Tyranny of the urgent

This week I've been reflecting on time lost to the urgency of business. I've allowed promises made for good reasons to crowd out good reasons to say no. I've simply become too busy to give attention to the right things.

It's time to revisit my life priorities. I'll keep you apprised.

Jim

Beyond Good and Bad

This may very well be the most personal newsletter I'll ever write. You see my birthday falls on 9/11 and for the past 8 years I've been trying to reconcile what had been a day of personal celebration with what has become a day of somber reflection.

Now it's not my intention to bring you down, but hard things happen. They're unavoidable. No amount of planning and control can fully protect any of us from experiencing personal tragedy and pain. They're just part of living in this world. So, perhaps an important question to ask is "What do you do with the hard things that happen in your life?"

Recently I've had several experiences that have led me back to that question. On a Friday night 3 weeks ago I sat silent with 1000 other people in the bleachers and prayed as a mother stood over her teenage son and watched him die on a high school football field. Two weeks ago a friend shared how he was fired from his job of 12 years, moved his family 600 miles, and has been living out of storage bins for the past year. A close friend lost half his meager retirement in the stock market melt-down last fall. And days ago another friend shared her story of watching her marriage implode and losing her job.

All of these were extremely painful things for the people involved and even for me to hear about, because if you live long enough you eventually go through the same things or darned close to them your self and I'm no spring chicken.

But these and other experiences have also pushed me to rethink my crude definitions of what Good and Bad mean in this life.

Categorizing hard experiences in terms of Good or Bad may lead you to miss the benefits of a difficult experience

On the other hand, I increasingly find that categorizing hard experiences in terms of Good or Bad may lead me to miss the benefits of a difficult experience. For example, my friend who lost his job also told me that now, and for the first time in his life, he’s in a job that’s perfectly made for him. My friend who lost his retirement has a different perspective on the meaning of "security". And my friend who lost her marriage, found (and kept) a relationship with God for the first time in her life. So, were those Bad times they went through? Painful? Yes. Difficult? Certainly. But not necessarily Bad.

A wise fellow was once heard saying “celebrate with those who celebrate and mourn with those who are mourning”. In other words, don’t rain on people’s parades and don’t try to rationalize away the pain of people who suffer - be With them where they are. I try to remember this when I'm with friends who are excited or going through hard times. Still, I personally find myself trying to look beyond how something “feels” while I’m going through it.

Increasingly I want to understand how my circumstances might change me and where I’m headed in good ways. I’m also increasingly skeptical of the excitement I feel when life meets my expectations - I’m just not a very trustworthy guide to my own best interest. Finally, I don't want to be too quick to dismiss pain and difficulty as worth-less, when they’re often more beneficial to my growth than the easy times.

Every client I meet has a story. Many have stories filled with love, laughter, and fond memories. Just as many, and sometimes the same people, have stories where they've become too familiar with hardship, difficulties, and pain. And often the events of a life have shaped how those same folks perceive themselves.

Part of my job as a career and business coach is to help people like you or your friends get a fresh perspective on who they are, what they've experienced, and what life can become. Despite our best efforts at self-help and changing our own thoughts, there are often parts of ourselves that we just can't change without the perspective of someone who can see both the "forest" of our story and the "trees" of our unique gifts. Helping someone see the full picture and then go after their possibilities is why I'm here.

As for me, 9/11 is still there. 28 hundred people died that day and and I'll probably always feel connected to that loss. "Mourn with those that mourn". But life is found among the living, and we're foolish to miss chances to celebrate with those who celebrate and dance with the dancers. I am so very blessed with family, friends, love, hope and future - so I choose to focus on those.

God

I try hard not to be religious. I lived most of my youth trying hard to change myself to meet God's approval - the heart of religion. Nor am I enthralled with the idea of self-discovery, because I found the magnifying glass I turn on myself is too weakly powered to reveal the full truth and my own initiative is too weak to accomplish change. So what follows here are some loosely connected thoughts from my personal experience.

Lately I've found that I pursue many "good" and even "noble" things that are often thinly veiled or misguided attempts to be God in my life. I rely on my own devices, reason, and manipulations to make sure the outcome I want in life is guaranteed. For example, when my business is down I gear up my marketing, when I want a new (used) car I check my credit score to see if I can pull it off, and if I want better relationships I perform (seemingly) random acts of kindness to build up the love bank. In short, I try to find a short cut to get that outcome I think is best. Too seldom am I willing to wait patiently and let God be God.

I read last week where the Abraham and Sara in the bible tried to be God. God promised them a son, but took His time making it happen. So, they created their own way to make his promise of a child come true because God moved too slow for their taste. Abraham actually had a child with his servant girl to speed things up a bit. But that wasn't God's plan and it didn't work out. God finally delivered on his promise long after the couple were biologically capable of having children, because He keeps his promises, but also to show that it could only have been Him that caused the pregnancy.

It's really weird. You see, I intellectually and even verbally would acknowledge that I believe in God. I believe that He created the universe and that as a creator He exists outside of the constraints of the universe He created. In short He can do anything - he's not constrained by time and space like we are. I also believe, most often in my mind but increasingly in my heart, that He is good and will work things out for my good if I'll only trust Him. BUT too often I don't really act like He is all these things I say He is.

If the answers to my questions and prayers don't come like I think they should - they're too slow in coming or they don't look like I want them to - then I take over and try to make it work like I think it should. I try to create the answers I want God to give me or make His promise come true before the time He knows is the best. In the words of Brennan Manning, I become a "functional atheist" - saying I trust God, but living as if I am the one who makes things happen.

It's all very difficult and often confusing. I'm trying to learn to "be still", "wait", and really "know [He's] God". I live in a "take action", "get 'er done" world that says waiting on God is tantamount to laziness, irresponsibility, or even learned helplessness. But I also know that logically, if God is who I think and say He is, then nothing I have really came from my own efforts.

In the end I find I have so little patience, so little trust, and so little faith that He'll really take care of it all. I literally have to stop myself from taking God's job every morning. More to the point, I have to ask Him to please "Be God" every morning and go back to Him through my day with the same request, because I'm not able to do otherwise unless He acts to change me.

What we Think

Recently I shared an excerpt from the poem below with friends. You may recognize it from the movie "Akeelah and the Bee" where I first learn of it. 

I think it's thought provoking. Of course, when I read it I hear Lawrence Fishburn's voice in my head, so that may be why it feels powerful to me.

Jim

A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. 

It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us.


We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are we not to be?


You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.


There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.


We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.


It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.


And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.


As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.  

Amoebas looking through a microscope

This morning I've found myself thinking about my story. Not in a reflective way where I'm trying to make meaning of it all, but rather in a questioning way where I compare it to the stories of people I know. 

The lives of people around me always seem to be somehow easier or better than my own. The people seem to glide through life without difficulties, hard times, or trials - at least the kind I experience day to day. I tell myself that he or she seems to have it put together or that he or she doesn't seem to struggle with the things I do. I am the "odd man out" who just can't seem to get it right

But all of this is based on my limited awareness of her or his story and my self-absorbed obsession with the things I experience. When my focus is always on my experience of life's events and how they stack up against my expectations or hopes, then my life becomes a continuous litany of comparison and contrast where I am always somehow less equipped or fortunate or blessed than the other person. However, there are big flaws in that view.

My comparisons are limited by what I know of another person's story and by my own myopic obsession with my own. Self-awareness, something I've found to be a key to finding one's place in the world, can be misleading because it's subject to the distortions that come from limited perspective. I can come to know my story intimately, but only from my own limited view of it. There is no assurance that what I perceive is actually the truth, I must have some other's objective perspective in order to gauge the truth-fullness  of my view.

In the same way, my view of someone else's life is very limited. I have no insight into the struggles of his or her heart. I don't hear the deceptive and frightening whispers that they wrestle with in the quiet hours. I don't even know the full breadth of their life's battles - where they've been, where they are right now, what concerns loom on their horizon.

So what do I do with this? I think one simple answer is to turn my eyes off myself and my situation. I  am a mysterious creature who cannot fully comprehend his own story and its meaning. As point of fact, I've recently had moments of self-awareness where I finally came to understand my motivations during events that occurred decades earlier in my life. I realize now, in the my middle years, that I don't even know myself. I guess it's akin to amoebas looking at themselves through a microscope Or even self application of the observer effect (aka, the Hysenberg Uncertainty Principle) - what I see isn't really me because self-examination changes me. 

Nor do I have the ability to fully understand the life of another person, who is similarly unique and full of mystery and cannot be fully known by themselves (or even less, by me) for the very same reasons. No matter how much I try to distill someone down into a simpler, more digestible package, they are far to complex for me to really understand. I dare not be so arrogant as to presume that I can really "know" what it's like to be that other person because my view is so limited and that inevitably shows the expanse of my foolishness.

My head hurts. 

This started with a glimmer of awareness that I have very little awareness at all. I guess it ends with something simplistic; perhaps even too simplistic for some people to accept. 

Humility. Trust. This whole line of thought takes me to those two places. If I am to serve those around me and my perception is so very limited, finite, then I have to trust that there is a larger perceptiveness available to me. Some One that accurately sees the other person and myself, knows us fully and loves us as we are. I also have to believe that I can trust Him to care for me and the ones I love. 

I find no other basis for having some hope, peace, and security in this life except that these things are true. I also see no other reason to hope that I might be of some good in this world except that He chooses to use me to accomplish those things. In and of myself, I am far too limited.

