At the heart of what is meaningful in life, we think of many things: our families, our communities, our most important relationships, and even the social challenges that inspire us to take action in causes much larger than ourselves. It’s rare that we think of work, yet so much of our modern life is devoted to a job. We’re immersed in that work for much of each day, surrounded by others who are participating with us in a common endeavor, engaged in efforts that often require our full capacity and then some. If we are driven to seek larger meaning in life, it is obvious that we would do well to seek that in our work. In other words, I am suggesting that we view work not as a job, a paycheck, a struggle, or a confrontation, nor as something that we do to support our efforts in more precious areas, but as a source of meaning in itself. This search for meaningful work is the call to discover your passion.

In writing this chapter, I thought a great deal about passion and calling in life.
I thought about the many people I have worked with who followed their passion, and I also thought a lot about how I found a unique engagement with my own life and its meaning. No one showed me how to follow my passion, but somehow that is the path I have always traveled. In that sense, I have been blessed. I was the first high school–age woman to be sent to the poorest part of South America as an American Field Service student. I attended the Sorbonne University in Paris during the students’ 1968 revolution and took active part in those wild days of political unrest. I went on to serve in the Peace Corps in West Africa. I became passionately involved in the women’s movement during the 1970s. In the 1980s, I became a global peace activist engaged with citizen diplomacy in various hot spots throughout the world. In the last decades, I’ve worked to create environmental sustainability, a field in which my husband David Gershon is a leading force. In 1981, David and I founded our business, Empowerment Training Programs, to help others find their passion. Over the last twenty years, working with thousands of people in many parts of the world, I have learned a number of things about passionate work.

I wish I could say that the search for passionate work is easy or straightforward. But the truth is that there are always reasons why we feel the need to put off that search, and always roadblocks we can’t see beyond. We need only compare the eras we’ve lived through in the last five years to realize how critical, yet how elusive, the search for passion and calling can be. During the economic high times of the late 1990s, many of us fell under the spell of the trickster of busyness. We offered up our lives for the promise of a payoff that would lead to freedom, only to find that the rewards we sought were often illusory. That busyness created a malaise and emptiness that brought many people to a search for something more fulfilling.

The nature of that emptiness shifted with September 11. Fear and anxiety turned many of us inward in a re-examination of larger life priorities. At that moment, there was a kind of spiritual vitality present for many people, a deeper inquiry going on, an understanding that time is short and life is precious. But the economic downturn that followed made many people conservative about their dreams and less inclined to take risks. As a result, discovering and pursuing your passion has become a challenge once again, for different reasons than before.

Not everyone who needs help to discover her passion needs it because of a crisis in her work. Yes, there are those who need to leave their jobs because they are dying spiritually or emotionally. But some blessed people are extremely happy and fulfilled in their work and are looking for ways to sustain that. In between those two water, neither satisfied nor moved to desperate measures. The reasons for the call to passion, like the journeys themselves, are myriad. I’ve come to believe that the authentic search for passion requires a profoundly honest selfinquiry and the courage to face our deepest fears and unknowns. In this chapter, I will share with you what I’ve found that may help you face your challenges in the quest for passion. Through engaging with this process, you will, I hope, be able to answer some fundamental questions: What is my calling? What is my unique engagement with life? Where do I belong? What are my gifts, and how can I fully contribute them to the world? I want you to ask yourself, in the deepest sense: Who am I? It is my hope that the answers fill you with surprise while allowing you to recognize your passion,

The Quest

In his classic book, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran said this about the quest for passionate work:

When you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream assigned to you when that dream was born, and in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life. And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, and to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ear to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.1

The search for passionate work reflects all the classic phases of mythic journey:

• Call
• Awakening
• Journey
• Descent into darkness
• Epiphany
• Ascent

The good news is that this rigorous quest brings real joy and authentic meaning to our lives. How do we engage in work that is love made visible? There are two aspects to the quest for passion. First, there is the quest to find our passionate work. Second, there are the practices that sustain that passion—some of which we will explore in the next few pages.

In the journey to passion, we all start from a particular place. I have found that people fall into five broad categories in their search for passion. Each raises a different question for people searching for more meaning in their work. Perhaps one of these situations will resonate with you.

I Need to Leave My Current Work,
or I ’ll Never Find My Passion

“Where is my passion? How do I find it?”

Leslie was a vice president at an international corporation. Early in her career she obtained a very desirable global assignment. Because she excelled at that position, she began to climb the ladder quite rapidly and rose high in the ranks. She enjoyed her “golden girl” status, loved her work, and found her career path very satisfying for fifteen years. Then things began to unravel for her.

When she reflected on where things had gone wrong, she realized that over the course of her career she had driven herself so hard and fast, and given so much of herself for so long, that she felt incomplete as a person. Although she thrived in that dynamic work environment during her twenties and thirties, by her midforties she realized that she had absolutely no interior life. She had simply ignored it for too long.

Leslie never blamed the job. She did not try to rewrite history or dishonor the enjoyment she’d had for fifteen years. But she realized that it was time for a change. She needed to find passionate work again.

To do so, she needed to try some things that were difficult for her. First, she had to get quiet in order to hear what life was telling her. Next, she had to make a brave move and step off the fast track. For someone who had risen as high as Leslie that took serious courage. She understood that she had to jump into the void of the unknown in order to face all her most intimidating fears. “I’ll be nothing if I leave my position,” she worried. “I’ll become depressed. I’ll lose my community of colleagues and friends.” She was wise enough to get some counseling to see her though that inbetween period.

Eventually, after about six months of thinking and searching, Leslie discovered something new and very different. She decided to go back to school to become a therapist.

I found Leslie personally inspiring. She loved the work she had been doing at the corporation, then she realized that her passion was no longer there and knew she needed something else. She didn’t gripe and moan or blame the job. Instead, she had the courage to take decisive action. Unlike so many successful people, she did not stagnate in the trap of her own accomplishments but stepped out of that trap and found a new home.

