Category Archives: life lessons

Damn I broke a nail and other impending life challenges

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Regrettably, many of my conversations begin with the words “I saw this on Pinterest”, but here I go again. Recently, I saw a meme satirizing our “First world problems”. Some pinners have entire boards devoted to these. Here are five that I saw:

  1. I have more clothes than I have clothes hangers
  2. The phone rang in the middle of my song
  3. My laptop is dying and the charger is in another room
  4. I had to get a new phone and lost all of my Angry birds progress
  5. I ordered a Coke and the waitress asked me if Pepsi would be okay

But if you’re not a Pinterest addict (and hopefully you aren’t), I’m going to share with you five of my own that I have said (probably more than once).

  1. The air conditioner isn’t keeping the house cool enough on these hot days
  2. I spent a lot of my summer driving my son to camp
  3. I forgot to pick up dog treats when I went to Walmart and will have to make another trip
  4. I have too many bathrooms to clean
  5. The backup camera on my car isn’t working properly

Now, in my defense, it is HOT in St. Louis and it’s muggy as all get out right now. But there are people in far more physically demanding circumstances from Africa to those living homeless on the streets not all that far from where I live. These folks would never waste energy to think about any air conditioning, much less its efficacy.

Don’t I deserve your pity for 1) having a son (that I was fortunate enough to get pregnant with at age 43), a son that has the ability to have a talent of cello playing, to have the funds to send him to camp and the reliable transportation to get him there. Not to mention a job with the flexibility to take him to and fro. The unfairness of it all.

On a trip to the Bahamas earlier this year our guide mentioned some astronomical number that I’ve since chosen to repress that represents the number of stray dogs that roam in Nassau. There isn’t enough money for the people to have treats, much less the dogs. And while I’m pretty sure they have a Walmart, I doubt dog treats are a big seller.

Okay few people like cleaning bathrooms and I’m on the top of that list. But again, my house is too big? I imagine there are at least a handful of people in the world (including many who still use outdoor plumbing) who might enjoy having a bathroom to clean.

And the final tragedy I’ve listed in my life is the backup camera. I especially like this one because I’ve had my car with a backup camera for all of three out of my 55 years. And while I would like to enjoy the benefit of that for which I’ve paid, I think I can still remember how to back up the car without a camera if I put in just a little effort.

I suspect I’ve said enough to make the point of this blog clear, but just in case it’s simply this: We spend a lot of our energy on “problems” that in fact are not. Yes, they may be things that require a little more time than we might have planned, but they are simply tasks to knock off in a sub-list on the main list called life. They don’t need to be announced, grieved, overwhelmed by and certainly not immobilized by. Everybody else has theirs and they go on about the day of getting them done and many people find a way to do so without complaint, because they realize they have a choice to feel content and satisfied or depressed and deprived. They live by the motto espoused by the great philosopher, Larry the Cable Guy: ‘Git R done!”

The good news is that our brains are malleable and with a little practice, we can change the pathways or ruts we often get into and build new circuitry formed on a more positive outlook.  The practice helps to make this thought process more natural as our “go to “position. I’m not suggesting that I or anyone simply ignore frustrations, but rather that we keep them in perspective that they may not be as big as we sometimes make them out to be.

Commas save lives

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As a Craftaholique, I’m always looking for funny T shirt sayings. One of my favorite finds is

Let’s eat Grandpa.

Let’s eat, Grandpa.

Commas save lives.

 

 

Such a small thing can change the meaning of an intention so drastically.

 

Communication can be a tricky thing. It is so often the presenting item for which, people come into my office asking for help. And, like the comma shift above, very often the solution they are looking for isn’t a major change, but rather a tweaking of smaller behaviors.

 

Two of these we can easily focus on are intent and tone.

 

Can you recall a time when you intended to ask someone a question, but it came out like a declaration? Often, you know that is what has transpired because, rather than answering your “request”, the other person goes into a defensive mode. You might reply with, “I was only asking”, which falls on deaf ears as the other person is walking away frustrated and mumbling “It sure didn’t sound like a question!”

 

I am so familiar with that one personally, that I often hear myself prefacing my speech with “This is meant to be a question, regardless of how it may come out!” I have found that doing so clarifies my intent and prepares my listener if I feel a little confused about how to get the question out. More often than not, my listener is more receptive and forgiving of my fumbling because my intent is deemed genuine.

 

There are many other examples where clarifying your intention upfront can be very useful, but your intent has to be sincere. In other words, saying , “I don’t want to hurt your feelings but….”, does not let you off the hook. Most likely, you know you are about to say something hurtful but you’re trying to get a pass.   Sometimes we feel we have to say things that will be uncomfortable for the other person to hear. If we choose to do so, then we have to acknowledge that there will be a reaction.

 

Another communication game changer is tone. Some people are lucky to have a more steady tone throughout most of their dialogue. I am of Italian heritage. We don’t have that genetic make-up. My tone goes up and down like a two year old playing on a xylophone. And, I’m lucky enough to have the facial and body movements to support the rise and fall so there is no denying what state I’m in when expressing myself. Helen Keller can read me loud and clear.

 

As a result, I have to work a little harder to make sure that my tone is expressing what I hope for it to. In other words, if I’m in a frustrated mood about situation “A”, and I try to express something to someone in situation B without making an internal shift, I’m likely to use a tone (with supporting features) that conveys an unrelated frustration. An easier way to say this is, man gets mad at boss and comes home to kick the dog!

 

Tone, however can creep in and wreck a discussion in far more subtle ways.

-asking a question with a tone of suspicion or disbelief?

-offering a compliment with a trace of sarcasm or feigned enthusiasm

-providing support while distracted with something else.

 

In any of the examples, the way to improve our skill set begins with mindfulness and expands with practice. An exercise in mindfulness includes noticing the reactions others have to our declarations, and even asking for feedback when we aren’t sure. Obviously, those around us don’t want to be our constant communication coaches, but when asked with sincerity, our request for feedback may also be viewed as a genuine interest in knowing the other person’s experience communicating with us. They may even appreciate our desire to improve our skills in interacting with them. However, even when we don’t ask for feedback, we can step back and notice whether their responses to us indicate clarity of understanding what we thought we were attempting to communicate.

 

Practice means to start with clear intentions and be thoughtful about our speech rather than to give license to whatever we want to say when we want to say it.   The following quote* sums it up:

“If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?”

 

So, while commas may save lives, a little extra care in communication may save relationships!

 

*There is a debate as to the origin of this quote. It may be Rumi, Buddha or someone’s Aunt Ruth who stitched it on a pillow, but it is clearly not mine.

 

 

 

 

 

Talent or Delusions?

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Talent or Delusions

I don’t watch a lot of television. Except lately that seems a little less true. Last year I got a bit hooked on America’s Got Talent for a while. I was hooked until I discovered that talent was defined as a guy willing to get hit in his privates with baseball bats and the like and somehow  endure the pain.   After that,  I pretty much decided there were better things to do with my time. But the other night the TV was on and when I went by I saw this little old lady dancing and it caught my eye. I recognized her from an article I had seen a few weeks back. Her name is Tao Porchon-Lynch and at 96, she is the worlds oldest yoga teacher and apparently dancer on America’s Got Talent as well.

She is a sight to behold for sure. It’s admirable. I’m happy for her. But I don’t aspire to be her. I have neither a wish to be Debby Downer or self-deprecating, but realistically speaking, Tao is an anomaly, not the new poster child for 96 is the new 46. Yes, people are living longer than our predecessors, and I hope to be among that crowd. That said, the reality is that living longer doesn’t mean we are all going to be capable of doing in our 80’s and 90’s what we did in our 20’s and 30’s or even our 50’s and 60’s.  Why hold ourselves to this as the baseline standard?

I’ve been reading “Being Mortal” by Atul Gwande. It is a phenomenal book. But don’t pick it up unless you have time to read it in a relatively short period of time. The first half of the book is pretty tough to take in because it doesn’t sugar coat the harsh realities of aging. The goal is not to depress us, but rather to wake us up to accepting the inevitability of death. The author’s wish for his readers is that we live out our end with autonomy and agency rather than abdicating that responsibility to the medical community. Gwande, a physician, asserts that our society has turned dying into a medical war and people are often “sustained” and kept safe to achieve a quantity of life.  Further, He believes this strategy comes at the expense of achieving quality of life.

In our society, old age is something to be dreaded, feared and managed. I’m as guilty as the next guy. Yes, I’m used to my hearing aids, but I don’t embrace my aching joints, the lines in my face, or even the ever exposed “blonde” roots near my scalp. That said, I can contemplate at least intellectually that I’m logistically closer to death than I am to my birth. Emotionally, and perhaps this is only because I don’t consider having to confront it any time soon, I feel reasonably at peace with the prospect. I have lived a life I feel content with and have had the luxury of far more than I ever anticipated possible as a young girl. Still with the responsibility for my own young children, I’d like the opportunity to stick around at least long enough to ensure their launch into the world.

Beyond that point, I hope to have the presence of mind and the ability of body that will allow me to bead when I want to, eat and sleep when I want to, and to hang out with people or be alone if I choose. I hope as most people do, to not spend my last segment of life either hooked up to life support or in a nursing home. But the point is, most people currently in those conditions, also prefer not to be.

My mother died in a nursing home. She didn’t want to go into one and I knew that when I put her there. I felt I had no other option. She broke her hip and became immobilized. I work, have a family and neither, she nor I, had the funds to hire round the clock care for her. This is neither confession nor persuasion of justification, but rather an illustration of how these matters so often transpire. They happen because of the lack of a viable alternative.

