Your day (and mine, of course) begins in your head, in your thinking.
Then, it “becomes flesh.”
It becomes real, day-to-day stuff expressed by the things you say and do.
Telling yourself, on waking, that you will be generous today, sets a tone and lines you up to see opportunities for generosity. Chances are, after such self-talk on waking, you will act on the opportunities for generosity you see.
It works similarly if you want to be a grouch.
Telling yourself that you are going to be hospitable to strangers and welcoming of “new people” sets your sights on seeing people in new ways and equips you to see hope and opportunities in yourself and in your environment.
On such days everything will look a little rosier.
If you wake and rehash some squabble you had with a neighbor or former friend or ex-partner you spent years avoiding you’ll probably go to bed tonight disappointed.
You’d be amazed at exactly how much power you have to shape the kind of day you want to have.
You have all of it.
All the power over your day waits for you to say the word and release it and find expression through your voice and hands.
“How will I be today?” is a powerful and beautiful question.
Be it as informal as helping a friend out through a time of grief or illness, or as formal as being a paid care-giver, when the art is perfected, it enhances and empowers both parties and robs none.
Helpful care – not all “care” is care or helpful – requires planning, skillful beginnings, and open discussions about how to know when the season of informal or formal care can end.
Caring too much, over-functioning, being constantly aware and anxious, when caring depletes the care-giver, may indicate confusion as to who is caring for whom and we can legitimately ask, “Who is this really for?” It gets murky when the carer takes on responsibilities not his or her own or when the recipient of care “throws in the towel” or hands it off to the carer.
Caring is not primarily adherence to a set of routines or rules although it may indeed involve guidelines and expectations and rules and the spectrum of those who may be in need of care is wide, almost endless, tied to age and degrees of awareness and what resources are or are not available.
These many variables aside: the carer who neglects self-care and neglects to regard self-care as a priority will be depleted until he or she becomes no source of care at all.
We take responsibility for our lives despite past neglect or trauma we may have endured. We do what we can to live and love without blame.
HEALTHY BOUNDARIES
We are aware of growing in the understanding of where we begin and end. This is the art of knowing the span and the limits of our responsibilities to ourselves, our families, and our communities.
ACKNOWLEDGE OTHERS
We try to see people, acknowledge others, recognize we did not get to where we are – wherever that may be – on our own and neither did anyone else. We know there are no “self-made” individuals no matter the extent they may make the claim.
INTER-DEPENDANT
We know we need people and that we in turn are needed. We know the difference between being with others and “feeding off” others and are careful to avoid using or feeding off others. We know how to play our part in a community without taking advantage of anyone within the community.
SELF-AWARE
We know and are getting to know our quirks, oddities, difficulties, and are aware of not visiting them on others, especially in ways that make life more difficult for those our lives most closely impact.
Please do not link self-awareness with selfishness. They have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Self-awareness is about as far from selfishness as one can get.
It is a lack of self-awareness that is indeed at the core of selfishness.
SELF-AWARENESS……
Being aware of how my life — moods, attitudes, motivations, decisions and much more — impacts the lives of those around me. Each of us brings a presence into every environment and into every encounter.
Being aware that my unresolved relationships, losses, griefs and disappointments are constantly impacting who I am and have the potential to shape my responses to everyone and everything I face. Our history is in our backpacks. For some – it’s snug and comfortable and provides wisdom and healthy boundaries. For the others it’s a jet-pack ready to drive and repeat the mistakes of the past. For most people, it’s somewhere between these two extremes – a bit of both.
Being aware that my emotions can flood and distort my thinking and evoke the fighter or flee-er or freemer within me. Remaining present — neither fighting nor running — is usually the most helpful response. There are unusual situations where fleeing is necessary and healthy — but most conflicts cannot be solved by avoidance.
There are self-aware people who can be very selfish but that’s quite a different story – usually with a tragic ending.
I have heard men and women blame the government, the economy and even newborn babies for their outbursts of anger and I have the propensity within me to think of others as responsible for any anger I might feel. I too have blamed the traffic, my children, even the neighbor’s dogs for a moment of anger I’ve tasted when things would not go my way.
The person – me, you – exhibiting anger, can attempt to shift the blame for it, but the angry person must look within before anger issues can be resolved.
While an angry man believes his anger is someone else’s responsibility he will not find relief from its tenacious hold.
Mature, thinking, sane people – surely, what we want to be – take responsibility for their emotions, anger often being the toughest to corral. They resist blaming a spouse or traffic for their feelings. They see anger – and all “destructive” accompanying emotions – as notification from deep within that something awry is waiting to be addressed.
Anger-provoking events – a spouse who is not punctual, being kept waiting at the bank, traffic) simply allow the presence of anger to be announced.
Healthy people “listen” to such emotions and try to learn from them, rather than inflicting them on others – and hurting both others and themselves.
Most people welcome it from a friend or a family member.
“Let us…..spend some time together.”
“Let’s call each other, often.”
“Let us take a walk.”
“Let’s build a community of trust and mutual support.”
“Let’s build a business together.”
“I can do so many things alone but I’d much rather do things with somebody, really, I’d rather do it with you.”
“Why don’t we…..” is also an encouraging and beautiful thing to hear.
“Why don’t we go to lunch, get tea in the park, pack a sandwich or two and head to the beach.”
“Why don’t we just sit together for a few hours?”
“I miss you. I think about you. I wish you lived nearer.”
“I want to see you” – are powerful words that can feed a soul and confirm the idea that it is the thought that counts.