Leslie had found tremendous happiness and vitality in her work for many years. But when it began to unravel, she could feel herself becoming depressed. She knew how important it was to confront those fears directly rather than poison something that had given her so much joy. She was also smart enough to know that she shouldn’t go it alone. Because of that courage and care, she was able to reengage with life through work in a different and rejuvenated way.

I Had Passion in My Work,
But I ’ve Lost It and Need to Rekindle It

“How do I reengage with my passion in a sustainable way?”

If you are just getting by in your job, you neither like nor dislike your present work. Although there’s nothing offensive about the job, it doesn’t excite you or engage your passion. Perhaps you’ve fallen into a rut and don’t face any challenges. Perhaps you are bored or burned out.

Ella was a gifted clinical psychologist. She’d been working oneon one with patients for ten years before it became very boring to her. There was no fire left. When she began examining what would reignite her passion, she felt that she needed to do more group work, so she volunteered at a shelter for battered women. This experience lit her fire. She made a tremendous contribution to the shelter and realized something even more important—she needed to work with a more diverse population. The highly educated, uppermiddleclass patients with whom she’d been working were very comfortable to her. By moving out of that comfort zone and giving to a wider world, she found the love of her calling again.

I have seen a great many people reignite their passion by connecting that passion to the larger world. Doctors, lawyers, business executives—at a certain point, they may develop a need to push themselves beyond the confines of their everyday responsibilities in order to encounter people and life issues they would not normally be touched by. I know doctors who’ve gone off to work in refugee camps their passion to their work in a slightly new or innovative way. This pattern exhibits something true about passion: it needs to incorporate “giving,” almost as though giving is the kindling that keeps the fire going. Sometimes, by making certain subtle but strategic shifts in your thinking, you can fall back in love with your work or create a new iteration of that work that reengages your passion.

I Am in Transition Between Jobs

“What is my passion? Am I actively seeking it?”

When you are in transition, you are between jobs and wide open to what’s next. You may be searching for a new career in a field in which you have no experience, or you may want to continue your current field of work but hope for a job that is more fulfilling. Perhaps you need time to just “be” before you get back to work. Perhaps you are actively searching for your next job.

The wonderful thing about being in transition is that you are in an excellent position to start with a clean slate. This is an opportunity to clarify your vision and make sure that your next work experience is all you want it to be.

Candice was a stockbroker. She had loved that work intensely for a long time, then felt so burned out that she needed to quit immediately. To her credit, she did not try to hang on to something that was unhealthy—she let it go. Candice’s problem was that she did not have a clue in the world about what she wanted to do next. She wanted “another life” but did not know what that meant. Through the process of getting quiet and befriending her fears and barriers, she began to hear the call of her earliest passion. After college, she had been a volunteer teacher at a high school. She thought back on what had been so exciting for her at that time in life, and remembered all the good and bad aspects. It gave her a picture of what she might want to do next. As the vision gained clarity and took shape, she decided that she wanted to work with young adults in college who were struggling with what shape their own lives should take. This new passion, radically different from what or business executives who mentor young leaders, high school students, or innercity children. Although their service sometimes takes people in entirely new directions, more often than not it connects had occupied her through her career as a stockbroker, was connected directly to her earliest work. By rediscovering that passion and updating it to fit her experiences and current interests, she made a major shift into what could honestly be described as “another life.”

I Am in a SteppingStone Phase in My Career
and Am Headed Toward My Passion

“Am I still actively learning from this stepping stone, or am I where I am because of inertia?”

When you are in a steppingstone phase, you are doing work that you know is not your final destination. That work is providing you with training and experience in a field you will either stay in or adapt to a similar field. You are learning a lot of practical skills, and your work is fulfilling. You still face a learning curve. You sometimes question, however, whether the step is still relevant. You wonder if you are still making progress toward your destination.

Sometimes you need to sharpen your vision of where your path is ultimately leading you so as to make sure you are getting the most out of your present situation. Paula was another therapist who had become tired of that work and knew she wanted to do something different. She decided that she wanted to join the corporate world, so she became a management consultant. She knew that management consulting was a steppingstone to the business world and that it would provide her with valuable training and experience.

Even though her management consulting work did not take full advantage of her capabilities, Paula found it satisfying for a time because of the learning involved. After a while, however, the work became boring to her, and she decided to figure out where her passion was taking her within the business world.

She realized that the level at which she was working was not satisfying. Paula wanted to help executives at senior levels, so she decided to become an executive coach. Her management consulting role put her in position to develop those capabilities and gain the right experience. She was also very smart about using the support network around her. She talked to her boss openly about her larger goals. When the time came for her to move on, he was the first one to point out that she was ready and became an advocate for her move within the company.

Becoming an executive coach was, in many ways, a reconnection to her original passion as a therapist. But she needed to take a slightly roundabout route to get to that position. In other words, in order to sustain her passion in therapy, she needed to be truthful about her feelings for her work and place herself on the next growing edge of challenge.

I’ve Found My Passion;
My Work Is Love Made Visible

“How do I sustain my own passion and create an environment that empowers others to find and sustain their passion?”

Sarah is the executive director of a regional AIDS program—one of the model agencies. Her story is compelling because of its lessons for leadership. The passion that Sarah, her staff, the social workers, and volunteers at the agency had for people dying of AIDS was immense. As is often the case in such situations, however, the danger of despair and burnout was very high. It’s as though the fire of passion can burn so intensely that we become consumed by it. In Sarah’s case, she was so immersed in her work that her marriage began to suffer, and she felt that her inner life was in need of protection.

Sarah thought long and hard about the practices needed to sustain her passion. She could have rationalized the daily sacrifice of time and energy that was hurting her family and marriage, but she knew she needed to safeguard that wellspring of support if she was to be fulfilled as a person and a leader. She had a passion, separate from work, for being in nature, so she followed that by hiking and skiing with her family in order to spend more time with them. She also developed a strong spiritual practice that became critical in feeding her resilience.

