Why Be To Do

​Dear Why Team member,
I hope this message finds you well and encouraged to make the best of the second-half of 2021. 

Audio:🗣

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​More than a year has passed since (possibly) the most surprising world-wide event we have ever experienced in our lives. Many of us had a chance to be more aware of the “little conveniences” that construct our lives and hopefully many of us did become more appreciative of “the hand they were dealt”. Hence, This week we consider our primary approach to life either as human-beings or as human-doings. Why consider being versus doing? Because when we receive the insight we need, we’re empowered to become more of what others need.

So, are you more "Do to Be" or "Be to Do?"

We consider the difference because it makes a difference.
Do you do more to be more for you or are you becoming more to do more for others? Are you motivated to get more for yourself or inspired to give more to others? Are you thirsting from a mindset of scarcity, not enough, or overflowing from a mindset of abundance, more than enough? 

The difference makes a difference in your life and the lives around you. How we approach life, reveals how life approaches us. We live in a doing culture where doing more, means I am more, and doing less means I am less. Yet the research shows that those who achieve a healthier life balance, moderately nurturing their being, actually accomplish so much more with their doing than those who burn themselves up on the altar of more. 

Are your actions born from abundance or scarcity? 
Is your doing to fill a hole in your being or is your doing an overflow coming from an abundance of being?

"Do to be" or "Be to do," which is you?

For most of my life, I have been "Do to be". My parents divorced when I was 11 years old, the night of their separation, my father swiftly said his goodbyes followed by an estrangement of 33 years. My father likely believed that because he made a mistake, he was a mistake. Thus the legacy for his son was a pursuit of perfection, a fear of failure, a fear of being a loser as I once saw my Dad. However, his mistakes did not mean that he himself was a mistake. His value of being goes beyond his error in doing. Were he able to see and know this, no doubt his subsequent behavior would have produced more abundance than scarcity. 

Only when I saw my approach to life differently was I able to approach his life differently. He made a mistake, he is not a mistake, and neither am I.
This awareness helped shift my life from less "do to be" to more "be to do". Mistakes no longer define me, they refine me - to become more and more of what others need. As the old Chinese proverb reads, "Nurture the Root and the Tree takes care of itself."

How many of us knew exactly how to act in the face of a pandemic? 
If mistakes were made, realize that you are not the mistake or the person that may have harmed you is not a mistake. Just like with my father, in the moment, extreme circumstances may cause extreme actions. Sometimes, we need to “do to be” in order to become a “be to do”. Do analyze the circumstance and the response of the ones around you. Think through it and resolve to make lemonade out of lemons hence becoming a “be to do”; and thus more able to overflow positive thoughts and actions for the ones around you.

Be to Do!

Nurture the root of your being and no doubt you'll bear more fruit from your doing.

Make it a great week,

Steve Luckenbach