Symptoms of humility

I’ve alternated “he” and “she” but of course all points apply to men and women. 

• He has finely developed self-knowledge. He knows his talents and uses them well. He does not shy away from his giftings.
• She has a high degree of self-awareness. She knows the power she has to impact the lives of others and governs that power with deep respect.
• He can listen to others without needing to interject his insight, interrupt with his own stories, or follow up with something bigger, better, faster, or more dramatic.
• She openly admits that she avoids getting involved in areas where she is unskilled and lacking in talent. She knows there are talented people best-suited for all tasks. 
• He makes way for others to get ahead in their careers and for others to be acknowledged. He is unintimidated by the strengths of others. 
• She doesn’t use her insights as a weapon or as a means of manipulation, domination, or intimidation. She treasures her freedom and the freedom of others. 
• He is quick to forgive and often does so without needing to be asked. He does not live as a victim. 
• She engages in radical hospitality and commits act of extreme generosity. She is daring with love and openness. 
• He focuses and capitalizes on his strengths while he also fully accepts his weaknesses.

A beautiful rendition of the Umhlanga Pier, South Afirca — Pieter Van Heerden

Human situations, interactions, are complex and multilayered and far more complex than may meet the eye.

Churning beneath the surface, lingering in the atmosphere, are unfinished generational issues and immediate pressing challenges. Problems, experiences, anti-social proclivities, joys, conflicts, desire for kindness, ethical dilemmas, addictive leanings, attractions, old and new prejudices, percolate within and linger among. 

Very little of human behavior can be explained by “cause and effect.”

It’s not that simple.

“Johnny doesn’t want to go to school. What’s ‘wrong’ with Johnny? What’s ‘wrong’ with the teacher? What’s ‘wrong’ with the school?” This statement and the logical questions reflect linear thinking.  

Johnny may want to stay home from school to protect mom from dad or dad from mom – without even knowing it. Johnny may prefer to stay home because he detects peer rejection. Johnny may be unaware of the source of his anxiety and may be one of several family members who had similar feelings about school generations before Johnny was conceived.

Our behavior is at least as complex as fictional Johnny’s behavior. 

Appreciating the multiple levels underlying complex human behaviors takes empathy, patience and kindness. 

It takes willingness to looking inward.

“This is your captain speaking…..……,” and in the most soothing tone he or she continues an announcement. 

Good news, bad news, they always sound so smooth, so in control,  relaxed – even when delivering the toughest announcements. 

Airline captains know their tone, pitch, and rhythm, when speaking over the intercom, conveys even more than the words they may carefully use to communicate with the hundreds of passengers. 

Anxiety, airline pilots know, is highly contagious. 

They know that a plane load of passengers (even those who speak a different language than the captain may use) can hear and detect anxiety without necessarily ever seeing the captain. 

The last thing a flight crew needs is a plane load of anxious passengers. Even under tough or dangerous circumstances, what the captain and crew most need from passengers is that they are both informed and relaxed with relaxed and calm being even more important than informed.

What’s true for an airline captain and crew is also true for you and for me. 

We do our families a great service when we hold onto ourselves (manage ourselves) before we communicate (spread) tough or bad news. 

Families read, hear and catch unmanaged anxiety and it “jumps” to others before we have said a word. 

Anxiety is contagious, in airplanes, schools, businesses, wherever, and in your family.  

“How are you doing?” is a question thrown about with abandon, a polite greeting, or a genuine show of interest. If you were to fully trust and honestly answer with the opportunity to sit down and speak with whomever inquires, what might you say? 

While there are indeed more than 4 options, which best describes you this Monday morning?  Which would you choose and why?

Here are my quickly-drafted definitions. If you so desire, let me know. 

• Spiraling: Usually an emotional slow crises, moving in a downward direction, the gradual slow beginning of feeling out of control. Matters are getting, at an increased speed, out of hand. Spiraling can pertain to any areas of living – finances, relationships, and career.      

• Surviving: Living, with difficultly, through the struggles of life. Day-to-day, week-by-week, barely keeping your head above the proverbial water. This can pertain to any area of living – finances, relationships, career.

• Idling: Waiting, alive but stationary, neither progressing nor regressing, feeling somewhat stuck. This can pertain to any area of living – finances, relationships, career. 

• Thriving: Enduringly enjoying and meeting, and even sometimes beating life’s challenges. It’s making steady progress towards your known and expressed goals. This too, can pertain to any areas of living – finances, relationships, and career.     

Don’t be surprised if during a happy moment or during a pleasurable experience you are hit with a moment of grief or regret. 

You are probably not regressing. 

You’re probably not dealing with unsuccessful self-forgiveness. 

Your mind, your thinking, your experience (in the present) and your memory (of the past) with all its traumas, disappointments, losses and your unspent emotions will easily collide, and collide they will when you at your most relaxed, your happiest, and when you least expect. 

Without being too dramatic or analytic, it is as if your unexpected happy moments, your moments of non-anxiety, your moments of “letting go,” undergo a form or survivor’s guilt and want to clearly remind you of the losses and regrets and the failures you have known and survived. It’s when you are healthy and enjoying a moment that the loss of a beloved spouse or a breakup in a marriage may come calling, calling you to be grounded, to remember, to be aware, that happiness and success are built against a context of loss and defeat.