Because Sarah was a visionary leader, she knew she had to sustain the passion of the people around her as well, including her staff, the people dying of AIDS, the social workers, and the volunteers, a group that collectively numbered in the hundreds. She empowered them to such a degree that even in the midst of extraordinary suffering there was a sense of meaning and joy. Sarah found that the passion of others was sustaining of her own passion as well. It was as if passion had to flow out of her to be sustained.

Leadership can be a draining and lonely affair if passion is not sustained. As Sarah’s story reflects, it is critical to preserve the inner life of the leader. And it is just as important to develop support systems around the leader to feed the passion of all involved. When you have full passion for the work you do, you experience that work as love made visible. When that passion is sustaining, you have created a work situation that is deeply fulfilling to your mind, heart, spirit, and body. The work remains challenging to you, both for personal and professional growth. There is no difference between work and play. Your work is your earthly playground, and you are very blessed.

Finding Your Passion

The process of finding your passion is a gestalt with many interconnected qualities. For most leaders I’ve worked with, that process encompasses seven stages, as follows:

Get Quiet Enough to Hear Your Passion Calling You

Many of us are so busy, so overstimulated and crowded within, that there’s no space for our passion to grow, and no quiet from which to hear its call. And yet our deepest creativity is born in silence. As my dear friend Gunilla Norris says in her beautiful book—Inviting Silence,

Within each of us there is a silence
a silence as vast as the universe.
We are afraid of it . . . and we long for it.
When we experience that silence, we remember
Who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the birth of galaxies, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space . . . created
from silence.
Silence is the source of all that exists,
The unfathomable stillness where vibration began
the first oscillation, the first word,
from which life emerged. Silence is our deepest nature,
our home, our common ground, our peace.
Silence reveals. Silence heals.
Silence is where God dwells.
We yearn to be there. We yearn to share it.²

The seeds of your passion are born in this silence. To discover it, you need to cultivate quiet in your life. You can do this through meditation, prayer, or formal retreat. You can do it through quiet walks in nature or even by turning off the radio on your commute. You can create silence with your family before meals, or within your own mind just before you fall asleep.

Have Courage to Heed the Call

Once you hear the call of your passion, it will be obvious that tremendous courage is required to heed that call. To follow your passion requires that you face fears, losses, challenges, and failures. The cultivation of your courage comes as you face some difficult questions: What am I willing to give up in order to pursue my passion? What am I losing by not pursuing my passion? Am I dead inside and just going through the motions at work? Am I burned out? Have I given away my soul to my job? Am I courageous enough to risk the security of the known and pursue my passion, finding my gifts and giving them fully to the world?

The beloved Indian poet Kabir called us to courage in this way:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think . . . and think . . . while you are alive.
What you call “salvation” belongs to the time before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?³

Face and Befriend Your Fears

This courage then guides us to the third stage of passion where we are asked to face and befriend our fears. Most of us want to run from our fears. Paradoxically, it is by going toward our fears that we move toward our passion. We are not asked to overcome or resolve our fears completely. Rather, we are asked to befriend them. Fear is a necessary ingredient to passion. Indeed, it is part of what keeps the fire hot.

Often the fears that keep us from claiming our passion are deeply hidden and unconscious. They include the following:

• Fear of disobeying an idealized father figure
• Fear of disobeying a patriarchal organization or culture
• Fear of betraying our mother who didn’t follow her passion
• Fear of displeasing or threatening our lover or spouse
• Fear of the inner critic who tells you that you are worthless and can’t follow your passion, that you don’t have what it takes, that you’re not enough
• Fear of confronting the litany of excuses that blocks your real passion; fear of failure, disappointment, not enough money, not enough time, not enough staff, not enough

These fears are inevitable as we claim our passion. We need to go toward them in order to uncover them, talk about them, and transform them with mentors, counselors, or trusted colleagues. We need to use them as part of the fuel that fires our passion.

Face and Befriend the Unknown

Like all mythic quests, the journey to passion also requires us to face and befriend the unknown. To find our passion we often have to leave the familiar before we know exactly where we are going.

Most poetry, music, and art that moves us deeply is in some way about going to the edge and leaping emptyhanded into the vast unknown. In the deep waters of the unfamiliar, creativity and passion live and thrive. The unknown may be scary to us, but it’s a fertile and friendly environment to the two sisters, creativity and passion. In her poem “At the Shore,” Mary Oliver speaks to us about befriending the unknown so that we may know passion. As you read it, imagine risking what is familiar and safe in your work so that you might find what is passionate.

At the Shore

This morning
wind that lightlimbed dancer was all
over the sky while
ocean slapped up against
the shore’s blackbeaked rocks
row after row of waves
humped and fringed and exactly
different from each other and
above them one white gull
whirled slant and fast then
dipped its wings turned
in a soft and descending decision its
leafy feet touched
breakage of waves it settled
shook itself open
its spoony beak cranked
like a pump. Listen!
Here is the white and silky trumpet of nothing.
Here is the beautiful Nothing, body of happy,
meaningless fire, wildfire, shaking the heart.⁴

Revisit Your Earliest Passion

It is challenging to face your fears and unknowns, but there are some lovely aspects of the journey as well. Revisiting what Emily Dickinson calls your “original joy” will almost always give you clues to your life’s passion. The blueprint for passion is set early for most of us. That blueprint shows up where we felt our greatest sense of belonging as children—in the natural world, with books, music, dressing up, building things, organizing tree house clubs, or finding new and dangerous adventures. My sister, for example, was forever in the creek behind our house. Only in mud and plants, with frogs and snakes for company, was she completely at home. Today she has found her passion as a wetlands ecologist—not such a far cry from her play in our childhood creek. Another friend enjoyed her greatest moments of belonging while listening to her grandmother tell stories. It was the deep listening that totally engaged her. Today she is a talented therapist, healing people through her gift of listening deeply to their stories.

Remember What Is Essential in Life

What were you passionate about early in your story? What was your original joy? At the deepest level our passion is in close relationship with what is essential in life. Ironically, finding and living your passion have a close relationship to the questions you will ask at the end of your life: Did I love well? How have I touched the people at work, at home, and in my community? Have I given my best? Who, what, and how you love is inextricably bound to your passion.

