The finish of the bike ride – the 1st of the year with my son & granddaughter – came to an abrupt and terrifying end. After hitting the pathway around the local park and cruising the neighborhood, we were on the downhill run to the right hand turn into the home street. The speed merchant father was finishing in style as he passed me and started the turn. Unfortunately, the chariot with his daughter didn’t have the same turn radius for the speed he was carrying, and the trailer went over on its side. The toddler was crying and her dad was traumatized – already beating himself up.
I moved the bikes off the road as my son cradled his girl and started apologizing over and over through his tears. In the next 10 minutes we knew she was fine, and I tried consoling him but really only remember three things I said. I told him his daughter wouldn’t need to forgive him anywhere close to the degree he would need to forgive himself. I also let him know that typically no one in our lives will hurt us more than our own families, and that he would actually hurt her more in future days than today had done. Being a psychologist he wisely told me to shut up and… well actually he didn’t, even if he thought that at the time. I’m glad he is parenting those kiddos.
I’ve been thinking lots about hard things, family and why we get those particular others to start us on our journey, especially knowing that we will damage each other. We could argue that the prevalence of the family ouches are mostly about opportunity exposure – we spend more hours with family in our first 18ish years of life than any others, etc. However, I think there is a design purpose at play in this scenario. Birth order isn’t just a coincidence, nor is the membership in our tribes.
So this raises a conundrum for me – why did the designer set up such an obviously flawed plan of creating human community? Novices with functioning gonads get to reproduce – no licensing required. No threshold for parenting skill or intelligence is required; that central challenge of ‘can you live for the next 18-30+ years while serving and providing for the needs of another?’ doesn’t have to be pre-tested.
Can you imagine how different our culture might be if the ones parenting children were as wise as grandparents? Oh wait, in my neighborhood that sounds vaguely Asian… Multigenerational living discussions will need to wait for another day.
So why is this design the way it is? Here’s three ideas to consider:
1 – To develop capacity and resilience we have to deal with tough things and endure. Exercise physiologists tell us that to build muscle – get stronger – we have to overload muscles. Helicopter and snowplough parents notwithstanding, as parents we need to intentionally mete out challenges and model responses on how to deal with life when it is hard. Much of the foundational, shaping work for our spirits happens in early windows of learning in which wee ones have very few choices. Establishing that life can be tough, and that we can persevere while navigating both our emotions and those challenges is a necessary lesson for all of life.
Then there are the ages where as parents we deliberately choose to either expose or shelter our children to a variety of situations. The goal is that hopefully our kids’ capacity for front brain reasoning has been developed on the path to independence in such a way that they have the resiliency to respond to the changes ahead as life throws curveballs. So perhaps the inevitable imperfect parenting and sibling injustices are actually camouflaged capacity development in preparation for bigger things ahead… the small wounds from family develop capacity for the upcoming wounds from our world.
2 – Family is the first venue in which we learn and experience healing. When we get wounded by the ones we live with, there is no immediate, long term escape available. Turning back and apologizing, owning our faults, or extending forgiveness when we are wronged should be started in the home. I can still feel my throat tighten and my face flush as I recall a few of the most egregious acts for which I had to apologize. I also understand now the gift my sister, my teacher, my employer gave me as they offered forgiveness and helped me navigate repairing the damage and loss I had created. We don’t often move to that choice voluntarily; our family structure is the right blend of push and support to force our feet down the entire path leading to restored relationships.
3- Jesus tells a story of an employee who had a huge debt forgiven, only to turn around and harangue and threaten his fellow employee for a much smaller amount. When the employer hears of the injustice, he terminates the forgiveness and holds the original debtor fully accountable, since he was not willing to extend the same forgiveness to another. The clear lesson is that we are all given grace that we do not earn; the proper human response is to share that same graciousness with each other, even when we have to pay the price.
My mind connects forgiveness with second chances. We have all needed them, and hopefully we have learned the value of extending them. Similarly, we have all suffered the wounds of wrongs done to us. Learning early in life how to handle those wounds plants a seed that we will need all of our life. Both ends of the power dynamic have lessons to learn, and parents & other family should be engaged in helping us learn those in supportive home settings.
