Mystic Messages

WHO are you serving?

When you do whatever you do, are you conscious of the person or people for whom you are doing that? This isn’t just about your job or career or business, but even the family for whom you are cooking dinner, or the person you hold the door open for at the mall, or the charity that you are supporting with your donation.

WHO is it that you are serving?

There are plenty of answers when you look outside yourself at the examples above. But in all of those, are you serving yourself first? Remember that the airlines instruct you to put your oxygen mask on FIRST and then turn to help a companion or child. What good are you to that other passenger if you pass out from lack of oxygen before you can help them? Take care of yourself first so that you are better able to serve.

We think of that on airplanes but the same principle applies all throughout our days and our lives.

If you don’t take care of your own health, no one else can do it. You know this. You accept this. But what about your spiritual and psychological health? Your emotional health? Your mental health? Are you serving yourself by taking care of yourself in those areas?

If you are an entrepreneur or you work in an office, are you clear about the customers or clients that you serve? Are they real people to you or are you focused on tasks and not people?

As an entrepreneur I am very focused on the clients in my business. My work is to build a relationship in which I support them. If I were a secretary, I would be supporting a boss and needing to accomplish certain tasks for her. How much use would I be if I weren’t taking good care of myself and if I was thinking about the computer instead of the project that creates info that she needs? A teacher who thinks only about what he is teaching and not about the kids and what they are learning is not a very good teacher. A musician or actor or artist who isn’t thinking about how the audience is receiving their art isn’t sharing much of themselves.

We’ve all heard that ‘Energy flows where attention goes.’ If your attention is on accomplishing your to-do list, on everybody else’s to-do list, on getting things done and over with instead of on the people and the relationships, what do you think will happen to the people (including you) and the relationships?

Take some time this week to ask yourself the question, “Who is my WHO? For whom am I doing this? And have I taken care of myself first so that I can serve at my best level?”

Entrepreneurs are taught to identify their ‘target market’ or ‘audience’ early in their training, but most of us don’t get this lesson and broaden the perspective into everything that we do. Next time you are fixing food, ask about your ‘Who.’ Next time you hold a door, think about the person walking through it and smile. Smile before you answer the phone because there is (usually) a human being on the other end of the line. Think about the tasks on your to-do list in terms of the person/people impacted.

Who is your WHO?