How do you discover, nurture, and live in your passion? It’s not as hard as you may think! Below are 12 exercises to discover and re-connect with your passion and purpose. 
Let me know how these strategies work for you! Can you add to the lists?
With love and excitement,
Maria
BTW - This is an excerpt from my new book!
Passionate Leadership
We cannot talk about passion without including heart in the discussion. When we are passionate about something, we often proclaim, I put my heart into it. When we want to place emphasis on something, we touch our heart saying we speak from the heart. This implies a deep core connection, a heart connection. The heart center, the core of our being is where passion resides. When we tap into our passion and lead from that space, passion ultimately oozes out of every pore in our body. People know it when they see it. 
Passion is an attraction magnet. We are drawn to people who enthuse passionate energy. Because passion is so appealing, it is a great energizing force for leaders. Leveraging passion motivates teams, as has passion motivated the masses throughout history. Passion fueled the migration of Europeans to the new world, independence from oppression, voting rights for women, the civil rights movement, and environmental safety. Passion has taken organizations to unimaginable success like Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and Apple. We see passion demonstrated in great art. Passion is a differentiator. Passion is not complacency or conformity; it is a call to action.
When we think about passion from an individual level, we know we cannot not do whatever it is we are passionate about. Our minds, hearts, and bodies must fulfill the burning desire of passionate. To our passion, we are driven to say, YES! We may be able to put it off for a while, but it burns like a continuous flame inside of us until we extinguish it. The only way to extinguish our passion is to fulfill the destiny inside of us or die. Passion must be lived if we are to realize our authentic self. Passion drives and motivates us to come into fullness of presence and defies time and space through the lasting effects of legacy.
On Thursday, I will outline 12 steps to discover and re-connect with your passion.
With love and passion,
Maria
BTW - This is an excerpt from my new book!
Leadership Power Tool - Perception Shifting
I love the story of Plato’s cave! The shadows of the people outside the cave, distorted images from the fire flames, created a dark reality in the recesses of the cave. What dark reality exists within the confines of the caves of our mind?
Thoughts are powerful; they are the seeds to ideas, beliefs, creativity, attitudes, knowledge, wisdom, and reality. Thoughts can be our best friends or our worst enemies. Not by happenstance do thoughts come to us, these powerful seeds come to us through choice. Choice and thoughts are action movements directed by us whether we are conscious of these activities or not. The key lies in awareness of these two incredible gifts.
Negative self-talk are weeds that have grown in our minds. You know these voices, since many of us have cultivated these over years and decades: 
Sound familiar? We could probably add to the list with little effort! Often these voices are steeped in fear, anxiety, doubt, guilt, and shame. Our behaviors are a reflection of our beliefs. If we believe the negative self talk, how it that manifested in our behavior with ourselves and with others? Do we find that we become stuck, unable to accomplish that goal or unable to overcome our fear of something or someone?
Perception shifting is one of the most powerful lessons for leaders. Perception responses are deeply ingrained in our realities and are foundational to the way we think, see, believe, understand, and behave in our lives. In Thursday’s blog post I will share with you some activities to help exercise your perception-shifting muscle.
With love,
Maria
Intentional Leadership
For many, intention is defined as a motivation, a drive, or an ambition to succeed. It can be a demonstration of force, determination, or your immutable will to attain or accomplish something indicates that you have a firm intention. These are examples of our Western mental model of intention. A deeper understanding of the power of intention, described by Carlos Castaneda, suggests, “In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link”. This is not a model of perseverance or a mindset where only the fit (determined) survive, but a realization, again, of the connection to each other and to our Source, God. What this model of intention describes for us, as leaders, is that we are not alone in this organization, community, country, or even universe: but we are together, linked to the energetic force of intention.
Why is intention crucial to our leadership? It is the purpose, the why we are here, our belief in something greater than we are. Intention is how we derive meaning. In order to create a vision for our companies, or even our lives, we must first ask, why? Tapping into the power of intention requires clearing space in our minds and allowing and trusting our intuitive insights to flow.
Here are some exercises you can do to lead with intention:
Knowing your values helps bring clarity to what is meaningful to you. Identify ten important values. Narrow the list down to your top five and write a sentence or two explaining what the values mean to you and why they are important.
