It’s early in the morning; the sun hasn’t yet risen.

The last pinks of the sunrise give way to a clear blue sky of a glorious fall day. A few cirrus clouds slowly transform and evolve, adding dimensionality to an already beautiful skyscape. 

I understand why Monet preferred to paint by the morning and evening light. The colors are more alive.

I’m sitting at my desk in front of an expansive window overlooking my balcony.

I’m an hour and a half into my morning routine, wrapping up my journaling, when I pause to think.

Something has me a little stumped. I need a moment, and I do what I always do when I’m a little stumped by something I’m journaling about. 

I stare out the window; the blue jays are awake, flying from branch to branch, making their presence known.

A small flock of birds flies overhead; they dance across the morning sky. 

I allow myself to let go and merely observe as the birds fly in unison. I find myself deep in thoughts and visions of hundreds if not thousands, if not tens of thousands, of birds flying in unison. 

It turns out there is a word for this spectacle of nature, murmuration.

I find it fascinating and hypnotic to observe birds moving in sync with one another, changing direction with a sharpness and precision that would make a fighter pilot envious. 

Moving at speeds of up to forty miles an hour, packed so densely that only a body length separates them. 

They move with the synergy, fluidity, and ease of a seasoned ballerina. Their movement appears as choreographed chaos, dedicated to a single purpose, survival. 

When the birds fly in unison, they both hunt prey and protect themselves from predators.

Taking moments to observe the glory around us is a gift of being alive that we, unfortunately, don’t always unwrap. 

In that moment of being lost in nature’s glory, the answer to what was stumping me came in an instant of crystal clear clarity. It was a moment of deep understanding and intrinsic knowledge. 

Something else came to me. 

Before the Wright Brothers, humans looked to birds in envious wonder. We wanted to be like them, fly, and experience the freedom and ease of coursing through the open sky. 

To dance in choreographed chaos towards a single purpose. 

And the extraordinary fact is this: We have the ability and gift to be like a murmuration.

We can move deftly through the sky of our thoughts and lives.

How? 

1. We do this when we have a clear why.
2. We do this when we are connected to our core values.
3. We do this when we do work that fills us from the inside.
4. We do this when we drop the “shoulds” and expectations of family, friends, and society. 
5. We do this when we consistently face our fears and push the boundaries of what we believe is possible for ourselves. 

We may need machinery to physically fly, but we only need ourselves to mentally, emotionally, and spiritually fly. 

📣 New Offering! Check out the Reinvention Reset.

It’s a highly focused, tactical, 60-minute call designed to get you unstuck, reinvigorate, and build momentum.