Belief Makers

Labels: faith clarke, love

Every Friday until November 7, 2010 you will find entries from a series written by Iris about her training to run the New York marathon in 2010. It is something she never aspired to do; she has never run a distance of more than two kilometers in her life. In this series she describes her adventures and how she works on her beliefs to transform her challenges and successes into one great experience.

It's Thursday evening and I am typing this blog while watching the sun go down. The sky is orange and beautiful. From my lazy chair I have an incredible view that seems so much more amazing to me tonight. I am totally aware and it seems that this sunset was specially painted for me personally.

Sitting in my chair I am wondering about my life, the world, our experiences and how we interpret them. It's one of those philosophical moments in which many things are thought, and it is a moment in which I feel very grateful for my life. I am grateful for who I am today. In my thirty-seven and a half years I have walked many roads. The last seven years I have mainly walked new unknown roads with my hubby Teflon, creating our amazing future on the spot.

Making Miracles
I must tell you, we are miracle makers. We see, choose and decide without holding on to what we have. We like moving towards what we want at full speed! If this means leaving our house, or changing our jobs, or traveling around the world, or taking loans to support others with what we have, we do it without hesitation.

One thing that makes us miracle makers is that we "love". We love each other deeply; we love other people deeply; we love a challenge; we love helping people; we love doing creative new things; we love change and we love to change; we love life and everything in it. We love what is and what will come and we believe that what will come is going to be beautiful.

Today I spent my day talking to families with autism, working with one of my wonderful little friends in his playroom and doing a couple of dialogues with amazing people. And at the end of the day I was not burned out or tired, but I felt full of gratitude and love for the people I worked with. People are the most amazing mammals in the world, so inspiring, creative and fun.

Running?
Sometimes things do not go our way. My leg injury that I ran into a couple of weekends ago did not disappear. A full-blown inflammation is still keeping me tied to walking and biking instead of running. But the funny thing is that I am not upset.

I start to get ready to go back to running. My mind clearly wants to run. But my body says something else. Teflon and I talked about this inflammation and we came to the conclusion that my cardiovascular system has really strengthened, but that my muscles are running behind in gaining strength. So, this week I am signing up for a gym to have some machines help me focus on this and show this inflammation the door.

When things do not the way we expect, we find alternatives, and we try new things. We follow the path that opens up, but instead of blindly walking it, we influence, we change, we create and we end up where we want.

Making It Big!
I'm reading what I wrote in this article and I realize that I am practicing something that I explained to one of my clients today. I told this person that when you look at addressing a challenge, you go into the details and cut everything in small, specific pieces. It helps you to see what the challenge is about and to see that there are simple steps you can take to overcome it. However, when you are not working on a challenge, but working on making your happiness and positivity bigger, the skill is to create your beliefs in a big way. Forget about specifics, get big and general!
Here an example. I could have said, I love Teflon. But instead I wrote, "We love deeply!"

Saying that we love deeply is a way bigger statement of love in my life. In comparison with the first statement it seems unbreakable, tangible, vibrant. Ahhhh. Love...

So, I would like to know, how often and in which situations you make your happiness fueling beliefs big and general? Do you allow yourself to make your skills, abilities and passions big? Or, do you qualify them and apologize for them? When was the last time that, in describing yourself, you used words like amazing, awesome, wonderful or great?

I'd love to hear from you and your amazing description of you!

Iris

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, love

"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Matthew 5:43-48 (New International Version)

Over the last couple of days I've been learning about the art of love and it's been a wonderful experience.

"Love" as an Incantation
I received a call from a dear friend a couple of days ago who had received a bunch of calls from other friends telling her that yet another friend had called each of them accusing her of all sorts of terrible stuff. In addition to the accusations themselves, the accuser asked everyone he called to decide between him and my friend asserting that, if they didn't decide, he would no longer befriend them.

