"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. Get the book here.
Here are some products I created that express "What is Real". Your purchase helps support Generosity Through Abundance.
Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re
supposed to be and embracing who we are.From The Last Addiction by Sharon A. Hersh
Humility frees us from embarrassment about ourselves or our loved ones and
keeps us open to the healing path, in whatever form it might take. I learned my
own need for humility in my failures in recovery. I hid my relapse from others
for the reason often quoted in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings: "You don't want to
relapse, because then you have to go to the back of the line." Right, I didn't
want to go to the back of the line, and I certainly didn't want anyone to tell
me that I had to go there. I had stepped off the path, not because of my
relapse, but because of my pride. I was unwilling to believe that my relapse
needed to happen because I still had a lot to learn. Humility allows us to hear
that every relapse or struggle is an opportunity to learn something, and then
humility leads us to what we need to learn, even from the back of the
line.
From The Leader's Code by Donovan Campbell
"In Officer Candidate School and then again in the Marines' basic officer course, it was made very clear to us that the greatest sin that could be committed was an "integrity breach." Most commonly, an "integrity breach" took the form of a lie, but at its heart it was anything that drove a wedge between our professed beliefs—honor, courage, commitment—and our daily actions. Most often, we failed by lying, usually to cover up mistakes or gaps in knowledge. When, for example, a screaming gunnery sergeant is two inches from your face, demanding to know why you failed to carry out a specified order, particularly one from a peer, it is very easy to say you never received such an order, or that you did not understand. Shifting blame to someone else often seems the best option for getting yourself off the hook.
However, as I soon came to find out, sacrificing integrity is almost always a significant long-term loss. Candidates who were determined to have outright lied were almost always jerked out of training, hauled in front of an officer board, and harshly cross-examined to determine whether they could remain in the training. Usually, the board summarily kicked them out. Executional mistakes, on the other hand, were well tolerated, expected, even. People could fail woefully at basic skills, including marksmanship, and still be allowed repeated chances to improve, try again, and continue the training. It usually took only one integrity breach, though, to end a prospective Marine officer's career."
