The SpiritCoach

The Fisher King

I dictated this story while watching the Terry Gilliam movie The Fisher King. The story is told by Parry in the first scene in Central Park at night. At least one point can be extracted from the story: the single minded pursuit of personal satisfaction is doomed to failure. Only through other pursuits can true happiness be realized.

Here is the story...

It begins when the king is a boy. He has to spend a night alone in the forest, to prove his courage so he can become a king. And while he's spending the night alone, he is visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire, appears the Holy Grail. A symbol of Gods divine grace.

And a voice said to the boy: "You shall be keeper of the grail, so that it may heal the hearts of men."

But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty. And in his state of radical amazement, he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible. Like God. So he reached into the fire to take the grail, but the grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded.

Now, as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper, until one day, life, for him, lost it's reason. He had no faith in any man, not even himself. He couldn't love or feel loved. He was sick with the experience. He began to die.

One day, a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded; he didn't see a king, he only saw a man alone and in pain.

And he asked the king; "what ails you, friend?"

And the king replied; "I'm thirsty, I need some water to cool my throat."

So, the fool took a cup from besides his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king. As the king began to drink, he realised his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the Holy Grail; that which he sought all of his life.

He turned to the fool and asked in amazement: "How could you find that, which my brightest and bravest could not?"

And the fool replied: "I don't know. I only know that you were thirsty."

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Questions...

What is YOUR "Holy Grail"?

What important things in your life are difficult to realize?

How can you take a more simple look at things that are illusive in your life?

Capacity Building: Stacking the Load Properly

If the camel is carrying as many feathers as he can possibly carry, can the camel carry ONE more feather? The answer is no. The reason some struggle with the answer is that they set up the problem incorrectly by focusing on the weight of the feather rather than the capacity of the camel. To get the most from the "camel" watch how the load is stacked.

It is impossible to get the most from our life, our careers, and our relationships by squeezing in one more feather. It’s like the truck driver that jumped out and pounded the side of the truck with a baseball bat at each red light. At one of his stops someone asked what he was doing. He responded, "I have a one ton truck here, but I'm carrying two tons of canaries. I have to keep a ton of birds in the air at all times or this truck won't move."

We all carry and are limited to different loads and varying capacities. Most of us can be found trudging a heavy load dragging the ground. Capacity building refers to our ability, as a whole, to perform. Here are a few ideas for stacking the load properly without merely adding another feather to an already overtaxed load.

Understand our own capacity. At this stage we investigate all the parts of load by studying our personal attributes, gifts, and nuances. This might include personal assessment to find the strengths and challenges; it might mean personal and professional development, or focusing on priorities, or developing effective methods of collaboration with others.

Maintain our current capacity. We can build capacity without shifting the entire load. Achievements thus far in life are in direct proportion to the personal strengths on board. Hold on to the feathers that have attracted achievement.

Grow our current capacity. We have the innate ability to expand our capacity. Accelerate your rate of achievement rapidly by searching and vigorously employing new behavior that builds your current capacity.

We can expand too quickly and try too many things. Likewise, we can expand too slowly and never attempt anything new. The key is finding the workable balance by focusing on possibilities and eliminating the weighty limits of the load. Capacity building means moving outside our mental boundaries and even violating the boundary of the probable. It means achieving well beyond the obvious.

Weigh each feather. This means making sure we have the right feathers on board by weighing the parts and uncovering the effective and ineffective. Some feathers are worth the weight while others waste precious space and energy. We limit ourselves by just piling on more rather than streamlining the contents to include what we really want.

Get ruthless about doing something different. This means giving yourself permission to dream and to risk. We never escape risk. It’s not something we choose to live with or without. Something is always at stake. We can only decide which risks we will take. The only risks that aren’t worthwhile are the ones we have outgrown. Choose and chuck deliberately the feathers occupying your load.

Find ways to share the load. The will on the parts of others, together with a developing trust and passion for development on the part of our own will, makes the sum greater than the addition of the parts. It is important to view and grow our current load objectively or with an objective third party - a life coach for instance.

Right now in this moment, we are capable of exponential capacity building in our lives by demanding a willingness to risk mistakes and an unwillingness to concede defeat. Stack the load properly.

Are You Living in the Moment?

If five birds are sitting on a wire and one of them decides to fly away, how many are still left? The answer is five. One bird’s “decision” to fly away did not remove it from the wire.

We all know people just like this bird. These people continually “decide” to become more involved in church, lose weight, manage their money, build a relationship, etc. Yet they do nothing to turn their decisions into action. They are living a life on auto-pilot versus a life on purpose.

When you die, there will be two dates on your tombstone: the date of your birth and the date of your death. Those two dates will be separated by a DASH. It is this dash that represents your life. Are you truly Living Your DASH on purpose?

Living in the Moment

Living Your Dash demands living in the moment by seizing moments in time, utilizing the gifts and talents you possess, and taking immediate and decisive action on the things that are important to you. “Deciding to” does not necessarily equate action. Even nature teaches you’ll never be a butterfly if you can’t stop being a caterpillar. The worm must take action to weave a cocoon in order to transform from slimy fish bait into a miraculously beautiful butterfly. Imagine a couple of caterpillars looking up at a soaring butterfly and saying, “You’ll never get me up on one of those things.”

The caterpillars on the ground haven’t realized their potential, they’ve become fearful of the unknown, they see the world only from where their past has brought them, and they have trouble anticipating future opportunities. It’s not that the bird in the first illustration and the stalled caterpillars in the second don’t have the potential; they just are not living in the moment.

Living in the moment are those perfectly balanced instances in the middle of a regular day or event that we would define as really living. These moments are actually very rare. Consider these five principles and one law of living in the moment. Each in its own way advances the life we were meant to live.

Principle 1: You are either living YOUR life or someone else’s. Our society places beliefs on who we should become, how we should act, what we should buy and even how we should dress. Once we make up our mind that we are here to live our own life and not the life our parents, friends, teachers and acquaintances then we can live our own life based on the talents, gifts and passions we know to be.

Principle 2: The people that enter your life are the right people... the good and the bad. Those troublesome people are important reminders of wrong directions, ideas and philosophies. Those few exceptional people remind us they cared enough to be a part of our life. Either situation makes them precisely the right people.

Principle 3: Whatever happens…happens. Accepting this focuses attention and appreciation on the present moment, thereby excluding all of the might-have-beens, should-have-beens and what-ifs. "What is" is the only thing present at the moment. Appreciate that!

Principle 4: Whatever happens is the right time. This is an admonition to take things as they are and when they happen. This is living in the moment and a cardinal prerequisite of Living Your Dash.

Principle 5: When it’s over it’s over. This is basically the flip side of the preceding one. Everything has a beginning, middle and end. All three must be appreciated, most particularly the end when it comes.

The one law is a strange one. It is called The Law of Two Feet. Stated succinctly, if at anytime you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet. Go somewhere else. Do something useful. Live Your Dash. Stay in the moment and don’t get stuck in the moment.

Living in the moment means leaving behind a life of societal status quo, which by definition is the accepted way of doing things. The path of least resistance can be attractive. But by living in the moment you do precisely what you have been gifted to do…take action and therefore Live Your Dash.

© Doug Constant is an internationally recognized Life and Business Coach. Start Living Your Life on Purpose by calling 318-442-3510 or email to Doug@OnPoint-Learning.com for a FREE personality style assessment via fax or email and to arrange an appointment for a complementary 30 minute Life Coaching session.