Sam Beasley - Your Life is Your Prayer: Wake Up to the Spiritual Power in Everything You Do

Your l ife Is
Your Prayer

Copyright 2019 Sam Beasley and BJ Gallagher

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover Design: Jermaine Lau
Layout & Design: Morgane Leoni
Content on p.143, Worth Circle Diagram 2009 Suzanne Lorenz and Sam Beasley

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Your Life Is Your Prayer: Wake Up to the Spiritual Power in Everything You Do

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2019935685
ISBN: (print) 978-1-63353-970-9, (ebook) 978-1-63353-971-6
BISAC category code OCC011020 BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Healing / Prayer & Spiritual

Printed in the United States of America

Your l ife Is
Your Prayer

Wake Up to the Spiritual Power in Everything You Do

s am b easley

and

bj g allagher

Mango Publishing
Coral Gables , FL

It is not necessary to spend your entire time in prayer and meditation. Rather, seek to make your work a prayer, your believing an act, your living an art. It is then that the object of your faith will be made visible to you. It is then that you shall kiss the lips of your desire.

Ernest Holmes, This Thing Called You

We dedicate this book to Shak ti Gawain
author, mentor, friend, and singin g partner.
RIP Shakti
Your work and your spirit will live on in the many ways
you have influenced and inspir ed us all.
We are living in the light, than ks to you!

Contents

Foreword

I loved reading Your Life Is Your Prayer. It made me think, it made me chuckle, and it made me reflect on, not only how I participate in leading our organization, but also how we help our clients as they strive to improve their orga nizations.

As chief spiritual officer of The Ken Blanchard Companies, each morning I use a voice-to-text feature on my smartphone to leave an email message for every Blanchard associate in the US, Canada, and the UK. Ive been sending out these morning messages almost every working day for more than twenty years. Why? Because I want to encourage our people to be their best and to remind them of our companys mission and values. I believe that, deep down inside, each of us has a little voice that cries out, Inspire me! Help me be the best person I can be.

When my wife, Margie, and I cofounded our company in 1979, we had three simple goals: to work with people we loved and cared about, to make a difference in the world, and to have fun. That was our prayer thenand today, forty years later, it still is. Our daily work is focused on driving human worth and effectiveness in the workplace and helping each organization we work with become the employer, provider, investment, and corporate citizen of choice. Our beliefs and values form the foundation upon which we build our careers as individuals and our collective success as a company. Our work is our prayer. How we love one another as coworkers is our prayer of mutual trust and respect. How we serve our clients and customers is our prayer of service and con tribution.

Over the years, Ive come to realize that all of the spiritual teachers throughout history have shared one profound conviction: human happiness is possible only when the center of the universe is not ourselves. All of these teachersJesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Yogananda, the Dalai Lama, and Archbishop Tutu, among othershave believed in serving others with kindness, compassion, forgiveness, honesty, hard work, patience, and loyalty. Their prayer is for peaceinner peace as well as world peace. Their prayer is one of lovelove for a higher power and love for on e another.

In my daily morning messages, I draw on all the great spiritual teachers for wisdom. This book, Your Life Is Your Prayer, is your own personal source to draw on for wisdom. Its like having a spiritual advisor right in your pocketsomeone who can guide you in dealing with real-life issues: career, money, health, and difficult people and situations. Youll learn how to live the principles of service, how to take action when necessary, and how to face each day mindfully and pr ayerfully.

Im a raving fan of BJ Gallagher, her coauthor, Sam Beasley, and this wonderful book. I know that after you read it, youll be a raving fan, too.

Ken Blanchard

Coauthor of The New One-Minut e Manager
and Leading at a Hi gher Level

H ow to u se t his Book

We have lived hard and we have lived easy. Easy is less stressful, less fearful, and less anxious. Easy is more fun, more productive, and more healthful, too. Its prayer that has made our lives easier, so we wrote this book to share what weve learned about living easy by living pr ayerfully.

Each chapter begins with a couple of short essays or stories, followed by an acrostic or alphabet, then a handful of prayers to adopt or adapt to use as your own. Some prayers are poems, others are prose; some can be sung, others can be chanted. None are set in concretetheyre flexible and adaptableso take them and use them as you like.

You can use the book in a numbe r of ways:

You can read it cover-to-cover, if thats your preferred way of devour ing books.

You can open it to any page, and we hope youll find a few words of wisdom to help you in th at moment.

You can use it as a self-study workbookdoing some writing at the end of eac h chapter.

You can use it with a groupwith everyone reading each chapter, one at a time, then getting together weekly to discuss your insights, comments, and reactions with on e another.

You can use it as a personal devotional, as part of your daily spiritua l reading.

Our book is simply a resourceto be used in whatever you likein whatever way work s for you.

A Note about God

How do you speak of the Divine? How do you refer to the Great Unknown? What name do you use when you pray and meditate?

We dont presume to know the real name of Godor if God even has a name. All we know for sure is that there is a higher powerthe Source of all that is. We see evidence of it all around us. We see God at work in our own lives and in others lives as well. We see the Creators fingerprints on everything. We feel the presence of an indwelling Godin our hearts, in our minds, in our souls. Thats enough for us. We each have our own personal experience of Godthats all we nee d to know.

For the purpose of discussionand since we cannot know the true name of Godwe have used a variety of names throughout this book: the Universe, Almighty, Creator, Dearest God, Father, Mother, Goddess, Divine, God, Great Unknown, Heavenly Guide, Higher Power, Holy One, The Great I Am, Highest, All That Is, Joy, Lord, Mighty, Peace, Presence, River of Peace, Sacred Voice, Something, Something I Dont Know, Source, Spirit, The God Which Causes Completion, The Word, Vi sion, You.

As you read the stories and prayers on the following pages, feel free to use whatever name for God that works for you. If Yahweh or Allah are most relevant to you, th ats fine.