Posts Tagged ‘confidence’
FROM LINDSAY
“The key realization, which was a theme to the rest of my realizations and experience, was my understanding of self-worth. In the seminar I was able to get all I wanted just by being myself. I was able to find a new-found confidence and trust that allowed me to be more accepting of situations and of how I handle those situations. This new feeling of acceptance allows me to feel more at peace and that is something I’ve been struggling to find for a while – until NOW!”
Lindsay Morris
Advanced Seminar – Florida November 2010
CONFIDENCE
“Confidence is preparation in action.”
Ron Howard
SERVICE THROUGH EMPATHIC LISTENING
Excerpt From Relationships That Work: The Power Of Conscious Living
- By David B. Wolf
Another character from a novel, Josephus in Herman Hesse’s The Father Confessor, was renowned as a great healer. In Josephus “a gift slumbered, and with the passing years…it slowly came to flower. It was the gift of listening. Whenever a brother from one of the hermitages, or a child of the world harried and troubled of soul, came to Josephus and told him of his deeds, sufferings, temptations, and missteps…or spoke of his loss, pain or sorrow, Josephus knew how to listen to him, to open his ears and heart, to gather the man’s sufferings and anxieties into himself and hold them, so that the penitent was sent away emptied and calmed…
“He regarded every man the same way, whether he accused God or himself, whether he magnified or minimized his sins and sufferings, whether he confessed a killing or merely an act of lewdness, whether he lamented an unfaithful sweetheart or the loss of his soul’s salvation. It did not alarm Josephus when someone told of converse with demons…He did not lose patience when someone talked at great length while obviously concealing the main issue…All the complaints, confessions, charges, and qualms that were brought to him seemed to pour into his ears like water into the desert sands. He seemed to pass no judgment upon them and to feel neither pity nor contempt for the person confessing. Nevertheless, or perhaps for that very reason, whatever was confessed to him seemed not to be spoken into the void, but to be transformed, alleviated, and redeemed in the telling and being heard. Only rarely did he reply with a warning or admonition, even more rarely did he give advice, let alone any order. Such did not seem to be his function, and his callers apparently sensed that it was not. His function was to arouse confidence and be receptive, to listen patiently and lovingly, helping the imperfectly formed confession to take shape, inviting all that was dammed up or encrusted within each soul to flow and pour out…”
Josephus experienced severe struggles, and discovered his own healing in entering the world of others, serving them as an instrument in their healing. To serve another person—be it a friend caring for friend or a businessperson serving a customer—means understanding the needs, desires, thoughts and emotions of that person. This is empathy, a way of being that creates a culture of trust, supports self-realization and generates a climate of healing and healthy resolution. This is a key quality in life-enriching relationships that are based on honor and respect for each individual.
The essence of these techniques and principles—such as empathy, effective attending behavior and appropriate silence—is to view the world from the other person’s perspective. Seeing the worldview of someone does not mean being in agreement with that view. We can be secure in our viewpoint while understanding another perspective. In fact, an internal sense of security naturally translates to an openness to other frames of reference.
FEAR TO CONFIDENCE
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
WHAT IS AN AGREEMENT?
Excerpt From A Coaching Letter Written By David B Wolf
“How do agreements come in to being? or what is an agreement?”
My understanding about this is that we each determine this for ourselves. Having said that, I also want to express that my understanding is that the principles that we present in the Satvatove seminars, regarding agreements, are valid regardless of time, circumstance and subjective definition. That is, for example, the principle is that when we keep our agreements we create in our lives trust, confidence, safety, warmth, gratitude, etc., and when we violate our agreements we create mistrust, hurt, decline in self-respect, confusion, etc. In defining what is or is not an agreement we want to be as honest as possible, not avoiding the truth of a broken commitment through some attempt at word play. For myself, I endeavor to be conscious about my language in this regard. For example, if I know that I don’t want to make a commitment, or for the other person to think that I’m giving my word, I’ll specifically use language such as “I may call you tomorrow…” or “I might be at the meeting…”, whereas if I want to create commitment with myself or others, then I endeavor for my language to reflect that, such as “I will call you on Thursday.” With ourselves, whatever stories we may tell ourselves, I believe that we know when we’ve made agreements with ourselves, and as you indicate in your letter, we feel the positive effects when we
fulfill them, and negative effects when we neglect to do so. . . .
