Tag Archives: Books

The Dark Side of Goal Setting

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Similar to the week focused on dreams, attention today turns to overdoing a good thing. I asserted that dreaming couldn’t be over done – go ahead and dream big! Goal setting, however, can have some drawbacks.

There exists a mound of research supporting the effectiveness of setting challenging and specific goals. That said, several researchers from Harvard Business School have outlined the darker side of goal setting in their working paper, Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting. And for the most part, I have to agree.

The writers assert that setting goals too specific or two challenging can result in inappropriate risk taking, unethical behavior, and narrow focus on quantity instead of quality, to name a few described side effects. Overall, these issues seem to arise more in a corporate setting where goals have been given to individuals versus the goals that we may set for ourselves.

Can we take goals too far on our own?

Unfortunately the answer is – of course we can. Particularly when we set too many goals at once, our focus tends to move to just one of our goals when we can’t focus on them all.

But hey, you say, I have a lot of stuff I want to get done!

Our goals become difficult to pursue when we set too many at once that require self-control. These goals use up our daily allotment of self-control (really, we only have so much according to research done by Roy Baumeister, described in Creating Your Best Life). If we have too many, we simply spread ourselves too thin.

So pick a goal or two – and make sure they are exactly what you want to achieve as you work your way toward reaching them. Goals are a powerful tool for each of us to use and understanding just how powerful they can be is an important piece to remember as we each work to define our goals.

Also good to remember is that the goals we reach and how we achieve them become a part of who we are. Because of this, the goal needs to be right and the path to get there needs to be upright and in line with the values of the goal setter.

Keeping all this in mind harnesses the power of setting challenging and specific goals.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Responding to Disappointment and Failure

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As you may have gathered from the posts I publish here, I’m a positive person. Because I focus on goals, taking risks, going for it, finding the silver lining, sharing compliments, being grateful, and so much more; I sometimes get comments from people that imply that my life is blessed, charmed, lucky – somehow disappointment and failure free.

Whatever.

I’m here to tell you that plenty of disappointments come through the Baana household. We disappoint one another. Friends and circumstances disappoint us. We live in Fargo so the weather regularly disappoints!

What might be different is how we react in our disappointment. Sure, at first we may rant, scream… even swear. Or pout. And then we continue to love each other, our friends, and even Fargo.

When it comes to circumstance, we need to move past the setback and move on. I’ve mentioned before that during these times my favorite question to ask is, “What have I learned from this experience?” As that question is answered, I see the reason behind the failure and figure out how to apply the learning going forward. At least I like to think that’s what happens. Sometimes the pouting goes on for a while before I get to that enlightened moment.

It goes back to what John C. Maxwell points out in his book Failing Forward: the key to overcoming disappointment/failure/set-backs doesn’t happen by changing circumstances. It begins with a personal desire to be teachable. It begins within us.

Continuing to paraphrase from the book… If you’re willing to do that, then you’ll be able to handle the disappointments, setbacks and failures that come your way.

Microsoft Lesson #4 – Enjoy the Ride

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As I mentioned on Monday, I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic which has sent me digging through pictures from work events during my years with Great Plains Software and Microsoft. Some pictures bring back memories of how hard we worked during that time – invariably followed with memories of the fun we had. Work hard, play hard, really has been the mantra.

I definitely enjoyed the ride. All the travel. All the picnics, baseball games and our unique-to-Fargo Holiday Wine and Cheese. All the amazing friends I’ve made along the way. Some of my best friends, in fact.

One habit that I picked up was to always plan time for friends when I travel – because there’s always someone I know where I land. Keeping in touch virtually is one thing but being able to enjoy each other’s time in person strengthens bonds and creates truly lasting relationships. I let people know that once they are in my circle of friends, I don’t easily let people go. They’ve been warned…

Work can be difficult and the politics can sometimes seem brutal, but enjoying the people around us is critical to how we feel about our work environment. A few years back, Gallup published a book about the need to have Vital Friends at work who support and help us and – I would interject – make sure we laugh and smile along the way.

