December 2011
64 posts
Day 35(C): Reprogramming Self-Talk
I was stuck in destructive patterns for much of my adult life. I stayed in them because they were comfortable and provided easy excuses, allowing me to tell myself stories that explained away why I always felt that I was not living the life I had been destined to live. My old patterns provided a convenient alternative to staring into the truth of my soul and beginning the hard work of re-shaping...
Day 35(J): Practice Makes It Mine!
(Watercolor by J)
A good ol’ friend called to chat with me. She was also at Microsoft for many years, and she left the company a few years before I did. A mutual friend had told her that I left the company, and she wanted to hear directly from me whether what she heard through the grapevine was true. I was happy to catch up with an “old” friend, and grateful to receive her congratulatory words...
November 2011
60 posts
Day 34(C): Going Without the Flow
I’ve lived most of my adult life under the misconception that my willpower is weak and I have little self-discipline. I focused on this story so much, in fact, that it became a self-fulfilling prophesy and led to a years-long period of my life during which I didn’t create nearly as much as I was capable of creating. I tried all the tips and tricks for getting organized and staying focused but...
Day 34(J): All Gone!
I find it fascinating that all the work to which I devoted hours, days, weeks and years of my time during the last seven and a half years at Microsoft is “poof,” gone with the wind! All those late-night and weekend email sessions, the intense preparation of Power Point presentations for critical meetings, and the many hours of recurring meetings as well as the all-important “green light”...
Day 33(C): We need to be our own Robin Hood
Yesterday our whole family went to see the Seattle Children’s Theater’s production of Robin Hood. It was a wonderfully entertaining re-telling of the Robin Hood tales put into a contemporary context by having the cast enter the theater through an outside door as if they were homeless people who stumbled in, looked surprised at the audience, and then began begging for money. Soon they shed their...
Day 33(J): Shared Responsibility & Ownership:...
I’ve written mostly about myself in this Soul Play Family 365 Experiment but Charles knows that I do not enjoy being in the spotlight. I am writing this way by design, not by accident. Most of my writings reflect my experiences, feelings, and thoughts: not only because of my introspective nature, but more to do with my burning desire to share what I have learned in my own journey with others. ...
Day 32(C): Sustainability is Security
In “No Matter Where You Go, There You Are” I described my experience of epiphany which enabled me to put my full faith behind MyCrownShift:
”…I saw that continuing with the status quo was the more truly risky course of action. When I could see through the illusions that were created by my assumptions and emotions, I saw that of all our choices, our leap of faith was the safest of all.”
What I...
Day 32(J): REMEMBER who You Are…to RECLAIM your...
“Somehow, whatever CREATIVE POWERS we have in our work are intimately CONNECTED TO OUR ABILITY TO REMEMBER WHO WE ARE amidst the traumas and losses of existence. All of our great literary traditions emphasize again and again the CENTRAL IMPORTANCE of this dynamic: that there are tremendous forces at work upon us, trying to make us like everyone else, and therefore WE MUST REMEMBER SOMETHING...
Day 31(C): What Is It That Only You Can Do?
My spending 15 months in Korea in the mid-1990s was no accident. It was not an easy journey for me to undertake, either logistically or psychologically. When I first looked into going there I didn’t know anybody in Korea who could help me and I had only a single year of college Korean language studies to call on. Still, I was convinced at the time that I could not reach my future except through...
Day 31(J): I’d rather Die Living than Live Dying
It’s been exactly a month since I left Microsoft. In some ways it feels like MyCrownShift happened a long time ago. In other ways it feels like the past one month zipped by. Nothing has jumped out at me as a surprise, jolting me into thinking, “I wish I had known this before I made my decision to take on my new adventure!” Perhaps because my yearning to live a life reflecting my true self was...
Day 30(C): No Matter Where You Go, There You Are
In the movie, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, one of the titular character’s more famous quotes is, “No matter where you go, there you are.” The actor’s delivery makes it funny: it’s an obvious statement delivered with the sincerity of a deep philosophical message. Still, it pains me that for so much of my life, I looked everywhere else and every-when...
Day 30(J): Failure is Not an Option
Today I celebrated my birthday with Charles and our daughters. It inspired me to write about how MyCrownShift feels like a birth to me:
Perhaps the kind of commitment we need to birth the secret yearnings we have been harboring in our hearts for years-upon-years is an air-tight commitment. One which says, “Failure is not an option.” No escape hatch. No parachute. No secret passage way. An...
