Presented by Bob Hunter

▪ Focus on your own functioning: Don’t let the crisis become the axis around which your world revolves.
 
▪ Develop a support system outside of the work system: professional helpers, family, and friends.
 
▪ Stay focused on long-term goals.
 
▪ Deep breathing  - Prayer  -  Meditation: (And CYCLING!!)
 
▪ Listen to your body.
 
▪ Watch the triangles.  

▪ The “molecules of human relationship”

▪ The person in the “responsibility position” ends up with the stress.
 
▪ Work out a balance between being responsible for self and being [labeled] obstreperous.  (“Not a team player”)
 
▪ Keep the system loose through humor.
 
▪ It’s time to make decisions when the same question brings no new information.
 
▪ Accept the possibility that one’s own functioning brought it on, which means that one may be able to influence one’s recuperation.
 
– A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, by Edwin Friedman; p. 302

With the weekend quickly dawning and one which will involve a lot of travel for me (I will be going home having spent the week teaching in Switzerland) I thought I’d invite you to the challenges I will set, in writing, for myself for the following few days. Perhaps you will embrace them, too:
 
·       I will work at being and becoming the most generous person I know.
·       Similarly, I will work at being and becoming the most forgiving person I know.
·       I will consistently reduce the amount of effort, care, and attention I need from others and thus hopefully earn a reputation for being “low-maintenance.” 
·       I will look for adventure in changes, especially those that are neither anticipated nor desired and over those with which I have neither authority nor control.
·       I will be as clear as possible about who I am and what I want so that the need for guessing and anticipation is reduced for those who interact with me.
·       I will look for opportunities to give and receive love, especially where both giving it and receiving it may be least expected.
·       I will govern myself well so that I may be proud of my self-handling and the handing of others as both pertain to my roles and responsibilities.