This week I am reading The Power of TED – The Empowerment Dynamic by David Emerald
“Your life is a kind of laboratory where you’re constantly experimenting with your own higher knowing, always increasing your capacity to design the life you choose. Human beings must create; it’s hardwired. The question is, are you consciously creating or only sleepwalking through your human life?”
The book starts with a fabulous forward by Lisa Lahey and this quote from Mary Oliver
I found this extract very powerful.
“Some people are delighted by the question’s reminder that their lives are in their own hands, while for others, it is a novel but wonderful idea that they could actually plan to do something with their lives.
One way is to see ourselves at the mercy of those around us, and the other is to see ourselves as having agency over our lives. We can move back and forth between these two mindsets, though people seem to operate predominantly from one or the other.
People find it hard to ask for help for many different reasons.
Asking for help is hard.
Our individual development needs to be nurtured, and that an ideal environment is one that both supports and challenges us. Too often, we go without both of these conditions. If I could wave the proverbial magic wand on behalf of each of us becoming our best selves, I would make it so we could ask for help and we could do so before things go terribly wrong, or before we feel overwhelmed and excessively stressed from being in over our heads. Living out of fear not only keeps us small but creates a dynamic in which we keep others small as well. We limit our own potential as well as the people around us. We lose a connection to our vision and purpose. Developing our capacity to take responsibility for our lives is an achievement that needs to be cultivated. If we did so, we would be able to use our one wild and precious life to create something meaningful. We would be available to support other people to do the same. And together, we might intentionally participate in our communities (in our home, our work, our neighbourhoods) to do something bigger than any of us individually could.
If we could develop our capacity to plan and live our lives fully, we would feel less like victims, helpless to solve the problems other people make for us. We would no longer feel so exhausted from fighting, feeling badly about ourselves for not fighting back, or for believing that we are not good enough. We would have energy to create more of the life we want.
Go find the community, even if it is just one other person, to provide you with what you want, need, and deserve.”