With others it seems that it is important to clarify matters if we sense that there is some room for uncertainty with regards to whether it is perceived that we made an agreement. For example, if I say “I’ll try to be there tomorrow at noon…”, and I sense that the other person is responding in a way that he expects me to be there, then it may be helpful, to avoid misunderstanding, for me to clarify on the spot, that I may be there, and that I’m not committing to be there…
Ability & Character
“Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.”
John Wooden
To Withhold
“To withhold is to perish”
Khalil Gibran
Be a Distinction- Who Are You In The World?
Being Authentic Is A Key For Vibrant Living
For most of us, consistent authenticity involves conscious, courageous effort. It’s a challenge to recognize our deceptions and pretenses, and differentiate them from actual self-discovery. Each moment our integrity is connected with willingness to be authentic. Authenticity vitalizes our immediate experience, and also enriches the service legacy we create for others.
Willing To Be Uniquely Ourselves
The habit of authenticity makes us a distinction in the world, a human being willing to be uniquely ourselves. This isn’t about reactively differentiating ourselves, which is the flipside of following the crowd, but rather full and genuine expression of our spirit. This requires great intention, as social pressures tend towards conformity and conditioned behavior at the expense of honest realization of self.
Intention itself is a spiritually-based principle of personal growth. A fundamental characteristic of intention is clarity- to be completely clear on who we want to be, what we want to experience, and the actions and results that flow from that. In addition to clarity, fully believing that our intention is possible is also essential. A third element is readiness to accept what we say we want for our lives. We can ask ourselves to what extent are we actually prepared to receive the abundance and success of our intention manifesting. This could lead to productively addressing self-defeating beliefs connected with, for example, a sense of unworthiness. The totality of these elements- clarity, belief and acceptance- constitutes clear intention. Clear intention is firm, yet flexible to the indications and will of the divine. Lacking clear intention we are likely to live a life with a script written by others. Living from clear intention we are truly the authors of our life.
Such a life of distinction represents a standard to which others may aspire. Of course, endeavoring for authenticity for the purpose of being recognized as an inspiration for others could well be another strategy for the ego to seek approval. Still, we can appreciate that an effect of an authentic life is that it is inherently a service to others. In fact, we may be most inspiring to those who struggle with the same challenges we handled in our journey. For example, if our path to genuineness is characterized by transforming the needy, helpless script to an assertion of power, confidence and intelligence, then our willingness to be authentic is especially poignant for people playing out a similar script. Similarly, if our transformation is marked by creative expression where formerly there was dull routine, or vulnerability that was covered by bravado, or adventurous risk-taking in place of playing not to lose, we serve as a model for others immersed in those same life-draining, surviving instead of thriving, conversations.
In the Satvatove environment we speak about assertiveness. Assertiveness is founded in authenticity. We need to know who we are and be connected with our core in order to know who or what it is we are asserting. Otherwise, in the name of assertiveness we may be into yet another game.
In a life of distinction we assert and communicate from our being. Otherwise, we get caught up in doing and having, disconnected from being, searching externally for experiences such as satisfaction, power and beauty, that are inherent to our nature. We are human beings, not human doings. Being a distinction is not only personally fulfilling- it is also, from my perspective, an integral aspect of our responsibility as human beings.
Creating With Our Word
In The Beginning Was The Word
Just as the supreme creates with his word, we too, as parts of the ultimate source, create our lives with our word. In the Vedic tradition there is a literature called Upadeshamrita, or The Nectar of Instruction. It is a short book, and concludes with a depiction of the most elevated spiritual consciousness. The initial sentence of The Nectar of Instruction describes the importance of controlling words, for anyone interested in spiritual progress.Throughout the Satvatove programs we have opportunity to be aware of our relationship with our word, and its effect on our life and relationships.
Exercise
Whether or not you’ve participated in the Foundational Seminar, I ask the readers to go through a process similar to an exercise in that course. Bring to mind a time when someone made an agreement with you, and broke that agreement, and afterwards you saw the person face-to-face. Connect with this experience. Write down two or three words describing what this experience was like. Next, bring to mind a time when someone made a commitment to you, and kept it, and afterwards you saw the person, in-person. Again, connect with this experience, and on a separate list write what that felt like. Now think of an example when you made an agreement with someone, and you broke it, and afterwards you saw that person, face-to-face. Connect inside, and write a few words describing that experience. Lastly, recall an instance when you made a commitment with someone and fulfilled it. What was that like? Write it down on a separate list.