Asking the wrong question

This morning I read a section in a book that made me stop and ponder. Not just think, but really stop and consider the deeper implications of an idea.

Author Robert Benson (not the actor) wrote a book titled "Between the dream and the coming true" that contains a bit of wisdom I've tried, less aptly, to weave into my work with people struggling with job fit. He notes that too often we ask the wrong question in life. Rather than the common "what should I do?", he says we should be asking "what should I be?".

Benson goes on to make the point that what we do should really be a an extension or illustration of who we are. Of course, therein lies the rub. Too many of us still haven't attained a comfortable notion of who we are. We fashion our lives around some image of what we think we "Should" be, rather than a certainty about who we are.

I often tell my younger clients (I'm in my late 40s, so anyone under 35 is "young"), that there's a widespread myth that when we get to a certain age all of the pieces slip into place and we just know what we are to do and be. The majority of my clients are middle aged and older, so based on my experience there's no substance to that myth. Besides, I haven't found it to be true in my own life.

What is true is that some people settle into an unpleasant acceptance of being ill-fit into their life roles. They join the millions Thoreau spoke of as being a state of "quiet desperation". But there is another way.

An "other" focus

I've just come from a networking referral group that I was fortunate to lead. I say fortunate because it gives me an opportunity to teach what I believe is true.

I exist to serve others. It's counter-intuitive, especially in the business world, but it's a principle that makes for great tangible and intangible rewards in life. Doing something for truly benevolent reasons, just to see the other person better off comes back to you in ways most of us can't even imagine.

A great referral group is made of individuals who are deeply invested in seeing their referral partners' businesses flourish. A measure of the group's growth is how actively its members are out working as their partner's marketing department. In those situations members prove their character through their actions and that reinforces the commitment they have for each other.

Some would call this Karma, but I think its just a good rule for living. And it has another unintended benefit - better mental and emotional health. If I'm always focusing on bringing good things to the people around me, then I have less energy and time to focus on my own problems. In short, I'm less neurotic because I don't have the bandwidth to be so self-absorbed.

To find out more about my networking group go to this URL: http://www.referralexchangeorganization.net

The illusion of risk-free living

I've been impressed lately how often we have a goal of living risk free lives. We don't use those exact words, but use terms like "financial security", "high yield", "good prospect", and "passenger protection system". We build wealth, pad retirement funds, get good health insurance, buy "safer" cars, and many other things to help us move through and exit life with as few hiccups and bumps as we can. 

This isn't some kind of rant against the "evils of wealth", I wouldn't mind being in a position where I had the "discretionary income" I've read about. It's just that too often I think we live acutely tuned into the dangers that surround us and try to find ways to shield ourselves from those things that might upset our status quo or worse, leave us damaged or less well off. 

With few exceptions I lived most of my life in a risk-averse posture; making smart decisions, being safe, doing the expected thing. Although I might have sometimes worn the facade of a rebel and risk-taker, these were the things that really marked my life.  No skydiving, running full-out, and taking things to the edge of the envelope - I was stable, predictable, prudent, conservative and very, very vanilla in my convictions. The problem with that kind of living was that it never let me explore what else life might have to offer. 

Today I've found myself musing on Thoreau's reflection that "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation". I find myself very saddened by the number of my friends and acquaintances that have bought into the illusions of this world that avoiding discomfort is the goal. I wonder if avoiding discomfort is actually the greater risk because it places us in a position that prevent attaining the greater gains. Perhaps the thing that feels like a coccoon of security may actually be an air-tight body bag.

Today I'm choosing to live life in pursuit of the greater gain and turn a deaf ear to the siren song of security and the klaxon's of impending doom. Today I'm going to step out on the ragged edge and trust my fate to someone bigger than me.

Authentic personhood vs persona-hood

I'm fortunate to have a variety of clients and situations I'm serving right now.

I'm working with college freshmen (freshwomen?), homemakers returning the the workplace, people near retirement age but continuing to grow, managers, business owners, married couples, and on. The common denominator is that they all want to make a path that fits them and not the expectations placed on them by themselves and/or others. Being honest with yourself and trying to live out of an authentic you is a daily challenge, at least it is for me.

I want so badly to help people find and live out of the real them that I sometimes feel pressure to help make it happen. That can be a bad thing. A person has to want change him or her self or it's just another laminated persona they've taken on. On the other hand, if I get too invested in seeing change in someone, then I'm no longer an objective coach and run the risk of taking on a persona myself.

It's taken me years to get comfortable with who I am (and whose I am) and takes a daily reminder to get re-centered in that. I tried the route of being and performing the roles I thought were really me, and all I got was tired and confused. I don't want to live a persona anymore and I sure don't want to lead someone into the pursuit of something that's not real.