Sunday, December 29, 2013

5 Questions To Kick Off 2014


My godson Finn’s new fav word is “startled” and I have to admit that I’m feeling startled that 2013 has reached its end!

Newscasters, bloggers and anyone with an opinion all are offering their various “Top 10” lists, while motivational gurus are prepping us on how to plan for 2014.  And, yes, I’m feeling the pressure to join in.

I spent weeks toying with my own “Top 10 Ways To Make 2014 The Best Year Ever!” but eventually I realized I had my focus out of whack.  I couldn’t suggest ways to plan for 2014 until I’d made sense of my own 2013.

Before you plan for the future, you have to make sense of the past.  There’s no point in making New Year’s resolutions until you acknowledge the good of the previous year.

Albert Einstein believed that “there are only two ways to live life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is.”  To help me reflect on the “miracles” (yes, that is a loaded word) in my 2013 life, I asked myself five questions:
1.     What did I learn in 2013? 
2.     Who inspired me? 
3.     What gave me pleasure? 
4.     What or who surprised me? 
5.     What am I grateful for?

I stared at these questions for a long, long time.  I think I felt stumped because during the year I hadn’t stopped enough times to take stock of where I was or where I was going.  It was all rushrushrush. 

Eventually, I was able to answer wholeheartedly each of those five questions.  In the coming weeks I’ll explain my answers.  For now, though, here’s the outline of my answers and I hope it coaxes you into finding your own answers. 

In 2013 I learned to ask for what I want.  I was inspired by a groom who was willing to hit rock bottom before allowing himself to find true love.  I realized with a newfound sense that I enjoy giving keynote talks, not because I like to hear myself speak, but rather, because of the great conversations that take place afterwards with interesting people.  I was surprised by how I made a new friend who has opened unusual doors for me.  And lastly, I’m most especially grateful to a client whose generosity taught me how to respect myself more than I’ve been doing.

Taken together those five “miracles” reminded me that nothing is more important than the day at hand.  If I can remember the insights gained, I think I’ll be able to live 2014 more mindfully and more generously.

What about you – what are your answers to those five questions?  May your answers give you a happy and fulfilling 2014!

Friday, December 20, 2013

The Feast Of Surprise



A down-and-out character in Tennessee Williams’ play “Small Craft Warnings” asks this question: “What is the one thing you must not lose sight of in this world before leaving it?  Surprise.  The capacity for surprise.”

Christmas is one of the great stories of “surprise.”  A virgin birth, an angelic choir to greet a long-anticipated savior in the stinkiest of settings, are the surprise highlights in a story that ripples with the unexpected.

No matter one’s beliefs, I think it does us good to reflect on our own individual capacity for being surprised – by life and perhaps, most especially, by our own self.  Can you still surprise yourself?

The mad rush to year’s end, beginning at Thanksgiving, accelerates the freneticism of our daily routines.  We want some holiday cheer, some Christmas “spirit,” whatever that spirit actually means and feels and looks like.  But because we’ve been planning, organizing, shopping and juggling we just end up losing sight of the “why” of it all.

For some that “why” has a religious answer and for others it has some other, ill-defined answer.  But no matter – we’re still left with the reality that “surprise” is embedded within the DNA of this holiday.  Even the most famous secular Christmas story, “A Christmas Carol,” is the tale of a nasty old man who is given the surprise of his life – past, present and future!

The great gift of this celebration is the gift of being open to surprise.  And why is this gift so extraordinarily crucial?  Because life without surprise is not life.  It’s just monotonous, deadening, robotic routine.

To keep Christmas in one’s heart all year round is to promise to be a bearer of surprise in all things great and small.  It’s mindfully being willing to do the unexpected, the unanticipated and the unlooked for.  To surprise people with small courtesies as simple as opening a door or sending a thank-you.  To surprise the seemingly idiotic with patience.  To surprise the beggar with a dollar.  To surprise a friend with a lunch date.

And it means being willing to surprise your own self – to be kind to your own self – to not punish yourself with food that makes you sluggish, with delayed projects that derail your credibility or with dreams deferred that cause you to walk away from yourself.

To surprise your self by doing what you’ve put off doing because of fear.

This is a time for surprise and light and birth in ways unfamiliar and unnerving.  This is a time to once again resolve to live with courage.

Life, in all its messy glory, is what animates the deepest yearnings of December 25th in both its religious and secular manifestations.

Merry Surprise!

Saturday, December 14, 2013

How Shag Carpeting Made Me The Man I Am


The Russian novelist Tolstoy believed that the greatest gift we could give a person is a happy memory from childhood. 

I’m fortunate to have numerous happy memories from childhood and the ones I most cherish are linked with my grandmother, “Nanny Prize”.  From this vantage point in time I now realize what an unusual woman she was – which is a nice way to say she was something of an oddball!

