Enduring Wonder: Recent Episodes
Bruce Wayne McLellan
A podcast devoted to inspiring you to design more serenity, joy, and awe in your life. With nineteen years of experience as an expert coach in the field of human potential - my burning aspiration is to make a better world for our great-grandchildren - by doing for adults what Mr. Rogers did for children. I will share stories that engage your heart - information that challenges your assumptions, and even songs that help you smile and remember that you are enough. Join us for another soulful encounter with Enduring Wonder.
Exploring the idea of mastery, I initially sought examples of mastery in the human realm. You often hear about the mastery journey of famous artists, inventors, athletes, and entrepreneurs and how the pursuit of mastery influenced their ability to create success, triumph, discovery, beauty, and their ability to make a lasting mark on the world. This chapter will go beyond the human species to get a fresh perspective on how unexpected, unassuming, and genuinely marvelous mastery may manifest its most refined expression in another more unpretentious creature. With that in mind, we found an interesting example in the animal kingdom that will surprise and delight you in the humble yet truly remarkable turtle.
https://brucewaynemclellan.com/
Soundtrack - "Ikigai" composed and performed by Bruce Wayne McLellan
Mary Oliver said, "Someone I loved, once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift." Growing up in the rural townships outside Portland, Maine, I was raised Catholic. And although the mold did not entirely take, I was left with some indelible impressions that would last a lifetime. The most profound impression was the power of love to heal, connect people together, and serve as a source of limitless joy. Another was the wisdom of compassion.
https://brucewaynemclellan.com/
Soundtrack - "Ikigai" composed and performed by Bruce Wayne McLellan
"As a society, we come up lacking in many of the marks of compassion and wisdom by which we measure ourselves as civilized." Greg Boyle. Absent of compassion, we appear as unrestrained savages, crude hominids lacking in imagination and vision. A man of deep compassion, Boyle, helps us to envision our next level of civilization. Perhaps as we evolve, our society can embrace compassionate kindness as an essential human principle. This evolution begins with each one of us. Kindness is the next leap in the realization of our innate human potential.
https://brucewaynemclellan.com/enduring-wonder
Karibu Rafiki, welcome friends! This was my first Swahili phrase that I learned when I climbed Mt Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania Africa 2010. During that climb, “It’s not the Destination, It's the journey.” from Emerson’s Self-Reliance was on the lips of all of my fellow adventures and the shortened version “It’s the Journey” became our mantra. We used this mantra to temper our expectations as not everyone will summit. When, I asked our African guide, Yusuf, “Do you think I will summit?” He responded mysteriously, “If the mother allows.” I’m not sure what he meant by that. Maybe he meant Mother Kilimanjaro will allow?! If so, what does that even mean? Does Mother Kilimanjaro stand for luck or for fate or for life?! Either way, “it’s the journey” provides exactly what is needed by each individual climber. https://brucewaynemclellan.com/enduring-wonder
Wayne Dyer once expressed this eternal wisdom, “When you have the choice between being right and being kind - just choose kind!” But it was my earliest mentor, my Dad, who first inspired me to be kind. As with many great mentors, he did so by being a good role model. In Breakfast with Maude, he models kindness in his relationship with my great-grandmother. https://brucewaynemclellan.com/enduring-wonder
Robin Sharma, a Canadian author and my personal leadership coach, reminds me to maintain a curious mind saying, "A bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul." It never ceases to amaze me that things can be chugging along just fine, and then wham! Out of the blue, something unexpected comes along that seems to have a life of its own. It grabs you by the scruff of the neck and sets you on a daring path that you never knew existed. It takes control of the wheel of your life and veers into the perplexing and foreboding parts unknown of some ancient mariner's tattered map. And it does all of this without permission or advanced notice.
“A journey of one thousand miles begins with one step,” was written by Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism. The “one thousand miles” quote breaks down the daunting challenge of huge undertakings into small, manageable bits. It reveals footprints to follow along the landscape of our life-odyssey toward the achievement of our success, however we define success for ourselves. In this way, Lao Tsu teaches us a simple wisdom about how to live a meaningful, successful, and joyful life. “Slowly, Slowly” is a story about a portion of my personal odyssey as I attempted to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, Africa in 2010. It reveals the footprints of my African guides leading me up the landscape of a world-class mountain to discover my best-self. Eventually, this discovery led me to the creation of the “Formula for Success.” https://brucewaynemclellan.com/enduring-wonder
The famous Beatle John Lennon once wrote, "Before you cross the street, take my hand. Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." This is an enlightened phrase because it embodies a simple truth about life. Life often plays out considerably different from our expectations. With this in mind, it seems a little short-sighted when we react with surprise and disappointment at the inevitable twists and turns that life may bring. Please, allow me to share a few of my plans and what happened instead.
"Even motivated people who welcome change often encounter stumbling blocks that make transformation more complicated than they'd originally anticipated." Amy Morin. It was clear from our first meeting that he was a highly intelligent and well-mannered person. Yet, his relationship with his spouse, Molly, was far from perfect. Harold's story is everyone's story when it comes to personal transformation. Though our circumstances are different, the stages of personal transformation are common to all forms of personal growth.
"humans deserve a night sky, a sky full of possibilities—sometimes of clouds, often the moon, occasionally planets, nearly always stars and the Milky Way in which we live." ― Heather E. Heying, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life.
More than 20,000 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age, the First People of America migrated as hunter-gathers across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska, crossing the land bridge known as Beringia. They carried their children on their backs and their stories in their hearts. Today's episode features a retelling of one of those stories. This story explores what might happen if a dog and a wolf could carry on a conversation. Interestingly enough, that discussion could mirror an exchange between two human beings in the twenty-first century.
These insights gleaned from this ancient encounter are more relevant today in our sophisticated, technology-rich, rapid-change world. It seems that we have not gone so far astray from our hunter-gatherer past.
A podcast devoted to inspiring you to design more serenity, joy, and awe in your life. With nineteen years of experience as an expert coach in the field of human potential - my burning aspiration is to make a better world for our great-grandchildren - by doing for adults what Mr. Rogers did for children. I will share stories that engage your heart - information that challenges your assumptions, and even songs that help you smile and remember that you are enough. Join us for another soulful encounter with Enduring Wonder.