Ever Forward

Be mythic. 
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March 10, 2010

Ignore all the little tributaries where energy can be wasted, in favor of the primary goal.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu teaches that killing the enemy is not the objective of a military campaign. The objective is to take territory. To do so without ever drawing a sword is the pinnacle of expertise for a military leader. 

Ignore all the little tributaries where energy can be wasted, in favor of the primary goal. 

That is the spirit of forgiveness. 

Ever forward. 

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March 9, 2010

Online counseling via Skype. Watch a four-minute video about my approach

A counselor is a personal trainer for your heart and mind. If you're willing to work and take an active role in your own growth and prosperity, I can help you.  


Skype makes it easy: 
  • You don't need to be local
  • Counseling happens in the privacy of your home 
  • Video conferencing is an option
  • Record your sessions for future reference and listen on your ipod 
  • Telephone conferencing is available. You can call my Skype number from your mobile or land line
Contact me at petertcrowell@gmail.com to set up a consultation. We'll talk about your goals and decide if we're a match. 

Here's a four-minute video about my approach:

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March 8, 2010

It's way easier to let idiots be idiots when you deliberately try to forgive.

A spirit of forgiveness can make it a lot easier to get through the day. It's way easier to let idiots be idiots when you deliberately try to forgive. It's also a lot easier—and more effective—to stand up for yourself when necessary if you do it with a forgiving attitude. It helps you stay on point and not get sidetracked by the need to defend yourself on every little detail. 

Forgiveness is not taking it on the chin. Forgiveness is allowing your passion to continue to flow in the face of ignorance, injustice or abuse. It's remaining faithful to your dreams and goals by not allowing the energy they require to be diverted. 

The point is to experience inner prosperity without obstruction. 

Shrug it off. But mean it. 

Ever forward.

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March 5, 2010

Ten-second survey about God and religion. 5 yes or no's, totally anonymous


A totally anonymous questionnaire from the Ever Forward blog. 

Click here for the survey.

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March 4, 2010

By making choices in your life, you throw a harness on your circumstances.

By making choices in your life, you throw a harness on your circumstances. You start reining them into line and making them work for you. Decide to take up the violin. Carve out the time, make it a priority and the rest of your life has to accommodate. 

It happens all the time with the priorities you did not choose. Why not with the ones that come from your heart? When you start to exercise your passion, the important things you do every day will stay important, but the things you do just to fill time will start to move aside. 

Ever forward.

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March 1, 2010

The gift of unemployment is that your fears and attitudes are suddenly exposed in a way you can address.

Try to imagine losing your job as the parachute behind a dragster—something sudden and drastic that arrests your momentum. It's intended to get you dealing with the things in your life that need the most attention. What, specifically, does unemployment have to teach?

Losing your job places you under a unique brand of stress and brings up unique thoughts and feelings. What are they? And what are you doing about them? What actions are you taking in response to losing your job? What words do you use to describe your new situation? 

Stop and look. 

I had three basic, unforgettable responses when I lost my job: 

"We'll never be able to buy that house, now!"
"But my wife is pregnant!" (Because of the biggie: "What about health insurance?")
"What am I supposed to do now? The market for my skills is saturated!"

These responses showed me that I have insecurity and confidence issues in at least three areas—finance, safety, and my own creativity. So, my work is to develop strength in those areas. The gift of unemployment is that your fears and attitudes are suddenly exposed in a way you can address. And that's how you get stronger.

Take a look at your day to day experience. What happens when you follow the prevailing wisdom regarding job loss? You try to develop that hobby, or spend time in a cafe, or going for walks. What happens when you try to reinvent your career? Maybe you're just too stressed to get into these things fully. Maybe you can't enjoy yourself or relax, even when you've done all you can for the job hunt. 

You need to understand why. 

Maybe you're convinced you have no right to enjoy yourself until you get a job. If that or something like is true of you, don't view it as silly or irrational or nuts. Admit it. See it as true and do something about it. Under the stress of unemployment, the inner mechanisms that prevent you from enjoying your life and finding your fullest happiness come out in the open where you can deal with them. 

Unemployment strikes at some foundational insecurities but it does not create them. It just shows them to you. They're inside you all the time, affecting your behavior and your decisions. From the moment you lost your job everything you do will alter the landscape of your life and impact your happiness. It's important you begin to see what's going on inside you so you can exercise some measure of creative control.  

If you lose your job, the universe does not want you in that job anymore. It wants you somewhere else. Facing the fears unemployment brings up can help you figure out where that is. 

Ever forward.

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February 26, 2010

Quick survey about your happiness. 3 yes or no's. Totally anonymous.

I'm curious about how people are doing out there, so I thought I'd ask.

3 yes or no questions. Totally anonymous.

Click here.

Thanks!

Ever forward. 

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February 23, 2010

The key to living a satisfying life is how you respond to the life you're living.

You come back from the coffee station with a new stain on your shirt to find your coworker crying because she's just been laid off. So, you take her to lunch at Chili's to cheer her up and everyone has margaritas and when you get back to the office your e-mail account has been deactivated. Is that an echo of the Mexican Hat Dance you're hearing? No. It's the sound of the ax dropping and it's not what you had in mind when you left the house this morning. 

