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Jennie Marlow

Coaching for intelligent, aware people who want to live deeply fulfilling lives

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One Simple Thing You Can Do Right Now

September 27, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

In a conversation with a prospective client, I was asked this question: “What is one simple thing I can do right now to feel more on track?” My answer was, “Stop fixating on the goal, and start focusing on the essence you want from achieving that objective.”

“By essence, you mean, the emotion I want to feel, right?” she asked. Well, not exactly.

The word feeling has some interesting definitions. According to the Oxford Dictionary, there are three applicable definitions:  an emotional reaction; a strong emotion; a belief, especially a vague or irrational one. (Yes, this last one definitely got my attention!) Essence is none of these things, because none of these things is inextricably tied to our fulfillment.

Spotted Eagle describes essence this way: “Essence is a feeling state that comes about naturally when we feel deeply fulfilled by something present in our lives.”

The key difference is that essence is the feeling we long for in our hearts when our desire for something is truly authentic. Essence can be universal, such as the desire for joy, creativity and ease. Or it can be linked to a circumstance, such as serenity, freedom, fun or unconditional love.

The point is, essence determines whether or not an outcome we are pursuing results in the the fulfillment we want to receive from having that outcome occur. If the essence is there, we feel successful, peaceful and deeply satisfied. If essence is not there, the outcome can work out exactly as we planned, but it disappoints and frustrates us because it doesn’t give us what we want at a heart level. This can leave us wondering, “Is that all there is?” Or worse, a lack of essence can turn the outcome into an unsupportable burden.

The one simple thing I told this individual to do right now is to start identifying the essence of her desire before she launches into the full-on pursuit of an outcome. Once she identifies the essence, she might see that her desired outcome is actually skewed by fear, neediness or ego, and then be able to make a more essence-rich choice. In any case, by focusing on essence, she offers herself an unparalleled opportunity to explore other outcomes that might deliver the experience of essence she really wants in her heart of hearts.

The one thing she can do right now is to seek essence in small ways every day and discover an immediate increase her level of fulfillment. As a daily practice, essence can then guide her efforts toward all of her goals and help to ensure that what results actually fills the fulfillment bill.

Essence Words

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Authenticity, Joy, Spotted Eagle

What a Vulture Can Teach Us About Bliss

August 24, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

It’s always fascinating to see what immature birds are up to this time of year. So, when a young vulture took an interest in an old tarp that covers our pile of kindling, I couldn’t help but notice.

This juvenile, fresh out of the nest, has clearly acquired some knowledge about how his kind feed themselves, but he is still rather ignorant of key truths about food. This has encouraged him to go where food isn’t, namely a tarp.

Clearly, he has watched his parents scavenge his meals from dead animal carcasses. As you watch him, you might notice that our tarp bears some resemblance, in form, to an animal hide. And he is making an admirable effort to peck his way through it.

https://jenniemarlow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/vultureclip.mp4

Ignorance is like that. It’s that familiar condition of partial understanding which leads to misplaced energy and effort. The mind declares, “Eureka! I have found it!” (Whatever “it” happens to be at the time.) And so we excitedly pour energy into the endeavor, misdirected by our excitement and bliss to a disappointing conclusion.

The truth is, ignorance is bliss only while we are projecting that our efforts will lead us to what we think we want. And here’s the irony: rather than growing and learning from our disappointing results, we tend to keep chasing bliss instead.

Now, eventually this not-so-little fellow moved on, presumably driven by hunger. However, I suspect he did not engage in what a human might do, and that is to beat himself up when his efforts did not come to fruition. He very likely learned a thing or two instead.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Authenticity, Joy, Spotted Eagle

Does Self-Reflection Improve Executive Performance?

June 28, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

self-refelctionIn an environment driven by profits and stock value, taking pause to self-reflect is unlikely to be an executive’s highest priority. It is often not until a personal crisis erupts that we’re willing to pause and assess where we are personally and examine what is needed to move forward.

When I was invited to blog on LinkedIn, I took a tour of the business blogosphere to see what the experts had to say about self-reflection. I suppose it wasn’t surprising that Harvard School of Business thinks executive self-reflection is about improving performance and that it ought to be focused on corporate objectives and whether or not one is communicating a clear vision for the company. Other experts suggested so-called self-reflective questions like: “Am I meeting expectations?” Or, “What else could I be doing that no one else can do?” And my favorite, “How do others perceive my performance?”

The irony is, after years of relentlessly pursuing company goals, a leader, whether corporate exec or entrepreneur, can feel untethered from his or her authentic self, anxious and stretched thin but unable to identify the source. When this happens, there will be little encouragement to go inward, but go inward one must or a personal crisis will be the inevitable outcome.

True self-reflection is personal, regardless of our role in the world. It takes courage and discipline to pause and take stock of ourselves. However, the most meaningful self-reflection is not an exercise in evaluating, judging or tabulating our mistakes and conquests, or in gauging how we are perceived. Instead it measures something intangible yet vitally important to our personal well-being, and that is do we feel fulfilled? And if not, why not?

If we aren’t feeling fulfilled, I guarantee that self-reflection of the personal kind will uncover the gap and that it lies in what is missing at the heart level. I don’t care how driven we are to succeed materially, life is a feeling experience, and our quality of life is measured by how fulfilled we feel. If there is a gap, it will surely be defined by the feeling experience our endeavors have failed to deliver.

Fulfillment may be a luxury of the successful. Once we are no longer fighting to survive, we cannot help but crave joy, creativity and ease from our investment of energy, indeed our life force. Perhaps this is the reason statistics prove that, at a certain point now determined to be an income of $100,000 per year, more money and status do not make us any happier.