Knowing my friend and the circumstances surrounding the accusations, it was imminently clear that accusations were baseless and the accuser was simply lashing out at my friend because... well I'm not sure why. The catch is this: in each case, as the accuser made his accusations he sandwiched them in statements of how much he loved the friend he was accusing. It's as though, as long as you 'say' you love someone, then you can 'do' anything you want to them.

Our accuser seems not to quite get the point.

Loving the Accuser
I'm pretty good with people coming after me, attacking me, etc. and still maintaining an attitude of love and acceptance. I'm not so good when I see people going after friends of mine, especially when they're bullying.

When I heard my friend's story and how essentially the accuser was trying to discredit her to the point of taking away her livelihood, my initial response was to go after him hard, fast and decisively. I'm quite good at that kind of thing and, well, although I could have said that I would do so lovingly, it wasn't exactly love that was driving me.

My friend appreciated my enthusiastic support, but did not take me up on my offer. Instead she asked if we could simply brainstorm ways to love her accuser and potentially bring him around. Wow! She was actually doing love, not just talking about it.

So, we embarked upon an exercise to reach out to her accuser in as loving and accepting a way as possible. It's been an amazing experience.

The Clarity of Loving
As we loved and accepted her accuser, our thinking became clearer and clearer. We considered all the accusations to see where they might have merit and where they didn't. We saw how the accuser was simply acting out of fear and then worked to understand what might be driving that fear. We worked together to draft a letter to her accuser inviting him to talk about the accusations and to work things out. Everything became clear, easy and relaxed.

In the end, neither of us knows how all this will work out; in the end, it doesn't really matter. The process of approaching the whole situation from a place of love seems to be all that really does matter.

All You Need
As I indicated, we're still in the midst of this little dramatic adventure. Who knows where it will take us and what we'll discover. But, as Chris Kisling pointed out the other day, "In the end, he who loves the most, wins!"

I would add for clarity, he who actually loves, not he who says he's loving.

Lovingly, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, love, mark tuomenoksa

Joining a Son-Rise Program® has been a great inspiration for me. Not only is it fun to be in the playroom. I also get inspired to do more fun stuff outside the playroom. I get inspired to find ways to inspire Christo's mom. And I get inspired to change my life.

Inspiration in the playroom
When I am in the playroom we mostly play games inspired by Disney. We started with Tigger, which happens to be Christo's and my favorite Pooh character. We will bounce around and quote Tigger. Just try to perfect your "youuuhuuuhuuuhuuuhu". Can you do that without smiling? Do you recognize the amazing feeling when you get Tigger under your skin? You can feel the energy and happiness bounching around while being Tigger. It is so different from playing Eeyore (which is fun too, just different).

Sometimes we pick characters from "Jungle Book". I love Balou. Being Balou gives me a chance to move my but! I would like to be a monkey, but I still can't sing all the words from "I wanna be a Mankind" (I haven't made it my highest priority yet!). Than there are the dogs. They are everywhere: it can be 101 Dalmantines, Blutz, you name it. There are so many great Disney dogs, and I'm a dog person..

I would recommend to anyone to personify a disney character. It's fun and you can make it a good workout too. Pick one of your favorite disney characters and start playing! And by the way: when was the last time you were standing close to someone making funny faces? or scary faces?

Preparing for the playroom
We've been playing monsters, dogs and George of the jungle. I didn't even know George of the jungle. So recently I 've spent time on youtube. Laughing a lot watching clips from this crazy movie.

I've bought some new dvd's and borrowed some from friends with kids. Because how could I know that "Get out of here" was just a quote from Beauty and the Beast"? And I for sure didn't know that there were lines from StarWars in KungFu Panda!

Lately I have been smiling, singing new songs and making more jokes and people around me have been laughing with me!

Inspiring someone else
When I did Group Facilitator training I found it challenging to find the energy and enthusiasm within me. But when I am sitting at the kitchen table exchanging ideas for the playroom with the mom, I am excited. I love telling her how good she is, how fantastic it is that she can see what to do next and that she keeps moving.

I want her to get more help and training, so I keep feeding her with suggestions, and step by step is she moving on it. It's fantastic. I see that I can inspire, and can be patient, all at the same time. It feels so good.

