Recently I got certified to administer a 360 assessment. In order to administer the tool, we had to take the assessment so we could develop a deep understanding of its power.
Like most 360s, this one included a self-assessment that was plotted against the scores of my respondents. When I received my results I was overwhelmed. And sad. My self-assessments were, in some cases, 80% less favorable than how my assessors saw me. Who was this amazing person they saw? Why can’t I see her? How is who I am for others so different than how I feel inside?
A fellow coach worked with me to understand what I saw. We talked about my childhood, my early adulthood and where I am now. We talked about my family and my colleagues and my business. We talked about patterns in my life and my go-to stories. In the end, we landed on some homework.
I told my coach that I wanted to admire myself more. What I really wanted, I didn’t have the courage to tell her. In truth, I wanted to adore myself. “Adore myself,” I thought. But if I did that, I would feel like a selfish jerk. So I looked for a different path.
In the past few years, I have uncovered the part of me that is the divine spark. The other part of me is the human form. “What if,” I wondered, “I could allow the human form in me to adore the divine spark in me?” That seemed less arrogant. How could I not admire the divine? And conversely, “What if the divine in me could adore the human form of me?” How could it not?
In yoga that night, during a restorative pose, a love song played. I LOVE love songs! Since I was a little girl, I have always sung love songs to myself imagining a man singing that song to me. That night, for the first time ever, my divine self sang a love song to my human self. I wept. I was filled.
The next day I listened to the radio and a love song played. My human side decided to sing that song to my divine spark. Wow, what a love affair I started!
After just a few days, it’s so much easier to sing, and believe, the words my selves are signing to each other.