A Privileged Friendship

Last night, Paula raised outstanding issues with me – how she had behaved when drunk the other night – and for the rest of the night we chatted about how well we are all doing and that we just need to keep on going. Nobody said it would be easy. Just by verbalising her issues Paula set us all off on a conversational summary of what we have achieved. Great stuff.

Today, Francis and I talked about all that has happened between us during these three weeks.

Learning points:

  1. I have the strength of character to be myself – so use it.
  2. The verbalisation has been a great success.
  3. It’s easy to pastime – just talk, recount, observe, share, listen and ask questions.
  4. I have made good progress with my pastiming (Francis has noticed the improvement) and it has been fun and effective.
  5. I ignore my wants and desires, convincing myself quickly that I don’t need whatever I desire – this allows me to remain lazy.
  6. Have fun, fulfilling those desires, no matter how small.
  7. What do I want – rather than default to ‘please others’, look, think and consider what it is that I want.
  8. My observations are poor – use the above point to give my observations more life and more credence.
  9. I make things complicated – make (& keep) them simple.
  10. Next time we get together we need to concentrate on dealing with all our work issues first so that we can relax quicker – it took us both two weeks to fully relax this time round.
  11. Enthusiasm for our website project dwindled after the first few days – and I let it. I didn’t have the conviction and determination to keep at it. Sort this out. This is the please others driver which says that I should not rock the boat or even make a suggestion because I am here to please people and go along with what they want to do.
  12. When I did take the initiative, it worked.

Considering this is my last day, I have felt very good. My time here has been rewarding and I have no feelings of sadness about leaving tomorrow. I am privileged to have such a friendship.

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