Stretching Lessons: The Daring That Starts From Within - Suggested Discussion Questions on Section 5: "Growing Wings "

For those who are unable to complete the reading prior to our meeting, I provide a list of passages and questions from the reading so that you have something to reflect upon. These passages and questions are simply a guideline to jump start conversation. As always, my preference is that you spend the entire evening sharing your answer to the final question.

Rather than pick a selection of quotes, this time I chose quotes related to themes that are near and dear to me.

• Pg 175 I didn't have a question to ask, but I did have a need to speak: "You talk much more slowly now than the last time I heard you," I said. "Now I feel your presence in every word. Your slower way, your pause, waiting for the next word to come, allows me to be present. Your presence has given each of us a present."
  

Pg 185 I want to feel I'm in my life—not traveling around looking for it.

• Being present, in the moment, is a form of meditation taught by famous teachers, such as Jack Kornfield, Eckhart Tolle and Thich Naht Han. I love this concept of "feeling like I am in my life", as it is something I find myself doing more and more. What does this concept mean to you? What are ways that you have to be present in the moment?

 

• Pg 180 The circumstances certainly weren't as terrifying, but the voice had almost the same tone—open and vulnerable. I wasn't hiding who I was with personality. No pretense. No trying. I had always thought somewhere inside I wasn't big enough. And I would be disappointing to others if I didn't keep trying to measure up. But now I trusted enough to come from a place inside, tired, discouraged, unwilling to work hard trying to convince anyone I was anything but what I was at that moment. My need to control, as best I could, an outcome had given way to allowing. I had tapped into a core strength. And when I finished speaking, the tiredness I had been feeling for almost a month dropped away. I had become, without struggle, bigger than that. I've never thought of trust as a muscle.

Pg 203 I had given myself so much permission, so much space to accept and appreciate whatever would happen that, nine hours later, I knocked at my son's door, and he looked at me, amazed. Total acceptance of any outcome was a new way for me to meet a challenge. What makes us wise one moment, and so unwise at another?

• These themes of letting go and acceptance appear frequently throughout this book, in a myriad of ways. Sue Bender's question "What makes us wise one moment, and so unwise at another?" brought a smile to my face. How do the themes of letting go and acceptance show up in your life? Do you find that they come easier or harder in certain circumstances? Which ones?

 

• Pg 217 Now, I repeat, as if it were a mantra: don't limit your vision. Don't get attached to a specific outcome. Something important may be right in front of you—but it may come in a form you aren't expecting.

• Words have huge power over us; the most powerful are the ones that we unconsciously repeat to ourselves in our thoughts simply because we are not aware of them. What are some of your conscious mantras?

 

• Was there a particular passage that made you stop and either consider or appreciate?