Learning to listen to your own inner guidance takes practice.
We learn to be dependent on others to advise and choose for us.
LISTEN, LEARN AND LET GO.
ONLY ADVISE WHERE ASKED.
Affirmations:
I am a compassionate listener for those who need to explore their feelings.
I trust others to discover their own answers and solutions.
I seek helpers and healers who help me listen to myself.
I forgive myself for thinking I know what others need.
Asked for Advice?
Do you give your opinions whether or not you are asked?
Do you give advice without knowing what is valued?
Are you trying to help, fix, teach others, even if not asked?
Do you experience your judgment matters to others?
It seems we are all trying to be experts no matter how little we know.
It looks like we are self-made advisors on what is helpful and what is not.
People seem to feel they are called to put in their "two cents worth".
What do you want and value and find helpful?
Give what you want to receive.
Offer others what they want to be offered.
Treat yourself and others with respect.
Know what you know and what you don’t know.
I have chosen to offer nothing, unless asked.
I follow my mother’s lead and listen first with a desire to understand.
I give only what I am specifically asked for, and nothing more.
When I am invited to be used as a consultant and counselor, I give my best.
When asked and hired as a consultant, I offer a specific time and confidential place and full attention.
As a professional therapist, counselor and consultant, I respect the one asking by offering the best I know.
I offer a private space and specified appointment time and treat the other with great respect.
I encourage the one asking to listen to themselves and declare what they want.
Opinions are opinions.
If I have a judgment or opinion, I declare so.
If I am giving advice, I acknowledge that in my limited experience, I may…….
I hesitate to advise, because I am not the one who is involved in the circumstances.
I must be a safe place in which the truth can be shared with no fear of judgment.
I must be well-informed and aware of how my words may be perceived.
I must be careful that I always place the other’s needs and wants first.
I must recuse myself, when I am prejudiced or misinformed.
Bottom lime, I prefer others to come to their own decisions.
I encourage more information and more education be revealed.
I source what seems to be from intuition and inner guidance.
I offer forgiveness and healing, open-mindedness and consideration.
I am the example of the rational mind for the one asking for help.
When in relationship seeking the highest and best way, we must be awake and aware.
When wanting to be helpful, we must encourage the one asking to be helpful first to themselves.
It is essential that we learn not to misdirect others by our own prejudices and personal healing needs.
It is time for all of us to respect the unique learning and healing path of each individual.
We have a responsibility to clear our own healing and learning needs first.
We can be truly helpful by being fully present and open to the needs of the one seeking help.
Stop and pay attention, listen to what is being said inside and out, tell the highest truth and let go.
Helpful relationships relate to one another with trust and freedom = LOVE.
Love one another always with respect, responsibility and cooperation.
Betty Lue
Helping, Fixing, Serving
--by Rachel Remen (May 29, 2000)
Service is not the same as helping.
Helping is based on inequality, it's not a relationship between equals. When you help, you use your own strength to help someone with less strength. It's a one up, one down relationship, and people feel this inequality. When we help, we may inadvertently take away more than we give, diminishing the person's sense of self-worth and self-esteem.
Now, when I help I am very aware of my own strength, but we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all our experiences: our wounds serve, our limitations serve, even our darkness serves. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in the other, and the wholeness in life. Helping incurs debt: when you help someone, they owe you. But service is mutual. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction, but when I serve I have a feeling of gratitude.
Serving is also different from fixing. We fix broken pipes, we don't fix people. When I set about fixing another person, it's because I see them as broken.
Fixing is a form of judgment that separates us from one another; it creates a distance.
So, fundamentally, helping, fixing and serving are ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak; when you fix, you see life as broken; and when you serve, you see life as whole.
When we serve in this way, we understand that this person's suffering is also my suffering, that their joy is also my joy and then the impulse to serve arises naturally - our natural wisdom and compassion presents itself quite simply. A server knows that they're being used and has the willingness to be used in the service of something greater.
We may help or fix many things in our lives, but when we serve, we are always in the service of wholeness.
--Rachel Remen, from Zen Hospice