Just like happiness, how much we enjoy our time at work is in our hands as well. We come with a daily attitude that lays the foundation for how the day will be; how hardships will be met.

Regardless of how hard the work may seem, I encourage you to choose to enjoy the ride.

Ready to Go

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Again for new readers: this week I am answering the question, “How did you decide to do this?” And THIS is my decision to leave my corporate job to begin my new business.

I knew I needed to make a change. I figured out the change I wanted to make. The educational and financial plans were being executed. The date of my departure from Microsoft was set in my head and even stated out loud to a few close friends.

And then my cheese moved.

Spencer Johnson’s parable kept coming to mind as circumstances dramatically shifted in my work life. My entire personal project plan was based on a September departure and then, in March, my boss announced his retirement. Regular readers will remember my thoughts about Bryan as he departed and he truly was a major component in why I was continuing my corporate career. His announcement was a trigger for me to reevaluate my own dates and when I did, I decided I was ready to go, too.

The groundwork I laid prepared me to be flexible when the opportunity presented itself. And once I decided, my plan turned into action.

I told my husband that I wanted to leave sooner versus later and he was supportive (whew!).

Before Bryan left, I told him my plan. He was happy for me.

Close friends and a few co-workers were in on my decision and they were excited on my behalf.

I kept saying it out loud. I changed my password to reflect the day I was leaving. I began to create my transition plan so that I could exit gracefully.

And then, I quit.

And now, I begin.

Coaching: Happiness #2

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Happiness is within your control. Research shows that there are several “happiness boosters” which are outlined in Creating Your Best Life and touched on briefly here over the last couple of weeks. They are: journaling, expressing gratitude, physical exercise, volunteer work and altruistic behavior, savoring happy memories, forgiving, applying your strengths, and meditation. As you think about your happiness and what you want to do to improve it, let’s close the week by moving through a mini coaching engagement. As always, I invite you to really think about and write down your answers.

Here we go…

As I mentioned last week, it’s important to know for yourself whether you truly believe happiness is within your control. If you still think that happiness happens outside of your control, I challenge you to pick one of the boosters and try it for a week or two to see what happens. Just a thought…

For those of you ready to dive in and try something new – which happiness booster triggered an interest for you? How excited are you to incorporate this activity into your life?

What will it take to make it a part of your daily routine? How can you change your environment to support your new commitment? Who can you ask to hold you accountable to do so?

How will you feel after you’ve been at your new activity a few weeks? What will show you that it has worked for you?

Personally, I’m committing to adding physical movement into each day. I’m working to find a few accountability partners. I also talked through various reminders I can place in my environment with my coach (yes, I have one!). Over the weekend I will put my little free-weights on my desk, sign up for an e-newsletter about exercise, and will bring my exercise ball into my office to substitute for my chair.

Wednesday’s post was definitely a pep-talk to get myself going! I hope you’re as excited as I am to get started on whatever it is that makes YOU happy.

Move Your Body!

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Today I’m writing this as a pep-talk to myself as well as to you. Physical exercise is a happiness booster. We all know it’s good for us to do, so why do so many of us avoid it?

“Exercise is one of the best ways you can improve multiple areas of your life, including your happiness. Regular exercise not only releases endorphins into the bloodstream; it also helps people socialize with other exercisers, lose weight, and enjoy the outdoors.”[Excerpt from Creating Your Best Life]

What jumps out at me in this passage is that “it also helps people socialize with other exercisers.” As I enjoyed coffee with a dear friend this morning, we talked about how we separate our time with friends and our exercise. What if we combined the two? Crazy thought!

The more I think about it and look back to when I did have some success in adding exercise to my schedule, there was a support system in place. Either my husband was exercising with me or I had a group of friends who was checking in with one another on email or I committed to a series of classes that I paid for in advance. There was accountability.

And so I think I’m ready to seek out someone or some structure to hold me accountable to get my body moving. It’s just too much to hope that I’ll be able to hold myself accountable!

