[Courses] [Spineful Living, lesson 1: Dreams]

[Anne Sorsa]

Hello Clytie!

I am so glad to hearing from you!

Thank you to sharing this with us :-)

Regards,
Anne

2007/4/3, Clytie Siddall <clytie at riverland.net.au>:
>
>
>
> Some years back, when I was in hospital for several months, for the
> first time in my life, I wasn't _being_ something for somebody. I
> wasn't being a daughter, student, wife, employee, mother, voluntary
> worker, whatever. I had nobody needing me to do things, expecting
> things of me.
>
> It was frightening. A huge blankness, and no tasks to fill it.
>
> Lucky I was there so long. I wasn't able to ignore that situation. I
> even had the opportunity to do an assertiveness training course,
> which changed my life. I shudder now at how narrow, how externally-
> controlled my view of life was at that stage.
>
> I was completely unaware of the basic human rights on which the
> course was based. I remember how blown away I was when I first read
> them:
> ___
>
> Basic Human Rights
>
> 1. The right to feel good about yourself
>
> 2. The right to act in ways that promote your dignity and self-
> respect as long as others' rights are not violated in the process
>
> 3. The right to be treated with respect
>
> 4. The right to say "No!" and not feel guilty
>
> 5. The right to experience and to express your feelings
>
> 6. The right to slow down and think
>
> 7. The right to change your mind
>
> 8. The right to ask for what you want
>
> 9. The right to do less than you are humanly capable of doing
>
> 10. The right to ask for information
>
> 11. The right to make mistakes
> ___
>
> I doubt if any of you are as spiritually impoverished as I was then,
> but if any of these human rights don't seem completely intuitive to
> you ... believe them.
>
> They give us permission to be ourselves. Which is what we were
> designed to be in the first place.
>
> ***
>
> BTW, thanks for sharing about ambition. I've never been the least
> ambitious, and felt guilty because of it. It's been another thing
> other people have expected of me: vicarious success, in at least some
> cases. But it's not me.
>
> Now I feel better about it, reading that others feel the same. I
> think ambition is perhaps a legacy of the male social structure. It's
> competitive, linear, alpha dog. I grew up in that sort of system and
> learnt to succeed in it.
>
> It never felt right.
>
> :)
>
> from Clytie
>
> Clytie Siddall -- Renmark, in the Riverland of South Australia
>
> Apologies if this email is badly written or difficult to understand:
> due to illness, the writer has cognitive problems, has great
> difficulty typing and is severely debilitated.
>
> Current Net communication capacity: only very occasional email.
>
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>


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Life doesn't move as fast as we think.
The world is better if we don't know everything.
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