Insights come from many places. Sometimes profound lessons come from unlikely teachers. Equally, sometimes, conventional teachers provide unfortunate lessons, when the words they speak conflict with their underlying attitudes or behaviours. Ultimately, it's all about the attention and awareness that any teacher and student bring to bear on a situation. For anyone reading who is not a dog lover, please bear with me for just a few paragraphs. What follows is not a cutesy dog story. Having set the scene in the next three paragraphs, we cut to the chase, which is about exploring your attitudes. Sharon, my little dog, has long been my teacher. This is not to say that I sit at her little furry paws looking for wisdom. Rather, because my mind is relaxed and able to roam freely when I'm in dog owner mode, I pick up on things that might escape me in another context. So it was that, a little while back, I accompanied Sharon on her daily constitutional. Now, Sharon always brings the same lively interest to everything she does, but on that day I was more attentive than usual. At one point Sharon stopped stock still on a grass verge to gaze across the road at a Jack Russell (who was promptly dog marched off by his owner). As she stared at his retreating form, Sharon spent some time kicking her back paws up behind her, in a very focused way. Suddenly, it dawned on me: the grass verge was not her territory, but it was her universe at that precise moment in time, and she was experiencing herself at the centre of it. Whatever explanation you might choose to find for her behaviour, she was, unmistakeably, experiencing herself as the central player in that moment and that place. How often do you experience yourself as being at the centre of your own universe? How often are you merely a driven figure at the periphery of your universe, rushing frantically in one direction or another, like a matchstick figure in a Lowry painting? And how often, like some of the women I've shared this idea with, do you not even appear on the radar of your own universe? Some women I've worked with find it hard even to grasp the notion of being at the centre of their own universe. It's nothing to do with selfishness. It's simply about being the central player in your own life. Because being the central player gives you the option to decide who you want to be right at the heart of your life with you. And who you don't want to invade the innermost reaches of your world. Some women have argued that they can't be at the centre of their universe because they have to race around caring for family members. They haven't -yet- understood that they can still be themselves, even if their time is sorely limited. Doing things for other people need not deprive you of your sense of self. Especially if you reserve your right to say no. Because even the nicest, most loving of people say no, when they feel they are being drained by other people's demands. Saying no doesn't make you any less lovable. The people who criticize you when you say no, probably use you, rather than value you, when you oblige them by saying yes. If you were to start visualising yourself at the centre of your own universe, what would you do differently? |
