October 22, 2017
by Rod Smith
Of course I cannot do all of the following – but reading them through each day helps set my daily trajectory, especially on a Monday. My ardent hope is that reading this list will do the same for you:
- I will be proud of my behavior when I review it at the end of the day.
- I will take full responsibility for my actions while anticipating that others might not do the same.
- I will pay my way, live within my means, and seek and act on opportunities for generosity.
- I will be kind no matter what.
- I will seek to be as low maintenance as possible.
- I will try to know the difference between what are my responsibilities and what are not, with the understanding that some things are everybody’s responsibility.
- I will give others the benefit of the doubt.
- I will allow people to escape their reputations even if their reputations are well earned.
- I will speak up about what I want or don’t want so that others, even those very close to me, will not have to spend any energy guessing or interpreting my behavior.
- I will remain out of control and unpredictable; I will break my own rules and habits without hurting anyone and without damaging any treasured relationship.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships |
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October 18, 2017
by Rod Smith
Your day will run much like your mind runs – positively or negatively
Versions of the following have occurred this week with clients:
Jane unexpectedly sees a friend, Sally, at a distance. Sally appears to ignore Jane. Jane ruminates deeply about this.
- Jane feels rejected and wonders for hours, or even days, what she did to offend Sally. Jane can’t let it go.
- Jane assumes Sally simply did not see her, or, if she did, Sally was too busy to talk.
Francis hears about close friends who had lunch together without her.
- Francis is immediately debilitated. She feels betrayed. Francis knows they were talking about her and she is sure she was the reason they met.
- Francis tells herself her friends are as free to meet and exclude her, as they are free to meet and to include her.
- Francis assumes her friends are planning a wonderful surprise party for her.
I’d suggest that hidden within each of us is a healthy self. It’s a self that can be pushed and pulled to run with the negative or to run with what’s healthy and positive. It’s the often-miniscule inner choices that make all the difference to the shape of your day (week, month, and year).
Posted in Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships |
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October 17, 2017
by Rod Smith
I am very aware that people don’t analyze their connections in the manner I’ve described below. We’d have healthier communities and families if we did!
- Will you search with me when I am searching, stand with me when I am standing, and drop to your knees with me in prayer if and when I need it? I will try to do the same for you.
- Will you stand up to me with firmness and kindness when my many blind spots are blocking my thinking? I will try to do the same for you.
- Will you join me and examine our connection (as casual acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors, partners, or spouses) so that we remain mutual and equal and respectful no matter the degree or significance of our connection?
- Will you take time to listen to me? I will try to take time to listen to you?
- Will you allow me my quirks and eccentricities and try to regard them as interesting rather than regard them as things you wish were different about me?
- Will you seek my highest good as far as you are able given the knowledge we have about each other? I will try to do the same for you.
- Will you try to be as unafraid of me as I try to be unafraid of you?
Posted in Addictions, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Grief, Leadership, Listening, Love, Manipulation, Marriage, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Schnarch, Sex education, Sex matters, Sexual compatibility, Single parenting, Triangles, Voice, Womanhood, Young Love |
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October 9, 2017
by Rod Smith
Nine things I learned from my father – and some of them not too well:
- “There, but for the Grace of God, go I.” This he said when seeing anyone in a tight spot, self imposed or not.
- “What if it was us, Mavis?” This was his appeal to my mother who tended to want to watch expenses more than he did.
- Radical hospitality. Stories of our father opening our home to strangers were legendary.
- “Make your words soft and sweet in case you have to eat them.” He used this when I was judgmental or harsh.
- “Don’t carry your fish in a violin case.” My father despised all pretension.
- “Build bridges; don’t burn them.” My father feared cut-offs.
- “A man who is going the wrong way down a one-way street already knows it – he needs help turning around.” Forever benevolent, my father championed the underdog.
- “Rather be fooled because you trusted too much than because you trusted too little.” And, sadly, he was frequently duped.
- “If the child needs milk the child needs milk – milk is more important to that child than the money is to me.” He’d open his grocery shop at all hours of the night and give milk to the mother of a hungry baby.
What did you learn from yours. Let me know.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Living together, Love, Responsive people, Therapeutic Process, Trust |
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October 5, 2017
by Rod Smith
The world is disturbed by threats of nuclear war. There have been horrific mass shootings, race riots, and re-emergences of violent extremes.
Entire regions of the world have been destroyed by hurricanes and earthquakes. Millions are homeless because of severe weather and millions more live as refugees fleeing oppressive political circumstances.
May we (you and I) deploy our most powerful individual forces. As limited as we each may be, the world needs a few superheroes and we can each in our own way be one:
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Design and commit specific, routine acts of kindness and generosity. Make them pointed, uniquely tailored for someone in need. If possible, make your target an enemy and make your act anonymous. The “routine” will help us form healing habits. The “enemy” element will transform us into fine-tuned agents of grace
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Extend your immediate community by embracing the stranger, the sojourner, the person on the fringe. Resist the urge to create him or her into your own image by expecting your guest to conform to your ways or to convert to your ways. Superhero hospitality accepts people exactly as they are.
