Sourcing from Beauty
“I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from its presence.”
– Oriah Mountain Dreamer
The other day, a client began our session by asking me how I replenish my energy, given that I have so many deep conversations every day that require fairly intense concentration. I answered with: “quiet reflection, exercise, being in nature, a nice glass of wine, and hanging out with our cat.” However, reflecting again on her question later, I realized I had somehow overlooked what is for me perhaps the most powerful source of renewed energy and inspiration—beauty.
The beauty I’m talking about runs deeper and wider than most conventional definitions. It shows up in my life as the view from my office window—of rock outcroppings, flowering cactus, and ponderosa pine, along with the resident deer, bobcats, and foxes. It’s the art in our home. The lines, color, and feel of my car. The flowers we buy and the food and wine we enjoy. A well written and acted TV series. The feel of carving a turn in fresh snow. The kindness in a friend’s eyes, and the way a colleague articulates an idea. All these things—and so much more—we can perceive as beauty. They can resource, replenish, recharge, re-energize—all ways to talk about nourishing ourselves—so that we can enjoy our time on the planet and continue to give our talents to the world around us.
I have a friend and client who includes in his life purpose statement “leaving fingerprints of beauty.” And while that’s a bit unusual, and while I’ve never seen a leader call out beauty as a business priority, I am still hopeful that it will happen. Beauty inspires and motivates people. It’s one of the things that most attracts and keeps customers (as Apple discovered). It makes us feel more vibrantly alive. And that energy of aliveness fuels creative thinking and resourceful and productive action.
To avail ourselves of the inspiring and resourcing impact of beauty—to let it into our lives more—can be helped along with a few elements of greater intentionality:
Attention.
The beauty we source from is less a matter of the particular form it takes—from nature to ballet, to an elegant business solution—and more a matter of the attention we pay it. Especially an attention that is powered by appreciation. This is about finding the world beautiful, wherever and whenever we can. It is consciously noticing beauty, and allowing it to wash over us and through us. I like to imagine that paying attention to beauty works a little like absorbing vitamin D from the sun—except that it’s through the 5 (or more) senses, instead of the skin. It’s opening our eyes, and really seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching—and intuiting—the world in a way that gives beauty a chance to enrich our experience of life.
Resonance.
A second element is how we know and connect with beauty. It is a kind of inner attention I would call resonance. Because beauty is less a thing “out there,” and more an experience “in here.” Beauty is not objective. It is subjective perception. Resonance is a sense we get “in here” that tells us what we find compelling “out there.” Experiencing our personal and subjective sense of resonance with beauty leaves us feeling more whole, more inspired, more nourished and energized. In addition to the energy we get from it, resonance with beauty “out there” also shows us an aspect of who we are “in here.” So resonance in this sense is a kind of aesthetic self-knowledge. It is seeing and knowing something of ourselves—like looking in a mirror—which can help us both understand our choices and guide them.
Amplification.
While resonance is a natural and often quite unconscious response to beauty, we can turn up the dial on it with a little intentionality. I recall one evening in the mountains of Virginia, sitting with a friend on a rock outcropping watching a particularly gorgeous sunset. We were silent, transfixed, soaking in the colors. And suddenly, she began clapping and yelling out, “Yay, God!” I have seen more sunsets than I can possibly count, but I’ll never forget that one, nor the impact it had on me, mostly because of the way my friend’s unbridled appreciation, celebration, and gratitude took the beauty of that moment and amplified it.
“Those who dwell…among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.”
Questions to ponder, and if you have a journaling practice, to write about…
What is beauty to you?
How does your relationship with beauty impact how you show up in your personal life? In your professional life?
More in the Power Pathways Series…
Sourcing from Beauty is the tenth in a series of posts exploring a compass-like wheel of twelve “power pathways”—avenues for expressing our power to be the creators and authors of our lives.
Read the whole series here →
Here’s the full wheel, connected conceptually and practically to radical responsibility and the four cardinal disciplines of conscious leadership – inspiration, integrity, courage, and clarity.
