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When you come right down to is, all you have is
yourself. Yourself is a sun with a thousand rays in your belly. The rest
is nothing.
~ Pabalo Picasso ~
Including
Yourself by Leslie Karen Sann, MA, LCPC
I'm on my way home from a wonderful visit with a
dear friend. During our time together she had shared with me her concerns
about a trip she is going on in a few weeks. She is off to Africa on a
safari (or two). The concern is about the food. She is very careful about
how she eats as she has learned over the years some foods, and times to
eat, etc., work better for her than others. Wanting to feel as vibrant as
possible she wants to make sure she eats well. Well, as in what is
congruent with her needs.
The concern is what works for her is different from
how the safari guides have planned the meals. The group is scheduled to
eat at a much later hour than serves her body, which will set her up to
not sleep well. Therefore, she will not get the rest she needs to
adventure out at dawn the next morning.
Most of us have been conditioned to do our best to
fit in with the way things are, rather than learning to negotiate on our
own behalf in a manner that cooperates with the larger group. My friend
was facing this challenge.
In our exploration of possibilities she decided she
would ask to have something set aside from lunch to be served to her when
they returned from the dusk safari outing. In this way her request would
take minimal effort on the part of the support staff while she could dine
at an hour that worked for her body.
Simple solution yet without opening to the
possibility that she could make a self-serving request that the staff
could say yes to, she may have resigned herself to doing her best to fit
in with how things had been written down in the brochure.
Have you ever done that to yourself, not represented
your needs, open to being met in a way that could work for everyone?
Some of us imagine there are only two choices -- go
along with the program resigning to what is -- or -- demanding and
insisting we get what we want the way we want it. Neither demand or denial
work to create win/win outcomes.
Instead, there is a third right answer: staying true
from a place of openness, acceptance and cooperation as a way to invite
the world where everyone wins, where everyone is included, including
yourself.
Readers Share Wins:
I am learning a lot about choice lately. There are
moments when I'm tempted to do an old pattern of scolding myself for not
doing something "right". Instead I switch to humor and say
something like, "Well that didn't work out so well, I wonder what
else we could do?" This feels better and opens me up to other choices
and possibilities. ~ M.R. ~
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