Category: Expectations

Mother’s Day, part 2: The Invisible Mother

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After I did the previous post, my sister-in-law sent me this. Just had to share.

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way
one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be
taken to the store. Inside I’m thinking, ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone?’
Obviously not; no one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping
the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see
me at all. I’m invisible. The invisible Mom. Some days I am only a pair of
hands, nothing more! Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this??
Some days I’m not a pair of hands; I’m not even a human being. I’m a clock
to ask, ‘What time is it?’ I’m a satellite guide to answer, ‘What number is
the Disney Channel?’ I’m a car to order, ‘Right around 5:30, please.’

Some days I’m a crystal ball; ‘Where’s my other sock?, Where’s my phone?,
What’s for dinner?’
I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes
that studied history, music and literature -but now, they had disappeared
into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She’s going, she’s going,
she’s gone!
One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a
friend from England. She had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she
was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there,
looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to
compare and feel sorry for myself. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when she
turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, ‘I brought you
this.’ It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe. I wasn’t exactly
sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription: ‘With admiration
for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.’

In the days ahead I would read – no, devour – the book. And I would discover
what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could
pattern my work: 1) No one can say who built the great cathedrals – we have
no record of their names. 2) These builders gave their whole lives for a
work they would never see finished. 3) They made great sacrifices and
expected no credit. 4) The passion of their building was fueled by their
faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A story of legend in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the
cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird
on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, ‘Why are you
spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by
the roof, No one will ever see it And the workman replied, ‘Because God
sees.’

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was Almost
as if I heard God whispering to me, ‘I see you. I see the sacrifices you
make every day, even when no one around you does.

No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, no cupcake you’ve
baked, no Cub Scout meeting, no last minute errand is too small for me to
notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see
right now what it will become.

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of
the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work
on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went
so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime
because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.
When I really think about it, I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s
bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, ‘My Mom gets up at 4 in the
morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for 3
hours and presses all the linens for the table.’ That would mean I’d built a
monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there
is anything more to say to his friend, he’d say, ‘You’re gonna love it
there…’
As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re
doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel,
not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the
world by the sacrifices of invisible mothers.

Share this with all the Invisible Moms you know… I just did. And remember to COUNT all those zillions of “invisible” tasks you do each day.

Mother’s Day Movie Fun

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Happy Mother’s Day to all my readers!

Mother’s Day videos abound–to enjoy, personalized or not, and share. So I made one for you, my dear readers. I appreciate you all, moms and nonmoms, and hope you enjoy this selection. Pass it on!

JUST FOR FUN!

If you want to make your own, check it out here. There are two more to choose, from one of the funniest shows on TV.

On failing to ask for help

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“I don’t want to bother her.” “I’ll just drag him down.” “It’s my job to be strong.” “I don’t want to be a burden.” “I can do it myself.” Excuses abound for why we fail to ask for help–whether practical pitching in on chores or emotional support that could ease us through a tough spot in our lives. The cultural press, in this nation that so prizes independence, is to do it ourselves in order to not irk or stress others.

What about the flip side? Think about when you are able to support someone who is dear to you. How do you feel when you can listen, give a hug, or lend a hand? There’s lots of research expounding upon the psychological and health benefits of giving to others–in many forms. I’m sure that you are aware of the bonus for you when you help a friend or loved one. You get a little glow, a boost to your own day, from feeling valuable to another.

So next time you find you are shutting down, failing to ask for help or confide to a loved one because you don’t want to “bother” or “stress” them, ask “who says?” Who are you to deprive another of a chance to feel good by helping you? Put yourself in her shoes. For example, I often hear women say “I can’t ask my mother for help–she has so much on her plate.” Then reverse the scenario. If you had a daughter, wouldn’t you want her to ask you for assistance if she needed it? You’d want to be helpful if you could be–every chance!

Of course, when we are asked for help, it’s healthiest to give freely if we’re able–and to speak up honestly if we really can’t step in with an open heart at the moment. No room here for passive-aggressive giving shrouded with anger or resentment. It’s each person’s job to police her own resources, and say “no” if a request is not possible. That’s the job of the person being asked. It’s not for the person in need to ‘prescreen’ and second guess.

Give your loved ones a chance to show love and support–ask for it! Benefits all around will abound.

Take it to heart?

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“Take it to heart.” Usually, we hear this phrase applied to feedback, aka criticism, offered by others. We feel like a bigger person if we can listen openly to negative words from someone. Seems to me to be another of those casual phrases that do us more harm than good and deserve a hearty “who says?” challenge.

