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    Anthology for Living: Volume One
    Anthology for Living: Volume One
    Anthology for Living: Volume One
    Ebook155 pages1 hour

    Anthology for Living: Volume One

    By Callan McDonnell

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    About this ebook

    Anthology for Living reveals A-Z life lessons that will help you live the best life possible.

    Callan McDonnell, a life coach and the founding director of the Centre for Applied Leadership, Learning, and Narratives, begins with the letter Afor Awarenessand works all the way to Z for Zeal.

    Other themes include courage, discovery, fear, generosity, and possibility. At the end of each theme, youll be asked five questions that will help you dig into the inner workings of your life and how you think. The author encourages you to:

    pay attention to the desires you fulfill instead of focusing on what you dont accomplish;
    postpone judgement for as long as possible so events or people do not have to conform to what you already believe; and
    align what you are good at and love doing with what the world needs.

    Whether you choose to read through this book of lessons one story at a time, all at once, or with a friend or partner, youll find these insights to be a source of inspiration and a reminder that we should all enjoy our journey to the fullest.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBalboa Press AU
    Release dateJun 12, 2018
    ISBN9781504313230
    Anthology for Living: Volume One
    Author

    Callan McDonnell

    Callan McDonnell is the founding director of the Centre for Applied Leadership, Learning, and Narratives, which specializes in transforming the stories of individuals, teams, and organizations. He uses a narrative coaching approach along with other modalities to show people how to move forward with new stories and let go of limiting stories that no longer serve to fulfill their potential. He lives in Brisbane, Australia, with his wife and two children.

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      Book preview

      Anthology for Living - Callan McDonnell

      Copyright © 2018 Callan McDonnell.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Balboa Press

      A Division of Hay House

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.balboapress.com.au

      1 (877) 407-4847

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

      ISBN: 978-1-5043-1322-3 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-5043-1323-0 (e)

      Balboa Press rev. date: 06/11/2018

      Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      1.     Awareness: Negative Space

      2.     Belief: Suspending Your Disbelief

      3.     Courage: Scheherazade

      4.     Discovery: Looking Out For A Hero

      5.     Existence: Becoming A Signal To Life

      6.     Fear: The Monster Under The Bed

      7.     Generosity: We Are One

      8.     Happiness: Follow Your Bliss

      9.     Imagination: Imaginary Friends

      10.   Joy: Chasing Happiness

      11.   Knowledge: Staying Inside The Boundaries

      12.   Life: Life Hacking A Good Life

      13.   Mindset: What Are You Thinking?

      14.   Nostalgia: Go To Your Happy Place

      15.   Openness: Feel The Feelings

      16.   Possibility: Seeing The Patterns

      17.   Questions: Tuning In

      18.   Resilience: All In Good Time

      19.   Sadness: The Narrative Of Loss

      20.   Transformation: The Guardians

      21.   Understanding: Distilled Experiences

      22.   Vulnerability: The Shame Of It

      23.   Wisdom: This Is My World

      24.   X-Factor: The Lure Of The Elusive

      25.   Yearning: Something’s Missing

      26.   Zeal: The Shrine Of Your Life

      Conclusion

      About The Author

      To Alanah and Luke who have made my story extraordinary and Deb for sharing her story with mine.

      Acknowledgements

      A tremendous amount of effort goes into writing a book, but before a book can even have its genesis, there need to be believers. My particular thanks to Michelle Daley, Mary Jane Cormack, Allison O’Brien and Jill Brennan for their support, advice and belief in these stories. Deep gratitude to the loyal tribe of readers who followed my blog and sent me comments and feedback that grew my own belief that this book was waiting to be formed.

      A man who has been with me since I was in my early 20’s is Joseph Campbell. Although he never knew me I have loved getting to know him through his books and archival video footage. He has been a mentor to me, teaching me about this wonderful, heroic path we all get to travel. It’s the symbol of the hero that runs through most of my stories in this anthology. How life transforms us and we in turn transform life is what being a hero is all about. Mr Campbell gave me a grander metaphor to which I can pitch my life and find meaning in the experience of being alive. I hope these stories do something similar for everyone who reads them.

