When God wants you to follow a particular path, God will clear all obstacles from your way.

This belief has occupied my mind these past few weeks. In this short span of time, we managed to get our current house under contract and have an offer accepted on our top home in Austin, TX. So, as of August 1, we will be official Texans and Austinites.

Yet, even though most of these things easily fell into place, we did (and still do) experience some nail-biting and gut-wrenching episodes surrounding financing and repairs on our present home. I must admit that there have been more than a few times when my wife and I looked back on our decision to move and asked whether it was the right decision. Was our determination to move to another state 1500 miles away justified? Or was it a semi-delusional dream for new adventure and a better way of life? Of course, these are the questions we ask in our darker hours…but, when we reenter the light we know that this is the right path and that Austin has always been preparing to accept us. In the end, we recognize that these past few months have been an exercise in faith.

Still, it’s almost impossible to not obsess over all the details and the potential areas where things could go wrong. Fortunately, I received a trackback from Halina Goldstein who writes a blog called The Inner Travel Journal. Wandering through her blog, I discovered a post called Obsessions that really spoke to me. She writes of how we neglect the present by overfocusing on the past and the future:

Each moment is potentially exploding with energy, creativity and significance. Exactly how this I cannot say — but I know that it’s true. And the more I’m willing to let go of empty thoughts about something in the future that may or may not come true (and they will never come true exactly as I’ve imagined them anyhow), the more I’m willing to simply RESPECT THIS VERY MOMENT, NOW, the more I will enjoy my journey.

It’s a beautifully stated reminder for us to slow down, breathe, and get present. After all, that’s all we really have that’s real.

Ever have the thought that the sooner you find your purpose in life, the happier you’ll feel? It’s kind of like our unique sense of purpose is the final piece to the puzzle of life and once it locks into place…well then we can check that one off the list and then really start living.

I admit this trap is hard not to fall into at times. And when you do, it’s always nice to have someone help you climb out. For instance, I like what Patricia Soldati writes in her article, Finding Purpose: Don’t Let It Get You Down:

Purpose is not a thing, or a goal to be achieved. Maybe it’s your work…or maybe not. It lives on no one’s timetable and defies any systemic approach that says, “At the end of this lesson, you will be able to…”

In fact, the more you hard-core it – set your mind to finding it – the more elusive it becomes. You end up chasing away that which you most want to embrace in your life.

She then lists four ways to reconsider the journey of finding purpose. My big takeaway? Number 2: Find it outside of your own needs. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my own sense of self-exploration, I forget that the answers to the really big questions just might exist outside of myself.

Yep, the Bailey clan is moving to the Lone Star State. Austin, to be particular. After nearly a decade in Washington DC, we say “adios” to the area (as well as gridlocked traffic, long commutes, skyhigh real estate, etc., etc.) toward the end of July.

I guess you could say that this was a long time coming, really. Caroline and I have been talking for a while about getting out and finding new adventure somewhere else. We both had a feeling that we were getting stuck here and falling into complacency with surroundings and a lifestyle that didn’t light our fire. We considered places like Minneapolis, Charlotte, Seattle…even Toronto. What we were searching for was a slower pace of life, friendliness of neighbors, lots of culture and character, and a place where we could enjoy the outdoors. It seems like we found these qualities in Austin.

And with any adventure, there’s some risk involved (or else it wouldn’t actually be an adventure, eh?). Neither of us have work waiting for us which is a slightly scary prospect for someone who knows how hard it can be to be jobless. To tackle that problem, I’m making a couple of recon trips to meet with potential employers. My first will be next week (May 10 – 14) so if you’re in the area and would like to meet, let me know.

Right now, the plan is to sell our house so we’re busy it ready to market. This is a lot of work and fortunately we’ve found lots of folks to help. We hired a professional organizer to help us pack up our non-essential items and get rid of our clutter. We hired a painter to redo all the interior walls. And we’re considering whether to lay new carpet or not. Last weekend, I spent a great deal of time on the outside of the house and in the yard. This weekend, I anticipate doing some more yardwork and sprucing up some tired looking shrubbery.

