Being Point

Tag: intention

  • How Would Your Life Be Different If You Trusted Differently?

    How would your life be different if you trusted differently? In other words, what effect does the depth and quality of your trust have on your life?

    Some people report that they trust to excess, some trust too easily, some not at all, and some in what feel like random ways. It *could* be true that our results largely depend on how much we consider trusting to be a skill set that can be developed, enhanced and – ultimately – mastered.

    Who taught you to trust? What kind of guidance did you receive, and has it been useful or hurtful? Have you been taught about trust more by trial and error – or by a more organized and intentional means?

    Would you consider your trusting yourself to be a matter of personal growth that, with focus, could be addressed in a way that has your life be happier and more fulfilling? If not, why not? What are the alternatives?

    How much do you trust your life?

  • What Would You Teach Your Children About Trusting?

    Headlines over the last few years have been saturated with stories about trust gone bad. Confidences broken, tales told, sacred commitments thrown away.

    Trust is a complex topic. Trust is faith and belief in the veracity of a human being or in a human organization. Knowing who to trust is among the most important decisions for anyone. Whom do you trust? And on what bases?

    The flagship British Petroleum gas station at the corner of Olympic and Robertson in Los Angeles – the one that was so futuristic with the big green and yellow flower BP logo (“beyond petroleum” – supposedly so “green”) – is now, suddenly, an Arco station.

    No BP signage anywhere. An interesting trust issue since BP owns Arco. It’s just a simple name change. Can’t say that it makes me trust BP any more – probably a little less trust in that its intent seems to be to deceive.

    Have you ever experienced an individual or a business trying to gain your trust – and then deceiving you? How do you make the decision about whom to trust? What would you teach your children about trusting?

  • Privilege vs. Obligation: How Are You With “Get-To” vs. “Have-To”?

    This past Sunday morning, I attended a high-energy Ecstatic Dance event; and when the group of about 125 people was seated in a circle, the facilitator asked each person to meditate for a moment and become aware of a core intention to focus on and nurture in the coming weeks.

    After thinking for a moment, the thought that came to my conscious awareness was that I would like to diminish and / or eliminate feelings of “have to” and replace them with feelings of “get to.”

    Truth be told, most of us are blessed with far more “get-to’s” than “have-to’s” because we have voluntarily made the core choices which have created most of our “to-do’s.” Ironic, isn’t it, that when blessed with the ability to make so many of our own choices, many of us have often felt burdened?

    How are you with “get to” versus “have to”? Which of the two do you spend most of your time doing? Do you feel differently in one mind set distinguished from the other? How conscious are you about the distinctions between the two: privilege vs. obligation?

  • The Test Of Your Character Is How You Handle Power ~ Allen Roland

    Many of you know Allen Roland’s phenomenal work: the supremely talented author and therapist who wrote the seminal book, Radical Therapy (and a great friend). His very popular blog had a great quote today apropos of the unfortunate situation that Tiger Woods has created.

    “The true test of a person’s character is not how they handle adversity. It’s how they handle power.”

    Allen’s sentence (and the entire blog) caused me to consider how diversity and power are related. Adversity can cause people to steal and hurt others, and so can power. Both adversity and power can be met with good or poor intentions. I think Allen is right that power is far more likely to test one’s character than adversity.

    What is the distinction between your experience of adversity and power as tests of your own character? How have others treated you when they had the power and you perceived you had little to none?

    Stay close !

    Hutt

    P.S.: You can find Allen’s original post here:

    http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/12/06.html

    The link to his blog is here:

    http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/

  • Doing Your Best: Engaging With Absolute Intention To Do What Is Required

    Preparation and practice are fundamental to doing well, yet doing our best doesn’t demand excellence as much as it demands intention to do as well as possible under the circumstances.

    Doing our best means engaging a presenting situation with the absolute intention to deliver what is required – for example, the advance intention of shooting the arrow into the bulls eye.  It means not holding back, never giving less than you know that you can, refusing to be a slacker, and always persevering.

    Half-hearted efforts are exactly that:  situations where someone has refused to put his whole heart in.  Focus, attention and complete presence are optimal, and living in the moment predicts doing your best.

  • Doing Your Best May Still Be Imperfect: Are You Okay With That?

    Thanks to Vince, in our monthly men’s group, for choosing to facilitate last Saturday’s session on “doing your best” – now a great topic for Study Hall this week. “Best” is a powerful (and sometimes loaded) term which means different things to different people.  The word means “superior” and we think of “best” in words like “as good as it gets.”

    Yet, there may well be flaws even in anything that may up to that point be the best.  Churchill famously said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”  He acknowledges its flaws, but asserts that democracy is the best form of government compared to other forms.

    The concept of “doing your best” does not mean perfection, but it does imply an advance intention of taking action as “well” as you can.  There’s “best” for the individual and “best” for the group, so how do you reconcile that often different points of view?  How do you feel about doing your best?  What is the appropriate role of comparison in doing your best?

  • Promises And Personal Reputation

    Making promises can be a powerful ingredient of personal growth as long as promise-making is done in good faith with a complete intention to honor the promise.  We’ve talked in Study Hall about the definition of a brand (in business) as a set of promises, and there is similarity in how promise-making affects one’s personal reputation.

    The more often we make and keep promises, the greater our reputation for reliability and credibility.

    Can you think of promises that you have made that have had you grow beyond what you thought possible?  Have you ever tried to renegotiate a promise when faced with difficulty in delivering? What was the result?

    Who in your life has the best reputation for keeping promises? Who has the worst?What did you learn from each person?