Category: General

Lifting the cry, Hosanna, I welcome my triumphant I,

(Feeling my mother’s side-eye—Easter and countless rites were narrowly sacred.)

My parade moves languidly down rugged Jerusalem’s path:

“You must pound the ground smooth where you are sitting,” Unumbotte ordered.

Dust sifts light and thin off of hard soil in my Holy Land,

Swaying palms move hot air gently across my smiling face.

Hosanna.

Trust your intuition. That’s what I would tell my Younger Self. Align your head and heart and follow your own good advice. That’s what Younger Me needed to hear.

Some of the best interviews of celebrated people include a thoughtful answer to this prompt: What one piece of advice would you go back to give your Younger Self if you could? Have you ever thought about how you would answer? I have. Dear Girl, trust your loving, soulful, wonderful self.

I wasn’t really encouraged to trust my instincts by my parents. My mother was withholding—her approval was unavailable—so I learned not to trust myself. My dad was domineering and, instead of hearing me out when I brought a problem to him, he’d cut me off mid-sentence, “Here’s what you do…” or “Here’s what you tell them…..” Part of my waffling I brought on myself. I’m an extrovert, so I get energized by interacting with people and used to draw willing participants into a game of “Let’s Play Amateur Analyst,” discussing why people do what they do or say what they say as an entertainment on the path to making a decision.

With age comes wisdom, if you’re lucky, and by the time I was approaching 50, I had learned to give myself the approval and acceptance I sought from other people and stopped consulting so many people about my choices. I suppose I finally stopped ignoring my feelings and my intuition, too, and stopped being so worried that my feelings would betray me. Self-esteem, self-respect, a deep and personal experience of worthiness: those were the gifts I give myself.

When I serve as a mentor for young women, I’m regularly struck by their capacity to understand themselves so well and intuit smart moves and good choices. I don’t think I’ve only met young people who are exceptionally bright or self-aware. Sure, I meet young women who have lost their way, too, but I think there was something in my experience that conditioned me away from trusting my instincts, and I regret that and want to inspire other women to be alert and ignore needless doubts.

If I could speak to my Younger Self, I would say, “Baby, you need to love yourself more. Trust yourself. Reach with your heart and trust your gut instincts. You know what’s right and what you want. Take a deep breath and step forward.”

So, ask me which way to go, Aspiring Girl. I have my answer ready.

Our 2015 cohort is winding up with a common read: Amy Morin’s 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. As always, when I discover a good book, wise thinker or super strategy, I’m going to share with you.

At the core of Morin’s book are Five Things that mentally strong people know for sure, and one of the five core truths is that people with mental strength focus their thinking on the realistic and the rational. There are no extremes of either negative or positive thinking in Morin’s definition. People who have mental strength don’t operate in extremes anyway: they stay centered in their personal truth, values and principles.

Positive psychology defends the misguided notions of either-or strategies all of the time.

Think about the best treatments for clinical depression. The most effective therapies include a range of modalities, including short-term medication protocols and cognitive behavioral therapy. The best therapists don’t practice in the extremes, treating their depressed patients with only one type of treatment. They assess the patient and match the most realistic treatment(s) for that patient to his/her needs. If a therapist advises patients to dwell constantly on their pain and anguish or to focus entirely on positive emotions and flourishing, the therapist is building a doomed practice. Therapists who treat depression from many evidence-based approaches have high success rates. Period.

Life doesn’t unfold for us in terms of “this or that” anyway. Most children approach life from simple terms, but time and experience teach us that life is seldom good or bad, right or wrong, is or isn’t. Morin asserts that the most resilient of us over age 10 or so make our choices from realistic, rational thinking and find ways to flourish in a happy medium.

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Morin, A. (2014). 13 things mentally strong people don’t do: Take back your power, embrace change, face your fears and train your brain for happiness and success. Harper-Collins.

Allow is my inspiring word of the week.

Allow describes an intention that I’m getting more comfortable with and that I’m encouraging more and more clients to embrace, but it’s not as easy to practice as it is to pronounce. Lots of us are just not wired to allow naturally. We’re doers: caffeinated, impulsive, and regularly irritated with people or things that don’t go our way quickly enough.

Allowing people to behave as they will or things to unfold as they will can be real tests.  We can get into a pattern of forcing our will to make things happen, get a response or meet what we’ve convinced ourselves is an unyielding deadline, and when we start taking even small steps to allow for time and space, we can feel weak, disengaged or lose interest in the process altogether. That’s how I first felt when I began to let go more and allow.

Those of us over 40 can remember when technology hadn’t set our expectations for a fast outcome. Texting, IM-ing, tweeting and commenting after online posts prompt us to expect a quick comeback, and we fail to allow for just some common courtesy or discretion before we “Send.” I don’t even pretend to have all of the answers, but I do read some bold statements sometimes and long for more kindness and critical thinking.

Those are some of the things we surrender when we don’t allow for a deep breath or a good night’s sleep: kindness and grace, critical thinking and reflection.

Allow and our lives become much softer and sweeter.