The intersection of power and adversity sometimes yields freedom. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote:

“You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.”

This is a surprising paradox: that we humans become free when adversity has taken everything away and we have nothing left to lose.

Life’s difficulties can have this kind of effect. For example, people report bursts of freedom and exuberant power when the adversity of illness has left them with very little time. Similarly, severe financial adversity often results in expanded power to appreciate life and the non-material world. Losing a job can transform into a feeling of liberation.

Have you ever participated in or witnessed the kind of scenario that Solzhenitsyn describes? Can you think of life experiences where all was lost, yet there was freedom and power because adversity had wiped away everything? What is your relationship to this paradox? Is it familiar? How does it resonate with you?

Loyalty to so-called “lost causes”? Who me? Who you? Most likely, each of us has at least one cause to which we remain loyal no matter what. It could be anything: a sports team, a family member, a political issue – a belief in something that you refuse to give up.

Czech activist and the first President of post-Communist Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, said:

“The only lost cause is one we give up before we enter the struggle.”

Havel’s point was to remain loyal and not to give up on what we believe in. His struggle as a leader for Czech freedom is legendary – and, at the time, most would have said it was a lost cause.

What is it that keeps you loyal to people and situations that seem to others to be lost causes? How can we explain our commitments? Is this blind or misplaced loyalty – or is it something deeper?

Wikipedia defines serendipity as “the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.”

It’s going out to dinner with friends and meeting your Forever Love at First Sight and never changing. It’s Louis Pasteur’s experimenting with molds and discovering what ultimately allowed Alexander Fleming to invent Penicillin. It’s losing a job which prompts you to start your own business. It’s an unpredictable result that occurs, most often, quite by surprise from what appears to be a completely unrelated set of circumstances. It’s an apple falling from a tree that gives us Isaac Newton’s insight about gravity.

It’s being at the right time for a completely different reason than what ultimately occurs, but having the wisdom to recognize the value of what you have when you see it. Is serendipity all around us? Is it rare in your experience? Is it more than luck or chance, by definition, since it implies destiny?

Think of at least three life-changing events that, for you, have been the product of serendipity. What made you take advantage of them? How have you honored those moments? What about those times have proven magical for you? Can you trust yourself to know serendipity when you see it – and to act on it?

Have a Great Independence Day! Be free!

Expanding your income and / or your business is a matter of expanding your relationships. You may have noticed that after a certain point, you have not maintained the same enthusiasm for developing new contacts that you once had. Perhaps the need has changed, and you’re more comfortable. Perhaps you have felt that you don’t want to bother people – or some other excuse has taken hold like you lack the time or patience with the process.

Try on the notion that you’re either expanding or contracting – and that there’s no standing still. Expansion and forward movement does not have to be accompanied by pressure. Small steps, when added together, can equal significant progress. The Japanese word “kaizen” means “some progress, however small.” If you practice kaizen on a daily basis, even if it’s the equivalent of only one step, you’ll find that over time, you’ve expanded your relationships – and, thus, your income and / or your business.

Where can you see a place for the daily practice of kaizen in your professional life? Can you feel the freedom in moving forward each day with zero pressure on how much distance you have to cover?

The promise of the Hero’s Journey is to return safely home – not necessarily unwounded or unscathed – but free. The freedom comes as a result of losing one’s fear of death during the journey.

The Hero is able to resist looking into the past with regret or into the future with apprehension. Upon the conclusion of the ordeal, the Hero is able to be present in the moment. The Hero is ultimately free simply to be.

The Hero’s Journey demands courage and fortitude. The journey requires surrender to the journey itself and to its perils. The passion and commitment to a goal larger than oneself. The drive and zeal to return home and be willing to be transformed by the journey and its lessons.

Think about your life’s significant challenges and / or adventures. Situations in your life where you have defied your comfort zone in service of a goal or calling that demanded that you grow.

The journey, of course, is often not enjoyable. It is often arduous, but it is most often supremely rewarding. What parallels can you see in your own life using the steps of the Hero’s Journey? How free are you to be?

You may prefer the phrase “changing habits” to the implications of “breaking habits” because experience teaches that it is far more powerful to be in favor of something than to be against it. “Changing” may be more powerful than “breaking.”

Consider how it feels to say, “I’m changing my habit of eating sweets to habits of eating that are consistent with vital health.” We don’t have to think of a habit as something to be judged – just something that perhaps has outlived its perceived usefulness.

Unthinking habitual behavior is not based in freedom, and often we don’t recognize that we have been in a rut.

Consider the perception “I choose conscious habits” over “I have to break my bad habits.”

How would it feel to develop habits consistent with freedom rather than feeling compelled to indulge in behaviors that no longer serve us? Where in your life do you most desire freedom from old habits? What habits could you be in favor of that would replace old, restricting habits?

Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

This week has been one of our best in Study Hall . . . thanks for attending and sharing. STARTING OVER is definitely a muscle that wants to be strengthened.

Fact: the past is over! As Will Rogers famously said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” The advantages of resetting . . . and restarting . . . are enormous!

Think of the freedom . . . the thrill of being able to create without the limitations of the past! And it’s so simple: only recognize that it’s reality that this moment is the first moment between now and the future.

THE POWER OF FORGETTING AND STARTING OVER IS ENORMOUS!

We can also forget the laurels we’ve rested on . . . and, similarly, we can release all the limiting perceptions. Both have kept us stuck.

In what area of your life would STARTING OVER make the biggest difference in your life?

Copyright 2009. E. B. Hutt Bush and Coaching for Results, Inc.

So far this week, we’ve focused on our own starting over. Today, consider the wisdom of allowing others to start over with you.

Everyone has made mistakes in life. It’s just a matter of degree, but . . . face it, no one escapes doing some really dumb things.

We can assist others in their journeys by losing the attachment to past wrongs and saying, “The rest of my relationship with this person begins now.”

Imagine what a difference that would make in business, family friend and romantic situations.

Allowing others to start over means that you don’t hold their past performance against them. By giving them a clean slate:
* Grudges disappear

* Wounds heal

* Harmony expands

* Freedom grows

This is not a “touchy-feely,” “lah-lah” strategy. Rather, it has highly practical outcomes. Life gets better! Results improve!

Please think of some people whose conduct you can reframe in your mind as only in the past . . . and consciously allow them to start over. Breathe and observe the way you feel as you release the past and allow the present with nothing but possibilities.