As a person in a position of power (a parent, a manager, a politician) your role in a moment of crisis is to inspire tranquillity.
That’s how others around you can continue to think clearly and help everyone out of the crisis.
As a person in a position of power (a parent, a manager, a politician) your role in a moment of crisis is to inspire tranquillity.
That’s how others around you can continue to think clearly and help everyone out of the crisis.
Prejudice prevents you from seeing the world in its entirety. It forces you within some boundaries and it reinforces your perspective by limiting doubts.
When prejudice is taken a step further it becomes righteousness. That’s when you aim at keeping others within the same boundaries built your own prejudice, and you allow them only one possible version of the truth.
Prejudice and righteousness are human traits. That’s why it’s important to remind ourselves of how limiting they are.
There’s what you think you are. And that’s where you should invest most of your time. Understanding what you stand for, figuring out what you like, setting your own boundaries, and managing your triggers. You have full control on this.
There’s what others think you are. And that’s something you can’t do much about. Because others will always use their past, their experiences, their fears, their dreams, their thoughts, their values, their versions of the world to process what you are doing. You just can’t change that.
And there’s what you think others think you are. And that’s dangerous. That’s when we give up figuring ourselves out and instead use others to highlight everything we don’t like about us – our body, our mind, our traits, our personality, our behavior. You are giving up control doing that.
There’s arguably nothing worse than feeling alone.
And that’s not sitting on your own when working, staying home alone, walking in a forest with no one around you, or even living by yourself.
It is the feeling of being the only one who sees something, who feels something, who experiences something.
There are two good news though.
The first is that we are more similar than we think when it comes to what we see, feel, and experience. So, connection is most likely available.
The second is that we have the possibility to build that connection by sharing our version first.
Your best self is not an absolute.
You can’t pretend to be at the same level of performance in all situations, under all life circumstances, whether you are relaxed or stressed, appreciated or diminished, content or sad.
So, you have to be able to look at what is the best self you can bring to the table today, right now. And you need to accept that it might be not as much as you (and others) would expect.
That’s a good step to build kindness towards yourself.