Browsing the archives for the The Power of Story tag

16 Jun 12

Discovering a New Way to Be Human and Polish the World

by Robert V. Taylor

This blog interview appeared on the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation website on June 11, 2012

We don’t often stop to think about how the way we choose to manifest our unique humanity impacts ourselves and the world around us.  We are not conscious of the limitations we place on ourselves by old ways of being.  Yet we live in a world that needs our courage, creativity and imagination.

In his best selling book, A New Way to Be Human, nationally recognized speaker and author Robert V. Taylor explores the question of how we can each leave a footprint of compassion in the world by tapping into our personal spirituality and innate values.  We had the opportunity to talk with him recently about his ideas for more fully realizing our human potential.

 

DTPF What motivated you to write A New Way to Be Human?

RVT To invite readers to be happy and change the world. The sense of helplessness and disengagement that so many people feel about the world – “My voice doesn’t matter; my actions don’t really count” – leads you to clutch at life. There is another way! To live into the fullness of being human; to discover your magnificence and the truth that the world needs your active engagement as much as you do. The book invites readers into a more fulsome, happy and engaged new way to be human.

DTPF You speak in your book about connecting with stories – our own and those of others. How do we know which stories are the most important to share?

RVT Listen for the ones that make you feel alive, along with those that scare you. Pay attention! When you know your story and can be compassionate about every part of it – the wonder, regret, shame and joy – you tell it knowing that eternal wisdom and truth is revealed through you story. You then find yourself listening compassionately to the stories of others, attentive to the eternal truths and wisdom being revealed. Not every story is safe to share with just anyone but you will know that intuitively. Sharing your story you discover common ground with the most unexpected people. As you share who you are – not just what you do – your stories remind you that we need one another in order to be human. It’s a life-changing way of living each day and claiming your voice in the world.

Archbishop Tutu & Robert V. Taylor

DTPF One of the ideas you discuss in A New Way to Be Human is the limitations – enclosures – that we allow ourselves and others to place around us. What is the best way to recognize the enclosures we experience in our lives so that we can address them?

RVT Become aware of the things that you resist doing or think you’re not good enough or loved enough for. Beware of choices that are driven not by your passion and desire but by the needs of others or the habit of pleasing them. Each of those things constrains you, holding you back from your magnificence. They squelch your voice and cramp your compassion. You serve no one’s good by hiding behind whatever encloses you from being fully alive, happy and engaged. The book offers practical tools for stepping beyond what encloses you from your fullest self.

DTPF You talk in your book about reflecting the imagination of the Holy and “polishing the world?” What exactly to you mean by that?

RVT Our greatest failures come from a lack of imagination. When you chose to embrace your imagination life is different. Instead of looking at the world and accepting it the way it is you imagine the way it can be. That’s engaging and enlivening! Every seemingly small action that you do to make something better in the lives of others, in your community, school or in world helps to change and polish the world. What you do matters! Your actions allow the humanity of others to flourish. Lives and communities have a new shine to them!

DTPF One memorable story in your book has to do with your friend Joe who had stopped following the news because it ultimately made him feel helpless. This is something that many people experience today. Can you tell us how Joe was able to turn that deeply felt negativity around in his life?

The Los Angeles launch of A New Way to Be Human at LACMA

RVT Joe heard the challenge of a good friend to stop being disengaged and to see in the news an invitation to be part of changing the story line from bad to good news! Of course there are lots of terrible things in the world. But when we sit back we give them power. We are hard wired for love and compassion and we know it when discover life-giving energy by choosing to do something. As Joe responded to his friend’s challenge he found that he was drawn to stories about girls and young women denied education in many parts of the world. The bad news of those stories led him to learn about people and organizations doing something to give women access to education. It is probably one of the most transformative changes imaginable for the human family. So Joe got involved in an organization working in partnership with local organizations to provide that access. It’s changed his life. He’s no longer a helpless victim of life. He’s become an active participant in change and says he’s more fully alive because of it.

DTPF Many of us grow up being told that to think of others is virtuous, but that thinking of one’s self is not. How can your book help us better understand the difference between looking inward with love to learn who we are versus just being egotistical?

