This Week’s Topic – The Treasure in Your Own Reflection

Ladies,

 

This one will be a tough one – but well worth the focus. It’s also part one of two, so we’ll keep part one tight.

Selfish. Let’s go straight there. 

 

During a quick back and forth thread in the community conversation here, we touched on the deep training we all have – especially as women – as kids about how not to be selfish. In short, selfish is bad, and selfless is good. That’s the polarity.

As kids we received this training to temper childish behaviour, before our survival instincts have matured to include others. Our parents and elders would ask us not to be selfish, and instead to think of others. It starts as sharing food, toys and space with others, but then extends to our thoughts and actions as we become more responsible.

How would Jane feel if you said that? Share your lunch with Dick if he forgot his. 

How old were you when you learned that walking Spot everyday made you a good person? 

In their purest human intention, these are the lessons that make us the beautiful adults we are now, but it is also the information we receive when we are first having the delicate awareness of ourselves as important and valuable human beings. We are asked to hold back our thoughts and feelings, go hungry, and work hard even though we are tired.

We will all have our own details. We’ll leave the rhetoric here though. Let’s blaze a new trail with that one word: Selfish.

Did you know it has a scientific definition also? And better, it’s biology! We’re back in the sweet spot. It means… drum roll please…

“being genetic material solely concerned with its own replication.”

I swear I did not make that up for flare. Merriam Webster did.

 

So, this week, part one of our two part challenge (part two to be revealed next week!), consider this:

What part of yourself would you replicate? There’s lots. Choose 3. 

 

Hint: a) Look inward – don’t compare, or look outward towards something you wish you were better at. b) Choose something really specific and practical. Of course we want to have more and more of those great energies like love and kindness in the world, but you already know you are that. Think more about how you represent those bigger energies. How are you that?

This is a tough one! Lean into each other for reflections. That is what we agreed to do here when we started this project, to reflect each. What do you love about a woman here – or that you know. That’s you.

Another way to think of it is as if you were showing a child like you how to be loving greatness.

 

Go ahead.

The world needs more of you, and that’s a fact.

Be selfish.

3, 2, 1… GO!