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October 27,
2009 |
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| If,
every day, I dare to remember that I am here on
loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes
are all leased to me, not given, I will never
despair.
Erica
Jong
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Developing
a cheerful disposition can permit an atmosphere
wherein one's spirit can be nurtured and encouraged
to blossom and bear fruit. Being pessimistic
and negative about our experiences will not enhance
the quality of our lives.
Barbara
W. Winder
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I seldom think about my
limitations, and they never make me sad.
Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times;
but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.
Helen Keller
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The
Guide with the Broom
Dawna Markova
When
I was in the hospital, the one person whose presence
I welcomed was a woman who came to sweep the floors
with a large push broom. She was the only one
who didn't stick things in, take things out, or ask
stupid questions. For a few minutes each
night, this immense Jamaican woman rested her broom
against the wall and sank her body into the
turquoise plastic chair in my room. All I
heard was the sound of her breath in and out, in and
out. It was comforting in a strange and simple
way. My own breathing was calmed. Of the
fifty or so people that made contact with me in any
given day, she was the only one who wasn't trying to
change me.
One
night she reached out and put her hand on to top of
my shoulder. I'm not usually comfortable with
casual touch, but her hand felt so natural being
there. It happened to be one of the few places
in my body that didn't hurt. I could have
sworn she was saying two words with each breath, one
on the inhale, one on the exhale: "As . .
. Is . . . As . . . Is . . ."
On
her next visit, she looked at me. No
evaluation, no trying to figure me out. She
just looked and saw me. Then she said simply,
"You're more than the sickness in that
body." I was pretty doped up, so I wasn't
sure I understood her; but my mind was just too
thick to ask questions.
I
kept mumbling those words to myself throughout the
following day, "I'm more than the
sickness in this body. I'm more than the
suffering in this body."
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I remember her
voice clearly. It was rich, deep, full, like
maple syrup in the spring . . . .
I
reached out for her hand. It was cool and
dry. I knew she wouldn't let go. She
continued, "You're not the fear in that
body. You're more than that fear. Float
on it. Float above it. You're more than
that pain." I began to breathe a little
deeper, as I did when I wanted to float in a
lake. I remembered floating in Lake George
when I was five, floating in the Atlantic Ocean at
Coney Island when I was seven, floating in the
Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa when I was
twenty-eight. Without any instruction from me,
this Jamaican guide had led me to a source of
comfort that was wider and deeper than pain or fear.
It's
been fifteen years since I've seen the woman with
the broom. I've never been able to find
her. No one could remember her name; but she
touched my soul with her compassionate presence and
her fingerprints are still there.
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Doing
Things the "Right" Way
Kathy
Paauw
“You
have your way. I have my way. As for the right
way,
the
correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
Friedrich
Nietzsche
Those
in charge often fall into the trap of identifying
their own agendas and standards, along with a
message that “my way is the only right way.”
Virtually everybody wakes up in the morning with an
unseen assumption that life is about the struggle to
survive and get ahead in a world of limited
resources. This limited view squelches
innovation and creativity, and it also trains people
to focus on what they need to do to please their
superiors by doing things the “right” way
-- whether that way works for them or not.
As
a youth I had planned on a performance career as a
coloratura/lyric soprano, so I was thrilled when I
was offered admission to Eastman School of Music --
a very competitive and top-rated music conservatory
in New York. I vividly recall one of my lowest
moments during my freshman year at Eastman...
My
roommate was a bassoonist, and we were both giving
recitals near the end of our freshman year.
She needed a scheduled break in the middle of her
recital to rest her embouchure (the formation of
the muscles in the mouth and lips, designed to
create pressure on the reed), so she asked if I
would perform something from my recital on her
program. I agreed to do so, thinking it
would also be good practice for me as I prepared
for my own recital two weeks later.
The
week before her recital, my voice teacher noticed
a flyer advertising my roommate’s recital
program, with my name included on her program.
That week when I entered my teacher’s studio for
my voice lesson, she pulled out a copy of my
roommate's flyer and informed me that I would
not be performing in her recital because
I was not ready. During the ensuing
rage-filled lecture that followed, my teacher
instructed me that I was never to perform
in public without her permission.
After all, her reputation was on the
line! She could not believe I had the
audacity to consider performing anywhere
in public without first getting her
permission to do so.
Recalling
this most unpleasant outburst from my Prima Donna
voice teacher 28 years ago, I have great
appreciation for something that Ben Zander said:
“It is dangerous to have our musicians so obsessed
with competition because they will find it difficult
to take the necessary risks with themselves to be
great performers. The art of music, since it can
only be conveyed through its interpreters, depends
on expressive performance for its lifeblood. Yet
it is only when we make mistakes in performance that
we can really begin to notice what needs attention.”
You don’t have to be a musician to appreciate the
value of his wisdom.
Zander
actively trains his students to celebrate their
mistakes by lifting their arms in the air, smiling,
and saying, “How fascinating!” As I read
the book, I tried to imagine what it would have been
like as an 18-year-old performer if I had studied
with a teacher like Benjamin Zander.
You
may be wondering what happened after my voice
teacher ripped me to shreds. At the age of 18,
I did not have the backbone to stand up to a person
of such famed stature, so I did not perform
in my roommate’s recital. Just two weeks
later I performed the same piece in my own
recital...and my teacher was very pleased with my
performance. After completing my freshman
year, I transferred to Macalester College in
Minnesota, where I got a great liberal arts
education and studied with an outstanding and
affirming voice teacher for my remaining three
years. There I received encouragement and
support in an environment where it was safe to take
risks, make mistakes, and learn from them. Instead
of feeling defeated, I flourished.
Carl
Jung, the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who
founded analytic psychology, sums it up by saying
that "Criticism has the power to do
good when there is something that must be destroyed,
dissolved, or redirected, but it is capable only of
harm when there is something to be built."
Zander
suggests that mistakes and negative experiences can
become great opportunities for growth. He
tells the story about a tenor who came to him after
losing his girlfriend. He was in such despair
that he could hardly function. Zander was
secretly delighted, because he knew that this
heartbreak would enable the tenor to more fully
express the heart-rendering passion of Schubert’s Die
Winterreise (about the loss of a beloved).
Zander recalls, “That song
had completely eluded him the previous week because
up to then, the only object of affection he had ever
lost was a pet goldfish.”
In
The Art of Possibility, the Zanders share a
fundamental practice that is captured in the
catch-phrase, "it's all invented." It's
all a story you tell -- not just some of it, but all
of it. And every story you tell is founded on
a network of hidden assumptions.
Zander
explains, "We do not mean
that you can just make anything up and have it
magically appear. We mean that you can shift
the framework to one whose underlying assumptions
allow for the conditions you desire. Let your
thoughts and actions spring from the new framework
and see what happens."
Here's
a great example of the power of shifting your
framework and assumptions: A shoe factory
sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to
study the prospects for expanding business. One
sends back a telegram saying, "Situation
hopeless. No one wears shoes." The other writes
back triumphantly, "Glorious business
opportunity. They have no shoes!"
©2005
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Ten
Ways to Connect to the Confidence within You
Louise Morganti Kaelin
Working
with a variety of people from all walks of life has
given me some insight into the process of
success. Regardless of our background, skills,
experience, or attitude, we can't be successful
until we feel confident about who we are and what
we're doing. It's one of those cart before the
horse things, since we tend to think that being
successful will give us confidence. In fact,
feeling confident FIRST will allow us to experience
success and the achievement of our goals. Here
are some ways to connect to the confidence within
you.
- Be
aware that confidence comes from inside, not
outside.
You can't use others as a yardstick. Other
people take their cue from you. If you act
confident, people will have confidence in
you. If you are hesitant or timid, no one
will be able to put their trust in you.
- Start
with your strengths (and we ALL have them).
Make a list of your strengths, no matter how
silly the list may seem at first glance.
If you can boil a 'mean' pot of water or touch
your nose with your toes, let yourself get in
touch with how you feel about that. That
feeling is known as confidence.
- Allow
the memory of confident times to be your
trigger.
It doesn't matter if it happened in the 2nd
grade--remembering a time that you were on top
of the world, if only for a moment, can be all
you need to feel confident here and now, in this
situation.
- Confidence
is like rabbits: it multiplies
exponentially.
Once you start feeling confident about
everything you do well, you start looking for
other areas you feel confident in. You
also start feeling confident about things you
haven't done before. You'll be able to
more honestly assess your skills and expertise
and give yourself the opportunity to
succeed. Allow the feeling to multiply
just like all those bunnies in that commercial
where the gentleman has to get approval for a
check.
- Maintain
an attitude of gratitude.
Gratitude puts (and keeps) a smile on your
face. What's the first thing you notice
about confident people? They're smiling.
- Identify
your rules for feeling confident, then rewrite
them!
