2009 has certainly been a year to remember for us here at Seven Stones. We began this year as a newly formed entity on January 2nd and now we find ourselves at the end of our first year where we began—in an inquiry. We have witnessed and experienced so much change, so much tumult, so much joy and so much for our hearts and bodies, for our teams and communities, for our organizations and governments to contend with in such short order. As we often suggest, this is a time of year to slow down a bit, to allow this season to influence us, to rest, get quiet, use this time to restore ourselves and prepare for the coming year.

In years past we have offered a process for completing the year powerfully and one for creating the New Year with intention. Our investigation of sufficiency has shifted some of our thinking and our own processes for reflection and creation and we wanted to offer that to you as our year comes to a close. Leading the inquiry of sufficiency offers us more questions than answers. Questions are the currency of today’s leaders. Answers are fewer and farther between, and once we think we have them the world has already shifted. It is our job to live, as Rilke would say, the questions themselves. Those who do not, or cannot, pose the questions will not move us towards the emerging world.

 To complete 2009 we invite you to ask the following questions:

  • What was enough this year?
  • What might we let go? I prefer: What can we let go, in order to welcome the new?
  • Who has ceased to nourish us?
  • What and who can we offer our love?
  • What or who could use our generosity?
  • Where is gratitude present? To what and to whom can you bring forth your gratitude?
  • Where can you place fierce compassion?
  • Are you able to recognize what is enough or what would have you be deeply satisfied?
  • How have you been changed by this year?
  • What experiments worked? Which did not?

 Creating 2010:

In the past we have invited people to create accomplishments—create 2010 as if it has already happened and speak what is created. What we notice is that so much of what we dream and invoke comes from a profound training in being dissatisfied with what is. At the heart of the American Dream itself is a quest for more and better.

 “To create a new world, we must first create a new dream.” John Perkins, The World Is As You Dream It

 Now is our time to dream a new dream for ourselves and for the world at large. This is a profound and necessary act of leadership, one which requires the willingness to slow down, ask the questions and listen. What dream are you daring to dream? Have you thought about the dream for your organization that will actually enable it to thrive in the new economy? Do you know how to usher those you lead into a new dream? Do you have the practices, the rigor, the integrity and trust required of leaders today to drive change in these moving sands?

 In 2010 if you knew there was no place better than where you already are, what would you dream? If you knew you were enough, that you had enough resources to take care of all your concerns, what would you dream for yourself, your family, your organization? If you asked your team, your boss, your company, your share holders, what is enough, what would immediately shift in how you and they saw the business of doing business? How would that contribute to a more sustainable world for us all?

 We invite you to join the inquiry, to investigate and find a path carved by the questions themselves. And, yes enjoy.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. —Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet