30 days of happiness #7

I am about helping people grow.  It was an obvious part of my mission when my kids were young, and even now that they are mostly adults.  I have always been happiest when my work has allowed me to stretch the people around me, elicit their strengths, encourage them, and sometimes kick their behinds with love.

Growth is life.  It is also hard work.  I need all the help I can get in my own growth process and seek to emulate all the people who have enabled me.  My greatest heroes are the people who continually grow out of one phase and into another in a continual evolution toward their own best selves, using every lesson to attack each new challenge or embrace each new adventure.

Integrity, then, would be what I am trying to create in the world, both in the sense of honesty and in the sense of wholeness.  We tell ourselves and each other so many things that aren’t true because we are supposed to or because we are afraid of the alternatives or because we haven’t taken the time to evaluate and check what we are saying against reality.  This fractures us as individuals and as communities when we so badly need to be healed and whole.

Imagine a whole world full of people being their best selves!

So my vow, for now, is:  I will seek to bring everyone I know (including me!) closer to his or her best self with love and gentleness.