For thirty-five years she was a prison guard on Riker’s Island, the largest prison in NYC.  She retired her billy club at the age of seventy-two.  To look at her, you’d have thought she sold cosmetics at Macy’s.  She had been widowed in her early thirties and raised my father by herself.  She had no friends.  Her job was her life, but my brother, Peter, and I gave her life.

Throughout grammar school, Peter and I spent almost every weekend at her Bronx apartment – a place we dubbed “Freedom Land”.   Unlike our mother, Prize let us have the run of her place, letting us do as we pleased.  And so Peter and I turned each room into a magical setting.  Before there was Hogwarts, there was my grandmother’s apartment!

The great gift Prize gave us – above all else – was the gift of setting our imaginations wild and grounding it all in ritual.  In her home, there were no rules, no “shoulds,” just a sense of play – creative, imaginative and anchoring.

How did she do this?  Well, she had the entire apartment wall-to-wall carpeted in green shag so as to give the appearance of grass.  She wanted us to imagine that we were on a farm or in the woods.

She saved the boxes her end tables came in and we propped them in the living room, creating a tree house.  In an adjoining room, that probably should have been the dining room, she had a day-bed that was used as our pirate ship and a legless ironing board was the gangplank that poor Peter had to walk.

Every weekend, without fail, we ate pizza on Friday, steak on Saturday and fried chicken on Sunday.  We played checkers and Pokeno and watched the same TV shows weekend after weekend.

We loved our days at “Freedom Land”.  With Prize as Oz, we created a safe world that nourished our imaginations and gave us order and meaning.  That was ritual – not routine.

I now realize that the gift of those happy memories influenced everything I’ve done as a teacher and coach, uncle and godfather.

Here’s the thing: holidays can either sap our energy or renew us.  It really all depends on our rituals.  What do you do each year that creates happy memories? 

Saturday, December 07, 2013

Old Habits Really Do Die Hard



In prepping for December musings, I reread last Thanksgiving’s posting and was shocked because this year I did exactly what I encouraged you NOT to do last year!  Here’s an excerpt from that column:

“what should you do with the relatives that drive you batty?  Change.  Change the way you deal with them because, if you don’t change, and they’re not going to change, then nothing is going to change and the 2012 holidays will again end up being from hell!

Here’s what to do.  First think about who’s on your ‘naughty’ list.  How do they press your buttons?  Why do they have the ability to press those buttons?  Once you’re aware of what they’re doing, then you can decide if you’re going to allow them to upset you.” 

Although I stick by what I wrote, it’s harder to do than my cheery tone might imply!  This year I went to John and Mary’s for dessert (names changed).  John’s parents were at the table when I arrived.  I’ve known them for many years and while they’re more socially and theologically conservative than I am, we’ve had a mutual affection. 

As soon as I sat down, John’s mom made a statement that centered on the two things you shouldn’t bring up at a holiday meal – religion and politics.  What she said was factually incorrect and I instantaneously became irritated.  My answer was snappish, though I pulled back (I think) in time before turning into a rude guest.  John’s mom had a sarcastic comeback and I upped it!  We both knew what had happened and we backed off.

I’m embarrassed that I snapped.  I teach, write and speak about dealing with difficult people and in the heat of that moment, none of it meant anything.  I’m humbly reminded that, truly, old habits die hard.

Why did I care what this woman blathered on about?   Well, she was wrong and I was “right” and here’s what went through my brain at lightning speed: “I think you’re being stupid and therefore I’m going to fix you – at the dinner table – and I better do it quickly because I only see you once a year.”  With that kind of thinking, who’s the “stupid” one?!

Truth be told, what I’m really annoyed about is that I’m not perfect and I wasn’t the person I wanted to be.  I don’t want to be the smug guy who’s snappish with little old ladies who love Limbaugh! 

Here’s the thing - if you know you’re going to be spending time over the holidays with people who can push your buttons, be mindful of who you want to be and how you want to behave.

We always have a choice.

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Right This Moment. . .



I recently came across this reflection snippet from Danielle LaPorte.  I don’t know the context from which this comes, but it has grabbed my imagination and challenged me to ask myself, “what am I doing in this moment and will it eventually benefit someone?”

Read this and see if you’re similarly challenged. . .

right now:

·      Someone you haven’t met yet is already dreaming of adoring you.

·      Someone is writing a book that you will read in the next two years that will change how you look at life.

·      Millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always be that way.

·      Someone is in profound pain, and a few months from now, they’ll be thriving like never before. They just can’t see it from where they’re at.

·      Someone has recently cracked open their joyous, genuine nature because they did the hard work of hauling years of oppression off of their psyche—this luminous juju is floating in the ether, and is accessible to you.

·      Someone is genuinely forgiving the seemingly unforgivable.

·      Someone is curing the incurable.