What Inspires Me Today - Accepting Praise

 Inspiration: Accepting Praise

Last week I began a new management training program at work.

The first session was about giving and receiving feedback... appropriate for all of us as we're going through our annual performance review period. 

In the session we talked about how to give feedback to those on your teams, but then also how to receive feedback.

One of the most important things I learned from therapy (when I was doing it regularly) was the need to receive love and praise... or rather embracing the concept that you are worthy of love and recognition.

In close personal relationships, it's easy to block receiving the love of your spouse, partner, parent, sibling... there are a host of reasons why people struggle with that, but the end result of all of them is that we push away the people we care for the most.  Sometimes it's a strong push, but usually it's a slow and subtle pressure that takes years to build to something we have to deal with. 

But when we allow ourselves to be loved, that love enters, is magnified, and can't help but return back into our world. We are positively changed, and in turn, we positively affect those we love.

The same is true beyond our personal relationships. 

The act of accepting praise and positive recognition from your boss, your colleagues, friends, and greater community is something we downplay, sometimes with a false sense of humility. We right off those who give us praise as either not knowing us well enough, or having ulterior motives, or just being kind.  

Whatever the reason, we are simply finding new ways to prevent ourselves from believing in our own abilities/capabilities/selves. We can't accept praise because we don't believe we deserve it. 

You Do.

Accepting praise and recognition for hard work goes so much farther than ourselves.

When we celebrate our accomplishments and victories, we not only celebrate ourselves, we provide a wealth of feedback to those around us. We light a path forward for others to follow, and when others follow, they experience growth and success in different ways, expanding that path of great work.

First Things: 2018

Around the start of a new year I always try to take a few moments and journal my thoughts from the previous year and those for the next. On New Year's Eve I jotted down my thoughts about the end of 2017. Today I finally got around to looking forward and in the process was reminded of something I tell myself a lot.

Feeling defeated is easy

Feeling empowered is a choice

It is easy to feel like the world is against you. To look at the chips and see how they did not fall like you wanted. It is easy to see external things as the cause of our problems, issues, defeats, difficulties, etc.. It is true - they DO affect us. We are battered by the world. Life is a hurricane.

But we have a choice to make - do we allow all of that to let us feel defeated - or do we make a choice to take power over one thing? It's easy to rest - but to get up, we have to make a choice to stand. We can choose to have power over one thing and move forward to the next, and the next, and the next.

First Things: Your path

Driving into the office today there was a segment on our local NPR station talking about people moving from other states (particularly the South) to Detroit - and what things they brought with them as heritage from their old lives.

It made me consider what my life would have been like had my parents gone through with a move they talked about when we were young.

Dad had lost his job at Pullman Standard (the rail car giant), and mom wasn't working. Our home was in danger of Sherrif's auction and times were very hard. They had discussed at length moving to Arkansas to a job a friend of my father said he could get him. We almost moved, but something kept them in PA.

My thoughts on how moving would have affected me, moved to much more how I think moving would have affected my parents (or maybe not) - and how that change would have affected me.

As we went through the loss of my mom, her cancer and her treatment, we learned a lot about our family. I didn't want to lose my mom without talking with her about her life - with dad, with her parents, her grandparents.

Mom always had a kind of negative fatalist mentality or outlook on life. I remember her saying many times as a kid... "Two Steps forward just to take three steps back." And "No matter what we do we can never get ahead."

As we talked with Dad through everything, we asked about moving, about why they didn't do things they always talked about and Dad constantly pulls the conversation back to being forced to do things by others... family members taking things from him, people threatening to not take care of our grandma... and people telling him that he'd never make it.  And when we listen to dad talk today about his life, and about things happening today... this mentality paints an overall coating to how he sees the world. No matter what he does, someone is there to take his chances away, someone is there to flounder his plans / his success... even before it can start.

I think that had they taken the chance to move out of state, they would have had an opportunity to break that mindset, to see that not everything ends a step behind where you started and that you can allow others to stop you or you can make your own solid choices to push forward.

I think that would have had the biggest influence on me had we moved.