This is what Gibran was talking about in the earlier passage when he said, “To love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret. It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit, and to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.”

In working as a hospice volunteer, I’ve had the privilege of helping people review their lives before they die. Again and again, what was essential to most people centered around doing what they really loved, giving their best to life, and loving well. Recently I coached a minister who was working with firemen and rescue workers on the front lines at Ground Zero in New York City. He was struggling to understand the relationship between the indomitable passion he saw in the rescue workers and the unfathomable death all around them. In our dialogue it became clear that the death around them had brought out their very best. It had made them realize how short and precious life is, how important it is to give our best and not to hold back. Perhaps this is what September 11 asked of all of us.

Start a Passion Journal

Finally I want to switch from the sublime to the pragmatic and mention the final stage—starting a passion journal. This is a great support in the process of discovering your passion. In the spirit of Julia Cameron’s wonderful book The Artist’s Way, a passion journal is a simple diary in which each day you record one thing that generates passion.5 This can be something specifically related to your work, such as having lunch with a mentor or colleague who inspires you; or it can be something more general that ignites your creativity, such as arranging a vase of flowers, listening to music you love, taking out the hiddenaway box of watercolors, or walking in a beautiful place. A daily journal entry exercises your passion muscles and gives you the flexibility to move out beyond familiar boundaries into the unknown.

Sustaining Your Passion

Working with these seven stages of the journey can help us discover our passion. But how do we sustain it? Passion is an ongoing, living process that needs reigniting on a regular basis. Not surprisingly, most of the elements that sustain passion are precisely the same ongoing practices that sustain quality of life in general. In particular, there are five practices I can describe that will help you sustain passion, regardless of your environment. Discuss these practices at length in my book The Rhythm of Compassion.

Engage in a Spiritual Practice

Ultimately, to sustain passion we need some kind of spiritual practice that helps us cultivate a strong center. Prayer, meditation, yoga, solitude, time in nature—regardless of the form your spiritual practice takes, it is essential to sustaining your passion. Without a spiritual practice we’re like a tiny boat without oars or rudder on the great turbulent sea of life. In fact, your spiritual practice is the most powerful tool you have for staying healthy—mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—amid the enormous stress and complexity of passionate work. When you find your passionate calling, complexity and challenges increase, and more is demanded of you on all levels. You need a place to stop to refuel and to replenish your energy and confidence. It is your spiritual practice that will sustain the courage and energy required for passionate work.

In the last several years, I’ve had the good fortune to do much of my teaching in a beautiful Benedictine monastery on the Hudson River in New York. I’ve grown very close to the monks at this monastery, and they have taught me an enormous amount about passion and spiritual practice. This is a vibrant working monastery where the brothers host thousands of visitors a year and lead hundreds of dynamic programs on spiritual development. These brothers are as busy as anyone who works and leads, yet they pray five times a day to cultivate a strong spiritual center. Having this center allows them to be present though each moment of the day. In a multitude of ways, I have witnessed their deep attention to each person, each challenge, and each stress. They have taught me that many present moments add up to an entire passionate life.

Practice Self Responsibility, Showing Up,and Being Real

The next practice is easy to describe but hard to do. So often we lose our passion in work because we’re hiding. What are we hiding? Well, to name a few things, we are hiding our gifts, our ideas, our enthusiasm, our boredom, our anger, our power, our originality, our disagreement, our failure, our success, or our exhaustion. The energy it takes to hide our real self steals vital energy from doing passionate creative work.

The degree of passion you sustain in your work is equivalent to how real you are. What does it mean to be real at work? It means that who you are at work is who you really are. In other words, there is no split between work and the rest of your life. There is a large component of personal responsibility inherent in this idea. A person who is who she is at work must take responsibility for the good, the bad, and the ugly without blaming others. A passionate person does not hide from herself or from the world. A passionate person shows up, beautiful mess and all, and generously gives her gifts to the world.

Rumi taught us this about showing up:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.⁶

Stay on the Next Growing Edge of Challenge

To sustain passion in our work we need to be honest with ourselves about when we are stale. Such stagnation can build subtly when we’ve found work that we’re passionate about. Because we love the work, we coast too long without stretching ourselves with vital new challenges.

In my own case, for instance, I am absolutely passionate about my work as a teacher and a trainer, but I have to stay alert for the dangers of becoming too comfortable. Some years ago, I noticed that I was becoming bored with my work. I was still helping transform people’s lives, but I wasn’t being transformed myself anymore. I realized that I needed to work much more deeply and for longer periods of time with the same students if I was to reengage with that sense of personal transformation. To that end, I created a yearlong spiritual growth training program that took people into the most fundamental questions about themselves and the nature of the human condition. I was, to put it mildly, challenged by this endeavor and found that my passion was reignited. After some years of doing this work I was so inspired by my students that I wanted to write a book about what I was learning. My inner witch said, “Don’t even try!” But I knew that writing was the next challenge I needed in order to keep growing and learning. As hard as it was, and still is, writing is now a rich part of what brings passion to my work.

Protect Your Inner Life

Like everything in life, passion has a shadow. The shadow of passion is called workaholism and burnout. Without the balance of an inner life, your passionate work is an empty shell. Sooner or later you will find yourself automatically going through the motions of an outer life that will lead to burnout. As someone who has experienced the shadow of my own passion—I am susceptible to both workaholism and burnout—I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that passion cannot survive without an inner life.

In her wonderful book A Woman’s Education, Jill Ker Conway— the first woman president of Smith College and a leading educa tional visionary—says this about protecting the inner life: “I wasn’t quite forty when I arrived at Smith and ran instantly into one of the major challenges of adulthood. That challenge is to protect and sustain the inner self while entering passionately into the complexity of one’s work. I was stressed. Not so much by all the public commitments but by the lack of solitude. I thought the Benedictine rule of work, prayer, and meditation saner than any other rule for life I knew, and I began to lose my zest for life if I couldn’t find some approximation of it.”⁷

Then Jill goes on to describe how she and her husband found a way to protect their inner lives: “Our life in Conway took place on snatched fragments of weekends, holidays, and summers. It revolved around creating a garden, hiking to enjoy the striking beauty of the natural landscape, poetry, which we read aloud to one another almost every evening we were alone, and music.”⁸

I use the metaphor of the breath to represent our need for both the inbreath of selfcare and the outbreath of giving our gifts to the world. To thrive on all levels, we need to find our balance of breathing in (caring for self) and breathing out (offering our best to life). We know our passion has turned into workaholism when we find we don’t have a life outside work anymore.

