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What Guidance is Trying to Reach You?

When on a summer retreat vacation, The Runaway Bunny book came to me in an unexpected way. What was the message, I wondered?

Halfway in, I came to this line:

“If you become a sailboat and sail away from me,” said his mother, “I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go.”

What might you be running away from or ignoring?  A call to a different job or career? A new relationship? An adventure? A scary ending or an unknown beginning?

Perhaps the mother bunny represents your intuition calling to you in quiet moments: your still small voice, your inner guidance. Or Universal Intelligence or the God of your understanding.

When I saw the picture of the mother bunny blowing the baby bunny in a guiding way, I thought of the term Holy Spirit because I recently heard that concept referred to as Holy Breath. Perhaps it’s the whisper in your ear.

Regardless of your spiritual or secular orientation, I think we can all benefit from the still small voice within for guidance in career and life. It calls us to what we may already know from our deepest wisdom. It is calling us to come home to ourselves and to peace. And by the way, after all that exploring and ignoring, the Runaway Bunny did return home as well.

Please keep my career counseling services in mind if you know any bunnies trying to find their way!

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A compass for decision-making – Inspiration from local musician

As a career counselor, I notice career wisdom all around me. This past Sunday, I was inspired by talented guest musician Brad Yoder at First Unitarian Church and received his permission to share some lyrics from his songs. Check out his songs and performance schedule HERE.

First an excerpt from his song Compass, pure positive encouragement and help with decision-making for career and life:

Deep down you know there’s a compass in your soul,

Telling you the way to go,

Deep down, it’s true, there’s a map inside of you, deep down…

The other song that spoke to me was As Easily as Birds. In person, Brad invited the congregation to sing what you’ll see as final lyrics, the positive ones about not giving up.  That’s the message that I wanted to share. Interestingly, when I listened to it on-line, those words were very much in the background at the end with the pessimism message much stronger. I guess that can be like real life.  We need to pay attention and listen closely to words of encouragement, our own and from others.  Positive messages can often get overshadowed by our own negative self-talk.

I had a dream and you were there,

We were both suspended in the air..

Flying wasn’t hard to learn,

We could rise as easily as birds..

But I know that’ll never be, oh, that’ll never be,

As anyone can see,

That we may fly when we dream,

But we wake up to gravity,

So that’ll never, that will never be..

And my favorite lines:

Don’t give up so easily,

You can’t see how far the ripples travel…

I’m glad to share a bit of Brad’s talent with you, helping ripples to travel. If you or someone you know is a bit lost with career direction and needs a little assistance to uncover the map inside, I’d be happy to help.

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Wisdom for Grads and Life-long Learners

When I started reading author Anne Lamott’s 2003 Commencement speech that made its way to my Facebook feed this month, I couldn’t stop.  Besides being thoroughly entertaining, I thought: what a fun and wise career counselor she would make!  I try to balance dreams and reality in my career counseling work, and like that she put some weight on the dreams side of the scale.

Here are two of my favorite paragraphs:

“I bet I’m beginning to make your parents really nervous — here I am sort of bragging about being a dropout, and unemployable, and secretly making a pitch for you to follow your creative dreams, when what they want is for you to do well in your field, make them look good, and maybe also make a tiny fortune.

But that is not your problem. Your problem is how you are going to spend this one odd and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over people and circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.”

Click HERE to link to Anne Lamott’s Substack and full speech.