Volunteering for Happiness

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“Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.”~Mother Teresa

In giving we do, in fact, receive.

According to the authors of Creating Your Best Life, “Researchers who studied adult men in Michigan found that those who volunteered their time, money, and energy felt happier than – and also outlived – their less altruistic peers.”

There have been times in my life when I’ve been much better at donating my time and giving to others and I need to find that place again. Let’s be honest, it’s not always easy figuring out what it is that we want to do, where we want to do it, and when. Having to make those choices can feel daunting which makes it pretty easy to put off making any decision at all.

And yet as I write this I’m remembering volunteering and how good it felt, particularly at times when the interaction with those in need was an immediate exchange and I could see the gratitude in their eyes; hear their direct thanks. Thinking about this makes me wonder what stops me and what I think it is that’s more important than this.

Knowing that it also contributes to my happiness… perhaps this will spur me into action.

Use Those Strengths!

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There’s no possible way to cover “applying your strengths” – another happiness booster outlined in Creating Your Best Life - in a single blog. As you may remember from the Discover Your Strengths post, strengths strengthen us and as a bonus, using them makes us happier.

One outcome of working within the area of your strengths is that you experience flow. Flow was first recognized by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and is described as “the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” (Wikipedia) You know it if you’ve been there. Maybe it happened when you were working on something and then – POW – suddenly it was dark out and you had no idea what the time was. That’s flow. And it makes you feel good.

Haven’t paid much attention to what your strengths are? Didn’t run right out and buy the books I recommended in the Discover Your Strengths post? OK, here’s another chance.

I’ve recently learned about the VIA Survey of Character Strengths survey; a simple and fairly quick assessment of strengths. Heress how you can take it for yourself – for FREE! Navigate to www.authentichappiness.org and register for a free account. Once registered, check out the questionnaires and find the VIA Survey of Character Strengths (there’s a lot of other great stuff there, too). Answer the questions and there, you’re done.

Now that you have your top five strength areas, here’s a little exercise you can do that Caroline Adams Miller had us do as a part of our class. Think about a time when you used them all at once. For some people, this is a sort-of “mountain top” experience. For me, all of my strengths are used when I facilitate. Everyone’s assessment will, of course, be unique.

I know it’s not Friday but the coach in me just has to ask one more question! How can you get more use out of your strengths?

Think about it and lets meet back here tomorrow…

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Remember When?

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With the Easter holiday came an opportunity to gather with family. These events always create memories (ours did!) and they also give us the chance to share and remember past memories as well.

Savoring happy memories is another happiness booster from Creating Your Best Life. When we were together this past Sunday, stories were told about Grandpa Joe, my son’s recent trip to Six Flags, and the details about my nephew’s wedding shower, to name a few. Next time we gather, we are sure to bring up that our puppy, Moose, grabbed a deviled egg from the serving plate as we gathered to say grace before our meal!

Remembering happy times simply makes us happy again. This is why we love photo albums and share our pictures online. This is why so much of our memory-making time with friends and family is spent reminiscing. This is why I recommended that you remember your very best times in “The Most Fun – EVER!” post last month.

Feeling a little down? Let your mind drift down memory lane. Pull out the albums. Click on “Photos” when you’re on Facebook. Call a friend and start the conversation with “remember when…”

I guarantee you’ll smile when you do.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Pursuing Happiness

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Is happiness something that you pursue? Or do you simply hope it happens to you?

If I look back and am honest, I think I’ve fallen more on the side of believing happiness happens. But lately I’ve been learning that happiness is something we have a lot of control over. All of us.

Caroline Adams Miller leads one of the classes I am currently enrolled in. She co-authored Creating Your Best Life with Dr. Michael B Frisch and the book is required reading for this particular class. To sum it up, it’s a book about being intentional about finding happiness which is, as I mentioned, shown through more and more research to be within our control.

As I finished reading though the section discussing proven happiness boosters – there are eight – I see about half that I’m doing; maybe not daily, but often. And there are four that I need to either pick up after a long hiatus, or simply start.

