Author: Anne

This author has written 802 articles

KINDS OF COURAGE

Courage is a generous act that involves risk.  It’s not courageous to hang out with friends and make a crank phone call.  The risk involved might be actual risk (it took courage to go to the moon) or it might feel risky (raising your hand at a meeting to ask a useful questions probably has no real downside but it feels that way).  Too often, we get hung up on how risky it feels, and fail to focus enough on how generous the work is.  Generosity is a great antidote to fear. 

FROM: Seth Godin’s Daily Blog

REFLECTION:

  • Courage involves risk.
  • Having courage and taking risks can be a generous act.
  • What if you could have the courage to to take a risk – write a book, share your story, heal a broken relationship, say you are sorry to another…
  • Knowing this is an act of generosity can help to shift from fear to being brave risk an action today.

CLEAN UP THE MESS

Mushroom helping to "clean up" in the forest - mushrooms assist in decomposing.

It is the unacknowledged hurt that becomes a wound.  Our only recourse is to acknowledge what we’ve done and clean up the mess.  Even if our awareness comes years after delivering the hurt, the smallest word or gesture – owning what we’ve done – can reopen the heart.

The Book Of Awakening by Mark Nepo

REFLECTION:

  • Is there a wound or unacknowledged hurt you are carrying toward someone?
  • Is there a wound someone else has toward you?
  • Can you acknowledge what you have done … perhaps say you are sorry or some other gesture?
  • What can you do to reopen the heart… clean up the mess that exists in that  relationship?

TO DISARM

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Washington DC

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

REFLECTION:

  • Everyone has a backstory that contributes to how they are behaving towards us.
  • Is there someone who has been disrespectful, perhaps argumentative or even attacking you personally?  Is there a backstory to their behavior?
  • Are they in need of compassion?
  • How can you approach them with empathy and compassion?  try it!