Opening the door.

28 Mar

When my son was about a year old, I sat him in his highchair and gave him his first popsicle.  He grabbed it from my hand grasping the frozen top instead of the handle and immediately stuck it in his mouth.  He loved it!  However, his hand was gripping the icy popsicle itself instead of the wooden handle.  I tried to pry his fingers off to move them down but he would not let go.  Quickly he began to cry because his fingers were freezing and were beginning to hurt, but he kept putting the popsicle in his mouth through all the tears, and had no way of knowing what the problem was.  I kept trying to loosen his grip but he thought I was taking his delicious treat away from him and he held on even tighter, continuing to cry and scream because his hand was hurting.  It took a few minutes but I was finally able to tug the popsicle from his iron grip, at which point he shrieked, tears pouring down his face.  I gently put the stick into his hand and finally he realized he could eat his treat without pain – finally holding it in the right place!  It was a very tense and comical situation while all of this was going on – me trying to comfort him while taking his hands off his prize, and him screaming because he wanted the popsicle and his hand was freezing.

I have never forgotten this experience.  Why?  Because there have been times in my life where I, too, have been holding onto the popsicle, screaming in pain, but refusing to let go.  Let me explain.

Sometimes we get to a place in our lives where we want something very badly.  We really want it.  We want it with all our hearts – but – there is something else holding us back from getting it.  Not necessarily something on the outside, but often something inside of us.  We have been hurt before so we are afraid to go forward.  We are unsure because it’s new territory and we don’t know how it will go, so we hesitate.  We aren’t positive we can handle the thing we want so badly.  We think we can but we aren’t completely sure.

So we get to the door, we go all the way up to it, it’s right there, that last step we need to take to move forward.  Our hand is on the knob, we can feel the tension, we are right there, but we can’t open it.  We want to, really want to, but if we open it everything will change.  We would have to let go of all our fears, all our insecurities about the decision and just go for it.  That takes determination, and it takes courage.  We really don’t know what will happen if we open the door.  We think it’ll be great.  We really want to do this, but we stop.  We are holding onto the popsicle too tightly. We don’t want to lose what we have, even if what we can gain is so much better.  We can’t let go.

Life is complex.  We go through so many changes, we travel so many different roads, we experience so many things.  We get hurt, we get happy, we get disappointed, we get relief, we cover the whole gamut of human emotional experiences.  And each one of them leaves a track – not always a scar – but definitely a track because we’ve traveled through it. Sometimes those experiences cause us to hesitate because they were painful and hard to overcome.  Some of them we have not overcome yet, and when we think of them they still hurt.  And so, the hesitation.

It’s a gamble.  There are no guarantees.  Everything is up for grabs.  We never know if things will go the way we think they will, the way we hope they will, or even they way we want them to.  But, if we don’t try, if we don’t ever open the door to the new experiences, we will never know.  We will stay in exactly the same situation we are in now, and never get to find out how it could have been.  The other side of the door holds new challenges, new opportunities, new decisions, and may offer new happiness.  It may also offer new sadness, but we won’t know if we never open it.  Getting close doesn’t really count for anything in the end.  Getting right up to the door doesn’t change anything.  We have to open it and walk through it.

Every day I hear people complain because their lives aren’t what they hoped they would be.  They aren’t living the life they really want and they are unhappy.  But the truth is that we all have the power to change our lives, we all have the power to try new things to be happy, every day.  But in order to do that, we have to let go of the popsicle.  We have to let go of the things that are holding us back, and we have to open the new door.   Will it be scary – probably.  Will it be unnerving – maybe.  Can we do it?  Absolutely.

What are you holding onto that is holding you back?  What are you afraid of?  What doors are waiting for you to open?  Walk up to them.  Put your hand on the knob, let go of the popsicle, shake it off, and open the door.  Take the chance.  Be brave – don’t look back, look forward.  It’s waiting for you.

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My boss the bully.

27 Mar

Some years ago I had a very stressful job.  It involved dealing with all kinds of unhappy people in situations where they were angry.  I am pretty good at diffusing conflict and I learned very quickly just to listen and let them blow off steam before I would talk and offer suggestions for resolution.  It was a good job in that the salary was high, the hours were good, and the benefit package was nice, but it was a very hard job and what made it worse was that my boss at the time was a bully.  And to add to it, (although this term has been completely over used and tossed around way too much in recent years) the woman was also a racist.  She hated white people.  She frankly stated it time and again.  At work!  I will not reveal what race she identified with because it’s not important.  What is important is that I am “white” or what she thinks of as white.  Actually I’m Italian, but that was white enough for her.

The first few months in my new position, my boss ridiculed me regularly, demeaned me in meetings, and criticized me openly in front of my co-workers.  Every time I turned around she made a snide remark about me, and did everything seemingly in her power to make me feel horrible.  There were days I cried in my car driving home thinking, “I can’t go back tomorrow.”  But I needed the job and there was no way I could quit.  I tried meeting with her alone but she would not show at our appointed time.  I asked again and again to see her, and she would not meet with me.  Her boss was also her best friend who hired her despite the fact that she did not meet the requirements for the job, so going to him seemed pointless.  And so I was stuck day after day basically in job hell.  After several months of this, I became physically sick and called my elderly dad and told him what was going on.  He was patient and told me what I already knew – I shouldn’t have to put up with this.  Then I called my attorney and asked him what my options were and he advised me with all kinds of legal suggestions that I figured would just make the situation worse.  And then I called my Bishop at church who advised me to pray about it, which I had been and continued to do.  But still there was no change.

After one particularly horrible day, I went home sick to my stomach, with a grinding headache, and decided I couldn’t take it any more.  I shouldn’t have to put up with this, I didn’t want to take legal action, and so I decided I was going to have to quit.  I didn’t know how I was going to manage but anything was better than what I was enduring.

I got home, cried a little, felt horrible a lot, took a long soak in the hottest water I could stand, and went to bed.  Resigned to my fate.  Defeated.  Done.

But something happened that night.  I tossed and turned in bed for hours and at about 2:00 in the morning I sat straight up and said out loud, “Oh no you don’t.  You are not taking my job from me.  This ends NOW.”  Somehow in a moment I had changed.  I was not going to be the victim anymore.  I was going to stand up and although I didn’t know how I was going to do it, I was going to confront her in the morning and put a stop to the abuse.  I took a deep breath, steeled my resolve and went to sleep.

The next morning I got up and got ready.  I was nervous and scared, tremulous, but determined.  No more letting her roll over me.  No more abuse.  When I got settled at work, I stood up, took a deep breath and marched into her office.  I shut her door, and told her I needed to talk to her.  She looked up at me like she wanted to put a knife in my heart.  I took another deep breath and said:

“I will no longer tolerate your abusive behavior.  It will stop today.  If it does not stop today, I will either file a civil lawsuit of discrimination, an EEO complaint, or a grievance.  Or I might file all three.  But your degrading comments about me and to me, your constant criticism, and your remarks about my race end now.  This is over.  Are we clear?”

She was stunned!  She looked like she had been hit in the face with a brick (I know I exaggerate but you need to know the full effect of my words.)  She cleared her throat and said she would have to report my comments to her boss, and I said, “That will be fine.  Are we done here?”  She nodded, and I turned and left her office.

When I got back to my desk I nearly fell into my chair I was shaking so hard.  I felt I had faced down the demon, and it had been both a terrifying, and immensely gratifying experience.  It took a while for my breathing to calm and for me to be able to feel normal again, but I was very, very proud of myself of facing the issue and doing what had to be done.

After the moment I left her office, everything changed instantaneously.  I never heard another single negative thing from my boss.  Nothing.  She was cordial and polite every time we interacted, she was respectful in meetings, and when we passed in the halls she always said hello.  I couldn’t believe the difference or how quickly it happened.  Later she moved on to another job, as did I.  We’re both still with the same company, and when we see each other she is always quick to say hello and ask how I’m doing.  A complete and total reversal from where we had been.

Is there a bully in your life?  Someone who is making you miserable?  Someone who is doing things that hurt you maliciously?  You don’t have to take that.  You can stand up to it.  They say that many people who bully others do so because they have a low self image and lack courage.  That seems to have been the case in my situation.  I am not an extremely brave person.  I struggle with fear – have my entire life.  It took everything I had to stand up to the bully in my life, but I did it, and everything changed.  If I can do it, you can do it too.  Stand up.  You are worth the very best there is out there.  You can defend yourself and you can prevail.

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Enough is enough.

27 Mar

Expectations.  We all have them.  Others have them for us.  It seems everyone expects us to be this or that, to look like this or that, to act this way or that way, to do things one way or another.  There are expectations everywhere.  You pick up a magazine and nobody in it looks like you.  They don’t even look like anyone you have ever known, but the expectation it seems, is that we should all look like the flawless, perfect, successful, people on those glossy pages.  That’s not only absurd, it’s impossible.  We read stories about 70 year old men who are still running marathons, 60 year old women who look like they are 30, and 30 year old people who are making millions of dollars.  And in each story there seems the implication that if we just worked harder we, too, could be like them.  And often it seems the expectation is that we should want to be like them.  But should we be comparing ourselves to that?

There is always someone in our sphere who expects us to somehow be different than we are and when we don’t meet that expectation, they express their dismay and disappointment.  “Just try a little harder to be the person I think you should be and you’ll be happier,” they seem to say.  But should we be listening to that?  Should we be striving to be someone that somebody else thinks we should be.  Could they possibly know more about us than we know about ourselves?

Most of us have an idea of the person we want to be.  We have personal goals, things we’d like to improve on, things we’d like to do better, things we’d like to stop doing.  Those goals are, as I said – personal.  They belong to us.  They are ours alone.  We set them and we decide how to manage them.  Some we meet, some we let go of, some we keep working on.  The important thing to understand is that they are just ours and nobody else’s.  So when others express their defined expectations for us, we can and should evaluate if those expectations define where we want to go before we give them any credence.  We are the ones who set the standard for the person we want to be.  It really doesn’t matter what our families think we should be, what our friends think we should be, what the world thinks we should be, or what our lovers think we should be.  The important thing is that we become the people WE think we should be.  That is the only way to be genuinely who we are.

We don’t have to fit into anybody’s model to be enough.  We don’t have to become someone else’s design of us.  We are enough just as we are.  We are enough because only we can decide who we want to be and how we want to live.  Nobody’s else’s ideas about those parameters matters.  They don’t matter.  We own who we are.  We decide who we will become.  We choose how we will live.  That’s what matters.

You are enough just as you are.  You are enough.  And as long as you are living your life honestly and in the direction you want to go, you are succeeding.  You get closer every day to where you want to be.  Let the world say what it will, let the expectations roll off, and keep your eyes on the goal you set for yourself.  You are enough.  You will become who you choose to become.  Be clear, be brave, and keep true.

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Yes, you can.

25 Mar

There are limitless possibilities in every life.  Millions of paths you could choose, innumerable choices you can make about how you will live your life and what you will do.  The sky’s the limit.  We believe these things when we are young and think about becoming astronauts, ballerinas, famous musicians, Nobel prize winning scientists, and anything else we dream up.  We are sure when we are young that all of these things are certainly possible.  But as we get older and begin to more closely define our lives and what is important to us, we are also impacted by the opinions and advice of others.  It’s wonderful to be a dreamer and imagine everything that can be – dreamers are the people that give the whole world color and interest.  As we age, sometimes we temper our dreams because somebody said they would be not only difficult, but frankly impossible for us to achieve what we’ve been dreaming about.  And maybe somebody else said the idea was ridiculous.  And maybe somebody else said we should be sensible and plan for something that is easier to attain, where we can succeed.  It seems there is no limit to the number of people who will discourage our dreams.  Perhaps it’s because they are cautious.  Perhaps it’s because they are jealous.  Perhaps it’s because they are afraid.  Or maybe it’s because they didn’t go after their own dreams and so they really don’t want us to go after ours and maybe succeed where they failed.   There are countless reasons why people discourage us, and every time they do they chip away a tiny piece of our resolve, a tiny piece of our confidence – that is if we listen to them.

Our lives belong to us.  And they go by fast.  It seems that in a blink five years have passed.  It is important, no it is imperative that we understand that we control our lives.  We can do anything we want.  It doesn’t matter if everyone tells us it won’t work, we can still do it.  The greatest minds in history did things nobody thought could be done.  It is said that Edison designed 1,000 light bulbs that failed before he finally designed one that worked.  Somebody asked him how he could keep going when he had failed already 1,000 times.  His response?  “I haven’t failed 1,000 times.  I have found 1,000 ways that it won’t work.”  And that’s the attitude of success.

I went on a cruise with some friends and there was an excursion, “Adventure in the Trees” or something like that.  It involved completing an obstacle course twenty feet up in an orchard of trees on ropes, including zip lines and all sorts of tricky maneuvers.  We decided it looked like fun and figured it should be safe because the cruise line was sponsoring it.  When we got to the course and climbed up to the ropes we were told that nobody was going to assist us because the tour group had found that when their team helped the participants then tended to rely on them, and would get hurt more often than if they were left to themselves.  I took one look at the situation and thought “THERE IS NO WAY I CAN DO THIS!!”  We had to climb around large tree trunks with nothing to stand on, step on floating planks to get through, and hang from ropes at certain times.  My friend behind me was screaming, “Whose idea was this?  This is insane!”  I called back, “Just keep going,” and I proceeded with my heart in my throat.  The course was not easy and took about two and a half hours to complete.  But by the end of it we were laughing and having a blast.  We had tested ourselves, and once we got over our fears, found that it was really fun to push ourselves and figure it all out.  At the end of the course we decided it had been the BEST DAY EVER!  That was a great example to me that even when I’m afraid and think I can’t do something, I should go out there and do it anyway.

Is there something you really want to do and haven’t tried because you were told it wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t be worth your time or money, it was a dumb idea, or any other discouraging advice?  Is there something you really want to do that you haven’t tried because you’ve been afraid it would fail?  What’s the worst thing that could happen if you actually tried to do the one thing you really want to do?  What’s the worst thing that could happen?  If you want to start performing music, someone could say “You suck.”  Can you handle that?  If you design a new piece of equipment and it fails, you’re out the time you spent and whatever funds you invested.  Can you handle that?  If you want to write a book and you finish it, and nobody publishes it, can you handle that?  Take some time and think about what it is you really want to do.  Make a plan to begin the process to get it started.  When the hurdles come, jump over them.  You can do anything you want to do.  Anything.  Sure some things will fail, sure it might not go the way you think it will, sure it might be difficult, but you can still do it.  And whatever comes, you’ll be happy that you tried.   They say that when we are dying it’s not the things we did that we regret – it’s the things we didn’t do.  So be brave.  Be convinced.  Get out there.  Do what you are dreaming of.  Take control.  Live YOUR life.  Have a blast!

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Jumping?

24 Mar

We make dozens of decisions every day.  Sometimes they need no thought – I have to go to the store, pickup the mail, get the car washed, be at work early – things like that.  There are decisions we make quickly because we don’t really have to think about them, we just need to get things done.  But other times we make fast decisions in situations when we really should wait for a moment before we decide what to say or what to do.  We jump.  Oftentimes we jump because our feelings are involved and that “fight or flight” thing comes into play.  When someone says or does something that hurts us, we can immediately jump to an action or statement that can quickly escalate the situation.  We get cut off on the road so we lean on the horn and shout out some sort of damning expletive that makes us feel better, but does nothing to improve the situation.  “You idiot!  Who taught you to drive!  Get off the road you ass!”  You probably will feel temporarily better for having told that horrible person who dared to cut you off how you feel about it.  But in reality, you have done nothing to change anything.  He is still there in his car, ignoring you, being who he is and really not caring what you think.  So the question then comes, is it wise to jump?

In our personal relationships with family, friends, co-workers, and everyone else in our sphere, there will inevitably be times when we will be hurt or disappointed in something someone is doing or has done.  We take it personally.  We feel unfairly treated and if we jump, we say things to hurt the offending party right back.  After all, they deserve it – they hurt us first.  But sometimes our perceptions of what happened may be incorrect.  And if they are and we jump to respond, we can damage those relationships and lose the trust others have in us.  A friend of mine has been dating a man for a while.  He says he’s madly in love with her but has been unable to move the relationship forward in any way.   She says she loves him but she isn’t sure he will ever really commit to a future with her and she isn’t sure how long she should wait.  He has a lot of excuses for why he can’t move forward and they all sound good, but a couple of years have gone by and nothing has changed.  After careful consideration she decided to clearly discuss the matter with him and frankly and openly ask him what his plans were for the future.  She had tried before to do this but he skirted the issue and changed the subject.  This time she was determined to have an honest discussion with him so she could decide how she wanted to move forward with her life.  When she brought the subject up and told him she wanted to talk about their relationship and get his perspective on the future, he immediately lost his temper.  “Why are you asking me this?  Are you seeing someone else?  I thought you loved me!  I can’t believe this!  Have you been pretending all this time!” and on and on he went.  He jumped.   He was uncomfortable and instead of getting the facts and listening, instead of just taking a breath before he blurted out all of his concerns, he jumped.  Maybe he jumped to divert the conversation away from something he was clearly uncomfortable talking about.  Maybe he jumped because he knew he had made her wait too long and this conversation was inevitable.  Maybe he jumped because he was threatened.  Nobody knows why he jumped, but when he did, any hope of moving the conversation forward, to discussing the options before them as a couple, or understanding his point of view were lost.

Perhaps it would be wise when we feel that sting of hurt from something someone did, when we feel the threat of something coming, when we feel scared, when we get angry, perhaps it would be wise to just wait a moment.  Take a breath.  Don’t jump – yet.  Breathe.  Look at the situation again.  Breathe.  Get all the facts, listen, listen, listen, and then take another breath.  And then express yourself calmly.  If we can stop jumping and learn to control our responses, most of our conflict will become more manageable. Our interactions will become a little easier and we will feel better.  We can choose to jump and react or we can choose to think and respond.  If we practice taking that extra breath, just taking one moment to think before we jump, we will be more successful in understanding where we are and what is happening.  They say that knowledge is power.  I believe that’s true.  So stop, take a breath, get all the knowledge you can about the situation and then use your power to control your response.  Those around you will learn that they can trust you not to jump.  It will take some practice but it will be worth it.

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