So this week I will start on the positive note of what I am doing to boost my happiness, beginning with journaling.

Augh, you say? Everyone says we should journal and it takes up so much time. Yeah, it does but yeah, it’s hugely beneficial.

Putting aside research – because you can do a quick search online and find plenty of material on that – I will tell you what journaling has done for me.

First, I note that I pick up the pen when I hit low-points in my life. I need to purge all that is going on in my head and when I do, I’m better for having done so.

Second, I find that I am more creative. Poems and ideas can be found in the margins as I brain-dump onto the pages.

And finally, I get the same benefit (maybe more) by blogging – my public journal. When I decided to blog I had no idea how much I’d enjoy it. I thought it might seem like work but really, it’s been fun and a great creative release.

So pick up a pen or start a new page in Word or OneNote and let it all out. It’s one thing to consider adding to your daily routine if you’re looking to increase the happiness in your life.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Add Some White Space

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White space. Do you have any on your calendar?

Or are you constantly running from one meeting to another; one event to another?

More importantly, when white space shows up on your calendar, how does it make you feel? Do you welcome and embrace the downtime? Or do you see it as space that needs to be filled?

We must quiet our minds and give ourselves time to think. More often than not, to really make it happen, this time must be scheduled. It must also be – and I don-t think this word is too strong – sacred. Uninterrupted. Yours alone.

In Creating a Charmed Life, Victoria Moran advocates “taking ten” each day, stating that “the surest way to access [your] energy… is through silence, through taking a specified amount of time each day for mediation, prayer, journal writing, or inspirational reading.” Later she continues, “Even if your busyness tells you that you can”t afford to take quiet time, know that you can”t afford not to.”

Elaine St. James devotes the chapter “Do Nothing” to a similar concept in Simplify Your Life as well. She shares that learning to do nothing is actually a skill that must be learned; that it isn”t as easy as one might think. Different from Moran, she suggests this time be without books or writing and that “the idea is just to be with whatever is going on in your head without having to do anything about it.”

On a bigger scale, Bill Gates has famously taken time away from work, family and friends for his twice yearly Think Week. Michael Karnjanaprakorn’s blog on his own Bill Gates inspired personal retreat outlines how the practice of time away, alone, can change perspective and even career direction.

I’ve been good at taking my vacation time but I’m not always very good at sitting still with myself – even for just the ten minutes that Moran suggests, let alone a whole week away.

But I’m thinking it might be time to make time for some precious white space on my calendar.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Don’t Look Back

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It might come as a surprise, but there are times when I’m at a loss as to what I’m going to write about in the week ahead. I’ve brainstormed a list a mile long but I have to feel it, too. So most of my topics haven’t come from that list at all…

It was during this weekend ritual of deciding where I will go for the week that I decided to go back to my “morning pages” from when I went through The Artist’s Way a few years ago. It’s sort of a journal; sort of a brain dump. I thought something from my past would inspire me.

Wow. No.

I should have known. That time in my life was more of a time of recovery than a time of inspiration. But I had forgotten because I’d already rewritten history.

As Sara L. Orem, Jacqueline Binkert and Ann L. Clancy discuss in Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change:

Time is a shared perception of reality that can differ depending on culture, society, and family. Individuals experience time differently depending on circumstances. Because it is subject to reinterpretation, the past is as dynamic as the present and future. [Italics mine]

You see, the past can be rewritten. And when it should be and has successfully been revised, don’t unnecessarily journey there again. In this instance, there’s no benefit to me if I relive the stress and unhappiness of that time in my life. The rewritten version draws on the parts where I was content and happy – even if those moments were fewer than I now remember.

Dredging up stressful memories creates stress. Remembering the good stuff helps us to move forward.