Being Mortal is an invitation to consider an alternative to the status quo of how we currently manage aging and death. Instead of ignoring its realities and holding the fantasy in our mind that we will dance at 96, go home and quietly die comfortably in our sleep, we can make decisions in our life and our death. We can think about and discuss what we are and are not willing to endure when we inevitably become too frail to enjoy life as we know ourselves to be. This includes contemplation and some frank discussions with those who may be the executors of decisions on our behalf. It is not enough to simply say “I don’t want to be in a nursing home.” It is imperative that we make known what we individually consider quality of life to look like for ourselves and consider what options available best achieve those goals.

Would you trade a being gravely ill for 3 months of chemotherapy in order to live 4 months more?  If you have a heart attack or a stroke, what measures do you want to help sustain you? For those of you who are younger, what if you were in an accident? Would you be willing to stay in a coma indefinitely? How damaged of a body are you willing to live in? There are no rights or wrongs. Stephen Hawking has lived so many years in a body unable to move or even speak and has continued to make enormous contributions to the world. These are personal decisions for you to make. Don’t let someone else determine what you should or should not endure, be it family, children, and least of all institutions that do not know or understand your individual needs.

Welcome to my dreams.

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Welcome to my dreams

A lot of people tell me they don’t remember dreams.   Personally, I think it’s a cultivated skill. I have always found my dreams to be rather instructive throughout my life and I have had a handful of recurring ones. Today I’d like to share one of those with you.

I find myself in high school. Usually in this dream I return to a high school reminiscent of my own or the community college, but last night I was actually in my son’s high school. It feels overwhelming. The kids there are nice enough to me, but I can’t get with the schedule. I keep getting lost while trying to navigate the various buildings and I can’t remember where my locker is or which class to go to next. Finally, I look around and say “I’m not doing this anymore. I already have a Ph.D.” Specifically in last night’s dream I went to the office and spoke to the principal. She said “Sure, you can quit, but there are certain types of jobs you won’t be able to get without your high school diploma.” She described the jobs to me and none of them were things I would ever want to do, so I left and never went back.

Now in real life, I did finish high school. But I finished at the semester rather than the full year. And I had just told that story recently which, most likely prompted the activity in my sleep. At various points in life that dream has meant different things to me. But last night’s version is, I think, the result of my contemplating something for someone else. Actually, for three someone elses: 3 women I am currently seeing in my practice.

Here is a quick vignette:

D- a very successful woman in the business world. She can pretty much count on getting 90% of the jobs she interviews for. In her last position, she worked 70 hours a week, and had to replace 75% of the team she inherited in under a year. Her CEO recently joined her on a sales pitch to a customer that if awarded would have raised her team performance considerably. The day after the sales meeting, without any indication of the customer’s decision, D was unceremoniously let go. She was told “It wasn’t enough.”

S- Another superstar. For her last position, she was courted by the employer. They stole her away from a competing company by promising the moon. They didn’t even know where to put her in their organization they just knew they had to have her. She joined them. Two years later, they still didn’t know where to put her. She never had an opportunity to shine at anything, because it was never really clear what she was supposed to be doing. She often felt like she was overlapping with others in their responsibilities, and they didn’t seem all that thrilled about the intrusion. Finally, the director told her he had made a mistake and they were eliminating her position.

N- Worked in a major institution for 20 plus years. She was the darling of the team. She was thorough and reliable. Not only did N do a great job logistically, but she was deeply committed to the people she served. N was called in to human resources and terminated without warning. Their reason: they claim N did not clock out before going to lunch. N often worked long after she clocked out in the evening in order to get her job done. She would never have gone to lunch on company time.  She was never asked about the incident at the time it supposedly occurred or given a chance to prove her case.

I heard each of these stories in about a two week time span which helped link them together in my mind.

In her discussions about entering the “dark night of a spiritual journey”, Caroline Myss says that anything that stands in your way will be removed for you by the universe. I don’t know if that was the case for any of these women, but I do know that each of them had been unhappy in their jobs and was thinking of leaving, but neither was sure what their next step would be. One could argue that their unhappiness produced substandard work which prompted their terminations. I know that was not the case with any of them however, as they are all hard working women with considerable integrity.

I think my dream was my own minds processing that these stories. For me, they are examples of being in a role that isn’t really right, but doing it because you think you are supposed to fulfill someone else’s rules for you. My declaration that I had a Ph.D. to the other students was a way to say, “I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t have to do this.” And to seal it off, the principal tried to give me advice of the importance of staying, but it was advice from her framework not mine. When I identified that, I was free to leave.

These women became free to leave. I am confident that each will land on their feet, and become stronger and wiser in the process.   Are you hanging on to a role or relationship that you don’t belong in, but one that someone else thinks is a good idea for you? Are you willing to take yourself out of the position or do you have to wait to be asked to leave?

Do you have the time?

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I’ve been doing a lot of un-scheduling lately. I’ve unscheduled my weekly network meeting. I’ve unscheduled my weekly accountant meeting. And with great heaviness, I even unscheduled my monthly card making group despite the fact that I enjoy it immensely.

