Freedom Friday: To Adapt is to Love

Hello everybody and welcome once again to the unlearned podcast. I am your host with Abigail aka RA, and this is once again Freedom Friday, where me, or me and a friend of mine come to you and share something we've unlearned recently and how it has made us just a little bit more free. So I have the privilege of being in a leadership development program. It's a pretty intense program and we had our first kind of gathering workshop for the cohort this past weekend and we did a lot of stuff. One of the things that we did was personal assessments and I really learned just a little bit more about myself. If I'm honest, I kind of thought I had a lot of things already figured out. I've done a lot of personal assessment stuff before and while I was looking forward to it, I didn't expect to necessarily learn anything new which is arrogant on my part, but it's true and so one of the things we took was the disc profile. For those of you that haven't heard of it, it's an assessment Typically like a workplace assessment basically talks about your natural personality and your adaptive personality in the workplace for the most part, and so we took it. And who? I am right, it's a D-I-S-C D for dominance, I for influence as for steady or steadfast, and C for conscientious. And my letter combination was the highest one I had was D was dominance right, which was very interesting, something I didn't expect, but we'll get into that another time. But the thing that I think I took away from that, all this is in the context of leadership, and I was really humbled by this idea that was spoken about during the workshop, and one of the big ideas around this was that to adapt is to love, to adapt is to love. We take these personal assessments. I mean I've done most personal assessments. I'm really interested and fascinated by it. It's really interesting to me about the way that we're wired and kind of what that says about us, how we behave as a result, the way we relate to people, how we think. Like it's really interesting to me, I enjoy it. So I take them all and really have gotten to know a lot of them, and so this one was really also intriguing to me. I think, in a culture that is obsessed with yourself and obsessed with even the good no-transcript Learning yourself right which is a good thing we should be self-aware, we should understand who we are, but sometimes we can, even we could be too self-absorbed to be so committed to learning myself that now, because I know myself so well, I demand that the world Treat me the way I need to be treated, because this is who I am. I am an extrovert. I am, you know, I have the. I'm an introvert. I am somebody who really Loves to use my words to communicate. I'm somebody who has this love language. I'm somebody who has these strengths. I'm I'm somebody who's dominant versus influential, versus. You know, I like to think a lot. I'm. I have all you know. These are all the things we learn right about each other and then, if we're not careful, we'll go out into the world and and expect the world to meet me where I am, as I am, and what I had to unlearn and what I have unlearned and will continue to unlearn from this particular doing, this particular workshop, is that these assessments are not Just to do. These assessments are not just to Define who I am or even give me a pathway to get better, because I personally don't believe that they're meant to define you if you take it and Say, okay, this is me, and now I must be treated as such, because this is who I am and there's no. There's no pathway to grow. You don't understand the pathway of growth and balance and really leaning into Things that can help you be better, because there's always a shadow side to the best qualities that we have. That's really what those personal assessments are for. But if we're not careful, we will just lean into them and declare we are that way, even if we do Put ourselves on a pathway to growth, even if we do look at those personal assessments in a very mature way, say, alright, this might be who I am today, but here are the suggestions for how I should grow, how I can get better, how can relate to people more. Even doing that, there's still a step that very few of the personal assessments, if any of them, ever really Give, and that's to adapt Because you love someone else, not just grow into a better person, but sometimes you have to put yourself aside and Meet someone else where they are, because it's going to be better for them and it may go against who you say you are and it may go against your personality, your preferences, what you think is good for you. You may be uncomfortable, you will probably be uncomfortable, but if I can Not just know who I am, not just grow to be a better version of that, but also be willing to adapt in situations that calls for it, in situations where I can show love by putting my needs or wants or desires or preferences aside. I Think that's where the these personality assessments, the self-awareness that we get from it, is really flying on all cylinders, when I don't just know myself, but I know when to adapt and I know how to adapt, and I don't do it for any other reason other than I love the other person enough to say I could put myself aside so that you can be comfortable. You can get what you need in this moment, which means I may not get what I need, and that's okay. That's okay. I love how we talked about it in the context of leadership. If you have a team at work, or even if you're leading your family, if you are leading a small group, if you have any kind of position where people look to you in any way, it is not their job to meet you where you are. It is your job to meet them where they are, which means it is your job to adapt. It's your job to be self-aware, to grow and become a better version of yourself, but also not use those things as an excuse to remain at a certain place and demand that people meet you where you are. But humbling and humility, meet others where they are, even if it means a lot of times when it means you won't be comfortable. For me, a lot of this lives in being somebody who has a dominant personality. I really like things going fast-paced. I've talked about this before like my pace is pretty much if the speed limit is 65, I'm probably gonna go 75 to 80. I'm going fast and I'm just a fast mover. Well, one of the other letters, which is an S steadfast is more of a slower pace. I learned that that particular letter is probably one of the most difficult for me to deal with because it really goes against my grain to not move quickly. But I have to unlearn that my pace is more important because it's more comfortable for me. If I can learn to slow down for the sake of somebody else, then I'm really living into the fullness of who I'm able to be. And that's just my example. And so if you know whoever you know you are whether you've taken a personality assessment, whether you have it, it doesn't matter but if you know yourself, you know you are a certain way. Take the time to figure out how you can adapt so that other people can feel loved by you in spite of you being uncomfortable and you not feeling like you have everything you need, but you are giving someone else what they need. It's not the way we work in our culture today, but it's worth it. It's worth it. It's. The highest form of love is to adapt. So that's all I got. Let's keep unlearning together so that we can experience more freedom, and we will be back next Friday, peace. Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast. We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think. We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom. See you then. Pleasure.