Do You Have A Couple Of Minutes

Words help us bring otherwise unknown thoughts to the consciousness of other.

Word proved context and vision

Words provide clarity - we can speak to be clearly understood without mistake

Words express emotion

Words evoke thought, pictures in the mind, allow us to share common experiences more deeply and from varied perspectives.

Words allow us to share our stories and our lives.  Sharing our stores allows us to live and work more cohesively in community.

Words help us set boundaries

Words help us share expectations

Words help us share empathy and sympathy

Words help us to share appreciation, gratitude, and joy

Are You living a life You've crafted or one that's "off the shelf?"

- Different Levels

-Different Experiences

- You are the Selector, but not the designer

-Off the Shelf Has Limitations

-Know where you're at what you are workig toward, or living for

-Life is a gift to be treasured - it's also perishable, but you can leave a positive ripple effect and legacy

Continuing our series on asking ourselves questions in order for us to operate from a place of strength, understanding what we have to learn and contribute, making decisions aligned with who we are, and positively impacting our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Next we want to ask the following questions:

What Are You Attracting and Why Is That?

What are the stories that keep repeating themselves in your life? What should I be learning and/or what do I have to contribute?

Make needed changes - small or large

Continuing our series on question to know yourself better to help you operate from a place of strength that will help you with alignment of decisions with who you are and want to be, and to help you in relationship with others.  Knowing who we are and acting in accordance with who we want to be and how we want to be known, is intentional work.  We must take time to know ourselves.

Our next question centers around how we use our life experiences.  It's a big one.

How have you determined to use your life experiences to shape you?  Are you hung up on any negative experiences wasting energy that could be positively directed?  Can your experience shape better decisions instead of repeating things that aren't effective.

You get to decide what you will do with your experiences.

Do something with the experience before the experience, unmanaged, does something to you.

Yesterday, we talked about the importance of knowing yourself.  And we started off with a few questions to help us thinks about how we are feeling and what we have to contribute and learn.  The thought behind us knowing ourselves is that not only would we be aligned with our strengths, but it will help us in our relationships with others.

I want to continue our self-inquiry process with the following questions for us to consider and answer.

Who Are You?  Ask "Who Am I?"  How do you identify yourself?  What does this say about who you are and what you hold to be valuable and important?

What Are Your Dreams?  Sometimes we can suppress our dreams or let go of them because of inconveniences or responsibilities in the moment.  But what do those dreams tell you about who you are?

What are Your Likes?

What Do You Enjoy?

How Do You Describe Yourself and is This How You Would like to be Described? have you taken on labels others have given you or the ones you selected for yourself?

When I was much younger I learned a song about the value of a spark.  Some of the lyrics say "It only takes a spark to get a fire going, and soon all those around can warm up to it's glowing...I wish for you my fried, this happiness that I've found...spread love to everyone, you want to pass it on."

As I have reflected on the intent of this podcast, it really is about sharing what I have learned and gleaned in a manner that might be useful to others.  And I dig deeper I understand that as much as I may have something to offer that others can benefit from or maybe even need, there are those I am so grateful to because they took the time to share with me or to share their learnings and thoughts so that i and all those i come in contact with can benefit.  It's the power of a spark, that has the ability to grow so much larger and add so much more benefits.

So with this, I would like to encourage you to keep sharing with others, pay attention and keep learning from others,  Our experiences are meant to be shared, as our collective experience has great value.  

In a time when there is so much pretension and pretending, the importance of being real, authentic, and sharing vulnerability seems to be making a comeback.  Perhaps, it actually never really went away.  The social and world events of the last few years have helped to highlight the need for a strong relationship with reality in our work and personal lives.  Dealing in the truths of our realities, allows us to make better decisions. 

In the workplace, there is greater emphasis on understanding how personal and professional responsibilities might better coexist without as much sacrifice as was expected in prior generations.

In personal life, the need to be transparent and vulnerable as it relates to our connections with one another and mental health struggles has come to the forefront.  We have begun to normalize the the reality of mental health struggles and in so doing, we normalize that it is not necessary to carry heavy burdens in shame or secret.

I can think of several times in my life when I vulnerably confided in sharing some life difficulties with others and when others have done the same with me.  The usual outcome was that we both had faced similar circumstances or known of others who did.  The result was a normalization that helped to provide a sense of support in common experience and a confidence in a oath forward.

When we exercise the courage to be vulnerable, real, and authentic with others, we extend our courage to others to do the same.  We also help others understand that they are not alone in their life struggles.  Part of living life is learning, growing, changing, overcoming.  So let's get real so we can go through life together.

Knowing what you have to offer as an individual or as a business is important.  This is known as a value proposition.  When we know the value we have to offer it helps to ensure our interactions are in line with the value we bring.  

A  simple example of this might be a pawn shop.  The other day i was watching an episode of a pawn shop series where an individual brought in something to exchange for cash.  He was hoping to get $1,000.  The pawn shop owner told him while it was possibly to get $1,000, he thought it was worth much more.  After having an expert look at, the item was valued at $9,000 for trade.  the item turned out to be something that was rare and authentic and very valuable to a collector.  Going forward the interaction with those items was based on valuing them as something of greater value.

Likewise, sometimes the value we have to bring is not accurately or easily assessed.  However, just because we do not know the value, does not mean what we have is not valuable.  It means that we need to better understand what value we have to offer and find the right situation for that value to be utilized.  We must not forget that over time value may increase or decrease.  However, with unique authenticity and useful application, value tends to increase.  The good news is you are unique and it is up to you to share the value of your authenticity. Take some time to understand the worth of what you and/or your organization have to offer, and then proceed accordingly with adding the value you have to bring and receive the return on that value.  Know your worth and what you have to bring - that's your value proposition to offer to this world.