Way back in grad school, 30 plus years ago, I learned that feedback is effective only when solicited. It’s pretty hard to take in and process effectively something that we didn’t ask for and probably don’t want to hear. We all do better when we seek information to help us improve, rather than have it foisted upon us, in any of the typical forms: fights with loved ones, criticism disguised as ‘help,’ yearly job evaluations. It seems to me that this phrase, “take it to heart”, runs counter to human nature. The phrase implies that a grown-up wants to listen to feedback. Truthfully, I don’t think many of us really yearn to hear that we need to do something differently–even when we know on some level that we do. And challenging ourselves to “take it to heart” implies that we just need to suck it into our inner most being. We impose an expectation that criticism is always true and valid and valuable.

(That always sounds like an absolute. And if you’re a regular reader, you know my ideas on absolutes.)

My challenge is aimed at that last phrase about criticism. Criticism/feedback may be necessary to growth. But is it always true, valid, valuable? Many of us believe that it is. Rather than “take it to heart,” I suggest “take it to mind.” Don’t just expect that, because you are an adult striving to do your best in life, that you have to accept negative words right into your core. Think on feedback. Evaluate it. Test it out, dwell on the accusations or challenges for awhile. See if the words fit your perception. Write about it. Check it out with a friend or therapist. Where is the truth–the helpful portion of the words? And where is the anger or defensiveness or misperception on the part of the giver? What might have more to do with them, who offer the criticism, and less to do with YOU? Incorporate what is valuable, and let go of the rest.

It’s okay–even extremely healthy–to take some time to sort out what comes your way. You don’t have to “take it to heart” to be a functional person.

International Women’s Day

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March is Women’s History Month, and today is International Women’s Day, devoted to celebrating the economic, social, and political achievements of women, past, present, and future. In fact, this year is a banner year, being the centennial celebration (1911-2011.)

My favorite saying about women in history is “well-behaved women rarely make history.” Translate this adage through the lens of this blog: women history-makers were excellent at disputing cultural shoulds.

Any woman who has ever made history began by rehearsing in her head, debating and talking back to the status quo, asking “who says?” before finally moving into execution of her famous act. The kind of questioning that I live by, and hope to encourage through this blog.

Many ill-behaved women have made history by challenging cultural ‘shoulds.’ Rosa Parks didn’t listen to the bus driver order her to give up her seat to a white passenger. Elizabeth Blackwell and Maria Montessori became the first women physicians(U.S. and College of Rome, Italy, respectively). Who says women had to be nurses? Sally Ride was the first woman in space, topping the accomplishment of a Ph.D. in astrophysics! Who says women can’t do math? And to think that women who applied to be astronauts in the early days of the U.S. space program had to wear high heels and hose during qualifying tests (pre-panty hose, that would mean a garter belt, too!) That brings to mind another adage about women in history: “Don’t forget Ginger Rogers did everything (Fred Astaire) did backwards . . . and in high heels!”

Psychologist James Prochaska has determined that there are stages in the intellectual process of change, steps we must engage in before we can finally act. These stages are precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Stroll through the lists of women in history, and imagine the challenges to traditional thinking that were necessary precursors to action. I’m guessing that considerable time was spent contemplating those changes, revising a few assumptions, before these women came close to preparation and action.

We need to cut ourselves some slack if our process of talking back to the status quo, in society or our own heads, takes some time. Find your own pace, time to contemplate and prepare. And maybe, in honor of International Women’s Day, forget being well-behaved and make a little history of your own today. Join the ranks of the history-makers by revving up the chorus of ‘who says?’ in your life.

Talk back–and tell me how you honored the tradition of the day.

Feelings: trusted signals?

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“Trust your feelings”–truth or fiction?

We’ve all heard this old adage. We use this phrase to urge others to act on gut feelings, usually suggesting that the recipient will “just know” the answer they need. These cultural underpinnings imply that actualized, emotionally healthy persons wisely let feelings be a guide.

Since my mind constantly locks onto these discrepancies in our use of language, I issue a hearty “who says?”

Sometimes, yes, we do want to trust our feelings. However, like so much of our thinking, this phrase is dangerous if we lock into feelings in a black and white way. Feelings aren’t always an indication of “Truth.” Feelings aren’t always effective guides. Take two of the most common feelings: guilt and anxiety.

In most cases, guilt is not factually-based in wrong-doing. Most of our guilt is driven by inaccurate beliefs, largely fueled by a powerful “should.” “I should be happy, I wanted this baby” when you’re overwhelmed by depression, grieving the freedom of pre-baby life. “I should spend more time on X,” when in actuality you find X boring–or you’re doing the best you can to allocate time to X. “I should feel thankful for Y,” when you’re overwhelmed by stress and having difficulty focusing on the positive. We plague ourselves with guilt for not feeling some prescribed way, rather than trusting a favorite adage of mental health professionals, i.e. that “feelings just are.” Maybe it’s ok to be where we are. Maybe we don’t need to second guess our experience.

