Learn the ART of living fully in your own head, and only, in your own head. Think for yourself. Try not to interfere when others think for themselves even when they express thoughts you’d never think. It’s allowed. MINDing yourown business, avoiding crossovers, is a crucial and necessary art in the empowering business. Like everything, it begins at home. Your spouse, adult sons and daughters, your parents, all the adults you know have unique brains capable of their own thinking. You may find this harder than it sounds if you are accustomed to living in multiple heads other than your own, and in yourown.
Why is this important? It’s fundamental to trust, growth, respect, equality, mutuality and all those good things. I’d suggest it would be highly disrespectful of me to assume I am better at doing your thinking than you are at doing yourthinking. If I focus my mind on my business and trust you will do the same, the meeting of our minds has the potential to enhance both of us. Conversely, if every time we talk or spend time together you cross over in my head it is likely much of my energy will be spent, not in thinking and exploring with you, but in attempts to safeguard my head-territory.
One of my very favorite pieces of art. It’s from Gorky Park, Moscow. Street artist — 1992.
Allow yourself to experience your emotions – even the extremes. Don’t cover or hide from your grief. If you are feeling joy, express it. Avoid constructing a wall or barrier between you and your emotions. The day may come when you cannot see over the barrier, let alone climb the wall.
Take time to hear as many “sides” to every story. Don’t rush to judgment. There are usually 7, 8, even 10 sides to every story. Hear them all. Things are often not as they appear. Listeners take all the time needed to hear things out.
As far as you’re capable, go back and make right where you have failed. Often, this may be impossible. Make a list of your regrets, determine never to move in those directions again. Learn, recover, learn recover.
Even if it’s not in your usual habit, try to talk more to people you care about about the things you care about. Don’t rehash hobby horses. Let people into unexpressed parts of your thinking.
Notice your indifference. This is where you’ve been unmoved, unaffected, by things that ought to move everybody, ought to affect everybody. Allow the world about you, near and afar, to have its impact on you.
One corner of my home office……. you’re welcome here.
There is nothing like a good listener for feeding the soul.
A good listener determines there will be no distractions — no phones, text checking, no dings or app notifications or glances to see the time — and will offer complete and uninterrupted and undiluted attention to the speaker.
A good listener listens, says very very little except may offer occasional brief words of encouragement like “tell me more” or “go back to the beginning if you want” or “go into as much detail as you think will be helpful” or “could you tell me that again so it’s clearer for me.”
The good listener knows listening and any attempts at multitasking — even the most subtle — distract the speaker and obliterate listening. A good listener gets all the potential impediments to listening out of the way before sitting down to listen.
The good listener knows a listener’s inner-noise —- things the listener is refusing to hear or address from within — will emerge and sabotage attempts at hearing others and so addresses unresolved personal matters as much as possible so others may encounter a clear-headed listener.
The good listener does not formulate replies or develop counterpoints while listening and does not one-up the speaker with the listener’s own experiences whether they may appear to the listener to be helpful or not.
A good listener sees, hears, knows, acknowledges the speaker by listening — the most powerful and tangible expression of love.
I devised a list of how to participate in the healing of men and women who have been hurt:
Be willing to listen, even if what is being said is what you’d prefer to not hear. Try not to re-engineer (re-frame, recast) what you have heard so it is more fitting with what you’d really like to hear.
Resist understandable attempts to short-circuit growth by trying to ease necessary pain, by offering false affirmations, and by accepting empty excuses for irresponsible behavior. Pain is a very good motivator for change. Resist the urge to remove it when it appears to be helpful.
Offer your presence, not your answers. “I am with you” is more helpful than “let me help you fix it.”
Welcome silence. There are ways to communicate that do not include words. Resist the understandable urge to chase healing and learning away with the incessant use of words and stories.
Avoid minimizing (“it’s not so bad!”) or rationalizing (“What else did you expect?”) or normalizing (“Anyone would have done that!”) the issues that resulted in pain. Do not rob necessary pain of its usefulness.
Promote “future thinking.” Ask questions focused on future wellness and success.
Try to avoid searching for the genesis (the cause) of what has led to pain. Where something comes from is not nearly as important living your way out of it.
Most USA schools are back in full swing…… at least around here they are:
Hats off……
Hats off to teachers and coaches who love the world and its peoples and whose zeal for both results in empoweing students of all ages.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who love their subjects and sports and whose passion for their work opens vast vistas of opportunities for their students.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who are as tough as nails over matters of integrity but are easy sells when it comes to listening and attempting to understand students and their home-lives, peer, and social struggles.
Hats off to teachers and coaches who know their students well enough to be able to anticipate and address problems before unnecessary escalation.
Hats off to school administrators who have the courage to support teachers and coaches in the face of often difficult parents and who have the courage to listen to all parties before they act.
Hats off to school administrators who aspire to serve rather than be served, who understand the power of humility, and who see their essential role as empowering coaches and teachers and students to get the very best from each other.
Hats off to parents of students who seek to respect and learn from their children’s school teachers and coaches and administrators rather than demand rights or seek to chastise or correct.
