Opus Day 3: Be Loyal to Your Inner Qualities

[Barque]

“It takes a well-grounded ego to withstand the assaults of well-intentioned and not-so-well-intentioned critics. But people who are unsure of themselves at work, by definition, don’t have a strong ego. They are vulnerable to attack. They fall over easily when pushed. People in power may have gone through similar trials and now unconsciously force their underlings to remain equally unhappy.
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To deal with such pressures, you have to be loyal to your essence or to the person you know you can be. People around you look for evidence of success, but you may have to trust the qualities in you that you know have not yet been revealed. Otherwise you may collapse and have your spirit crushed by criticism and expectations that are not your own.”

Today’s Work: What inner qualities of strength have you yet to reveal? What personal expectations indicate success for you?

Share your responses with Barque readers, by replying to this discussion.

[Dr. Robert Klass]

One quality of inner strength that I have yet to reveal is patience. Actually, I have revealed it to the extent that I do what I can to be more patient in the face of stress, adversity, criticism and so on, but I find that I have to constantly remind myself that those things that I want may not happen right away...in fact, they may not ever happen at all. As somebody who was an only child, I grew up in an environment where I was used to getting my way. As we get older, it becomes increasingly obvious that expecting, or even demanding, that our lives be a certain way can be a source of disappointment or worse. At some point, it does come down to how we feel about our lives right now, and are we willing to be happy with what we have and what we do not.

[Jonathan Arnold]

I can relate to this concept of vulnerability. When somebody is upset at me at work or even with our organization as a whole, it punctures my ego strength and is really upsetting. I know that I need to strengthen my inner sense of strength and expectation of myself and then through that become stronger.

The idea of strengths that I have not revealed is interesting to me. It obviously does not refer to weaknesses because that is not a strenth that has not been revealed but rather a strength that is not there. It seems to me to refer to a strength that exists within us but has not been creatively put in to use to strenthen our inner sense of power and accomplishment at work.

A while ago I read this book called Now Discover Your Strengths. They have an online survey that is supposed to determine your strengths. The theory behind the book was that it is not worth putting effort in to strengthening areas of weakness because although not futile it is a lot less productive than focusing on strengthening strengths.

This posting inspires me to look again at the strengths that I have and examine my challenges at work and see where I can use these strengths to develope a sense of ego stength and self validated expectations and successes.

Jonathan

[Ian]

My hunch is that strength and patience require flexibility above all else.

I wonder if this is what is meant by loyalty to essence and to who we can be; we are weakest and most vulnerable and most impatient when we don't have other resources to turn to, and these are what we may not have yet discovered, but will emerge if we can trust ourselves - surely this is the essence of care of the soul.