In rereading "Crucial Conversations" again, I'm reminded of the power of sellouts. They seem small, almost insignificant. But, they have a lot of power!
I love the William Shakespeare quote, "Nothing in this world is good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Isn't that true?! That's just it - our stories explain (to us!) what's going on. They are our interpretation of the facts. They help us explain what we see and hear -the why, how and what. Why did that happen? He must have thought I wasn't prepared.... or She is controlling and insensitive. Our stories generate strong feelings.
As the authors say, the truth is that any set of facts can be used to tell an infinite number of stories. So why do we tell clever stories? That's the link to the sellouts - stories keep us from acknowledging the sellouts.We don't typically tell stories UNTIL we have done something that we feel a need to justify. We sell out when we consciously go against our own sense of what's right. And once we've sold out, we have to own up to it (which we don't like to do, obviously!), or justify ourselves.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Risking EVERYTHING
I recommend this book.....
“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” —Mary Oliver
This luminous anthology brings together great poets from around the world whose work transcends culture and time. Their words reach past the outer divisions to the universal currents of love and revelation that move and inspire us all. These poems urge us to wake up and love. They also call on us to relinquish our grip on ideas and opinions that confine us and, instead, to risk moving forward into the life that is truly ours.In his selection, Roger Housden has placed strong emphasis on contemporary voices such as the American poet laureate Billy Collins and the Nobel Prize–winners Czeslaw Milosz and Seamus Heaney, but the collection also includes some timeless echoes of the past in the form of work by masters such as Goethe, Wordsworth, and Emily Dickinson.The tens of thousands of readers of Roger Housden’s “Ten Poems” series will welcome this beautiful harvest of poems that both open the mind and heal the heart.
“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” —Mary Oliver
This luminous anthology brings together great poets from around the world whose work transcends culture and time. Their words reach past the outer divisions to the universal currents of love and revelation that move and inspire us all. These poems urge us to wake up and love. They also call on us to relinquish our grip on ideas and opinions that confine us and, instead, to risk moving forward into the life that is truly ours.In his selection, Roger Housden has placed strong emphasis on contemporary voices such as the American poet laureate Billy Collins and the Nobel Prize–winners Czeslaw Milosz and Seamus Heaney, but the collection also includes some timeless echoes of the past in the form of work by masters such as Goethe, Wordsworth, and Emily Dickinson.The tens of thousands of readers of Roger Housden’s “Ten Poems” series will welcome this beautiful harvest of poems that both open the mind and heal the heart.
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