Don’t look back.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Looking Outward

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Fridays here are usually when you are challenged to be introspective. Since this week has been out of sync with the usual format, I thought I’d continue that break and encourage a look outward instead.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend our local “Recital with a Cause,” a showcase of brilliant young musicians supporting Rotary International’s Polio Plus. When I told my husband where I was headed he came back with “Polio?” Yes, polio. According to the event material, polio is still active in Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan. As long as children in those countries are susceptible to the disease, our children here continue to need polio vaccinations as well.

Seeing Pakistan in the list, I was reminded of Greg Mortenson’s book Three Cups of Tea and decided that this would be the book to share as I close out my book recommendations this week. For those unfamiliar with the story, Three Cups of Tea tells the tale of how Mortenson, an experienced climber, got lost in Pakistan as he came off an unsuccessful climb of K2. The hospitality and generosity of the people he met in Korphe inspired him to return the favor by building a school for the community.

After a series of significant hardships, Mortenson was successful in building the school in Korphe and then continued his efforts to build several schools across Pakistan and Afghanistan. If ever there was a doubt that one person could make a difference, Three Cups of Tea proves that it is definitely possible.

Nearly every week each of us is approached to support a cause of one sort of another; charities that are local or global focused on helping children, the homeless, the hungry, or the helpless. Sometimes the volume of requests can be overwhelming because there is simply no way to support all the worthy causes from just one pocketbook.

So don’t. I challenge you to pick one, maybe two and adopt these as “your” cause(s). Going back to simplicity from earlier this week, knowing where you’ve decided to place your time, money and heart simplifies saying “no” to other worthy organizations. It also provides focus so that you can learn more about your cause and find the most effective way that you can make a difference in the lives of others (or in the care of animals, the environment or preserving our historical landmarks).

Of course, if your adorable nephew approaches you to subscribe to magazines in support of his football team, you can cave in on that. However, I think you’ll find that having charities of choice will help ease your conscience when throwing away requests that arrive in the mail and declining random appeals on the phone. And you will feel more connected when you focus your efforts on a choice you’ve made deliberately and with purpose.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Wander Woman

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Today I will neglect the men in this audience as I tell you about Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction. This is a fairly recent publication and so a very recent read for me. I have found myself recommending it a number of times and so I suspect the impression it made on me will stay for a while.

I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Marcia Reynolds speak a few months ago. Until then I hadn’t heard of her or the book, but I knew I had to get a copy when I heard her speak about women who sounded an awful lot like me. Here I thought I was the only one who had jumped from one career opportunity to the next without a lot of thought to what would come after that – or what the ramifications would be.

Turns out there are enough of us out there to be studied and written about. Who knew?

Beyond the gift of now knowing that I am not alone, Wander Woman walked me through steps to achieve intentional transformation and how to wander on purpose. Of course, simply reading the book didn’t do this – working through it did. This is not a “quick read.” I would read a chapter then put the book down for a few days while I worked through the suggestions Dr. Reynolds provided at the end of each section.

Doing so provided clarity to me on where I want to wander next and in the future. If a book can deliver that, in my opinion it’s a book worth reading. And perhaps re-reading down the road.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Discover Your Strengths

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I notice a trend that my favorite books are from quite a few years back. As such, I hesitated to post about this one. But to leave it off would be completely disingenuous as it truly made a significant impact on the way I approach self-development.

A decade after the release of Now, Discover Your Strengths it turns out that there are still some of you who are focusing on weaknesses to improve instead of strengths you can build on. This means that this book – or later iterations on the same theme found in StrengthsFinder 2.0, Strengths-Based Leadership, Go Put Your Strengths to Work and others – are still highly relevant today.

Improving on a weakness can only get me to mediocrity. Chances are very, very good that I will not improve to the point to make a former weakness a strength. Over time and with a lot of work maybe… but probably not.

When I have taken the time to unearth and understand my strengths and then nurtured and applied them to my work, the benefits have been boundless. What I’m good at turns into what I’m great at. I enjoy what I’m doing. Others see the results. It’s good all around.

I don’t remember it being in the book so I want to add here an additional point that Marcus Buckingham made when I had the opportunity to see him speak a few months ago. Paraphrasing perhaps, he said that our strengths strengthen us; our weaknesses weaken us. That means I can do something well and it can still be a weakness if it depletes me. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? We all have those things that we do well and hate. That, dear reader, is not a strength.

