22
Apr

The Value of Emotional Stability – Being A Robot Suddenly Sounds Appealing

Topic / parenting and leadership

How well do you take criticism?

Don’t feel bad if you don’t take it well.  I don’t know many people that do, and in my life I’ve met a lot, lot, lot of people.  It sucks to be told you’ve made a mistake, and it sucks even more to be told you’re wrong.

To make you feel better, I will tell you something about myself.

I am hands down one of the worst criticism-takers in the history of the world.

[Insert here loud guffaws from my family and friends.  “YA THINK?!”  Also add head shakes, deep sighs, and eye rolls from any man that I’ve ever spent more than five minutes with.  Criticism from men is an extra bad no-no.]
Read More

19
Mar

“What did you just say to me?!” – Hear What They Mean, Not What You Think

Topic / parenting and leadership

My dad used to tell me, “You have two ears and one mouth, use them in that proportion.”  I would always roll my eyes and get irritated when he pulled out that little gem, usually because he’d slap it on me when I was mid-sentence (and probably not doing a very good job listening).  It was a gem, though, and as much as it pains me to tell him “FINE, YOU WERE RIGHT,” he was totally right.

Listening is VITAL.

And not just “hearing.”  Hearing is a passive thing.  LISTENING is something else entirely.

The third aspect of Active Listening is understanding what the speaker is saying, both what they are actually saying and what they are meaning to say (because those two things are often different).

For example.  [You had to see this coming.  The best way to learn is to hear a story about how someone else screwed it up, and as luck would have it I am a FIELD EXPERT in “screw up.”  So here ya go.]

I really, really don’t like the word “comfortable.”
Read More

25
Feb

Depth and Parenting – Guiding Children through Childish Mistakes

Topic / parenting and leadership

This morning as I was herding kids out the door to catch the bus, the eight year old burst into tears.

“MOMMY!”

I turned my head to look, and she held out toward me her homework folder. The one that comes home Monday, and is turned in FIRST THING Tuesday morning. The one that was full of not-even-started, not-finished homework. The one I asked about last night, “did you get your homework done,” and was told “yes, I read my book on the bus.”

Her BOOK was done, her worksheets were not. She just plain forgot.

TEACHABLE. MOMENT.
Read More

21
Feb

How to Listen to Annoying Kids – Listening Through The Noise

Topic / parenting and leadership

listen (v):

1. to give attention with the ear
2. to pay attention, to heed
3. to wait attentively for a sound
4. to convey a particular impression to the one hearing

As a Grower of People, this definition makes me laugh.

If you’re not sure what the difference is between hearing and listening, you are cordially invited to my house for dinner. You’ll pull up a chair, we’ll all dig in, then I’ll bring up the topic of “passing gas” with the four year old. Give the conversation three minutes to gather steam, then try to change the subject.

Unless you come prepared with a live monkey for a prop, I can guarantee you MIGHT be heard, but you will for sure not be listened to.
Read More

06
Feb

How to Pay Attention – Be Heard and Learn to Hear

Topic / parenting and leadership

Do you know how to listen?

I’m not always great at listening. As a mother, I have mastered the art of selective hearing, which in turn makes it really, really hard to listen.

If you have kids, you know what I mean.
Read More

29
Jan

How to Recognize Connection – Learning to See Depth

Topic / mental health

Depth is not something that everyone easily sees or consciously recognizes, but we all notice when it is there.

We also notice when it is NOT.

In my spare time I take pictures.  I come by the hobby honestly; my mother is Japanese (“Ooooh, taykoo peecktcha?”) and there are no less than twenty cameras at every family function no matter how many people show up.  In addition, my dad has always fostered a passion for photography.  Between the two of them, I grew up with a lens in my face most of the time.

I got my first SLR camera when I was 25.  It was a Christmas gift from my dad.  I “SQUEEE”d when I unwrapped the gift, opened the box immediately, and I never looked back.  I loved that thing.  It shot film, though, and after the first roll came back from the store I realized “WOW, I have a lot of learning to do.”  The pictures weren’t BAD, they were just “….meh.”  Uneventful, uninspiring.  They were pictures of events and the SURFACE of life, but no more than that.  A person could look through my photos and say “Oh yeah, I remember that, I forgot that guy was there, what was I thinking wearing that shirt?” but that’s about it.  My pictures did not tell a story, they did not inspire.
Read More

26
Dec

What is Depth? Connecting to Others in a Disconnected World

Topic / love and relationships, mental health, parenting and leadership

For a very, very long time in my life, I felt lonely.  REALLY lonely, like I was the only person on the planet.  For all intents and purposes I should not have felt that way.  I was surrounded by people through work, family, friendships, church, in groups, online, and in my own house.  I had been married for 10 years and had (still have) three kids that I desperately loved.  In fact, almost all of my time was spent with people.  I hadn’t so much as peed alone for five years, but I still felt most of the time like I was the only one alive.