Borrowing the Fight Club’s saying “The things you own end up owning you” I am questioning whether we own our phones, or do our phones own us? We are consuming our time on digital devices, which is re-shaping our neurology and ability to be aware of our choices. As a result, we are increasingly less able to think for ourselves – critically, intentionally, and in focussed and sustained ways. Deliberate algorithm design in digital devices and platforms has behaviorally modified our thinking patterns and habits in ways users have not anticipated, and to a degree which is only beginning to emerge and be understood.
Jean Twenge coined the label iGen in her book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood… (2017) to describe the generation that is growing up with the possibility of always being digitally connected. Since then, given some whistleblowing regarding Big Tech’s algorithms and ongoing developments in our understanding of the dopamine pathways in neurology, we might more accurately label that as digitally distracted or even digitally directed today. Spoiler alert – it is not just the iGens who are in a battle for their minds, and thus their lives.
Focus – our ability to centre and sustain our attention – is a key tool for what defines us in our complex, many-layered lives.
So, I want to speak about 3 key ideas to help us win the war for our focus; to direct our attention rather than to be pulled through life by distractions. These key ideas are that you:
1 – need a goal, a belief about why you want to be able to focus
2 – must be intentional in choosing to exercise your focus muscles
3 – have to look at yourself in your truth mirror to assess where you are today
Why is focus a big deal; why should it matter?
Ask any teacher and they will tell you that students are increasingly not able to control their brains well enough to sustain focus. Colleagues at work are repeatedly interrupted by notifications, and who here has not engaged in multitasking or just online cruising during a camera-off Zoom meeting in the last few months?
What you think, you become, said Buddha, Bruce Lee, and the writer of Proverbs (23:7). Do we have a plan for how to use our minds to continue to grow, to learn, to become the best versions of ourselves? I echo so many others who have said “Failure to plan is planning to fail,” but I cringe when I think of the cost that will accompany this lack of focused thinking when we apply it to our lives… our relationships, our work, our growth.
Why the emphasis on being intentional; why can’t I just go with the flow?
So many of today’s mantras urge us to be present in the moment, and just accept things as they happen. Combine that with the progress argument, and there is an easy dodge of the intentionality lens – which like it or not requires concerted, ongoing effort. Things are always improving, with evidence that progress is all around us. Undoubtedly progress is happening, and there are great indicators across the world, including some portrayed by Hans Rosling in his inspirational work, Factfulness, as well as visualized in his Youtube clip 200 Countries, 200 years, 4 minutes. My contention is that these are products of people’s intentional work; without intention sustained by the ability to focus, none of the gains we associate with progress would be realized. Recall the laws of thermodynamics from our early science days, and recognize that entropy will increase as systems are left to themselves – the usable energy decays to less usable forms.
A key first step to maintaining our focus muscles is intentionally creating environments and routines to proactively limit the challenges to our focus. Here’s a few… set a limit on how much time and when we cruise the interwebs & apps. Know when our most productive time of day is and plan to do our heavy lifting work in that zone. Cultivate a keystone habit to create a cascade of practices that we know lead to our best productivity and lifestyle. Recharge devices away from where we sleep, with notifications silenced. There are many hacks possible if you make an effort to instigate even three ideas from what you can glean from the Google.
Here is my plan, and imperfect practice in this area. My keystone habit (applied from Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit) is to drink a glass of lemon water as soon as I get up in the morning. That leads me to a spiritual practice of reading, meditating, and reflecting for the purposes of gratitude, humility, and connection. In a perfect world that would include journaling; but admittedly I’m less than perfect with that practice. From there I organize to get out the door to exercise, whether the house is started yet or not. The goal is to not get tripped up by any work or digital engagement until after those selfcare practices are completed. My Achilles heel is when I check an early morning notification, or look at the online hockey pool… If that happens then my intentional practices may go downhill as time unspools randomly.