So get the book, take the assessment, discover your strengths. You’ll be glad you did.

NOTE: Do not buy these books used. Each of them comes with a code to take the StrengthsFinder Assessment. If you get it used, the code will not work for you.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Simplify Your Life

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Simplify Your Life by Elaine St. James changed how I look at the world and the decisions I make yet today. Several suggestions have taken me until now to implement, 17 years after the original publication. And some of it I still haven’t been able to pull off (for example, my mortgage is not paid off).

I’m continually amazed at how much stuff, clutter and obligations I still have even after taking a considerable amount of this book to heart. So for those of you who have never thought to simplify… Wow, you must have a lot of stuff and a lot going on!

There are chapters of this book that have become personal “rules” of mine over the years. I’ve stopped the junk mail, dropped down to two credit cards (and plan to go to just one soon), and resigned from organizations whose meetings I dread. Keeping it simple weighed in heavily when we decided to live where we do – small house, close to work, with lawn-care and snow-removal taken care of through our association. And I am not afraid to say, “no.”

Given that it was published in 1994, there are a few dated chapters… Get Rid of Your Car Phone comes to mind. But the spirit of the idea played into our decision when we dropped the phone line in our home because everyone had mobile phones. Technology has shifted us to the opposite side of the spectrum.

I’ve bought this book as a gift over and over again as recently as this past Christmas season and like I said with A Whole New Mind yesterday, I think I’m putting it in the re-read pile so that I can, as Chapter 29 suggests, review my life again to keep it simple.

But I’m keeping the damn boat.

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

Favorites by Daniel Pink

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This week I’m going to deviate from my usual form and instead will share a few of my favorite books with you. Anyone who has coached with me – or even has much of a regular conversation with me – knows that it’s pretty common to walk away with a book recommendation. My challenge here will be to figure out how to pare back to fit my favorites into just five days. I have so many!

Please keep in mind that I’m not a book reviewer… I’m just sharing what has made a difference for me.

The work of Dan Pink has been resurfacing in my life as of late, so I will begin with two of his books: A Whole New Mind and his more recent publication, Drive.

The idea behind A Whole New Mind is that we need to use our whole brain in business. So much value has been placed on left-brain thinking that we collectively have neglected the right side of our brains. Leaders now need to marry the two – we can’t just be good at the numbers going forward. Bring in the creativity!

Pink introduces the six senses of design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning as concepts to better engage our whole mind. This book is great because it is incredibly actionable, ending each section with suggestions to engage the right side of the brain; ranging from saying thank-you and listening to great symphonies to more robust challenges like playing right-brain games and much suggested reading.

For me, the game changer here is the all-up idea that creativity is important at work; even in roles where it seems like left-brain activity is what is most rewarded. In practice I’ve found that using our whole minds at work creates an environment that is more enjoyable as well.

I’ve got to go re-read this one! Thumbing through it I’m remembering how much I learned and how much I’ve forgotten (of course).

Drive is a pretty controversial read on motivation. I read it, loved it, and thought everyone else would too. However, I’ve recently been in a group discussion on the topic where not everyone thought it made sense. As Pink states in the book, this research hasn’t always been well received historically. What is the controversy? That the old carrot-and-stick approach to motivation doesn’t work. Period. Well, I know it doesn’t work for me – so I guess that’s why I didn’t find it all that surprising. If you don’t have time to read the book, there’s this great video available on YouTube – eleven minutes long but worth the time to view.

If you read either book on my recommendation, I’d love to hear what you think!

Find me on Facebook: Coach Carolyn

A Meeting Full of Love

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What if we brought love to the workplace? Sound a little crazy? Let’s explore…

One of my top values is my faith. When taking the Strength Finder assessment I uncovered that one of my top five strengths is Belief. A former coach of mine challenged me to bring that strength to work. I just couldn’t see how that would work out…

Until now.

