Are you using all your strength?
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Change management & wellness, Communication, Social Responsibility, Travel
You can be sure the people in Haiti are. Using all their strengths that is.
Sometimes we are oblivious to our most obvious strengths.
A little girl was having difficulty lifting a heavy stone.
Her mother came along just then.
Noting the girl’s failure, she asked, “Are you using all your strength?”
“Yes, I am,” the little girl said impatiently.
“No, you are not,” the mother answered.
“I am right here just waiting, and you haven’t asked me to help you.”
-author unknown
Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, talked of the good that can come from large-scale natural disasters – from the “improvised communities” people form “to pull each other out of the rubble” to the feeling of purposefulness, self-transcendence and even “deep joy” people experience in places where disaster hits.
Ms. Solnit speaks of survivors finding “a deep connection that is often missing” in their ordinary lives.
In a disaster, she said, “we not only do extraordinary things; we feel extraordinary things. A lot of the things that trouble us every day – whether we are lonely or feel bitter about the past – a lot of those things are brushed away.”
My heart goes out to Haiti and all the remarkable people there. May their strengths and ours combine to rebuild and reinvigorate.
And you? Who are you? Really. Are you using all your strength? Really?
For some help in discovering (or rediscovering) your strengths Marcus Buckingham style see this newsletter.
Tags: disaster, haiti, paradise built in hell, possibilities, rebecca solnit, strength
March 22nd, 2010 at 4:41 am
I will use your advice from now on. Jaap
March 22nd, 2010 at 11:39 am
Thanks. Good luck!