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Being quick to listen, rather than quick to assume what someone is about to say can allow for true listening.

Assuming or jumping to conclusions, may lead you to miss out on opportunities, more than you know.

Truly hearing what someone has to say requires patience and full presence in that moment.

All your attention is needed to understand what is being communicated.

So, pause, take your time before you speak again.

Let their words rest a moment. Let their words, and how they share them, be truly heard.

Your words can help to create a world of patience, peace, and love, or one of annoyance, anger, and hate.

The smallest of utterances can have the greatest of impacts.

Choose your words wisely.

Just because someone isn’t showing you kindness, doesn’t mean you can’t extend kindness to them.

There is a world of potential on the other side of the door. Sometimes you’re the one who has to stand there, holding the door open, so that others can take that first step.

Perfection isn’t necessary, or even possible, but seeking to do better next time is very possible.

Seeking to understand, not just to be understood requires whole body listening.

It’s a principle that can be difficult to follow, but it’s so worth it when you do.

Listening, true listening, is a whole-body exercise.

The words people use and the tone they use are only part of what they are communicating.

To truly understand what someone is saying, or how they feel, it can help to consider: What is their perspective? Where are they coming from? What is it they are really asking? What is it they are really looking for?

When we seek to help others, it’s best to consider if we are helping others in the way they wish to be helped, or if what we are doing is really for our own benefit.

Are we actually solving a problem for them, or do we just want to feel like we are?

Whole body listening is a key component in a life committed to service.

Knowing what others are really looking for, or need help with, can help you to better serve them, in a meaningful way.

It isn’t easy doing whole body listening; it’s a skill that needs constant practice, patience, and perspective. But, it’s a skill worth developing.

Communication is all about connection. And the better you listen, the better you can connect with others.

Being busy isn’t the same as being productive.

You can be busy all day, all week, and not actually finish anything. Not actually produce anything.

And, you can certainly be busy and not produce quality.

After all, busyness is just busyness.

You may start the week with a few goals, get distracted, and not actually achieve any of them.

Maybe you didn’t even establish what your goals were in the first place.

Either way, you could still keep busy and feel like you must have accomplished something. Even if you don’t know what that something was.

How much you are trying to do or how hard you are working aren’t inherently connected to how productive you are being.

We live in a world that seems to reward busyness, praise it, even. And, if you want to keep active, busyness can certainly help you.

But being busy isn’t the same as being productive.

And it won’t necessarily get you where you want to be.

Knowing where you’re headed and then getting there requires a different approach—you might begin with figuring out where you actually want to go.

With no address to aim for, GPS doesn’t do its best work. And, likely, neither do you.

Small things are as important as big ones.

It’s the small things that influence big change. The direction change will move in.

The small things you do each day matter.

A simple kindness: a smile, a sympathetic gesture, a thoughtful word. These are the things that help the world go round.

It’s the small things that shape our present, and our future.

Think about the negative, dwell on the negative, talk about the negative, and that’s the reality you will share with others.

That’s the reality you will help to create.

Do you think the world is full of doom and gloom? Or do you think the world is full of great beauty and potential?

Choose wisely.

Help create the world you want to be a part of.

Live the change you want to see.

Talk is great, but doing something is so much more meaningful and impactful. That’s how real change happens.

What kind a of world do you want to be a part of?

Letting go of control can actually help you find more of it—the good kind.

Trying to control others, control the outcome, control the world around you, rarely goes well. And it certainly isn’t likely to go the way you hoped, or “planned” it would.

So, why not let go of control? Instead, put your energy into exercising agency over your own life, and the things you can control.

You can’t control others, and you probably shouldn’t seek to.

You can control you, though. Your thoughts, your behaviour, your contribution.

Letting go of trying to control the things you can’t, instead focusing on the things you can—you, so often helps to create the conditions for the reality you’re really looking for anyway.

Live into the world the way you want the world to shine back at you, and the more often it will.