I suspect that fulfillment is elusive simply because it doesn’t tend to rank well on our priorities list when we’re engaged in the business of running a business. We tend to treat fulfillment as something that will happen to us later, when we’ve achieved a great business goal. This is pure fallacy.

Self-reflection of the personal kind is a business necessity, in my view. Without it, we will eventually become rudderless ourselves and thereby unable to provide guidance and direction to those who count on us for leadership.

Perhaps more to the point, if we fail to attend to our fulfillment while we focus on our material performance, we will burn through our time on the Earth and arrive at life’s end without much more than all that stuff we know we cannot take with us.

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

Filed Under: Life, Money Tagged With: Authenticity, Awareness, Business, Self-reflection

A Lesson in Coexistence & Conflict Resolution…with a Bird?

June 21, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

Our cabin on this mountain is rather small, so it’s our shed which houses the washer, dryer and the chest freezer. Normally, I keep the shed window shut against all manner of local rodents, but during the last heat wave, one night when a cool breeze finally came through, it seemed best to risk an incursion by mice, wood rats and voles to cool the place down.

Honestly, this window isn’t something I relish touching. It’s opaque with many seasons of unwashed grime, and there are quite a lot of cobwebs around the latch. (It’s apparently a nifty place to anchor a spider’s web.) So, when I open this window, I pay strict attention. I can’t help but inspect the area before I tackle the task of undoing the latch and scrapping the pane against the detritus that has collected in the channel in which the window is supposed to glide.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I reentered the shed at dawn the following morning, only to find that a tiny fly-catcher bird had apparently spent the night building a very exquisite little nest from bits of moss, leaves, weed straws, and shreds from a long discarded lizard skin.

And just then we startled each other, the would-be mother and I. She was about to fly into the open window, and she let out a shrill chirp when she saw me sanding there, hovering over her nest. Of course, I left the shed immediately, then watched and waited at my bedroom window, hoping she would come back and reclaim her nest, but she didn’t return.

Even so, I didn’t have the heart to close the window. The nest is, well…nestled so cozily on the sill against the casing. This little exquisiteness of the mother bird’s “mistake” was now my daily pleasure, and no less a masterpiece for having been built in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Then one morning, when I entered the shed, she was on the nest, flying out of the open window the moment I appeared. And there they were, four tiny speckled brown eggs!

My first reaction was to chart an absurdly impractical plan to never enter the shed again until her babies were fledged and out of the nest. My husband, a country boy born and bred, shook his head and said firmly, “You’re talking 14 weeks! No, she chose the spot. Now she’ll have to share the shed with us.”

It wasn’t lost on me that my first reaction was to sabotage my own peace to spare the bird discomfort. (Hmm…that sounded pretty familiar…) Frankly, it never occurred to me that she and I could work out some sort of mutual accommodation. She was a creature of Nature, and I, a blundering human, was trashing her plans for a family! (My husband will roll his eyes when he reads this.)

The bird and I have been at this for about a week now, and she is managing quite well with the daily incursions of humans. She doesn’t leave when we come into the shed, unless we need to get right next to the nest. And if she leaves, she’s back within seconds of our departure.

We’re actually coexisting pretty well, I’d say. (Okay, I admit I haven’t yet tested the robustness our détente with a rumbling load of clothes on the spin cycle yet.) And I’ve even been rethinking my original opinion that the nest was built in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Frankly, I needed this. It’s an excellent lesson that will forever inform the way I deal with conflict, especially when I am tempted to assume that it can’t be worked out or that the other can’t do what it would take.

And it’s also just so heartwarming to think that if she is as successful as she is determined, I will likely have a bird’s eye view, from the bedroom window, into the care and feeding of the hatchlings, which would be such an enormous privilege.

Hear me sigh with delight.

Filed Under: Creativity, Life Tagged With: Conflict resolution, Guilt, Trust

What a Coyote Taught Me About Growth and Evolution

June 1, 2014 By Jennie Marlow Leave a Comment

It’s been quite a while since my last post. I had intended to keep up a rhythm with posting, but the past few weeks have been incredibly busy ones, and before I knew it, the month had evaporated.

I’ve been working on From Solo to Soulmate, a program I’m launching soon, and wrapping up my book on the subject has been all-consuming.

The amount of work needed to get a project like this one up and running is always surprising, and like all of our labors to build something new, there are no guarantees that it will be successful. For some reason, I haven’t fretted much about failing this time. I guess you could say I’ve grown up a bit during the maelstrom of the last couple of years.

Last night, my husband spotted a coyote very close to our cabin, and we were able to watch him for quite a while as he explored the field behind us. Such encounters are rare here, although we do hear coyotes at night from time to time, especially in summer.

At one point, the coyote stopped and looked me right in the eye for almost half a minute. It was startling enough that I asked one of my guides, Spotted Eagle, about it.

He told me that Coyote represents both the creator and the jokester.

He said the thing to keep in mind about Coyote “medicine” is that it often fails to produce the result we expected. However, in failing, it always serves a much greater purpose. Coyote offers wisdom that is hidden from us, unless we fully accept what didn’t work out the way we expected. Only through acceptance are we granted access to the wisdom available from the apparent failure. He said the keys to coyote medicine are adaptability, simplicity and trust. It is Coyote who reminds us that wisdom and failure are inextricably linked in the sacred paradox that is our fulfillment.

This encounter and the teaching that followed it gave me pause to reconsider how I view all of the so-called failures that punctuate my past.

I was reminded of something Spotted Eagle loves to say: that a good education is expensive, and failure is usually the engine that drives our evolution in the direction of our eventual success.

It’s only human to resist the pain of failure. Perhaps Coyote can teach us to resist a little less so we can mine the wisdom present in all of the many things that did not turn out the way we expected or wanted.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: Acceptance, Awareness, Painful emotions, Spotted Eagle, Trust

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