When the hero Achilles was a baby, his mom dipped him into a magical river that made him immortal. She had to hold him by the heel to do so, and this heel became his only vulnerable spot.
So became the term Achilles heel for anything that makes you vulnerable.
I refer to my Achilles Heel as the things that I’m strong at, that can also be a weakness because vulnerability is a strength.
Seeing someone for who they are is an Achilles Heel for me.
In the book The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Ben Zander, they talk about the central self, which I refer to as the true self. This is the you that comes from the heart, and is under all of the mud and the muck. It knows the right thing to do, and it’s where our goodness lies.
This is the part of another person I typically connect to.
Most of the time, I hold people in the light of their true self. I find that it brings out the best in them. I consider this to be a strength of mine.
But with every strength comes weakness.
I have a hard time seeing a person for whom they have chosen to be.
In our mastermind yesterday, one of our members told a story from a book he had read.
He described a lady from his book who was describing an alcoholic perfectly. She said, “he hides from responsibility, he lets me down consistently, he blames everyone else for what goes wrong, he twists the situation to suit him, and he won’t move forward with life.”
The person she was speaking to replied with, “you have described an alcoholic perfectly and I understand that part, the part I don’t understand is why you want him to be someone else.”
You know the moment when someone speaks a truth you know, but don’t always follow?
That was me yesterday. It was like he was talking to me not telling a story from a book.
I have learned this lesson several times, and apparently I’m still working on it.
When I see a person in the light of their true self, I begin to expect them to behave accordingly.
When they don’t, it causes tension and resentment within me. I don’t understand their choices, I hear them say things the way I want to hear it, and my expectations get out of control.
It becomes a huge battle within myself because I see them one way, and they act another way.
I’m learning (over and over) that even though it’s great to see someone’s true self, it’s also important to understand I don’t always operate from that place, and neither do others.
We need to accept others without judgement or criticism, but for where they are at in their journey and on their path, because it’s not so different from ourselves…if only we chose to step outside of our situation and see it.
The words they speak may sound different, but the intention behind them always remains the same (this is the part that trips me up, I think new words mean new results – not true).
We just need to accept people as they are, where they are, and who they are… not for who we want them to be.
If we see and listen from this space, we will navigate our relationships in a much healthier way.