Pivotal moments; defining people, unexpected challenges, undiluted courage — identifying the moments of highest positive return in your life.
What experiences shaped your life in powerful, beneficial ways? Who are the people who turned you around, pointed you in a new and helpful direction? Who was the teacher or coach who restored your confidence when it was shaken?
Please, let me know.
Taking stock on your history and the people who shaped you and the moments that shifted your trajectory is usually a healthy and rewarding exercise.
Richard Morey (RIP) was my English teacher in high school. He took an essay I had written and put red lines through most of it with comments like, “you’re wasting my time” in the margins.
Near the end of my essay he circled a portion and in the margin he wrote: “Do more of this: this will make you a writer!” and so I did.
Frank Graham taught me Afrikaans and knew of my debilitating stutter which I tried most unsuccessfully to hide. While caring and kind, Mr. Graham never backed off, he offered me opportunities to speak like every other student and imparted the idea that I really had something to say.
Fifty countries later traveling as a writer and speaker I have much for which to thank these two fine men.
Things to try for a few days in the hopes will soon see they are life-style habits worthy of developing:
Plan your day.
Plan who you will seek to empower and encourage.
Write (using a pencil and paper) a few ideas as to how you will empower others no matter what your station in life.
Oddly, the more you plan, the more you will allow for a serendipitous life.
Besides, getting yourself ready for a great day will sharpen your eyes to recognize when great days come your way.
Plan your day as if planning a great day is in your power to do so.
Write a few notes to yourself about how much money you will spend, how much you will try to save.
Plan what and whom you will avoid because some things suck the life out of you.
As you plan your day, remind yourself that you are not all-powerful and that things happen to derail the best made plans. This does not mean a plan is not worth making.
Plan your responses to tough or challenging circumstances and situations so that you are unlikely to spend the day in a reactive mode with fight or flight as your defaults. Write a few notes to yourself about what you will or will not say and whom you will and will not engage.
Recap on anything the group would like to look at again or to reconsider.
The Humble Samaritan – why it this such a radical parable?
Fables and other resources
Post-traumatic Growth
Helpers’ Lives
POWER Balloon
Every person has been given a Power Balloon that represents an allotment of power. This is the power to have a voice, to decide, to be, to have opinions, have fun, learn, experience, to be autonomous, to be intimate, to be fulfilled and to love.
Within every person’s capacity (power) is the ability to do research and to decide things for oneself, to worship, pray, accept, reject, remain free of abusive relationships and to create and enjoy safe relationships.
Every act of manipulation, of cruelty, of “over-functioning ” and of “under functioning ” is the denial of the power of another or of others.
People, for various reasons, will try to burst your balloon, boost your balloon, take your balloon, give you their balloon or render your balloon insignificant.
Resist such acts from others and resist doing such acts to others. Care for your balloon only; leave others to the divine task of caring for and nurturing their own balloons. This is not selfish.
Think of how selfish it is to say to someone, “Here, let me take away your power from you,” or, “Here, I do not want to take care of my own life but you have to do it.” Not even God will take your balloon from you. Your balloon is God-given to you for your care and nurture. (God has God’s own balloon to care for).
The power for you to be fully human is yours and that power should be offered to no one under any circumstances and the position of exercising power over our own lives should never be abdicated except in extreme situations of medical emergencies.
Every baby and child has his own balloon to be respected as much as the balloon of every adult. This, of course, does not mean that babies should be caring for themselves or that children must be given their every whim. Reaching such a conclusion is to misunderstand the concept of what it means to have personal power. The art of parenting a baby, of nurturing children involves respecting and nurturing their sense of personal power. Parenting is exercising the kinds of discipline and care that do not diminish a child’s self-worth or distort their capacity to discern and appreciate the power that is their birthright. Anything less is to “spoil and child.” It is to “spoil” their capacity to see and know themselves with accurate personal assessment.
What will it take for you to calm down and be less anxious?
Your answer will almost certainly include another person or something from outside of yourself if you are given to anxiety.
“I’ll calm down when he gets a job.”
“I’ll calm down when his ex-wife is out of our lives.”
“I will calm down when the house repairs are complete.”
The minute we loop others in and believe their behaviors are the reason we are anxious, our anxious state will be at their mercy.
I’d suggest you can calm yourself down even if he never gets a job or his ex wife never stops interfering and if the house repairs take another five years..
The keys to calmness, to reducing anxiety, are within our grasp and not in the hands of others.
Rise above yourself.
Get a “bird’s eye” view of your life.
Become an expert in your behaviors.
Look at how and why you choose to do the things you do and make necessary changes even if they displease others.
These are vital steps in modifying your behavior and in reducing your anxiety and therefore calming down.
Calming down is a life-long process, a life-style of self-management, of assuming personal responsibility for who and what we are.
