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Rebecca Silva-Faville

Notes from a workplace contemplative—where the inner life meets the outer setting

Headshot of Rebecca Silva-Faville, smiling, wearing a white blouse, against a navy blue background

I’m an average middle-class worker, a registered nurse, pursuing integration of work, home, and community. One seamless, healthy existence lived out in many contexts, seeking to move with openness and curiosity first, then advocacy; Held as a small, beloved part inside a much larger, mysterious story. I draw on many perspectives and disciplines to explore how my/our participation in a broken system may contribute to wholeness, reconciliation, and (if at all possible) redemption.

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The heart of high performance

High performance boils down to two things: responsibility and self-awareness. Since we can only exercise responsibility for the things we are conscious of, we begin with self-awareness.

Since the vast majority of our self lies just outside conscious awareness. We don’t rely on our prefrontal cortex to reveal ourselves to us. For that, we rely on the body.  

The language of the body is sensation. Feeling. Every feeling has a corresponding emotion. Each emotion serves as an indicator that points to a belief, an assumption, and a core value. 

But don’t get caught up in the underlying beliefs just yet. Start with the fluttery, flashes of heat, tension or balling up, sinking, lightness, bubbly feelings in your body. Just watch and listen with curiosity. 

If that seems too woo-woo to be practical, then start by watching and listening to the high performers you admire most. The ones who are really living the life and doing the work. DM me if you think you find evidence that self-awareness is not the bedrock of their approach to everything. 

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