Resenting F. Scott Fitzgerald

I recently read a lovely book by Fredrik Backman titled, Britt-Marie Was Here.  It is the story of a woman who, after forty years of living for others (her husband and children), begins in her early 60’s to make her own choices. The book is a powerful description of all the reasons we choose to limit ourselves. In Britt-Marie’s case, it is believing her exacting parents when they point out all of her faults. Then it is her marriage and how she lets her husband’s and children’s criticism of her social skills, cooking, parenting and almost everything else define her most significant skill – cleaning.

Britt-Marie’s identity becomes the one who cleans. Until a bold, desperate step outside her comfort zone reveals she has other talents for which strangers appreciate her such as courage, perseverance, integrity, tolerance, reading people, compassion, generosity, humility, and coaching soccer which she knows nothing about. This step changes her forever as well as the strangers she encounters.

It’s easier to read about someone else’s life and see how they’ve put themselves in a box that becomes increasingly hard to escape. It’s not as easy to examine our own lives. I can say that my identity has not been reduced to cleaning. But I’ve also tried to please parents and spouses and have a block against dancing due to being asked to leave my ballet class at five years old. And there are countless other “truths” I’ve told myself that have kept me from being bold.

I must be attracting these messages. It’s probably no accident that just as I finished Britt-Marie (who is the same age as me), I saw this quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald posted on Facebook.

Then this last week, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau, an article highlighted this quote:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Thanks, Scott and Henry David. Just what I wanted. A reminder that every day I have the opportunity to challenge the assumptions I’ve made about myself and the boxes I’ve put myself in.  That every day I can, as Fitzgerald says, choose what to change and what to stay the same. Choose to be startled. And feel things I’ve never felt before. And be bold and unafraid.

As Backman writes near the end of Britt-Marie Was Here, “At a certain age, almost all the questions a person asks himself are about one thing: how should you live your life?”

For all of us, that “certain age” is now.

Try It:

• List 5 “truths” about yourself. They can be positive or negative. Where did these “truths” come from? How have they helped you and enriched your life? How have they limited you? If you were to choose one “truth” to let go of, which one would it be? What might be possible if you no longer held that “truth” about yourself? How might you let it go?
• What’s one of your key strengths? Where did that come from? How have you cultivated it? How has it worked for and against you in the past? What other strengths of yours might you choose to cultivate and use in place of your key strength? What might that offer you? How scary is that? Why?
• Every morning for the next week ask yourself: how should I live my life? Keep a journal about what answers come up for you and to what extent you feel you’re living deliberately. After a week, look at what’s come up and what, if any, changes you’ve made.

 

 

Stories vs Facts

Some readers may be familiar with the old TV show Dragnet starring Jack Webb as Detective Sargent Joe Friday and some may know the movie of the same name with Dan Akroyd. In this police show, Joe Friday is famous for saying when interviewing witnesses,

In his investigations, Joe didn’t want any guesses, or interpretations, or theories. He didn’t want to hear the witness’s story about possible motivations for the crime or the suspect’s history in the neighborhood. Joe Friday just wanted the facts. What was the masked man wearing? Exactly what did she say, not what did she mean? How far from the victim was he standing? He didn’t care that the suspect “looked threatening”, he only cared about what observable behaviors the suspect was displaying. Did he raise his right hand to hit her? Did he lean forward and shout so someone a block away could hear? Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.

Facts are the observable behaviors or specifically what happened in a situation. Stories are the meanings we make out of them based on our assumptions, or world view, our beliefs, and our values.

Here’s an example. The first time I went to Paris, a number of Americans warned me about how rude Parisians were. One example was restaurant servers. Americans described them as rude, inattentive, abrupt, unfriendly, unhelpful. These are all stories – interpretations. They must be stories we Americans make up because I know Parisians who go out for dinner all the time and don’t experience servers this way. Americans have explained to me “it’s how they are with Americans”. But as Americans, our paradigm, how we see service, is different from Parisians. We tip extra for servers who introduce themselves, make small talk with us, cater to our individual food ordering whims, hover to ensure we have everything we need. In Paris, servers want to make themselves invisible so as not to interrupt diners’ experiences. They believe they are there to get great food on the table for you so you can enjoy your meal and company. So, they don’t feel a need to pretend to establish a relationship with the diner. They are professionals. They are invisible. Now, obviously, this isn’t always true. Parisians certainly enjoy their favorite cafe where they are known and servers might live down the street from them. But, it’s the difference in how Americans and Parisians see the role and job of a server. And in Paris, if we don’t get someone playing a familiar role, we label that server as rude and unhelpful.

In my youth, I had women friends who hung their whole assessment about the potential of a new relationship on whether the man called several days before to arrange a date or whether he called the day of the date. For many of them, they assumed the man who called Saturday morning was just looking for something to fill up the evening when in reality the man woke that morning knowing the only thing he wanted to do that night was see this new woman.

Two individuals or groups of people can observe exactly the same behavior and come up with completely different interpretations based on completely different assumptions. As humans, we are meaning-making machines. Larry Wilson in his book Play to Win says we’re all graduates of MSU. No, not Michigan or Missouri State University. We are graduates of Making Stuff Up. We observe something and we make judgements about it not based on reality but based on how we see the world.

In every situation, in order to be active learners and continue to grow, we have to separate what are the facts in the situation and what are the stories or meaning we’re making of the facts? We can’t change the facts – or others’ behavior, but we can challenge, question, explore, and learn from the meanings we assign to those facts.
Try It:

• See a movie with a friend then talk about what you saw, what you each liked, disliked, and who in the film or what circumstances did you each connect with. Where were your perspectives the same? Where were they different?
• Take a controversial subject like an alleged police brutality event or the Affordable Healthcare Act. Read a number of accounts or opinions about the subject. What are the actual, irrefutable facts in the situation? How do you know? What are the different stories surrounding this subject? How are they different? What meanings, interpretations, assumptions might be influencing that account or opinion?
• Describe a recent life event that surprised you. Why did it surprise you? What were the facts? What were your assumptions and meanings that might have gotten in the way of you seeing the facts or interpreting them differently?
• What have you learned from this process? How might that influence you in the future? Why?

 

 

 

 

The Downside of “Doing”

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that “doing” – or taking action – doesn’t always “do” it. It doesn’t always solve the problem. It doesn’t always produce the best result. Sometimes it just feels like an endless stairway, exhausting me and leading nowhere.

 

 

Rather than endless doing, sometimes it’s who we’re being that solves the problem, produces a great result, or enhances the quality of our life.

I’m not always good at distinguishing between Doing and Being. I am a problem-solver. Show me a challenge and I’ll get out my paper and pencil and get to work. I will define the problem. I will work to determine the root cause. I will research the best approach. I will make decisions and establish a plan. I will work the plan. And sometimes what I’m doing makes no impact, no impact at all, on the problem. So, what do I do? I devise alternative approaches, revise the plan, and tackle the tasks. And the problem continues.

The problem continues because I’m only Being one way. I’m being a problem solver. And sometimes the challenge cannot be solved. Sometimes it can only be experienced. The problem may require me to Be different.

A simple yet profound example of this was my friend Kim who volunteered to run a development department of a non-profit for a year while they hired a director. The department was in disarray, systems not working, cumbersome processes, and mediocre results. Her first week most of the staff quit, having had enough of a non-functioning organization.

Kim is a problem-solver. She’s a doer. She can diagnose what’s going on, innovate, initiate change, and get things so they’re working again. Until she encountered this mess. Without the people, she and a few others were trying to just keep up rather than solve problems. She had management and budget constraints. Her plans weren’t working. So, she made other plans and tried to work those, always bumping up against the same barriers. She made plans to get around or through the barriers and those plans didn’t work. She was a Doing machine working 14 hours a day and not feeling like she was making any progress at all.

Kim is also an active learner and she tried not only new plans and solutions but different approaches and always felt thwarted. Doing wasn’t doing it.

It took about 8 out of her 12 month commitment to realize that who she was in this role was a human “doing” rather than a human “being”.  There was almost a loss of humanity. Kim had to start looking at how she was getting in her own way and holding herself to unreasonable standards. She started focusing less on the problems and more on the possibilities of the future. She began creating rather than fixing. Kim learned to relax more and take the small wins while continuing to address the problems. She breathed deeper, set constructive boundaries about how much effort to dedicate, and enjoyed the process of tough change. She was able to wrangle the critical pieces, hire good staff, and let go of her addiction to control.

I often stop myself and think of Kim’s transformation and what she gained by Being rather than Doing. It’s still not easy for me to balance and align my actions with my intentions and values. But when I am able to strike that balance, I’m much more productive, get better results, and feel better about myself and my challenges.

Try It:

• Ask yourself what one problem have you been trying to solve for a while without making much progress. It could be a relationship with your teenager, or a pesky project, or your health and fitness, or that junk room that seems to get worse and worse. What are you doing about it? How’s that working for you? Who are you Being related to this problem? Are you stopped by fear or resentful emotions? Are you shaming yourself for something? Are you avoiding? Are your standards unreasonable? Or not high enough? Are you clear about what you want?
• Next, instead of focusing on the problem, focus on the outcome you want to produce. How does that feel?
• Once you’re clear about the outcomes you want (and they are reasonable and attainable), ask yourself who you need to be in order to have what you want. Do you need to be brave, organized, committed, joyful, competent? Do you need to be patient, empathetic, trusting, understanding?
• Then try it. Be different when approaching the situation. See what it opens up for you and how it influences what you’re seeing. Keep notes and share your results on What are you learning – Action

Adventure

Recently I visited Asheville, North Carolina for a wedding and wandered into Malaprop’s bookstore. There, on a set of shelves, I encountered a small challenge that sparked huge realizations for me.

I found a shelf of anonymous books wrapped in brown paper with several words describing what lay inside. Some books had words like “Fantasy”, “Historical”, “Family”, and “Opinion”. And some had words like “Delicious”, “Searing”, “Stifling”, “Raunchy”, “Luminous”, and “Commanding”. No hints about what lay beneath the paper.

My first impulse was to reach out for them. If I couldn’t rip them open, I could drink in the vivid descriptions and lay the books in my hands to measure size and heft. But I stopped myself. Which book was the right book? Maybe I should reach out for a wrong book?  What if I didn’t like it? What if I’d read it already? What if, when I got it to the register, it was a first edition that would cost $120?

Immediately, Emily Andersson came to mind. My friend Emmi is currently in Vietnam in the middle of a 15 month journey that has taken her to Eastern Europe, Thailand, and other countries I can’t remember. She is 20 years old and traveling on her own. A couple of weeks ago she posted on Facebook that she had bought a motorcycle….

…….. which she didn’t know how to ride, had packed her few clothes and belongings onto the back, and was headed out of Hanoi to spend the next several months and 5,000km down the Ho Chi Minh trail on her way to Cambodia and Laos. As she launched herself out of her comfort zone, she admitted being terrified but “addicted to the feelings of challenge, uncertainty, and ever-changing horizons”. “I’m not ready” she wrote. “But I’m as ready as I’ll ever be”.

And I, standing before a shelf in an air-conditioned store, could not choose an unknown book.

It was sobering because I realized I’d lost some of that sense of adventure I’d had in my past. Not the Emily Andersson sense of adventure. Few people have that. But my own personal sense of adventure in trying new things and taking risks and just moving forward.

The good news is that we are presented with adventure all the time and may not even notice it. We don’t have to be Emmi, but we do need to stretch. After my second hip replacement, my brother told me on the phone, “I don’t think I could have gone through a second one knowing what the first one took”.  My brother, who loves nothing more than being dropped in a mountainous area to streak on a bicycle down narrow paths between trees. So, one of my adventures is two hip replacements that have greatly enhanced my life and one of his is defying gravity while trying not to crash. 

Some people pull up roots to move their young family and three animals across the country. Some people write a book and keep trying to sell it until someone publishes it. Or keep trying out for the basketball team even though they haven’t been chosen for the three previous years. Others, like Cheryl Strayed, hike 1,200 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail. Some people adopt their orphaned nephew. Some try using pastels to paint rather than oils. Others help their community recover from devastating floods or storms. Some risk their lives leading social justice movements. Some dangle precariously from bridges to block tankers destined to exploit oil deposits in the Arctic Ocean. 

