Looking within
Gregory was enjoying his breakfast at our kitchen table the other morning when he heard a flurry of wings and glanced out the window: a Sharp-Shinned Hawk swooped in right next to the house, captured a Mourning Dove and flew away with it. “Whoa”, I heard from the other room and came in to see scuffle marks in the snow surrounded by a smattering of small grey feathers. Happy hawk, doomed dove. I suppose it’s nature’s way.
After breakfast we sat down for our weekly business Play-date. This is kind of like the traditional strategic planning meetings that regular companies have, only way more fun. We hang out, we drink tea, we chat — about what’s been coming up for us, how things are progressing, and what we intend going forward. It helps us get onto and stay on the same page. Sometimes we even generate action items. (Yes, this notice was on our Play-date’s To-Do list).
Our Play-date discussion began with a share: I had watched a short Brendon Burchard video online. [watch it here]
It’s about three different kinds of life we lead — Caged, Comfortable and Charged. Gregory and I both agreed that we live a very comfortable life by design, one of grace and ease. We also agreed that excessive ease can lead to a kind of undesirable complacency, a certain brand of ‘stuck-ness’. Which begs the question: how to transition into the ‘charged’ and active life of passion and inspiration, without getting caught-up in over-doing and overwhelm? Gregory made a stepping forward motion with his hands, “For me, it’s all about right timing — not just the sequencing of tasks during a particular project, but the overall timing of jumping into the project itself. For instance, there’s plenty to get done around here, but I often start my day feeling, ‘I need to get to that specific thing Today!’. Right timing is the impetus to move forward, engage in a task or get something done ‘now’.”
Sometimes called ‘divine inspiration’, it’s tempting to see this impetus as coming to us from outside sources — the right alignment of the planets, say, or in the case of artistic inspiration, a muse. But what if we could fully embrace the idea that as co-creators with universal energy, we generate everything from inside ourselves, including ‘right timing’? That an unlimited abundance is always available to us, we only need to believe in it to see it? Maybe that sense of right timing is a feeling that comes from our own state of readiness to engage with life — the alignment of our intentions with the perfect opportunities that seem to ‘present themselves’, simply because we’re ready to receive them…
Our very enjoyable conversation came to a close when the furnace repair man knocked at the front door. An hour or so went by. Now it was lunchtime. With the hawk’s hunting display still on his mind, Gregory looked-up Sharp-Shinned Hawk in Ted Andrews’ Animal-Speak Pocket Guide. It read,
Sharp-Shinned Hawk (timing) — Be prepared to act when opportunity appears. Trust in your sense of timing. You will manoeuvre around obstacles with ease.
We looked at each other and laughed.