Say it Better

Live Your Strongest Life

  “Out beyond the ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field – I’ll meet you there.” ~ Rumi

“It hits a spot, doesn’t it?  It suggests that not being right (or wrong) is a place we can choose to go to,” wrote Sarah Wilson after reading Laura Munson’s book on how she chose not to retreat or retaliate when her husband said he was leaving. Instead Laura chose to be calm, still – and yes, sometimes quite scared.

“If your partner said that to you, chances are that would be the start of a conversation --- an ugly one,” wrote one of my favorite reviewers, Jesse Kornbluth. 

Instead she said, “I don’t buy it.” 

Her story was the most forwarded, shared and debated Style column in The New York Times all year.

“I was faced with a choice, wrote Laura, “I was going to let this take me down, or I was going to learn to base my happiness on something that was within my control.”

Adds Sara, “That it just exists, once we drop knee-jerk judgment, and is entirely accessible. If. We. Just. Choose. It.”

This is not an instinctive nor an easy approach yet it is worth practicing. That is to choose not to suffer or to retaliate against someone dear to me right after he says something toxic  - or doesn’t speak up or act in a situation where I relied on his support – or at least their understanding. Good men know this.

My reacting harshly out of hurt usually stiffens the spine of the other person in their righteousness. They respond defensively and feel greater justification for their actions.  This hardens our hearts towards each other, making it increasingly difficult for either “side.” By then we do see sides in the situation, so we move farther apart.  Through that lens of protective distance we are more inclined to see how the other person is wrong and we are right.

 

One hard-learned truth I tend to forget:

Choosing to respond to the decent actions in others and to let the rest go seems to be the most likely way to stay connected to the better parts in each other. Live strong is not only an apt motto for Lance Armstrong but a wise maxim for us all to accept frailties in others and to live from our strengths.

 

Another rule of thumb:

Do not let somebody else determine your behavior.

 

Two Mothers Share Tragedy: Three Triggers to Comfort

Hearing of the death today of a friend’s son in a war zone I was struck again by the many feelings a Mother’s Day evokes and how comforting others is as vital as celebrating on this day. Here’s my related story to share (bet you have some too).

''I had a doorbell moment this week.'' Patricia told Tracy. 

Both have sons serving in the same Marine unit in Iraq. Patricia is describing the fear that grabs her the moment her doorbell rings unexpectedly, thinking that the officer on the other side has come to tell her that her son is dead. Tracy understands.

 Hint One: Through shared experience, expressed aloud, we adopt “shorthand” expressions and feel understood, closer and comforted in that familiarity. 

~

 When Tracy’s son, Derrick was deployed, she knew that those who would most understand her feelings were other mothers in the same situation so she started a support group.

Cynthia Gorney’s wrote about these mothers way back in 2005 when the war still seemed new:

 “Draped over a banister in Tracy's house was an unwashed T-shirt Derrick had dropped during his last visit home. I thought Tracy was apologizing for her housekeeping, which I had already seen was much better than mine, but she cleared her throat and said that what I needed to understand was that she hadn't washed the T-shirt because if the Marine Corps has to send you your deceased child's personal effects, it launders the clothing first.

‘That means there's no smell,’” Tracy said.”

 Hint Two: Smell is the most directly emotional sense.  Nothing else comes close. Turn to smell as memory anchors of your shared, comforting experience

~

 “Tracy's closest friends in the world right now are other parents whose sons and daughters have served in Iraq or are serving there now.”

 Hint Three: Expressing vulnerability as you feel it can create an opening for others to do likewise, bring you closer, in the moment and over time.

~ “Tracy knows that the grandfather clock in Patricia's house chimes nine times when the other clocks say it's noon because the grandfather clock is set to Baghdad time.  Tracy knows that Patricia has figured out how to tell if someone is in her driveway by squinting at the reflection off a certain glass-covered picture in the dining room, so that if it should ever be two men in uniform, Patricia will know they have arrived before they start ringing the bell and before she is obliged to look directly at them and hear what they have come to say.”

Hint Four: The specific detail you share paints the general picture that listeners will see in their mind’s eye and will shape how they will feel and remember what you say.

 "One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention." ~ Clifton Fadiman

How to Look Weak or Defensive

 Like saying "I don't beat my wife" Obama's "will not" statements regarding the inept attempted Times Square bombing puts the emphasis in the wrong place in his first two sentences (I humbly suggest) by inadvertently bringing to mind the fear factors rather than speaking from strength in the positive as he did with the second two statements, beginning, "We will..."  

Obama said "We will not cower in fear. We will not be intimidated... We will be vigilant. We will work together."  Public figures are taught to avoid such defensive-sounding soundbites or answers to reporter's questions and to, instead, state the positive, strong and pro-active mental image they want to instill in others' minds. 