I used this inspiration to challenge people at my work, people who seemed to be waiting for inspiration. When they resisted taking responsibility for their lack of inspiration, I would ask them: how is it working for you to wait for a small ant to bite you, to get under their skin and fill you up with inspiration. As we laughed I knew that they knew that inspiration was there for them to choose.

Let the world be my playroom
I want to take as much as I can from the playroom and build my world from this.

I know that Brian and Mary have a webpage on how to create relationships. My suggestion will be: build a playroom for you and your partner. Build this place with love and acceptance, and a lot of space for exploration.

If anyone want to join my playroom, let me know. It might include pillow fighting and greek dancing, but it will be fun.

My playroom, my rules.

Joy

Labels: inspiration, intention, joy vigh strand, love, relationships, son-rise

I regularly hear from friends that they deeply admire the relationship that Mark and I have. They tell me that they want to create for themselves a relationship like ours. I agree with them; Mark and I have a wonderful and amazing relationship. Let me tell you our secret: we keep things simple.

My husband is working eighty hours a week and is grumpy all the time.  I think he prefers his job to me...

She's wearing that ugly red sweatshirt just to irritate me...

When he makes a drink for himself, he never asks me what I want. He doesn't care about me...

She was crying again last night. She just wants to make me feel guilty...

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, love, mark tuomenoksa, relationships

One of the things that Iris and I frequently notice is that there are only a few people in my life who ask me questions. I'm not talking about "how's it going?" or "what do you think about all this rain we're having?" I'm also not talking questions like "how can I create a website?" or "can you help me with my computer?"

I'm talking about deeper questions that would have meaningful responses.

Conversationally, this is never a challenge as I like to ask questions. I'm always curious about people, who they are, what they believe and why they do what they do. I'm interested in everything from philosophy to mountain biking and from math and science to music and art.

Sometimes I like to see what happens when I stop asking questions. Quite often the conversation simply stops. There's a long pause and then the person I'm speaking with will mention something about the weather or the Red Sox or the latest news around town, apparently at a loss for words.

Questions on Monday
So, this morning I was thinking that it would be great to declare Monday, August 24 2009, Listening Day. On Listening Day, we exchange gifts called questions.

Creating Your Gifts
There are several steps required to transform a question into a gift suitable for wrapping,

First, the question must have no intent other than curiosity and interest in the person of whom it is asked.

For example, it can't be a "can you help me with..." or "would you go get the..." type of question. It also can't be a an accusation wrapped in a question such as "what the heck were you thinking when you..." It also should lack any direction or command such as "wouldn't you feel better if you just..."

Nope, the question would be a simple what, how or why type of question. The why questions tend to make the best gifts.

Second, to bring the question to life, you must listen lovingly, intently and without judgment to the answer. Really, really, really pay attention. It's the active and focused listening that brings the gift to life.

Third, subsequent questions in your gift package are based on the answers to previous questions all derived from you amazing active listening.

Fourth, this may go without saying, but the questions are best delivered in person or over the phone or even via instant messenger. Interactivity is key.

Will You Celebrate Listening Day?
If you'd like to join me in celebrating Listening Day, then identify some people to whom you'd like to give some questions.

Don't worry about what the questions are? Just focus on that person and creating a loving and accepting attitude. If you'd like to get a running start, build your curiosity about them. Who are they really? What motivates them? What are their passions? What are their fears? What do they want most from life?

I believe that celebrating Listening Monday can have a profound impact on our lives and relationships. If you're someone who "never knows what to say" when meeting people, make every day Listening Day and you will completely transform your life.

So, today, August 24, 2009, I'm celebrating Listening Day. Will you join me?

Have an awesome day!

Labels: all blogs, love, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

In English, we have two words that we often use to express thankfulness: gratitude and appreciation. Although these words have subtle yet significant differences in meaning, we tend to use them interchangeably.

Gratitude requires no understanding of that for which we are grateful. It's an expression of sentiment on our part having nothing to do with the thing for which or the person for whom we are thankful.

