Heartwork
[Music]
i
have cheated my entire professional
career
for 17 years universities think they
have been paying me to develop student
programs
run all of these reports to make data
informed
decisions but i don’t care about any of
that
i drudge through all of that work so
that i can spend time with these
confused little humans
that we call our students
let me tell you no group of people are
more mysteriously amazing
than the group of know-it-alls that are
both confident
and scared at the exact same time
i literally collect a salary to clear
their heads
fill them up with this philosophical
jargon and
send them off into the world to search
and destroy
i love my job at every level of my
career starting as a student in the
office of student activities to
becoming president of some grand
university one day my
secret to success has been to deprogram
the environmental and social
conditioning of the minds of our
students
and open them up to their own interests
desires and curiosities
this was me in 2003 as a pal
panther advisor leader our role
was to ensure that every newly enrolled
student knew that they made the right
choice to attend this university
before their first day of class to break
through their
hard cool kid outer shell we had to
employ
my secret three-step process
encroach inspire
employ encroach
p for prairie v-i-e-w-u
me and a hundred other pals screaming
the school songs and chants at the top
of our lungs
from the moment you woke up until you
learned all 64 dance moves
of the school dance we call the pv
shuffle
by the time we were done with you you
were tired crazed out of your mind
and yet begging for more we got all
up in your space and we got comfortable
only so that you could get comfortable
in this new place this university your
new home
inspire p for prairie v
i e double you
you yeah you you
belong here it was imperative for me to
ensure that every student knew that they
belonged here you belong here
in this place this is that place for you
to explore
all of you use those classrooms and
use these student organizations and
those grilled cheese sandwiches from the
caf
gave me an extra 45 pounds for me to get
to know while i was here
in this place this is that place
this is the place where you begin the
rest
of your life ever since the first grade
they were always asking us
what do you want to be when you grow up
and to this day i still don’t know the
answer to that question
i take the line in my job description
other duties as assigned
very serious and i assign myself
the duty of releasing our students from
their fears of expectations
and exposing them to new fields of
exploration
while they’re at this place
employ pete for prairie v
how do you do you
this is probably one of the most
important questions that we ask our
students
because it affirms that they have a
unique contribution
and it’s needed it confirms that
all the energy that we put into
inspiring our students
helps them to see themselves
we employ them so that they can learn
themselves college days are some of the
best days that we all get to experience
because we get to discover
who we are our duties as professionals
to ensure that we put those discoveries
to great use mr orrock
you helped me realize that i really love
dance and dancing brings me so much joy
oh really did you know that we had over
10 dance organizations and one dance
company here on the campus that you can
join
today mr o’rock i’m an engineering major
and i want to join an organization but
y’all don’t have anything for
engineering majors
oh really did you know i’m looking for
10 students to serve as my production
and design team
for campus activities board do you know
anyone who would be interested
mr orrock i’m learning so much about
operational theories and
organizational theories in higher
education i didn’t know i love this
until now
oh really how would you like to work in
my office and
develop student programs and run these
reports so that we can make data
informed decisions
encroach inspire employ
what happens at my day job with these
students is nothing other than
decluttering
of the heart space making room in their
heads and their minds to fully
experience themselves as they exist
in the world who knew that the crux of
my work as a professional
would be considered some of the most
important work that every human has to
do
i call it heart work
hard work begins with acceptance
i could say that only college students
struggle with this concept of acceptance
however
i know that acceptance is really hard
for some of us to digest
whether we’re young or old traumas and
dramas and triggers
oh my all of us have experienced
things that have led us to ask the
question why
why didn’t i get that job or why do they
treat me this way or
why don’t i have enough or why am i not
enough
some of the sources of major conflict in
our lives comes from the fact that
we desire from other people
we desire to be acknowledged we desire
to be accepted we desire to be
admired we want to impose our will
on other people if other people just did
what we asked them to do then the world
would be a perfect place
but no i want to release you from that
train of thinking
this session begins with hard work and
we’ll start with your definition
of love m scott peck the author of the
book the role less traveled
has a definition of love that i
subscribe to in which
not only frames how we accept ourselves
and how we accept other people
but also how we should exist in
relationships
we’ll use this definition to better
understand acceptance
let’s call this segment acceptance from
love
m scott peck defines love as the will
to extend oneself for one’s own
or another’s spiritual growth
we’ll have to break this down piece by
piece to understand how it connects
to acceptance the will to extend
oneself this simply means that you
choose to employ your own
authority over yourself to stretch past
all that you are you
are the author of your actions you are
the author of your experiences
you shape how your experiences register
in your mind the will to extend oneself
for one’s own or another’s spiritual
growth
your spiritual growth that’s who you
will become
another spiritual growth that’s who they
will become
i take spiritual growth to mean the act
of striving towards the idea
or image of your greatest self
