TRUE LISTENING

I have this radical idea that I’m not really listening unless I’m willing to be changed by you.”

Quote by Alan Alda

REFLECTION:

  • Assess you listening skills.  When in conversation with someone are you willing to be changed?
  • Today, try “really listening” to someone.  Write about the experience.  Was there some kind of shift/change?

INTERCONNECTEDNESS

We humans are all intimately interconnected.  How we treat each other matters to the health and well-being, perhaps even the survival, of us all as a species, not in some vague future, but in this very moment.  Kindness is the natural response to recognizing interconnectedness.  And in that kindness is true wisdom.

From: Arriving at your own Door  108 Lessons in Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn

REFLECTION:

Coronavirus has shown us in a significant way, we are truly intimately interconnected.  Kindness matters. 

  • How can you show a kindness to someone else today?  
  • Do one kind thing for someone else today!

ASSETS vs. DEFICITS

“From the time we begin school, if not sooner, we are taught to be blind to our assets and only see our deficits.  We are carefully marked on how many we got wrong on a test and, rarely if ever, asked how we know how to spell the ones we got right.  By the time we are adults, we are well versed in every one of our limitations, skilled in our incompetence.   

Aristotle said that one’s purpose is merely a matter of knowing where one’s talents and the needs of the world intersect.”

Cultivating, developing and setting free one’s gifts is essential to fulfilling living one’s life on purpose. 

Quote from:  I WILL NOT DIE AN UNLIVED LIFE  Reclaiming Purpose and Passion by Dawna Markova

REFLECTION:

  • What are your talents/assets? 
  • What talents do you have that can intersect with what the world needs?  Are you using your assets fully? If not, how can you use them more fully?
  • Think of two people in your life (maybe even 5).  Identify their talents?  Do something to let them know their assets today (tell them, write them a letter, call them, etc.)