There’s only one thing to do at that point. We need to take that radically courageous first step of reclaiming our inner life. We need to start gardening again, or playing the piano. We need to take a silent retreat, go back to our dance class or our morning yoga. I’ve found that even a small dose of inbreath—a long hike, a beautiful dinner with friends, an evening of reading or music, an afternoon of silence—goes a long way to protecting the inner life. Our inner life doesn’t require a lot; it simply requires that we honor it.

Create Ongoing Support Systems

Last, and definitely not least, I want to mention the crucial need for creating support systems to sustain passion in our work. . . . The very essence of passion is the support with which you surround yourself. To meet the risks, challenges, and demands of doing passionate work, we first need the support of our family. Our partners and children need to be on our team all through the journey. This includes the phase in which we jump emptyhanded into the unknown, as well as the times when we have wild successes or dismal failures and are confused, elated, or overwhelmed. Our family needs to know why it is important for us to follow and fulfill our calling in life. We also need to support them in their doing the same. Passion, after all, is contagious.

Our family support provides us with an even deeper level of selfknowledge than we may be aware of. After all, the roots of our passion are in our own lineage. We may have a father who inspires superb negotiation skills, a mother who is the consummate team builder, a grandmother who was a genius at multitasking long before the word was invented, or a grandfather whose courage remains a vibrant and living inspiration. This lineage gives us profound insight into our passion. In our toughest moments we can go to back to our roots to find the strength we need.

We also need support systems among our colleagues and mentors. Such people are invaluable resources when it comes to talking things through, testing ideas, collaborating, obtaining honest feedback, and staying on the cutting edge in our chosen fields. I have been in a woman’s support group for over twenty years, and I am absolutely clear that these colleagues and dear friends have been an intrinsic part of sustaining my own passion. One of the most crucial things that your family and your collegial support system can offer is to let you know if you’ve fallen into the shadows of passionate work. They are there to remind you to protect your inner life.

Signing Up for Life

Some people come to their passion naturally and easily; such people are blessed. For others, there’s a crisis—a divorce or an illness— through which they recognize that change has occurred. It sounds glib, but at such moments one really does realize that life is short. The question that follows (What do I really want to do with my life?) can provide a powerful redirection. The majority of women, however, are in the poignant and difficult category. They’re going along well enough, but there’s no spark. The voice in their heads is soft but insistent: This is not what I signed up to do for the next twenty years of my life! What such people do in response to that voice makes all the difference in the world.

It takes a very brave person to leave her job or reshape it, especially when that carries her beyond a zone of comfort and security. It takes courage to push the envelope of what provides subsistence for our lives in order to go for something that is truly nourishing. Especially in this conservative era, few people are inclined to take such risks. I see many corporate women, in particular, who are sitting on their passion these days yet who want to reclaim their lives.

As leaders we are conditioned to think about what needs to change in the world and to take action. We know how necessary it is to take a stand in that external sense; but it is just as important that we take a stand with regard to our interior lives. Without that stand, we burn out, falter, or lose spirit, and our lives are less integrated and rewarding. When we touch our innermost vision of how we want to express ourselves on this planet, we release our life energy. This energy fills us with creativity and provides us with an innate ability to bring energy forth in others. In these trying times, there can be no greater thing we do for those around us.

Be still. Listen to your calling. Be brave. Find support. Take the leap. Bring others with you. The rewards will return to you many times over.

Manifestation

Yahoo! Flowing Waters...

Since doing the Empowerment Workshop, I find I am more attuned to the resonance of life – my life, the natural world, the people around me. The clarity triggered through 45 hours of concentrated work has released a stream that is flowing – running more smoothly from the source, moving towards the vision of what lies ahead. Yahoo! Flowing waters have ever been a strong personal image. For some time it has felt like I was sitting in an eddy gathering courage, energy and momentum to jump out into the current and go with it. The experience of the workshop has offered me the internal sense of power to set off with visions of my destination. I have a clearer picture of both my abilities and vulnerabilities. I celebrate both, and am excited to learn from this river on which I travel.

– Lisa Brukilacchio, Somerville, Massachusetts

A Little Bit of Faith

Based on your literature, the recommendation of a management consultant friend, and a little bit of faith, I decided to experiment with what looked like a totally different approach to furthering the development of my management style and personal growth. What I got from your course was something far beyond any of my expectations.

I have never encountered two such compassionate and warm teachers and healers in my life, which includes eight years of college and certainly hundreds of continuing education experiences in my work career as a manager. You are obviously both on a mission. The processes you have developed and honed are effective and insightful. Your wise and caring approach and genuine feeling of personal involvement in your work permeate the three days, and frankly catalyzed a dramatic enhancement of my response. As someone who over-intellectualizes most of work and life, I am not easily accessed or engaged on the emotional level. I was amazed at the way experiences during the workshop touched me in some places that evidently can be reached via routes around my brain. I did want you to know that in my estimation you have created a powerful and effective message and process.

– Dr. Paul Gertenbach, St. Paul, Minnesota

Hungry For More!

The change I have experienced in my life since the Empowerment Workshop is unbelievable. I don’t know if other people notice it as well, but I feel so much stronger, so much more capable. I can recognize my fears now as they arise in me, and then question their validity. For the first time in my working life I raised my voice at an insubordinate employee, it felt great. I have just completed writing a long letter to my parents discussing subjects I never dared discuss. It’s a lot of change, and I am hungry for more!

