There is something within us that is innate and capable of a deep reverence for all life. The Empathic Civilization
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Recognize Your Worth
April 27th, 2010, 12:17 pm“Some people go through life with [an] unerring sense of direction. . . . When we meet people like this, we say they are grounded. They know who they are and where they’re going. We feel secure around them. . . . What all of these role models have in common is an exquisite sense of who they are, which translates into perfect pitch about how they come across to others.” (Goldsmith, 2007, p. 3)
One of the best ways to recognize your worth is to have a clear understanding of how your behaviors come across to other people; your employees, colleagues, clients or friends and family. – I am just off the phone with a friend of mine. She consults with individuals and companies to help them understand who they are, what they do, and how to take this understanding into their personal and professional lives. I consistently find that when I am speaking with her, I clearly recognize myself as she formulates and expresses how she perceives me and my work. She becomes a mirror and steadies our connection so that I can see myself in her understanding of me. I recognize the value, not so much because I see and accept myself, but because of how she expresses her experience of how she perceives me.
This relationally activated recognition of self and worth, refreshes and supports my experience to such a degree that I literally recover a deeper – felt sense of who I am and of how I am being perceived. It is as though my “worth” is market driven; it is based on how value is determined by those who are invested in having a relationship with me.
Recognition of self and worth becomes the currency with which we learn to more deeply value who we are. And it has value to the degree that we value our relationships with one another. Take a look at one of your relationships today and greet with curiosity that person you are as perceived by that person you are with.
Ref: Goldsmith, Marshall. 2007. What got you here won’t get you there. New York: Hyperion
Listen to this Moment
December 14th, 2009, 7:50 pmIn life, perhaps in this moment, we are given an opportunity to listen. If we are still, we may actually hear what is calling to us. We have a choice at this time; “do I listen” or “do I move back into the familiar patterns of my life?” Do I answer the call and take the risk inherent in it’s promise - to change me and “riddle” me into being more fully who I am?
” Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or ‘culture,’ the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and is meaningless – even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown. Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.” (Campbell, 1949, p. 59)
Maybe the Answers are Inside
December 13th, 2008, 9:22 pm“Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains,
and the maker of pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the strings that no one touches, and the
source of all water
If you want the truth, I will tell youthe truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I (you) love is inside.”
Bly, R. (1971). The Kabir book: Forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir. Beacon: Boston