If I asked the question "What must be in
place in order for you to feel
confident?", I can guarantee that you
will have a long list of conditions that must
ALL be in place in order for you to feel
confident. If I asked you who wrote those
rules, you would answer "I did,"
although it may take you a moment or two to
realize that fact. If you wrote the
current set, take the initiative and rewrite
your rules. Make them simple, stated in
the positive, and totally in your control.
(P.S. There is nothing more in your control than
your thoughts. That's why #3 works.) One
more thing: make sure your new list is divided
by OR's, not AND's.
- Hang
out with confident people.
Confidence is contagious. Actually, all
feelings are contagious. Which group will
make you feel better? One that exudes
strength, confidence and positivity? Or
one that is constantly seeing the worst that
could happen, fearful of trying anything new,
afraid to be embarrassed? Hang out with
the one that makes you feel like you can
accomplish anything you want!
- Completion
equals confidence.
Finishing anything at all gives you
confidence. The knowledge that you can put
your mind to something and do it is all that is
required to feel confident. Look around
and finish everything you see unfinished.
- Only
you can kill the feeling of confidence.
Just as you can't find confidence outside of
yourself, no one else can stop you from feeling
confident. Have you ever noticed that
really confident people are oblivious to your
opinion of them? No matter what you've
done, it's only YOUR opinion that matters.
- Don't
worry about getting 'above' yourself.
Some of us don't want to get too big for our
britches. We think that downplaying our
abilities is the way to go. The truth is
that thinking is just another way to keep
playing small. It undermines our ability
to succeed because after a while we start
believing that 'it' was no big deal. As
Norman Vincent Peale expressed it:
"Believe in yourself! Have faith in your
abilities! Without a humble but reasonable
confidence in your own powers you cannot be
successful or happy." I like that
phrase, 'humble but reasonable.' If you
keep that in mind, you can't go wrong.
Related
Quotes
Confidence
on the outside begins by living with integrity on
the inside.
- Brian Tracy
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great
undertakings.
- Samuel Johnson
Having once decided to achieve a certain task,
achieve it at all costs of tedium and
distaste. The gain in self-confidence of
having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
- Arnold Bennett
If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the
universe against me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When you have confidence, you can have a lot of
fun.
And when you have fun, you can do amazing
things.
Joe Namath
©
Louise Morganti Kaelin. Louise is a Life
Success Coach who partners with others to help them
turn their dreams into reality. Email: louise@touchpointcoaching.com
Web: http://touchpointcoaching.com
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Personal
Philosophy is like the Set of the Sail
Jim Rohn
In the process of living, the winds of circumstances
blow on us all in an unending flow that touches each
of our lives.
We have all experienced the blowing winds of
disappointment, despair and heartbreak. Why,
then, would each of us, in our own individual ship
of life, all beginning at the same point, with the
same intended destination in mind, arrive at such
different places at the end of the journey?
Have we not all been blown by the winds of
circumstances and buffeted by the turbulent storms
of discontent?
What guides us to different destinations in life is
determined by the way we have chosen to set our
sail. The way that each of us thinks makes the
major difference in where each of us arrive.
The major difference is the set of the sail.
The same circumstances happen to us all. We have
disappointments and challenges. We all have
reversals and those moments when, in spite of our
best plans and efforts, things just seem to fall
apart. Challenging circumstances are not
events reserved for the poor, the uneducated or the
destitute. The rich and the poor have marital
problems. The rich and the poor have the same
challenges that can lead to financial ruin and
personal despair. In the final analysis, it is
not what happens that determines the quality of our
lives, it is what we choose to do when we have
struggled to set the sail and then discover, after
all of our efforts, that the wind has changed
directions.
When the winds change, we must change. We must
struggle to our feet once more and rest the sail in
the manner that will steer us toward the destination
of our own deliberate choosing. The set of the
sail, how we think and how we respond, has a far
greater capacity to destroy our lives than any
challenges we face. How quickly and
responsibly we react to adversity is far more
important than the adversity itself. Once we
discipline ourselves to understand this, we will
finally and willingly conclude that the great
challenge of life is to control the process of our
thinking.
Learning to reset the sail with the changing winds
rather than permitting ourselves to be blown in a
direction we did not purposely choose requires the
development of a whole new discipline. It
involves going to work on establishing a powerful,
personal philosophy that will help to influence in a
positive way all that we do and that we think and
decide. If we can succeed in this worthy
endeavor, the result will be a change in the course
of our income, lifestyle and relationships, and in
how we feel about the things of value as well as the
times of challenge. If we can alter the way we
perceive, judge and decide upon the main issues of
life, then we can dramatically change our lives.
Reproduced
with permission from the Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine.
All rights reserved worldwide. www.jimrohn.com. |
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