      Thanks too to the team at Balboa Press who have supported me through the process of publication.

      Introduction

      I have always loved stories. Listening to the stories people tell about their lives; reading novels and biographies; watching films that display stories—it all appeals deeply to me. I think stories are a currency we use to exchange an understanding about the world and ourselves. As humans, we transact through stories.

      When I skilled myself up as a coach, I eventually discovered the world of narrative coaching which is a transformative process that assists people in recognising the language they are using to inform how they position themselves in their lives and the world. If you want to live out a different story for yourself you need to start telling yourself a new story and narrative coaching works on just that—creating new stories.

      In my coaching practice, I started to focus on personal stories and recognised how we all, at times, adopt a mindset that places limitations on our potential. As a leader in an organisation, I saw time and again remarkable people who restricted the possibilities for themselves and the work they did purely because of how they thought about themselves or their work. Once you can help people move to a position where they are aware that they are the thinker of their reality, you activate a new power within them.

      Then I started to write stories that I saw as thought provokers—pieces of writing that might get people to see an aspect of life from a new perspective, or perhaps start to better understand how they positioned their thinking in relation to that idea. The stories grew in popularity, and people started sharing these short essays with their friends. This then evolved into a blog where I would publish a story each month and subscribers could get a reminder of the power of their thinking.

      It occurred to me that my stories could be collected together as a sort of guide where someone could read just one or two stories at a time as a pick-me-up, or as a means of reconnecting to a greater sense of themselves, or as a reminder of how they are choosing to make meaning in their lives.

      There is a release of burden that can be experienced when we are reminded of the shared aspects of our humanity. Activating a new awareness in people when they think about their humanity from a new perspective is a powerful way to release potential in people. I like to think that these stories may help a little in this regard. No matter our situation in life, we all share times when we explore what it means to be human—as do these stories.

      The Anthology for Living is really about asking questions that help you live the best life possible. Each theme is described through a story and is followed by a set of five questions that might help you to dig into the inner workings of your life and your thinking processes. I have found that asking questions that explore the mysteries of who you are and how you think life operates will allow you to discover an inner life as large and unchartered as your imagination can tolerate.

      You can use this book in a number of ways. You could read through it one story at a time, savouring the awareness it activates in you. You could share the stories with your friends or partner, and together you can explore how each of you thinks, thereby expanding your understanding of one another. You could choose to read the book in one steady run; grasping the full arc of human experiences contained in this anthology. For some of you, you might like to just do a random pick from the contents page, selecting a theme that appeals to you in that moment, and explore your thoughts in relation to that idea. It’s entirely up to you to make use of the book in a way that works for you.

      My hope is that The Anthology for Living becomes a valuable resource in your life that you can turn to for inspiration, support, or as a reminder that this human experience we share is a wonderful, wonderful mystery that is constantly evolving us into new levels of awareness.

      Enjoy your evolution.

      Awareness:

      Negative Space

      I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

      —Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, Artist

      I turned fifty. It’s a milestone birthday, right? It’s meant to mean something. Prior to this event, I was doing a fair amount of reflection on what I wanted it to mean for me to reach half a century. In so many ways, it’s just an arbitrary number that has little significance. It’s only the story you associate with the age of fifty that makes you feel something about your identity. Regardless of the number, I am the thing I choose to believe I am.

      I was reading what other people said about turning fifty and came across a description of ageing as being similar to moving through a house with many rooms. The older you get, the more rooms there are that are shut away from you—rooms you will never need to go back into and rooms you can never go back into. I found it interesting that ageing was often described as what was no longer available to us—what was lost or diminishing. Whilst I can see that point of view, I experience something quite different too.

      This got me thinking about how we look at situations and how we can lock into a view that life is either positive or negative. It’s the endless duel of opposites. It’s either this or that, right or wrong, happy or sad, or good or bad. I think our minds must default to this binary view of life. We are something, yet we are also not something. The perspective we take on this can make all the difference.

      In coaching, I

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