– Sisi Boskositz, Mt. Tabor, New Jersey

A Gust of Fresh Air

I’m not easily impressed. I tend to be a skeptic. I’ve spent time during three summers at the Omega Institute fro Holistic Studies. So I’ve seen ‘lots of workshops, ‘lots of people, many different things. There’s a lot of "stuff" out there that may seem wonderful at the time, and then you get home, and poof! it’s all gone. I’ve tried things like that, and ended up more frustrated than before. I’ve also been in therapy, it’s a wonderful thing, but hasn’t been able to help me move forward in certain areas as much as I’d like. So your workshop was a huge breath, a gust really, of fresh air. Wonderful! Some of the things I’ve been dealing with in both my choice of a profession – acting – and life in general started transforming for the better, maybe over the past year, but much of the work I did with you really clarified certain issues. I guess I started the process myself and the workshop carried it much further.

I continue to do the affirmations, (belief work) daily and have really seen them start working! I’ve been made aware of HOW much I stop myself. Certainly there is much negativity and lack of opportunity inherent in my profession – but I was amazed to see how much is my own creation! So, I’ll continue, upwards and onwards. Thanks so much for everything.

– Mindy Pfeffer, Astoria, New York

Reinventing Our Lives

My husband and I attended the Empowerment Workshop about ten years ago. It was a gift for my 40th birthday . . . and a life giving gift it has been. As a result of your workshop the following has happened: We moved from Maine to Chapel Hill. Our income has tripled. My husband loves his work. I translated my work into a 20-hour position at Duke University and won an award. I use empowerment in designing and conducting management development programs at Duke’s Medical Center. Despite struggles, we are reinventing our lives and our relationship in exciting ‘growing edge’ ways that make me feel incredibly lucky and blessed. Your workshop has been such a foundation of strength.

– Vicki Field,  Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Total Quality Management Meets Empowerment

It is about time to inform you, which I do with great pleasure, about what has happened since I finished my paper on the relationship between Quality Development and Empowerment. I used your book, along with others in the field of management, to develop a model you can use in organizations in which the process of "permanent improvement" and "keeping on the growing edge" go hand and hand. In my training programs for organizations I am finding excellent results using the empowerment model and tools I have learned from you. And so it seems I have begun to manifest a part of my journey which started when I met you in the Art of Empowerment in Holland. I am now not just thinking about, but doing the things that seem to have real meaning, and which help people grow.

– Connie Schijf,  Leiden, The Netherlands

Visions 7

Here are my final visions from the recent Seattle,Washington Empowerment Workshop. They are so powerful when all the seven life areas of Empowerment are worked with together.

Emotions: "I say what I feel and it comes from the heart."

Relationships: "My needs are met first so that I may help others."

Sexuality: "My Eros is my own."

Body: "I love my body and it shows."

Money: "My balance is my affluence."

Work: "My vision is a gift to follow and to share."

Spirituality: "Peace rests within me and I am one. I trust God.

– Kjell-Jon Rye,  Issaquah, Washington

Empowerment For Health

I am writing to ask your permission to present an adaptation of your core belief work at an international health conference to be held here in Vancouver. You can be sure it will be appreciated and shared throughout many countries. Your empowerment methodology plays a very powerful role in my work with clients and in my teaching. I have presented a kinesiology model of it to students six times in the last two years. This has been very well received by them. My life continues to blossom and bear precious fruits. You two are instruments of these blessings.

– Garry Gallagher,  Vancouver, B.C., Canada

The Learning and Growing Continues

My reason for writing this letter is to thank you both, for different reasons, for your research, wisdom, and efforts to reach out to people like myself with your teachings. My affirmations and visions still ring true every day. "I now am an excellent pilot", complete with my own plane. "The other side of perfect is me", and the struggle to really understand the depth of meaning of that vision is a process of constant growing for me. "Be congruent" is tough, because much of my learning process on this one is after the fact. The progress is that "after the fact " is now much sooner most of the time. And "I need to get serious about not being so serious" is still a big one in my life. So, the learning and growing continues. Sure is fun, isn't it?

– Daniel Leete, Homer, New York

Beyond Technical Expertise

A note to add to what I assume must be mountains of fan mail you must receive each time you do a workshop. As I told you the last night of The Art of Empowerment the didactic and experiential content of the workshop was absolutely terrific, and it still would have been worth the price of admission just to sit and watch the way you work with groups and individuals. There are group leaders who are technically adept and do a good job, and there are those, like you, who are truly gifted and soar beyond "technical expertise." Your spiritual practice informs every move you make, and since that is a primary component of my current "growing edge", I thank you for being the perfect role models just when it was most needed.

– Dr. Elizabeth Roebuck, Newton, Massachusetts

Viva la France

I attended your Art of Empowerment in The Netherlands. You will remember me as the Frenchman in that training. I got very valuable inspiration through your work and your personal example. As a trainer myself I have been using the tools I learned from you as well as the French translation of your book Empowerment in my six month training called The School of Life. I am finding the work on beliefs described in your book brings powerful results. I would like to stay in touch and keep you informed of my progress.

– Gilles Roy,  Villeneuve Les Avignon, France

Bringing Spirit into the Corporate World

Since most of my visions during the Art of Empowerment centered around having the courage and wisdom to bring spirit into physical matter within the corporate world, it seemed very appropriate to share with you the announcement of my new company, Shared Corporate Visions. It is my vision that the company encourages cooperation and respect within all levels of an organization by empowering, in the true sense of the word, employees to align their individual purposes and values through the process of actively creating their own organizational visions. I was able to clarify my spiritual path through the caring, insightful process which you provided in your workshops. May you be blessed as you continue to guide many transformational leaders to affirm their spiritual purpose as together we create a world of peace, truth, beauty, and trust.

– Sandra Brossman, Bezar Wayne, Pennsylvania

The Best Medicine

Its been years since I attended your workshop, just after I lost my husband and I was in a deep depression.It was the best medicine. Your inspiration and understanding had a major role in my eventual pursuit of a viable way to push on with objectives that had motivated us through almost forty years of marriage. At this stage you ought to have some credit for the continuing success of the War and Peace Foundation of which I am the Executive Director. As a Non Governmental Organization with an international following, we have become an inspiration and an educational guide for thousands who are working for a sustainable world. The War and Peace Foundation has had solid grounding stemming from our original association with the help of you two dear leaders.

