Munificent Mindsets — tapping into our best selves
I had a personal issue recently, and my wise woman counsel and BFF suggested I ask the other person involved to show up as their best self, in order to try and resolve it.
I’d never thought of doing that before… ask for something like that… Interestingly, I did, they did, and it helped enormously.
It got me thinking about how often we make the effort to be that higher version of ourselves versus how often we sit in scarcity.
And more importantly, how is it that we can think with such abundance towards another person in one moment and in, seemingly, the next moment… be the exact opposite.
It’s kind of unnerving.
I mean… where is the truth? What do we really believe?
Think of your own friends group. There will have been occasions when, on the down low, some of them have been critical of each other, and then subsequently gotten together on an evening out and ended up in each other’s arms professing love and appreciation? Aside from the possibility of booze being involved, what they were doing was accessing more respectful and elevated beliefs and sentiments towards each other, which at some level are actually real to them — just not all the time.
It got me wondering why we can’t stay more consistently in this higher version of ourselves. Why is it that we can respect and admire a person in one breath and in another, denigrate and devalue them? Why do we get petty?
Think of someone who you admire that you also know personally. What is it about them that impresses you? And despite admiring them, are you still critical of them? Are you, maybe, a teensy bit jealous of them?
Could it be that this capacity to hold space for opposing feelings about others is one of the keys to human adaptability. We rise and fall in our emotional munificence towards others, depending on the occasion. Maybe that’s how we’ve survived to be the top of the food chain? Maybe its the way we are able to cohabit and build family networks — because our true feelings about others are so malleable and inconsistent.
I’m sure most of you have at some stage had this thought… “if XX is saying that about my friend, or colleague, then what are they saying about me?”
It’s a legitimate question, and there’s a fair chance the answer is “pretty much the same sort of thing.”
We are fickle and mutable in a way that can appear almost erratic. We are human.
But what if “being human” intrinsically meant maintaining an elevated state of attitude and behaviour. Imagine if we were characterised by our integrity, selflessness, graciousness, and generosity? Imagine always taking the high line, and never circling the drains of jealousy, greed and spite.
Do you think the world would be a better place for it?
Or is the reality that a human race such as that would have died out long ago because we never learned to build resilience?
“Being human” can mean so many things. But more than anything maybe it can be equated to “being situational.” And maybe that’s a characteristic that we should acknowledge more openly, rather than pretending we are something more steadfast.
Or do I happen to be just sitting in too much scarcity right now? Comments welcome!