Day 29(C): A Haiku of Thanks
Today I give thanks, For my best friend is my wife, And my kids love me.
Day 29(J): Thanksgiving Haiku
(J. Tailor by J and S. Stabler by S)
I THANK Mother Earth For Her Abundant Blessings Peace and Joy to All!
Day 28(C): Four Week Haiku
Soul Play Family: Four weeks done; a lifetime left. Thank you for reading.
Day 28(J): Do What You Love and the Energy Will...
Charles reminds me that it’s been exactly four weeks since we started our Soul Play Family 365 Experiment blog. Gratitude fills my heart as I acknowledge that the shift we have made since October 26, 2011 (my last day as a corporate employee) is real. We pushed the “reset” button and we are starting a completely new life in some ways, yet it feels so old and familiar that it feels like coming...
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Day 27(C): Would you like to play a game?
“Lia” by J
If you’ve read a balance of my posts and Jung’s posts, you may have noticed that we’re very much “on the same page” in what we’re writing about. In some areas, we have been on the same page since the day we met. Our late-night conversations during the first week of knowing each other showed that we were very much kindred souls. In other areas, each of us has had to stretch...
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Day 27(J): Games
“Lia” by J
Charles knows that I am not into games. I recall playing Monopoly with my brothers when we were teenagers but I don’t have a lot of fond memories of that. My parents only played games with other adults, so gaming was never a family activity. Charles, on the hand, loves to play games. When he introduced the girls to the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) role-playing game...
Day 26(C): World Building
(Graphic by Wade Rockett)
Inspired by writing about the Aalto software synthesizer yesterday, I decided to fire the software up again and try to recreate the “Alberti Forest” patch I featured at the end of yesterday’s post. I had a lot of fun experimenting and I also noticed something interesting about myself as I worked. I loved sitting and listening to the sounds evolve, being surprised by...
Day 26(J): Body Wisdom
I was going to write about listening to my body, but if I listened to my body right now, I’d sleep until Christmas. When I was a corporate employee, I used to say that to Charles all the time. Some things haven’t changed.
My daughter S woke up this morning with a stuffy nose. Yesterday, she told me that she wasn’t feeling well, and at one point she complained about a headache which she rarely...
Day 25(C): Alberti Forest
Ivan introduced me to a lot of new musical ideas in the Harvard Electronic Music Studio, but the most radical to me was learning to use music synthesizers as tools to create compositions rather than just to create sounds. When most people think of a synthesizer, they think of an electronic keyboard like the kind used in a pop band, an instrument which can create a wide range of sounds but which...
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Day 25(J): Let Go and Shine Your Light
I feel totally drained by my daughter J’s emotional outburst today. Both J and S have been having friendship issues at their school with the same friend for the last couple of months and it’s grown in a crescendo within the last week. “Friend A” (we’ll call her Amber), has been their best friend especially since another close friend of theirs whom S and J had known for 6 years moved to a...
Day 24(C): Wednesdays with Ivan
Some people believe that if you set an intention, then opportunities which weren’t there before will present themselves and help you to make your dream come true. My take is a little different. I believe that we consistently live in a world of infinite possibility. Possibilities surround us like invisible radio waves, cell phone signals, and the like. When we set a particular intention, or we...
Day 24(J): What Kind of Family Do We Want?
Last year I went to the 21st annual Bioneers conference in San Rafael, California without my family. I came to know Bioneers because of its women’s leadership retreat known as “Cultivating Women’s Leadership” or CWL in short. The CWL that I attended in April 2010 in Sonoma, California was co-led by Toby Herzlich and Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers. As I wrote about this experience in...
Day 23(C): Are You Happy with the Change?
In my music composition class I’m learning a technique which requires a lot of trial-and-error, as I mentioned yesterday. Today I followed through with my intention and analyzed what I did yesterday before writing a new version of the assignment. Looking through my notes from last class, I re-read my instructors recommendations for completing this assignment. The assignment involves...
Day 23(J): Who Are You?
In the beginning of this year, I knew that “I” had to change before changing anything external or anyone else. I examined my life to see where I had power to make direct changes and where I could use my power to influence others to make indirect changes that I desired to see. That meant, I had to first know what changes I wanted to see in me, my family, my workplace, my community, my country,...