It’s not regression but progression.

It’s not a lack of self-forgiveness.

It is a reminder that laughter and joy and peace and kindness can live boldly within the lives of those who have known deep suffering.

From the shore of Lake Geneva — a coffee shop’s view

Yesterday, in much of the Western world, mothers were celebrated, and appropriately so. I would like to extend my congratulations to the fabulous mothers who read this column and to those who don’t and to those who will never see it:

I take my hat off to mothers who work themselves out of a role, week-by-week, month-by-month, slowly, but surely, teaching their children that they are fully capable of living life independently. This is true mothering

I take my hat off to mothers of few resources. There are mothers who carry water on their heads, walking hours, to their children every day. There are women who spend days selling meager goods at markets to put food on the table for their children, often without the assistance of a husband or any help at all.

I take my hat off to the woman I’ve met who lived in extreme anxiety because of the behavior of the immature man (or men) in their lives and make a priority of protecting their children to give them the best life possible.

I take my hat off, I bow my head, to women who have decided the best option was the difficult but caring choice of adoption.

Look me in the eye. Talk to me. I won’t budge from your truth. Tell me the best. Tell me the worst. Tell me the dangerous. I will look you back in the eye and see and then tell you that, like me, you’re part of the human condition, that I accept you no matter what.. 

Look me in the eye. I will look back at you, hopefully with care and hopefully with mercy and charity and acceptance, with love. It’s the kind of love that wants  you to be totally free, empowered to be exactly who you were designed to be. It’s not too late, not for anyone.

Look me in the eye. Tell me of your early years of struggle, of being misunderstood, of being conflicted about what was going on within your conflicted home. Tell me how your history continues to impact you, tries to sabotage your thoughts and your future. I will tell you that I think I understand. 

Look me in the eye and tell me your story, as much or as little as you want to reveal. I will give you my ear. I will listen with my heart. It’s unlikely your story will surprise me. We have probably walked similar paths even though there might be nothing similar about our origins.

Yesterday I asked readers to imagine an ideal setting and context for the birth of a child and to reflect on their own contexts and circumstances of birth, childhood and growing up years…..

Today, I invite readers to imagine the antithesis of that perfection in order to taste a child’s experience of an anxious, conflicted environment where the womb, crib, family, school, the entire context and journey is constantly jolted with survival anxiety. 

These are, what I call, “crossfire children.” 

He or she, the infant, and the siblings are caught in the crossfire of adult overt and covert conflict. 

Parents and caregivers are in conflict and the crib shakes. 

The crossfire child – trapped in the middle of parent addictions and stressors – has an overwhelming desire to be noticed, accepted, affirmed, protected, understood and appreciated while living in what a child may perceive and know as real-time danger. 

Mom and dad fight – and anxiety strikes all who are in the family and home. 

Imagine a dynamic (changing) environment where primary caregivers and authority figures are sources of complex multi contrasting messages of fear, uncertainty, danger, discomfort and sometimes comfort; where fight and flight are foreign concepts (to an infant and growing child) but are familiar intimate and powerful experienced emotions.

But a few months ago …….. !

In general conversations, when around those who work in areas of mental health,  people may ask,  “Am I of sound mental health?”

Mental health, like physical health, is on a continuum. There are days when you are in better shape than you are on other days.

Here are a five pointers to evaluate your healthy state of mind:   

You are objective about what it means to be you while you take care of immediate day-to-day matters. You are functioning, playing your role and only your role – in a family and community. You isolate yourself at times to rest, not out of fear.   

You are able to look back at how your past has shaped you. You can and do look ahead and enjoy your future hopes and dreams.  Are you able to “reflect” both ways (forward and back) without being overwhelmed with fear. 

You able to look deeply within your inner-being, your head, heart, soul, motivations with humility and thanks. You can see and acknowledge your beauty. You accept who you are. 

You able to accept yourself despite your failures and allow yourself to encourage others even when you yourself are under trying circumstances? You can rise above difficulties and challenges when necessary.  

You are able to focus on the people you deeply love and really listen and appreciate their uniqueness, their beauty, and invite them to teach you about love and greater self-awareness.

My next teaching destination

Understandable missteps in blended families

• Proclaiming “we are one big happy family” by the adults will be heard as a script that now must be followed, or covertly rejected. Children know the truth. If the blended family is happy it will require no announcement or proclamations. Happiness and contentment will speak loudly for themselves. 

• The step parent heartily confesses “I know i am not their mom/dad and I will never replace their absent parent” and yet tries too hard at playing the parent or friend role anyway. Step sons and daughters may really like the “new” husband or wife. The children may genuinely enjoy the adult company. But when step-mom or step-dad over-step boundaries – too much too soon – the confusion the children express will be experienced as rejection.

• There is a tendency among blended families to over-supervise, to repeatedly check if everyone is doing well with the new family arrangement. There is a tendency to over-structure relationships rather than to trust the children (of all ages) to let them develop naturally. Such anxiety from the adults can upset the children who are quite happy to let things develop at a natural pace. Let people be – they don’t need as much help as many adults may think. 

My office — if anyone is interested. I call it The Dream Center