This is an uncharacteristic lapse in Obama's usual responses to situations. 

One of the most vivid, credible ways you can stick an image in someone's mind is by comparison.

When Worry is Worthless, When Fear is a Friend

My friend Colleen Wainwright calls "anxiety, my old friend." 

We women generally worry more than men.   For example, "While men are bearing the brunt of the job losses, women report much higher levels of fear and worry about their families’ financial security than men do" and women worry more than their husbands about prostate cancer coming back.

Yet it is vital to recognize the difference between worry and fear. How, for example,  can we know when a fear for personal safety is justified and when a worry is sapping our spirit and making us see the world simply as a dangerous place?

“Our fears are fashioned out of the ways in which we perceive the world,” wrote Gavin Becker, author of The Gift of Fear:  Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence.

Better to learn how to recognize when someone’s hostile or other less apparently dangerous actions are, in fact, a danger to you, so you can act to protect yourself, and not let unfounded fears and worry contaminate your life. 

What can we do?  Revise FDR’s advice, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” by using our gut instincts well, with this variation:  “There is nothing to fear unless and until you feel fear.”

Whenever you’ve felt profound fear, it was linked to the presence of danger, imminent pain or death.  

Said DeBecker in a National Public Radio interview, “When we get a fear signal, our intuition has already made many connections.  When you feel fear, try to ‘link’ it back to a past situation where the feeling that was similar to see if your fear is, in fact, justified.” 

When you feel it, take notice to find the link back to see if you need to take action.  How rational are our fears?  In the 1960s a study was done on what single word evoked the greatest psychologically strong reactions of fear.  The study included words like spider, snake death, rape, murder and incest.  Shark evoked the strongest reaction. 

But why?  Sharks rarely come in contact with us.  Three reasons:  the seeming randomness of their strike, the lack of warning for it and the apparent lack of remorse.  

Yet man is a potential predator with far more abilities to approach, disguise and deceive.  While the media often portray human violence as random, de Becker points out how it seldom is, and how you can anticipate the patterns in most cases, if you listen to your instinct of genuine fear and take action. 

DeBecker’s book describes how you can better protect yourself by learning to recognize and act on the intuitive signals you pick up but reject as unfounded.

Worry, on the other hand, is the fear we manufacture. 

Worry, anxiety, concern and wariness all have a purpose, but they are not fear.  Any time your dreaded outcome cannot be reasonably linked to pain or death and it isn’t a signal in the presence of danger, then it really should not be confused with fear. 

Worry will not bring solutions.  Worry distracts from finding solutions.

See it as a form of self-harassment. 

To free yourself from worry sooner, understand what it really is.  Most people worry because it provides some secondary reward such as:

• Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don’t do anything about the matter.

• Worry allows us to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we’re doing something.  Prayer also makes us feel like we’re doing something, and even the most committed agnostic will admit that prayer is more productive than worry.

•  Worry is a cloying way to have a connection with others.  Worry somehow shows love.  The other side of this is the beleif that not worrying about someone means you don’t care about that person.  As many people who’ve been worried about know well, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action.

• Worry is a protection against future disappointment.  After you complete an important project where the success of your approach won’t be known for some while, for example, you can worry about it.  Ostensibly, if you can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it, so to speak, by worrying about it, then failing won’t feel as bad when it happens. 

But how would you want to spend the time while you find out:  worrying, playing or initiating another action on another endeavor?

For some people, worrying is a “magical amulet”, according to Emotional Intelligence author, Daniel Goleman.  Some people feel it wards off danger.  They truly believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening. 

Most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur.  This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predictor that it isn’t likely to happen.

The connection between real fear and worry is similar to the relationship between pain and suffering.  Pain and fear are necessary and valuable components of life.  Suffering and worry are destructive and unnecessary parts of life.  Worry interrupts clear thinking, wastes time, and shortens your life.

When worrying, ask yourself, “How does this serve me?” 

To be free of fear and yet still get its gift, consider these techniques: 

1. When you feel fear, listen.

2.  When you don’t feel fear, don’t manufacture it.

3. If you find yourself creating worry, explore and discover why.

We Choke on Anxiety

Anxiety, unlike real fear and like worry, is always caused by uncertainty.  it is caused, ultimately, by predictions in which you have little confidence.  If you predict you will be fired and you are certain that your prediction is correct, you don’t have anxiety about being fired, but about the ramifications of losing a job. 

Predictions in which you have a high confidence free you to respond, adjust, feel sadness, accept, prepare, or to do whatever you need to do.  

You can reduce your anxiety by improving your predictions, thus increasing your certainty.  It is worth doing, because the word anxiety, like worry, stems from a root that means “to choke,” and that is just what it does to us. 