“I want to be with you in what you are facing. I want with-ness with you. I am lonely without you. It’s not that I don’t have people around me or time with people I love, it is time with you that I want.”
May we not hold back on expressing our love to those whom we love.
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.
Not everything is proceeding as you’d prefer. You notice you are starting to avoid and resent some members of your team and some people in your organization. You’d rather not pick a fight so you’re managing your day (week, month) around who you do not want to encounter. You notice, on occasion, there’s a dictatorial edge lurking just under your calm exterior and you hope it is not going to take you by surprise.
Find a leadership coach.
You find yourself taking sides on issues and recruiting those who are on yours. While you know that surrounding yourself with YES men and women is probably not good for your organization it feels good. You know that the people who hold counter opinions are good for you and for you and for your organization, you’d like them to ease off a little.
Please, find a leadership coach.
Your family is getting in your way and there are times you want to stay at work rather than go home. At the very same time, when you are home, you want to work from home to avoid some of the underlying conflicts you have to address at work. Nowhere feels completely comfortable right now.
Please, for everyone’s sake, find a leadership coach.
“Now what would Jesus do?” asked the woman glancing at her WWJD bracelet.
“Grape nuts,” replied the companion, as if he’d served Jesus breakfast that morning. I slipped away pondering how the will and the ways of the greatest political, religious and social reformer of all time got reduced to a formula for grocery shopping.
What Would Jesus Do is a great question to ask, but wearing it on a wrist somehow suggests that the answer is easily accessible. It suggests that if you and I will simply stop and think a little, having eyed the bracelet, we’ll get the answer. Then, as we act on our newfound knowledge, predicaments will be resolved, we will have better lives, and conditions in the world will improve all around for everybody.
Quite the contrary: Answering the question and doing what Jesus would do in any situation is neither easily established nor executed. Finding the answer itself would take a lot of work, like tunneling back though a couple of thousand years, researching culture, geography and weather conditions and the varying political and religious climates. Then we’d have to identify, and then decipher, metaphor, understand and interpret tone and intent, humor, and immerse ourselves in at least a few ancient languages. Besides all this, we’d need a working knowledge of the subcultures and the prejudices that existed within those subcultures. Then, with all this done, we might be able to decide what Jesus might think, might say, might do, given a few, but not all, situations we face.
The next challenge, once we’ve established the answer, would be to have the courage to do what Jesus would do. WWJD is not about “doing the right thing.” Jesus did not always do the “right” thing. If that were so, no cross would have awaited him. Doing the “right thing” would have endeared him to those who mattered and would not have required him to buck Rome and the Temple authority.
Essentially Jesus laid a platform for his followers to live differently, in ways that set both the religious establishment and Rome against Jesus and those who followed him – embracing Samaritans, making a Samaritan the hero of a parable, illustrates this. That alone was enough to put a target on his back. It doesn’t take too deep an analysis of the Gospels to see that he despised pretentiousness and empty religious “performance” and was particularly vocal wherever he found religious zeal devoid of inner transformation. Jesus despised abusive systems and was a particular critic of those who ripped others off. So now, where will you bank, shop, invest, give, worship? How will you vote? How will our practices change were we to take WWJD seriously?
I do not think Jesus cares what cereal you buy, what dress or suit you wear or how your hair is or is not cut or if you wear a hat to church or not. But. I do believe he cares about what kind of people you and I are and whether we love mercy, humility, truth and justice. I believe he cares that we challenge systems where these qualities are absent. I do think Jesus cares about what motivates you and me. I do think he cares about how we treat the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised. When we (you and I) elevate the rich and show contempt for the poor we get his goat.
It is apparently forgotten that Jesus was hardly a nice guy. Today he’d be a threat to our political order and might not be able to find a church he’d attend, let alone one that would permit him to preach! Consequently, doing what Jesus would do could significantly reduce our popularity rating.
The real question, by the way, is not “What Would Jesus Do” but rather what will you, what will I do, in response to what he has done?
It’s not grape nuts or cheerios, but love, mercy, humility and justice that may bring us, yes, you and me, all a little closer to reflecting who and what Jesus was and is. But be careful, you might shed the WWJD bracelet and exchange it for a cross – and it won’t be hanging around your neck.
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* When published in The Indianapolis Star, this column certainly got me some fans – and enemies. The morning it appeared my email was as hot! I was called brilliant, I was called stupid. One reader said that finally he’d read something by an intelligent Christian about a really stupid gimmick. Another said he’d be praying for my salvation even though he was convinced I was a lost cause.
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Unrelated image…. Meditating a moment in an Havana Art School
Anxiety will render you partially deaf to what others are saying to you and you will tend to hear what you want to hear. It will make you partially blind to what is going on around you and will see what you want to see.Anxiety will make you hyper-sensitive to what others are doing and not doing and you will become less and less aware of your own behavior.
You will reduce your levels of anxiety if you….
“De-triangle” yourself. This means getting out of the middle of relationships that do not directly involve you. For instance, stop trying to get your son to like his stepfather, or your mother to like your wife, or your boss to spend more time with his children. You are powerless over relationships that involve others and not you.
Re-connect appropriately with people to whom you are related, especially when it is by blood. It is virtually impossible to be enduringly emotionally well if you have severed blood relationships. We are designed for connection and healthy family connections can nurture like none other.
Step out of the role of being a peacekeeper – being the one who avoids and helps others to avoid necessary and helpful conflict. Be a peacemaker, the one who steps into the role of one who welcomes and facilitates necessary and helpful conflict.
difficultrelationships.com 