It's easy for me to default to a point of view that expects "the other shoe to drop" at any moment.
With every project, with every element of my life I always anticipate the upcoming event that will knock me off of my path.

Things are going well... something's going to come along to fuck it up.

This is my default.

But it gives control of my life to that event (if even the event never happens). It surrenders the idea that I am successful - it puts me in a place of defeat from the first step I take. I'm sure that I'm not alone.

We have to conquer that mentality.
Yes, issues come up, things happen, difficulties will block our way.
But they do not have to knock us off of our path.

We can achieve much more if  we see these moments as opportunities to STRENGTHEN our path rather than knock us off of it. What path in life is straight? The variances in our path can defeat us or strengthen us. It's our choice on how we view them and what we do with them.

First Things: Holding On

This morning as I walked to my car I noticed that the thistle in our front yard had burst out with about eight blooms.

Days earlier I found myself wondering how I was going to take it down, its tall spike-filled stalk turning a mustard brown with the fading of summer. The remnants of its last bloom had been wisked away by the wind leaving only the white broken end of an empty stalk.

But today, after a weekend's worth of rain and wind the persistent plant had pushed out several purple tufted bulbs with two bumble bees clinging to its nectar.

Today I celebrate that little burst of life, the reminder that it will hold on through the winter to be reborn in the Spring. From the weakened stalk a beautiful punch of bright color broke through.

Even when you feel like you're not at your best, like you're failing at life, beauty and growth is still possible. You're not dead until you're dead... and even then, as with the thistle, the seeds of what you've created will spread and grow again.

First Things: Betterment or Detriment

Last night, as Ian and I were driving home from visiting a friend downriver, we were talking about the HBO Documentary Tickle.  If you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend it. It's seriously messed up and completely fascinating.

Without spoiling too much of the movie, it ends up centering around someone who has a tremendous amount of wealth and time and uses that very poorly.

And it struck me, almost to the point of tears, that to do such a thing with the valuable resources and time you are given seems to be to be more "sinful" than the poor person who turns to drugs or crime.

I'm sure that in some ways the socio-psychological conditions by which both the wealthy person and the poor person choose to waste their resources are similar... but for the person who has much to offer the world - to squander that wealth is far more reprehensible that the person without.

It sits with me then, that we have an obligation to be wise with what we have been given. To use the little or vast resources that we have at our disposal for betterment and not detriment. Do we use our words to build up or to tear down? Do we use our time to improve or to complain? Do we spend our energy celebrating another person or belittling them?

When I look at the legacies those who have gone before us left, the legacies of those who used their time, money, and efforts to tear down are rarely celebrated - perhaps in circles for a season, but then they are gone, tucked away as a part of history we learn to not repeat. But those who enrich the world, who stand as a force for positive change, their legacies last both in physical memorials of statues, statutes, laws and books - but in the hearts of lives changed for good.

We have a choice every day as to how we will spend our valuable resources.
For betterment or for detriment.

First Things: Redemption

This morning, my daily devotional talked about an old Christian Poem.

The poem was about the crucifixion of Christ - as told by the cross itself, the tree that was cut down to make the cross on which Christ was nailed. The poem reflects on the idea that Adam & Eve ate from a tree and in so doing condemned mankind, but this tree that became the cross would be the tree on which all mankind would be redeemed.

I get emotional when I think about the idea of redemption, especially when it comes to being an instrument or a vessel for good.  The Bible is full of parables and stories of how God uses imperfect people to accomplish great things. Jacob tricked his brother Esau, yet God chose Jacob to build the Hebrew nation. Zachheaus (sp?) was a tax collector who defrauded people out of money, but the story of his hospitality to Christ is sung throughout Sunday schools around the world. Peter denied Christ and then became the rock of the Christian Church - and Paul killed many Christians before he was called by God to be a part of the foundations of faith. And there are many many more stories.

The Biblical message is clear - no matter what you have done in your past, no matter what your history, redemption is real. You can make a choice for a positive impact, you can change the world. If you feel that you are worthless, so have countless others before you.  If you feel that your baggage is too heavy, it is no more than what others have born. If you feel powerless, you have the power to change the future.

