Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind. ― Madeleine L’Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet
human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life.
3 Questions for Discerning Your Calling
(excerpt)— Jordan Raynor, Relevant Magazine
… entrepreneurs and creatives … tended to ask three excellent questions when discerning God’s calling on their lives:
- What am I passionate about?
- What gifts has God given me?
- Where do I have the greatest opportunity to love others?
It’s these three questions which will help you discern where God has called you to expend your energies …
Calling as Passion & Purpose: Commentary
Are we alert to the needs and stories of those who come among us? Could the answer to their prayers be the answer to our prayers? — Sally Sheffield
Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God. — Dorothy Sayers
In a century of staggering open questions, hope becomes a calling for those of us who can hold it, for the sake of the world. Hope is distinct, in my mind, from optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing. It references reality at every turn and reveres truth. It lives open eyed and wholehearted with the darkness that is woven ineluctably into the light of life and sometimes seems to overcome it. Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a practice that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It’s a renewable resource for moving through life as it is, not as we wish it to be. — Krista Tippett
One of the realities we’re all called to go through is to move from repulsion to compassion and from compassion to wonderment. — Mother Teresa
What are you doing when you feel most beautiful? — Jacqueline Novogratz
If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it? ― Stephen King
And anything in our world now that slows us down is to be valued and maybe as a gift and even a calling from God. — Ellen Davis
I believe there’s a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call. ― Oprah Winfrey
If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud. ― Émile Zola
Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you’re put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling. ― attributed to Vincent van Gogh
I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. ― Annie Dillard
God did not direct His call to Isaiah— Isaiah overheard God saying, “. . . who will go for Us?” The call of God is not just for a select few but for everyone. Whether I hear God’s call or not depends on the condition of my ears, and exactly what I hear depends upon my spiritual attitude. ― Oswald Chambers
Song: “Listen” by Beyonce
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. — Leo Buscaglia
Listen. It is the greatest compliment you can give: that I am worth hearing. — Dona Hoffman
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. — Ernest Hemingway
We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say. ― Zeno of Citium
Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right. — Jane Goodall
Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together. — Colin Powell
Listening is active. At its most basic level, it’s about focus, paying attention. — Simon Sinek
The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. — Fran Lebowitz
I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him. — Simone Weil
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. ― Stephen Covey
This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going. ― Sarah Dessen
Key Points (excerpt from Active Listening from Mindtools.com)
There are five key techniques you can use to develop your active listening skills:
- Pay attention.
- Show that you’re listening.
- Provide feedback.
- Defer judgment.
- Respond appropriately.
- Positive Reinforcement
- Remembering
- Questioning
- Reflection
- Clarification
- Summarization