January 18, 2016: Continued Thoughts of Knowing Self - a Copy/Paste from Fb

That Warren Bennis quote was too good to not share.  I posted on Fb, and a friend posted the following in reply:

Here was my reply to here:

I am giggling...I think I may have to print out Dorothy and keep her close by. You said above "being true to what you are without the nod to outer pressures and misinterpretations." I left my own business that I had co-founded, co-owned and co-operated to become a teacher in a state institution. I knew there were lessons to be learned - one of which was this: "Compliance without Conformity." Where this quote came from is altogether another story, but I have kept these words close.

Now, I am feeling naked - I've shed the old coat. I am reminded of one of my best skinny dips in Canada.

I stood in my birthday suit, sang my thanks to the glacial lake I stood before and the world around it, and then dove in. It was the best baptism ever. I filled my water bottle from that lake before I left, and never let the water completely run out until I lost the water bottle. I drank the essence of that lake and swim for many, many months.

My present dive has been completed.  I am swimming in another lake now, with the same gratitude and the same feeling of nakedness - I am being baptized and welcomed.

Lordy - the fullness is overwhelming in the most bittersweet, wonderful way. If I were anymore grateful, I would explode and you would have to wipe pieces of me off your lawn ornaments - or perhaps just let me be...and I am smiling at the thought of that.

Quack-Quack!

January 18, 2016: Know Thyself

"On Becoming a Leader" by Warren Bennis was one of the books I read in my doctoral studies.  It's subtitle is "The Leadership Classic."  I found it this morning, opened it up, and found this underlined phrase:

"Know thyself, then, means separating who you are and who you want to be from what the world thinks you are and wants you to be."

This - this - is what feels different to me.  I know that I will continue to process what spurred me toward this move, and that there may a jillion things that I will name that contributed.  Today, this rings true.

My supervisor viewed me a certain way, and it did not match with who I knew myself to be and what I knew myself capable of.  

And perhaps, this is why I feel a sense of "freedom."  I am somewhere where no one has a "notion" of who I am.  I can live in who I am and who I want to be, without constraints of what the world thinks I am and wants me to be.  I can live, listening for the next hint of what and where I am to grow into, and move as a whole person.

Given this, I can now understand why my journey is here - why I was called here.  There is a space to move towards - beyond the views of others that held me stagnant in my workplace.  

No more words.  No Pics.  It will be good to sit with this one awhile.