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In the spirit of St. Francis, indeed a superhero, may we seek to console and to serve rather than to be consoled and to be served. I know, I know – it wasn’t supposed to be a direct quotation.
Posted in Anxiety, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Past relationships, Recovery, Responsive people, Therapeutic Process, Voice, Womanhood, YWAM |
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September 20, 2017
by Rod Smith
My teachers have never left me. They hover in my awareness and continue their work despite the decades that separate me from their classrooms, lecture theaters, labs, fields, gyms, and studies. Almost all were highly motivated and loved their jobs and regarded it as a calling and I can still hear them calling me to adopt high standards for others and for myself.
The few who didn’t love their jobs, those who landed in the classroom somehow against their will or to test the waters of education, also hover. Their obvious boredom, anger, or their cynicism, were in themselves powerful lessons.
I find it incredible that the teacher with the parrot (Mrs. Bradman) who dogged my third or fourth year of school and the psychology professor who was so self-absorbed more than a decade later and my family therapy professors a lifetime later and nations apart and Mr. Morey, Mr. Graham, Mrs. Hornsby, and Miss Chadwick (I could go on) do the cancan in my frontal lobe at the oddest moments.
I know, I know, someone is going to write and tell me there is medication for my condition – but I think not.
I think it’s a testimony to the power afforded men and women who are teachers.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Friendship, Leadership, Listening, Responsive people, Trust |
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September 17, 2017
by Rod Smith
The Mercury / Monday
Thank you for reading my work. Really. I appreciate it.
Allow me to let you in a little.
I live in the USA, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to be precise. If you are reading this in a real newspaper you are probably somewhere in KwaZulu-Natal. I was born and reared in Red Hill, Durban.
If you are reading online you could be in any one of the 180-plus nations where people read this column.
Before you are overly impressed, in several of the 180-plus nations my readership totals 2 or 5 or even 8 people.
I am writing this particular column on the Saturday before you will read it on Monday. I am in a busy coffee shop on the very affluent side of our city. I drive here. We don’t live in this neighborhood. But, where we live is hardly poor. By American standards my sons and I are well off.
There are many days I want to be where you are. I miss the beaches, the weather, your naturally hospitable ways. I miss extended family.
I am sure there are times you’d like to be in the USA.
I’ve had this consistent thought since moving to the USA: It’s not where, but how you live that makes the difference.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Responsive people, Voice |
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September 9, 2017
by Rod Smith
People who are more defined, more separate, and who can live without each other are more likely to stay together in a long-lasting committed relationship than those who are very close and can’t live without each other. Even trees need space. So do people.
When a relationship is faltering people want to analyze it, work on it, talk about it and fix it; when relief and healing my indeed come from benignly ignoring the relationship as each participant commits to working on him or herself. Declaring personal goals and dreams that may have zero to do with the faltering relationship can go a long way toward its healing.
Childhoods are important (of course) and a happy one is what any reasonable parent strives to give a child, but, not every relationship malady or personal failing can be placed at the foot of flawed parenting or childhood trauma.
Understanding and talking about matters is not always helpful and is not always the golden key to possible solutions. Sometimes people have to simply change unhelpful habits, get off the couch and work harder and stop rehashing excuses for their behavior or searching for its source in a troubled childhood.
Posted in Addictions, Affairs, Attraction, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace |
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September 5, 2017
by Rod Smith
Therapy works:
- When clients are highly motivated to grow
- When clients are willing to take risks and do new things
- When clients are willing to be vulnerable with the people with whom they share life
- When clients are willing to face, rather than deny, necessary and inevitable loss
- When clients establish a realistic view of what therapy can and cannot achieve and have realistic expectations of the therapist and the process.
Therapy will be an exercise in treading water and wasted expense:
- When clients go through the motions of getting help without wanting either growth or change
- When clients attempt to outsmart the therapist and therefore treat the process as a game
- When clients have a distorted view of the power therapist have and an unrealistic view of what the process may deliver
- When clients withhold pertinent information
- When the therapist “pushes” or “pulls” clients against their will and in conflict with their abiding loyalties.
Posted in Anxiety, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Family Systems Theory, Leadership, Listening, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust |
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September 3, 2017
by Rod Smith
I am learning from my boys and other sources that I am not as funny as I think I am. I recall the day when a woman looked at me right in the eyes and said Rod Smith you are not funny.
Humor in print (and all other kinds for that matter) is not easy. I might think something is very funny but unless readers think it is funny it is a waste of words, if being funny is my goal. A well-seasoned columnist once told me, after one of my funniest columns about the Queen of England got me a lot of hate mail, that we are often funny but some readers are deadly serious.
I’ve learned:
- Good humor has no victims.
- Good humor can endear an audience to a speaker or a writer; tasteless humor can send an audience in the opposite direction.
- What is funny shifts and changes a lot with geography.
- Some things are never funny (promoting cruel stereotypes).
- The ability to really laugh and to really laugh at one’s own foibles is an indication of emotional and psychological health.
- Persistently putting yourself down, selling yourself short, using yourself as the butt of your own jokes is not only tiresome, it’s probably a suggestion that all is not well within.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Family, Friendship, Grace |
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