– Selma Brackman, New York, New York

Empowerment in Action

What follows are four conversations with visionary colleagues. These interviews represent cutting edge applications of the empowerment model to facilitate healing and executive and organizational development.

Dr. Christiane Northrup is the author of the best selling book "Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom." She is co-founder of Women to Women Health Care Center, in Yarmouth, Maine, and she is Clinical Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Vermont College of Medicine.

Gail: When did you first do the Empowerment Workshop and how has it assisted your own life?

Chris: I first did the Empowerment Workshop in 1984 and it profoundly affected my life. It gave me a foundation of self trust that I needed to co-create my business Women to Women. I have no idea how I would have believed I could do this without the reinforcement of the empowerment model. I actually don't know how people go through their lives without knowing these principles of how the universe works. Otherwise you are a boat without a rudder.

G: How does it assist you as a doctor and a healer when a client has done the Empowerment Workshop?

C: When I know that somebody has taken the Empowerment Workshop I know instantly that we have a baseline shared language from which to start. So I don't have to reinvent the wheel as it were. This person at least knows the basic laws of the universe, the laws of manifestation, the laws of attraction. And then what I do is take it from there more deeply into the body. What I used to believe was that anyone who took the Empowerment Workshop would understand implicitly that their body was just an extension of all that they had learned. Unfortunately this is not the case. What I have found is that our entire society and our culture is set up from birth with the erroneous belief system that your body is something separate from the rest of your life. That is what I call the "medicalization" of the human body. It serves no one. The Empowerment Workshop gives a client the language of how we create our realities. Then using the language of science and psychoneuroimmunology I am able to take that client deeper into my own field. I can teach them how thoughts and beliefs literally become cellular tissue, and affect hormonal levels, and that sort of thing.

G: How does the empowerment model with the strong emphasis on the power of beliefs affecting the conditions of our life, and focusing on vision versus pathology facilitate the healing process?

C: I think actually on some deep level there is nothing else that can facilitate the healing process. First of all we have to believe that it is possible to be healthy. We have to believe that our baseline nature and essence is health. That all is well and that the body knows how to stay healthy and how to heal itself. And if we don't have that in place, we will be on an endless search for the drug, the next surgical procedure, the next health care practitioner with the magic bullet. When, in fact, the magic bullet in always within us. So I think the empowerment model reverses the paradigm of an addicted patriarchal culture. Your model insists on self responsibility, using on-going support systems, finding your own truth, and always bringing a person back to themselves.

G: Is there anything else you wish to add?

C: I would say that I have been profoundly gifted in that close members of my family, my mother, my spouse, and basically all the original founders of Women to Women went through the workshop. We founded that business on the basis of the empowerment principles. So I have seen, on a day to day basis, my closest associates and family members live in this way. This has created a base of support that has allowed me to make quantum leaps in my own life.

Tom Hubler is founder and President of Hubler Family Business Consultants in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tom is an organizational consultant who works exclusively with family-owned businesses to help them excel. He lectures internationally on topics of interest to family businesses.

David: Tom how has the Empowerment Workshop affected your life.

Tom: I told someone the other day that there are three things that have had a significant influence on my life in terms of my professional career. One of them was the Empowerment Workshop. I came out of the workshop with a burst of creative energy that I hadn't seen for quite a while. What it did was enable me to make the transition from working with an existing firm to establishing my own independent practice again. It became the philosophical basis of how I work with my clients.

D: How have you used the empowerment tools in your management consulting?

T: First of all in my own personal life I have continued to use the tools and what I have been able to do is convert them into a system of managing change. The key thing about empowerment is the vision part of it. Focusing on the seeds, not the weeds. I use it as a corner stone for how to manage change in both a family-owned business and my own life.

D: What is your reason for sending clients to the Empowerment Workshop?

T: It goes back to something you said that if you really want to have an empowered organization you have to have empowered people. I really believe that. What I am trying to do is create empowered family businesses and one of the ways to do this is to have empowered people in the organization. My goal is to create a core group of people who are empowered and who operate the business using the empowerment principles and focusing on vision. There is usually so much emphasis and pressure toward negativism, toward focusing on all the problems. In a family business there is usually more of this than an ordinary organization because of the overlap of family and business. What I want is to have people focusing on the vision People who have done the Empowerment Workshop create insiders if you will. People who better understand what the empowerment work I am doing is all about. These people can then become the leaders of the organization's future.

D: How have you seen this work?

T: It is almost like a miracle sometimes. There was a group of guys, and a sister, in turmoil. I referred them to the Empowerment Workshop and they came out really smoking. On an individual level they got their lives lined up around their gifts. This facilitated a solution for some of the major organizational issues and allowed two of the brothers to leave the organization and do other things which they really wanted to do.

Another business I am consulting with has four brothers, two over 60 who are twins, two in their mid to late 50s, who have had terrible times working together. Eight of their children work in the business. One of the first things I did with them is create a common family vision. I distinguish this from the kinds of visions and missions you would expect to see in a business from a strategic planning effort. For me the families values are an important part of this vision. This is a spiritual issue that needs to take them to their core as a family and as individuals. Whenever we have a meeting we start with reading the common family vision and then we state the prayer for loving -kindness. I created a one sentence statement out of their individual visions and each reads their vision and the other brothers concentrate on seeing their brother living this vision. Then they repeat the prayer of loving-kindness to that brother. We repeat this process until all the brothers have shared their personal vision. I have done this with several clients now and it is very effective.

D: That is beautiful work, you are helping them develop a spiritual worldview as part of the way they do their work. Is there anything you would like to say to someone working with the empowerment tools within an organization?