I felt like a tiny, isolated island in the middle of a choppy, wild ocean, my very existence completely unknown by anyone except myself, constantly beat on from all sides by waves that eroded me away.

I felt like a palm tree in the eye of a raging, savage, tearing storm, cemented in place and unable to move, small and insignificant, bowed and bent and victim to circumstances outside of my control.

Being inside my life felt like being stuck in slow motion on a busy sidewalk.  I was sweating and pushing to go faster, muscles straining and heart racing, trying to wave my arms and scream at the top of my lungs just to be NOTICED, but even with all possible effort I was invisible.  Forgotten.  People buzzed past me, bodies brushed by, and my omittable self was drown out by an endless cloud of blurred faces and swirling voices.

Being lonely when you’re all by yourself is one thing.  Being lonely when you’re surrounded by people that say they love you is something completely different, and infinitely worse.

It sucks.

And it happened ALL. THE. TIME.  It happens to all kinds of people, all the time.

In fact, at one point or another in your life I bet that it’s happened to you.
Read More

18
Sep

How to Feel Good About What You’ve Got – The Power of Perspective

Topic / mental health

In an earlier part of my life I served as a missionary.  The experience crushed me and left me shattered and hollowed out.

But in a really good way.

Nkule, the day we took him in.

Nkule, the day we took him in.

This is Nkule.  He was born in Winterton, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Well, technically he was born OUTSIDE of Winterton, since the ACTUAL place he was born was a tiny hut made of mud and straw well outside of civilization.  No electricity, no running water, no plumbing of any kind.  At least a one hour hike to the nearest hand-pump well.  The clothes you see him wearing are the only clothes he owned.

I had seen Nkule for the first time about a week prior to the time of this photograph.  When I saw him he was clean and sitting with his sister, his two cousins, and his grandmother.  His grandma sought a meeting with “the missionaries” to seek counsel, and we had agreed to meet with her.
Read More

11
Sep

How to Be a Mother – Raising Kids the Right Way

Topic / parenting and leadership

In the last few years I’ve done a lot of thinking about being a mother.  It’s probably what I think about MOST, actually, since having kids.  My thoughts fluctuate equally between “Am I doing a good job,” “How much am I going to screw them up by doing-not-doing this-or-that,” and “where’s the instruction manual because REALLY I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL I AM DOING.”

Being a mom is…   well, it’s rough.  And wonderful, and amazing.  And brutal.  And rewarding and miserable and fulfilling and draining and pure bliss.  It’s the only thing I’ve experienced in life that can leave me feeling as full as a hot air balloon, weightless with love, and AT THE SAME TIME as twisted and wrung out as an old, holey and shredded dishtowel.  From the second you conceive until FOREVER your life is no longer your own.  It becomes something totally different.  Something MORE.  Every day your guts feel like they gorged on a party snack mix of puberty mood swing hormones and Sominex and double-frosted kid’s birthday cake seasoned with a hearty dash of crazy and sprinkled with very loud noises.

The best way I can describe it is to imagine that you have a cute, fuzzy, warm, cuddly monkey sitting on your shoulder, playing with your ear, whispering to you and loving you.  On your back.  All the time.
Read More

04
Sep

Lessons for My Younger Self – Regret and Growth

Topic / mental health

I was thinking.

If you could travel back in time and find the younger version of yourself, what would you say?  What would you tell younger-you?

There are movies about such things.  A guy is older and hates his life, then goes back to talk to the younger version of himself to set things straight.  There are books and blogs that tell the same story, varied in one way or another.  I’m positive that almost every older person has daydreamed and wished for the ability to teach their younger-selves a lesson and prevent pain, or mistakes, or regret.

I don’t usually check the rear view, but every once in a while I think about “MAN, how awesome would it have been to know this-or-that when I was seventeen.”  I think about how differently things would have been for me as a kid if I’d known then what I know now.  Or how different my world would be right now if I’d made a different choice for school, or work, or relationships.  Like a line of dominoes, the first few tipping in a different direction would have laid down a whole separate path.

MAN I wish I would have known.
Read More

Search

CATAGORIES

Popular

RECENT

Feeling worthless and empty?

Dive in and get the first eBook, FREE.