Typically, the broken agreements lists include experiences and feelings such as hurt, embarrassment, anger, undependable, confused, unclear, devalued, and disappointed. In the agreements-kept column we characteristically find words such as trust, grateful, responsible, fulfilled, secure, clear, respected, and honored. The purpose here is not to moralize about the importance of keeping our promises. It’s simply about realizing how our relationship with our word affects our experience of life. When we violate our word, then, based on our experience, as evidenced by the lists we’ve generated, our confidence and trust in others tends to decrease, and feelings like resentment, distrust, and pain are predominant. And, when we honor our agreements, confidence and trust increases, and we tend to develop an experience and environment of appreciation, affection, and harmony.
No Big or Small Agreements
Connected with this conversation about the results of our relation with our word, I’d like to offer that there aren’t big or small agreements. Consider, for example, that I say, “I’ll call you tomorrow,” and I don’t call you tomorrow. We may think, “Well, it’s no big deal.” With respect to our relationship, however, will the consequences from the broken agreements list manifest? Probably they will. Probably, at some level, your trust for me will diminish, and our relationship will feel less clean than before.
Certainly, we could think of instances where a person breaks his agreement, and the consequences discussed above perhaps will not be in effect. Suppose you’ve agreed to be somewhere at 9 AM. You stop on the side of the road and save someone’s life, and arrive at your appointment at 10 AM. Did you keep your agreement? No, though perhaps in this exceptional instance the unpleasant consequences usually attending violated commitments will not be in effect, because you served an even higher principle. I assert, though, that the vast majority of the times that we transgress our word, harmful effects materialize. Rarely are our “good stories” for not honoring our agreements actually “good stories”, in the sense that our justifications don’t negate the adverse, destructive experiences.
Many of us carry in our subconscious an equation that looks like:
Keeping Agreement =
Not Keeping Agreement
+
A Good Story
And this formula has corollaries, such as:
Being on Time =
Not Being on Time
+
A Good Story
It’s not that one side of the equation is always greater than the other. Above we cited an example – stopping on the side of the road to save a life – where the “good story” side may actually be weightier. We’re claiming that the equation isn’t an equality, though usually, more than 99% of the time, respecting our word will create an experience of life and relationship that is much more satisfying than breaching our promise.
To Grow Entails Making Challenging Commitments And Honoring Them
If we’re not creating commitment in our life, it’s likely that we’re also not sufficiently stretching ourselves to expand our limits and possibilities. If we do give our agreement, we’ll probably find that, despite our best efforts, we sometimes don’t follow through. A strategy for handling broken agreements with integrity is also a valuable tool for spiritual transformation and restoring relationships.
The Five As
A strategy we use in the Satvatove community is the “five As.” The five As are 1) acknowledge, 2) accept responsibility, 3) account, 4) apologize, and 5) amend.
“Acknowledge” means to recognize that we have a broken agreement, and to express this to the person whom we transgressed. We’re not justifying, or defending, or rationalizing that we haven’t broken a commitment. Acknowledgement also consists of empathically understanding the pain, disappointment, loss of trust, and other emotions we have caused by violating our word. Accepting responsibility, the second of the As, denotes realization that I responded in a particular way – or neglected to respond in a particular way – that caused me to not honor my word. I’m not playing the blame game; I’m accepting responsibility, and expressing that to the person to whom I broke a commitment. The third A is Account. Expression of accountability consists of genuinely explaining what happened. “Explanation” does not mean “defense,” or “excuse,” or “justification.” This truthful explanation may sometimes be rewarding, such as the example where we save a life at the expense of keeping our word. More often, though, our explanations may be unflattering, such as explaining, “I spaced-out about our appointment because I was watching television,” or “I paid a few bills instead of timely paying my debt.”
Apology is the fourth A, and it’s important to note that it’s fourth, not first. Oftentimes we act like apology is the first and only step in effectively handling a broken agreement. “I’m sorry” can be more about my need to look good, to restore my image, than about sincerely expressing remorse and reinstating the soundness of the relationship. Even more, we can imprudently use “I apologize” as implicit permission to do the same thing again. Without acknowledging what we’ve done, accepting responsibility and honestly accounting for it, apology can be hollow. Following the first three As, apology is a natural step in managing broken commitments. Amend is the fifth A, and consists of doing what we’re able to redress the situation. We may approach the other party for ideas for remedial action.
Create a Culture of Trust
Through making and keeping agreements we grow and strengthen our relationships. Each of us can identify things we could do, things we should do, to better our lives. My proposal is that before we end our day today we each make a commitment, and keep it. It could be apparently large or small. The significant point is that by creating and fulfilling an agreement, we create a culture of trust, security and optimism.
