A Daily Scroll: A Mentorship Recap – December 15th, 2021 – Show Notes

Kay:

Hello there, Questers, and welcome back. It’s Wednesday, December 15th, and you know we’re going here. There are 10 short days to Christmas. Shy, what does that mean is leaping our way?

Shi:

Lords are leaping! So glad that the Lords are leaping the final double digits before we get into single digit Christmas countdown. If you’re like us and like our children, you are at level 5,000 excitement. So we are excited to be here in episode 488, bringing you a shortie but goodie quote from Toni Morrison, of course, the American writer. She examined the black experience, the black female experience, brought a lot of progress to that movement there. And her quote today is “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”

Kay:

Coming from someone who extensively examines the black American experience, particularly the black female American experience, this is so deep in understanding that when you create definitions, that definition is your definition. And when you put it onto somebody else and, and give them that definition or say, “My definition of you is…” that is still your definition. That is not magically now their definition or someone else’s definition. It always belongs to you. Now you might say, “Well, I got that definition from Websters and therefore it’s Webster’s definition.” But the fact that you subscribe and believe to it means that it’s your definition as well.

Shi:

This principle’s been noted throughout the ages by many different people. Perhaps most famously Shakespeare telling us “A rose smells just sweet by any other name.” That is exactly what we’re saying here. It doesn’t really matter what the name is on it, the essence of something remains what it is and remains only known by that thing or that person because it’s the experience on the inside. It’s that essence, that piece, that spark on the inside. I’ll say it another way, Dr. Dyer used to tell us that your reputation, every time you speak to someone, you have another version of you out there. And that reputation, if you speak to a hundred people, they all walk out with a hundred different versions of you. Or as Toni tells us here, Toni Morrison, a hundred different definitions of you. And so trying to take responsibility for those other definitions of yourself, or your actions, or your history, or your past, can end up driving you crazy and end up causing you a lot of pain and suffering and worrying. And I know I do this a lot. I take a lot of extended responsibility and have really been trying to focus and work on not doing that. And I think this quote is rather potent in terms of that effort.

Kay:

Tony Robbins also says, “Create your meaning, create your life.” Your meaning that you assign to whatever it is in life is what’s going to create that reality around you. So whether it’s the fact that you’ve defined something that has more dimension, or maybe you’re being blind to the fact that you’re defining something that may not need to be defined, or that maybe you are not asking the defined or figuring out what it is that is their experience, a common social issue that happens in this is the experience of disabled people and what they quote “should” and “should not” be able to accomplish and do. And disability looks different in almost every single disabled person. So to say the disabled “should or should not do this” is a definition belonging to me, the definer, who is not disabled, not the individual human being with the disability.

Shi:

In the Eastern spiritual religions, they tell us how someone else acts is their karma, how you respond is yours. So it’s remembering that we do have that ultimate responsibility, but only for what is contained within our own skin, or our own four walls of our own mind and our own brain. And so we get to be the definers of that we get to, as Kay mentioned, assign the meaning for ourselves. And we do this by extending it to others. We do this by reminding ourselves that those definitions are subjective. I heard a lot of people starting to use the language of “my hallucination is,” and I just love that as an indicator that people are starting to and have been waking up to this realization that the experience is subjective and that you get to choose what the meaning is, and that other people’s definitions don’t have to be yours. Easy to say, sometimes hard to embrace.

Kay:

It was such a good reminder on a day where we are starting to leap toward the Christmas holiday and have an opportunity to define the upcoming season in the way that works best for us. So as Toni Morrison tells, “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”

Shi:

All right, it is wellness Wednesday. So your quest today is to define what a little bit of self-care would look like for yourself today. We know that when we fill our own cups, it allows us to pour more into others. So your assignment today on #WellnessWednesday is to define what self care looks like for you and spend 10 minutes practicing that. And if you could get a few leaps in, all you Lords and ladies out there, that would be fantastic. Are you ready?

Kay:

Let’s quest.

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