RVT Loving yourself is the greatest lesson and gift you will ever receive! You develop tenderness for yourself – warts and all. When you love yourself without conditions you want your own well-being. That’s where you discover happiness and how to be happy. With each step you take you become more compassionate about yourself. But none of this is a personal treasure to hoard. You discover that other people are loveable too – with all of their quirks. You can’t help but yearn for their well-being too. You desire happiness for all people. Loving yourself is the exact opposite of being egotistical! It makes you more fully human and alive because you realize that we need one another, that we’re inter-connected. Self-love becomes a generous outpouring of love for others.

DTPF You share a great quote in your book related to “limitless imagination.” You shared the story of a woman, Zelda who, because of the demands of her corporate career, was denying the “invitation to let go of the pause button” on her imagination. How can each of us learn to let go of the pause button on our own imagination?

RVT Listen to the tweets that your passions send you! There may be just one thing that you’re passionate about, that makes you feel alive. Pay attention – it’s the Universe inviting you to live life fully with whatever your gift is. That’s where you discover limitless imagination. When you choose to not listen to your passions and imagination you hit the pause button on your life. Imagine if any of your heroes had paused their imagination – the environmental, civil rights, gender equality, LGBT and other movements exist because of imagination that is alive and engaged! The world needs your imagination at work every day as much as you do – it’s how change happens.

DTPF How would you describe being “at home in your heart” to a group of young people today?

RVT Listen to your heart! Science reminds us that our heart and brain are connected and when we only live in our head space we miss out on our heart pointing us to happiness, purpose and meaning. Celebrate the people and places who make your heart space alive and detach from the toxic people whose energy limits your ability to be at home in your heart. Allow your heart to feed your intuitive response to the people, places and causes that make you at home by filling you with life-giving energy.

DTPF What is the most important idea your book can offer a young person who wants to better their lives and those around them?

RVT Love yourself and share that love! Be kind to someone today, speak out on something you care about, take an action to make the world a more just place. Love – it’s in your DNA. Love like it’s the best day of your life.

Post your comments below or join the conversation about this interview on the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation website

Robert’s new book A New Way to be Human is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and your local Indie bookstore

 

Read or post comments Posted in Active Being, Connecting with Your Imagination, Delighting in Delight, Fully Human, Fully Alive, Oneness with Self & Creation, Polishing the World, Showing Up for Life, Spirited Conversations, Trusting Your Voice
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9 Jul 10

Heartless Youth? Growing Empathy in Our Kids

by Robert V. Taylor

Robert V. Taylor

Are our youth heartless?  A new University of Michigan survey suggests this might be the case.  My personal experience and field research with parents suggests that there may be another story.  It has to do with us and the role we play in the lives of young people in our orbit.

Today’s college students are 40% less empathetic than the same age group in 1980 according to a study by Sara Konrath published in The New York Times.  That’s an alarming statistic. It has implications for all of us about compassion, empathy and kindness to one another. I’ve heard immediate reactions blaming technology and social media.  That’s a cheap blame game. 

My on the ground conversations with parents all reveal that the greater empathy killers may be adults.  Almost every adult has young people in the orbit of our lives.  If it takes a village to raise a child, do we care about the messages we send by our actions to young people?   

There are five steps that each of us can incorporate into our lives and, by implication, those with whom we interact.  They have to do with values, giving, service, stories and gleaning.

Values.  The actions we take, the choices we make as adults are like Tweets.  They are powerful shorthand communications to the young people round us.  One mother told me about taking her young child to the shelter for homeless women that she volunteered at once a month. 

The women of the shelter gravitated to her daughter.  “Tell us about your school. Do you have a home to live in? Do you have friends?” they wanted to know.  As mother and daughter left the shelter the young girl said, “It’s really cold outside Mom; do all women have a place to sleep?”  Her Mom believes in truthful answers and so she said, “No, but these women do.  That’s why we need places like this to provide a bed until they can get a home.”

Years later this same child orchestrated efforts in a local community to raise money to feed the hungry.  A value had been tweeted to her daughter.  A child had created a human connection with people she would not ordinarily meet.

Giving.  The unique interests of young people invite giving.  A father and son have bonded in their mutual love of baseball.  Baseball is the passion in this young man’s life.  This father and son activity has become an opportunity to give.  This summer the son is volunteering in a baseball camp in the Dominican Republic.  Understanding and empathy will be shaped by this experience –for the baseball coach and the campers.