Anxiety is an even more powerful signal that we seem to cast as reality. If I’m worried about something, we reason, there must be real danger. We give anxiety such power, translating the biochemical process of stress revving through our bodies as a signal to be heeded. Just like guilt, irrational beliefs (e.g. “it will be a catastrophe! Everything will be ruined!”) abound. Much of the time, worry and anxiety are based in conditioned responses. Our bodies habitually respond with this runaway action. As Rick Hanson says, maybe the tiger in the bushes isn’t really a tiger. We’re paying on that debt we may not owe. We’re anticipating future angst, to use a Bible verse (Matthew 6:34) shared with me this week: “Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”

I preach (and try to practice myself) to first stop and evaluate, and then hopefully, to dismiss anxiety and guilt. Is this a real worry? Do I truly have anything to feel guilty about? Call it what it is: energy spent in a direction that is not necessary or helpful. “It’s just anxiety–not reality.” “I have no need to feel guilty–I’m doing the best that I can do.” Talk back to those feelings, saying what you would tell a friend. Offer yourself self-compassion, which I’ve taught for years as self-care, and now has credibility, with mention in The New York Times.

The majority of the time, there’s no magic message in anxiety and guilt. Let those feelings go.

Never enough time

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If you’re like me, in travels around the web, you click here (or on any of a million blogs), glance at the length of the text, and make a quick assessment: nope, not enough time to read this now/today/ever. I’ve gotten feedback that my posts are too long. Guilty as charged, at times. Often, as I’m trying to condense, I feel like I’m channeling my dad, writing his weekly sermons. Here’s a fact to fight that impulse to click on: My posts are ~500 words. This is the amount the average adult can read in TWO MINUTES.

I try to remind myself of that, as I struggle with the sense that there’s never enough time.

When my older daughter was not even two, she held up a crystal clear mirror to my warped sense of time. Rushing out the door with me, she said (in her toddler pronunciation, unable to say her Rs), “Huwwy, huwwy, Mommy, it’s bad to be late.” Was that really what I wanted to instill in her, a catch-up pace of life?

Impact #2 came years later, from Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow. A constant champion of sensible thinking, Steve challenged a colleague who drove like me: always racing to beat the lights, weaving in and out of traffic, certain that this was an essential and valuable time saver. One day, Steve (a confessed granny-type driver) followed the other guy all day, driving in his usual conservative style. By day’s end, the rushed driver had saved approximately two minutes.

Think you must always hurry, or all will be lost? Think you don’t have time to work on change (patience, exercise, clutter–name the goal)? Here’s a few two minute or less investments, quick and dirty ways to improve life while battling the perspective that “I have no time”:

1) Check out “Do Nothing for 2 Minutes.” A mini-meditation guaranteed to calm. (Thanks, Ninotchka, of “Cease, Cows, Life is Short.”)

2) When stressed and feelings prevent your brain from doing what’s best (leading to speaking in anger, overreacting, etc.), tap the fingers on your right (or dominant) hand for 45 seconds. This activates the left hemisphere, the locale of reason in your brain, and helps you switch gears and calm down.

3) Throughout the day, take 2 minutes each hour for slow deep breathing. Definitely leads to lower stress hormones (and better sleep) by day’s end.

4) “Take in the good” for 20-30 seconds. Our brains are wired to attune to the negative. Stopping for this brief time and letting a good experience or memory sink in, beginning the process to rewire the brain more positively. (Thanks again, Rick Hanson!)

Who says you don’t have time to change your life? You can invest a minute at a time.

(For more great time quotes and graphics, check out Our Funny Planet. Thanks to them for this graphic. And we won’t even begin to consider whether time exists–or is an illusion. Just leave that to the physicists.)

A Valentine’s Day reminder

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Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s a holiday–so expectations, ever threatening, ramp up again. Remember the five simple rules of happiness: Rule #5 is “expect less.” Pretty hard to do when every other TV commercial is for diamonds and every other aisle in the grocery store looks like this:

This holiday has the potential to suck us into classic all-or-nothing, black and white thinking (that we humans are so prone to): either my loved one does X, or s/he doesn’t love me. Tuning into the underlying intention is good medicine. Even if your sweetie is not a mind reader, it’s good to embrace whatever is offered. Even this epitome of “less,” an innovation in gift baskets that I’d not seen before (and made me laugh out loud):

Hmmm, what chocolate goes best with beer? Perhaps this chocolate bar with bacon that I recently discovered–downright divine. May the sampling commence.