So with a day well-begun, moving into my most productive time of day is an energized next step and I look forward to the planned tasks, as well as being open to the co-incidents (Daniel Henderson) that are coming without my knowledge.
James Clear ( Atomic Habits) insists change occurs when the reasons for our habits are focussed on our identity, not on the outcomes. Eg. I exercise as a habit because I AM a fit person, not because I want to lose weight, or squat 300 lbs, etc. From that perspective, let’s develop our focus and intentional way of living because we are people who know and live our purpose.
What do you do to address this issue? What resonated in this, or what would you add or offer to counter my ideas?
The key learning for me in coaching was centred on becoming a better listener.
“Listen to understand, not to respond” was a zinger that hit me right between the eyes. As a principal, I was often asked to provide solutions; in fact, I started that role thinking that was why I would become a good principal. As a fixer leader I thought I would have solutions where other people were stuck on problems and would only have questions.
So I had some serious learning to do around listening,; for which my wife has been grateful, I hope 🙂 That learning included the axiom that leaders build trust and gain influence when they listen actively; communicating that they not only understand the issues, but they also appreciate the values and beliefs that are embedded in the relationships enmeshed with the problem. It allows us to recognize the human cost for everyone involved, without having to activate the fixer gene to start working on solving the issue. A great by-product for the one sharing – being vulnerable and honest about what the situation means to them – was that it taught me social awareness, and I began to develop my capacity for empathy.
So that’s the quick introduction for listening out, the more easily recognized part of the title. Lately, my lesson seems to be focused on the other half of the title; listening in. I am currently grappling with making sense of emotion, particularly anger. I just finished reading a very helpful book (Healing Life’s Hurts, Graham Bretherick) that has challenged me to rethink anger. Watching as a wee lad my father repress emotions for years but then have periodic eruptions of Vesuvian proportion, I drew some very erroneous conclusions about anger. The key takeaway was that I did not want to be blowing my stack, because I thought anger as an emotion was wrong. Consequently, I locked down strong emotions, questing for control as the goal for dealing with anger.
This book challenged me directly to recognize that anger is a designed response to danger, providing the energy to take helpful action. Anger is in fact a very positive emotion, but only if it is used under control and in a purposeful way.
As a connection to listening in, I am just starting to realize that when I encounter something that makes me angry, I need to have the awareness to have my internal voice interrogate the reality of the problem. (As a quick aside, thanks to Fierce Conversations for that very helpful concept.) Anyway, I am going to have to reprogram myself to stop suppressing anger when it arises. I need to examine what has caused it, what the threat is to me, and what a positive response might be in that situation. In other words, I have to listen in to the voice inside me that has something to say.
Daniel Goleman’s article (What is Emotional Self-Awareness?) asserts that “Emotional Self-Awareness isn’t something that you achieve once and then you’re done with it. Rather… it is a continual endeavor, a conscious choice to be self-aware.” I’m choosing to rumble with that powered by optimism… I can start a new season and begin to experience growth. This is new territory for me, so I am hoping that the skills of listening to others, developed through coaching, will allow me to develop an ear for my faintly audible inner voice.
What are some strategies that you use that support emotional awareness? How do you create your context for listening in? What advice might you have for me, a middle-aged male who is definitely late to the game, but is wanting & willing to learn?
In the midst of the Covid chaos, am I winning the mindset war? Do I have the antidote of purpose and value to repel the dark thoughts of despair and hopelessness? Honestly, while I might be handling the current battle well, I certainly have lost several recent skirmishes. This past Covid-dominated year has more than put a wobble in my top; I have found myself needing to resist sliding into the shadows more than once. My hunch is you are waging the same war too.
With very little face to face contact, and the loss of routines as I worked from home or from a sepulchral office setting, I have struggled to be positive and bring focus to how I approached life. So many prior routines had fall off the cliff endings – the gym closed, going into schools for my HR role dried up, connecting in worship was suddenly done. Even being together as an extended family – with the first two grands on their way – disappeared for the high season celebrations. It became a real challenge to restructure my thinking so that there were things to anticipate with joy. With a focus on the half-empty glass, I struggled to not get immersed in the conversations thinking about what was lost, or how restrictions were arriving by unreasonable and unfair means.