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Day 22(C): Learning by Doing
On Day 15, I wrote about needing to be more conscious of making time for composing music. I can now report that carving out time to compose daily feels fantastic! Giving priority to that which is most important to me makes it much easier to approach my other daily work with a light heart and a spirit of play. I feel more centered and much more “muchier,” because I am spending time and attention...
Day 22(J): Laughter Deficiency Syndrome (LDS)
Lately, both Charles and I noticed that I laugh a lot more often. This is a hearty, unstoppable belly laugh that shakes my whole body uncontrollably. While walking with Charles this morning, I broke into another laughing fit. I don’t even remember what it was about, but I couldn’t stop laughing. He said I was making up for lost laughing time. And then he “created” a condition (or syndrome) right...
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Day 21(C): Adult Student
If you know me well, you know I don’t believe in “do overs.” I believe that the past, with all it’s missteps, has shaped me to be who I am today and if I were to try to go back and “fix” anything, then I wouldn’t be the same person. That said, boy do I wish I could do so much of my schooling over again with the attitude I have now!
As I wrote on Day 4, I am studying in the Pacific Northwest...
Day 21(J): When is a Weed not a Weed?
Weed: A plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted, as in a garden.
Toxic: Capable of causing injury or death, especially by chemical means; poisonous.
A weed is not welcomed. A toxic environment is not welcoming.
I woke up this morning with a thought that nudged me to ponder about the connection between a weed and a toxic...
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Day 20(C): How do you Measure Thinking?
Back on Day 3, I wrote about the temptation to give priority to what is easy to measure rather than what may be in fact more important. Today, as I thought further about the parent meeting Jung and I attended yesterday, I recalled raising the issue of differentiation. Our childrens’ school prides itself as being a model of differentiation, but what I’ve noticed this year is that although Math...
Day 20(J): My Shift from Expert Advice to Daily...
I often wonder why we don’t practice what we learn. We absorb as many of the “secrets” to success, happiness, wealth and health as we can from numerous self-help books and motivational speakers. Some of us are workshop junkies: we go to as many workshops as we can attend, hoping to learn something new, and to be inspired or motivated to move forward towards what we always wanted to accomplish....
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Day 19: Thinking is Hard
This morning Jung and I went to a coffee discussion time with many of the parents of our daughters’ classmates and the head of their school. The discussion was about homework which had become such a hot topic for some of the families of S&J’s grade that Mr. C (the Head of School) created a homework log for all students to fill out for two weeks so he would have some hard data to look at and...
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Day 19: What do I want?
When I was growing up in Seoul, Korea back in the 1960s and through the mid-1970s, my parents sent me to Sacred Heart, an all-girls private catholic elementary school that then extended through middle school and high school. It was the most elite school for girls in Korea at the time. However, the real reason my parents sent me there was because my father wanted me to avoid taking the middle...
Day 18: Shared Vision
Today my daughters and I spent some time together playing an online role-playing game. Usually when I play with them, I have a fantastic time, but today my experience was mixed. It took some reflection for me to identify why I wasn’t enjoying it as much, but I figured out that we were spending too much time playing as separate characters and not as a team. We weren’t going for...
Day 18: Vacation Reflection
Every time I went away on vacation in the past, I dreaded the “vacation tax.” Whether I was out of the office for four days or for 14 days, tying up the loose ends before the start of my vacation meant late nights at work and at home. To add insult to injury, I also had to “pay” for having been away upon my return, going through a full email inbox to respond to inquiries and additional work...
Day 17: Playing with Control
My current, official title in Soul Play Family is that of “Ambassador of Play.” Like everything in this experiment, that is subject to change, but one thing will remain the same: play is very important to me. It is a central element of who I am. My humor, spirit, and creativity all come from a place of play. I have many thoughts and ideas about what play is and why it is such a central element...
Day 17: Fluent ARC (Arrival, Rejuvenation,...
Earlier this year when I arrived at the decision to leave my corporate job to live a congruent life in which my (inner) values are reflected in my (outer) expression of who I am, I asked myself: “How do I envision MyCrownShift? What do I want to see, feel or sense as I make this shift?” I knew I needed to have a compelling vision to keep me inspired and self-motivated to manifest my intention. I...
