What Happens if Everyone Is Nicer on a Monday?

January 21, 2013 //
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Expectations are strange things. If I expect Mondays to suck, they generally do, and over time more so. If I spend a few minutes on Sunday evening contemplating what a great day Monday may be, my Monday seems to start in a very different way, filled with the soft quiet of unfulfilled potential rather than with the dread of ‘if this, then what else follows?’ It is a nice difference (and I owe a dear loved one a ‘thank you’ for the suggestion). It also got me thinking about expectations and how a pleasant surprise can turn a day around.

Would you like to get in on the ground floor of some fun with me? It’s along the lines of upsetting expectations, and altering our reality for the better, and it’s easy and doesn’t cost anything but a moment of will and your time, and all the choices are yours! Here is how it works – be just a little nicer on Mondays. That’s it. So many of us expect really awful Mondays. We go back to work after a weekend that always feels too short, or we wake up with the knowledge that we are among those who could be working but are not, or any one of a near infinite number of life scenarios – many of which include the expectation that ‘Mondays suck’. So, to join in on this fun, we’ll be re-wiring Mondays! Treat your fellow man just a little nicer today than you might ordinarily, and see where it takes us all. It doesn’t have to be ‘let me buy your lunch’ big, either, and you don’t have to tell a lie or compromise your values – just handle each interaction in the most pleasant way you know how. Exercise what you understand about kindness, mercy, compassion, friendliness, hospitality, graciousness, good manners, helpfulness, patience.. hey, pick one and just do that! I don’t see a goal labeled ‘perfection’ on this anywhere, the word I keep using is ‘fun’.  Why ‘fun’? Because that is how I hope to appreciate the day today, any time my efforts result in an unexpected smile from another person, or a moment when it is obvious that their Monday is just a little better than they expected. If enough of us do it, what happens to what we all expect of Mondays? If it gets to be a widespread practice, how awesome would that be? How amazing to build a reputation as a culture for treating people well? We could do that, one day of the week at a time.  It’s a choice.

Ideally, of course, we couldn’t have this conversation at all. The very idea that it would come up as a suggestion is a little… well… it doesn’t say great things about who we have become as ‘civilized’ beings, does it? That there is room to suggest our world could be a better place with so little effort is rather…sad. Still, the good news there is that it actually will take very little individual effort to make our world a better place, to improve our culture, to improve our quality of life experience, even to make Mondays great days to look forward to. Small steps, and simple ideas, are not a bad starting point for change.

Today I am taking on Monday very differently.  I wonder what it will be like? I mean, after all… we are each having our own experience…

Categories Perspective, Relationships, Words

Tear Down Your Idols

January 20, 2013 //
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A Sunday evening before a Monday workday and I am contemplating what has been a very productive and pleasant weekend spent in the company of people I love, and thinking about the immense damage we do to ourselves over time, and how it becomes damage we do to others. Of course, a lot of the damage we do to ourselves has its origins in the damage done to us in life, and there’s that whole ‘choice piece’ to contend with, because once the damage is done, the choices are still our own, and then there’s the ‘accountability piece’ too, because whether we willfully choose an action or not, the ownership of the things we choose to do falls to us regardless of our choice, in all but what is forced upon us. It’s complicated to think about, sometimes, and recently I think about the logic of choice a lot. Choice works best when you know as many of the available options as possible, and for years I just didn’t understand how wide open the vista of choice really is. That has limited me more than I understood.

I’ve been searching all my life for ‘happily ever after’ – a fairy tale ending, more or less, I guess. Not reality; reality hasn’t always been good to me. Something hit me this week, sometime in the midst of tears, pain, emotion, and turmoil, both internal and external… maybe ‘happily ever after’ misses the point as goals go? Would I be more productive, more satisfied, and even happier if I turned my attention away from the goal of ‘happy’ and focused more on ‘meaning’? A mindful, meaningful, life… it’s a different idea for me. I’ve tended a bit more toward easy gratification of obvious desires, or needs that don’t infringe on other priorities (or do so in a way I can overlook).  I don’t have a lot more to say about that from the vantage point I have this evening, as I watch the sun sink low, and listen to the contented sounds of life at home; I just have hope.  Hope feels pretty good, and for the moment, good choices don’t seem out of reach.

I’ll admit that one thing that has been big for me lately has been ‘tearing down my idols’ – finding the bits and pieces of nasty leftovers in my basic learning of things that simply are not true, don’t actually reflect my values, or are remnants of assumptions, premises, and teachings that have been long over-turned but not corrected in my thinking and decision-making. It’s a slow process and sometimes quite sad; the discovery that some long held notion is a ghost in my machine, or worse still some malicious booby trap left over from some earlier time, place, and relationship…well, saying ‘it hurts sometimes’ doesn’t even begin to describe the quantity of tears or magnitude of disappointment.  It is worth it to make the slow steps to being who I most want to be.

