Quote of the Day – April 1 2012

““The beauty of empowering others is that your own power is not diminished in the process.”
— Barbara Colorose

Wow. It seems so easy to find quotes about relationships that reflect disempowerment. People talk about how they have been dumped on, hurt and diminished by connecting with people. It seems relatively harder to find quotes that talk about empowering and being empowered by others in our relationships.

What does it mean to empower others? How can we learn to build on the strengths of people we love and enable them to feel like they can accomplish anything they wish? How do we say ‘I believe in you and mean it’?
Perhaps the question might be better phrased. Why don’t we say it more often? It seems so easy to feel over-sensitized in our relationships especially our long-term ones. Little things build up day by day and we not only diminish our partners in our eyes but we diminish ourselves. Resentment seems easy and praise difficult.
We even justify it in our minds. We aren’t harder on them than we are on ourselves or Wow look at all the things that bug them about us. But perhaps like so many other things, the answer is contained in the question. It’s easy.
It’s so easy to settle on the traits we love and hate that we have seen many times before. It’s like there is a checklist in our heads. Yep there he is being kind again, He forgot that again. Yep, she’s complaining about this. Yep, she’s so organized. How much more difficult it is to look at our partners as if we were seeing them for the first time with fresh eyes. When was the last time you noticed a new quality to admire in your partner? If you don’t have a partner how about friends or family members? If it takes us a lifetime to know ourselves completely than I can guarantee that there are qualities in each person you know who you have yet to discover.
Blessings, G

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Masqued Response by G A Rosenberg