A new year, and a new way of playing with the Spirit@Work Cards®.
I was pleasantly surprised to draw Listening as the first card of the year as that is exactly what I’m doing as I start this journey.
My intent is to draw one card a week, on Mondays, and to blog about my experience with the card on Sundays. I am not going to return the drawn cards to the deck. I want to spend each week of the year with a new card to consider and implement into my life. Although the cards are designed to be considered in a work environment, I’m going to use them to play with self-discovery and growth for the year.
The sentences that resonated with me the most from the book were:
- We are experiencing a growing social ailment – a sense that we are not being heard.
- We cannot meet the needs of others – delivery – if we do not pause to hear what those needs are. We serve best by listening with sacred attentiveness and then acting constructively on what we have heard.
- Sacred listening is open listening; it is effective listening that seeks to understand without being defensive or manipulative.
My favourite sections of the poem were:
Guide me to be present and attuned.
and,
Let me listen with love.
I have a bad habit of listening to what everyone else thinks I should be doing. I really need to start to listen to my heart to hear what I need for my Soul development. I not only need to listen … I also need to act on what I hear. There’s so much I want to do, but I’m not doing it. I’m not … listening.
If I were to really listen to what my heart wanted me to know I would probably be surprised to hear what it said to me.
The very first thing that comes to the surface is that my heart wants to cry. It’s lonely and is hurting from not feeling like I’m worthy of being treated well … not even by myself.
There are so many things I want to do with my life and I don’t listen to those desires. I hear them. I make lists of things to do. I don’t follow through on them. I’m not listening at a sacred level. If I were, I would follow through on my list.
I not only don’t listen to my heart on a relationship level. I completely block it out. It hurts too much if I really listen to what it wants in order to feel alive. I need to spend some time listening to my heart and figuring out what I need to do with my relationships in order to be happy.
My heart also tells me that it’s scared. It’s scared that I will give up on my goals for this year and that I won’t act on what my year of self-discovery brings to the surface.
If I listen to my body a completely different type of message is heard. My body wants to be nurtured and cared for. It wants to live in a healthy way with nourishing food and energizing exercise. It wants to feel better. My body wants to feel loved, not used. It wants to be pampered with hugs, massages, warm bubble baths, and facials. It wants to wear nice clothes and have it’s hair to be taken care of properly. It wants energy to be able to accomplish everything my heart, body, and mind needs to feel whole, happy, and content.
If I were to listen to my mind it would tell me that it loves to learn, to figure things out, to be creative, and to be intelligent. It wants to be allowed to be everything it already is. It wants to thrive and to lead me to great places.
Listening is a perfect thing to continue throughout the year. I know what’s best for me. All I need to do is listen … and follow through.
I have a whole year to practice and perfect listening to myself. I’m surprised at how much I learned this week by simply taking the time to listen to myself!
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