Tag: discernment

The Power of Sharing: Lessons from a Bunny Encounter

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“We form friendships with unrelated people. It’s universal in human groups. We cooperate with each other, altruistically. We’re kind to strangers — again, to unrelated individuals. This is different than many other types of cooperation, which are also seen in other animal species, but often that cooperation is between genetically related individuals. We do it with genetically unrelated individuals. We teach each other things. People take this for granted, but it’s actually unbelievable” – Nicholas Christakis

I find it fascinating when my kids demonstrate something that we do all the time as grown-ups. In this case, discern who to share with.

My six-year-old son, Mr. D, and I were walking on our favorite beach on Whidbey Island this weekend when we saw a bunny in trouble. It was trying to climb the bank back to the grassy top about 100 feet above. It kept on getting about two-thirds the way up. But then the incline was too vertical so the bunny fell back down.

Mr. D and I were watching it. He said the thing that was running through my head. “Take a rest. Calm down. Try another approach.”

But its frantic efforts made it lose ground and attract our dog, Cooper’s attention. The bunny started running along the bank parallel to the beach about 10 feet up. Cooper started chasing it. Because he wasn’t on the leash, all I could do was call him (good luck with that) and run after him to try to leash him.

The bunny finally exhausted itself and fell to beach level. Cooper caught up and nosed it but I don’t think did any more damage than what happened when it fell. When Mr. D and I got there, it was breathing and moving its front paws, but I’m not sure its back paws worked any more. We put Cooper on leash and left the bunny to rest but we weren’t feeling hopeful about its survival. It was a tender moment.

Later that afternoon, Mr. D quietly said to me, “I told Miss O about the bunny. I didn’t tell Eric though. He’s too funny for that.”

It was such a great example of what we all do when we share something. We evaluate who the audience is, whether they can be trusted with the information, and if it’s the appropriate time. It’s just like sharing a file in the office. Are we putting it in the correct location with the right permissions?

Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong but we keep trying. Because to share is human, and as Yale sociologist Nicolas Christakis says, it’s unbelievable!

There are times I get rusty and the words for any experience that is hard or tender come out slowly. I’ve found that it’s easier to keep it flowing than let myself get encased in my armor. Thank goodness for kids that show me how. And for this beautiful blogging community who receives so beautifully!

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

(featured photo from Pexels)

You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/ and Instagram @wynneleon

I host the How to Share podcast, a podcast about collaboration – sharing leads to success.

I also co-host the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast, an author, creator and storytelling podcast with the amazing Vicki Atkinson.

The Difference Between Want and Need

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“Recognize what is simple. Keep what is essential.” – Lao Tzu

Yesterday morning, our first morning after returning from our road trip, I looked around the house and had a good laugh at the evidence of our settling in. I’d relished being home by sitting on my meditation cushion with all my meditation books around me. Five-year-old Mr. D played with all the sports equipment. And nine-year-old Miss O had gathered up all the materials and made slime.

It’s a defining act to travel. We pare down to essentials so that we can go on adventures. It forces us to know what’s vital to our health and sanity and pack accordingly. I’ve seen climbers who cut the pages out of a book because reading is important to them, but they don’t want to carry the whole weight.

Of course for our cushy road trip visiting friends who took great care of us, it’s not nearly as stark. But still, I couldn’t bring all my meditation books, D had to pare down to only some baseball gear, and Miss O could only bring a couple of stuffies.

But I love the way we better appreciate the luxury of all of our comfort when we come home. It feels as if part of traveling is helping us know what is essential for peace of mind wherever we go. We’ve come home a little wiser about the difference between what we want and what we need. Which is an important thing to know.

(featured photo from Pexels)

You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/ and Instagram @wynneleon

I host the How to Share podcast, a podcast about collaboration – in our families, friendships, at work and in the world.

I also co-host the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast, an author, creator and storytelling podcast with the amazing Vicki Atkinson.

Figuring Out Feelings

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“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” – Rumi

There’s nothing like watching a kid trying to figure out what they’re feeling to remind me how hard it is to name what’s wrong.