I certainly did notice that there was more time and space in my life. However, I lacked the energy of activation catalyzing me to use that time to take on positive goals. Despite wanting to do basement workouts, I had minimal success hauling myself off to the dungeon and setting a new routine. I found myself gravitating to distraction more than challenge, unless you consider Alphabetty, Wordscapes, and Lumosity as significant growth indicators. I think we updated Karl’s Marxim to the 21st century reality that Netflix is the opium of the people.
So what helped me turn the tiller before I wrecked on the rocks? Reading; specifically targeting what to read, and then rumbling with the thoughts that destabilized me. Pursuing the challenge of ideas to foster growth. James Allen’s 100 year old pocket companion – As a Man Thinketh (a Proverbs 23:7 Biblical reference) asserts that our thoughts are the key to helping us help ourselves. I have known for a decade+ that I am a learner (according to Strengthfinder 2.0) and I even have a story of ending a former career doldrum with a cathartic decision to take on a learning goal. However, that prior self awareness did not save me from the mindset dip when the seasons turned from outside living to indoor, Covid dominated existence.
Starting with re-reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, I was challenged to be aware I could choose my attitude. As soon as I raised my eyes off the Covid confinements, I realized again that although the Now feels randomly chaotic, my map is scribed already; I could let it unfold as the Creator has drawn it. I just need to decide what I would choose as my framework these days. That provided the confidence that there was purpose even in Covid.
So the mindset I want to immerse in has three perspectives – yesterday, today and tomorrow. I want to recognize the valuable aspects of yesterday – even the painful parts – for helping me to grow. Viktor Frankl challenges me to look at today with gratitude and as an opportunity to learn and help – to define purpose. Tomorrow needs me to hold it with open hands, not to labor to construct it with my limited narrator perspective. The confidence to navigate today and not be paralyzed or anxious about what is around the corner tomorrow is not dependent on my capacity; that confidence is based on the quality of the mapmaker.
There is always amazing and beautiful LIFE happening around us. The eye-prickling humility of getting to hold your newborn grandchildren (twice in the last 5 months!) can cancel any newscast or Covid restriction announcement. The chance to listen to others, to care and offer empathy is a better choice for me to make than to join the woe chorus. I can’t fix my co-worker’s frustration with leadership who won’t collaborate but only demand accountability, but I can walk alongside him.
How about for you? What are choices you are making that are helping you find perspective and purpose today?
PS – Cancel Chaos is an amalgam of two ideas: cancel culture and Chaos Theory. In choosing this as a title, I wanted to co-opt cancel to a positive intention – shut down the insidious darkness that Covid has cast over our perceptions. Isn’t that where our current chaos begins? Words create worlds. Where we choose to focus, the words we use to define our realities, are these not the tools that construct our lives? Chaos theory simply suggests that what appears to most people as chaos is not really chaotic, but a series of different types of orders with which the human mind has not yet become familiar. (Frederick Lenz). That seems to me to be a great indicator of the Infinite Mind that spoke all existence into being – an order with which my mind is not familiar. So I will lean into that hope of unseen order by choosing my attitudes and words, thinking and actions, clinging to those assurances that life is always purposeful.
The finish of the bike ride – the 1st of the year with my son & granddaughter – came to an abrupt and terrifying end. After hitting the pathway around the local park and cruising the neighborhood, we were on the downhill run to the right hand turn into the home street. The speed merchant…
An hour and a half… that’s how long it took my 90 year old father to eat his hospital lunch. The self-talk that kept me from getting too impatient was recalling the light in his eyes as the tray was delivered – it was obvious that lunch was a highlight for a day in the…
An hour and a half… that’s how long it took my 90 year old father to eat his hospital lunch. The self-talk that kept me from getting too impatient was recalling the light in his eyes as the tray was delivered – it was obvious that lunch was a highlight for a day in the hospital.