Day 16: Eleven Eleven
At around 11am today, Jung and I headed out to the end of the dock stretching into the Hood Canal. It had already been pouring rain for a while, but we loved the sound of it pounding on our large umbrella and we stopped more than once to admire the way the rain struck the surface of the water like jewels. Birds floated everywhere but stayed clear of us, the only humans out braving the weather....
Day 16: Let’s Get REAL!
We are celebrating MyCrownShift away from home in Hood Canal. It’s been a journey of more than two decades of my work life. I feel blessed with gratitude, abundance and vitality as I reclaim Authentic Jung to live in accordance with my core values of CHIA (Creativity, Humanity, Integrity, Authenticity) for Joy! In the spirit of our MyCrownShift celebration, I’d like to say “Let’s get REAL!”
Do...
Day 15: Full Moon, Full Life
Woot! Two weeks ago today Jung didn’t go to work and we began this crazy experiment. On Jung’s first day as a non-corporate employee there was a new moon, and we’ve so enjoyed the way it symbolized the perfect blank page for our new start that we were surprised to learn that today the moon was already full! These first two weeks flew by and it’s amazing how quickly we all got used to the new...
Day 15: Seriously?
I recall a workshop I attended in early 2009. One of the activities was the creation of a vision board. I had never heard of a “vision board” prior to that workshop, but in hindsight the vision board I created triggered the beginning of my shift in consciousness which eventually led me to MyCrownShift and to my vision of creating a livelihood which is in line with my core values, passion, and...
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Day 14: A Brief S Update
A friend who has been reading this blog asked me how S has been doing since experiencing being heard and exercising her power as a verbal ninja. Since standing up to her tormentors, she hasn’t complained at all about the kids at school and I haven’t heard anything about her becoming emotional in class. She has an air of strength around her which feels new, yet old—as if she had been born with it....
Day 14: The Power of Choice
Our work is to make ourselves visible in the world. This is the soul’s individual journey, and the soul would much rather fail at its own life than succeed at someone else’s.
—David Whyte
Before leaving my corporate employment, my mother routinely admonished me in Korean: “Work is work. It is what it is and all corporate jobs are all like that.” The unspoken but undeniable message was, “Keep...
Day 13: Connecting the Dots
A few days after Steve Jobs passed away, Jung and I showed our daughters his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (transcript). The message we wanted them to hear is summed up in one of his most famous quotes from that address:
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the...
Day 13: No Plan A, No Plan B, Just a Vision and a...
Charles introduced me to Seth Godin’s blog earlier this year. The more I followed his blog, the more I was pleasantly surprised: I often find his message being in the same vein as a theme in a recent talk I’ve had with Charles or in my journal writing a day or two earlier, and sometimes even on the same day. Every time I witness this synchronicity, I feel as if Universe is supporting me and...
Day 12: Be Mature
(A conventionally mature person)
mature
to bring to full growth or development, or to ripeness
to develop or work out fully
(Webster’s New World Dictionary)
If someone were to instruct you to “be mature,” how would you interpret that? Would you use the dictionary definition above? Would you think they were asking you to bring to bear your full growth and ripeness? To be honest, that would...
Day 12: Honesty Is The Best Policy
Since we started our Soul Play Family 365 Experiment, Charles and I have noticed that we’ve been paying closer attention to our thoughts, words, and actions. We have become more aware of our internal landscape as well as how we show up in the world. We have chosen to live more consciously, and that choice is leading us to live an examined life. When one of us has an insight or thought, we speak...
Day 11: Awareness Is the Key to Our Answer
As an information and Internet gourmand, it’s not surprising when I come across something that supports our crazy experiment. Today, however, I was surprised by two thoughts which were pushed to me through my subscriptions from people whom I respect: Pema Chödrön and Seth Godin. You may think that those two couldn’t be further apart: a spiritual guru and a marketing guru. All I can tell you is...
Day 11 - Weather Is No Longer My Scapegoat
In April 2004 we moved to Washington State for my employment with Microsoft. We wanted to experience something new. Our daughters were toddlers then and most of our friends and family members were on the East Coast (and they still are). We had originally planned to be here for five years, and then reassess whether to go back to Boston. More than seven and a half years later, however, we are...
