It’s about Them
It happens something like this. I meet a person who intrigues me. I rush in where the proverbial fool would fear to go. I want that person to see my value. I put it out there. I don’t realize that my thinking is all about me.
“Look at me behavior” is what I call it. The subtext of what I do is something like “I want you to see what I know, think, understand, have accomplished. I want you to see how worthy I am. I want you to see me.
The irony is that whenever I make things about me, it’s not me who shows up to tell the story.
I end up saying things in ways that aren’t my way of saying them. I hear myself handing over my weaknessess as I tout my strengths.
When I am lucky, when I have my wits about me and my heart in the right, relevant place, I know that the other person doesn’t know or even suspect. I’m only ludicrous facts that I’m spouting without context.
It’s so silly, We all know that folks discover the things they need to know.
When I choose to trust the person I’m talking to, I find that the right parts of me show through — without effort, within the bigger story of who I am. I find that my defensive self promotion falls away like water falling down a moutatin cliff.
When I trust in the thoughts of others, I am who I am.
When I trust the thoughts and humanity of others, the rest happens rightly more often than not. It’s so much easier to let them discover wht I am.
We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss