I have had the joy of being with you this past week: several of you shared meals with me and we met in ways I know I will remember. I hope you will, too. Thank you. Given the time I would have enjoyed such an opportunity with each of you. During your first session with me I told you I would give you my notes from each of my talks. If you read this letter today or in ten years it is all ok with me. People do what they are ready to do. Keep them. See how well they age. Remind yourself that I repeatedly said I am addressing the future you.
Day One I tried to tell you how unique and beautiful you are. This is not an older adult attempting to convince you of something adults generally want you to believe. As I said I really have never met – 50 countries and thousands of people later – anyone, anywhere who is not beautiful. Yes, I have met people who have done really ugly things and done a few myself, but, you (we) are beautiful. Get to know any human by listening, really listening, and I believe you will soon agree with me. We talked about leadership: I said Leadership is a Function, a role, not a position. If your motive in becoming a leader is to see your name at the top of a list or to be the boss, your distorted motive will be your constant hurdle. Leadership is about who and what you are and what you do within a community. It is not about status. If it is the status you seek, your drive for recognition will persistently contaminate your leadership. To lead others effectively it is necessary to know what you are good at and what you are not good at. Work at your strengths. Accommodate your weaknesses. Both are yours for the long-haul.
I encouraged you to consistently define yourself. If you don’t, someone will. Resist the natural anxious urge to define others. Become an expert in your own behavior. Resist the natural (anxious) urge to be an expert in the behavior of others, especially those who annoy you. Listen more than you speak. Make sure you are hearing, not waiting to talk. I closed saying Self-Leadership has by far the greatest impact on how effective you are as a leader. If you can’t lead yourself you can effectively lead nothing and no one.
Day Two I emphasized your (and my) uniqueness. I urged you to find within the depths of where your hearts, minds, spirits, souls meet (see it as a kind of Venn diagram) the beautiful “place” generally referred to as the SELF. YourSELF is beautiful, it’s as unique as your fingerprints, your voice, and your personality. It is shaped by your family history, your DNA, by enduring joyful and nurturing experiences. It is shaped also by trauma, by loss, grief and so much else. This SELF is resilient. The Self wants to be well. It self-repairs (given conducive conditions). It is not Selfish to find and love and know yourSelf. I would suggest it is selfish NOT to. People who avoid Self-Awareness because they consider it selfISH are usually people who put stress on leadership teams and on friendships and battle with boundary confusion – “I am I, you are you, we are we, Let’s not confuse the three” – Remember? It’s corny BUT if you live it, it will save you a LOT of pain and therapist bills!
Day Three I emphasized your God-given desire for Autonomy. It’s part of your humanity. To desire self-directedness (AUTONOMY – SPACE, ROOM TO MOVE, freedom to be yourself) comes with your birth package. When it is unfulfilled – or ignored – you will be discontent. You have a similar God-given desire for Intimacy. This is part of your humanity. We all want some closeness, to belong, to be part of. Accepting that these Dueling Desires live within you and recognizing they are present in all the people will make it easier for you to welcome both into their legitimate place within your life. You (and I) really grow up when you (we) meet these needs in yourself AND understand that others are similarly driven. When your best friend chooses to be alone (wants Autonomy) it is not a rejection of you (necessarily) if you, at the same time, want Intimacy. Remember, you cannot LOVE and CONTROL the same person.
This afternoon (Thursday) and Day Four, I left you with eight things I would tell my younger self:
Save, and never touch, one third of all the money you earn. Few people regret having saved from an early age. Few things upset adulthood as well as financial pressures.
Honor your family and extended family relationships above all other relationships. If you are a brother or a son, a niece or an aunt, be the best one you can be.
Learn to live without blaming others. While others are indeed imperfect, blaming others for anything will seldom get you to where you really want to go. There are exceptions which I made clear (I hope).
Forgive, truly forgive, but remember. To forgive and forget is often foolish and even impossible. Remembering is not the same as holding a grudge. There are exceptions which I made clear (I hope).
Find your VOICE and hold onto it. Finding your voice means figuring out what you want your life to say. Only a small portion of finding your voice has to do with actual words.
Every unfortunate or bad thing that happens to you will ultimately offer you a choice. Will it become SEED (for growth) or STONE (resentment or hardness)? Seed will be most helpful to you. The choice will always be yours.
Pursue (chase) education even over romance. Few people regret having a sound education.
Gain understanding about your power, the power that comes with being human. Treasure it; Protect it, Deploy it. Use it for its intended purpose only.
