"What Do You Count on Me For?"

I am in a year long course that meets on a weekend every other month. It is part of my own ongoing growth and development, which I feel is essential for the integrity of my professional capacity if I am going to put myself in the privileged position of being another person's coach. The title of this musing is the question I have been inspired to ask some of the people who are most dear to me in my life.

Of course when the moment comes to ask this question of my significant others, all sorts of invalidating conversations that have been lying happily dormant in the quiet recesses of my memory bank, suddenly clamor for my attention. I know you have inside of your verbally unexpressed thinking some version of these hecklers. We all do. It's part of the make-up of being a human being. But that's another musing ...

In any case, they vie for my attention and I listen to them for some time. But I'm actually more interested - thankfully - in the answer to the question, because I really do want the important people in my life to experience me as someone they can count on in ways that they want to. The risk of course, if I listen to that internal nonverbal invalidating commentary, the risk is that I will find out I have woefully failed the people I love, not measured up to their expectations, have them laugh in my face or maybe even sneer
(those internal critical hecklers pull out all the stops!).

Well, I asked. I asked them all.

What I found out, to the chagrin of my own personal booing crowd but to the joy of my authentic essence, is that the things I most want to bring to people, that I have worked very hard to make present in our lives together, actually was their experience of me! And for the most part, their comments exceeded my hopes. What a gift! Several of my appreciative peeps thanked me for the opportunity to be able to express to me how much I meant to them in their life, and so themselves got to be moved and real and honest about how much they cared and valued what we had together. We became more and more related as
I reciprocated and shared with each of them what I count on them for.
We gave each other the gift of gratitude and acknowledgement and appreciation.
In a word: Love.

I invite you to ask your precious community the question: "For what do you count on me?",
and bring what you're looking for.



~ ten thousand blessings to you ~