Blog Evolution

I have updated the descriptive header of this ongoing blog to better reflect my current perspectives on the purpose of my entries and the intended dialogue.

The title, "Toward Authenticity," remains the same, because the journey itself has not changed. I am committed to ongoing growth in self-awareness and utilization of my talents, to ensure that I remain discerning of any tendencies to "keep up with the Joneses" or make choices just because other people or conventions declare that I should. As I sojourn, my hope is to encourage others to gradually abandon their false selves and more fully unleash their authenticity.

Formally, I listed that this blog was an effort to integrate discussions of "spiritual formation, leadership and the arts." That was a worthy three-fold focus, I believe, and hopefully on occasion I have pulled off such a marriage.

However, as my thinking has evolved, I have come to understand that what especially compels me to write blogs is an awareness of how so many of life's moments are chock with coaching insights; open windows for being coached and coaching others. These insights, as I blogged about a few weeks ago, especially are found when seven key spheres of life are synthesized as intentionally as possible: Art, Learning, Recreation, Relationships, Service, Spirit and Work. "Spiritual formation, leadership and the arts" certainly compose a great percentage of these spheres, so I am expanding my writing focus here rather than simply changing it.

Recently I looked across my blog's two-and-a-half-year history and found that when I first began, entries were few and far between. Now, if I let a week go by between entries, I feel off-kilter. Blogging begets blogging, just as deep conversation unfolds even more layers of meaningful dialogue. Conversation itself becomes change.

And so I compose these blogs as a coach, writer and speaker who is enthralled with the power of words to equip, encourage, inform and motivate others. I have realized that my professional endeavors revolve around leveraging words to in some way coach others--to elicit new insights so they might change their thinking, and hence their behavior and hopefully their results toward whatever goals they have set. And through this forum, I hope others might more fully see how the seven spheres are pregnant with epiphanies, how life itself becomes one unfolding coaching session if we are paying attention.