Hello fellow steemians!
Today was my first day back to work this year and I was reminded about an exercise that we did during one of our Monday morning meetings.
The year was coming to an end, people were tired and there was pressure to meet some deadlines.
It is easy to get into a negative frame of mind and friction between colleagues was a reality.
Instead of just getting into the agenda for the Monday meeting we were all given a blank A4 paper and a pen and were told to write our name on the bottom right hand corner.
We then were told to pass our paper to the person next to us, and then write something positive about the person who's name we could see at the bottom right of the paper.
We then folded the paper to cover what we just wrote down and we again handed the paper to the person next to us and we again wrote something positive about the person who's name was at the bottom right of the paper.
We continued to pass the paper that we had in our hand to the person next to us, wrote something positive about that person, folded the paper and passed it on again.
We did this until the there was no more space to write and we could only see the name of the person on the bottom right.
The paper was now back in the hand of its owner and now everyone could open their papers and read their comments.
It not only lifted everyone's spirit, the atmosphere of the group became light and animated.
One of the most remarkable outcomes of this exercise was that there was a similar theme to the comments on each person's page.
There was one line on my paper towards the bottom that particularly touched me and it said,
'MATURE, BRAVE, DARING'
Why this touched me the way it did was because most of the time I don't feel mature, brave or daring.
But reading those words made me realize that sometimes people around you see you more clearly than you see yourself, and when I look back over the past 3 very challenging years in my life I can see that I was those things.
Now, when fear hits me or intimidation strikes, I remember those words in bold on that paper.
I remember that I am mature, brave and daring
and that I can achieve what is in my heart and overcome every obstacle on the way!
Here is my paper... It is slightly crumpled because I carry it in my bag.