In the teaching of the Tao, the 10,000 Things is everything that happens in your life, good or bad. You win the Super Bowl pool. You get a speeding ticket. You have a ridiculous blind date. Your alarm clock goes off. The 10,000 Things is how the Tao shows itself to you, and losing your job is one of them. 

By itself the 10,000 Things is just a bunch of stuff that happens. How you interact with it is the key. Your responses to the details of your life have an effect on what happens next. Consider that speeding ticket. What happens if you give the cop static for pulling you over? What happens if you just accept it as the consequences of your actions? Very different potential outcomes. 

Your present situation combined with your response to it gives birth to new circumstances to which you must respond. From the moment you lose your job, everything that happens in your life, for the rest of your life, will be the spawn of unemployment. 

The key to living a satisfying life is how you respond to the life you're living. Not only does responding creatively improve how you experience your circumstances, it helps you change them for the better. With each choice you make you alter your landscape just a little. By responding creatively you take some control over the direction of your life. 

It's not complete control, of course. Life is risk and there is always uncertainty. It's like a rudder on a boat. It helps you deal effectively with a current you can't control. At some point you have to trust the current but this is much easier when you know how to handle the rudder. 

Interacting with the 10,000 Things is a skill you can develop. Over time you learn to recognize and respond to opportunity you could not see before. You can even learn to create opportunity out of circumstances where it may not be obvious. It takes time, but it's really just a matter of beginning, of making mistakes and persevering, and it begins where ever you are right now.

Just lost your job? 

Start there.

Ever forward.

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February 16, 2010

The Te of Unemployment

Te (which sounds like day with a really hard d) is the virtue of following the Tao. It's an active effort to cooperate with what life hands you instead of resisting it. The result is a more fluid experience of life with less conflict and greater responsiveness to opportunity. In fact, practicing Te enables you to evoke opportunities from circumstance, as if they were hidden there waiting to be found. Like Easter eggs. 

It's the power by which the Tao creates transformation. When an acorn becomes an oak tree, that's Te. So, to practice Te is to participate in the process of transformation, instead of just being a passenger. You make the most of a situation by bringing out all the potential it contains. 

The Te of Unemployment sounds something like this: "Being out of work brings opportunity you should try not to miss." 

Sure, there are lots of unemployed people, but there's only one unemployed you. In the Tao of Unemployment, you lost your job because it's part of your path. You are the only one walking your path, so the situation is full of opportunity and potential intended just for you. Unemployment and you make a unique combination not repeated anywhere. 

How you deal with it is totally up to you. That's why Te is a virtue—it's something you really should do, no matter how other people react to the same situation. It is uniquely yours no matter how many other instances of it occur. And that's why it's a gift. Something about the experience of unemployment is exactly what it takes to reveal the next phase of your life, which, if you let it, could be incredible. 

So, Te is your part of the equation. You can dive in and learn, or you can resist. Te is diving in. It's how you find and activate the opportunity and potential in your situation. Resistance is anything you do that prevents you from finding those things. Fear, anger, laziness, desperation—feeling these things is normal. To give in to them is to resist the Tao. To explore and learn from them is to practice Te.

What do you want your life to look like over time? Will a new job give that to you? What do you want to be true of you when a new job finally comes along? What thing of value can you get from unemployment that no other experience could give you?

What are the gifts? 

The treasures?

Eventually you will find a new job. But what happens then? The opportunities contained in unemployment will no longer be available to you, and you could miss out on something you really need in order to be happy, job or no job.

Ever forward.

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February 10, 2010

The Tao of Unemployment

If the Tao is the Way (and it is, I looked it up at Wikipedia) then it must lead somewhere, into something. That something is this: the constantly expanding awareness of what reality is capable of, and how to deal with it. Following the Tao makes us ever more available to the lessons of experience, which makes us better at life.

So, what's the Way of Unemployment? 

I haven't had a full-time job for eighteen months. It's been a long painful grind. Interviews and opportunities come and go like mirages and in between are these long stretches of hot sand. Sometimes just staying positive is rigorous work. But you have to become at home in the shadow of unemployment. No matter what your situation, you have to get creative, because job or no job your life is happening.

Much of the popular advice about unemployment relates to finding a job or reinventing your career. That's logical and smart. More personal is the advice to enjoy the time, go to a cafe, pick up those water colors, or spend time with the family. Also, very good advice. Less is said about all the information you can gather about yourself.

The stress of unemployment brings out the truth. It's filled with indicators about how you live your life. An honest look will reveal all the repair work you need to do on your personal foundations, and all the potential for growth, healing, and positive inner change. Unemployment is an opportunity to explore your fear, to understand your expectations of life, to get a feel for your relationship to success, to your dreams, to the people you love. It's a chance to evaluate and strengthen the your connection to yourself—the connection that exists completely independent of your career goals. 

If you don't have a connection to yourself independent of your career goals, that may be the greatest thing the Tao of Unemployment can show you. 

Of course losing your job is a chance to take a new direction. Of course it's a chance to evaluate the path you've taken to this point. But it's not just about reinventing yourself. It's about "who the heck are you to begin with?" You can't reinvent something until you understand what it is already. If you look, you'll find out who you are right now. If you're honest you'll see the opportunity. You'll see where you are strong, where you are weak, where you are fearful, where you are brave. 

There's an old saying: "When the disciple is ready, the master will appear." That's the Tao of Unemployment: unemployment is the master and it appears because you are ready to learn what it has to teach. 

Ever forward.

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