My latest practice event occurred in the context of moving. I have never moved a family of four, with two young children. It’s not exactly fun. But with some practices, I was actually able to experience some miracles.

Pause, Notice, Inquiry & Action, and it doesn’t matter in which order. I first noticed that I was using certain words to describe my experience: hard, harder than giving birth, harder than having a newborn, hardest thing ever, hard and no one told me how hard … And when I said these things to myself or out loud, I would feel tension, a constriction in my body. In that pause of noticing, I would wiggle a bit – shaking off the tension and ask myself: what is working here?

So much was working. We had so much help: four big guys – my brother, my father, my sister-in-law’s boyfriend, and a dear friend – helped unload four storage pods and a medium truck. Another friend stopped by with nourishment and a hug. Three different families came and picked up my children and cared for them all day. My father-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law spent a whole day with us, running errands, putting our entire kitchen together, helping us make design decisions. The same friend stopped by again to help. Many people checked in through text and voicemail; one friend has popped over several times to hang with my baby, folding our laundry on one visit.

Beyond the hardness, was gratitude, a lot of gratitude. Turns out I am pretty good at receiving help. I’m even grateful for that. What a testament to community.

Little miracles. When I couldn’t find the blankets for the baby, I found another set that was good enough. When I couldn’t find a spatula to make some eggs for dinner, I found a drawer the seller forgot to pack with a utensil that was good enough. Nothing was perfect. We were – and still are – sore, physically and emotionally. Our older daughter is regressing, needing extra attention during a time when we are giving less than usual. But then we look around, and outside at our yard and the green shoots of spring and the expanse of a playground and we know it’s all worth it. It’s worth it in the moment.

Here are some of the moment-to-moment practices I’ve used over this week to help support my sufficiency during a extraordinary time:

• Living in inquiry with questions such as
  • What is working?
  • What else will work?
  • Can I surrender to the discomfort?
  • What can I be grateful for?
• Pausing, taking breaks, looking for opportunities to slow down.
• Staying focused – allowing myself the privilege of doing house tasks and suspending my needs for socializing, working or tracking anything outside of the move for a couple of days.
• Keep some normalcy for my children – sleep routines, activities, etc.
• Keeping one of my morning practices – for me it was writing/scribbling simple daily intentions
• Laughing/finding the humor
• Looking outside and seeing green – good for the nervous system and remembering the point of all this work!
• Having some reward at the end of a long day
• Getting enough sleep – this proved to be quite a practice

I am reminded of the allegory about two fish friends swimming in the ocean. A third fish swims by, greets the friends and says, “Nice water today,” swimming past. After a few moments one fish turns to his friend and says, “Water? What water?”

Scarcity is the invisible context in which we all swim.

The Weapons of Scarcity came to me as a part of a dream in 2007. When
I woke up I wondered, “What are the weapons that scarcity would choose to fight with if ‘it’ could somehow declare war?”

These are the words that came up:

Discord                                    Alienation
Failure                                     Resistance
Fear                                        Immediate/short term
Self loathing/denigration            Doubt
Hoarding                                  Impatience
Hostility                                   Jealousy
Uncertainty                              Competition (Win/Lose)
Comparison                             Distraction
What isn’t                                Silence
Either/ OR                               Shame

We find that whenever we feel stuck, trapped, or experience suffering, simply naming the Weapon and moving toward and through the scarcity allows for sufficiency to arise. We have a company practice not to step over any scarcity in the space. We do this in our staff meetings and sometimes we send each other to the scarcity workbook I created called Unstuck: Make the Shift.

When working with each Weapon, consider defining it for yourself (i.e. what it means to you and for your life or organization). You may want to consider your journey with that particular Weapon, and simply free write about. As a move to process the weapon, what questions would you ask it? What does it say, what does it need, who’s involved?

This month we are exploring scarcity – continuing the journey of waking up to “the water” we are swimming in. Tell us your stories.

Try it out! And tell us what you think at enough@sevenstonesleadership.com.

Context

This Year is created inside:

This Month is created inside:

This Week is created inside:

What is the vision for this year I am living into?

Drop the year’s vision and declarations you created for yourself in this space and read it each week, making any adjustments as necessary.

Creation

What did I create this week?

Where am I in reaction?

Looking at the past week where did I fail to honor my integrity? Is there anything I need to share about my word, my relationships or my intentions?

Is there anything stopping me that I need to share?

Are there any in-authenticities or disempowering conversations to share?

What possibilities or empowering conversations can I engage in that further my goals?

Devotion

What actions did I take in the domain of devotion this week?

How well did I love myself this week? How well did I love the softness, the beauty, the hidden and the revealed? Did I bask in my own glory and feel the presence of absolute love?

How am I physically? Am I eating in a way that provides me the energy and vitality that is demanded for the long term? Am I in integrity around my, physical, emotional and mental well-being?

Am I doing my practices?

