Tonight on my way home I picked up takeout food for my family’s dinner. I was instantly annoyed when I noticed, as I was driving off that, the person who bagged my order had missed about ¼ of the order. We are trained to catch others and ourselves doing something wrong. Many of us have finely tuned radar that can scope out failure in a nanosecond.
What would it take to train ourselves to catch people doing something right? Better yet, how about catching ourselves doing something right? Why is it okay to notice the wrong, but to dismiss the right as the norm with little regard for the effort to secure it?
I’m not suggesting that we walk around issuing press releases every time we or someone else ties our shoes correctly. Greg Behrendt has a pretty funny (comedy routine called “You must Rock”. Unfortunately, the language is pretty vulgar, so I’m not going to put the link on my site, but it can be find pretty easily in a google search if you are curious. One example he give is the comparison of how we treat rock stars. They perform, while the crowd holds up signs and yells “We love you!” Behrendt asks his listeners to consider what it would be like if we treated the person who makes our morning Latte or drywalls our kitchen, with the same level of excitement when they do their job in an amazing way.
So if you don’t want to hold up an “I love you sign” for your barista and chant his or her name, you can certainly do that with a tip, which is always appreciated. But the tip goes in the jar and is split among everyone including the person who did not put in any extra effort. How about taking the extra step and saying “Hey, thanks!” in a personal way like “You always do that so quickly!” or “How do you manage to stay so cheerful every day?”
Better still, are you as likely to call and recognize an employee for good service, as you might be when they mess up your order?” This is something I really like having the opportunity to do. Usually the manager comes to the call braced for a ripping and is so incredibly grateful to hear that I am complimenting their establishment or employees that it is great fun for me.
This week make it a point to catch someone doing something right. And if you really want to have fun, catch yourself as well.
For an audio version click on the link below- If you are listening on a smart phone scroll to the end of the message and click on the sound icon.
I’m having a bad hair day. I pretty much have bad hair days through most of April and August because these are the months it rains a lot in St. Louis and the humidity makes my hair fat.
And occasionally I have bad hair days at other times, but I also have some really good hair days. Today isn’t one of them, but I do know the difference.
I didn’t always though. When I was a kid I had this wild mound of super curly black hair. Actually it’s pretty much the same as I have now, just with no gray mixed in. I also didn’t have some of the great hair products I use now to keep my locks from oozing into the personal space of a person standing next to me.
Just about everyone I knew while I was growing up had silky straight blonde or light brown hair. But not me. So I felt like an odd duck. Okay I felt like an ugly duck. An ugly duck with bad untamable hair that had a mind of its own.
My mom, bless her heart, tried to do everything she could. I would lay my head on the ironing board while she tried to flatten it out. Not my head, just my hair. I can pick up the scent of singed hair a mile away. Over the years I tried every imaginable straightener on my own and professionally. I’ve spent a fortune on brushes, hair dryers, curling irons and OMG my retirement fund went entirely for creams, shampoos, conditioners, hot oil treatments and I can’t remember what else.
When I was about 4 my severely mentally retarded brother ran a wind up car through my hair. Cutting it out did not leave pretty results. Try picturing RoseAnn Rosannadanna with chopped out sections.
Along the way of my life, people would say “is it natural?” My answer was always “Who would pay to do this to themselves?” Others, (including my mother with baby fine poker straight hair) would say “oh you are so lucky”. I didn’t feel lucky.
But a few years ago, I did what the popular movie Frozen says. I “let it go”. I let my curls be whatever they wanted to be for the most part plus or minus a little anti frizz stuff.
Ironically, or not so, it’s not that unusual when a stranger says to me, an adult, “I love your hair”. And now I realize in fact that I AM lucky. My sister told me recently had left the house a couple times recently and realized once she was out and about haven forgotten to comb her hair. I can’t remember the last time I combed my hair. I don’t even own a hairbrush. I used to spend an hour a day blow drying my hair out. Now, my morning routine is pretty much limited to a 3 second glance in the mirror just to make sure no wild animals burrowed in during the night. We live on wooded acreage. It could happen.
Am I really writing an entire post about my hair? Nope. Stay tuned.
Recently, I received contact from a friend from about 30 years ago. Although we’re still trying to catch up on each other’s lives, one thing has become oddly apparent. Who she knew back then and who I knew her to be were two people that clearly did not exist. We both credited the other with possessing skills and strengths that were far from grounded in reality.
Perhaps we are simply blind or too inexperienced in our youth to see things of value properly. Maybe I will learn in 20 years that the things I think I see today are just as misguided. But what I now know is that my hair hasn’t changed much. I just have learned to see it from a very different lens. And similarly, the girl I was, back when my friend knew me, desperately wanted to live a life in which she could feel legitimate. The problem was that she took cues from everyone else to determine what that might/should be. It was only once I began to listen to my own voice somewhere along the way I created a life I recognized. I know today there are still people who see me as something they think I am, rather than who I really am. The difference is that i now understand it is their vision that is off, rather than whatever mask I have put forward.
I stopped wearing masks a long time ago. I found they messed up my hair.
Are there parts of yourself that you could appreciate in someone else, but fail to embrace within yourself?
Do people know you? Or do you let them know who you want them to see? Are you hiding your best attributes in fear that they won’t be good enough?
Do you try to mold parts of yourself into someone else or society’s criteria?
Are you judging yourself by a standard that is far more harsh than you would extend to another?
Is it okay to not be the same as everyone else? Or even the same as everyone expects you to be?
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. I’d love to hear your comments. If you found this helpful, I hope you’ll pass it on to someone else. Until next time, take good care.
for an audio version of this post, click on the link below- if you are listening on a smartphone, you may have to scroll to the end of the post and look for the sound icon
We went to the airshow last weekend. It was a great day weather wise and the show was exciting. The highlight for me, however was an exchange I had with my youngest son.
Because he anticipated the loud noise, my husband thought ahead to bring earplugs for each of us, which he distributed before we got out of the car. Once the Blue Angels were in full force Andrew and I both put ours on. These are the little foam chunk type of ear plugs. You basically squish them to stick them in your ear and they expand to block out loud noise. However, you can still hear a fair amount going on around you. Well, most people can, but my hearing is not that great to begin with.
A few minutes into the show however, Andrew began talking to me about what was going on around us. I told him I couldn’t hear him and he should wait. At that point, he pulled out one of his ear plugs and began to repeat what he said. It never occurred to him that taking out his ear plug, made neither his voice or my ears sharper. A little bit later he leaned in and said “if you want to talk to me, you don’t have to take your ear plugs out, I can still hear you.”
Have I mentioned before that Andrew is in fact gifted? He has a high IQ and is especially strong in math and science skills. Seriously he is. But he is also what I often refer to in a very loving tone as “a dumb little kid”. And as he continues to grow by leaps and bounds each day, it is that this child- like silliness that I will miss the most as he matures.
John Cabot Zinn is responsible for one of my favorite quotes which is, “Think of children as Zen masters in little bodies. They will teach you every lesson you need to learn in life”. It would be hard for me to pick out the millions of lessons my children teach me every day, which of them is the most important. (because I can certainly be a dumb adult). But the one I’m writing about today is of how it important it is to be able to laugh at myself. I’ve spent a life time trying to be smart enough, when in fact, one of the things I find so endearing about my child is the places where he is not yet “smart like the world”. It is an innocence so pure that it melts my heart. And it doesn’t feel too badly when I apply it to my own inadequacies as well.