oads 1 VOLUME 1 - NO.1 Dear LifeLaunch Participant, Welcome to the InRoads, a quarterly publication for our LifeLaunch participants. This newsletter is a new initiative to support YOU in keeping your focus on what’s most important. It is our intention that this information will remind you to continue to deepen your inner dialogue and to help you step back from the busy-ness of your life, even for five minutes, to keep your commitment to live your LifeLaunch plan. Our commitment to understanding the nuances and changes in midlife remains as strong as ever. Now in our 20th year, we are beginning a new commitment to engage in study and research around the dimensions of the adult journey – specifically those mid-life transitions. We’d like to invite you into that conversation. So we’ll be tapping into your experience from time to time to complete an online survey, spend a few minutes in a phone interview, and perhaps engage in a few Bridgeline focus group discussions. We hope you take us seriously in our invitation to engage you in this ongoing dialogue. As always, we want this information to be useful to you. Please let us know what you think of the content that follows, and what you’d like to see us address in the future. Sincerely, Pam McLean, Ph.D CEO The Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara R In T he question of life purpose is in the air. All you need to do is go look at the bookshelves at Border’s or Barnes & Noble and scan the shelves and you’ll find purpose, soul and meaning are everywhere in the titles. This is no wonder, as we are searching for balance to the frenetic pace of our lives and the automatic default within our Your Past Holds Some Secrets to Your Purpose culture that is so skewed toward performance and continually emphasizes that happiness is derived through consumption. (Not to mention that our goods remain earthbound at the end anyway, from all reports, as we move into whatever the ending mystery of our life entails.) By John Schuster, LifeLaunch Team Leader, management consultant, coach and author of Answering Your Call
Transcript
oads
111
V O L U M E 1 - N O . 1
Dear LifeLaunch Participant,
Welcome to the InRoads, a quarterly publication for our LifeLaunch participants. This newsletter is a new initiative
to support YOU in keeping your focus on what’s most important. It is our intention that this information will remind
you to continue to deepen your inner dialogue and to help you step back from the busy-ness of your life, even for
fi ve minutes, to keep your commitment to live your LifeLaunch plan. Our commitment to
understanding the nuances and changes in midlife remains as strong as ever. Now in our
20th year, we are beginning a new commitment to engage in study and research around
the dimensions of the adult journey – specifi cally those mid-life transitions. We’d like to
invite you into that conversation. So we’ll be tapping into your experience from time to
time to complete an online survey, spend a few minutes in a phone interview, and perhaps
engage in a few Bridgeline focus group discussions. We hope you take us seriously in our invitation to engage you
in this ongoing dialogue. As always, we want this information to be useful to you. Please let us know what you
think of the content that follows, and what you’d like to see us address in the future.
Sincerely, Pam McLean, Ph.D
CEO The Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara
oads oadsoadsR R R R R In
The question of life purpose is in the air. All
you need to do is go look at the bookshelves
at Border’s or Barnes & Noble and scan the
shelves and you’ll fi nd purpose, soul and meaning
are everywhere in the titles. This is no wonder, as
we are searching for balance to the frenetic pace
of our lives and the automatic default within our
Your Past Holds Some Secrets to Your Purpose
culture that is so skewed toward performance and
continually emphasizes that happiness is derived
through consumption. (Not to mention that our
goods remain earthbound at the end anyway, from
all reports, as we move into whatever the ending
mystery of our life entails.)
By John Schuster, LifeLaunch Team Leader, management consultant, coach and author of Answering Your Call
I exploded the levees
of memory and recorded the
spillage as it fl owed through the
dry imagined streets of my life.
2
V O L U M E 1 - N O . 1
Yet all the good that high performance and
material well-being bring fade when put
against the eternal question of “What am and I
here for, anyway?”
At LifeLaunch, revitalizing purpose is a
key part of the work. The quest in key part of the work. The quest in
our lives for signifi cance is an
underlying assumption behind
all the work in LifeLaunch,
including pushing past the
boulders on the beach and
removing the barriers that
keep us from moving into
purpose with passion and
confi dence.
One key that I would offer to refreshing
your purpose – one that I think can be overlooked
if we are not careful – is your past. As you
remember your lifeline exercise, with its crazy and
unpredictable ups and downs, it is full of memories,
incidents and travails, “letting goes” and things
coming together.
This collection of memories is a storehouse of
images and messages that can unlock the door
into deeper meaning and purpose in your current
life. Reviewing them with skill and courage is part
of the work of keeping yourself on purpose in the
here and now.