I continue to have great visions for Bailey WorkPlay and the Alchemy of Soulful Work. I hope you’ll continue to check in and follow along as we intrepid pioneers hitch up our wagon and migrate to the Texas Hill Country. If there’s one thing I can share as I look forward to this next chapter in life, it’s that life is far too short and precious to wait around. I know I don’t want this to describe me:
“Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.”
-Robert Anthony

I’ve been meditating on a particular prayer that prefaces a sermon written by Davidson Loehr, a Unitarian Universalist minister in Austin, Texas. Through this prayer, I’m facing off with that great demon known to us as Playing-It-Safe. Davidson writes:

If we must fail, let us fail at high endeavors. Let us not fail to be mediocre when we could instead fail to be absolutely brilliant. Let us not fall short of being moderately compassionate. Let us rather fall short of being fully compassionate.Of all our failures in life, perhaps the saddest are those in which we failed even to try and serve the highest and noblest ideals.

It is a sin to fail at low aims. Not because we failed, but because we aimed too low.

But it is not a sin to fail at very high aims, like aiming for truth, justice, compassion and character. Because even our failure puts us into the company of the saints, the company of those who also believe that rising to our full humanity and rising to our full divinity may be the same rising.

Striving after low and mean ends is a boring sin, not worthy of us. Let us have greater ambition for our failures. Let us vow never to fail at anything that wasn’t noble and proud, never to settle for lower aspirations for ourselves, our lives, our country or our world.

We will all fail at some things. But let it not be a failure of vision, a failure of aspiration. If we must fail, let us fail at high endeavors, and then let our failures bless us – for they will.

Amen.

You can read the full sermon here.

The passionate idea of working toward great and noble ambitions in our lives offers both comfort and strength. When put into this context, we are free to set our mind and body toward the light we want to create. Even failure cannot touch us or our soul.

I think this prayer ties into Curt Rosengren’s recent post on an interdependence of dreams and actions. When we gather the courage to dream big things and then take action to follow our heart’s calling, we move beyond the small ideas of success and failure. These are often inaccurately measured based on someone else’s notion of the world. Instead, we journey on a path which is uniquely our own…where the endpoint is uncertain, but clearly a paradoxical place of excitement and solace.

Extended Play (04/23/06): My friend Garth at exploreplay has a great quote from Jon Krakauer’s book Into The Wild which really accentuates the power of following your sense of adventure. It starts: “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism…” Visit exploreplay for the rest of the quote…you’ll be glad you did.

Well, leave it to Kathy Sierra to inspire me to do something else. She asks a seemingly simple question about why many people (and I’m included here) don’t like to exercise when most animals crave it.

She muses…

Take a human out of his work cubicle or off the couch and turn him loose outside. What happens? Hmmm… for far too many of us, nothing happens. Or we turn around and walk right back in the door and head for the couch or the chair in front of our computer. The one thing that usually does not happen is the kind of physical exuberance–the sheer joy of being able to run and jump–that so many other animals do.

She offers some explanations but I know for myself that it’s a matter of just not enjoying the process of exercising. Or, at least, that was my old story. This old story continues that exercising is boring and pointless (forgetting all the pointed stats that it’s actually good for us to break a sweat). So, to make it less boring and pointless, I always tried to initiate a set of goals and keep a log to track my progress. This always worked great…for a while. And then something would happen like I’d get sick or my work got heated up. I’d miss a few workout sessions and before I knew it I’d be back to where I started. Only this time, frustrated and depressed to have to begin the long progress back toward my goals. I wager this might be a familiar pattern for most folks.

So, in keeping with my new living philosophy of rewriting my personal story, I’m taking a very different approach to exercise: I’m giving all these goals the boot. I’m rediscovering whatever exercise I’m doing and focusing on the fun of the activity. I’m running again and leaving the stopwatch at home. Rather I’m listening to my body tell me when to run, when to walk, when to just enjoy the time outside.

