My day started with a strong feeling that my chest is filled with Big Love that pours out upon everyone and everything. The well of my love renews itself naturally. The love is easy and generous and inclusive. I even feel love and acceptance for myself.

At first I thought the source of this infinite gift was happiness. However, everyday there are experiences that are both pleasurable and painful. Not all the things I do are easy nor do they always create a feel-good moment, but — they are rooted in good intention and hard work. And not everything I see or read, is kind and happy. Though I draw strength from Mary Poppins as a leadership role model, I am wise enough to know that the world is not to be viewed through rose-colored glasses, and leadership does not candy coat the reality or let the pain turn into fear, force, or frozen. Life is not always easy or fair; but I can choose my response.

So, from where does this powerful source of love come? Self-care and self-love. Balance in all directions – physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. Making peace with my history and letting go of the triggers that reflect my past and not my future. Friendship and meaningful work. These are some of the reasons why I have access to that which that fills me each day, and which I share with everyone I meet.

I am finding that age has the benefit of perspective. This morning my awareness gifted me with the understanding that it has been my formative life experiences, along with the people involved, that have contributed to who I am and who I am becoming still. Not all of these formative life experiences have been happy. It has been from the most painful experiences that I have grown. I am grateful that I did not grow armor but instead have learned to open my arms and hug the hardship; and to find the lessons that go with growing through the challenge and difficulty.

I have not always been able to do this. Often I spent hours, days, and even years revisiting experiences, trying to fix a situation. Many times, I have learned, there is no fix of human situations or human beings. As frequently as I have said and heard the statement, “You can’t change anyone else, you can only change yourself,” I have remained confident in my skillfulness and dedication to fixing.

This, too, is being released to the world. I retire from fixing. In doing so, I have found an ability to be more present. My letting go of trying to improve every situation and relationship I am in is not giving up or abdicating any responsibility. It is instead a loving acceptance of what I can change — and that is me. I accept the full responsibility for me. I will contribute to helping to create the best outcome for everything I touch. I accept that it does not always work out so easily or happily (and yet there is always something to learn).

So now, this is my real understanding this morning. (And I admit that I always seem to take too long getting to the real focus in making my point). Life is the teacher. Live events are the most meaningful teachable moments if you are open to grabbing them and exploring what is to be learned. It is in embracing the formative events of your life from the past and in your now that you may find your deepening.

My source of Big Love started while I was helping a friend look for her lost dog. I found a starving, formerly beaten large dog that had been abandoned on an industrial plot and decided I would rescue him. Making that commitment to his well-being brought challenge, change, and a deep relationship into my life. In his passing this past January I was forced to make one of my life’s most difficult decisions and let him go with grace. The tears still flow today.

It was in the confidence of extending my life to him that I made the second commitment to my mother. And she too was ‘rescued’ to live her last days (that turned into a year) with us in a little cottage.

Both of these commitments and the stretching they required deepened me in ways that I could never have imagined; and the affects remain. What I learned, and who I needed to grow to be to respond to the commitments, contributed to my learning how to live big, and I have become a better me. My well of love was filled by Big Boy’s and Betsi’s example of living when living is not easy.

Here it is nine months after Big Boy’s passing and four year after my mother’s death and our little cottage is filled with an aging original dog, Buddha Bear, and a new French Bull Dog puppy named Crook. Buddha Bear remains a teacher and guide and Crook brings curiosity, play, and fresh perspective into our household. New life lessons rain down upon us and more space in my heart is created.

As a teacher, coach, and learner I am going to embrace that life is a good teacher and that our lives can be good food for our lessons. I will continue to recommend books for a good read and frameworks that make sense of work and life challenges, but you might find me using life as the food for our soulful work of becoming the best individual, leaders, managers, parents, spouses we can be.

• What are your life’s most formative experiences that contribute to who you are and who you are becoming?

• What are you experiencing right now that is stretching and growing you in ways that contribute to your life and work?

• What from your experience or the observing of another person’s life challenges help to fill your well of empathy, compassion and thoughtful understanding?

• What is painful to you that you can mine for the lesson and then let go of the pain?

I celebrate that I am still learning and share this journey with you!

Leslie

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“The purpose of life is not to be happy;

It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate;

To have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson