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The service is difficult. It requires a lot of effort on our part. And like anything in order to continue on the road of success we need to continually continual self-examine ourselvesexamination. Otherwise, we might go down the wrong path, which would be bad for us and for the people we are serving.
The purpose of self-examination is to re-align ourselves with the primary purpose of the service. We should ask ourselves what that is. This is not a question we ask once, but I believe it's a question we have to ask ourselves on a daily basis.
If our goal gets misaligned, then problems can creep into the service.
Articulation
Part of self-examination is taking time to articulate our thoughts; our plans for change.
Many times we can have ideas which we think are brilliant or on point, but we don't spent time articulating them. When we start talking about them we quickly realize how unclear and vague these thoughts are. Vague thoughts are not very useful and can cause confusion to us and to others around us. Have you ever got in an argument with someone and started talking left and right and didn't feel that you made sense? This is because in anger or anxiety or any heightened emotions we don't spend the time and effort necessary to articulate our thoughts clearly. We just blurt the first thing that comes to mind. We need to learn to be careful with our words. When we don't we end up creating more problems than we solve. Articulation and words give us power over our circumstances. We no longer become victims of our circumstances. Articulation gives us the ability to take the potential for change and make it into reality.
Therefore, it's imperative to spend the time clarifying and solidifying our thoughts; working out any loopholes; working out the logic of our arguments. This is of particular importance when we examine ourselves and our service to lay down our plans for improvement of the self first and by extension our community.
Stopping at thinking internally only, while good is incomplete. It doesn't get us all the way to where we want to go, which is to affect change. In order to affect change we must go outside ourselves and articulate our thoughts. Articulating thoughts implies having an audience to hear and give feedback on these thoughts. Many times our thoughts require an objective third party to work out our biased from our thoughts. Being too close to something hinders our ability to be objective.
To reiterate, the goal of all of this is to be able to come up with a solid and measurable plan for self-improvement.
Activity
Being articulate is difficult, but it is a skill worth working hard to attain. The following exercise has the following steps:
- Look at common issues that we face individually and in the service and see how we can handle them
- By extension we need to put in the effort to articulate our plan for improvement
- If we have time each group will provide feedback on the other two group's presentation.
Let's take 3 issues and try to delve in each.
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