Now my recrafted personal story is that I love to exercise and that my body is a finely tuned system that will always tell me what it needs. I don’t have to impose any artificial goals to force me to workout. I’m more than able to find the fun in things without creating structures.

If you find yourself on a treadmill going nowhere (exercise, work, relationships, you name it), slow down and let the rhythm of a playful life take hold.

I’m planning something rather BIG and could use some help. If you’re living in or around Austin, TX, shoot me an email at baileyworkplay[AT]gmail[DOT]com. I’ll have more details soon…

For Leah, my oldest daughter, April 27 is shaping up to be one of the most exciting days of the year (next to her birthday and Christmas). Why? April 27 is Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day.

I think her excitement seems to be a mixture of spending time with me and doing something grownup. And I’m excited to be able to show her the working world again. The last time I was able to do this was when she was four years old and she spent a half-day with me coloring and playing with a magnadoodle. Now that she’s seven, we can create activities so she can explore what work can be. Do some dreaming…I think I’ll join her.

The organization behind this day is the Ms. Foundation for Women. Their resource site has plenty to offer, particularly if your workplace or your child’s school sponsors the day. And if not, no worries…just play around with it and create something on your own.

As I was touring around the site and discovered a quote from Bob Drago, a friend and former Board member of mine when I was at another association:

When my daughters were younger, I found Take Our Daughters To Work Day invaluable, partly for the positive exposure to the world of work that it provided to my daughters, but also because it strengthened the bonds between us. Today, I believe in Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work more broadly as a way to educate children regarding the world of work, a way to humanize our workplaces, and as a device to teach parents about how work looks from the family side (which is often an eye-opener!). Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work is a great way to open up the workplace to issues of family, to see a side of employees that is often (and unfortunately) hidden, and to educate children, employees and managers as to options around flexibility that we either already have or should have in the future.

So, if you have children of your own, take some time to introduce them more intimately to your work (and if you don’t have children, grab a niece, nephew, or a neighborhood kid). Don’t think your work’s interesting? Just try to see it through the eyes of a child…you might be surprised.

I tend to have some interesting phobias, but they’re probably not uncommon to those experienced by other folks. For most of my life, I’ve been afraid of spiders. Here’s where it gets interesting…not all spiders. For instance, I really like tarantulas. I guess its because they’re kind of like giant fuzzy caterpillars (you know, the brown and black kind that you commonly find crawling up trees and along porch rails) only with eight big legs. And I love Spider-Man. On the other hand, I can’t stand the ones with long spindly legs like black widows and argiopes. I find them fascinating, but the thought of having one touch me sends a cold shiver running through my body.

Another phobia that I seem to have is linked to small, tight spaces. I remember my one time doing some cave exploration in high school, I found myself in a confined area trying to squeeze through and all I could think was “what if I get through, but can’t get back out?” Well, that was my last spelunking adventure.

[An aside...as I get older, I realize that many of my fears are irrational and the quickest (but definitely not easiest) way to overcome them is to confront them head on. Perhaps there's more there for me to consider. Okay, back to the original point]

This weekend is a holiday for the U.S. Federal Goverment which means my organization offers a three day weekend. And my wife decided to take the girls to visit her parents in Southern Virginia. This left me alone in my home for the first time in quite a while, and it has been a wonderful time. It’s not so much the quiet as it is the isolation that has been rewarding. The past two days have allowed me the chance to review all that has been going on in my life the past few months, to realize that the critical problems I’ve been facing at work are not insurmountable, to reorient myself back toward my north star – the very philosophy that defines how I choose to bring myself to my work and my life.

I realize now that I had been suffering a type of psychic claustrophobia where problems at work and home had closed in on me leaving me constricted and struggling for breath. I desperately sought an exit. Little did I know how simple the solution could be. For me, it was some temporary freedom from many of my other roles: father, husband, manager.