Categories Logic & Reason, Perspective, Relationships

A Day Ahead

January 18, 2013 //
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It’s very early to be writing. Ordinarily, I’d at least also be sipping coffee while I wake up and prepare for the day. Today feels like a test of my strength, my resolve, my balance, and my desire for change. No coffee, no breakfast – instead I am due for some blood work for an upcoming physical, and it is the last (I hope) big day of moving. My bad planning put them on the same morning. It is, however, morning and mornings are new beginnings. It may test me, but it’ll be an open book test…

I didn’t sleep well last night. I barely slept at all. I wasn’t especially anxious during the night, but I didn’t fall asleep easily, and I woke around 1:30 am, and struggled to return to sleep, then woke groggily to an alarm that just couldn’t have felt any less appropriate. I managed to rouse myself enough to be awake.  At least I carried last evening’s feeling of hope forward with me into the new day – that feels good.  I am eager, though, to be done with the work of the day before it has begun; I’d simply rather be at home with my family.

A few minutes in quiet contemplation of the day ahead, and I’ll be out in the world living the day and doing my best, and hopefully remaining mindful that we are each having our own experience.

Categories Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Words

An Odd Quiet Moment

January 17, 2013 //
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It’s been a tough few days. Actually, for me it has been a challenging few weeks, of soul searching, questions, doubt, insecurity, fear, anxiety, perspective altering information, gains, losses, love, Love, anger, disappointment – did I mention the fear, insecurity, and anxiety? It has been emotionally busy…difficult…painful…meaningful…and worthwhile and necessary.

This week I saw two loving beings be better than circumstances require, more compassionate, more rational, and more supportive under stress than people are expected to be. I saw some of the best that ‘civilized’ humanity has to offer one another. I am awed. Almost speechless with wonder – and appreciation that two such people are part of my life. I hope to live up to that example, myself. I’d like to turn 50 being the very best person I’ve ever been, able to make use of a lifetime of wisdom, and surrounded by people who love me.

Evening light…and a quiet moment. I am not alone tonight, I am surrounded by love and a significant measure of patience, and support. I won’t be writing long tonight, there isn’t that much left to say right now. There aren’t enough words to write enough thank you’s to express how I feel tonight. I think I could spell it ‘hopeful’.

Categories Anxiety, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50, Words

Making a Choice

January 16, 2013 //
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Choice is a tricky thing, and carries with it the characteristic of ‘accountability’, for each choice I make.  Education and coaching tell me things like ‘don’t blame the victim’ and give me reminders that events forced on me against my will are ‘not my fault’. That sounds easy enough, but it’s a complicated thing, because my own choices at any point after an event that ‘isn’t my fault’ are still entirely mine, and the accountability for them is also mine. Isn’t it? Does a brain injury, or child abuse, or domestic violence get me off the hook for being accountable for my own actions, my own choices? It doesn’t seem that it would…but are my choices themselves, or my ability to make them well, altered by my brain injury? My PTSD? My hormones? What does that mean for me, or for my relationships?

I’m staring at a lifetime of bad decision making, poor choices, failures to be accountable, and I am frustrated and tired and disappointed that at 49 I am not a better human being than I am. I spent the night in quiet contemplation, no real hope of sleep. I am tired, too tired for clear thinking, terrified to let my mind rest and risk losing a moment of understanding or any sort of step forward. My anxiety is completely out of control and I feel lost and very aware that my decision-making may be impaired… except… wasn’t it already?

Life lays out the choices. I have to see them, and make a choice. I’m choosing to do a better job of being a good human being, moment to moment. I expect that choice will have it’s own unique challenges, and may be more difficult than it sounds. (I hope that if I have to let go of what means most to me right now because of failures to be a better human being sooner, I will find being committed to treating myself and others well, and being honest and thoughtful with my choices in the future, will be enough to earn something that means as much as what I have cost myself through my bad choices in the past.)

We’re all having our own experience. The significance of what we do isn’t solely our own – someone else will experience it along with us, in their own context, understood from their unique perspective. Please help me make the world just a bit better than I have made it on my own, so far; treat someone who is hurting with compassion and understand that they are having their own experience, and that is both their truth and their world. Treat people well, especially the ones you love. Make good choices that meet your needs over time. I am pretty sure that if I successfully did those things every day, life would be wonderful.

Tags
Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50
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