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.
At the start of a new work week may I offer you encouragement?
Stop hiding who you are behind a desire to be accepted or to fit in.
Let people know who you are and what you want.
This does not mean you have to be pushy or overbearing.
In both strong and subtle ways define yourself.
Leave little up to guesswork.
Do this, even if you start in very small and incremental ways, with the people you are close to and to the people whom you love. This may take some people by surprise and even catch them off guard, but the people who love you will be delighted to hear your voice.
You will immediately begin to feel less anxious when you begin to define yourself. As you advocate for yourself, even in the smallest of ways, you will begin to like what you see and what you feel and think, and you will grow even more beautiful than you already are. If you have been a “I just fit in with others” or “I hate conflict” kind of person you will begin to notice you will have lower levels of anxiety as you reverse your “fit in” and “avoid conflict” tendencies and allow your personality and your wishes to emerge and ultimately shine.
“Writing in the sand” is a strong metaphor for me.
My usage is in reference to a New Testament moment.
When confronted by men who desire to trap him, Jesus twice stoops to draw or to write in the sand.
Theologians have postulated much on what it was he wrote or drew.
I believe he was “steel-ing” himself. He was readying himself for a strong, suitable reply to what may have appeared to bystanders to be an impossible dilemma. Jesus was thinking, mulling things over, reminding himself of his calling and the power that was his and and was not his.
He was doing what you and I are called to do when faced with dilemmas, complex or easy.
When we take time to write or draw in the sand we give ourselves the time we need to consider many options when we make decisions.
Taking the time offers time for increased perspectives.
He was no loose cannon and we know how damaging they can be.
I have been writing or drawing in the sand for months, designing and planning suitable responses to tough situations.
It has taken me far more than two stoops and I know I will make many more.
But, I will emerge and act on decisions made while stooping these many times and drawing in the sand.
Screen-obsession may be rendering face-to-face conversations a dying art.
You may have noticed some people can look deeply into a screen for hours but are uncomfortable, even unsettled, rattled really, with the briefest of human eye-contact.
I acknowledge this idea will not fly in some cultures and contexts and none of which I’ll name.
Adapt the words (adjust, make the idea sound like your own) that follow to avoid sounding ridiculous and contrived, but use the broad ideas in face-to-face conversations.
Be gentle, you may be met with delight or horror!
“I am interested in how you arrived here (this job, predicament, fabulous place). Tell me as much as you’d like me to know.”
“I will give you an hour (ten minutes, two hours, choose your amount of time) of uninterrupted time to tell me as much or as little about anything you choose. I will listen with both ears, both eyes, and all my heart and offer zero advice or judgment.”
“I’d love to hear about what you want from your life and about your plans to achieve what you want with your life.”
“What are the three or four greatest challenges you’ve ever faced? I’m interested in learning. Tell me as much or as little as you’d like me to know.”
I like to think of every Friday as a good one, no matter how trying a week may have been. Fridays announce the fire-break, declare the rest-stop, the opportunity for the breather that’s just around the corner.
Fridays are for letting things go, the cumulative stresses of all that’s come at me from Monday. I hope it’ll be the same for you.
Fridays are for a few handwritten notes in the mail, notes of affirmation and thanks, not necessarily for what’s occurred in the past few days but an expression of thanks to those who’ve got me to this point. Consider joining me, it’s amazing how good it feels to write without a screen.
Fridays are for re-envisioning the shape of the future, not only next week and six months ahead, but my role is in creating a great tomorrow for my children’s children’s children. We really do, like it or not, for good and for ill and everything in between, invest in the future.
Fridays are plan-my-weekend reading opportunities and so I rather informally gather the books and articles I’m hoping to start or finish. I confess, this is an ongoing challenge but remains refreshing because it is unfinished.
Fridays are for scheduling one-on-one phone-free, screen-free time over the weekend with our most intimate circle of family and friends.
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).
When I was a child there were days when every finger on both my hands would bleed from my biting and ripping my nails. I’d bite and rip until shiny puddles of blood and spit would pool in what was left of my fingertips. I’d make fists to hide the damage or tuck the wounded digits into my school pants pockets where the blood and spit would stain the pockets. If I pulled the pockets from the trousers they’d be a dull red or a darkened brown on the white cloth depending on the stain’s age. They’d look like a handkerchief applied to a bleeding nose. It was a painful habit and I was ashamed of my fingers and I hid my hands. The shame and pain did not stop this incessant indulgence which persisted well into my adulthood. My dad”s only and repeated remedy, which was never acted upon, was the threat to apply some bitter substance he’d known as a child. Mother never referred to my nail-biting but to sometimes say, “Don’t bite your nails,” and, “If you swallow a nail you’ll puncture your lungs.” Despite the graphic image of me exploding like a punctured balloon her exhortations were unsuccessful.
difficultrelationships.com 