Rejection is protection!

What?Rejection is protection! How can that be?  This is a saying in 12-step programs.  When someone rejects you, or your proposal, it is actually a sort of "whew...dodged that bullet!" because even though you wanted "it" or wanted a relationship with this person, your IDEA of what you would actually receive in the bargain was just that:  YOUR IDEA.  Not the reality of what would occur.This is one of the hardest passages of adulthood.  Recognizing that the voice inside our head, the strategic mind that tells us what it thinks is good and bad, is actually not what is wisest in us.  There is another voice, "that small still voice within" that knows more but often scares that strategic mind and so it shuts that voice down.  I have a long time friend, going on 3 decades.  She is a recovering alcoholic.  She told me once that first time she tried a 12 step program it didn't work.  The step (maybe first?) that asks you to surrender to your higher power?  Well, she really believed that "She was her higher power".  And I don't blame her.  First of all she might be the most competent person I know, and I know so many, that this is actually a huge complement.  Second, she grew up where there was no reason to trust any adult around her and every reason to assume she was the only person that was for her.  The only person she could trust and the only person who would protect her, was herself.But when she said it ("I always thought I was my higher power.")  my first thought was "She is just like me."  I too find it easier to trust my idea of what should happen instead of trusting "life" or "God" or even that small still voice deep within me that whispers, maybe it is better this way.  My strategic mind hates that voice.  It doubles down on its list of why things should be the way it thinks they should.For most of us our idea about a job, a marriage, really any endeavor we wish for ourselves never materializes that way.  It is always something different.  Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always different.  So silly me, why do I really think I know what is best?  So, picture me raising my right hand and swearing:  "When the "no" comes, on any front, I resolve to recall all the times a "yes" made me unhappy and say "I probably just dodged a bullet, and I don't know why yet."  Care to join me?  

"When you are very sad, the only thing to do is to go learn something."

"When you're very sad, the only thing to do is to go learn something."  Merlin to Arthur in The Once and Future King.  (Full passage below).For those of you reading this who are intimately familiar with loss and sadness right now, this is particularly for you.   But it is for the rest of us too.  For those of us who are sad about the world, or about health issues, or a lost love, or maybe just "what might have been" we need to learn something too.  Why does learning help? I will answer that with a story.  When my 89 year old father died about 10 years ago he didn't give us much warning.  On Thursday we were told his lab results and he was gone by Saturday night.  My mother had a very difficult time processing that her husband of 50+ years was gone and to compound matters, 30 days later she was told she was in the early stages of dementia.  When it rains it pours.  AND it surely did on our sweet mom.My parents history was complicated as all marriages are, in one particular way.  My mother had a long list of "honey do's" that my ordinarily kind and sweet father adamantly refused to do.  Go figure!  So my wise and loving brother who was equally stunned by the loss of his father and best friend came over every week for two years and took something off the list of "honey do's".  And then when it was complete, he started coming up with things to create, to add to her home that he suspected she would really enjoy.  My mom never truly fell apart in the ways we all thought she would and certainly had every right too.  I believe the love and attention she received from my sisters and I was a part of that but I truly know in my heart that having something new to look forward to every week told her hurting soul, that while life held loss and endings, it was not just that, it also held discovery and beginnings.  My brother was as wise as Merlin, in the face of the biggest ending in my mother's life, those constant new beginnings helped her through that very rocky passage.  So too with learning something new.  It fills you with beginnings and with discovery.  Learning is not just good for us as we age because it keeps our minds agile it also keeps our hearts and spirits young.From the Master himself, in his own words:  “The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.” ― T.H. White, The Once and Future King  

"There's that feeling you get when you see something that you don't understand..."

"There's that feeling you get when you see something that you don't understand the origin of ... wonderment."The Brooklyn artist Swoon was quoted as saying this in the New York Times and when I read it so many things came together for me.

• Why adults and adolescents love small children.
• Why it can be difficult for us as adults, to be curious in the face of the unknown.  The uncertain.
• And why poetry so often appeals to us, especially at the most difficult times in our lives.

I think most of us "smart and savvy" (and maybe a bit world weary) adults do just the opposite of wonderment in the face of what we don't understand.  We don't get curious, we don't allow ourselves to be drawn toward the unknown, instead we just shut down and/or armor up.  We assume something negative and turn away.  What poetry does (think Robin Williams in the Apple commercial) is usher us into a larger world where wonderment is more easily accessible.  It helps us make or see things whole, including our own difficulties and our own lives.Of course, I realize there is real danger in the world.  My goodness look at the front page of any newspaper around the world.  Death and disease are everywhere.  On a large scale the world is beautiful and terrifying.  All the more reason for us to seize moments of wonderment.  But to grab hold of them we most notice them first. Let's start by looking close to home, people we know or situations at work.  When a colleague or loved one says something that I don't understand the origin of what do I do?  Too often I tell a story, make meaning based on my past experience and the culture I am part of ... but what might happen if instead I go to "wonderment".  To wonder and awe as in ..."that makes no sense to me, I wonder what s/he is seeing or experiencing that I am not."  Can you sense, that in that moment we are drawn in, we are drawn closer, just like a child to the first doodle bug they see? We all have this capacity.  We were born with it.  But it gets covered over with our preference or our habits of predict and control.  For just today, instead of making meaning, good or bad, in the face of something or someone we don't understand, why not try wonderment, real open hearted interest and curiosity about what we don't know?  Let's enter our beginner's mind or "don't know mind" and see what happens.   