(And if you’re sweetie-less, challenge the automatic thinking that you deserve a capital L on your forehead. Who says presence of a partner is essential validation of wonderful you? Treat yourself today!)

Worry dies hard–for worry die-hards

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One of my all-time favorite movies, Defending Your Life, features Albert Brooks in “Judgment City” after his untimely death, defending his behavior during his just-ended life. A central tenet of the film is that anxiety is a given in human beings which we must all struggle to overcome. In the film, Brooks’ character will either ‘move on’ to the next level or get sent back to tackle his anxiety one more time.

Examining my own life and watching the lives of others unfold has convinced me that this is an innate truth.  Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain, who I heard speak in January, talked about how our brains are conditioned in this way for survival. A prehistoric human, obliviously waltzing through the meadow picking flowers, was likely to be the victim of a sabre-toothed tiger. Snap, crack, crunch–end of that lineage. Only those worriers who were constantly wary, watching for danger around every bush, survived to reproduce. This means most of us have the worry habit pretty well locked in, after eons of reinforcement.

Face it: this habit is no longer necessary for survival. Worriers often argue that point, feeling that the energy invested in worrying does somehow protect us. We think that if we relax our brains, and don’t tune into all the negative, we may miss a chance to protect ourselves, to react in time. Proponents of positive thinking insist the opposite is true. The more we invest in looking for negative, the more it’s what we see. This is what Hanson said, too: each time we fuel that habitual worry with attention, the related brain connections are strengthened.

Time to banish this energy-draining habit–or at least reduce it’s hold. Anxiety need not be the basic human condition. My favorite tools to reduce anxiety are:

1) labeling the anxiety as just that. “It’s anxiety–it’s not real.” This is powerful for me, leading to a deep breath and letting go. Just because the habit has kicked in and the brain circuits are activated, doesn’t mean that’s TRUTH.

2) Mantras: mind vehicles. These are phrases I repeat to make NEW brain connections that eventually will override the old habits. You may have your own; here’s the latest that’s really speaking to me:

Fear is a down payment on a debt you may not owe.

I detest paying good money for something I’ve not yet received and that may never even be delivered. These words have been a great reminder, as a way to activate the idea behind that little charm on my key ring to “free your mind from worries.”

Groundhog Day begone

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January, with all that emphasis on resolutions and making new habits, has wrapped up. Phew. I think most of us set our sites high, ending a bit exhausted and discouraged. Then here comes Groundhog Day, with the promise of spring (more implied change) and the metaphor that the pop culture movie created, i.e. to NOT live the same patterns (mistakes?) again and again in an endless Bill Murray loop.

I didn’t post last week, counter to my resolve to post weekly, for two reasons:
1) I was in jury duty ALL DAY Weds. as the court tried to empanel a jury for a DWI case. That was a day with an undercurrent of the difficulty in changing habits. All around me, fellow potential jurors had tales of victimization at the hands of drunk drivers, often repeat offenders. Change is hard.
2) Friday I was excited to attend a continuing education workshop led by Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. I’d already purchased the book before I knew he was coming to town. Hanson talked about the easy, concrete ways to make changes in our brains that last, certainly a necessary foundation for changing behavior.

Juxtaposition of these two events shows the range of beliefs: change is easy, change is hard. Which is it? Whichever we adopt is powerful in steering our lives.

It’s both–and mostly depends on focus. If we look for big picture, total life revolution, we’re likely to be disappointed. Sometimes, massive steps are essential: if you’re arrested for DWI, it’s time to never again get behind the wheel after having a drink.

Shifting focus clarifies small revolutions. If you expected your January efforts to completely transform you, you’re probably disappointed. One mom described planting flower seeds in a pot with her son. An hour later, the boy was sitting on a stool by the pot, staring at the dirt. “Watching for my flowers to appear,” he explained. We laugh at his innocence. But are we applying the same unrealistic standards to ourselves? Scolding ourselves for not keeping our resolve 110%? Giving up because the pace is too slow, and we’ll never arrive?

In the words of Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson’s character in Star Wars: Episode I), “your focus determines your reality.” Rick Hanson (only a psychologist–not a Jedi master) said this is fact. When we focus on what we don’t accomplish, and how we feel badly, the brain connections for those feelings are strengthened, reinforcing the endless loop. If we can take in how each cookie resisted, each yoga practice, each deep breath is part of action on the path to change, the brain reinforces positive instead, keeping us out of the Groundhog Day rut. Reminds me of my old favorite, the “Did Do” list.

What have you accomplished this year? Tally the moments and take credit!