When telling your life story is raw, remember – the rawness that you once lived in is the reason that you are who you are today; someone who cares for others and who uses the pain and lessons learned from times past to strengthen our world for the future. There is forgiveness and healing in so much of life, but we must choose to look at our past life experiences as the needful pieces that fit us up for today’s and tomorrow’s work. We may never fully comprehend the reasons for our past pain, but we know we wouldn’t be the same people today if it hadn’t been for them. We are a planet of broken people. But that brokenness may be the one thing that sets us apart: what we do with that brokenness is something entirely different than how we experienced it in the first place.
Today, I got to tell part of my life story to a group of people who have come to be my friends, even if we are in different countries. This Community of Practice (CoP) revolves around bringing Teal Practices into our collective business world. One of the three tenets of Teal is that we “bring our whole selves to work” – called “Wholeness.” There are no professional veneers allowed. We truly show up as ourselves with all of our problems, pain, potential, and power. It was humbling to hear the responses from others, but all of us have taken this turn to tell our stories so that we can truly understand each other, our lenses and foibles, our pain, and our possibilities. The reactions from everyone, each time, have been filled with affirmations and the promise of moving our world towards connectivity and goodness. I’m excited to build with these wonderful hearts and truly inspirational and transparent people. This is what business can be like; being our unfettered selves, bringing our best to humanity, allowing business its next evolution, and becoming all that we possibly can be – together. Business – evolved! People – unleashed and valued!
Pivoting Life – Finding Your Purpose
Every part of life is to fit us up for what is next for us. It is no use trying to create our paths forward by carefully planning out our way. Instead, we must find our way within the beautiful mess called “Life.” We do this by listening to our hearts and finding the crosspoints where our lives and hearts intersect with the whole of humanity, or at least a small subset of it. Within this beauty, even if pain-filled, is where we can give our best to our world. We can only take the one step offered to us today to get to our Life Purpose.