Habits, Opportunities, Timing

These are the words I got from the POINTS OF YOU cards during our CFA Homeschool Recollection, Echoes of Empathy.

Now that I’ve written them, I can see the connections clearly.

With the consistent good HABITS in life, OPPORTUNITIES happen in the right TIMING.

Habits are the seeds we nurture day in and out. Eventually when the right time comes, we will fully be ready for the opportunities that will be presented to us. But without the right habits, opportunities will be scarce and I don’t think the right time will come.

There were a lot of takeaways I got from the recollection.  I learned a lot from my colleagues’ sharing of their personal stories.  I was reminded that everyone went through, gone through, and maybe still going through a difficult situation.  Things are not really what they seem and a person might appear very much put together but sometimes behind that  smile  is someone who just shows up in life despite that difficulty.

SHARING TAKEAWAYS

We fight a good fight because of the people we love.

Daanan mo lang… then Move on.

Even if you don’t know what’s going to happen, TRUST!

It’s OK to slow down.

GROUP AFFIRMATION

Each of us was given a phrase that we have to agree on or change if we don’t agree with it.  With these affirmations, we claimed and spoke it with conviction as our affirmation phrases.  Without naming which affirmations were to whom, here are our individual affirmations:

I AM EMPATHETIC

I LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY

I AM TRUSTING

I AM ENOUGH

I AM FORGIVING

PERSONAL TAKEAWAYS

We all grow in different phases and it takes a lifetime to learn. We are all a LOVE in progress.  We might regress once in a while but the important thing is bouncing back.  

Authenticity

If you really want to be authentic, stop copying someone.  The said statement seems like a no-brainer but most often than not, we live to copy someone else because we thought they look better, act or react better, live better, and so on.  

I was going over and over about this question in my head?  Was I being authentic with others or with myself?  How much of what I am right now was my real choice in life? Have I been living my life copying someone else’s views?  How much of who I am right now is someone else’s belief system?

Although it’s not bad at all to copy someone as long as it is your choice or life goals.  I mean copying the lives of the saints and how they lived is a noble endeavor.   What I’m talking about here is copying someone because you think their life is better or you think they are way better than you.

We were given a chance to get 2 images from the round table that represents our past and our future.  I chose the image of the crying baby girl and an image of a relatively old lady who was smiling.  The crying baby girl represented my wounded self in the past which resulted in my deep inferiority complex, my self-doubt, and my hurtful pasts.  While the smiling old lady is a HOPE that someday, I will be able to accept who I am, wrinkles and all, courageous, happy and finally proud of who I become.  

It’s a long journey for all of us in the CFAH family to become better versions of ourselves.  But one thing is for sure, with God in our midst, we will leave this world better than when we found it.

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”

― John Dewey

It’s my first time to hear this quote from John Dewey, thanks to our Group C facilitator, Carla. It does make sense since it’s not true any longer that people learn from experience because we keep repeating our mistakes despite the many experiences that we had in the past. It is truly from reflecting on those experiences that gives us more Wisdom.

It pays to be more contemplative with what happens to us.

I would like to thank our Spiritual Formation Department for creating this Recollection Series, Echoes of Empathy. It’s one of the blessings to be with CFAH. It’s not everyday that an institution would go out of its way to evangelize and continuously come up with programs for the spiritual, emotional, and mental health of its employees. Only here in CFAH!

A special thanks also to Cefam Alumni Association Incorporated who patiently and effectively conducted our recollection.  The facilitators were able to process our individual sharing with empathy and without judgment.