“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” — Mark Twain In recent weeks I have come across a few articles on teaching our children “the future skills” of empathy and kindness…and off I went on a huff; it cannot be a future skill. It is a now skills, a now necessity!
Dictionary: Choices noun Plural: Choices “An act of choosing between a range of possibilities.” My Mom always told me; remember every choice you make, has a consequence. True and yet the implied threat thereof could also be a limiting factor to actually making a choice, let alone the right choice. Every day, all of us make at least 20 choices. What we eat, wear, our mood for the day, our actions, our lack thereof etc. etc. Our children in matric are facing the choices of what they will study or do after school, or if they are in grade 9, what their subject choices will be, these are big choices. Well perhaps subject choices in the bigger scheme of things, will prove to not be so important. The summer holidays are upon us, we contemplate what we will do for a holiday or buy or want for Christmas, such privileged choices, we forget to recognise the privilege of them. I listened to a Ted Talk that Caroline Myss gave in 2017 on Choices. I include it under the resources tab. It is really worth listening to. As an aside I was actually doing a bit of research for another Blog I will be writing soon on “Living a Meaningful Life”. I had just finished reading the recently discovered three lectures by Viktor Frankl, “Say Yes to life, despite of everything” and had read “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and was then doing a bit more homework into Caroline Myss and Living a Purposeful Life, when I happened to stumble across this Ted Talk. Sometimes the best things in life are unplanned. What a gift of a finding. So true, I just had to share it with you immediately. Here is a summary of her Ted Talk. Of course, I wrote down what resonated with me. Please still listen to the Ted Talk as you may actually scour other rich morsels from it that speak to you. The Power of Choice (italics are my comments) Choice is a fundamental power of the human experience. The power of the choices we make has infinite consequences and yet we do not know what a little or a big choice is. The big choices are not getting married, buying a house or getting divorced. Who would have guessed that? The big choices are choices that impact our health, healing, positioning ourselves and empowering ourself – the choices that we make in the privacy of our own life. The ones we do not always discuss with others, the ones we brood on and then jump into and embrace. Those choices have the largest impact on our soul and life. We are born knowing that choices are powerful. Because of that and as I said at the start, we are terrified of making choices and being held accountable for the choices. Caroline lists 5 Choices are being critical to our lives. Here they are… 1. The decision to live an integrous life. To choose to walk the way I talk. To say no matter what, I will always speak and tell the truth. What I say I believe, I will live. I will not betray or compromise myself. I will not force another to be in a circumstance that will please me. And then if you lie to yourself, remember that liars don’t heal. People who blame others or when they know others will pay for their choices or will be hurt by that choice, or that their actions or words will deliberately hurt others, do not get to think there is a free pass. Your body knows you did that. Don’t lie to yourself. Get this choice together. 2. I will not pass my suffering on, but my wisdom. Do you want to pass on your regrets and suffering, or do you get to share your wisdom? We all have wisdom, do not say you don’t have any wisdom, that is just a plain lie. What do you want to pass on? The sludge or the wisdom? You have the choice. Of course, we all have grief and pain, life will never be fair. Never. The model of healing is saying “this will never defeat me. I will not live in this. I must turn this into my source of wisdom.” Choose between wisdom or woe. 3. The choice to take risks in your life. Don’t wait for proof of success. At life’s end how many statements will be, I wish I had? We spend too much time on “What I”f? How many of our greatest fears happened? How many of the great things in life did you make happen? Don’t take the safe path. Don’t look backwards for guidance. You are where you are before the previous past of your life is over. Don’t let yesterday shape tomorrow. It only serves to pull you back; it does not propel you forward. The past holds regrets. The future concerns. Just be in the newness of now. Be there. For me this means just live in the present, choose now. 4. Choose new words and let go of the ones that do not serve you (see #1 above). Every word is a universe onto itself. Our thoughts and words are immensely powerful! What are the words that we say to ourself and yet we should NEVER use them? STOP Toxic self-talk. Make your inner voice your best friend. Toxic vocabulary creates vibrations of neurology that is organically so negative and hostile towards what we see, think and feel. When we speak our words, we manifest them. Being critical as a 1st reaction, entitling blame and thinking we deserve differently should be extricated from our vocabulary. We are not entitled to anything. Blame takes you out of our present into our past, doing so makes you a victim. Choose the words that reflect the gift of you and your life and the endless possibilities of now. I also think gratitude dramatically impacts the words we choose. 5. Choose to get up every day and bless our day. Base your day on the gift of you being alive and just because you are. Bless it by saying “this day in my life will never come again, I will never see this sunrise and sunset again. Nothing in my life, in the way it comes today, will ever be the same.” Making the choice of blessing each day will shape your life with such grace and beauty. Good luck making choices. I hope that this Blog gave you new insight into making the really important choices. Sincere Regards. Lou-Anne Find•Your•Wings “An act of choosing between a range of possibilities.” My Mom always told me; remember every choice you make, has a consequence. True and yet the implied threat thereof could also be a limiting factor to actually making a choice, let alone the right choice. Every day, all of us make at least 20 choices. What we eat, wear, our mood for the day, our actions, our lack thereof etc. etc.
My daughter recently told me that I apologise too much. As a Strict Perfectionist in terms of my Enneagram type I do tend to apologise when things are not perfect or to my standards. Her comment made me attentive to what and when and how I apologise.
In these increasingly anxious times, we can easily become very stressed or we can choose to practise staying Calm. I say practise because for many of us it does not come naturally, and it takes some practising before it is a habit and a natural state of being.
I have battled in my mind about writing this Blog on this topic. What raised the topic for me was the unnecessary and abhorrent death of George Floyd, whose death reignited the #Black Lives Matter campaign The question I kept asking myself is why was it that his death led to millions of protesters across the globes from all races, ages and gender, stood together in support of #BlackLivesMatter. We know, as this image so well reflects, that other people have suffered race biased violence in the USA before, so why did George Floyd’s death lead to this scale of response?
Why is it that we can become so locked into our own perspectives and increase the polarization by doing so? Would it help if we understood the other party’s perspective too? Would we find common ground or solutions in doing so?
Whilst I know that Gratitude, like Mindfulness, has become a bit of platitude over the last 10+ years, I also know from personal experience how both have helped me to live a happier and less stressful life.
The one thing that being in lockdown has given all of us, is Time. The best wines or cognac’s all improve with time. Therefore, time adds value. What value then have we gained from the gift of time foisted on us through the Covid-19 lockdown?
As we lean into the experience of this strange and scary situation, we all live in right now, we start to let go of our attachments to what was and what now cannot be, we start to accept the reality thereof. So how do we start to create our new realities? That journey will be different for each one of us but there are a few things we can practise that will help us to shape that more effectively.
I do believe that the combination of my career, training and life experiences offer rich insights and learnings, and if others can benefit from that and as a result, learn to fly, then my goal has been achieved.
I started writing this on day 2 of the Lockdown in South Africa due to the Covid-19 Virus. My blog will not be about Covid 19. Yet we must acknowledge that we live in a unique time. A complex, scary and tragic time and we can add an array of adjectives to this. It makes us feel vulnerable and being in lockdown has clipped all of our wings. So how do we deal with this?
This Blog was inspired by the confluence of a few things coming together. Towards the end of 2020 I read Scott Sonnenshein’s book called “Stretch”, I can recommend it. A…
Now more than ever the world needs courageous leaders. That means we all need to learn to act with the courage of our conviction. We need to be the change we want to see. How do we teach our children or colleagues courage if we choose not to act with courage ourselves?