Last week I finished reading Extreme Facilitation by Suzanne Ghais and Chapter 11 – The Spiritual Capacity: Helping Groups Transcend Their Limitations – has really stuck in my brain and spent some time spinning there. Ghais asserts that most of us share a moral compass that includes a foundation in love – people from every major religion as well as agnostics and atheists, too. So what if we brought love to the workplace?

I’ve been thinking about that. And the more I think about it, the more I think I actually do bring love to the workplace, as well as many other places that I go. What does that mean? For me, I’m seeing it this way right now:

Come into meetings assuming that we are all there with good intentions.

Greet people warmly and sincerely with a smile.

Listen when people speak and make every effort to not talk over them or interrupt.

Don’t argue; seek to understand.

Follow through on commitments.

Be trusting and trustworthy.

This list could go on and on, now that I’ve started to create it. Feels a little less like a crazy idea and more like a meeting you might want to attend, doesn’t it?

 

Love is a Commitment

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It’s Valentine’s Day and so our thoughts turn to love…

My husband and I are high school sweethearts and, with him a year older than I am, we “suffered” through the long-distance-relationship that was his freshman year. This was a time, my young readers, when a long-distance call was expensive and mail was actual mail. This required a commitment!

I diligently wrote to him every day and he wrote to me too… with less frequency (see above mentioned freshman year). I understood; however, I remember a time when I must have been pretty frustrated with the lack of correspondence from Grand Forks. On this day I sent a postcard that read, “Love is a commitment not a feeling. Where’s my mail?”  And then I quit writing until I received the hoped for letter. The silent treatment has always worked for me with him!

Of course, I said it to make a point and more importantly to get him to sit down and think about us for a moment when his life was so full of things far away from me. At our young age, I think we were particularly blessed to know that love is indeed a commitment and that we needed to work beyond the feeling (wonderful as it is) to make a life together. I guess we sort of understood that, as Gary Chapman shares in his book The 5 Languages of Love, the average in-love experience lasts two years. After that, it needs to be something more.

But commitment seems a little like work, doesn’t it? Sort of boring, maybe? Certainly not romantic! At first blush, perhaps. Then I started thinking…

This commitment makes me feel content.

This commitment makes me feel happy.

It makes me feel joyful, secure, adored, and delighted.

Above all, this commitment that I share with my husband makes me feel loved. And a commitment like that is more romantic than any feeling I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.

The Courage to Talk Straight

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Taking risks and making big decisions go hand-in-hand, right? Lately I’ve been rethinking that. You might look at the career decisions I’ve made and think I have little aversion to risk. But that’s simply not true; or at least not in every instance.

What might look like smaller, less challenging issues actually get to me more than contemplating those bold choices. In Stephen M.R. Covey’s book The Speed of Trust, he describes people who build high-trust relationships with others as having the ability to “talk straight.” You know… they tell the truth, they’re honest, that sort of thing. I do those things… it’s the next thing that gets me: they let people know where they stand. Oooof! That one can be hard for me.

My intention is not to be dishonest, to act without integrity, or to distort facts. However, I will quietly keep my mouth shut when topics turn to a subject where I disagree with the majority in the conversation. I imagine this goes back to a history where my unfiltered statements hurt others and damaged relationships. The pendulum has swung to the other side where Id rathe’r have you guess where I stand, maybe even assume I agree with you, just so I won’t hurt our friendship in the long run.

Sounds like that is a reasonable survival tactic, doesn’t it? Well, no. In doing this, I’ve found I keep others from knowing me and leave people with a false – or at least ambiguous – impression of who I am. Letting people know me feels risky. Way riskier than changing jobs, going back to school, or getting married at 19.

And so I am beginning to let go of my protective barrier, bit by bit, conversation by conversation. According to Covey, my lack of courage is an integrity issue (ouch!) and having it described that way motivates me to flex my courage muscle. Now I’m taking little, daily risks to let people know the real me.

I hope they continue to like what they see.