Back when I was in school I sometimes had a conversation with someone who would say something like “I’d love to go back to school too, but I just don’t have the time.” It used to tick me off. I refrained from saying something unkind like “Oh, how unlucky of you that you haven’t been given 28 hours to every day like I have!”   But instead, I smiled and thought to myself about the number of things I had chosen to give up so that, I could use my standard 24 to get school on the schedule.

When others played on the weekends, I wrote papers. When others rested in the evening, I went to class. When others ate lunch, I read a book. I’m neither a martyr or a superhero. I simply made a choice because I wanted the pot of gold I thought lay at the end of the rainbow. It made me neither better nor worse-simply attached to a goal I was willing to work towards.

A number of years ago before anyone and everyone called themselves a life coach, Cheryl Richardson wrote a book called “Take time for your Life.” It’s still a relevant and terrific book. Richard’s strategy is to take things OUT of your life before adding new things in. Simple, but not always easy.

Most of us are collectors. And, most of us operate out of habit. Once a habit gets in place (unless it’s eating well or exercising), we have a hard time letting go. Even after only a couple of weeks, we can get attached as if it looks like we were genetically programmed with the behavior. Think I’m exaggerating? How often do you check Facebook or Email?

Schedule fillers can creep in without much notice. I’ve started to watch a little TV in the past couple of months- something I rarely did in the past. But something had to go out. So far its mostly sleep and housework. But there is a limit to how little one can participate in either of those. Summer is coming and I want to spend some time at the pool- hence the unscheduling from paragraph one. This much I know is true: all any of us are ever going to get is the standard 24. Are you spending yours the way you will look back and feel good about?

I’d like to leave you with two quotes about time from guys a lot smarter than me:

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time given to us” J.R.R. Tolkein

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it” Henry David Thoreau

Decide and spend it wisely

Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

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I had an unexpected complication in my first pregnancy. What started out as a nagging backache in my 11th week turned into a pinched nerve.  I was getting ready for work when the pain literally dropped me to the ground. I somehow hobbled to the bed where I called my husband, barely able to speak and ended up going to the hospital by ambulance. I stayed in the hospital for 3 days while they tried to figure out what to do with me. Eventually a pain management doc started me on steroid injections which lasted several weeks outpatient.

In the first two weeks after the hospital the pain was really intense. I never slept more than 2 hours at a time. Frustrated one night I asked my husband “What if it’s like this the whole time?” He replied “Then it will be like this the whole time.” It was as if I expected him to come with an different answer because I wanted one. On another night in a sleep deprived stupor I exclaimed “I’m an American! This can’t be happening to me!” Brilliant- I guess only 3rd world countries are expected to have pain. Eventually the pain subsided. I was lucky.

A few years ago I met a young woman who had chronic headaches. I don’t mean take two aspirins and call me in the morning kind of headache. Rather, they were headaches that left her debilitated. Any kind of fluorescent lighting or screen light from electronics caused her considerable pain. She was forced to drop out of school.   After a couple of years she began to have some success with a variety of new treatments. It was hard to find hope when no one understood the cause much less the cure.

More recently I met Joyce who came to see me at the suggestion of her physician. Joyce has been coping with an excruciating pain which, at its peak left her housebound. She has tried every treatment she can find, both traditional and non-traditional. For the past several months Joyce has received relief through a medication intervention that has made the pain bearable, but it is far from gone.

Unlike my own experience of believing that if I could just use my national status or reason my way out of pain, Joyce, a very spiritual woman says that the pain has only strengthened her relationship with God. It has been educational, enlightening and frankly, beautiful to watch Joyce process her experience.   While it has been a journey for her, I will fast forward to the present resolution in the interest of brevity for this post. To state it succinctly, Joyce has moved from praying for the pain to be gone, to praying for the strength to use the pain as a tool to do whatever it is that God would like her to do in this world. Joyce has expressed that this reframe has enabled her to feel more empowered and less victimized by her circumstances.

I’m fairly confident that no one will read this post and hold up their hand to say “give me some pain please so I can grown stronger.” I think Joyce would really appreciate a vacation from her pain so she could get a good nights sleep that she hasn’t had in a very long time. But like many things in life, we don’t choose circumstances or pain that comes at us. Sometimes we do, but often we don’t. What we can choose is what we will do with it when it arrives.

I chose to become indignant. My first client chose to be focused on searching for a cure. Joyce tried both of those routes, but settled on a third posture. To find a way to keep living even with her pain, but even more importantly, to see it as purpose rather than ­­­­­persecution.

There is a wonderful little book called “Intoxicated by My Illness by Anatole Broyard. After learning he had terminal cancer, Broyard decided to use the metaphor of drunk as a way to describe how his illness afforded him the opportunity to fully live with whatever time he had left, without any inhibition or prohibition. In essence, he became “intoxicated” by the illness allowing him to do and experience every ounce of life in his remaining time. Broyard’s wife had to finish the book for her husband as he passed prior to its completion.

As author, Geneen Roth writes “Real people feel some kind of pain every day of their life. Living hurts, dying hurts.” And the Buddha says “Pain is inevitable, suffering is extra.” Which will you choose when pain, physical or psychological knocks at your door?

