Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash
We Are People. OK?
Come walk with me along this winding path. I have eighteen ideas flowing, not so seamlessly, thru my mind. I find walking allows me to focus my multi-lens on what I want to share.
This is our time on earth. Use IT!
We are being pulled in spite of and despite our selves between I and We, causing personal angst, pain and inertia. Let’s stop these feelings right now.
First and foremost the daily statement to vocalize is “I am OK”. There, you have said it in your head. Now, say it out loud, “I am OK”. Again, louder please and daily.
So many of my coaching and consulting clients, individuals or organizations, sit on my couch and have a hard time verbalizing. Look into the mirror and face yourself, eye to eye, I say.
It takes personal time, patience and empathy. Sometimes you have to look long and hard. Virginia Satir in her book The New People Making, reminds us that “each of us can make a difference, each of us is needed”.
Before you stop reading this article, remember there are fundamental truths in apple pie statements like, “get close your customer”, or “if you feel good, you do good”.
The daily pounding we are taking is painful, dealing with the many outside geopolitical and market forces, the demands to constantly think critically sifting through torturous masses of information to find wisdom and living our lives in a gig economy. Yet, We are OK.
Evidence shows that the strong:
- Rely on their own fundamental ethics and values
- Stick diligently to them
- Collaborate with others And always
- Remember they are OK. They have the positive individual strength.
But I am still on a high anxiety wire.
Imagine a large elastic band or find one in your junk drawer and place on one finger on each hand and stretch. As your hands separate what do you feel. Stress. Naturally each side wants the other to come back. And we, dear reader, are caught somewhere, anxiously, on the elastic.
Sometimes we can manage the pull and sometimes not. Sometimes we ask a friend to help.
But, who is doing the pulling? Do you see anyone? Look around. Ah! It is you. All your selves are creating the tension, purposely! No one else.
Looking from above, the “I am OK” place, creating tension enables change, encourages it and focuses our intentions.
Photo by Chase Clark on Unsplash
Maybe the tension is there to help you reach a goal you have set for yourself. You are OK, right. Being OK is the oil, the ibuprofen of the mind. So go with the flow and oil often. We are often reminded to rinse and repeat.
Tension is part of your meaning seeking, and goal seeking behavior. You can loosen or extend the tension. You make the choice and then move forward.
In her book “I will not die an unlived life” , Dawna Markova wrote:
The art of success is using what you are good at to overcome the challenges that life brings you. Everyone is good at something.
Yes, you are.
This article was first published on “Evidence of“.