Our imaginations can be fertile soil in which worry and anxiety grow from seeds to weeds, but when we assume the imagined outcome is a sure thing, we are in conflict with what Proust called an inexorable law:  “Only that which is absent can be imagined.”  In other words, what you imagine -- just like what you fear -- is not happening.

When You Want to Crawl in a Hole But Can’t

In “one fatal keystroke” Rose Zory, the Chief People Officer at Carat Media sent an “for top management only” email on the messaging managers should use when firing (oops, rightsizing) some employees. She sent that email to every single person in the company. Carat is Europe's largest media group, by the way. It provides advertising and public relations services, expertise it badly needed at that point.

Now comes the flood of advice (again!) about how to avoid such email embarrassments and what to do when they happen. What would you do?

Won’t forget you Zakia

Yesterday Zakia Zaki was shot seven times, including in the chest and head, as she slept with her 20-month-old son at her home north of Kabul, Afghanistan. Her three year old son witnessed her death, when three men armed with pistols and rifles, broke into her home and shot Zaki into the bedroom.

She'd been threatened much earlier for her reporting.

A former teacher and school headmistress, she ran the US-funded station, Radio Peace, since it opened after the fall of the Taleban in 2001. Sometimes the media can be silenced.

As you may imagine, women journalists in Afghanistan are extremely rare. Yet, just a few days ago a woman newsreader there was also killed. "Authorities" are making vague statements that the reason for her killing was "family-related".

Kathy Hilton: Instead, let’s turn our attention to Zakia’s courageous choices. They can serve as inspiration to make us better people.

There's comfort in discovering that Zakia's story attracts the attention of many around the world as it is BBC’s sixth most “popular” story right now.

Kindness as Innoculation

"Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble."
~ French proverb

Whatever we praise we encourage to flourish. Whatever we criticize or "simply" snub goes deeper.

Each moment we choose our emotional response. We choose where to put our attention, emotion, and intention. Emotions are energy. So, look to someone’s positive intent, especially when it appears she may have none.

"The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines," wrote Charles Kuralt in On the Road with Charles Kuralt.

"Keep what is worth keeping. And with the breath of kindness blow the rest away," wrote English novelist, Dinah Mulock Craik. Here's to making more opportunities to play, laugh, celebrate, and "say it better" in cultivating kindness as life's genuine "keeper."

Life contains few absolutes, and one of those few is that kindness usually cultivates connection, something we yearn for in a time-pressed, ear-to-the- cell-phone, relationship-diminished culture. After all, the heart can be our strongest muscle if we exercise it regularly. Yet being kind is not a guarantee of safety from hurt — nothing offers that failsafe comfort.

"Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships," wrote Barbara Grizzuti Harrison in an article for McCall's magazine way back in 1975.

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares," wrote Henri Nouwen in Out of Solitude.

Years ago from my college classmate, Alasi Perdanan, I heard a Persian proverb, "With a sweet tongue of kindness, you can drag an elephant by a hair."

"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate," wrote Albert Schweitzer. "He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love," wrote the Greek religious leader, Saint Basil.

Kindness is often unspoken. "An eye can threaten like a loaded and leveled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. At another time, Emerson wrote, "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."

"You may be sorry that you spoke, sorry you stayed or went, sorry you won or lost, sorry so much was spent. But as you go through life, you'll find -- you're never sorry you were kind," said Herbert Prochnow.

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom," wrote Theodore Isaac Rubin in "One to One."

"Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations win and preserve the heart” said English chemist Humphrey Davy.

"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop that makes it run over. So in a series of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over," once wrote the Scottish lawyer and biographer, James Boswell.

"We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness," wrote columnist Ellen Goodman.

From an artist's perspective, ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once said, "The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure."

From Mardy Grothe:

"When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason has left them."
~ Willa Cather

"Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution."
~ Kahlil Gibran

"Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not."
~ Dr. Samuel Johnson

Your Authentic Voice to Draws Others Closer

This story has stuck with me for some while, so I am finally sharing it here. Thank you Cynthia Gorney for your finely-honed sense of justice and your fine writing.

• ''I had a doorbell moment this week.'' Patricia said to Tracy. Both have sons serving in the same Marine unit in Iraq. She is describing the fear that grabs her the moment her doorbell rings unexpectedly, thinking that the officer on the other side has come to tell her that her son is dead. Tracy understands.

Hint One: Through shared experience, expressed aloud, we adopt “shorthand” expressions and feel understood, closer and often even comforted.

• When Tracy’s son, Derrick was deployed, she knew that those who would most understand her feelings were other mothers in the same situation so she started a support group and web site, Marine Parents.

Read more in Cynthia Gorney’s moving article in The New York Times.

Wrote Gorney, “Draped over a banister in Tracy's house was an unwashed T-shirt Derrick had dropped during his last visit home. I thought Tracy was apologizing for her housekeeping, which I had already seen was much better than mine, but she cleared her throat and said that what I needed to understand was that she hadn't washed the T-shirt because if the Marine Corps has to send you your deceased child's personal effects, it launders the clothing first. ‘That means there's no smell,’' Tracy said.”

