I attended Ariel & Shya’s “Passion: Revitalize Your Life” workshop in January. While I was attending the workshop, my four-year old son, Milan, spent time with his dad over the weekend. When I picked him up from school on the Monday after, he was so completely joyful and confident, having discovered his new abilities: ice skating on a single blade, snapping and whistling. It was so inspiring to see him so full of life and I knew that he was truly connected into the magic that happened during the weekend Passion workshop.

During that evening, Milan and I were hanging out at home and he called to me across the apartment, speaking in his own dialogue of made-up language. I responded back to him in made-up language and we had the funniest dialogue, exploding with laughter. I was so amazed, because speaking in a dialogue of made-up language was actually an activity we did at the Passion workshop! I could truly see how tapped into me he was. I could feel how when I took care of myself and went for my life passionately and without reservations, that my son was directly linked discovering his own gifts and passions, too.

Later that night I made a call to a man I had been seeing – or actually not seeing much of – on and off for several months. After the workshop, I realized that I needed to talk to him because something was not right about the situation. It seemed there was more text messaging happening than live interaction. I pretended that some things didn’t bother me about him, but I was always left with subtle incompletions. I told him that we needed to be straight with each other, and that our dating situation wasn’t working for me the way it was. So he came right over to my apartment, and yes, we did get intimate – which is the way things were with us. But this time I think it was to see if it was going to keep us together. Normally, I would leave that part out about us being getting intimate, but that is what I’ve always done – shared some of parts myself and hidden other parts. I’d intentionally be vague in my storytelling so that it would leave people wondering. But thanks to a “slack-jawed moment of enlightenment” – a moment where I just saw what was without judging myself, him and the situation – I suddenly became clear-eyed. I saw that I was so distracted by his physical beauty that I’d forget about all the things that left me wondering about him, which I had been trying to piece together for awhile. When I was present and in the moment, I simply saw that it was not working for me and I that needed to let him go. So I did.

This is where transformation blows my mind. Who would know that by letting him go, that my connection to people, my passion, and productivity at my job would thrive! By the way, I work as a literacy/social studies coach for teachers.

Here are a few examples from work:

* When I prepared the agenda and materials for a workshop, one of the worksheets required setting up charts/tables. In the past , I alloted the entire evening to complete it – no joke. I completed the charts in 10 minutes!

* My supervisor announced that my picture was all over the school she visited and said that it really showed how involved I was working with students and it impressed the principal.

* Yesterday I was at the District Office and was suddenly invited to speak to the workshop with 50 participants and share my experiences working on a Virtual UN Social Studies project, which I facilitate.

* Today I was at a literacy workshop and the facilitator invited me up to co-present with him.

* I changed the clock on my computer this week, which has been 13 minutes slow for a very long time.

And actually, everything was slow in my life when I was not clear with myself and honest about what I wanted.

-Jodi A.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 8:20 pm and is filed under Business & Workplace, Communication, Dating, Intimacy, Productivity, Relationships & Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.