How are my structures including my physical space? How are these domains working for me? Is there something I need to communicate about paperwork, clutter or laundry? Am I keeping my space in beauty?

What additions or alterations have I made to my Infrastructure?

Are my finances in a place to source me? What new revenues have I earned this week? How much have I earned total for the year? What are my debt levels? Is there anything stopping me that I need to share?

Action

Since my last report what actions have I completed? What has happened for resources to flow toward my business and personal intentions?

[Track from last week]

Looking at the past weeks where did I fail to honor my word or stepped away from the truth within creation, devotion or action? Is there anything I need to share?

What distractions kept me from living into my greatness? How do I distract myself from doing what it takes, and being who I desire to live into my definition of success?

Are there any disempowering conversations for me to share?

What are the actions I am committed to and tracking for this week?

Completion

What has opened up for me now that I have completed this report?

Is there anything else I need to communicate?

But “something” just kept being out of alignment. She felt it, we felt it, and all of us wanted it to go away. That something – that we were not able to provide the opportunities she desired and she was not able to provide the services our small business needed at this time – did not go away.

Finally we had to tell the truth. This is not working.

We sat with the truth.

Then wavered.

Because we were sad, I heard myself say, “But maybe we could …But what if we tried this …. How will she feel? … What will happen to our connection to her?”

In these early moments of our truth telling, we sat and watched how painful it was to sit with the truth, and how we wanted to do something to fix it or make it better; promote her, move her, train her. This is what we do often, isn’t it?

So after almost an hour of sitting and wavering and sitting, Shea said, “Now what?” I said, “Let’s just sit with it. Let’s just sit with the truth and let it cook. No need to rush. No need to do anything just yet. Just be.”

The next day I had a meeting with this young woman already set up. She arrived at my home and we began to check in. “How are you dear,” I said? “How are you feeling about things here at Seven Stones?”

“Well,” she said, “I think actually, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s time for me to go.”

There it was. She knew. She felt it. A nice little piece of synchronicity, yes?

Once it was spoken out in the open, everything between us opened back up. (Part of the truth telling was admitting the connection and flow of work and relationship had gotten a bit sluggish.) We felt connected, relieved, and somehow like a burden had been lifted.

The truth did set us free, specifically to:

• be accountable for what is and what is not working, which
• let the bottle neck of energy release so something fresh can actually happen, including
• to feel connected with one another and this lead us to
• re-design what we all needed and would best serve everyone now!

In our working relationships – or in any relationship – it can be difficult to speak the truth – to offer feedback, direction and honesty about what is possible – when we feel worried that we will hurt someone’s feelings, especially someone we genuinely like and care about. When we resist the truth, we muddle our clarity.

Somehow though, truth leaks out. Our colleague had known throughout that something was amiss and later wished we had spoken up. We had only postponed the inevitable, causing each of us distress. So find your courage and speak the truth. It will set everyone free to do the next right thing.

Gossiping is wrong, right? We know this intellectually. But finally, finally, I got it in my bones. I saw on the face of a friend, felt in my gut, heard through her clear response, how in my telling of another’s story I perpetuated the feelings of discomfort I was feeling onto her. Though not in breach of anyone’s word, and staying inside the lines of cultural integrity, the situation still went south.

The consequences stacked up: over four hours of recovery conversations, feelings of discomfort for several people to process, deeper heartache for still others. I had innocently passed around a toxic soup of words, information that was not mine to know, and ultimately amplifying a challenging narrative in the lives of other people.

The conversations we keep – whether in our heads or among friends – are what make up our lives. They are the words, the ideas, the use of our breath. Conversations forge or nick at relationships; they bring intimacy or cause pain. Conversations are the smallest unit of all that is interpersonal and interdependent.

Gossip is not just spreading ill will. The Hebrew tradition, lashon hara has a broader context: Speech is considered to be lashon hara if it says something negative about a person or party, is not previously known to the public, is not seriously intended to correct or improve a negative situation, and is true (Wikipedia).

What is the line? I could make myself crazy, I know. Do I never speak about my children, or my mother, stories that are so linked to me they feel like mine to tell? But are they? What is the line when I made a very innocent attempt at conversation that turned into a terrible situation that I now label gossip?

Telling stories is all the rage. Psychology Today featured a whole article about the power of stories last year (Gruber, Peter, March 2011). Hollywood makes trillions from visual narratives. Corporate America continually embraces narratives as a way to teach, to sell, to inspire. At Seven Stones we tell stories, the stories of ourselves and other, to illustrate how living in sufficiency looks and works, and how the weapons of scarcity conspire to harm.

If nothing else, how we tell a story is critical. Novelist Chimananda Adichie speaks about the danger of the single story in a July 2009 Ted Talk, a way we can pigeon hole and stereotype a person, a community, a country and a whole continent, by telling partial stories. Telling a story can turn into gossip in a number of ways: By not having permission, by having ill-wil, and in my case, by simply not being fully conscious of potential harm.

