Looking Back
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(Lose the Net by Rasmus Faber Courtesy of Epidemic Music)
It continually amazes me the way good questions lead so naturally to good answers and how beautiful questions lead to even better answers! Each time we open ourselves to the things we don’t know, we’ve opened the doors to discovery and wonder and greater understanding.
I’m Scott Lennox and you’re listening to The Beautiful Question, a consideration of things that matter every day.
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In the six years plus that I’ve been writing and producing newsletters and podcasts, my focus has been a simple one with great complexity built into it. I choose to see the good in people and the good in the world. And I choose to see how powerful we are as human beings.
Join me this week as we take a look back. Stay with me.
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The offering after this week’s podcast will be the three-hundredth episode and will be the last in a long series. At least for now. I’m keeping an open mind about how or when to proceed.
Seven years ago, while visiting friends in a mountain cabin in Taos, one of them said, “You should think about producing your newsletters as a podcast.” When I told him that I knew nothing about creating them, his quiet response was, “Well, do two or three of them and you’ll know how.” He was right, of course.
Last weekend, as I delivered several paintings to the newly re-opened Artisan’s Marketplace Gallery in Glen Rose, I drove past the parking lot where I pulled in years ago to take an extended phone call from a veteran podcast producer. Sitting in my car that day, I wrote several pages of notes as he openly shared the ideas and resources that set me on my way to producing The Beautiful Question. That eventually led to the nearly three hundred episodes that can now be found on the Beautiful Question website.
“How auspicious,” I thought, “that after all these years I would drive right past that same place as I’m preparing to end production.” One cycle of life is drawing to a close as a new one takes flight. My paintings and drawings went into two Texas galleries this past weekend and a large new painting was commissioned. Along with my ongoing counseling practice, I’ll now be focusing even more of my energies on creating visual art. It feels exactly right to me.
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Photo: Karen Ferguson
As I look back at what I’ve created with The Beautiful Question (with masterful help from Coleton Bullard, who manages the website), I see everything from guided relaxation to radio plays to poetry and photography to soundscapes and original music to short stories and to my repeated encouragement to live as powerfully as we can from the inside out.
My hope from the beginning has been unwavering as I continue doing whatever I reasonably can to inspire people to see the best in themselves and to live with meaning and purpose and compassion for themselves and the people around them.
I can think of no more important service or encouragement to offer than that.
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The responses I’ve received from readers and listeners over the years tell me that much of my effort has been well-placed. I thank you for that.
As I’ve contemplated how to draw this experience to a meaningful close, I realize that there is no tidy way to put a bow around it, nor would I want to. My time with you has been an integral part of my life from one week to the next and has taken on a life of its own.
Part of what has arisen over and over is the awareness that we have much more control over our lives than we are told. As I’ve said in the past, we don’t get to choose what life offers us or thrusts upon us, but we Always have the ability to choose how we respond to our circumstances.
The past twenty-two years have taught me that if nothing else.
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Living from the inside out—that is to say, taking full responsibility for ourselves—we begin by accepting that we are not passive receptors to life, destined to be helplessly cast about in every direction depending on which way the wind is blowing. Far to the contrary, we have built into each of us the freedom and the personal obligation to choose what we experience, beginning with what we are thinking and telling ourselves. There is no question that our thoughts give rise to our actions and emotions.
That being the case, are you willing to fully accept how powerful you are as a living, breathing, conscious being? As such, and by matching our intentions with our thoughts and actions, we have the power to live in increasingly effective ways.
The governing questions are elegantly simple ones: How do I want to live right now, where I am and as I am? What is it I value most? And what real and measurable steps can I take right now to move my life in that direction?
As I’ve counseled with hundreds, more likely thousands of people over three decades, I have asked, “What do you want more than you want anything else?” In response, I am given two extremely consistent answers. “I want to be happy (or content). And “I want to be peaceful (or calm).”
Those answers arise from an innate place, not a socially imposed one.
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Since you are the one who is making the most important choices and decisions about your life, this week’s Beautiful Questions are designed to help you move in that direction if you choose to.
Question One: What do You want more than you want anything else—whatever it is?
Question Two: In what ways will your life be different when you have what you want?
Question Three: What simple and measurable actions (including thought) will you take to move yourself even half a step in the direction of what you want the most?
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As always, I’ll be delighted to hear where your considerations take you. Write and tell me about them. It’s never too late to take charge of your own life.
As I say each time,
My Light with Your Light!
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I’m happy we can engage this way as we consider things that matter and what to do about them. If nothing else, I hope you feel inspired to look more deeply at ways of caring for yourself.
You can be further inspired by visiting my friends at Kosmos Journal. That’s K O S M O S Journal. Their mission is to inform, inspire, and engage global transformation in harmony with all life. You can easily find them online at Kosmos Journal dot O R G.
And at thebeautifulquestion.com, you can read the illustrated transcript of each podcast as you listen. We’ve also included an archive of all previous podcasts, including guided relaxation audios that can help you practice letting go on a daily basis.
If you find these podcasts useful, I encourage you to share them and tell others about them. That’s a great way of helping me get a voice of calm and collaboration and balance and encouragement out into the world. It’s a great way of spreading peace.
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I’m Scott Lennox, and this has been The Beautiful Question.
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The Beautiful Question is a One Light production, written, produced, and engineered by Scott Lennox at HeartRock Studios in Fort Worth, Texas, as a way of paying forward to life, being fully present, becoming better engaged with things that truly matter in a complex world, and committing to a healthier future for all of us.