10 Simple Ways to Honor Your Uniqueness

One message we hear from the time we are children is that it is better to give than receive. It is best to be humble. It is best to not shine a light on ourselves.

True, and not so true. We also need to recognize that until we honor ourselves with love and compassion that we will not be able to give fully to another, or shine the light on another nor will we truly understand humility.

These simply steps will take you on a path to honoring your uniqueness every day. Use them as a way to see how you are doing. Celebrate what is working, and choose to make adjustments where there is adjustment necessary.

1. Take time for quiet daily. Yes, there is much that needs to get done. Once you maintain a habit of being quiet either to contemplate, pray, meditate you will be amazed how much more efficiently you will perform your tasks, duties and projects.

2. Treat yourself with as much care, if not more, than you treat others. Love and nurture yourself as you love and nurture those around you OR as you would LIKE to nurture those around you. Once you master caring for yourself, caring for others will become effortless and spring from the heart instead of from duty.

3. Accept compliments from others with grace. Never, ever disrespect the person you are complimenting by disregarding or negating their compliment. Instead, accept it as you would a treasure box or a long awaited gift. Be grateful they can see something extra special about you!

4. Spend time investing in and cultivating close friendships. Incorporate friend building activities into your daily routine. Exercise with a friend, share meals together, keep in touch with a brief email or 10 minute daily phone call (and time the call and KEEP the appointment.)

5. Surround yourself with beauty. Honor your home by decorating as a way to express who you are at your core. If you are bold, use bold colors and accessories. Light scented candles, listen to music you love, use soaps that are lathery and smell great. Go for the multi sensory approach.

6. Give joyfully and receive with open arms. Recognize that giving and receiving are on the same continuum and not separate at all! Learning to give completely translates into receiving more than you could ever plan or expect to receive. The results take care of themselves.

7. Become a part of a larger community. This may mean a mastermind group or it may be a circle of friends or a book discussion group. Connect yourself with people who share your interests, goals and vision for the world. Synergy will empower you incredibly when you join in a community where you can equally give and receive on a very regular basis.

8. Mentor someone simply for the pleasure of observing and becoming involved in their growth. Invite someone who does not have the same level as skills as you do along for the ride with you. Listen to their input and see what you can create together. Chances are you will learn a lot from them (and vice versa!) creating both a Win/Win situation as well as learning about your own strengths and weaknesses in the process.

9. Live a purposeful, vision, values, cause oriented life. Recognize and embrace that you are creating your life as a masterful artist each and every day. You can choose each day whether you want to simply let life happen each day or if you want to create it fully. Choose the latter.

10. Love yourself with all your heart, soul, and strength without attachment to what you are achieving in your life today. Be compassionate and understanding while also standing firm in the knowledge that you are both incredibly unique and incredibly capable. When you can master this balance, being attached to your outcomes is not an issue because you will be achieving outcomes beyond your own imagination. You will be so magnetic you will wonder where YOU have been all this time! The answer? You are RIGHT there, ready and waiting to follow these simple principles. Live with Passion. Today.

(C) 2001
Julie Jordan Scott
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Julie Jordan Scott is the Creative Director of 5Passions.com
Transform Your Life, Transform Your World.
Creative Passion Resources for You to Achieve Growth
Coaching, Tele-Classes, Email Courses and Ezines
email: julie@5passions.com phone:661.325.4116
Subscribe for free now via email:
DiscoverYourPassion-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or
via web http://www.5passions.com
Honoring Uniqueness

Clear Space and Consciousness for the New Year

“In her book ‘Loving Yourself,’ therapist and writer Daphne Rose Kingma discusses how bad energy, objects, and attitudes ‘fill your life with junk, not joy.’ By making a space of clarity for youself, you invite good to come into your life…

Clearing Physical Space
A lot of the clearing we need to do has to do with the literal spaces, structures, and circumstances in our lives, the personal geography of our existence. In these arenas, the focus is on clearing the material clutter. Sometimes it’s as simple as clearing off your desk, weeding old clothes out of your closet, tidying up the cluttered garage…If your world is cluttered, your consciousness is cluttered also…A clearing in the material structure of your world will create space for objects and events to come in. It will also create a new sense of yourself. When you look at a world in tranquility, you yourself will feel more tranquil…When there’s space to breathe in, you will feel happier about being alive…

Clearing Your Consciousness
Even more important than clearing out your material world is the clearing of your consciousness, your personal awareness, the way you think about yourself and your life. These are subtle levels of clearing that provide room for internal growth and change. When you do this kind of clearing, you clean up the ideas and attitudes that clutter your unconscious, that have the capacity to torment you and keep you steeped in feelings of unworthiness. You also clear your conscious mind, the way you think and talk about yourself…

[Resolve:]

I will only speak to myself with love, confidence, and respect.
I will only listen to people who reflect the best about me…”

Read more in this article from Beliefnet.

Give the Gift of “I Love You”

“If you love someone, let them know. Don’t be afraid of the strength of your emotions or worry that your loved one won’t feel the same way. Besides, the words “I love you” are often best said to another without expectation of a return investment. As each one of us is filled with an abundance of love, there is never any worry that you’ll run out of love if your expression of love isn’t said back to you. Saying “I love you” is a gift of the heart sent directly via words to the heart of a recipient. Even though it may not always look that way, love from the heart is an offering that is always unconditional and given without strings attached. That is the true essence of the gift of ‘I love you.'”

From the DailyOM – Nurturing Mind Body & Spirit.

