As well-intentioned as we may be in desiring to avoid conflict and “keep the peace,” we create more problems we must face later by running or playing hide and seek. Then, when we do face matters, we’re not the people we once were.
Avoidance is a quick-change artist! It changes us in ways we are likely to regret.
We cannot solve or improve what we will not face. Denial gets us no place worthy of the journey or the unintended, unwanted destination. Until we gather the courage to look difficult situations directly in the eye and expedite what is necessary to face the difficulties, conflicts will stay as they are and they’re likely to deteriorate.
What we avoid shapes us in ways we may never notice. We modify our habits in order to sustain our denial and avoidance. We change our friendships in order to sustain our patterns. We go out of our way to keep the peace but the new path is one to further avoidance. Our defensive habits defend us in unhealthy and unhelpful ways and make us into people we’d rather not be.
Avoidance of necessary battles creates unintended distance from others — even those we truly love.
There is no worthwhile substitute for early honest approaches to family or business conflicts.
Avoidance makes the heart grow harder.
Ours.
I enjoyed this side-walk art…… 49th and Penn in Meridian Kessler, Indianapolis
Not everything is proceeding as you’d prefer. You notice you are starting to avoid and resent some members of your team and some people in your organization. You’d rather not pick a fight so you’re managing your day (week, month) around who you do not want to encounter. You notice, on occasion, there’s a dictatorial edge lurking just under your calm exterior and you hope it is not going to take you by surprise.
Find a leadership coach.
You find yourself taking sides on issues and recruiting those who are on yours. While you know that surrounding yourself with YES men and women is probably not good for your organization it feels good. You know that the people who hold counter opinions are good for you and for you and for your organization, you’d like them to ease off a little.
Please, find a leadership coach.
Your family is getting in your way and there are times you want to stay at work rather than go home. At the very same time, when you are home, you want to work from home to avoid some of the underlying conflicts you have to address at work. Nowhere feels completely comfortable right now.
Please, for everyone’s sake, find a leadership coach.
There are no blue-birds of happiness seeking nests.
It will not take us by surprise, arrive unannounced, and it won’t be ours because we read FaceBook memes or read anything inspirational or challenging anywhere, even the Bible.
And, no Podcast will do it – not even that.
Happiness has no victims. Happiness is an inside job, it is an internal state and it requires our willingness, our cooperation, and hard work.
Our happiness will be a direct result of what you and I do with our days.
Do we serve others?
Are we generous?
Do we accept and embrace and enjoy people who are different from us?
Do we look for beauty that is all around us and within everybody?
[If you think there is no beauty around you and there is no beauty in all people, well, you’ve already unearthed a major happiness blockage.]
Answering these questions with our lives will hold a few of many codes to unlock happiness and let it into our lives. And, this is a big one, our levels of happiness are never, not ever, up to others, no matter how much we may love or not love others. Happiness is not something another can provide for you at least for enduring lengths of time. Neither you nor I will be happier, or less happy, based on who or what we love or who or what we reject.
While I concede having money does make life just a little easier, our happiness levels are totally unrelated to money.
Some of the wealthiest people on the planet are clearly some of the most unhappy people.
Jesus of Nazareth said what comes out of people’s mouths reveals the state of people’s hearts or inner-beings.
Is there a millionaire or billionaire you’ve heard on TV with whom you’d want to share your daily life?
Happiness requires action and appears to play hard-to-get with those who persistently whine, “I just want to be happy.” It appears to play hard-to-get with complainers and those who seem entitled. Happiness and Laziness are not buddies. Laziness repels of Happiness. Happiness and Blamingness – I just made a new word – are not friends and, as far as I can tell, cannot co-exist in the same brain.
Finding a useful cause, a cause larger than oneself, and engaging in it with others who have the same or similar causes, and offering it zeal will quite often spark some thrill-for-life aka happiness.
While you and I are influenced even a tidbit by what others think of us (or what we think others think of us) we dead-bolt access to happinesses.
How and what we think and say of others is far more important than concerning ourselves with what “they” think and say of us.
“There are two sides to every story” is a common belief.
I am of the opinion that things are usually more layered. It is probably more like 7 or 9 sides to every story.
Motivation – the “inside story” – is similar.
What drives me – or holds me back, demands I succeed, or prefers I don’t – is usually more than one or two identifiable factors. People have mixed, often confusing motivations. Hidden, often unknown internal compelling swells drive people to surf historic and aspirational waves.
Getting to the bottom of motive can be like any journey, beautiful, pleasing, satisfying, sometimes uncomfortably revealing.
Time spent with a wildly successful person who donates to great causes and is appropriately honored for doing so led him to inform that very few people know how angry he really is at extended family who unashamedly live off him.
“I have to,” he said, “I have to support them. My wife knows it makes me angry. Everything is for my (deceased) parents.”
Motives are cloaked, mixed bags, driving from deep within, often yielding incredibly beautiful results.
The question is answered if I embrace the wealthy and look down on people of limited means.
If I am ignored by a waiter in a restaurant and threaten to withhold a tip or “go to the top” I have decided who I want to be.
If snubbed and I retaliate, my actions answer the question.
If I return evil for evil I have decided.
I am constantly revealing who I want to be.
Who I am is the product of thousands-upon-thousands of choices, and more, compounding, forming into habits that build platforms for actions and shape the lenses through which I see and respond to the world.