Are you in the "real" conversation?

This is truly the 64,000 question.  Most of us engage the conversation we know how to have but often that is not the "real" conversation.  The conversation that you don't know how to have, is typically a "real" conversation, it's  the conversation you MUST have to move forward.   Other questions that are related to this one are:

• Are you doing your top priority work first or do you tackle the things that you know how to do easily first?
• Are you majoring in minors?
• Who inside you determines the focus and the direction of your energy expenditure during a day?  Is it your protective and scarcity/anxiety/stressed based self or is it your aspirational self?

Since our organizational and our personal lives are  a series of conversations day in and day out, if we aren't having the conversations that are most important (even if  hard), we can expect the following:

1. Decreased passionate engagement and satisfaction in our work and life.
2. Decreased energy, efficiency and productivity.
3. Decreased positive personal and organizational results.

But when we do have the "real" conversations, the ones we MUST have, we can expect the following:

1. Increased engagement for ourselves and others.
2. Increased connection  to our colleagues and ourselves.
3. Increased sense of empowerment, for playing big and not small.
4. Increased efficiency, energy and productivity.
5. Increased positive personal and organizational results.

If you agree you want to have the "real" conversation, the one you MUST have, the first step is COURAGE.   And where do you find that courage?  For many of us it is found in reconnecting with our personal mission and purpose for our work and our lives.  We find it through our hearts and what matters to us.  Did you know that the root of the word Courage is Coeur for heart.  Ask yourself:

1. In my moments of "Flow" in my work and my personal life, what is it that excites and compels me?  What gives me energy?
2. Why  does my work matter to me?  To others?

The second step is COMMITMENT and action.  After you have brought to the forefront of your heart and mind the meaning and purpose of your life and your work, then make a list of the conversations you are avoiding, including any with yourself.  Rank order the list from easiest to most difficult. Then, make a commitment to go after them one at a time, until you have made it through the list.  Starting with the easiest allows you build on your successes and achieve positive momentum to continue to engage the "real" conversations that arise in all of our lives.The third step is to APPRECIATE and acknowledge yourself for shifting avoidance to positive forward moving action.   

"I am from ... "

Anthropologist and psychologist Mary Pipher gets credit for this exercise:   These “I am from” poems are an identity exercise.  They are poems that includes something about place, religion, and food that trace back to where/how you are “from.”  I chose to do this for my birthday this year, in honor of my mother whom I buried last year and all of the women and men I am from.  Also in honor of the midwest, particularly Wisconsin where I lived my first 30 years.  I am a woman who did not easily fit the land and people I am from.  I loved them but my latin soul, was a bit too expressive and wild for the natural vibe of Wisconsin.  I moved to Texas.  Now, at a distance I can truly see what I left behind in Wisconsin.  In Texas I could realize the positive side of the things that made me a "out of place".  My exuberant soul and affinity for loud, joyful laughter.  My tendency to always go for  "more" and for the "fun" option no matter the cost, liked Texas a bit better.  But in truth, I am both of these cultures.  Writing this poem made me so grateful for all of me, for all of my roots, Wisconsin and Texan.  I, like the skies of a Dallas sunset over Stevens Park Golf Course, dream big and believe anything is truly possible.  God Bless all of America and all aspects of our unique and wondrous selves.  The Exercise:Start each sentence with I am from...and write whatever comes to mind.  You might want to consider, place, food and religion...anything really that makes your roots distinct.I am from army blankets ...as forts...as  July 4th picnic blankets ...as warmth in Wisconsin winters.I am from Bob Wonders and Mary Skotske who recycled, resused and "made due".I am from prevent, control and tame.I am from Friday night lake perch tavern fish fries.I am from sheepshead, bar dice and bingo.I am from meat and potatoes ... chuck stew and mashed potatoes.I am from the place where ordinary and predictable are good and where wild and random are bad.I am from brooms, dust pans and carpet sweepers  in motion everyday but Sundays.I am from gray, low skies, gray homes, gray buildings and steel colored lakes and rivers.ANDI am from where miracles are believed to be real.  As real as daily rosaries.I am from damped down; cards held close the the vest.I am from ready help, if you ask for it.  Sometimes even when you don't but it is obvious you need it, and we wouldn't offend by the offering.I am from people who stop for strangers.I am from regular or whatever is the opposite of distinct and particular.I am from next door to Prairie Home Companion, which is a little too flashy for my people.I am from navy blue, gray and tan as colors not as neutrals.I am from "people are assumed to be good and decent until they prove otherwise".I am from the first state to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation...WISCONSIN!I am from a place where progress is slow on small things and fast on human rights ... on the things that endure.I am from love whispered not shouted.  Loyalty ever present but not on display.  And where prayer and religion were private affairs.I am from a land where people are trusted until proven otherwise. This poem is offered In honor of Bob and Mary Wonders and the family they created, the good they did and the values they passed on to their children.Nancy Claire Wonders