Impromptu Therapy Session

Some random personal insights from my first meeting with my new executive director:

• BOOKS: Two books that she recommended for me to read are "Lean In" (has been on my list for a while and "Mindset" (now on my list). I ordered "Lean In" off Amazon tonight. 
• JUDGMENT: You cannot judge others and not judge yourself. When you are in your judgment space, you are judging everyone, including yourself, and sometimes that is why we are out to judge others...to try to alleviate the pressure of our own judgment. You have to simply let go of the judgment and start acting on compassion towards yourself and others to break out of that cycle.
• DOING VS. BEING: Being is separate from doing. What we do is not always reflective of who we are. 'Doing' is an objective fact or action, but 'being' is something that we wrestle with only in our heads. While 'being' is actually the more stable of the two, we sometimes let them interfere with each other. Something we do may affect our own sense of 'being' or how we think of ourselves affects our actions. 
• ASSUMING/ACTING AS IF: Otherwise known as 'fake it til you make it', "acting as if" is a therapeutic principle that asks others to act as the person they want to see themselves as. Apparently this comes up in Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" a lot, but this also resonates with my brief theater experience in the Fall. The ability to get into a character can be defensive, offensive, or an agent of change in your own life!
• INTO BODY, OUT OF BRAIN: We talked a lot about remaining present and how our brain can deceive us into thinking it always has the answer to our problems. Remaining present in our bodies and observing thoughts/feelings as they come helps to discern which thoughts should be kept and which ones should be let go.
• SERVING OTHERS: She made the insightful observation that I may sometimes unknowingly try to help or protect others in the way I want(ed) to be served or protected. 1) She's completely right. 2) I then blurted out "But they don't even care!" and she replied "I know!" Basically, I have good intentions, but everyone does not need or want to be served in the ways I would want to and perhaps I should invest more of that effort in caring for myself in those ways. 

Anyway, it was a really wonderful conversation and I'm really excited to continue to learn from her.

I also watched this talk on Psalm 16 by Shauna Niequist online when I got home and it certainly fit with my introspective theme of the day. Right around 26:30/27, things get real:

http://media.willowcreek.org/midweekexperience/psalm-16/#content

Tomorrow we have a day long semester planning retreat! Yay!