I will always be who I have always been when I am unthinking, reactive, and act out of entrenched stereotypes.
Until I am available for something different, acknowledge there may exist new and more gracious ways for me to be, I will be who I have always been.
The question, “what kind of person do I want to be?”, demands I take responsibility for myself and my behavior. It’s not the waiter, the line at the bank, the government, a dysfunctional family or unhappy childhood, or whomever a person may choose to blame.
This most helpful and life-changing question is answered in my every-day routines, my attitudes, and interactions.
Definitions vary, but people usually want to be emotionally healthy, or moving in that direction.
How about some tangible goals displaying emotional wellness?
The emotionally well person is a self-starter who is inner-driven and internally-steered. She uses pre-established principles and boundaries to make decisions and is not usually externally steered by family, friends or fads.
The healthy person is no blind follower and nor is he “flying by the seat of his pants.” Even at his most spontaneous, he is living his pre-established principles and goals.
She loves her family but acts as a separate person when necessary and, when necessary, she is able to make unpopular decisions.
He sometimes chooses to spend time alone, time to think, plan, read, write and pray.
He is quick to forgive almost everything but learns to modify or manage trust. He understands that forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting although there are times and circumstances when it does.
Emotionally well people are able to “hold onto themselves” under pressure and do not lash out or blame others when things go awry.
Emotionally well people are comfortable with their status in life and thus able to impart calmness and comfort to those who appear to be on a constant treadmill in pursuit of wealth, success, or recognition.
“Living from within” can appear as arrogance to those who are tossed and turned by trends and fashions.
In a world of chaos and discord may you and I be part of the solution and not part of the problem. May we not fuel fruitless discussions but rather attempt to be agents of calm and sound reason.
In a world of selfishness and greed may you and I find it in ourselves to be self-aware and generous. May we assist when possible and necessary but may our help be carefully considered so that it is authentic, helpful and empowering help.
In a world of indifference and frequent contempt may you and I be engaged with others and accepting of others. May we learn the art of seeing, validating, and hearing people and loving those whom we may have formerly regarded with indifference had we noticed them at all.
In a world where many people are demanding and entitled, may you and I learn when to give way, to accommodate, to compromise, to yield, and when to stand firm. May we learn the art of repeated healthy responses to unhealthy expectations.
In a world of sarcasm, hurt and rejection may you and I represent hope. May we be people of healing and listening and grace. May you and I learn how to be safe people in an unsafe world.
“Dad, are we normal?” my son asked, bending from his perch on my shoulders, trying to look into my face.
“Why do you ask?” I said, looking up at him while holding his ankles in one hand and feeling his weight swirl to one side.
We did these “walks” around the block almost daily. We’d start out, his five year old body striding out ahead of me, beckoning me to hurry, usually toward the steel climbing equipment on the public school play area. I knew that if the walk was in the evening light was dimming and the alleys between the houses were throwing darker and changing shadows my son would plead tiredness, beg to ride on my shoulders.
I braced for big questions.
Was his question going about the deeper things in life? I wondered in these brief moments if he’d noticed some of the economic disparities that surrounded him. Race? I thought perhaps he’d been exposed to something at school and seen how unusual bi-racial families were in our part of the world. Perhaps he wanted to explore the intricacies of adoption or solo-parenting.
“We have a truck, dad. Everyone has cars. Everyone’s gate works. Ours doesn’t,” he said.
Days of riding on my shoulders are long past…… but the joy has not.
Within each person is a holy place called The Self. It is here, in the deepest recesses of who each of us is, that the human spirit, soul, and intellect meld, forming the powerhouse for who each of us is. And, the subtle art of self-care (“subtle” because there is a delicate difference between being self-caring, selfish, and self-serving) is fundamental to good mental, emotional, and relational health.
Appropriate self-care is neither selfish nor self-indulgent. It is not self-centered-ness. It is not self-serving. It is self-awareness. It’s self-monitoring, with the firm understanding that each person is responsible for the condition of his or her self. Each of us is responsible for how we relate to all others (to neither dominate or be dominated). Each of us is responsible, when it comes to all other adults, for maintaining relationships that exemplify mutuality, respect, and equality.
Part of self-care is the enduring understanding that each person has a voice to be respected, a role to be fulfilled, and callings to be pursued. Every person (every Self) requires room to grow, space apart from others, while at the same time requiring meaningful intimacy and connection with others. The healthy Self is simultaneously connected and separate, underscoring again the subtlety required in the art of self-care.
Finding the opportunity to seek forgiveness, participate in repair or restitution with people whom I have hurt may result in their expressing forgiveness. While hearing such comforting words warms me, self-forgiveness remains difficult.
Do you have similar battles?
I know this is a particular struggle because having known what is right, good, wholesome, I have not always done what is right and good and wholesome. I find this painful to admit and address. Knowing better was hardly helpful.
While it is no excuse, I am aware that I am not too different from many.
When I am feeling down it feels as if my failures speak louder than any successes. Despite the knowledge that “people are more than their actions” shame seeps and runs deep and makes me feel vulnerable and fragile. It can be a physical sensation.
Again, I must ask, do you ever feel this way?
When I am at my best, I can humble myself, accept my imperfections and that I am a forgiven person.
Admitting I am flawed is key to my freedom which leads me to self forgiveness at which point freedom fills my soul.
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