Books in sync with nature.
Books in sync with nature.
Everything—Yes, Everything—Is a Gift (Eight Ways to Start Believing It)
An astonishing book by Steve Roberts teaches us how to appreciate and even celebrate adversity . . . from Alzheimer’s to alligators.
Pittsburgh, PA (November 2005)—Everything is a gift. Everything. Most of us have no trouble accepting the gifts life showers us with if they’re things like birdsong or great sex or a bountiful holiday table or a perfect snowflake. Other gifts, though, tend to challenge our role as gracious recipient. A diagnosis of cancer, for instance. A visit from the IRS. Genocidal maniacs. A mean-spirited boss who humiliates us in a meeting. If you’re spiritually inclined at all, you know in theory that with adversity comes growth . . . but how can you reach a place where you really live that belief?
Helping people like you answer that question is a big part of Steve Roberts’s mission in life. A self-described “strategist and mentor” for leaders and the author of Cool Mind Warm Heart: Adventures with Life’s Biggest Secret (St. Lynn’s Press, 2005, ISBN: 0-9767631-0-9, $15.95), he specializes in helping people gain clarity on what is essential—especially in painful times.
“I for one don’t believe there is any such thing as a crisis—except perhaps for not learning from what happens to us,” Roberts writes on his website (CoolMindWarmHeart.com). “But even that can be a blessing, for denial eventually causes such excruciating pain that we are obligated to consider a different choice, a choice that serves our innate desire to act with our mind and heart in balance.”
As Roberts says, “Pain is not punishment. Pain is the universe saying, ‘No, no, my child. Make another choice. You are much bigger than this. You are divine. Ultimately, you can make room for everything.’”
Scary words, indeed, for most of us pain avoiders! Questions that might spring to your mind probably resemble these: “So how do I begin to make spiritually healthy choices? How can I embrace life’s challenges as gifts? I am trying to learn . . . how can I learn faster?”
Steve Roberts offers a wellspring of insights all stemming from his personal understanding that the universe only appears frightening. In reality, it is playful, loving, and deep—which is precisely the spirit of his advice. As the back panel blurb on Cool Mind Warm Heart jokes, “If the Dalai Lama married Tom Robbins, their love child might write this book.”
In this spirit, Roberts provides delightfully unusual twists on experiences we thought we knew. He makes us laugh and cry and launch unprecedented gift-searches in our own lives.
Here are just a few hints, some embellished with snippets from Cool Mind Warm Heart, on how you can come to fully realize that everything is a gift:
• Ask yourself, “What do I really believe is the secret of life?” Moment by moment, with everything we do or say, with every choice we make, we are broadcasting our fundamental take on the secret of life. Such as: If you screw up, you’re dead meat . . . You can never be too careful . . . We’re all victims of circumstances beyond our control. If your goal is to join Roberts in the conviction he feels so strongly that he wrote a book about it, you need to know where your starting line is. Understanding our take on the secret of life is a lifetime adventure that continually helps us to become more resilient and peaceful.
• Commit to learning at the speed of fear. Roberts says that the biggest gift we get is the gift of choice, and the most important choice we make is love or fear. That’s not to say we should fear fear. Rather, we should honor fear. It is one of the greatest teachers on Earth and, ironically, it is the golden key that unlocks the heart. “Love blossoms as fear is released—and not released harshly as if we are expelling some demon, but released lovingly, with gratitude for all that the fear has taught us,” writes Roberts. “That’s all there is to being a healthy human being: Recognize fear, feel it, let it go, then attune ourselves more deeply to the love that fear has masked, the love that has always burned within us.”
• In the midst of loss, notice what you’re learning. Roberts’s mother and his father-in-law both died of Alzheimer’s. His mother-in-law now suffers from the disease. In Cool Mind Warm Heart he movingly describes his wonder at the way Alzheimer’s teaches us that humans can communicate at the most fundamental, heart-to-heart, essence-to-essence level. “My mother and I would sit together for hours without talking, and yet the ‘conversation’ we shared felt in my heart like the one we must have had when I was in her womb,” he writes. “I learned that if I gave up thinking or needing or wanting or judging and just showed up with an open heart willing to experience and participate in whatever might present itself, magic would happen.”
• Water-ski behind the ark. On his website, Roberts offers a poster that he describes as “more valuable than the Mona Lisa.” It depicts a rain-drenched Noah, water-skiing behind the ark, the animals on board cheering his performance. Under the image is the headline: Being Alive Is Knowing How to Celebrate. Water-skiing behind the ark, then, means celebrating in the face of adversity. “Celebration is not something we earn—like dessert after eating our peas,” he writes. “Celebration is actually the very essence of life. It’s what we must do all the time to have the life we want.”
• If you think you’re socially responsible, examine your motives. Social responsibility is less about changing the world and more about answering for ourselves: Who am I committed to being? “We are learning that when we ‘make the world a better place’ because we are angry, say, to pick a common motivation—what we’re doing as much as anything else is perpetuating anger,” writes Roberts. “And if that weren’t enough, we are learning that making friends with anger (one of the indispensable steps toward actually managing it) may be harder than quelling terrorism or feeding the third of the world’s population that goes to bed hungry every night. How many of us would rather chop off our hand than give up our attachment to righteous indignation? How many of us light a candle for the planet while we hate those goddamn polluters?”
• When you have the choice between spending Christmas with Christ or Hanukkah with Hitler, choose the latter. Don’t take the easy way out. Stretch yourself spiritually. Strive to be what Roberts calls a ruthless saint. “Ruthless saints are men and women engaged in a practice of deepening their attunement to the unconditional possibility of the universe,” he writes. “They are uncompromising in assessing the extent to which their life expresses that attunement. Given the choice of spending Christmas with Christ or Hanukkah with Hitler, a ruthless saint might opt for the latter, not because he or she feels that Hitler is God-like, but because lighting the menorah with the Fuhrer would oblige them to grow their love much more than singing Silent Night with the Prince of Peace.”
• Decide how you want to die. Write it down. When the space shuttle Columbia exploded in flight, killing all seven astronauts on board, Roberts found himself saying, “Man, what a great way to die.” Will you die doing what you love the most? Well, only if you live that way. So decide what you want most in life—deeply, passionately, and completely—and write it down. (A study at Ford Motor Company suggests that people who have substantial goals and write them down are 85 percent more successful than the rest of us.) “Whether I slip on a banana peel at the edge of the Grand Canyon or get eaten by a boa constrictor (Whadaya know, it’s nibblin’ my toe. Oh gee, it’s up to my knee . . .), I’ll be doing what I love most: becoming who I truly am,” writes Roberts. “The universe is sneaky. I can’t have the death I want without having the life I want.”
• Learn what it means to say “Yess!” to life. (And don’t mind the alligators.) “Yess!” appears on Roberts’s vanity license plate. To him, it is the single most potent word in all of language. It means to live from your heart or die trying. “Only when we say ‘Yess!’ to the astonishing array of possibilities inherent in whatever our moments present do we tap into ourselves at our best,” he writes. “Of course, it’s not the easiest choice to make, because the ‘Yess!’ I’m talking about comes only from our heart, the voice of our true self that unerringly leads us in the direction of kindness, even though the route may more than occasionally oblige us to tiptoe across a carpet of alligators before jumping off a cliff.”
Ahh, yes (Yess!), those pesky alligators. They are our reminder that pursuing an authentic, fully present life doesn’t allow much time for naps. They are the price of admission to a life of abundance. With disarming honesty, Roberts shares his own struggles related to living in a way that serves his heart’s most insistent desires.
No surprise his book closes with the words: “This is the point where the violins come in and I tell you that I’m actually becoming playmates with those ghosts named Penniless, Homeless, and Toothless. Oh sure, I still let myself be terrorized by them on occasion, but I’m grateful (usually) for all they teach me. Moreover, I’ve got my bride, my dog, and I’m following my bliss, laptop under my arm. See me strolling toward a windswept cliff overlooking the ocean and the rising sun”.
“Only, upon closer inspection, you’ll notice that I am actually tiptoeing across a carpet of alligators, for not too long ago the voice of my heart started whispering, ‘Yoo-hoo”.
Steve Roberts serves leaders by painting their portrait in words, helping them grow fresh insight to the meaning of their experiences—including the gifts of adversity—and thus answer ever more deeply what may be life’s most important question: Who am I?
Steve is also a strategist and mentor, helping leaders gain clarity on what is essential—particularly in painful times.
Steve is the author of Cool Mind Warm Heart, a collection of essays, stories, and photographs of stone sculptures he builds on his Vermont farm. His essays appear regularly in The Burlington (VT) Free Press.
Steve serves those who are willing to celebrate a remarkable fact about themselves: They are not remotely who they think they are. None of us are. None of us are that small. Our capacity for self-discovery is immeasurable
Steve can be found on the web at CoolMindWarmHeart.com.
Cool Mind Warm Heart: Adventures with Life’s Biggest Secret (St. Lynn’s Press, 2005, ISBN: 0-9767631-0-9, $15.95) is available at bookstores nationwide, major online booksellers, and at CoolMindWarmHeart.com.