Nathaniel Branden was a fascinating guy. As a teenager he wrote a fan letter to Ayn Rand—which she ignored. Then he wrote another letter a little later which led to an intimate relationship and collaboration. We’ll save the details of that relationship for another discussion. For now, let’s look at some wisdom from The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem where Nathaniel tells us about a little self-awareness exercise called “sentence completion.” Here’s how he puts it: “Sentence-completion work is a deceptively simple yet uniquely powerful tool for raising self-understanding, self-esteem, and personal effectiveness. It rests on the premise that all of us have more knowledge than we normally are aware of—more wisdom than we use, more potentials than typically show up in our behavior. Sentence completion is a tool for accessing and activating these ‘hidden resources.’” How’s it work? Like this. Take a sentence stem (like: “Living consciously to me means...”) and create 6-10 completions of that sentence. Only rule is that each ending needs to create a grammatical sentence. Write quickly, don’t stop to “think” and, as Nathaniel says: “Any ending is fine, just keep going.” Let’s try it out on this sentence stem: If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my activities today… That’s Today’s +1. Here’s to tapping into the wisdom that’s always right there waiting for us!