Look at your calendar and review how you spend your time. Do the activities on your calendar align with your values? If not, why?
Create a mind map on a clean sheet of paper, in the center of the paper write, “My purpose for living this life is…” and circle it. Now draw lines out from this circle with as many ideas that flow into your head and heart and draw circles around each one of those words or statements, always connecting the circles with lines to the center circle of your purpose for living.
Using the above information you have developed, write a purpose statement, including the activities involved in achieving that purpose, people necessary to support you, and the value you provide to others.
Enjoy the process and see what you discover!
Let me know what you unearth.
With love,
Maria
What Does a Love-Based Leadership Organization Look Like?
In an LBL zone, love of Self, Source, and Others are present. We live the words so the words may live. People want to go to work, meaningful work in an LBL zone. A paradigm shift occurs in an LBL zone, where we discover a new way to do business based in part on ancient and traditional wisdom. In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran described work in what could be an LBL zone:
It is to weave the cloth with threads from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. 
When LBL is practiced in organizations, several characteristics are present. The organization is fertile ground for knowledge creation, a learning organization. Power is shared, as is ownership of the work. Significance and celebration of others is ever-present in an LBL organization, adding to a meaningful work experience. A holistic approach to life, work, and spirituality is a way of life for those leaders practicing LBL, because LBL leaders honor themselves, their Source, and those with whom they work.
How would you describe a Love-Based Leadership organization?
With love,
Maria
Leadership Fear
We recognize there is only a limited amount of (money, people, projects, resources) and we will do anything to make sure we got most, if not all of it (money, people, etc). We tell our people they are important and they believe us because they are incapable of making any decisions on their own. We are the best because we said so. 
I was exploring the devastating effects of fear with a client recently and thought it may be appropriate to share an excerpt from my book, Love-Based Leadership: Transform Your Life with Meaning and Abundance. This piece describes what fear in an organization looks like…
“Increasingly, fear dominates our societies and most of our organizations. But you cannot fight fear directly. It is only possible to gradually supplant fear as the dominant emotion in our system of management by building respect, appreciation, and legitimacy.”1 LBL doesn’t look like fear, doesn’t smell like fear, and doesn’t walk like fear. “Perfect love drives out all fear.”2 LBL doesn’t just proclaim that people are important because it says so on the mission statement posted on the wall. LBL leaders do not say one thing and do another. An organization where LBL is not practiced is secretive: a fertile ground for non-truth. An organization without LBL is steeped in office politics and scarcity thinking. Information is not shared, it is hoarded. There is no sign of spirit. The focus and vision of organizations where LBL is not practiced could read:
“Too often managers and their organizations lose touch with their essence. This is true despite the growing evidence that companies with core beliefs and values that transcend the bottom line are, paradoxically, more profitable over time than companies that focus only on making money.”3
What are some other ways you have seen fear demonstrated?
In fearlessness,
Maria
Sources
1. Peter M. Senge, “Commentary.” Reflections, 2005, 6(2), p. 17.
2. 1 John 4:18 Holy Bible, King James Version
3. Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras, quoted in Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, Leading with Soul, p. 41.
Delays in Leadership, Love and Life
As I started preparing for the day, I read this statement:
I let go of anything and everything that could delay my good in any way.
Hmmm…
Of course, as I so often do, I contemplated how this might apply to leadership.
Leadership is the action that motivates people toward a vision. Therefore, if the vision is the “good” in the above statement, we need to ask ourselves, “What gets in the way that could cause delay of achieving your vision?” In other words, what no longer serves you?
We discuss this topic a lot with our clients. It is a great exercise to stop and check-in with yourself regularly, asking, what no longer serves me?
Some possible delays to our good or vision may include:
Once you’ve identified what gets in your way of achieving your good or your vision, it is time to let it or them go. Time to move into action, ridding yourself of anything and everything that gets in your way. This is the time to start exercising your backbone instead of your wishbone. You are the architect of your life, the author of your book. This is not a dress rehearsal. If you don’t like what you see…change it!
What gets in your way, delaying your good, or your vision?
In love, and without delay,
Maria