It’s the abundance and quality of the choices with which we are blessed that reveals stunning blessings as we pause during this annual holiday of giving thanks.

It is my intention to thank each of you individually throughout the year for your gifts of friendship, trust, laughter and love; but invariably, that does not happen as consistently as one would like. So THANK YOU – EACH OF YOU – AND KNOW THAT I MEAN YOU!!! Thanksgiving is a very personal holiday – one in which we are invited to go within and examine our relationships of gratitude to every aspect of our lives. JFK said:

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

May this Thanksgiving be a time when we both speak and live by the grateful feelings and actions that we express at this time of year.

In gratitude, Happy Thanksgiving!

My first marathon was the Honolulu Marathon, and I noticed that when I clapped and cheered on other runners as I was running, that I felt stronger and more energized. I remember its being a great reminder that we get what we give. W. Clement Stone said it more eloquently:

“Your most precious, valued possessions and your greatest powers are invisible and intangible. No one can take them. You, and you alone, can give them. You will receive abundance for your giving.”

This seems to translate into “the more abundantly I give, the more abundantly I receive” – and to remember that giving is true and complete with no expectation or requirement of return.

How does this sense of giving and receiving abundance fit with your life experience and world view? Is it true that we get what we give? How often do you remember this principle? How frequently do you practice it?

How often do we consider how abundant our lives are – and do so without any cloying, overly sweet sentiments? Just the facts: what do we enjoy in large measure that, for many others, might be considered a huge blessing?

One of the issues associated with abundance is that we can take things for granted. There can be so much of something or a situation or a person that we can fool ourselves into thinking that our life experience will always include those people or things in the same degree.

Writer, Jean Petit-Senn, said: “Not what we have, but what enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”

What are you enjoying now in your life? Where have you recently felt laughter, peace, satisfaction, fulfillment? What is abundant in your life to the degree that you are not only aware of it, but you actually enjoy and appreciate its presence?

Each of us somehow silently wishes only for pleasant surprises in response to the uncertainties of life. How rare to find the friend who will always be there no matter what, the lover who cares even in the face of indifference and even damage, the client who remains loyal even when others make exaggerated claims.

Uncertainty is the state of being in this experience we call LIFE. Only change is certain. Since none of us really knows what death is, even death is uncertain. Taxes . . . well, taxes – yeah, it’s cute to say that only death and taxes are certain, but there’s a palpable amount of self-indulgence in that comment.

What IS uncertain is how one moment moves to the next. How loyalty can turn to betrayal, vitality to illness, gain to loss. And the converse is true. The reversal of fortunes – of which we “have no idea” – can occur instantaneously.

In this uncertain life, where do you find Faith? How do you maintain a Rock? What allows you to function day-to-day in the face of relentless change in appearance, strength, possibilities and even your belief in your ability to prevail and win? What keeps you going in the face of infinite uncertainty? Therein is the heart of the poignant and exquisitely beautiful Human Condition.

Be Loved This Weekend – Be Loved Above All Else.

Every human being has experienced difficulty when uncertainty became fear, and we’ve found ourselves disillusioned. One of our amazing readers writes:

“I think as we grow older and take the knocks and defeats of life, we start compromising and then we get to the point where we settle. We let our fear of failure blind us from taking leaps of faith. We become more frail to setbacks than we did in our youth.”

Guarding against or minimizing the potential negative effects of uncertainty is a valuable strategy. Uncertainty can be channeled into commitment rather than being allowed to hold us back.

Think of a time when uncertainty stopped you from taking action and making a change. What did you do about it? What did you learn from it?

Can uncertainty be a good thing if used to create more clarity and focus? Have there been significant times when your uncertainty prevented your taking action, and you were glad it did?

And the strategies for dealing with uncertainty keep rolling in! Here is one from someone whom I love and admire, Tobey Crockett:

“Speaking more or less in statistical terms, I have always thought that one is likely to achieve only a certain percentage of what you go after. Therefore, one increases the odds of high achievement by aiming high. That is a way of using uncertainty to one’s advantage – building it into the equation so that it doesn’t disrupt the outcome.”

IMHO, this is a spectacular way to deal with uncertainty. What do you think? Aiming high . . . or some other strategy? What are your strategies for meeting uncertainty and *prevailing*?

What do you do – and how do you become – someone who deliberately engages the uncertainty of whether or not you can accomplish something amazing and fantastic?

Is it like seeing a cliff as you’re floating in the river, and you see a cliff, and you’re inspired to swim to it and jump? Or is it more deliberate and measured like deciding to climb a frozen, distant peak – and acquiring all manner of ice picks and gear to make the trek?

No matter your personal style – and there are, obviously, infinite variations – your intending to engage greatness, as you alone define it, necessarily engages uncertainty because nothing is certain except change.

Making friends with uncertainty and allowing it to co-exist with you is a strategic skill that is well worth cultivating. How is your friendship between ambition and uncertainty? Are they on talking terms? What can be done to have them be best friends forever?

Certainty, like security, is a relative concept as there are few, if any, certainties in life except death and taxes. Change is the only real certainty, so uncertainty necessarily involves resistance to change.

Learning how to engage the unknown with grace rather than with trepidation is a highly valuable exercise. One of the historic barriers to dancing well with uncertainty has been our attachment to the belief that there is security.

One can be secure – for the moment – as compared to someone else. However, life’s shifts can occur so quickly that there is no such thing as complete security.

Are you dealing with a high level of uncertainty now? What are your strategies for moving through it? Have your approaches toward uncertainty changed over the course of your life?

Low confidence seems to show up more often around low passion and low belief in the value of any given situation in which one is engaged. If you’re passionate – about your family, an opportunity, a person, a relationship, your health, a trip, etc. – your level of confidence naturally rises.

Nelson Mandela said, “There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

One could also say, “There is no self-confidence to be found in playing small.” Imagine being imprisoned, as Mandela was, for 27 years, but keeping the faith and confidence in your cause and ultimately prevailing.

Where in your life can you focus on your passions, your bliss, and explore the consequences of expanded confidence? Are you more confident about situations where you have a higher level of passion? For you, what is the correlation between passion and supreme self-confidence?

Henry Miller has always been among my favorites. Here, Miller discusses Supreme Self-Confidence.

“Every day, we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.”

“Every (hu)man, when (s)he gets quiet, when (s)he becomes desperately honest with himself (herself), is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.”

What is the song that you long to sing that you would sing . . . if only? If ONLY you had the Supreme Self Confidence to believe in Yourself?

Read the above Henry Miller quote OUT LOUD – and then try it a few times more OUT LOUD. Monitor the feelings in your gut. How does it feel to examine self-doubt and its opposite? Please let me know the results of your experiment.