What’s Next? Life-long learning

…in good company

Join our September groups exploring:

The Artist’s Way
It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again
The Prosperous Heart

September is coming - and for me it has always signalled “fresh start”. *

I loved school - starting, most unusually in the fifties, at 3 years old.

Then and for the rest of my undergraduate years, it was a sanctuary, an escape from home.

I entered the workforce in my 15th summer, as with most American teens in retail.

“Back to School” was nearly as hectic as pre-Christmas and I was busily employed in July and August.

I felt just as empowered by the sense of purpose and the place to go to, as I did by earning a minimum wage. (And with no rent to pay or necessities to account for - $1.85 an hour seemed like a king’s ransom.)

In hindsight, the experience was far more formidable than I’d ever realised - until recently.

I revisited that experience this summer in Week 3 of the #Memoir writing exercise - a bedrock tool introduced by Julia Cameron in It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again.

Why formidable?

There’s a complicated dance in adolescence - we’re becoming adults - but the space-in-between child and adulthood is fraught. We try on different ways of being - we keep some, discard others - but the experiences are often random.

Everything I have come to understand about what I value - was driven home by the random experiences of that time and place.

And while I didn’t have language for it then - I do now.

Agency, Self-Efficacy and Service

Whatever else was going on in my life - in those working summers - I experienced all of the above. It’s arguable that in that summer and the next - I was, more often than not in a state of flow.

And whether that combination would have inevitably been the recipe for achieving an overall sense of satisfaction with my life or the experience dictated the required ingredients for such a state in later life - I don’t know.

So what are they and why was it important?

Agency is simply our capacity to act independently and make choices not limited by people or circumstances.

Self-efficacy, differs. We many have the capacity - but do we limit ourselves because we lack the confidence to exert control over our choices, our behaviours and our environment?

And service - is the act of witnessing our journey, sharing the tools, challenges and insights - not to evangelise, but to stay grounded in our own recovery from whatever dis-ease we’ve overcome in our lives.

Paying it Forward

Empowering Change is the name of the practice.

Empowering agency, self-efficacy and service is what I do.

Sharing the tools that I and millions of others have used to make and sustain change is the how.

The single most important life lesson I can share is #DontGoItAlone.

Because bringing the best version of ourselves to the world requires support.

The “Queen of Change” as the New York Times calls Julia Cameron - whose tools I share - offers many vehicles to help us gather supportive ‘families of choice’ and develop a structure and discipline to sustain the changes we make.

I invite you to consider another ‘back to school’ experience this September.

Join a supportive group of peers exploring just how powerful it is to discover and recover your creative self, imagine an exuberant ‘third act’ via an encore career or active retirement, or rethink prosperity - and adopt an abundant mindset while creating a life of enough.

To explore the courses - click here.

To book a call - click here.

Let’s do this!


Thanks Nancy Lee for your powerfully succinct contribution to a Quora discussion on Agency vs Self-Efficacy.

“According to social cognitive theory, self efficacy is one’s perceived ability to deal with a task or situation. Agency is one’s actual ability to deal with a task or situation. This reminds me of something I think about a lot: real vs. perceived limitations. What are my true limitations, and what are artificial limits I place on myself due to fear or past experience?”