Let me give you one modern literary example: Tom
Wingo, the main character of the popular novel of
20-plus years ago, Prince of Tides, at the beginning
of the story is mightily stuck, enduring a stale
marriage and joyless work. His only joyful role is
fathering. Due to his sister’s attempted suicide, he
courageously moves into a review of his and her
life to see if he can help heal both of them from
their ugly and beautiful past – ugly in its trauma
and beautiful in its sibling love, art, and the tidal life
of South Carolina shores and nature.
As he reviews his life he rediscovers the essence
of his life. Eventually, he is able to re-enter his
marriage with passion and his role as a teacher in
a way that sustains him, his sister and his family.
Here is the key summary of how he rediscovers
his purpose, the process he used to set him free
of the scripts and boulders that had invaded and
constricted his life: “I exploded the levees
of memory and recorded the spillage
as it fl owed through the dry
imagined streets of my life.”
A powerful image. The
levees of memory. The
blockage of the imaginative
waters that had led him to
a soul-less existence. It is a soul-less existence. It is
my belief as a coach who has my belief as a coach who has
helped hundreds of people with
purpose, that the levees of memory
are what keep people from their truest
imagination and purpose.
And the same can work for you:
o Review of your past, in dialogue with
loved ones and signifi cant others
o Journal in your daily internal dialogue
on paper
o Rekindle memories of your past in
conversations with your coach.
All of these are a source of new ideas and old
passions to re-vivify your life.
One caution, of course. If you have had enough
trauma, review the painful ones with a good
therapist. In Prince of Tides, the family was near
crazy, so he did his work with a therapist. I have
used a therapist for some of the deeper parts of
this work to overcome wounds. But by far, the
best and most substantive time I have spent with
myself and with clients, is by myself, with a coach,
or with my spouse as they help listen to what I am
discovering about my past that energizes my
purpose in the present.
In addition to great models, and skilled and
caring facilitators, the power of LifeLaunch stems
from the use of powerful exercises to re-engage
3
V O L U M E 1 - N O . 1
participant’s imagination. The tie of purpose to
imagination is a direct one. Remember your
LifeLaunch plan where you declared your purpose,
imagined how it would look, and devised the steps
to take, however preliminary, to move you closer
to the purpose you have re-discovered, or perhaps
have sensed for the very fi rst time.
Take your time with purpose. Laugh about how
even the greatest purposes devolve into tasks like
email and budgets. That is one of the Universe’s
great jokes on humankind. Mightily believe you
have one, or several, and they will take various
forms as you mature and encounter life. Purposes
reveal themselves in many ways, often showing up
as an insult to our ego and the very thing that your
soul needs.
In My Own Words: Eva Hirsch Pontes
Editor’s Note: We all come to LifeLaunch for different reasons. Yet regardless of why we
answered the call to come, there always seem to be some “a-HA!” moments that give us
that “lift-off ” to the next chapter of our lives. In their own words, here are the stories, of a
few of our LifeLaunch participants.
Eva Hirsch Pontes – Psychologist, executive and independent consultant in marketing.
Currently acting as Institutional Development Offi cer at The Coppead Graduate School of Business
of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; one of the top 100 business schools in the Financial Times full-
time MBA school world rankings.
I got started by fi rst dipping my toe into the water. I had been looking for the ways and means to combine my
experience as an executive in family fi rms involved in succession processes and my interest in psychology.
A Brazilian friend, who also attended HI, suggested that coaching might be a suitable possibility. There are
no certifi ed coaching programs in Brazil, so I chose a local program only as a fi rst step before committing
to an international certifi cation program. The experience with the program in Brazil proved to be quite
positive and I decided to pursue an international certifi cation.
I was deciding between HI and another certifi ed coaching program in the United States. I wanted the
opportunity to interact with other people, not just an online learning experience. Choosing a program
in the U.S. for someone who lives in Brazil is obviously a major decision. So, I thought I’d evaluate the
program through attending the prerequisite LifeLaunch program to see if I fi t with HI’s methodology.
Although I did realize I was offering myself an opportunity for refl ecting on my own personal and
professional choices, I did not have high expectations about the program itself.
Imagine my surprise! When I got to LifeLaunch, I liked it immensely. I felt at home from the very beginning
and even more so during the coaching seminar, with the theories and the HI methodology. That was
exactly what I was looking for.
“A-HA!” I learned I have different choices for the second half of my life. The boulders were very powerful. I was
so moved at learning what I was doing to myself. I would never let anyone talk to me that way – so how
could I do this to myself? One of my boulder voices was a hysterical one insisting, “I needed a cigarette.”
Other self-defeating voices were haunting me, too. Now, I know I can choose whether to listen to them or
not. And I don’t choose that for the second half of my life.