I have loved being with you. Thank you. I especially enjoyed the Talent Show and the party. I loved watching your amazing capacity to have fun and I particularly enjoyed seeing some of you who arrived earlier this week appearing shy and withdrawn having the time of your lives.
Rod
Dad, Uber Driver, International Speaker and Newspaper Columnist
Things to try for a few days in the hopes will soon see they are life-style habits worthy of developing:
Plan your day.
Plan who you will seek to empower and encourage.
Write (using a pencil and paper) a few ideas as to how you will empower others no matter what your station in life.
Oddly, the more you plan, the more you will allow for a serendipitous life.
Besides, getting yourself ready for a great day will sharpen your eyes to recognize when great days come your way.
Plan your day as if planning a great day is in your power to do so.
Write a few notes to yourself about how much money you will spend, how much you will try to save.
Plan what and whom you will avoid because some things suck the life out of you.
As you plan your day, remind yourself that you are not all-powerful and that things happen to derail the best made plans. This does not mean a plan is not worth making.
Plan your responses to tough or challenging circumstances and situations so that you are unlikely to spend the day in a reactive mode with fight or flight as your defaults. Write a few notes to yourself about what you will or will not say and whom you will and will not engage.
Respect is placing high value on privacy, even, perhaps especially, between and among people who are very intimate with each other. The deeper and greater the intimacy, the greater the need for individual space, even opportunities for extended solitude.
Respect is listening, it’s having the willingness to focus on what another is saying without correcting, interpreting, or interrupting. It’s developing an eye for what another may need or want and looking for ways to serve one another. It’s having an eye for mood and occasion, the ability to read a moment and to sense when strong emotions may call for deeper understanding.
Respect is having an ear for what is not said. It’s the capacity to read between the lines, to discern what may be uncomfortable to express. It is developing an ear to honour what another finds painful, the ability to understand that loved ones may hide pain, may want pain concealed, from some, but not from all.
Respect is found in the appropriate use of touch, touch to affirm, the kind of that says “You are not alone,” and expresses warmth, declaring the pleasure it is to share life with another.
A man or woman who is a survivor of a difficult or traumatic childhood will often go to unusual extremes in several of life’s arenas.
“Make it perfect,” becomes the mantra.
The extremes are intense attempts at perfection to put right the past or stop it intruding on the present.
This may be particularly obvious when parenting.
The survivor of a difficult childhood whom you love will go to endless lengths to please you once he or she has broken through the trust barrier with you.
Once you are trusted it will be in ways he or she has never trusted before.
Be gentle as it could be very fragile.
When suspicious questions arise, answer as honestly as you know how you realize that it is not about your behavior, it’s about history repeating itself.
The man or woman whom you may love who is a survivor of a difficult childhood will often feel heavily let down if well made plans go awry. He or she may suddenly become completely disillusioned when discovering he or she was unable to create something perfect for you to experience together.
If you fall in love (or are friends) with a man or a woman who reveals having had a very difficult childhood there are a few things of which you may want to be aware.
Keep in mind that I am only one voice in a vastly explored arena. It is usually a good idea to get lots of insights from several sources.
Sad thing is that if you have already fallen in love you probably won’t be looking for help.
If you are, it’s because you’ve already begun to see how tough it is to love tough-historied people. (I rather like my euphemism).
“Troubled” or “unsettled” are pejorative terms.
Avoid them.
People from tough backgrounds can be very exciting, motivated and “world-changing” people.
If you are going to be partners you have to learn and understand what kind of music is playing in their heads and hearts and how they dance to it or turn it up or turn it down or turn it off (if they ever can).
They will often be way ahead of most people in terms of being street wise. They have had to be. They have been watching, negotiating, recruiting, debating and have had to have an eye for undercurrents for so long such behaviors are a way of life for them.
They will usually be cunningly intelligent but also possess zero desire to bring harm to you or others.
More about this sometime….
Artist: Trevor Beach – google him or find him on Facebook and buy his art. The above and another hangs in my office. I enjoy the idea that an artist named Beach seems only to paint Ocean Scenes.
The problem with difficult childhoods in troubled families (pick your conflicts or addictions or stressors or health concerns – or a combination of several) is that children with difficult childhoods have had to dress for self-protection, and, as a lifestyle, have often had to prepare themselves for enduring domestic tensions or wars and regarded it as normal. This is how everyone lives isn’t it?
Once the child becomes an adult its difficult to shed engrained protection measures and essentials and throw off a guarded and conflictual lifestyle even if it’s no longer needed.
Carefree happy children may become carefree happy adults but it’s unlikely a stressed and anxious child will enter realms of stressfree bliss and trusting vulnerability on coming of age.
