Are you aware of the environment?

The environment is all around you.

How aware are you of its beauty?

How do you acknowledge and affirm your duty for stewardship?

Do you have affection for the sun – when it rises it benefits all?

Are you tempted to be a socially conscious consumer advocating for fair trade, organic production and local markets rather than just consuming less?

Here are some simple steps to discern and guide your actions.

Become aware.

Pray and reflect on the duty to care for the environment and protect the poor and vulnerable.

Learn about and educate others on the causes and moral dimensions of climate change.

Understand how you, your families and friends, communities of belonging and other affiliations contribute to climate change by our own energy use, consumption and waste.

Act to change your choices and behaviors to reduce the ways you contribute to climate change.

Advocate for integrity and compassion and wholistic principles and priorities in climate change discussions and decisions, especially those which have an effect on the most vulnerable.

Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun and I say
It’s all right.
George Harrison

A prayer, an affirmation or a take-out order from the Restaurant of the Universe

I want to attract influential, educated, professional men who are ready to step into their personal power with integrity, compassion, dignity and grace in service to an interconnected and peaceful world.

Men who have a firm grasp on their mission and purpose.

Men who want the support of a life coach to take their next step.

Let it be a personal prayer, a daily affirmation or a special order from the Restaurant of the Universe.

What’s your cultural IQ?

Are you developing the right cultural skills?

Learn and develop cultural skills throughout your life.

Be humble.

Understand that cultural differences can have local and regional variations.

Learn them and encourage people to tell you about these variations.

Get ready to accept sharing knowledge.

Ask questions!

Photo courtesy of @boys_indian.

Is it time to think about your life?

A few questions to ponder…

Do you have a strong self-concept, a powerful sense of your own worth and potential?

How are you dealing with and solving problems in your life?

How can you improve the quality of your relationships with family, friends, fiduciaries and co-workers?

Do you present your opinions and views and speak assertively or aggressively?

Do you have the information, knowledge, and understanding of larger issues that affect you?

Do you and make healthy lifestyle and life choices?

What’s your ability to respond?

Are you setting and achieving goals?

Do you know and understand that you can have an impact on the world?

Do you create projects that improve the lives others and strengthen communities?

Power shift: spirituality

Spirituality beyond established religions is giving men new views of themselves.

Men live in the universe and the universe lives in men.

Service and prayer strengthen our bonds and spirits.

We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
Carl Sagan

Using your journal as binoculars to shorten the distance

Use your journal like a pair of binoculars to make what appears distant, appear closer. From your daily experience:

Are you able to identify any underlying or overarching issues or recurrent themes?

What could be done to change the situation?

How will this alter your future behaviors, attitudes or career?

Have you thought about tomorrow?

What does the future hold?

Photo courtesy of Mike Dozer.

Using your journal as a microscope

Use your journal as a microscope that makes the small experience large!

What happened?

Describe your experience.

What would you change about this situation?

What have you learned?

Was there a moment of failure, success, indecision, doubt, humor, frustration, happiness, sadness?

Do you feel your actions had any impact?

What more needs to be done?

Does this experience compliment or contrast with what you’re learning in other setting? How?

Has learning through experience taught you more, less, or the same as in other ways? what ways?

Who will read your journal?

Your journal is a very private document.

You might want to take some notes during the day, but capture your thoughts at the end of the day.

Do not let others read your journal.

For more, Mark Cooper, Reflection: Getting Learning Out of Serving,
Florida International University.

What are reflection journals good for?

A daily or weekly reflection journal can capture personal judgments.

There may be people’s actions that you find unpleasant, ways of doing things that are not as you would do them, work environments in which you would not want to remain.

Your judgments, your prejudices and biases, even the ways you discern and discrimate, will help you learn about yourself, your values and your limits.

Journals allow you to speak your mind!

For more, see Mark Cooper, Reflection: Getting Learning Out of Serving, Florida International University

Five fundamental and global power shifts

The founder of the Human Potential Movement, Dr. Jean Houston, suggests there are five power shifts that will help you cultivate your compassion and the infinite possibilities of the moment.

The Five Shifts

1. Your understanding of who and what you are and what you need to become to be able to deal with the complexity of our time is evolving.

2. How you do business and how businesses are governed are shifting in the midst of vast ecological and financial changes as you are able to communicate and transact business in real time with the most remote regions of the world.

3. Human societies are repatterning and new stories are emerging dealing with egality, equity, equality, equanimity and diversity, including the rise of women to a full partnership with men across the globe.

4. As human kind accentuates the uniqueness of each culture, it’s also creating a global gumbo of food, music and beliefs.

5. Spirituality beyond established religions is giving men new views of themselves. Men live in the universe and the universe lives in men.