Randy Pausch

I was following some links in a roundabout way and ended up at The Power of Mortality, Patrick Mathieu’s site. And it is there this morning that I heard that Randy Pausch had died. 

I’d been checking once in awhile to see how he was doing and was a little worried because on the information site about his ongoing life and health, there had been a month’s silence. The next to last  message said that he was a lot sicker than he’d been to date, and the next sentence was that he was in hospice care. The next day’s entry was that he’d died.

I’m grateful that he didn’t have a long drawn out end game. And I am very sad he is gone so soon. He was a wonderful presence in so many ways. I learned a lot from what he had to say and how he lived his life. My heart goes out to his family and friends.

One for Beauty

Carrying on from the last post:  a fellow artist was telling me how she had been feeling badly and she put on some music and it lifted her spirits right up. And she realized more strongly than ever how important beauty is in our lives as a counterweight to all the conflict and ugliness we are exposed to daily. People need beautiful things around them.   This is as good a reason as any to keep making art.

It vindicated me, because I tend to work more decoratively and am aesthetically oriented than many of my more edgy colleagues. And I realized that is just fine. There is a place for all of it.

Ted Orland and David Bayles in ‘Art & Fear’, said, ‘ It has been a tough century for modesty, craftsmanship and tenderness’. I’d add ‘beauty’ to this list.

More on marketing

I don’t mean to dismiss ‘marketing’ out of hand.  But I feel that some of the underlying assumptions that come along with it need to be examined.

In fact, I took an excellent marketing workshop not long ago.  Stephanie Ward  was a wonderful presenter who radiated joy and integrity. I learned a lot about ‘attracting more clients’, ‘education based selling’, and ‘creating a magnetic marketing statement’, plus other useful tools. But still, it felt like another planet. Even though I went home and implemented some of the strategies, I eventually bogged down.  Because there it was again, despite the workshop’s emphasis on opportunities and self-empowerment, the unavoidable assumption that one has to do everything humanly possible to stand out and attract clients in order to survive. And this is based on the fear that there is not enough to go around. Not enough work, attention or money for everyone. Our whole Western society is based on this. (See ‘The Soul of Money’ for a more in depth treatment of this subject).

So how do we sidestep this paradigm and survive financially as well?  Well, I can already think of one example of how it could be done differently. See next post.  

The Soul of Money 2, Sufficiency

In Lynne Twist’s book, ‘The Soul of Money’, she poses the question, ‘What if what we have is already enough?’. 
She calls this ‘sufficiency’:

‘Sufficiency is not a message about simplicity or about cutting back and lowering expectation. Sufficiency doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive or aspire. Sufficiency is an act of generating, distinguishing, making known to ourselves the power and presence of our existing resources, and our inner resources.’

‘Sufficiency is a context we bring forth from within that reminds us that if we look around us and within ourselves, we will find what we need. There is always enough’.

What would it mean to my own life to let go of the ingrained idea of scarcity most of us have, and to accept fully that I already have what I need. Wouldn’t that be a form of resignation, sort of like saying, ‘This is as good as it gets’? 

The irony, according to Twist, is that as soon as one recognizes and appreciates the ‘this is as good as it gets’ in any situation, it gets better.  

It is subtle shift from, working to ‘get somewhere that will be better than where I am now’, to discovering the treasures   I already have and applying them to my highest commitments.  Then my goals shift from ‘making a success’ of my authentic business and ‘increasing my income’, to ‘creating wealth’ but in a context of sufficiency.
Twist writes:

‘Wealth shows up in the action of sharing and giving, allocating and distributing, nourishing and watering the projects, people, and purpose that we believe in and care about with the resources that flow to us and through us’.

Then you stop living in fear of losing your money;  instead, money becomes an expression of gratitude and purpose.