{"id":5263,"date":"2019-04-01T00:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T00:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/todaysveterinarybusiness.com\/?p=5263"},"modified":"2023-06-17T17:13:02","modified_gmt":"2023-06-17T17:13:02","slug":"activate-your-latent-superpower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/navc.sitepreview.app\/todaysveterinarybusiness.com\/activate-your-latent-superpower\/","title":{"rendered":"Activate Your Latent Superpower"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our most recent column [\u201cWholeness and Self-Compassion,\u201d February\/March 2019]<\/a> explored the importance of acknowledging our wholeness as a first step to finding peace in the present moment. While presenting on the topic of wholeness at VMX 2019, what became clearer to us than ever before was that members of the veterinary profession struggle with the concept.<\/p>\n

For many, external and self-imposed pressures to live up to someone else\u2019s expectations, do things right and be in control have been going on for so long that they became a way of life. As a result, our session attendees reported busyness, stress, anxiety and comparison leading to self-judgment as common barriers to finding peace and embracing their wholeness.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, effective tools are available to help us not only survive, but actually thrive, no matter what challenges life might present us. In this column, we focus on one ability that can dramatically alter our experiences for the better, which is our definition of a superpower.<\/p>\n

Wherever we find ourselves, one powerful step we can take is to activate a latent superpower that all of us, as humans, possess. That superpower is curiosity. When we are sincerely curious, we unlock new fields of possibilities. We also begin to realize that the \u201cfacts\u201d and the stories we kept telling ourselves were only perceptions that we had stopped questioning.<\/p>\n

Here are a few ways to activate your superpower:<\/p>\n

1. Adopt Beginner\u2019s Mind<\/h3>\n

Curiosity is sometimes referred to as having beginner\u2019s mind. Zen monk and teacher Shunryu Suzuki noted, \u201cIn the beginner\u2019s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert\u2019s mind there are few.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview in the magazine Strategy+Business, Harvard social psychology Professor Ellen Langer said this about beginner\u2019s mind:<\/p>\n

\u201cTo approach the world freshly, with a beginner\u2019s mind, has an enormously positive effect. All the limits that people assume to be real \u2014 limits on creativity, innovation and even health \u2014 are often of our own making. Mindfulness is simply \u2018being here now,\u2019 holding an open frame of mind, and noticing moment-to-moment changes around you (from the differences in the face of your spouse across the breakfast table to the variability of your asthma symptoms). Inattention and autopilot behavior is the source of many of our problems. You want to cultivate the ability to notice more of what\u2019s going on around you and within you. Noticing new things, in general, puts you in the present. That makes you more sensitive to context. Most important, it shows you that you didn\u2019t know that thing you thought you knew, which makes everything new to you again.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. Apply Curiosity Inwardly<\/h3>\n

Being curious and applying beginner\u2019s mind inwardly is a way to develop the self-awareness and self-confidence needed to understand ourselves, embrace our wholeness and appreciate our unique design. In his book \u201cSearch Inside Yourself,\u201d Google engineer Chade-meng Tan makes an elegant case for the fact that, by applying curiosity and becoming more self-aware, we become able to separate the experiential (\u201cI feel angry\u201d) from the existential (\u201cI am an angry person\u201d). He illustrates the point using a powerful metaphor: \u201cThoughts and emotions are like clouds \u2014 some beautiful, some dark \u2014 while our core being is like the sky. Clouds are not the sky; they are phenomena in the sky that come and go. Similarly, thoughts and emotions are not who we are; they are simply phenomena in mind and body that come and go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also in \u201cSearch Inside Yourself,\u201d Meng notes that self-confidence<\/a> is a strong sense of one\u2019s self-worth and capabilities that comes with increasing self-awareness. He quotes Norman Fischer: \u201cSelf-confidence isn\u2019t egotism. It takes profound self-confidence to be humble enough to recognize your own limitations without self-blame.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Identify and Own Your Derailers<\/h3>\n

Fully accepting and embracing our whole self involves becoming more and more self-aware of our habituated behavior and how it might be working for or against us (that is, the behaviors that \u201cderail\u201d us and keep us from being effective). Sara J. Grady, president of the Bevens Institute, suggests that it\u2019s especially important to notice our natural tendencies to avoid the pain of criticism, failure, weakness, rejection or exposure by creating defenses that keep us from perceiving and acknowledging reality and truth.<\/p>\n

Grady explains that defensive behavior takes three typical forms:<\/p>\n