That was a week ago – today the 2 year old grandson is coming together with all 13 of us to celebrate him amidst the chaos of 5 grands 3 years or under. That ratio will work out – 8 adults to 5 toddlers – but they will give us a run for our money 🙂
The week between those two events and the contrast between my responses has moved me to wonder how often I live in the joy of the current moments, as opposed to having a focus on something ahead in life. I’m sure I am not the only person who approaches life by trying to think about what tomorrow will hold – big events to anticipate, possible problems to prepare for, and goals to move towards. That quality led me to recognize in my late 40s that if I wanted to be on the floor with the future grands, riding bikes, teaching them to throw a football and playing catch then I had better maximize my physical capacity right away. A decade later with 20,000 km cycled I’m glad I made some changes.
Recently that thinking around the corner habit nudged me to consider what will provide my life’s quality when like my parents I live more in my mind then I do in my failing physical capacities? What am I doing today to cultivate the capacity of my mind, so I will be able to draw on some reserves if I am gifted those future years?
I think the most important thing I can now do is make two commitments:
Commit to the growth mindset that leads me to learn every day.
Commit to memorizing ideas that matter, words that resonate with truth.
Staying a learner is a huge idea, but it really comes down to the limiting choices I rarely examine. Things like will I do the work to stay current with technology changes? Why would I go through the hassle? What’s the value of learning about AI, for example? Then I recognize the extreme limitations of the resistant learners in the generation ahead of me (I’m in the boomer cohort) who can’t operate cell phones, email, maybe even TV remotes or WLANs. I’m musing about a new definition for ‘you know you’re getting old when’ that ties to the time of the most recent system update on your device.
Another challenge in a learner or growth mindset – am I willing to be a 60 year old novice? While it’s humbling, I know the answer has to be yes. The old coach in me knows if you don’t gain skills in practice it doesn’t take long before you aren’t in the game. So I tell myself trying new things eventually leads to some sense of efficacy and will mean I hopefully don’t have to ask my kids to repeatedly solve my life’s little glitches.
Commitment to memorize – I’m still mulling on that. I know music speaks to my spirit more effectively than just text, so I think I might start with curating a Spotify playlist of music that matters. Morning meditations on soul-stirring lyrics may be just the thing to code truth to memory. Perhaps an idea to explore in a future post…
I have often said I want to be a happy Papa and not a grumpy old man. I’m hoping to do that by looking for the good in the moment I’m in, being kind and generous with others, and intentionally building capacity for a future I don’t know but recognize will be full of leaks. Leaking energy, memory, a slowing processor, taking fewer risks; I can feel these spectres sliding into the room with me already. So it’s important to be intentional about filling the tank now if I want the last bike ride to have enough air in the tires to get me home.
Alberta has a lovely mid-winter break that warms my heart every year – even when the ambient temperature does not match the warmth. Family Day – a free Monday to celebrate our closest tribe members. I’m going to lay out my thoughts as a way of ‘counting my blessings’ and practicing gratitude; I don’t assume this is anyone else’s experience, but I hope it links to something good for you.
In the last year our extended family added a new girl (now 8 months) and we are awaiting the arrival of the next grand – could even be this weekend! The little ones joining us and finding their unique tunnels into our hearts reminds me of something I have said to all three of our kids – generally in a time of crisis where they weren’t totally happy with the ‘rents. I pointed out to them that biology is not just chance, that they were chosen to be part of our family; we were all given to each other to be our tightest circle of support and love.
Which doesn’t mean that things are always well with us… In the aftermath of an accident that left a little, a dad & a papa all shaken, I pointed out to my son that family generally are the ones who hurt us the most. That may be the plan – get the hurts we need from those we have to return to and resolve those wounds. Let our scars please serve as reminders that we are loved, mistakes will happen, and we can learn from them and still go forward.
That is a tough choice some days. We all have the capacity to choose bitter, to not move back to the circle and own our part of the problem. Those wounds can fester and become fissures too big to bridge. Like every family, we are dealing with one of those right now. I don’t think anyone’s life is untouched by that type of conflict and loss. Small wonder that Jesus’s story of the prodigal son sends an arrow into every parent’s heart.
