The only way to get people to share their ideas, their thoughts, their feelings, their problems, their feedback, is for you to shut up.
If you keep talking, they will stop thinking. If you interrupt them, they will give up trying. If you go first – particularly if you are in a position of power – they will just repeat what you said.
To get people to open up you have to willing to give them space and just listen.
Every person is a possibility. Every person is many possibilities.
There are different paths you can take, different journeys you can loose yourself into, different decisions to make. The person you are today is probably not the person you will be tomorrow and certainly only one of the many different persons you could have become.
In this wealth of options, you can end up moving from one to the next. Or you can make an intentional choice, stick with it, and always keep in mind a couple of principles: this is what’s better for me and this is what’s better for the people I care about.
You don’t always have an answer, you don’t always know what to do, you don’t always understand what is happening.
The trick is not to try to fake it. Not to try to escape it.
If you can just stay with the feeling for a while, what you need will come.
Confidence is about being at ease with uncertainty, without wanting to get rid of it at all costs.
We always have thoughts.
Thoughts about what’s about to happen. Thoughts about what we would like to happen. Thoughts about what that person we barely know is thinking about that minuscule thing we did yesterday. Thoughts about our kids, our jobs, our relationships, our lives. Thoughts about how we will get out of a nasty situation. Thoughts about how good it was, how bad it will be, how incredible it could be if only.
We always have thoughts and we will always have them. That’s our great distractor. Not our phones, not our kids, not the noisy neighbor. Sure, all those things amplify our capacity to be distracted, but our own thoughts are the great distractor.
Train to be here, in the moment, and reinforce that link with what is happening.
You are a person who belongs to a category of one.
Or probably better put in the words of somebody who knew better.
Every individual is an exception to the rule.
Carl Jung
That does not mean that you are alone, not necessarily. It means that you are unique. That what works for others, maybe will not work for you. That what others consider ok, maybe is not ok for you. That you have the full power to write your own story and to be proud of it.
Of course, it also means that others around you are unique. That they might have a completely different point of view. That they might see things that are crystal clear to you in a completely different manner. That they might argue with you, disagree with you, be mad at you, while still fulfilling their own unique story. And be proud of it.
This is scary and also exciting.
The way you look at that changes everything.
You've got this 