the fear of risk taking. While genuine risk plays a crucial role in all of the Habits of Love, it is perhaps most keen in the Habit of Truth. At too many forks in the road, anxiety stops us from following Truth's suggested direction. What will happen if I say yes to Truth as I recognize it? That question can arrest us in our tracks."

Whatever your biggest mission is now - personal growth, healing, service, relationship revival, activism, or something else - you need to find the strength to open the door. This is your growing edge: To accept that you will be carried beyond yourself; to accept that you will find the strength and creativity to take the risk, walk your path, and speak your message out loud. 

Today you will draw on your organizational skills from the first part of this book to open the door to transformational love. 

• Map out your mission: On a plain piece of paper, start a Mini-Map with this priority mission in the center. Looking at your Base Map, follow the connecting lines to all the values (and other priorities) that relate to this one priority, and add them to the Mini-Map. Have a little chat with yourself in your journal, or just make a list of the values (and other priorities) that lead you to action for your mission.

• Set an intention for your mission using the action + deepest reason model.

• Make a backwards calendar: Brainstorm a list of all the supplies, information, people, skills, and steps you need to take to complete your mission. Group all the tasks into chunks. Organize chunks into the order they need to happen. Plug your chunks of action into the weeks of this month on your priorities grid.

• Make a full effort plan for how you will lean in and spark full and energetic effort day-by-day, for your mission: Brainstorm a list of the things that have worked to motivate you in the past and form your Full Effort Practices into simple steps.

Day 4: Seek Clearness with Others

Seeking clearness is the last step in the discernment process. Clarity - that feeling that you know what you stand for, you are sure of your objectives, you have set the best intentions, and you understand your next move - is liberating and empowering. 

Most of the time we don't wait for clarity; we act on autopilot, or on other's expectations and assurances, or because the situation is urgent. Waiting for clarity seems selfish or exhausting or just impossible.

But being clear in your heart that you are on the right path is a wonderful thing to wait for; it's transformative in itself! When you have gathered all the information, weighed all the possibilities, invited a leading of the spirit or Inner Guide, and you think you know what you are being led to do, it's time to test your leading with other people.

Many times, when I have an idea I'm mulling over, I will talk casually about it with my friends, and listen to what they say. I get to process my idea out loud, and I feel clearer. Most of the time that is enough to go on with, but - especially when I'm making big decisions- it has a major flaw: My friends don't know that I'm using them for clarity, so they might just tell me what they think I want to hear, or they might thoughtlessly tell me what their own fears and inhibitions tell them.

The Quakers have a wonderful format called a Clearness Committee, for when an individual (or a family or other group) is facing a particularly difficult situation or has a leading to test. A clearness committee of two or three other people meets with you for one or more sessions, and is tasked with asking questions that will lead you to consider the idea from new angles, and see it in new light.

Day 3: Write a Mission Haiku

Stephen Covey says, “The first principle of ethical power is Purpose. By purpose, I don't mean your objective or intention- something toward which you are always striving. Purpose is something bigger. It is the picture you have of yourself-the kind of person you want to be or the kind of life you want to lead.”

Purpose and mission statements are popular with organizations, but they are also useful for individuals. I'm using Purpose to mean your overarching idea of who you are and what you want to contribute, and Missions as your various big projects or directions in life.

After all the work you've done in the last weeks, you probably have an inkling of your purpose in life, and some ideas of missions. Today I ask you to choose one mission or leading to examine closer, and write it as a haiku that gets to the core of your mission, and gives you a framework for your actions. You might be surprised by what surfaces in this process, so give it a try!

• Start by ranking your missions in life: If you discovered today that you had just six months to live, what would you focus on? How would you rank your goals by priority so that they would be accomplished before you die?

Day 2: Truth Walk

Truth is a continual revelation, a constantly unfolding series of insights about how your mind works, how the world works, and how you might best act with more love, generosity, justice, and peace. I'm using Truth with a capitol T to mean an absolute - something that is foundational for you: Your values and principles, and your world view, and the leadings you have for action. 

If you have no Truths (no moral absolutes) then you will have no moral guidance. Everything will be situational: Whatever feels or seems right at the time and in that situation is right. This kind of “whatever feels good” mentality and lifestyle creates a society that regards all values, beliefs, lifestyles, and truth claims as equally valid. If we have no absolutes, then chaos follows.

At the same time, we need to accept that Truth is not the same for everyone, and learn how to listen to the Truth of others without getting angry or confused. And we need to accept that our own foundations change, as we grow and understand the world differently. 

Examining your Truth from time to time is a habit that expands your understanding of life, and gives you greater clarity.

Yesterday you wrote out your conscious, top-of -the-mind ideas about how you wish your world could change, and ideas that could lead you to change your world for the better. Now take another pass at it. This time, access your deeper, intuitive mind - your connection to God, or the Inner Guide, by putting yourself into a relaxed, trance-like state, and seeking a leading of the spirit with an open mind and heart.

Week 8: Transform Your World + Day 1: Journal & Set Intentions

For the first four weeks of this challenge, you deep-dived into your reasons for living, made a map of your path forward, and a plan for how to give full effort to your priorities. And for the last three weeks you centered your living in love by giving open-hearted attention to your daily interactions with the people in your life, to your personality style, and to generosity, equanimity, and other virtues and social skills.

The only thing remaining to do is to go out and transform your world. That's the gift we have - to see what needs to change and do the work to change it. No matter our limitations, we CAN make the world better, one smile, kind word, or conversation at a time. 

When I say "transform your world" I am suggesting a shift towards a better life: It could be mostly an inner renovation, or lifestyle alteration; it could be an adjustment in your relationships; it could be a new project or area of growth; or it could be a move into activism or service. You might already have an inkling of where you are being nudged. 

The work of transforming your world has several steps. This week you will take time to hear your truth, and get clearer on your various missions in life; learn how to test your leadings; and how to open the door to the uncertainty of life, take creative risks, and find the courage to act on your leadings. 

We will go through the steps of discernment - the process of making deeply important decisions in your life - that I set out at the beginning of this book. You will:

-Use your practical wisdom, collect information, reflect on your values, and weigh all the possibilities for action. 

-Seek a leading of the spirit (God or Inner Guide) with an open mind and heart. 

-Seek clearness by inviting thoughtful questioning (not advise) from some people you trust.

A note about your Inner Guide

I've mentioned your Inner Guide throughout this book, but what is it, really? Some people call it intuition, or a gut feeling; others feel it in their heart; and some might call it a leading of the spirit. It's that flash of insight, or creative impulse, or sudden clarity you get when you've been working out a problem; or it might be a leading or itch to act on something you never thought of before. It's sometimes quiet and subtle, and sometimes loud and clear.