“Appreciation is a wonderful thing.
It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” —Voltaire
This amazing, holistic journey we’re blessed to travel each day, never ceases to surprise me. I awake like a 7-year-old on his birthday, each and every day!
How do you feel when you awaken?
Does every day end up being spectacular? Not all of them. A few of them are devastatingly painful, many are uneventful and others are truly spectacular.
Leaders are expected to deliver the “environment where the opportunity for spectacular can happen” for others; regardless if it’s in a professional, personal or community role that we’re leading.
Deeply reflecting on how well we’re doing, relative to the purpose-driven life we’re pursuing, isn’t easy. Let’s reflect on our lives from multiple, interconnected lenses. Our personal reflection impacts every other aspect (professional, community, etc.) of our lives! I’ll share three intertwined holistic development areas I’m currently focused on elevating, after deeply reflecting on my own life. I invite you to continue enhancing your development in these areas as well.
Hyper-Appreciation – Truly embracing uncomfortable, heightened levels of appreciation for myself, others and opportunities has been eye-opening and life-elevating to say the least. Failure to understand and embrace ambiguous, high-potential opportunities, forever changes the course of our lives. Regret occurs when we miss these opportunities (and realize it years later), while pain occurs when others miss opportunities with us, due to their insufficient development of appreciation.
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Unconditional Love – This is simple to understand, difficult to embrace and takes an amazing amount of courage, commitment and integrity to implement. The “strength” you’ll acquire when you can deliver on this tough one, is spectacularly powerful. This is particularly empowering when those who’ve provided commitments to you, but aren’t able to keep them; meanwhile, you’ve been able to keep your commitments to them (even after they’ve broken their commitments to you).
Unconditional love, given without disclaimers. for a lifetime, can do wonders for your self-esteem, confidence, character, etc. A great example of this, is when it is shared between a child and parent. To honor and provide unconditional love to the child, regardless of the choices they’ve made, pain they’ve created, etc., is beautiful!!! Again, I’m not suggesting the child’s “painful choices” are ignored; rather, they’re embraced in a healthy manner to enable mutually beneficial future success in the relationship.
Forgiveness – This is definitely a work-in-progress for me. I’ve been observing the many interpretations of this concept from others. For many, “forgetting” seems to be interpreted as the equivalent to “forgiving”… but, I don’t agree with that thinking. Many believe they have “forgiven”; yet, hold a grudge or bias against the person, organization, etc. It is my belief, acknowledging what objectively happened and embracing the good, bad and ugly of it, is healthy. Further, this acknowledgement contributes to improvements in our future Decision Making Quality (DMQ) in a forgiving, constructive and healthy way. Thus, freeing us to forgive without forgetting.
How are you doing on these Big-3? Use your DMQ-Courage (explained in previous blogs) to re-open incomplete conversations that may need to take place in your strained relationships. Reduce regret in a healthy manner.
Attracting people…
- Who are hyper-appreciative; and,
- Who genuinely offer and are capable of providing unconditional love; while,
- Honestly, with no strings attached, are truly forgiving
… are exceptionally rare. Find them, hyper-appreciate them and I believe your holistic life journey will be amazingly spectacular!
Who changes the world? I believe it’s almost exclusively the Top-7%. They are the only ones with the Talent Portfolios and social consciences needed to actually implement significant positive social impact.
If you believe you’re one of these executives, we’d love to explore possible opportunities.
Get MAD! (Making A Difference!) ~ JR
