Reflections

This week I started a wonderful new job working with some phenomenally talented people, managing a complex, statewide, volunteer-driven policy initiative. It would probably fill up my heart and soul no matter the timing, but I’m back on the job after two years of time away from the office. Its significance at this point in my life is big.

It’s always advised to “take some time between jobs,” but often this means a couple of weeks. These past two years have been a great luxury, and helped me sort out the goals and objectives I want most to achieve in my work. In a sense, I have been working during the time away from the office, but the project was myself. The whole process got me thinking about two types of reflection.

There is the looking at the past, and analyzing and evaulating the decisions and results; there is also what we see of ourselves in other people around us. They may be clients or colleagues, but those closest to us eventually have a significant impact on our sense of self, and our ability to bring our dreams from thoughts to realities. The length of time I had away from my own old patterns made it impossible for me to deny the changes I needed to make. While it is surely easier to wish others would change, in the end it is always us who needs to alter what is happening in our own lives.

If you are struggling with needing to make a change, you might not need the extensive time I took to get there. You might just need encouragement and validation! Below are some questions that may help you get there more quickly:

Where do you see your reflection? In evaluation by others, in your own ability to steer your professional ship, in the kinds of clients you attract, in your paycheck, in your relationships with your co-workers? When you pinpoint your most common reflection, does it ring true, or do you want to see yourself somewhere else?

What one change could you make within yourself to see more of the person you want to be?

This post first appeared on www.corporateidealist.com on August 14, 2009. Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21314760@N00/1285407742/

Everything and Nothing

I once heard organizational guru Peter Walsh http://www.peterwalshdesign.com/ say, “When everything is important, nothing is important.”

He was counseling a woman who had lost control of her possessions. All of her things were out on her front yard, and she somehow laid hands on her deceased father’s wallet which had been crammed in the back of a drawer. It was full of pictures of her and her siblings, as well as handwritten notes and other mementos. Bursting into tears, she begged to be allowed to keep it, even though she was in a boot camp of sorts to save her home from clutter.

Walsh reminded her that she had not even known the wallet was there for over 20 years. It made no sense to hold onto it. “But,” she cried, “this is so important! Please!” Gently he pointed out to her that she had not treated this item any differently than she had treated anything else in her house, from random domino pieces chewed up by dogs to moth-worn scarves from her kids’ childhoods 40 years ago. That’s when he laid it on the line. “When everything is important, nothing is important.”

Unlike any other related advice, this stuck with me from the beginning. We so rationalize our attachments that often we lose our ideals to the idea that everything is important. I’ve had multiple experiences over the years where I felt pressure to push someone else’s goals, priorities, or even values up the totem pole in the interest of my own pereceived success.

There is no end to the parade of people who need you to believe that what THEY want from you is important. The question becomes, what is important to YOU? Which of the things you have filed away and stuffed into drawers – literal or metaphorical – are truly important to YOU?

This post first appeared on http://www.corporateidealist.com/ on August 5, 2009. Photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvar/2764272024/.

Where We Are

Lots of my peers are wrestling with relocating their lives. There is frequent talk of "making a change," and often this manifests itself in a laundry list of other places they and their families could live.

Looking for better schools for children; more variety in dining; more diversity in neighborhood; a change in commute; a change in climate; a new house; a more challenging job. The list is familiar and endless.

Pawing the ground at middle age is hardly new territory. The stereotype of the midlife crisis is not positive to say the least; but there is a strange degree of beauty in the moment. I like to believe that change is always available, that what we lose little by little is the will to make it. Midlife wrestling with where we are and where we want to go has an air of Dylan Thomas, "Do not go gentle into that good night."

Where it can get ugly is usually two fold for me. One, we repress our real feelings and needs for so long that when our conscience can't manage anymore the backlash is a destructive taking of all our unmet needs we've left untended for years. Two, there is a lack of clarity about what it is that is really unsatisfactory.

Is it REALLY that you don't have enough of this, that, or the other thing in the place where you are, physically? Or is it that you don't have enough in that other place where you are. You know, your life. Note to self: You take your life with you when you go.

Photo credit Charlie Dave: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charliedave/1508777627/

It Takes Two

"Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him and to let you know that you trust him." Booker Taliaferro Washington

I have a stack of notepaper, each page of which has a snappy quote. Some are good, some are not good, and some stop me in my tracks. The one from Booker T. today was the latter.

We seem so anxious to apply one or the other, but rarely both. Some might say trust is earned, not bestowed, and I do agree with that. But I think there are also times when one has to be willing to give both responsibility and trust in order to really get results.

Our public assistance program is a great example of all responsibility, zero trust. I don't have the answer, but I do worry that heaping obligation on people while simultaneously indicating a complete lack of trust is a dynamic headed for failure.

I also see a lot of this in the personal lives of people around me. A tight demand for meeting expectations and needs, but extreme stinginess in the trust department. Like the public assistance program, it seems to thrive on resentment and anger. The more resentful a person is, the more responsibility is demanded and the more trust is witheld.

It's hard to watch, and even harder to change. All that any of us can do is to support putting responsiblity and trust together as often as we can, and try to show it working in our own lives.

Photo credit: Vagawi, http://www.flickr.com/photos/vagawi/3155400274/

Pieces

I found some missing puzzle pieces today
Two to be precise
Been doing the thousand piece for so long without
They seem out of place, now
998 seems right
Can't bring myself to throw them away
But they no longer fit
Are in a drawer
Clawing to get out
I push the drawer until it clicks

The 80th Anniversary of the Birth of the Father

A few years ago, an associate of mine took off work to go hiking into the woods on the 100th anniversary of his father’s birth. He said since his father had passed away, he had taken to spending each birthday thereafter by himself in a peaceful, meditative environment, thinking about his dad and his dad’s life.

I was touched by this simple act of honoring a parent. I also was moved by the sincerity of the gesture, and of the completely un-modern spiritual commune with the memory of someone so important. I think most of us tend to take our parents for granted; even when we love them and talk to them often, do we really appreciate them as people, as individuals who had lives long before we were born and who – though they may make us think otherwise – often have lives long after we are born that are separate and apart from their identities as parents?

June 24 is my father’s 80th birthday. I am so blessed to say he is still living here on Earth, interacting with me and my family on a daily basis, enriching and encouraging us constantly. I cannot begin to imagine my life without him. The beautiful thing is I’m not sure I ever will have life without him. He is such a part of who I am, and because of his positive influence, such a part of so many people and institutions. I see him being a father figure to people who are not biologically his children, and offering opportunity to those who will never even meet him through his support of his beloved alma mater. One of his signature phrases is, “Never resist a generous impulse.”

Thank you, Dad, for always being yourself. You are a wonderful person, a stalwart friend, a judicious mentor, a loving husband and a patient father and grandfather. I love you for all that you are, and will always look forward to celebrating the anniversary of your birth. The world is a better place for you coming here, and I love you.

How You Look, How You Feel

For whatever reasons, I’ve never had big problems with how I look. I’m like everyone else in that some days there are some things I’d like to change, but overall my appearance has never troubled me greatly.

What has troubled me on and off for years, and lately more on, is how I feel.

I decided yesterday to take the challenge of a blogger on A Better West Virginia and to use social media to help inspire myself and to keep me accountable for making some meaningful change in how I feel through a new focus on fitness. http://marketinggenius.blogspot.com/2009/06/fitter-west-virginia.html

Not long ago there was a television campaign by the Church of the Latter Day Saints; it featured images of people in a community, all of whom looked pulled together and well. But through the magic of television the ad was able to show the people’s insides as well as their outsides. Some people were dealing depression, some domestic violence, some alcohol abuse, some profound grief, some chronic pain, some eating disorders. All of these struggles were invisible, but were wreaking havoc on quality of life.

I have not felt particularly great since having a baby, and by that I mean physically great. My heart is full, and I am so thrilled to have my daughter in my life. But the way my physical life has changed is starting to effect my psychological life as well. I won’t go into the details, but let’s just say this kid is trying to kill me and some days might be gaining ground on that goal. I’m really ready to stop waiting for this to “get better” on its own and to start doing something to make it better.

I’m not sure yet exactly how this is going to go, but part of it is to stop living in my own head all the time and start putting it out there, what needs to change and documenting progress.

For some strange reason, I think I feel better already.