Thinking Outloud

Do you ever feel like you have gotten lost in the day-to-day stress & hassle of life and work?

So often I meet entrepreneurs, nonprofit & business execs who are exhausted givers & fixers. High achievers who are sick & tired of being sick & tired. These hard-working leaders hustle for their business success, take care of family, friends & community.

They often keep the frustration, pain & sense of emptiness well-hidden until something happens to change that. They face a health crisis, job loss, business failure, divorce. Perhaps an overlooked loss as simple as an empty nest. Still others are dealing with alcoholism, addiction, or domestic violence in their family. Quick fixes & superficial solutions will not create the real and sustainable change they need.

I learned through my own journey & eventually studying with the Martha Beck Institute for Wayfinder Coaching, there is a path out of these difficult circumstances into your most productive and joy filled life. I learned how to hold onto what matters most to me by sourcing my life and work from a place of heart and intuition, rather than an external focus driven by reasoning alone. This was a huge departure from the way I approached life & work in the past.

If you track your authentic life and uncover its meaning, it will catalyze other possibilities for living and what’s important to you will immediately change.

Boyd Varty

The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life

To make the transition requires listening to your deepest desires & needs.

Ask yourself these questions:

• When you were a kid, what did you do for hours & hours?
• What causes you to lose all track of time now?
• What lights up your excitement?
• What ignites your passion?
• If you could make anything happen, what would it be?

The answers to these questions form the trailhead that can set you on the path to discover your “Original Medicine”, that essential part of you that has been with you from the beginning. You can also think about it as your Soul-Self.

There is a good chance that you have lost touch with your Original Medicine. You may need to establish contact and build a new relationship with it.

When I was a kid, my focus was always on organizing the other neighborhood kids into very imaginative scenarios. I lived in the city of Philadelphia. There was a limited amount of green space but there was a public golf course behind our row of houses. During late autumn and winter, when there were few golfers, we would climb the golf course fence to find adventure. I organized the kids to build forts in the rough. This led to all types of games & fun.

As a young adult I organized many parties, dinners & other campus-wide events for college friends & others. Always bringing together familiar friends with some new guests added.

I still love to use this formula for creating bonds between people. I’ll organize a dinner party, a game night, an excursion to the theater, a trip to anywhere, a book club or a master mind group at the drop of a hat. It is so easy; the energy just flows out of me in a stream of fun & joy.

Who knew that was a real career path until Priya Parker published her landmark book, The Art of Gathering.

Here is what Priya Parker says in the introduction to the book:

“I’ve spent much of the past fifteen years of my life studying, designing, and advising gatherings whose goals were to be transformative for the people involved and the communities they were trying to affect. Today I work as a professional facilitator. Though there are many of us around, you may have never heard of us. A facilitator is someone trained in the skill of shaping group dynamics and collective conversations. My job is to put the right people in a room and help them to collectively think, dream, argue, heal, envision, trust, and connect for a specific larger purpose.”

Voila! A description of my Original Medicine. Once I reconnected with that original medicine 10 years ago, it led me into the most satisfying work I’ve ever done in Inspired Action Coaching & Consulting, bringing together individuals, leaders & teams to transform their own lives as well as the life of their nonprofit organization or business and the communities they serve.

You too can find your Original Medicine. It will fuel you along the path to your most productive work and joy filled life. It is the source of your great gifts and creates an energy that can change the world.

Are you ready to discover your Original Medicine & create that next level of satisfaction and success? If so, I’d love to connect. Let’s see if we are a fit. Please use this link to grab a time on my calendar for a short conversation https://barbaragallen.com/contact/