Tech Savvy College Students Available

“Entrepreneurs and small businesses are often in need of affordable technology assistance. With limited budgets, many of the existing solutions are too costly. The idea of reaching out to tech savvy college students on a part-time basis not only makes financial sense but also develops these soon-to-be-graduates for the workforce. This concept can even enhances local economic development initiatives by addressing brain drain while encouraging students to pursue entrepreneurship.” So states TechStudents.net, a service that connects small business with technology students.

Management Science Portal

“12Management is a management science portal that summarizes over 300 management methods, models and organizational theories, combining scientific rigor with practical relevance. The methods are classified into 12 (partly overlapping) management disciplines.”

Via this post from Business & Technology Reinvention.

Postmen Taught Dog Psychology

“The German post office has started giving mail workers lessons in canine psychology.

Official say the number of dog attacks on postmen this Xmas were the lowest in 10 years after the lessons.”

Read more in this article from Ananova.

The Tyranny of Lookism

“Monica, at age 15, was a talented musician and poet with an insightful, witty personality and an I.Q. of 165. She had loving parents, both professors, who adored their only child. Nonetheless, Monica was depressed enough to enter psychotherapy.

What was she depressed about? Her appearance…

Monica is a case study in psychologist Mary Pipher’s best-selling book Reviving Ophelia. Dr. Pipher writes about the ordeal that faces most contemporary adolescent girls:

‘I wouldn’t have written this book had it not been for these last few years when my office has been filled with girls — girls with eating disorders, alcohol problems, posttraumatic stress reactions to sexual or physical assaults… self-inflicted injuries and strange phobias, and girls who have tried to kill themselves or run away. A health department survey showed that 40 percent of all girls in my Midwestern city considered suicide last year. [p. 27]’

Dr. Pipher identifies one of the main culprits in this ongoing catastrophe to be the pressure to be beautiful. She coined the term “lookism,” which she defined as “the evaluation of a person solely on the basis of appearance.” Dr. Pipher writes: “In early adolescence girls learn how important appearance is in defining social acceptability. Attractiveness is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for girls’ success…”

Judaism’s rebuttal to such “lookism” is: You’re a soul. Your self worth is intrinsic and immutable. You are created in the image of God, which means that your essential self is holy. And the more you identify with your spiritual essence rather than with your physical exterior, the more liberated you will be from the tyranny of the Greek god of external appearance.

Obeisance to the external tyrannizes because it’s never good enough. No anorexic girl is ever thin enough; no attractive woman can compete with the billboard models; even an hour assiduously applying makeup falls short of the faces in the magazines.

Those who value the holy, on the other hand, are always good enough, because holiness is an essential, incorruptible quality of every human being. It can be obscured, but never eradicated. Moreover, unlike physical beauty, holiness is the province of all. Only some people are born beautiful, but all people are born holy…”

Read much more in this article about the meaning of Chanukah from aish.com.

Use the Law to Strategic Advantage

What all firms have in common is the ability to integrate legal considerations into the firm?s overall strategy, not only to stay out of trouble but also to create value and manage risk. That?s what winning legally is all about. So contends Constance E. Bagley, associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, in this interview from HBS Working Knowledge. From the interview:

“Q: How can managers ensure that legal strategy aligns with corporate strategy?

A: Framing is critical here. There are legal aspects to every corporate strategy. Law is not separate and apart from what managers do. The law affects each of Porter’s Five Forces as well as the resources and capabilities of the firm. The availability of patents may be key to deciding what barriers to entry exist. The enforceability of covenants not to compete and assignments of inventions may determine who captures the value of knowledge created by employees. The risk of product liability may make it unwise to pursue certain marketing strategies…”

Words to Live By

“Today is a gift. I live it with a receptive mind, open heart, and generous spirit.

I am accountable for:

* Serving others;
* Building, never destroying;
* Sharing my gifts abundantly, needing neither notice nor credit;
* Treating everyone with compassion, candor, and fairness;
* Encouraging others;
* Honoring others’ feelings;
* Regarding everyone as an equal and teacher;
* Appreciating differences;
* Trusting others, assuming only good intentions;
* Forgiving quickly when I feel wronged;
* Holding my tongue when I want to judge, criticize, or condemn;
* Complaining only with love;
* Spreading joy to all I am privileged to meet;
* Living as I want the world to be.

Don Blohowiak”

From this MotiBlog post.

Powerful Year End Questions to Answer

“The questions we ask determine the answers we get. And it is from these answers that we create the actions of our day-to-day lives. This simple progression of questions to answers to actions implies that if we want more effective and productive actions, we can start by asking ourselves better questions….Will it take some time? Yes it will. But it will be time well-spent…Schedule a two hour appointment (or schedule 10 minutes each day and do one question a day) with yourself in a quiet place, with your Journal, computer or just a pad of paper and record your answers to these questions.

1. What did I learn this year?…
2. What did I accomplish this year?…
3. Which accomplishments am I proudest of?…
4. Knowing what I know now, what would I have done differently in the past year?…
5. What will be my greatest lasting memories of this year?…
6. In what ways did I contribute?…
7. What were my biggest challenges or obstacles?…
8. What obstacles did I overcome? And how did you do it?…
9. Who are the most interesting people I met?…
10. How have they changed my life?…
11. How am I different now than I was at the start of the year?…
12. What am I most grateful for?…
13. What else do I want to reflect on?…

These are thirteen powerful questions. But the power comes not from asking them, but from answering them…”

Read more in this post from getmotivation.com.