You will wait forever if you wait for others to do what you alone can only do for yourself.
Love is seeking another person’s highest good, every time, day in and day out. It’s holding nothing back if it’s in the highest interests of whomever you love.
Love is being willing to be unpopular because some truth is tough to hear and receive. It is being willing to be corrected by the people you love when they think you are wrong or need correction.
Love is finding legitimate ways to earn the extra money needed to protect and educate and serve the people whom you love.
Love is thousands of loads of laundry for the baby and then toddler and a young boy or girl and then it’s teaching young teenager to do his own.
Love is dealing with men and women who will tell you you are a bad parent for not giving rules and not checking phones or monitoring teenage behavior as if your teenage son or daughter cannot be trusted to exercise good judgment. Their unsolicited scoldings clearly mean they do not trust themselves or their own children.
Love is being committed to telling you the truth as lovingly and as efficiently as possibly.
Love is learning to love and embrace and fully accept the people whom your loved ones love.
By “your story” I mean your unabridged, unedited story, the meanderings of your life, the whole truth, not only the shiny parts.
If we are at all similar and we probably are, you may have noticed our propensity to play the well-worn tracks, the golden-oldies, we speak of those areas of our lives and they come out well-rehearsed, cute lines, anecdotes that flow with ease, often with intent to impress. With these areas of our lives we are seasoned raconteurs.
What will it take for you and I to unblock the blocked, dislodge darker areas, give the hidden areas of our lives a little light?
When we give these parts a little airtime, allow ourselves and others to know us at deeper, unrehearsed levels, it usually – if we are careful about whom we choose as an audience – gives the opportunity to be known a little deeper and to discover something new about ourselves.
“Out of the mouths of babes,” usually refers to something cute and endearing from children.
Out of the mouths of adults, the unrehearsed and previously unsaid, can be painful to admit and hear, but it may bring greater redemption and healing for both speaker and the carefully selected listeners.
I’m sure that you won’t have to look too far if you want to find people with courage. I run into men and women – and children – with remarkable courage for which they are apparently seldom lauded. I have noticed that the more I listen rather than talk, the more courage and love I encounter.
This week I met a woman who has two jobs and two high school children in her care. She is keeping track of it all with calm and good humor. I met a woman of courage.
I met a man who is facing a life-threatening illness while taking care to visit his wife daily. His wife is in a long-term care facility and has not known who he is for years. I met a man of courage and who knows about love.
A week ago I met a teenager who uses a ride service three times a week to spend time with her aged grandmother. She told me the visits also give her time to perfect her school work and time to apply for bursaries and scholarships to help her pay for the university she’d like to attend when she’s finished high school. I met a teenage girl who knows about courage and love and commitment.
The Mercury / Written and published with permission – I learned a long time ago NOT to write about immediate family (or even distant family) without permission.
On a personal note…
Almost every night I before I go to bed I reduce a handful of greens and fresh fruit into a delicious drink using a powerful juicer or liquidizer. I wash the jugs, clean the blades, and get it all ready for a similar ritual in the morning.
I know I leave the liquidizer plugged in the wall-socket.
Every morning — when the boys were teenagers —. I come downstairs it’s unplugged.
This very slight annoyance grew mostly because it made no sense and because both my sons were asleep when I faced this minor irritation and I’d forget to ask after the day got rolling and my attentions were focused elsewhere.
This week we have all been home in the mornings and so I asked.
Thulani (19) said that of course he unplugged the liquidizer every night as a “safety issue.”
He enlarged:
“Well dad, what if you walked in your sleep, came downstairs, put your hand into the liquidizer, turned it on and you lost your fingers? You won’t be able to play the piano anymore.”
I pointed out that none of us sleepwalks and that I never put my hands into the liquidizer even when awake. He agreed.
I asked if he’d be unplugging the dishwasher and washing machine in case I drowned and I think he said I was being ridiculous.
At the start of a new work week may I offer you encouragement?
Stop hiding who you are behind a desire to be accepted or to fit in.
Let people know who you are and what you want.
This does not mean you have to be pushy or overbearing.
In both strong and subtle ways define yourself.
Leave little up to guesswork.
Do this, even if you start in very small and incremental ways, with the people you are close to and to the people whom you love. This may take some people by surprise and even catch them off guard, but the people who love you will be delighted to hear your voice.
You will immediately begin to feel less anxious when you begin to define yourself. As you advocate for yourself, even in the smallest of ways, you will begin to like what you see and what you feel and think, and you will grow even more beautiful than you already are. If you have been a “I just fit in with others” or “I hate conflict” kind of person you will begin to notice you will have lower levels of anxiety as you reverse your “fit in” and “avoid conflict” tendencies and allow your personality and your wishes to emerge and ultimately shine.
difficultrelationships.com 