The Gift Of Giving And Receiving - September 27

There are moments when we step into the role of teacher, and others when we take our place as the student. In today’s 5 Minutes in Nature, Liz reflects on the value of both. We don’t need to be experts to guide, support or encourage. Just as we don’t always need an expert to learn from – sometimes it’s enough to follow someone who is just a little further along the path. So don’t talk yourself out of offering help, and don’t hold back from asking for it. We are all, at different times, both the student and the teacher.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and yesterday I was talking a bit about my gym experience there was a couple of things I've learned from the gym and I'm on a country lane the sun is shining it's a cloudy sky white clouds with a little bit of blue sky above me too and it's a fresh feel to the day and we're promised a little bit of dry today and I'm looking forward to it rather than dodging the rain showers and everything is still looking very lush and green although at the same time things are going a little bit brown and autumnal around the edges and yesterday I was talking about spiritual muscles spiritual muscles or psychological muscles I haven't been using for a long time that I'm aware I'm going to be be called to utilize and to use moving forward so I know from going to the gym and using physical muscles that I haven't used for a long time that there will likely be a little bit of discomfort as I engage in new things things I'm not used to new things to learn but the second thing that I learned from going to the gym and this feels really important as well is it was a gym class where we were all with an instructor and we were all going through the same routine albeit some people were much more advanced than I was and I naturally teamed up with a lady that was on the mat next to me and just said would you mind just helping me show me the ropes because it's all new to me and she did and she was brilliant she was much more used to coming to the gym than I was but she just kept an eye on me and the gym instructor was also keeping an eye on me but just when I didn't quite know how to use a bit of equipment or I needed somebody just to support me to know that I was doing it correctly this lady was there and it was so reassuring having somebody I could just turn to and say do you know what I don't know how to do this can you just remind me I've just been told how to do this but I can't quite remember what what the instructions were and what I learned from this lady beside me is that she was not one of the most advanced people in the group but she was more advanced than I was and she had the capacity to share to the best of her ability things that I didn't know and I know that probably six months down the line I will be taking her role in supporting somebody else new in the class and I'll be that little bit further along but I can show them what I know even though I'm not the most advanced one in the class and this for me is an important realization in the rest of my life you see I think that we are all at different times during the day during the week during the year all at different times there are times we are students and we are the ones that need to learn and there are times when we are the teachers and we are the ones that are there to coach and support others you do not have to be an absolute expert in your field to become a teacher to be a teacher what this lady taught me yesterday at the gym is what you need to do is have empathy to be willing to connect to give up some of your time and to share what you know we can't wait for the experts to show us the way we need to be taught by those who are just slightly ahead of us and likewise we don't need to defer to the expert when we can share what we know with someone who knows less than we do or we can support someone who knows a little bit less than we do so today is just a reminder about there are times when you for sure will be the student and there will times when you will be the teacher there will be times when you need support and you'll look for somebody to support you and there are times when you can give support you don't need to find the guru and you don't need to find the expert all you need to do is find a person who knows that little bit more information than you do and find them and likewise don't think that you can't share and give what you know to somebody else what i've really seen is that when we see that we are all in this together there will be times when we can help others and there are times where we need to take a step back and ask for help but we can both be the student and the teacher as we navigate our way through life