A few days ago Gayle and I went away for a few days. Those times have often been very fruitful with time to reflect, question, and pray. For sure the COVID lockdown has been good for us from the perspective of reflection. A while back I had (and thankfully still have) a connection with Authentic Business, who have an approach that is very people focused. Change is focused on the personal not the structural. One of the exercises they engage clients in involves discovering core process. So Gayle and I did this together.
It basically involves recounting three happy stories, then from them pulling out verbs that describe action involved in the stories and then nouns. Eventually it is narrowed down to one verb and one noun. Our process took us a couple of days, not constant, but ruminating. At the end of the two days we settled on (different) core process descriptions. It really had quite an impact.
It is great to be a little closer to discovering why one is on the planet (no need to say, ‘and you were born in 1955, what have you been doing all this time?’). Yes takes a little longer for some of us than others.
The three stories were very interesting for me. Gayle could pull out as many as you wish, I got to one story and couldn’t think of another one! The tendency was to pull on ‘when God did this’ kind of response, reflecting more a need to feel significant than discovering the happy time! With her help one of the stories I managed to get to was when she said – what about the time the police with armed rifle insisted on moving you on when you entered the zone they were guarding at the Congress building that had the barriers up? You came back from that bouncing with happiness.
What a great moment. I remember it well and it still brings a good smile to my face. The day I helped the police man be a good law-enforcing officer. My calling in life – or close to it.
Anyway… the verb I came up with was ‘provoking’. Gayle had the same verb.