This is what works for me. If you’re finding that nothing seems to be fitting into place like it once did, perhaps its time for a retreat of your own. We each have a different breaking point and a different idea for retreat. And it won’t permanently solve the problem. In retreat, there’s work that must still be done. It might not be isolation that’s needed, but time with a good friend. Whatever it is, be good to yourself and find what your mind, body, and soul need.

Over the past couple of months, I had the privilege to be a part of something magical. It all started when a great fella named Dave Rothacker had a hair-brained idea: wouldn’t it be neat if a group of people took a book which had a lot of shared meaning – each signing it with something nice – and sent it back to the author? Dave, being the hardboiled optimist that he is, dismissed the difficulties of coordinating such a feat. He didn’t care that the book would need to touch over thirty people dispersed throughout North America and Europe. He also stuck out his tongue at the very thought of trying to do this during the busiest time of year for mailing services – the Christmas/end of December holidays. And yet, it all worked better than anyone could have dreamed.

Those of us who make up Rosa Say’s Ho’ohana Community got a chance to let Rosa know how much she means to each of us. All of us have read her book, Managing with Aloha, and have been inspired to bring more of ourselves to our work. What started with Dave’s humble, yet powerful, idea snowballed into a project of love that involved each person giving something of themselves. Folks in the community coordinated personal handoffs with each other, they took pictures of themselves and the book, they wrote notes in the margins detailing how a particular part of the book made an impact on them.

It brings a smile to my face just imagining (and reading a recent email to the Community) how Rosa feels. All of us who write want to know on some level just how much of an impact their words have on others. In the end, what turned out to be just a book was transformed into a living testament of how one person has made a difference in the world.

All of this is a gracious and beautiful reminder that the best gifts are those given with simple intentions. Creating the gift may not always be easy, but when offered with true love from the brightest light of the soul, the gift assumes a power that is truly magical. And it encourages greater acts of light and love in other ways and in other places. Those of us in the Ho’ohana Community now ask, "What else can we do now?"

Cheers, Rosa. Your magic begets even more magic by those who are blessed to know you.

I’m back from Christmas with my in-laws in Southern Virginia. As much as I enjoy the annual visit from the jolly fat man, this year he left us a rather unsavory gift – the stomach flu. Fortunately, he was nice about it and left us the kind that has the courtesy to wait until the stroke of midnight on December 26 before inflicting damage. It managed to hit nearly everyone of us (eighteen in number) within a 48 hour period. The only two to escape the bug’s wrath were my daughters who stayed well only because they had had it the week before.

Unlike most of my family, I didn’t spend most of the time in the bathroom throwing up. I was nauseous, but I have the kind of stomach that selfishly wants to keep whatever it has. The real kick in the pants for me was the body aches, particularly in my knees and back. So, it was a welcome relief to feel 85% better the next day. As I was enjoying a cup of early morning coffee (after I slept most of the previous day away, I was more than happy to wake up at 5am), it struck me how appreciative I was to be feeling healthy. It’s like the old song line: “You don’t know what you got until its gone.”

And it’s also a main principle of my personal philosophy: to know one thing, we must know its opposite. It’s the natural yin and yang of our humanity. Too often, though, we only want to know what the sunny side of the hill looks like and deny that there is the darkness of the shaded side. It’s natural to want to avoid pain, sorrow, even our inclinations toward our less noble qualities. But does this truly honor ourselves? Does this avoidance lead to a better life?

I think back to those moments in my own life which are painful: getting the emotional crap kicked out of me in high school, getting rejected by a job which I thought I had “in the bag,” suffering a debilitating anxiety attack at a relative’s wedding. Would I want to relive any of these moments? I’d be a liar if I said I would. Yet, each one has offered me an opportunity to experience my own humanity and to better recognize love, joy, and success. Sometimes bad things happen to good people so they can be better people.