I saw the latest example play out today, family members who take offense from the actions or words of another kin. Almost 2 year olds are generally a handful, and one of us (not the parent) stepped up to corral the runner during a church service. The spirit was right – I can help out the parents as they are not seeing this and may be tied up – but a couple of days later a comment was made. Not cutting or mean, but a vapor trail that let the intervener know that the parents felt like a boundary was crossed and they needed to provide an explanation of why they had not acted. Almost more not being said than actually was said.
So the nameless intervenor thinks about the comment, wrestles with their conscience and reflects on the situation and their motivation, and then chooses to love. An apology is extended, without any ‘buts’ to justify. Commitment to supporting and being connected are expressed, with no desire to control. Grace in action. A sky-banner clear reminder that we are all stumbling through Brene Brown’s FFTs and will need help and understanding from each other to get through to wisdom on the other side.
So, Family Day… worth celebrating every day, but likely just as invisible to you as it often is to me. I’m grateful for the living reminder this year to lean into those relationships, to celebrate their unique personalities and affirm they belong with the rest of us in the circle. Oops- gotta go, I just got a video of grandkids getting sink baths in the kitchen. Pure golden, those giggles when the kids know the parents are playing too.
What I couldn’t manage to do, the Covid-19 pandemic got me started doing …
I know I should, I even want to, but I never seem to sustain the drive long enough to actually get it done. That’s the headliner for me and writing.
The pandemic just passed the one year mark (it’s March 26, 2021 today) and I’m finally making the commitment to follow through to achieve my WIG – Wildly Important Goal – according to the authors of the 4 Disciplines of Execution. More like what will it take for you to quit talking about it and just do it? It may have also helped that at the last family ‘boys’ birthday celebration I put it out there that I would write 1 blog a month for the balance of 2021, and I would be accountable to the 7 other family members in our clan to do so.
I’ve always enjoyed reading. My parents used to do the post-midnight bed checks every once in a while & I was invariably nailed and in trouble for reading under the covers with a flashlight. You would think I would have heard them coming up the stairs, but no – I blame the current hearing aids which foreshadowed the issue. I would get some inconsequential penalty and simply be back at it later…. So, the pandemic freed up time to read more, and I took advantage of it to start focusing on what next, what am I going to be when I grow up?
After 3+ decades in school, 21 years of that as a vice or principal, I realized I was becoming more excited about helping others grow than I was about being the leader. I still remember the frisson that danced between my shoulder blades when a colleague dropped the gratitude bomb on me in her classroom after school one day… she told me I was compassionate. Didn’t sound very masculine, and I sort of thought that would be a good quality that Jesus would have, but not someone as egocentric as me. But it did nudge my self-awareness ship to start to change course.
8 or 9 years later I get to work with some routine things in HR, but I also get to help school leaders and staff work through the problems that they have taken 1 or 2 swings at but are not yet resolved. When I got this role my superintendent chuckled at me and said “Now you get to work on the problems that the principals couldn’t get solved.” That sounded a bit daunting; but what he didn’t tell me was that I would get a chance to accelerate my own learning, and be helpful in some really unique ways.
My thinking moved some more as I realized the best conversations I would get in a week were either listening to my wife, helping a principal, or chatting with a younger person after church or in a school. My 6 kids are millennials, and they are a pretty gracious litmus test for knowing if I’m relevant (requires more listening than speaking) or just providing the glazed eyes that precede sleep. They may regret encouraging me to do this, but eventually I started to consider “What might it be like to write down some of these ideas?”
So here it is – a first attempt to deepen my own understanding and learning in life while hopefully being helpful to someone along the way. If ‘words create worlds’ then actually finding ways to express ideas might help me to see myself, others, and our common purpose & humanity more clearly. So that’s the crux of it – say something helpful, Lloyd.
 | James Holm on Why Write? |
| L3 on Cancel Chaos |
 | Wayne Funk on Cancel Chaos |
L3 - listen, learn, lead 