Life-threatening & Chronic Illness

I often focus on primary love relationships and family relationships, but this time I am going to take a sharp left turn and talk about business relationships.

This isn't really such a sharp departure; if you think about it. And here's why: Relationships drive everything in life.

From time to time I receive really uplifting or especially meaningful stories and videos from my Blog readers. The video in this week's post is one of those videos.

Read this story before you click on the video:

Rituals and celebrations are ways to intentionally create meaningful connections with special and important events and people.  Many of us already celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and various holidays including rituals we may not even recognize as such.

I invite you to stretch beyond your comfort zone and experiment with the idea of ritual by starting with a ritual blessing yourself!

Here is an example of a ritual celebrating YOU! Dr. Barbara Ardinger created this Self-Blessing ritual. You can find the complete version of this ritual in her book A Woman’s Book of Rituals & Celebrations.

What does it mean to be nurturing? Who is nurturing? Who is not and why not?

The very concepts of nurturing and peace (inner peace; peaceful; peacefulness) mean very different things to different people and to people in different settings.

The belief in Western civilization that the human beings are selfish individuals who are chiefly governed by self-interest is not universally true. It is not the case in many societies living outside Western civilization.

This belief reflects the nature of individuals when they must adapt to living in the cultures of Western civilization, rather than the way individuals evolved to adapt to living in the natural world. Indeed, in the natural world in which we evolved, we could not have survived as rugged individuals alienated from each other. Our success as a species rested on our ability to collaborate and share.

I just returned from more than five weeks in South Africa.  While the main purpose of my trip was business-related, my experiences were deeply personal and profoundly informing and enriching.

It's hard to believe that 2009 is almost over and 2010 is arriving very soon.

The end of the year is a good time to take stock; to examine where we've been; where we are now; and where we want to go next year.

I encourage you to spend some time exploring the various aspects of your life.