Adult survivors of difficult childhoods hear things like, “You’re so difficult to get to know,” and “You’re so difficult to get close to,” and “Why does everything have to be a fight?” and proceed with the hard work of adult life that mirrors the hard work of childhood wondering what on earth people are talking about.
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Unrelated to column: got some new art in our home today: Cameroon artist Patrick Yogo Oumar (see Instagram if interested).
An exercise for couples and friends…… choose your paragraphs wisely:
Look me in the eye and……
To look into the eyes of another may reveal a primal urge to dominate and, in some cultures, it may be a no-no pivoting on age and status, but for me, it’s a desire for deep connection, validation, underscoring that we are, at least for this time, fully present for each other.
When I look you in the eyes I see the beauty of your soul. Your strength, fueled and tended by a thousand faced challenges, radiates power and beauty from you in equal measure. Looking into your eyes gives me courage for my own life.
Look me in the eyes and know I’m embracing everything about you and hope you will return the embrace and accept (almost) everything about me. Nothing I see within you will cause me to retract from you or reject you and if I do appear to shudder it’s in sheer trepidation that comes with authentic committed human connection.
Look me in the eyes and tell me you love me, or loved me once and no longer do, but indifference, avoiding me, and ignoring that I exist, treating me as if I’m invisible, is very hard for me to deal with.
Cut and paste for your Valentine card or romantic conversation. Please tweak to make it more romantic.
Ten ways to love you. I will:
Not cut you off from your family or friends.
Take care of myself so I am in good shape to love both of us.
Do nothing that can be considered controlling because I know love and control cannot coexist within the same relationship.
Seek acts of intimacy that we both desire and enjoy.
Encourage you to pursue your interests, hobbies, and passions.
Do all I can to listen and hear you and I know the difference between the two.
Fight off any twinges of jealousy I may feel and I will not blame you for any of my feelings – they are mine. I own them.
Support you to get further education.
Not allow forgiven material to resurface between us.
Regularly, for extended periods, several hours at a time, turn off my phone so we can really be together.
I shall be speaking at a Breakfast for Women, 9 am to 10:30 am, on Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at the Butcher Boys Restaurant, Hillcrest. Book now at hello@caitlyndebeer.com. R120, continental breakfast. The venue changed in order to increase capacity. I am humbled that the extra space is selling fast.
Do you want to be an excellent employee especially when working with people?
Look people in the eye. Listen with your whole body. Listen to others before you speak. When you do speak, speak up and speak clearly. Avoid thinking you already know what a person is going to tell you or is trying to tell you.
Anticipate needs and wants of your clients (customers) while simultaneously being aware that you may anticipate incorrectly. It’s a fine balance. When you near perfection at this you will regard your work as art and not a job.
When faced with complaints or problems do not escalate matters, take sides, or assign blame. Focus on understanding and solving, not diagnosing.
Don’t chew gum at work, ever. Dress well and be well groomed, always. Shower, often (not at work).
Tell the truth efficiently and kindly. A good reputation, which can take years to build, can be permanently ruined with one lie.
Don’t date co-workers or anyone with whom you work. You’re at work to earn a living not find a spouse.
Turn your phone off at work.
Seeking a fellow teacher: A teacher, whom I know well, wants to have her 40 students (eight and nine-year-olds) correspond with similarly aged students in KwaZulu-Natal. Teachers, please reach out to Stacy directly at SGraber@SRESDragons.org.
Extended or immediate family discontent, even family rage, is more easily solved, healed, or negotiated sooner rather than later. Wait too long and it may go on for generations.
The longer schisms linger, the deeper they become and the more entrenched and “default” the reactive behaviors become. Bitterness, cynicism set in. Cut-offs become a way of life. Walls get higher and stronger.
The stories about who did what to who expand, often beyond recognition, in the heads of those who harbor and perpetuate the conflict.
To find healing or reconciliation, the “bigger” person, or the stronger member of the family, or the one who has the highest levels of “differentiation of self,” the one who wants the healing, initiates a conversation. That conversation must be devoid of all blame and all finger pointing. He or she does the necessary preparation and decides exactly what is wanted and what healing in a particular family may look like. Such an initiative demands humility, flexibility, and a deep desire for reconciliation.
Some families have been at war with each other for so long those who started it are long buried and those on the front lines do not even know anymore why they are fighting.
Please, don’t let that be true for you and for your family.
The consequences are too extreme, especially for innocent children who are inevitably caught in the crossfire.
difficultrelationships.com 