Redemption is freely available if you choose to take hold of its open hand.

First Things: In the Now

This morning I'm really thinking about the importance of what lies before us... of the now.

This idea has really been impressed on me lately as I've been teaching my improv classes. In any acting situation, the actor always strives to be "In the moment" with his scene partners and with herself. When an improviser is focused in the moment, nothing goes by in a scene without it being picked up, examined and devoured.

The best improvisers do this by habit. On stage they LIVE in the now. Your character is tying his/her shoes and misses tying the shoelace - "watch out, you're going to trip over that." A character sneezes - "You have a cold, Damn - I knew it stay away from me!" Not only are they in the moment, they are there with the strongest of emotional choices and imperatives.

This moment that has just happened is the most important thing in the world RIGHT NOW and we need to take action on it before we DIE.

A little dramatic, but the point is there.  Don't miss those moments.

And so it is with life. We live our best lives when we are present in the moment - when we don't gloss over someone's emotionally tinted comment, when we listen with our ears, our mind, and our heart, and when we react to the thing that just happened and deal with it before we move on.  Sometimes that means making tough decisions, or halting something else, or waiting for another opportunity. But we have to live in this moment because that is where our lives, our memories, our world is built.

First Things: Be The Good

This weekend ended on a sad note for many in my circle of friends as a dear family lost their mother.

It reminds me that in the midst of this bizarre and often difficult world, what matters most is the mark we leave on someone's heart.

On my Facebook Page this weekend an old high school acquaintance left a scathing, judgmental, hate-filled comment on a post that was followed by an equally hateful comment from a current friend which lead me to take down the post and step away.

No matter what the circumstances are in your life, to an issue, in a conversation or in a battle, you can be the good that someone needs.


Be the good for a world in need.
Be the light that shines in the dark.
Be the hope that seeks to be found.

First Things: Times of Joy

On Friday night I had the privilege to attend the official opening night performance of Dot at Detroit Public Theatre. Dot is a story about family's matriarch dealing with her gradual decline into dementia and Alzheimer's - and all of the relationships that a family typically struggles with during the holidays.  Written by Colman Domingo, the play is wonderful and I cannot recommend it enough. Here is the info - go.

I was especially touched as my family deals with our grandmother's affliction with these same things - though her situation is far more along than Dot's.

In the play, there is a point where one of the character's boyfriends accepts Dot's incorrect assessment that he is her long-passed husband - and when she wants him to dance with her to an old Judy Garland song, the boyfriend lovingly plays along while the family watches in confused sadness. But for Dot - it was a moment of joy, to have her husband back in her arms - if even a mirage. Adam, the character, did not deny her mirage or her joy, but took the moment to see her happy.

Having lost a lot this year, I have learned to embrace joyful moments in times of pain. Hell, I've learned to accept joyful moments in times of joy. When situations change, and when times get hard, memories of good and wonderful times are the echos we have to the good in our lives.

As we enter this week of Thanksgiving, I want to be thankful for times of joy - from the moment they begin to long into my memory. And I pray those in my life and those I care about have moments of joy to outnumber, and carry them through, times without.

First Things: Find your comfort zone

Comfort.

In circles talking about leadership and inspiration comfort is something that is occasionally given a bad rap. And it's true - we excel, grow, and succeed when we push ourselves out of our comfort zone. In many ways this is spot-on. You don't know what you can do until you challenge yourself.  The old adage "Do something that scares you..."

There is, however, much to be said for the down time. For the peace, for the rest.  While breaking out of our comfort zones in our profession, in our relationships, in our psyche - we also need to take time to FIND our comfort zone for renewal.

Bodybuilding is a process of exhaustion and rest, tear and heal, burn it up and cool it down.

I know that I spend a lot of time and effort worrying if I'm doing enough to push myself - I'm always thinking that I'm not doing enough... I'm not trying hard enough, I'm not pushing myself, I'm failing at this or that. And I forget to rest, to find a place of comfort.

We need healing, reflecting, and periods of quiet thankfulness for our ability to break out and succeed... or even to just appreciate who we are today.

Our comfort zones are part of our journey forward, do not neglect them.