Appreciation involves knowledge and understanding. You may recall courses on art and music appreciation. From a dictionary perspective, appreciation can be viewed as the act of estimating the qualities of things and giving them their proper value or as a critical evaluation of a situation, person or thing.

Appreciation requires knowledge and insight; gratitude does not.

For Example
Let's say that you're moving to Japan and you have a Steinway grand piano that you won't be able to keep any longer. You want to give it to someone.

As you consider all the people to whom you might give the piano, there may be many who would be grateful (some of whom might play piano and others who might not). So, as you consider to whom to give the piano, you start thinking about who would appreciate it most, e.g., who would understand what makes the piano great, who would be able to play it, who would be able to hear the difference in the sound, etc.

Although many might be grateful, you'd likely give the piano to someone who could really appreciate it.

Gratitude is for the Grateful One
One of the things that many of us have learned is that it feels good to be grateful. In a situation where we're overwhelmed or feeling unappreciated or simply unhappy, taking time to actively express gratitude for what we have in our lives can provide a fast path to feeling better and to happiness.

As we express our gratitude to others (especially to those for whom we are grateful), we share that process of feeling better. Still, the primary beneficiary of gratitude is the one who is grateful.

Appreciation is for Others
To appreciate something requires an investment on our part. It often takes experience with whatever it is we want to appreciate. However, the return on that investment can be significant, specially if there are people in our life with whom we want connect.

For example, let's say that you have a son or daughter who is really into hip-hop or rap, a child with whom you want to build a deeper relationship. You might express gratitude for them regularly, but you still don't seem to connect.

I believe that investing yourself in listening to, learning about and understanding hip-hop and rap will provide you a powerful means of establishing a connection with your child. Rather than expressing what they might consider to be empty or non-meaningful gratitude, you can express insightful appreciation of their music.

You'll be able to say more than that's nice or turn that down. You'll be able to make meaningful comments on what you hear and see. Appreciation can help you build a bridge.

Appreciation Doesn't Require Gratitude
A classic mistake that many people make in business is to not appreciate they're competition. Rather than exploring, understanding and valuing the strengths of their competitors, people often ignore or dismiss them. They fail to learn from their competitors or see opportunities to transform competitors into partners.

Now, you don't have to be grateful for your competition to appreciate your competition. Appreciation simply involves getting to know them and what they do, understanding their motives and goals, seeing their strengths and their weaknesses.

By embracing and appreciating your competition, you can become a much stronger competitor.

We All Prefer Appreciation
In many ways, gratitude is kind of like your mom telling you that you're handsome. It's nice to hear, but it don't get you a prom date.

I believe that each of us prefers to be the object of appreciation rather than the object of gratitude. Whenever we connect with someone who has similar interests and passions, we tend to talk more easily and more satisfyingly.

Whenever we've worked long hours to complete a project that has required skill and expertise, rather than hearing that's nice or how wonderful, we tend to prefer comments from someone who notices all the nuances of our work, someone who understands the required effort and skill.

Homework
If there's someone in your life with whom you seem not to be connecting or with whom you have lost connection, perhaps it's time to shift from gratitude to appreciation. Take time to learn what's important to them. Invest yourself in understanding it. Become an expert.

I believe that your investment will appreciate exponentially.

Labels: all blogs, business, love, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Recently I have been in situations where I have thought: why do we not want to give people what they say they want to receive? I am not talking about the times when they are asking for something that we simply do not want to give, I'm talking about when they ask for A and we'll give them B.

This week I spoke to my sister about a present for my aunt and uncle who are both turning 70 this year. On their wish list were mentioned blankets, pillows and red wine. So my sister suggested that we give them a fancy wine cooler. I never saw them using a wine cooler (which could mean that they don't have one) and a wine cooler could be a fantastic. But they did mention that they fancy red wine and I would rarely use a wine cooler for red wine; it could indicate that they don't really need a wine cooler.

Labels: acceptance, joy vigh strand, love