Some people accept an offer to dance at a wedding.

Adventure is necessary in life and it is also personal. It is what stretches us and if it doesn’t terrify us, it at least takes us out of our comfort zone. None of us will be ready, but we’ll be as ready as we’ll ever be.

P.S. I bought a book.

Try It:

• Do you need more adventure in your life? What terrifies you? In what ways and for what reasons? What might you avoid that could enhance your life? What might happen if you embraced it?
• What does “adventure” mean to you? How have you experienced it? How did it feel? What did you learn about yourself or the world?
• What “adventures” occur right in front of you in a typical week? How do you respond to them? How does that feel?
• How might you design a little more healthy, positive adventure into your life by stepping outside your comfort zone? It could be travel, learning a new skill, exploring new places where you live, trying new foods, starting conversations with new people. Keep track of your adventures, how you feel when you have them, what you get out of them, what you learn about yourself. And notice if stepping out of your comfort zone gets easier as you go.

The four areas of Self-Awareness

As far back as Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, Self-Awareness has been a fundamental principle of being human. “Know Thyself” – know your strengths, weaknesses, skills, behaviors, attitudes and beliefs, fears, personality, motivations, and how your life experience has molded and changed all those aspects of yourself. In today’s world, we hear “knowledge is power” and knowing ourselves gives us the power to deal with whatever circumstances life throws at us.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. – Tao Te Ching

Exploring who we are can not only offer power, it can also offer happiness – a greater acceptance of who we are and what we bring to the world. In a post on July 29, 2016, we looked at the Johari Window and the importance of expanding our Open Quadrant to understand more about ourselves through our own inquiry and through feedback from others. I’ve coached over four hundred people in my life and each encountered surprises as they tackled the quest of knowing themselves. We all have parts of us to which we are blind or are hidden to us and the world. We’ll look at four areas of Self-Awareness, your skills and behaviors, attitudes and beliefs, your life experiences that have helped form the former areas and your overall comfort with the unknown – how much risk you take, how much you control, and how you respond to new situations and challenges.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. – Aldous Huxley

Try It:

• Write down one key life experience that has had an impact on you. It could be the birth of a child, winning a competition, losing a friend or a parent, getting a desired job, mastering a black diamond ski run, recovering from an illness, achieving a great grade point average.
• What skills did you develop from that experience? How might it have changed your behavior going forward?
• How did this life experience inform your belief system? What was confirmed for you or what might you have questioned?
• How challenging, new, or scary was this life experience? How did you feel about it initially? What did you become comfortable with? What stayed uncomfortable? Why?

 

 

Both Sides Now

 

One of the most important aspects of Growth is being able to let go, even for a moment, of how we think things should be and being willing to explore. Instead of “I know”, practicing “I don’t know”. Because we don’t. Know. We may think we know, but we don’t even fully know ourselves and because of that, we can’t know what’s outside of ourselves.

In 1969, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell released “Both Sides Now”.  It’s a song about the paradoxes we experience when we try to know. We see something from one angle. Then something changes and we see it from another angle. And how we see things can be contradictory and humans aren’t comfortable with contradiction and paradox. For Joni Mitchell, it was looking at the many sides of clouds, love, and life.  All of those sides may be true for her, and she still doesn’t know them at all.

The not knowing is the joy in life. It is the exploration, the mystery, the surprise, the insight, the energy, the illumination, and the darkness. It’s only in not knowing that we have freedom and that anything is possible.

Not knowing opens us to Growth.

Try It:

• Check out Joni Mitchell’s song  “Both Sides Now”.  What things in your life do you find yourself feeling strongly one way and at the same time, the opposite? How do you reconcile those two feelings or experiences? What do you know? What might you not know?
• One line in the song is, “Something’s lost but something’s gained in living every day”. What are all the meanings that line might have? Why might it be useful to notice what you’ve gained every day and what you’ve lost?