T: The thing I think is very important, which we have covered, is focus on their own vision and what they are trying to do. They need to understand what their gifts are, and how to use them in the work they do. The second thing is to get their clients to do the same thing. The metaphor for me is around my bee keeping. Bees pollinate the flowers and they create a blossom or fruit. And that is what I do. It's empowering the organization.

Diane Brown has a twenty year background in human services. For over a decade she has been the Executive Director of the Southern Tier AIDS Program in Johnson City, New York. She has a staff of twenty-six people, and twenty of them have attended Empowerment Trainings. Diane's primary interest has always been in serving those who are under-served by society.

Gail: When did you first do the Art of Empowerment training and how did it impact you?

Diane: It was actually two years ago when I, my deputy executive director, my director of client services, and a case manager did the training. We had started to look at how our organization could better help our clients with HIV and AIDS live better lives. We wanted to know what we could do to allow them to find what is possible in their lives. We wanted to shift our focus as an organization away from what wasn't working to what was possible. Of course, this is exactly what the empowerment model was based on. Personally I was just crying out to hear something like this. All of us came back from the training extremely excited about how well this would translate into the work we do with people living with HIV and AIDS, and the general values we hold within the organization. So we started to work with the model immediately.

I recall a situation where we were having some problems with a local clinic where one of my case managers was stationed. The four of us who had done the training came into my office and shut the door. What was interesting was that we started that meeting with the old way of thinking, listing all the problems we were having. We got through half a page and I said wait a minute, wait a minute. We just came back from the Art of Empowerment, we are going about this all wrong. We ripped it apart and said let's list how we want this to be. And in forty minutes, literally, we had our plans on the wall. It was unbelievable to me really. It took forty minutes to go from what are the problems, to how do we want it to be, and we had a plan worked out. I don't want to sugar coat this, and say it was all smooth sailing from there because it wasn't. But this is now how we do our work here.

G: So the emphasis in the empowerment model on shifting the world-view of an organization from pathology to vision was significant for your organization?

D: Yes, we took that principle and ran with it. We don't call our meetings problem solving meetings, we call them visioning meetings. Our work groups are focused on "What is it we want the organization to look like?" Within the leadership of the organization, we pretty much will not buy into the pathology model anymore. We constantly ask the question of how we want it to be.

G: How does the empowerment model support you in the actual work with people living with HIV or AIDS?

D: When we sit down with a client we do so with the idea of looking at what is possible for them in their lives. Our case managers strongly encourage clients to look at how they can make changes, and also help them understand how they can create their lives to feel more in control. We also run our groups this way. We have an empowerment group for clients with AIDS. I'd like to read you what one of our clients has written about this empowerment group: "It is not a twelve step program. It is more than a support group. It is a way to put yourself in control using the powers and abilities you already have and the new ones you can try. The group helps with direction. If you want to change part or all of your life situation, give us a try. Empowerment can help you change your life, improve your life, or understand your life. Every meeting has a different meditation, a different exercise for personal growth and understanding. Every meeting has caring people and is holistic with meditations, discussions, awareness building, support, discovery, development of inner strength, and CONTROL."

G: I understand you have submitted a proposal called Living and Working with HIV/AIDS: An Empowerment Model for Community-Based AIDS Organizations and People Living with HIV/AIDS to be presented at an international AIDS conference.

D: I haven't heard back about that yet. It's generally a very scientific conference, and the typical AIDS service model is not necessarily a positive model, so I am going out on a limb. But I have put it out there, and my vision is that I will be standing up there in Vancouver talking about Empowerment and AIDS. It's so important because people who work with AIDS are often burdened with hopelessness and helplessness as to what can be done. The epidemic is overwhelming, it's so big. But once they start to consciously, and I think consciously is the important word, look at themselves and help their clients look at what I can do versus what I can't do, something fundamental can change. (Diane presented at that conference and the model, and her successful use of it, were received with great enthusiasm.)

Dr. John Buchanan is founder of John C. Buchanan and Associates in Minneapolis, Minnesota. John is an independent consulting psychologist devoted to increasing individual and organizational effectiveness. His areas of special expertise include executive coaching, team development, and career and work adjustment counseling.

David: When did you do the Empowerment Workshop and how has it affected you?

John: I think it was 1987. I did it with my wife Joan. It was just a wonderful experience. Very different from things I had experienced in other workshops. Very freeing. What I most appreciated was the emphasis put on finding your own truth. The thing that was particularly important for me was clearing out limiting beliefs that I held onto without being aware of it. From that I went on to do many of your other workshops.

D: You are constantly sending clients to do the Empowerment Workshop. How does it help you in your work with them?

J: I do industrial organizational psychology and my work consists primarily of executive coaching. I also do some work with individuals and with groups of professionals like physicians or lawyers. I recommend people to the Empowerment Workshop so that they can better understand on a personal level how they are empowering and disempowering people in their leadership roles. To be a more effective leader or manager in their organizations they have to be aware of themselves as a human being, and see when they are disempowered or holding limiting beliefs. It's also important for them to become more aware of how their non-work life effects what they do in work.

I probably could do some of these things with them myself, but I think the workshop is such a powerful vehicle for them and provides them support by hearing other peoples stories. They always come back with insights and are more open to empowering other people. As they empower themselves they are more willing to create conditions in which they empower other people.

D: Is there any aspect of the Empowerment Workshop that you find particularly helpful?

J: Most of the people I send have never been exposed to anything like guided imagery or other ways of teasing out how they hold onto their limiting beliefs. I think the tools you present are helpful in allowing them to see their limits and how to transform them. It is a powerful piece of the work you do.

D: Is there anything you would like to say to someone who might be in your position wanting to use the Empowerment Workshop to facilitate their work as an executive coach?

J: When you begin working with an individual there may be some issues that require therapy, but they don't have time or won't do it; or their view of my coaching is to fix a defect. The Empowerment Workshop gets people more willing to take risks and open to learning and growing. They discover that learning is life long. It allows me a good jumping off point to have my coaching viewed as a process of learning and being on the growing edge. People learn that being human and effective means making their lives work both personally and professionally. It also helps them become more reflective so they can become more intentional in what they are doing.