EXCELLENCE & KOKOROZASHI
2 IDEAS FROM ME
Excellence on your hero’s ultrajourney is applying your GIFT (Gifts, Improvement, Flow and Time) to lift others and change the world. Gifts are your signature strengths defined by the free VIA Character Strengths Survey @ https://viacharacter.org. Improvement is your life calling to contribute in a way that improves the world. The most comprehensive way to describe this is the Japanese concept of “kokorozashi.” Kokorozashi is part of the ikigai spectrum that harnesses our heart motivations to make an improvement in the world. Flow is a personal balance of performance between challenge and skill with optimum life experiences as defined by Mihaly Caskszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Time refers to your personal time spent in Flow using your Gifts toward your life calling (Kokorozashi).
The caliber of your life adventure is directly proportional to your excellence.
2 QUOTES FROM SAGES
“A visionary is a leader of excellence who sees what others do not see, who achieves for now and plans for the future, who positively impacts different generations and raises up other visionaries.” – Onyi Anyado
“O Me! O Life!” by Walt Whitman (Source: Leaves of Grass (1892))
“Oh Me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds, I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question,
O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
1 QUESTION FOR YOU TO EXPLORE
Whitman’s answer is a provocative question only each of us can answer. What verse will you contribute to the powerful play? What improvement (kokorozashi) will you make in the world?
Namaste,
Duane Nelson
