Help Others

Guest blog post by John Economou

“Help others”. This was one of the two pieces of advice that Lattie  F. Coor gave to me and to the rest of the graduates on Dec 13th, 2001 during the Commencement Ceremony at A.S.U. It sounded like the kind of wake up call I needed.

Just like most of you I assume, I've received help from others quite often. While growing up,  whether it was at camp, through playing sports, while in college or at work. Pretty much all the time, now that I think about it. I admit it, it feels good to know 'people have your back'. 

So, there comes a time when you realize that it is your turn to “help others”. Not because you “have to”, but because you want to. Because you know that even doing a small favor for someone else, just might mean the world to him/her. Just like it meant a lot to you when others helped you.

Ιf you acknowledge that people helped you so far in your life, maybe now it is your time to “give back” and start helping others.

Things I Am Thankful For - Today

Yesterday, as part of a game-chain on facebook, I had been “nominated” by a colleague to post three positive things for the next 5 days.

Now, I do not like chains and I hate to follow such games. I can see their value in some cases, but I prefer the spontaneity of posting freely without rules. Plus, lately I've become irritated with the “P” word (positive – positivity).

As a polite person I accepted the challenge, also seeing the fun part of it. For one day. Letting aside any ideas and opinions I have about chains, I do not want to post three positive things about my day. I can post countless things for which I am grateful.

So, here is my list of things for which I am grateful, thankful and positive today:

1. I am alive.
2. I can get out of bed, I can walk and I can run.
3. I can make decisions and have control over my career.
4. I can breathe. This basic function that we execute 12-20 times per minute and take for granted, with which we come to life.
5. I can see. The first time I tried contact lenses I said excited “so, that is how people see!”.
6. The ability to control my emotions and my mood. Anyone having any kind of experience or knowledge of depression, bipolar and other mental health issues can understand how grateful one can feel not to be in the mercy of any of these.
7. I am lucky to still enjoy the presence of my parents.
8. I left a hospital today with a smile. First time these past years.
9. My nieces are healthy.
10. I have a roof over my head.
11. I have control over my body.
12. I can sing and I can dance and I do not care if I am bad at singing.
13. My wonderful loving friends.
14. The people in my life, people that I admire and who are my role models.
15. My mistakes.
16. My work.
17. The smell of the fresh coffee in the morning.
18. Summer, my favorite season.
19. Blue skies.
20. The sea, calm or rough.
21. My memories, good or bad.
22. Art; Any kind of art, for the beauty of it.
23. The smile of random faces in the street.
24. The unexpected offering of a young neuroscientists's help with an article I am writing.
25. The sound of crickets.
26. That I can make plans and dream.
27. That I love.
28. That I am loved. 

 

Painting by Pedro Arnoldo Cruz Sunu

Ability vs Willingness

“Why don’t you change that phrase into ‘the seed that you will sow’?”, asked my friend – aka support structure for this blog – regarding the last sentence of a recent post. “I think ‘will’ is more positive than ‘can’ ”, she added.

She is right. What you "will" do sounds more positive than what you "can" do. But here is the thing: my aim wasn't to make it more positive. When I ask "what can you do", I am acknowledging that there are things that can be done, I am acknowledging your ability to act. The purpose was to make the reader reflect precisely from that perspective.

I believe that each one of us has potential and unique abilities. There are countless things, little things that we can do daily. Tiny seeds that we can sow and watch them grow.

It’s not our ability that is missing; it’s the awareness of and confidence in that ability. 

So I am making the question again: What can you do? 

Commit to finding the answer. And once you have it, decide how willing you are to actually do it.

Give Yourself Credit

How easily do we share with others the small or great achievements we accomplish in our everyday life?

There is a challenge with sharing publicly what we call “wins”:

-  We are afraid of how others will judge us: that we are bragging or showing off.
-  We think our win is not important enough to share. It’s just something small, even if it took a lot of work, time, or effort to achieve.
-  We feel others will not be interested in listening; even if our win is very important to us and makes us very happy, why should they care for it?
-  We have been taught that a modest person does not talk about him/herself and so should we.
-  That confident people do not need to talk about themselves and their achievements; only arrogant people do.

I had always been told by my mother that if I do something right or good, I should let others talk about it. If I am good at something, others should acknowledge it, not me.

We have a ritual at the coaching school where I teach: we start each class by inviting students to share a recent win with us and celebrate together. Exploring the obstacles that prevent us from generously share our wins with them today, I realized that I was still hesitant to do what I was asking.

So, the first thing I did straight after class was to challenge all these beliefs and post both on twitter and facebook the following message (in Greek): “If you do not follow my blog, you are missing out” (together with a request for feedback, ideas and support). That was something I never would have dared to write or say before. 

If you allowed yourself to be proud today, to generously acknowledge the baby steps that you are taking everyday, what would you “brag” about? 

Don’t compliment me please!

Last year I was working countless hours for many months on what I considered a very noble cause. Occasionally I would receive a compliment that would make me feel frustrated, sad and irritated. How can a compliment do that? Easy: I was skipping sleep and all kinds of self-care to get everything done, I was creating structures from scratch, being pro-active, resourceful and managing too many things at a time. When a potential problem could arise, I was immediately taking action forwarding the information to other partners, just to receive a plain feedback about a teeny tiny detail of the “unfortunate use” of an… adjective!

I was juggling tasks, deadlines, processes, people and problems with notable results and no acknowledgment. Oh, but I received a few compliments. And I got upset. And I was refusing to accept these compliments. Why?

The answer came with today’s class on Acknowledgment. Acknowledgement is about honoring someone by recognizing his or her accomplishment or something they’ve done that has made a significant difference. It is genuine, authentic and honest and it is purely about the other person, not our own preferences. 

By receiving occasional compliments (that by the way, had nothing to do with the results I was creating), I felt unseen and unappreciated.

You want to honor others? You want to show them that you appreciate and recognize them; that you value and respect their hard work? You want to have a positive impact to someone’s life and/or work?

Acknowledge them! Acknowledge the unique individuals they are and their achievements.

There is nothing as empowering as showing our gratitude and appreciation by the simple act of acknowledgment.