For now, I err on the side of less is more. Less telling, more listening. If a story is not mine to tell, gently invite a inquirer to speak to the original party. If someone has an inspirational story dying to be told, get permission first. The power of stories is real, for better and worse, and gossip is a big fog of gray area. Let consciousness be the guide to light our way and harness what is good.

How would you answer that question?

Where in your life do you have enough?

Can you name one place where you know that all is well?

When is the last time you said, I am enough exactly as I am?

For some of us we can rest inside an inner knowing that we are sufficient just the way we are.

Yet for many of us we find that almost everyday we notice what is missing materially, emotionally or physically from our lives. Our deficiencies are ever present as we notice our lack of: care, children, an intimate lover, our youthful zeal, the right pedigree or a certain amount of money.

We at Seven Stones believe that we can declare that we are enough right now, just as we are, whole and complete. No improvement necessary.

Are you willing to do that?

Right now pause and declare, more is not better; I am whole and complete exactly as I am.

Can you ask your colleagues, friends and neighbors to join you? Maybe this action could start a movement. A movement that had all of us resting in this radical declaration – knowing we are sufficient. Within this knowing we believe our quest for more could end.

What then would we do with ourselves?

Here was a moment in time when it really did look like there was not enough money. In fact, if we did not do something fast, there really and truly would not have been enough to cover our expenses due. This is what we call structural scarcity. The scarcity – the feeling of not enough – is not in our mind, so to speak; there is a real lack of available resource, in this case, money. But it is tricky because real lack can meet perceived lack and cause havoc. And this, of course, happening: I was scared. Scared beyond what was real in that moment. Fear was telling me I was in grave danger.

Do you remember the court scene in A Few Good Men?

Tom Cruise’s character: Was Santiago in danger?
Jack Nicholson’s character: Yes.
TC: Would you say he was in grave danger, sir?
JN: Is there any other kind?

Which, in factual reality, was not true. So in my situation, while there was structural scarcity, there was also the scarcity that pervades our consciousness, and I was dealing with both at once.

Crazy as it may sound the antidote in that moment to my perceived lack was to give something away. So with marching orders from my business partner inside this sufficiency experiment we are always running, I walked into the food pantry I drive by every day to drop my daughter off at school, and I handed the director a check for 10% of what was in our bank account that day. It felt like sticking my head in the mouth of the dragon, dramatic, I know, but it did kind of feel like that.

I came face to face with where my real scarcity met my perceived scarcity, and something shifted. I felt free. I felt like even if the worst happened and we received no more money for some time, and business completely dried up, that somehow I would be ok.

Standing in the lobby of that food pantry, I could feel at once my incredible vulnerability to the whims of life and my power to shape my experience in the face of any of it. Not exactly Viktor Frankl in a concentration camp or Neslon Mandela in Robben Island, but my mini version of standing in the enoughenss of it all in face of both real and perceived lack.

Many of us chose new habits and behaviors to be established as the year turned –at one month in, let us pause together and assess where we are by using an inquiry practice:

• What goals and aspirations or intentions did I set for myself this year?
• When is the last time I reviewed them?
• Did I fully complete my process of creating them?
• When I review what I established last month what do I notice? What do I need to communicate to myself or others?
• Can I declare success in any category?
• What practices do I need to adjust, add or remove that will aid my journey this year?
• What do I need to create for myself for the month of February? (February being the shortest month of the year can be a great month to commit to a new daily practice – 29 days of the gym, yoga, mediation, heating healthy, writing a page a day of my great novel . . . you get the picture)

Take time to pause today – enjoy what you discover, and we would love it if you shared your discoveries with us at Seven Stones.

In the context of exquisite sufficiency, an experiment allows us to name a strategy and then literally play with it. We advise ourselves not to take it too seriously, but to play hard, take on the challenge of doing something we haven’t done before, to be inventive and dig deep into our intuitive wisdom for some new thinking and acting, always asking ourselves what else?

Living in inquiry is radical any day of the week in any decade. In a world with people begging for the answer – answers just make us feel so safe and controlled – asking questions, especially following a question with a question, is mere blasphemy in some industries and organizations. “What do you think of my performance?” “What do you think of your performance?” How should this process work?” “How do you think this process should work?”

Admitting we don’t know adds a particular kind of vulnerability only now gaining some credibility for its honesty. We use it all the time at Seven Stones. Saying “I don’t know” causes an automatic pause in the process, and in our experiments, pauses often generate fertile ground for magnificent creation.

So in this post-holiday season, as we craft our vision for 2012, naming what we want more of and less of…

• Play inside the freedom and structure of experimentation.
• Tell the truth when we don’t know something and give the asker the chance to know by asking them.
• Set up some challenges over the year that are measurable, winnable and worth playing.
• And have fun.

“Tell us, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

The Summer Day

 Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean–

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

 –Mary Oliver