let me say that again spiritual growth
is the act
of striving towards the idea or image
of your greatest self
this quotient of spiritual growth goes
past the limitations of your current
conditions
past the limitations of your former
environment and dare i say
pass the illusions of reality in your
mind
this definition of love implies that you
as an individual
and everyone else in their own
individuality
has an idea of who they wish to become
let’s be clear to fully understand this
concept of acceptance you have to know
this to be
true you can’t control
what someone is or who they will become
no matter how we rationalize it every
individual is striving to meet their own
needs and become
their idea of their greatest self
by this definition of love the will to
extend oneself for one’s own or another
spiritual growth
you can only offer your support
for another person that’s striving to be
their greatest self
you can’t impose your desires on their
life
because that is not in your control
does that question make you feel
convicted in any way
if it does this is where hard work
begins
for you i want to share with you where
hard work began
for me i
accept my mother and how she chooses to
live
outside of my family unit
i accept the lifestyle that she has
chosen for herself as she sees best fit
for her
i support her i want her to be happy and
fulfilled
even though that does not include
me does that hurt
absolutely shame
abandonment these are all experiences
that i have lived
which have led me to doubt whether or
not i was good enough or
led me to try to find attention in all
the wrong places are
had me impose all of these strict
controls
on my relationships at the age of 26
my heart was still 12 and cold
and hardened because i couldn’t receive
the love that i wanted
i wanted everyone to give me what my mom
hadn’t given me
in all those years and that was simply
to be accepted to be loved
but it wasn’t until i accepted her it
wasn’t until i accepted
her image of herself it wasn’t until i
accepted all of her
that i began to release those
strongholds
in my heart that was occupied by fear
resentment
and anger to love her
is to accept her as she sees herself
without regard of what i want out of the
deal
no more petitioning for love unrequited
no more shrinking to someone else’s idea
of who i should be
no more trying to convince the world
that i am
good enough acceptance
it somehow mutes all of those external
voices that proclaim what you
are not and opens you up to everything
that you are
this pandemic has caused us to face some
of the things that we commonly run from
our health care for our neighbor
loneliness
and even death and while
those are all monstrous the biggest
monster of them all
was that for the first time in a long
time we had to face
ourselves many of us are familiar with
being still finding calm or meditation
but
during the quarantine we had to sit with
our
thoughts
let me ask you during the pandemic
did you take the time to redesign your
home spaces
to match your creativity or your
comforts
did you take on any new challenges that
may have previously scared you
did you take the time to notice the
worlds within our world
that maybe we were too busy to notice
when things were
normal hope that you use some time
during this pandemic
to really heighten your awareness and
get to know yourself just a bit more
while dodging kovit i grew an affinity
for growing
other living things not only as a
professional but also in my dad’s
backyard garden i asked my dad one day
i said dad can we grow sunflowers so
that we can make our own sunflower seeds
my dad says something that completely
caught me off guard it was
really really deep my dad replied he
said son
in order to enjoy the beauty of
sunflower seeds
you have to be willing to let the
sunflower grow past the beauty
we all know
i was like whoa dad where did that come
from
wow it was so deep nature
always has a way of saying these things
that are super deep
like like that phrase the faith of a
mustard seed
i never knew what that phrase really
meant until i heard it in a completely
different way
miles monroe once said god hid
everything that a thing is supposed to
become
in itself
so that means that this mustard seed so
small and
seemingly insignificant contains all the
information and processes and procedures
in itself that it needs to become a
full-blown
plant in itself
that small mustard seed already knows
what it will become
and will pursue its highest level of
spiritual attainment
you are just like that mustard seed
you have been encoded with everything
that you need
to reach your highest self
you also grew an awareness to witness
the entire process
and also reach for your highest
spiritual attainment this part of hard
work is about
following your senses towards your
interest your desires
and your curiosities you don’t have to
know where you’re going
to move towards what you will become
following your senses only requires that
you accept things as they are
while knowing that the answers to the
question that you have exist within you
an indian mystic name sergio said it
like this
he said life is not about becoming
superhuman
it’s about realizing that being human is
super
you are super and no one needs to know
that or celebrate that
but you you have to be bold enough
to do the hard work necessary to become
your idea
of your greatest self accept the world
as it is
and then use this newly freed space to
explore
all of you hard work starts off as that
hard work that begins the moment you
realize that the world doesn’t revolve
around you
first you must learn to accept the world
as it exists within and then the world
that just so happens to surround you no
matter who you thought was supposed to
love you
you are the generator that powers your
spirit higher
bring all of you into your awareness so
that you can follow
your heart’s desires whether that’s
engineering the next supercar or
becoming the world’s top nurse or
marching in storms to stamp your own
impression
know that you don’t need permission to
show up as
you using your own desired method of
self-expression
you are the master of your peace and
your masterpiece should be your most
masterful artwork i welcome you to this
place and extend to you the grace
to begin your own hard work
thank you
you