I have encountered this quote several times in the past six months.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” —no clear guidance on attribution. That space. How many times have we reacted and regretted it immediately? We made someone feel bad, yelled, pressed send, and wounded with words. If we breathe or close our eyes or count to ten after the stimulus and before the response, how might our day or year, or life change? How might our friends and family, and colleagues see us? How might that moment make all the difference? That space is a little thing. A little something we can do every single day. It will allow us to be in the moment, recalibrate, decide and accept. I spent the first two weeks of June in Bilbao, Spain, where I again encountered that quote. I attended the Wellbeing summit for social change and its extended working group sessions with the Wellbeing, Innovation, and Social Change in Education (WISE) Network. I joined this coalition of richly diverse, leading higher education institutions and organizations to commit to catalyzing a culture of inner well-being within the social change education field. The Summit was the first global event bringing together social change, governmental, arts, and business leaders working at the intersection of social change and inner wellbeing. During the sessions, we discussed the aspects of a flourishing life that arises from the integration of well-being, contemplation, and social innovation and that occur via engagement within ourselves, in our relationships, and with the world. When successful, it has the power to change individuals, communities, and societies positively. Globally, many encouraging steps have been taken for greater acceptance and prioritization of mental health and inner wellbeing for those working on some of the world’s most pressing issues. Among the multitude of topics that we discussed, we dived into critical concepts stemming from positive psychology practices. Three key ideas remain with me: #1 Flourishing Every human has the capacity and the undeniable right to flourish. How do we define that? According to Corey Keyes, mental health does not imply an absence of mental illness. Instead, mental health is a "separate dimension of positive feelings and functioning." Individuals described as flourishing have high emotional, psychological, and social well-being levels. Flourishing people are happy and satisfied; they tend to see their lives as having a purpose; they feel some degree of mastery and accept all parts of themselves; they have a sense of personal growth in the sense that they are constantly growing, evolving, and changing; finally, they have a sense of autonomy and an internal locus of control, they chose their fate in life instead of being victims of fate. Its opposite is a state of languishing, described as living a life that feels hollow and empty. #2 Contemplation Contemplation is the practice of being fully present—in heart, mind, and body—to what is in a way that allows you to respond and work toward what could be creative. The contemplative mind is about receiving and being present at the moment, to the now, without judgment, analysis, or critique. On the other hand, contemplative “knowing” is a much more holistic, heart-centered knowing, where the mind, heart, soul, and senses are open and receptive to the moment just as it is. Contemplation is about embracing the pause between stimulus and response. Contemplative practice generally refers to a particular form of observation in which there is total devotion to revealing, clarifying, and manifesting the nature of reality. Most broadly speaking, contemplative practices are secular and cultivate a critical, first-person focus, sometimes with direct experience as the object, while concentrating on complex ideas or situations. Find tools related to flourishing and contemplation here: https://flourishingu.org/. #3 Navigating change and uncertainty “It is time to explore the creative potential of interrupted and conflicted lives, where energies are not narrowly focused or permanently pointed toward a single ambition. These are not lives without commitments, but lives in which commitments are continually refocused and redefined.” – Mary Catherine Bateson. It is possible to re-imagine our relationship with ambiguity and recognize the creative potential that exists in the messy middle between life’s inevitable “What Now? Moments” and what comes next. There are tools we can learn to flourish in an era of unrelenting and exponential change. One of them is active resilience: the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to the psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that sustain their wellbeing and their ability individually and collectively to negotiate for these resources to be provided in culturally meaningful ways.” In this definition, the emphasis is on the individual agency that we have to pursue these resources. As a result, we have something to focus on when we don’t know what to do. Find tools in Joan P. Ball’s Book - Stop. Ask. Explore: Learn to Navigate Change in Times of Uncertainty. We live through uncertain times, and there’s more to embracing it than training ourselves to respond to the unexpected. Instead, we can become explorers with the willingness to ask new questions and experiment with new ways of being as we travel through life’s calms and storms.
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AuthorI was born in 1986 in Lebanon. I'm still trying to find my passion in life and in the meantime I'm learning to navigate my bipolarity and redefining stability. Archives
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