There is no hierarchy in giving.  One parent offered this wisdom, “Let your children’s passions drive their giving.” Adults can add context.  Holiday celebrations – from Chanukah to Ramadan, to the Festival of Lights and Christmas – invite conversation about what they mean and the transformation that they point to.  Secular holidays from – July Fourth to Labor Day and Martin Luther King – invite stories about giving of ourselves to something larger than our self-interest.

Opportunities to give of ourselves are bountiful.  When young people, encouraged by adults, share their passions with others they discover common ground with others.

Service.  Parents repeatedly talk about the importance of service projects.  Some even select schools which place a significant emphasis on service for their children.  One parent told me that the most important service projects for her children have come from her children’s seemingly “silly” ideas. “Follow the lead of your kids” she urged.

Her six year old had experienced a homeless tent encampment and was determined to make peanut butter and honey sandwiches for people living there.  Knowing that these particular sandwiches might not be the most helpful food to make this mom did not says that it was a “silly” idea.  Instead they agreed to take food to the camp on a pre-determined future day.  In the build up to it, mom and daughter went shopping for food items that could be used in the camp.  On the scheduled delivery day they took the bags of food along with a small platter of peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

A parent listened to the lead and intuition of her child.  It became an opportunity to talk about the food that might be most needed but also honored the heartfelt idea behind the sandwiches.  Several parents spoke to me about the importance of intuitive, spontaneous service ideas generated by young people.  Adult awareness and listening to the desire to serve is as illuminating as the orchestrated service projects of a school, faith or community group.

Margaret Larson and Robert V. Taylor discuss Empathy in Our Kids - see link below to show on New Day, KING5

Stories!  The adults who took time to share the stories of their lives expanded my world and engaged my imagination as a child.  A young person’s experience can be an equally powerful story.  A mom accompanied her nine year old daughter on a choir trip to Nicaragua.  Arriving a few days before the rest of the group, they were given a tour of a garbage dump where children lived and scavenged for food.  

The guide offered this advice about a potentially harrowing experience, “Look for one child in the dump.  Concentrate only on that one child.  Look into his or her face.”  A young boy was among the first to climb onto a newly arrived garbage truck hoping for the first choice of trash from which to eat.  As the young girl focused on him he tried to stare her down and finally broke out in a broad smile, waved and ran off.

That night the daughter did not want to write in her Nicaragua journal about the experience but asked her mom to.  “Only if you let me read back to you what I’ve heard you say to make sure I’ve it right” said the mom.  Now headed to college this young woman never forgets the story of the young boy foraging for food in a garbage dump.  It is part of her story about compassion, empathy and kindness.

An innovative program offered by the organization, Bridges to Understanding, uses technology for digital storytelling.  Young people across the world share digital stories.  A child in the United States listens to and experiences the story of a child in India, Ghana or Colombia.  Technology is not the enemy!

Modeling how to tell stories and encouraging the telling of stories invites imagining living in the shoes of another person.  Imagination births empathy, compassion and kindness.

Glean.  No matter your own spiritual tradition gleaning from the wisdom of faith traditions is a way to invite reflection on values, service, giving and stories.  How does the Buddhist concept of happiness for all people relate to the experiences of adults and young people?  Is there a meeting point between this and Christian notions of love and compassion, Jewish ideas of repairing the world and Muslim injunctions to give to good works?

Gleaning from the treasure trove of spirituality is about more than the wisdom offered.  It becomes an opportunity to talk with young people about the people who practice a variety of faith traditions.  Gleaning invites imagining the life of a Buddhist child in Bhutan, a Christian in Ethiopia, a Jew in Argentina, a Muslim in Indonesia, and a Sikh in India or a Hindu in London.    

The plunging rates of empathy in college students will shift to the degree that adults understand that we each create encouragement about kindness, compassion and empathy by the way we engage with the youth in our orbit. Our values, giving, service, stories and gleaning are on display with every action and word we take. 

Empathy killers or empathy creators?  We’re all in this together.

Share your stories of growing empathy here

Watch Robert V. Taylor talk with Margaret Larson on New Day about Growing Empathy in Our Kids

Margaret Larson & Robert V. Talyor on KING5 New Day discuss Growing Empathy in Our Kids

Looking for resources on how to discuss empathy with young people?  Go to the Resources Page to find Wendy Mogel’s books and Mr. Peabody’s Apples

Read or post comments Posted in Active Being, Everyday Goodness & Kindness, Fully Human, Fully Alive, Making Sense, Finding Purpose, Polishing the World, Showing Up for Life, Spirited Conversations
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