Just Listen an excerpt.
Grieving is a way of self-care.
Much of life can never be explained but only witnessed.
One of the reasons many physicians feel drained by their work is that they do not know how to make an opening to receive anything from their patients. The way we were trained, receiving is considered unprofessional. The way most of us were raised, receiving is considered a weakness.
The best stories have many meanings; their meaning changes as our capacity to understand and appreciate meaning grows.
Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity. There is no experience that this man has that I cannot share with him, no fear that I cannot understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter how deep his wound, he does not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough.
When I have forgiven myself and remembered who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see.” The way to freedom often lies through the open heart.
To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary. Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant striving. It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value. This.
I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect with another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention. And especially if it’s from the heart. When people are talking, there’s no need to do anything but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they’re saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it.
I am no longer as inspired by expertise as I once was. Perhaps the worth of any lifetime is measured more in kindness than in competency.
Few perfectionists can tell the difference between love and approval. Perfectionism is so widespread in this culture that we actually have had to invent another word for love. ‘Unconditional love,’ we say. Yet, all love is unconditional. Anything else is just approval.
Inner peace is more a question of cultivating perspective, meaning, and wisdom even as life touches you with its pain.
All life has in it the dimension of the Unknown; it is a thing forever unfolding. It seems important to consider the possibility that science may have defined life too small. If we define life too small, we will define ourselves too small as well.
We burn out not because we don’t care but because we don’t grieve. We burn out because we have allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.
Sometimes just being in someone’s presence is strong medicine.
The way in which we go to the grocery store may tell us everything about the way in which we live a life. The way we tend the life force in a plant may be the way we tend our own life force. We are exquisitely coherent.
It is actually difficult to edit life. Especially in regard to feelings. Not being open to anger or sadness usually means being unable to be open to love and joy. The emotions seem to operate with an all-or-nothing switch.
Freedom may come not from being in control of life but rather from a willingness to move with the events of life, to hold on to our memories but let go of the past, to choose, when necessary, the inevitable. We can become free at any time.
Perhaps winning requires that we love the game unconditionally. Life provides all the pieces. When I accepted certain parts of life and denied and ignored the rest, I could only see my life a piece at a time – the happiness of a success or a time of celebration, or the ugliness and pain of a loss or a failure I was trying hard to put behind me out of sight. But like the dark pieces of the puzzle, these sadder events, painful as they are, have proven themselves a part of something larger.
Often times of crisis are times of discovery, periods when we cannot maintain our old ways of doing things and enter into a steep learning curve. Sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate growth.
Wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten. Integrity rarely means that we need to add something to ourselves: it is more an undoing than a doing, a freeing ourselves from beliefs we have about who we are and ways we have been persuaded to ‘fix’ ourselves to know who we genuinely are.