Is it time for you to lose wait?

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NOTE to readers:     There was an issue with the captcha for new commenters- If you were not previously permitted to leave a comment, I believe this has been fixed.  I apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this may have caused!

Is it time for you to lose wait?

I know I’ve made a lot of typos lately, but the one above isn’t actually one of them.

I heard a story the other day about a guy I’ll call Fred who was estranged from his family for several years.   When Fred learned that his mother, in her late 80’s was on her death bed he tried to make the arrangements to visit her. The arrangements including getting time off of work, and creating travel plans. Unfortunately, Fred didn’t get everything worked out in time and he never saw his mother again.

A couple of years later Fred learned that one of his siblings had passed away from a sudden illness. The person telling me the story reported that Fred was once again devastated as he had been when his mother passed. Although he had not had any contact with his sibling in 30 years, he said he regretted not having spent more time getting to know him when they were kids. Despite these two occurrences, Fred remained distant from the remainder of his family.

Even without seeing Fred, I can tell that, he the kind of person with a lot of wait. Too much wait. Fred is waiting to do things he thinks are important, until the wait is over because the opportunity passes. He just sits around feeling sad that his wait has kept him from really enjoying life as he should.

Our wait is personal. We all carry it differently from each other. Some of us, like Fred wait to let people in our lives know they are important to us. Some wait to start a project, finish a project or develop our talents. Others wait to start their career, get an education or acquire skills. And still others of us wait to change behaviors that are setting us up for consequences we hope we will never have to face.

Would you be willing to start a wait reduction program? What area(s) in your life are you waiting to take action on? What are you waiting to discover about your passion and let yourself move forward on? What holds you back? Are you allowing yourself to fall victim to the rewards of short term behaviors that satisfy your urges long enough to help you postpone the longer term successes?

I’d love to hear your comments and stories!

Tick Tock

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Over fifty years ago my father in law had a construction accident which left him with two broken feet. He elected to spend his immobilized summer building things. Two of his major accomplishments during that period were matching grandfather and grandmother clocks. The latter took up residence in the home of one of his daughters, while the grandfather has continued to chime faithfully all these years in his own home until a couple of weeks ago

As my in-laws aged, they began discussing with their children how their possessions would be divided with respect to the desires of each child. My husband laid claim to the grandfather clock. We discussed how gorgeous we thought it might look in our foyer someday.

Some day came much sooner than I originally anticipated. A couple of weeks ago my husband went to visit his parents, and while there, his father insisted he take the clock home with him. I tried to protest, but we were overruled. The clock arrived. It’s not that I didn’t want the clock- its that I didn’t want the clock while his parents were alive. It didn’t feel right to me. But it came home to live with us anyway.

Ben noted that he thought he started immediately sleeping better because it was a familiar sound of his childhood. But my initial reaction to the clock is that it weirded me out a bit. It has a loud chime to begin with and in our two story open foyer, it bellows. After a few days I started to get used to the sound and didn’t seem to notice it as much.

Until.

Until my mother in law died suddenly last week. Ben left town to be with his family and the boys and I remained behind. The emptiness left by the news of his mother, and his own presence seemed to be filled at once by a loud clanging clock. It sounded almost haunting, or at very least taunting. I wanted to make it stop, but I didn’t know how.

Ben returned for a day and then we all left again for the weekend to attend a memorial for his beautiful and incredibly wonderful mother. It was of course, difficult and sad, and yet at the same time affirming as people told many wonderful stories of her life. I am her only daughter- in law, and that affords me a relationship unique in its own right. While I was grieving inside I spent most of the day trying to hold it together. I cried briefly as we pulled away from his parent’s house, but it became clear this was upsetting to my children and so I again mustered up a stiff upper lip.

At least until I got home. I walked in, went straight to my bedroom and let out every sob I had previously held in. I cried for her. I cried for me. I cried for my children and my husband. I cried for my father in law. I cried until I had no more cries. And then out of sheer exhaustion, I called it a night.

The next morning I woke up feeling an enormous release of all the previous week’s tension. But something else happened as well. The clock chimed its now familiar chime. The same chime as the week before. Only starting that morning, and still continuing, the sound is no longer foreign or disturbing. Rather, it is beautiful and rich. And strangely comforting, like the familiar and regular beating of life itself.

Last week I wrote about the difference between acceptance and resignation. The clock in our house has not changed. But I clearly moved from one place… resignation… to another… acceptance.

I will be on vacation next week, and thus, will not be posting a blog on 3/19.

Until next time… Take good care.

Lucy

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I’d like to tell you a story about Lucy the dog. While married to my first husband, we owned two female German Shorthair pointers. I had not been familiar with the breed prior to owning them, and in fact, was even a little intimidated by their size and muscular build. But I immediately fell in love with them because of their gentle and lovable nature.   Things were great until we decided to add a third dog into our household.

Lucy was the runt of her litter. We selected her in part, because she was so tiny and that seemed initially to only add to her adorableness. She was timid and cuddly and I carried her in my lap the whole ride home in my lap to introduce her to her new family. But almost immediately upon introducing her to the other two “girls”, we saw a side of Lucy we had not yet seen. The tiny little ball of white fur began hissing and snapping at our other two dogs almost like she was possessed. We snatched her up and tried again at different intervals with little success.

Within a day or two we took Lucy to our vet, the same one who had cared for our other dogs and knew us fairly well. Our vet checked Lucy out despite Lucy’s lack of cooperation. Our vet deemed Lucy to have a poor temperament and recommended we take her back to the breeder as soon as possible. We were stunned and confused as to why we had not seen this side of Lucy before.

Not yet willing to give up, we took Lucy to a doggie behaviorist. Yes, I’m still a little embarrassed to admit that, but it’s true. I was grasping at straws about what to do with Lucy. But as it turned out, the behaviorist turned out to be incredibly smart and helpful. She told us that Lucy’s temperament was just fine. The problem as she saw it was that, Lucy was so tiny, that in the presence of two big dogs (who had obviously arrived at the party long before her and knew the routine) Lucy felt frightened and intimidated. And so, she protected herself with the only productive resource she had: hissing and growling. It’s not as if she had the skill to take either of them on in a physical fight. The behaviorist suggested we separate Lucy from the other girls until she got a little bigger and stronger before leaving them together again. We took her advice and ended up in a short time with three dogs who loved being together.

I am often reminded of this story when I work with some people. I especially recall a family from a few years ago. The husband and son viewed their wife and mother as aggressive, bitter and controlling. It was clear when we worked individually, that this woman, not only did not see herself the same, but felt rather helpless in the relationship with the other two. Similarly, a newlywed woman told me recently that, she often feels like a burden to her husband and not worthy of his time, even though he describes their relationship as her not wanting to be around him.

When I hear these types of stories, I am reminded of Lucy. It describes for me that, it is often a sense of helplessness and insignificance that fuels people into behaviors that, come across as powerful and overbearing to others. When we are the recipient of such behavior, we want to shut them down. Unfortunately, that is the very approach that reinforces their starting feeling and spawns more of the behavior from them that we don’t want. It becomes a perpetuating cycle.

The behaviorist suggested we help Lucy become bigger and stronger to feel less intimidated. It’s hard to think of how to find the willingness to do that with/for an individual that feel is already emotionally pummeling you. The key however, is to try and consider that their outward strength, may possibly be a reaction to feeling vulnerability, intimidation or fear. This shift in your thinking doesn’t require that you put them on the couch and psychoanalyze the other person. In fact, you don’t even have to be “right”. By simply shifting how you respond to the other person you interrupt the cycle. When you aren’t resisting, there is no need to keep fighting. I’m not suggesting you lay down and take a beating, but rather, you use the encounter as an opportunity to learn something more about the other person and what is motivating their behavior. Questions like “I can see that you are really upset, can you help me understand how it feels like I may be contributing to that for you? This is an example of Stephen Covey’s “seek first to understand and then to be understood principle. I genuinely believe it’s one of the single most effective tools in developing and maintaining strong communication with another person.

If you are reading this on a mobile site, keep paging down for earlier posts.

My Brilliant Audience

A change in perspective, life lessons, Something to think about, When my mind wanders, , ,


A big part of blog writing motivation for me is the comments that you guys make. They challenge me, gratify me, and most of all inspire me to think. Last week was no exception and this comment from “K” in response to “more spring cleaning” got me thinking: “When you say it could be interpreted as cold to withdraw from some people, a lot of people will agree and dislike that advice overall. But when you spend a lot of time and energy on a person who is wasting those resources of yours, how much time are you taking away from others in your life? Time is a much more scarce and precious asset than money after all.” I think in part this struck a nerve because I’m a little guilty myself. My job is in the helping profession. And while it’s easy to look at my schedule in terms of the hours I sit in my office during any given day, there is a lot of other work activity that can easily fill my day from returning phone calls and emails to writing reports… and even blogging. Yes, blogging. All of these are things that are necessary, not because I have a boss standing over me, but because I feel like they are part of what enables me to feel like I’m doing my job to the best of my ability. They are important to me. But these are the tasks for which there is not a billable hour attached to them. And without that, it means there is not a clear start and stop time. I have to monitor this effort from within. When I’m successful at doing that, life hums along pretty well. But despite what I know in my head, I too can get backed up on obligations and I have to make choices I often don’t like in order to work my way out of overload

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. A client I haven’t heard from in a long time drops me an email. And days go by before I respond. I owe someone a follow up to a conversation and I take much longer than seems reasonable. A colleague or friend asks me to participate in an event that will take a considerable amount of time with little or no payback. And when I don’t manage it well, the people who suffer are primarily my husband, my kids and ME. As K so wisely pointed out in the comment “Time is a much more scarce and precious asset than money after all”. And time, once passed, can never be made up or recovered. You can do better going forward, but you can’t get back what you gave away.   While fortunes can be made, lost and made again, the clock only moves in one direction. I’m not suggesting that you or I should neglect our responsibilities in order to spend more time with people we love. I am however, floating this as a reminder to myself that sometimes the job, social or even family tasks are things we often assign to ourselves with arbitrary standards of acceptability. Sometimes, those standards are such that while each individual task may seem reasonable, the weight of the whole is unbearable and undoable. The most logical way I know to address this is of course mindfulness. It’s Steven Covey’s Sharpening the Saw. It’s taking stock. Look in the mirror, look at the people you believe you care most about. Are they (and you) getting enough of you compared to that which you give to others? I hope you didn’t find a lot of typos when you read this post. I’m not going to proof it. I could, but I think I’ll go say goodnight to my kids instead.

Happy New Year

A change in perspective, life lessons, motivation, Something to think about, , , , , , , ,

Well look what the cat dragged in….. I’m back!

I took a break from blogging but I am hopefully back to stay. I’m still working on some of the behind the scene changes so please bear with me while I continue to work out some of the bugs. However,  I absolutely welcome questions, comments or observations about changes.  Thank you so much for hanging with me throughout the year, and a special welcome to my new readers.  I am truly grateful for your time.

For starter, I’m uncertain of my timing. For now, I am committing to one entry per week. There may be more, but I hope not less. With that, I’d like to plunge in.

Happy New Year.

Even though today is January 7 and not January 1, today is New Year’s Day, meaning, today is the start of a year that is 1 year newer than the same Jan 7 of 2014. Tomorrow will be a new year starting one year ahead of January 8, 2014 and so on. This isn’t an attempt to be silly. I’m dead serious, so let me try to explain.

New Year’s Day is associated for many with New Year’s resolutions. In reality, these are usually not resolutions, or things one is resolved about, but rather New Year’s “wishes”. They are often things we wish would happen, hope will happen, would be happy if the desired action came about. But sadly, they are actions which, more often than not, fail to mature into consistent or lasting change. Some will fail within a week or two

There are two points I’d like to elaborate my thoughts on with regards to this topic.

First, If we drop the ball on January 7, or even February 7, why do we have to wait until January 1 of the following year to start again? As my opening paragraph suggests, every day is the start of a new year for us. We can choose to start fresh from where we are at any given moment. There is nothing more magical about 8:00 a.m. January 1 then there is about 8:00 a.m. on March 10th. The time to start is right now.   Start at the moment that you recognize you have the desire for a change in your life. Delaying until another time marking significance, is arbitrary and only means you are willing to live with the unwanted behavior a lot longer than you need to.

And that leads me to the second point.

There is a difference between resolutions and desires, wishes, hopes. A resolution to lose weight doesn’t mean starting a diet. A resolution to improve your relationships doesn’t mean scheduling a date night. A resolution to find a job you like is more than simply dusting off the old resume.

Here are some definitions for the word resolve:

Verb: to find a solution, to determine a course of action

Noun: Firm determination to do something.

If you want to achieve the goals above, chances are you have tried some of the solutions I listed above before New Year’s Day. Most likely, they weren’t met with lasting success, which is why they resurface year to year as a resolution for the next year ahead.

To make goals more than just a wish or desire, they require resolve. Resolve involves figuring out how you will get to the gym when you haven’t gone before. Resolve means finding ways to anticipate your pitfalls and have a “firm determination to do something” by having reliable support, structures and accountabilities in place to help you stay focused on your goals. Resolve means to search your heart and answer yourself truthfully about what has immobilized your efforts in the past towards these goals.

Resolutions are about what are you WILLING to make happen in your life. What are you willing to change, to give up, to work harder towards? Who or what are you willing to let go of in your life? What are you willing to stand up for, to be aware of and mostly to be vigilant about?

A posture of resolve takes thought and planning. It also takes dedication and perseverance. So, if you can’t get it all done by January 1, the good news is there are 364 other days in the year that you get to try again.

As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback! Until next time… take good care!

Make your mistakes big and loud

A change in perspective, life lessons, productivity, Something to think about, , ,

For an audio version of this post click on the link below:

My son Andrew plays the cello. He takes lessons once a week from a teacher named Clay. I usually drive Andrew to lessons and sit right outside the room. This puts me in earshot of everything they are playing and discussing. During the lesson, Andrew learns about cello and music, and I learn about a lot of other things. I don’t want Clay to know this, because he might start charging for two students instead of one.

This past week I learned a really helpful lesson that I’d like to share with you.

 Andrew is working on learning to shift. I’m not exactly sure what that means, as I have no musical ability. But I think roughly it allows one to access more sounds on the cello and change keys. Again, don’t quote me on that. However, what this means to the listening mother who writes the check is that Andrew now makes a lot more mistakes on music that he was previously playing more easily. And it is because he now has to move his little hands further around the instrument. This is thought to be progress even when it doesn’t sound like such.

However, not only am I used to Andrew playing a song with fewer errors, so his Andrew. And so as he plays to a part that was previously flawless and now doesn’t quite hit the right note, he played more quietly, as if to minimize the mistaken sound in front of his teacher. After a few tries at that, Clay stopped him and said “Play loud. When you make a mistake go big and loud. As loud as you can.”

Before I allowed my “mama bear” instinct to take over this brut who was attempting to humiliate my child, I settled back to wait and see if there was more to come. And of course, there was. Clay went on to explain that, when you play quietly over the error, you are more likely to ignore it or even not hear it.   By playing loudly through the mistake you notice it and therefore, know what needs to be corrected. Brilliant!

Sometimes we over focus on mistakes that are ridiculously small and no one cares about them. “My makeup isn’t perfect, the house has a dust bunny under the bed, my car has a microscopic scratch, or I gained 2 pounds on vacation. These preoccupations can take over our every thought and prevent us from being present in our lives. Ruminating serves no purpose. But other times we can have glaring non-productive, or even self-destructive patterns in our lives that we ignore, deny or even create a fortress between them and our consciousness. The proverbial elephant can be sitting in the room and we become masterful at throwing a cover over it and call it a table.

When the latter occurs, we miss the opportunity to use the mistake as a way to improve ourselves and our lives. Mistakes can be catastrophic or they can be thought of the way Thomas Edison did:   learning the ways how not to do something in the service of learning how to do it right.

So if you are going to make some mistakes today- make them big and loud and see what you might learn from them.

Games people play

A change in perspective, Go check this out, life lessons, , , , , ,

For an audio version of this post, click on the link below-

on a smart phone, scroll to the bottom of the message and click on the sound icon

Games people play

I heard someone talking about their life recently making it sound like a constant series of fires needing to be extinguished. Since I often think in pictures or imagery in my head, I started picturing the game of “Wac-a Mole”. If you aren’t familiar with this game, you get a mallet to hit moles that pop up quickly in a random pattern on a little motorized wheel of sorts. The goal is to hit one and push it down before it retreats on its own.  Sometimes more than one mole pops up at a time.

It got me thinking about other familiar games to describe one’s life. I’m going to just list them out here and you can decide if any of them describe you or anyone you know.

Monopoly—This is a person who spends their time and energy trying to collect the best real estate. I don’t mean literally houses, but things they think have worth. Their primary pursuit is the acquisition of status and this is often prioritized over relationships. In fact, in the actual game of Monopoly, the goal is to use one’s assets to weaken the rest of the people in the game. While monopoly players in this metaphor might not have the intention of hurting others deliberately, that is often an outcome when acquisition is their driving force.

Twister: In the musical “Oklahoma”, Connie sings “I’m just a girl who can’t say no”. Twister people have undefinable boundaries. They are there for everyone all the time. Pick up the dry cleaners, watch the neighbors kids, volunteer for the PTO, work overtime. You name it, they are there. There is a saying ,” If you want something done, ask a busy person- they know how to get things done.” Yes they do, but at what cost? Twister is a game where you place a part of yourself on the mat that the spinner selects for you. It doesn’t take a lot of spins to have yourself so sprawled out that, you collapse on yourself or another.

Jenga The goal of Jenga is to lay the blocks one on top of the other to see how high you can build things. Similar to monopoly, the goal is to get higher than the next guy, but you aren’t as protected as you are in Monopoly. With jenga every acquisition puts you closer to a potential crash. Jenga livers are people who take risks without regard for the potential consequences. They push the limits again and again. There is little time to enjoy any single accomplishment because each is only a stepping stone to the next.

Candyland. Part of me envies the Candyland players. Except I have to remember that as delightful as it looks, the win is really not sweet and yummy; its only an illusion.   Candyland promises that, while there are a few setbacks here and there, for the most part everything is good and delicious, as it should be. And if you just hang in there long enough, you are guaranteed the promise of more at the end. Perhaps the electronic game Candy Crush, (which I’m ashamed to admit I got hooked on for a while and fortunately ultimately escaped) is a better choice. At least with Candy Crush, it becomes apparent at some point, that in fact, there is no end point. Life’s achievements always give way to the opportunity to grow towards something else until the day you die.

Pictionary- This game is less about a life strategy metaphor, and more about a communication style. I think of Pictionary players as the people who seem to find it difficult to speak about what they want or need from you in clear language. Instead, they give you hints, sometimes not clear ones, and then it’s your job to guess correctly so everyone can win. And when you don’t, it’s your fault.

Trivial Pursuit. These are the folks whose lives are consumed with everything trivial at the expense of never getting to where they would like to be. I’d like to change jobs, but I can’t get my resume done because I have to clean the house, change the kitty litter, water the garden, cut down some wood and make paper from the pulp in order to print the resume on before I can think of what I would say. They may be very talented, but few people will ever learn that about them.

What game best describes your life? Are you having fun playing it?

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If you found this helpful, I hope you’ll pass it on to someone else and suggest they subscribe. Thanks for your time in reading, and until next time- Take good care.