You can count them, or list them, or whatever you want, but the most important is to notice them and how you feel when you do.

Seth Godin

It’s the same as the austerity reaction to the budget problems across the world. The clenching fists seize into tight balls with thoughts of ironically never-ending scarcity.

How are you investing in yourself and your business?

At one point I started celebrating lent as a way of formalizing my grief over my dad’s death. (He died at the end of Holy Week, just before Easter, 8 years ago. This date relative to the religious calendar is more about his life than mine. But that’s another story.) Otherwise, I found I would suddenly be cranky and irritable and only days before the anniversary of his death would I realize it was that time of year.

Anyway, part of some traditions anoint people with ashes on Ash Wednesday and say something like,”From dust you come, and to dust you shall return.” This to me is one of the most powerful insights we can live in the presence of.

Even from a scientific perspective (which I value) I know I’m made up of the same stuff that makes up the universe: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on. The bits that make me were elsewhere before there was a “me” here and they will disperse again when I’m gone. (In fact, even as I live the cells themselves are constantly dying and being replaced while elements such as those named constantly flow into and out of this body, maintaining more or less the same relative proportions, if I’m healthy.)

I am dust, and I will return to dust.

In the meantime, how amazing it is that, borrowing from George Wald, I have acquired consciousness and can come to know myself: I am hydrogen learning about myself when I read a book about water. Wow!

The daily drama subsides in importance when I remember the Big, Big Picture. How important is what you think of me, if I am lucky, chanced into consciousness? What if I remember I’m alive and what a hoot — what a miraculous and wonder-filled hoot — that is?

Living and knowing it is amazing and wonderful and beautiful that you are alive, that life even exists, that is living.

“Surely this is a great part of our dignity . . . that we can know, and that through us matter can know itself; that beginning with protons and electrons, out of the womb of time and the vastness of space, we can begin to understand; that organized as in us, the hydrogen, the carbon, the nitrogen, the oxygen, those 16 to 21 elements, the water, the sunlight – all, having become us, can begin to understand what they are, and how they came to be.”
(George Wald, quoted in: Philip Ball, Life’s Matrix: A Biography of Water, June 2000, p. 3)

These are desires, not goals. (And no, I’m not about to beat you over the head with SMART goals.) They’re lovely in their own right, but they don’t have the gas to get you where you want to be.

“I will grow my business to double its current gross revenue (a number I already know) by November 2012.”
“I will achieve my ideal weight before my 40th birthday.”
“I will choose to do one thing every day that contributes to making me happier from now through the end of March.”

While these statements are far more specific, their real power comes only once there is commitment to them. A quote often attributed to Goethe but actually by W.H. Murray states it most elegantly:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

I’ve seen this principle at work in my clients’ lives and even in my own. Can’t seem to get my running shoes on for a while, then I register for a race: I’m out the door easily. A client wants to start a new business but hems and haws anxiously. Create an accountability to get a new client (the first) and two days later, an email greets me announcing the client has been found!

If you really want what you say you want, create a real goal with a finish line and get cracking.

So here goes:

Day Five Dare: I dare you to be imperfcet!

Today, you get to show up as imperfect, or messy, or still learning and live to tell the tale. We tell ourselves we fear failure so much and then make up that any little imperfection equals failure.

Sometimes dotting every i can serve to reinforce the idea that you’re only worthy to draw breath because you dot the i. Today, you get to stand in your worth even with an undotted i! Will the world end and come crashing down? You’ll find out.

So make a typo, arrive a few minutes later than your usually early time, toss out an idea that’s not fully formed, wear clothes that don’t match, come up short of change at the check out or skip brushing your teeth. Do (or don’t do) whatever will let you try out just being, not trying so hard and accepting that you’re fabulous even if you’re not Hollywood perfect (as opposed to human perfect, which you already are with all your imperfections).

Go to the Being Daring Facebook Wall where all the action is and post what you plan to do, and come back with how it goes!

I’m not just talking about if someone asks for help, I mean even if someone doesn’t. If someone asks you for a quarter today, give ‘em a dollar. Today’s about giving it away, not clutching to everything we have and are as if we’re always about to run out of it.

Be generous with your money, your time, your expertise, your enthusiasm, your attention, your smile. What the heck, you can even be generous with your right of way as you drive (radical, right?).

Go to the Being Daring Facebook Wall and name three things you plan to focus on being generous with or about today. Then come back later and share how it went.