Meeting our neighbor reminded me that now is a good time to ask these personal “global positioning” questions:

1. What if the story I tell matters and is, in fact, shaping my future in ways I cannot imagine?

2. What if my subconscious mind is hanging on my every conscious and unconscious word and thought; ever ready to make these true for me?

3. Do the beliefs I hold about the world and myself feel like terra firma or quicksand?

I saw him impatiently digging; a four-foot Sierra drift and ice impounded his snow blower. He noticed me and said that he wouldn’t need to do this if he had elevated the equipment before the storm. We introduced ourselves. Gregg quickly shared that he is out of work and has been so for two years. He had worked a Physical Education Teacher, Coach and School Principal and private tutor for autistic children. He had been certain that his education, experience and years of service would have kept him employed. At 53, in the U.S. 2011, he finds his once confident career impounded by the economic storm. His expertise and experience seek new relevance and value. He said that friends are telling him to read “The Secret”.

Anyone going through this sudden and prolonged lack of belonging in a career, vocation or profession will never be the same.

What happened to our future?

In an improv moment I watched him shovel and wondered if I too have resources buried and frozen under the snow and ice of my own habits and beliefs. Is there any “path making” potential that I might elevate in my life?

I can work with that metaphor.

Now is the moment we have to embolden and revive ourselves as resource to re-story and re-pattern our thinking and our lives. Tuning out the relentless media blizzard of fear as our collective story helps.

It could be that one “secret” is to walk more often and consider everything as a possible metaphor for the next move in the game of my life.

“…admit that once you have got up from your chair and opened the door, once you have walked out into the clean air toward that edge and taken the path up high beyond the ordinary you have become the privileged and the pilgrimthe one who will tell the story…” David Whyte