This morning’s Pause for Thought on Radio 2 finished with: “Man sees the exterior and worries about what it looks like. God sees the divine you within.” That chimed a lot with me. I genuinely believe everyone feels they are doing the best they can but sometimes they don’t necessarily listen to their inner self; they act as they think they ‘should’. Quite often this isn’t actually as effective as it could be. A very short basketball player may think that he should be able to jump up to the 10-foot hoop and slam dunk his scores. In fact he’d be much better off getting his long range shots nailed: 3 points every time and not so dependent on physical height. The same with our mental processes. We all have different gifts so perhaps we owe it to everyone else to recognize them and use them rather than trying to be someone else.

I have just been reading about the values-based work of Richard Barrett. A little like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs Richard has come up with an ascending scale that starts at ‘surviving’ and goes up the scale through ‘conforming’ (learning to mix in society), ‘differentiating’ (learning to spot the differences), ‘individuating’ (recognizing the beautiful self), ‘self-actuating’ (embracing the self), ‘integrating’ (learning to let that self free in society) and finally ‘serving’ (using your gifts to make everyone else’s lives better). His diagram is like a bow-tie standing on its end. The bit in the middle, the knot, is where a person starts to recognize his own self and from there on up the model, just like someone’s world, expands outwards again like popping a champagne cork.

Sadly many fail to get beyond the knot. They’re so wrapped up in looking outwards that they fail to take notice of their inner selves. I shall be doing some more work on trying to work Richard Barrett’s theories into my own work. Have a look at his linked in page. Please also feel free to make your own comments at my Facebook page.

If you’re stuck in a knot I’d love to help you.

Jace