Hint Two: Smell is the most directly emotional sense. Nothing else comes close. Use smell as memory anchors of your shared experience

• “Tracy's closest friends in the world right now are other parents whose sons and daughters have served in Iraq or are serving there now.

Hint Three: Your strongest emotions right now can lead to your closest sources of support.

• “Tracy knows that the grandfather clock in Patricia's house chimes nine times when the other clocks say it's noon because the grandfather clock is set to Baghdad time.

Tracy knows that Patricia has figured out how to tell if someone is in her driveway by squinting at the reflection off a certain glass-covered picture in the dining room, so that if it should ever be two men in uniform, Patricia will know they have arrived before they start ringing the bell and before she is obliged to look directly at them and hear what they have come to say.”

Hint Four: The specific detail paints the picture that people will see in their mind’s eye and shapes how they will feel and remember what you say.

Molly left the world stage still ...

raising hell. Can't Say That Can She?

Ah yes. She did.

Even in her final month, dying of breast cancer, Molly Ivins wrote, "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders and we need to raise hell.

A surge is not acceptable to the people in this country -- we have voted overwhelmingly against this war in polls (about 80 percent of the public is against escalation, and a recent Military Times poll shows only 38 percent of active military want more troops sent) and at the polls....

“Anyone who wants to talk knowledgably about our Iraq misadventure should pick up Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone." It's like reading a horror novel. You just want to put your face down and moan: How could we have let this happen? How could we have been so stupid?

As The Washington Post's review notes, Chandrasekaran's book "methodically documents the baffling ineptitude that dominated U.S. attempts to influence Iraq's fiendish politics, rebuild the electrical grid, privatize the economy, run the oil industry, recruit expert staff or instill a modicum of normalcy to the lives of Iraqis."

Yet she always maintained that she aimed her barbed Texan jibes at the action, not the person. With her book Bushwacked, she told NPR’s Bob Edwards, “that she doesn't hate the former Texas governor, with whom she attended high school. ‘In fact I've gone out of my way time and again to point out that he's a perfectly affable fellow, and he's not stupid and he's not mean," she says. "And it takes me aback to have people just make that assumption about me... What we're trying to show [in the book] is that whatever Bush's personal qualities are, his policies are having a genuinely deleterious effect on people's lives.’"

Just as she recalled Ann Richard’s aptitude for attracting attention to an outrage by wrapping the real truth in humor, many of us will long relish that talent in you, Molly.

You and Wozniak?

A remarkably diverse mix of people, including many in the public eye, self-describe as having this "condition".

For example, Steve Wozniak publically admitted it when he was interviewed in front of an audience by the popular Scobleizer recently - and got a standing ovation when done.

Has someone been sending you emails rather than calling or meeting you face-to-face?

When you get together, does she or he stand back or avoid holding eye contact or speaking up? Could that description fit you?

While there are many possible reasons for their behavior, that person may, in fact, be chronically shy. Shy people tend to smile, touch, and speak less. In social situations they experience rapid heart beat, perspiration, and butterflies in the stomach.

Shy people think more negative thoughts about themselves, expect to be rejected, and perceive others as unapproachable. They are more likely to forget information presented to them when they believe they are being evaluated. In short, the world looks like a scary, unfriendly place, so—ironically—they often look unapproachable.

At what cost?

Shy people have more trouble meeting people, conversing, and forming relationships.

In his study, Thomas Harrell of Stanford University found that “The number one factor linked with success was social extrovertism, the ability to speak up,” something shy people are least apt to do.

Two potent negative consequences of shyness are:

1) Shy people have greater health problems because they tend to have a weak network of friends, are less resilient to illness, and less likely to give doctors sufficient information to be treated

2) They're less likely to make money, live up to their potential at work, or feel appreciated for their contributions.

Why do more people describe themselves as shy? Is it our growing social isolation? With less time spent in face-to-face interaction, people are less comfortable with their ability to connect.

What can you do to reach out through your shyness? Seek out and create safe environments to experience the non-shy parts of yourself, without fear of judgment or negative consequences. Over time, you'll know that you can survive and even thrive in situations that had seemed scary.

Most of my childhood I was quiet and kept to myself, mostly because I enjoyed daydreaming and reading. But most people thought I was shy. I had to learn to reach out more so people would be comfortable with me.

When you connect and care, you live better—not because those gestures are always acknowledged, but because it is your brave and warm expression of how you want to live your life.

Here's some good news. According to one study cited by Smart Mobs author, Howard Rheingold, some people "credited the Internet with helping overcome shyness."

Read Shyness and The Hidden Face of Shyness. Both books have been immensely helpful for me.