Hats off to Librarians, Musicians, Counselors, School Security Teams….. and all who work daily to keep our students motivated, kind, and safe.
Andrea Neal, Jay Sherrill and so many others who regarded Thulani and Nate as their own.
Israelite-Nathanael gets an invitation to meet Nazarene-Jesus and responds rather snarkily:
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
This exchange, recorded early in the Gospel of John, intrigues me and, as a result, I’ve always loved the person and name Nathanael.
He questioned, appeared playful and unintimidated.
On meeting, Jesus greets Nathanael by name, interprets his name, tells Nathanael He had seen him before Nathanael was aware of being seen by Jesus.
In modern parlance Jesus saw through the Israelite, welcomed everything about him, called him into a life-changing journey and Nathanael readily responded
Nothing takes the Son of Man by surprise: Jesus saw Nathanael coming and New Testament Nate more than met his match.
Jesus saw my Indianapolis-born son coming, too.
I didn’t. I had to decide blind.
Privacy laws permitted limited information – African American Male, Date of Birth, Full Term – was all I could know.
Pondering names for my son, whom I was yet to meet, the no guile or nothing false in Jesus’ description of Israelite-Nathanael wrapped it up for me.
Enroute from the courthouse to the hospital, custody papers in hand, with a stop at the K-Mart on Lafayette Road to pick up a few baby-essentials, I named a baby and formed a living link with a favorite character from the New Testament.
“Thula, Thula” I’d sing, following the maid around the house as she sang the prayerful lullabye. I could be on her back, tied with a blanket, listening to the Thula Thula song. The song was about a child urged not cry because the father will soon return from work on the gold mine. The song soothed and reached deeply into me, especially while tied to a maid’s back. There was not safer realm. Theres was no place warmer or more comfortable.
At 10 or 11 years old I learned from teenage boys and men named Thulani who came regularly into our dad’s tea-room the name means peace and stillness, to be quiet and comforted.
Temba means hope.
It is the name my adult Zulu friends called me once I reached adulthood and tried to unlearn so many things of childhood.
Although no one said it or taught it, I learned not to reveal excessive interest in the lives of the young men who came daily to the shop but rather to proffer indifference. I knew I was not to walk to the street corner too often in the evenings where they played lively music on guitars, hand made from wood attached to emptied cooking oil containers. No-one had to tell me of the barriers that came with my whiteness. I knew I was not to enjoy watching the young men dance and smoke the loose cigarettes – purchased from me at the tea-room, 2 cents each for unfiltered Lexingtons and 3 cents for filters – and laugh and rough-house bare foot on white suburban corners. The kitchen-boys’ or garden boys’ uniforms, white coarse red or blue trim v-neck shirts marked them legitimate workers in white suburbs even until late at night or at least until dad’s shop closed at 9.
They’d drift off to a concrete block room at the farthest corner of the yard of the property where they worked. The young men washed their master’s car and weeded the master’s yard, helped The Girl in the kitchen. I learned, although no one taught it or said it, to hide my interest. I wanted to join in and enjoy the lively music and playful antics and raucous laughter and the loud conversations which I could not understand.
But, I learned, although no one said it, to turn my desire to belong into a supervisory stance or glare which carried censure of the noise made by African young men in our white neighborhood where they were fortunate we allowed such antics.
Thulani and Temba were embedded into me by women who were our maids and who most certainly but unknowingly provided complete comfort, peace, solace for the living load tightly strapped to her body, riding her back and, everything I ever wanted for my infant son was provided unintentionally for me some 40-something years earlier when they sang his name.
“Choose something easier. Something American,” said a friend, “no one will remember it.”
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
I shall strive to speak and teach as one who has indeed much to learn.
In every classroom we are all learners.
I shall strive to listen to people in the class (and out of it) as if I were listening to the mountains.
Mountains reveal their real beauty to the dedicated observer, beauty that’s easily missed by those who offer casual hurried glances or who are themselves caught up in how they look or are dressed or what the student may think of them.
Can there be a greater privilege than jetting to Penang to teach Family Systems?
Real leaders, authentic leaders, as opposed to those who are in it for the illusion of power, love of money or the mirage of status will face multiple paradoxes and do so constantly.
Yes – daily.
It comes with the role – the “role” and not position. Leading is what leaders do.
It’s a function.
I have known “leaders” whose names are boldly declared on a suite’s entry – or the headmaster’s office, or the pastor’s study – but the leader is an under-appreciated someone somewhere whose name is upon nothing, and definitely not on a fat cheque.
Leaders lead, but must also follow.
It’s an art.
Leaders go first, but must also hold back, and know when to go last.
It’s a dance.
Leaders know that leaders are servers, first.
Leaders try to understand those whom they lead, yet cannot let their desire to understand, desire for empathy, derail decisions that are best for the whole, the calling, the gravitas, the goodness of the organization they lead.
Real leaders are aware that if they cannot lead themselves, monitor themselves, hold-onto themselves, they can lead anyone anywhere worth going.
Leaders are self-aware, self-assured, not selfish or self-less.
It’s an inner-tango, often the limbo, seldom a waltz.
And, here’s the kicker – it’s a solitary dance no matter what the music.
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