We traveled this weekend to San Francisco for a family party. Tons of fun! Also lots of people to coordinate with. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how traveling can decrease the easy access to food, increase how far we need to walk, and obliterate the routine. All in the name of doing fantastic things, of course, but a little disorienting nonetheless.

At one point on Friday afternoon, we walked to the Lucas Films office building to see the Star Wars memorabilia on display. They had the R2D2 in the lobby as well as the original Darth Vader costume. And tucked in glass shelving, they had Han Solo’s light saber and some other guns from the movie.

Yeah, you don’t even need to be a huge Star Wars buff to think that was cool!

We walked out of there and my son was upset. He wasn’t crying or saying anything but he parked himself on a wall a half dozen steps from the door and wouldn’t move. When I finally got him to talk, he said, “It’s not fair that they get to have those guns when I want one.”

Hmm… I didn’t think that was the root of it. Granted I’m not a five-year-old boy, but the guns didn’t seem amazing enough to spark a protest.

After some minutes of silent protest with his sister and me at his side and our family patiently waiting about 50 feet away, he finally could be persuaded to walk around the corner to a Starbucks. At least that was a little slice of familiar territory.

Even so, it probably was another ten minutes before he ate and drank enough to come back to himself. He still wanted a Star Wars original light saber but he could move on.

It made me wonder how many times I’ve hit the wall, mistaken the source of my depletion, and tried to climb the wrong tree to get over it. More times than there are Star Wars movies, for sure!

Being human is hard. Borrowing social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor for the body (elephant) and the mind (rider) — the elephant stops moving and the rider, thinking it’s in charge, finds the best story why, but not necessarily the most accurate. And then we can find ourselves wanting to shoot our way into the Lucas Films lobby to steal priceless memorabilia when all we really need is a snack.

May the Force (of stopping long enough to get to the bottom of our angst) be with you.

(featured photo is mine)

You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/ and Instagram @wynneleon

I host the How to Share podcast, a podcast about how to share anything – to the appropriate audience, with the right permissions, at the most opportune time.

I also co-host the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast, an author, creator and storytelling podcast with the amazing Vicki Atkinson.

Envisioning The Future Without the Filter of the Past

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“We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

After almost two years of working for the company that I sold my company to, I’m back in the business of working for myself. I’ve spent two-thirds of my career as a self-employed computer consultant. The inclination to build my business exactly as I did before is so strong – kinda like muscle memory. But that doesn’t honor that all the ways I’ve learned and changed since I did this previously.

So I love the inspiration I find to build outside of the box. Here’s one from Mark Nepo:

“It was a curious thing. Robert had filled the bathtub and put the fish in the tub, so he could clean their tank. After he’d scrubbed the film from the small walls of their make-believe deep, he went to retrieve them.

He was astonished to find that, though they had the entire tub to swim in, they were huddled in a small area the size of their tank. There was nothing containing them, nothing holding them back. Why wouldn’t they dart about freely? What had life in the tank done to their natural ability to swim?”

–The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

In addition, my meditation teacher, Deirdre recently gave me some powerful imagery. She said we need to envision the future without the filter of our past.

I’ve spent enough years hiking and climbing to know the wisdom of why we continue on the same path we’ve always used. It helps keep us from getting lost and if we have to backtrack, we know the way.

But for almost every trail system I’ve been on, there are certain intersections where you can easily traverse to another path. Because some paths don’t go to the place we are trying to reach.

I’m trying to keep that in mind as I navigate my next steps. I feel so lucky that I am at an intersection point that has made doing something different not only possible but also preferable. It’s like the Universe has left some bread crumbs to a different route. I just need to follow them. It’s easier to type than it is to do.

For anyone navigating a similar intersection, consider this as an encouragement to envision the future without the filter of the past. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.“

(featured photo is my daughter, Miss O, when she was almost two years old confidently finding her path)

Secret versus Private

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“Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.” – Kahlil Gibran

My daughter’s elementary school just had their annual book fair. One of the things Miss O selected was a fuzzy journal with a lock. She took it directly to my mom and had her sew the keys on to the journal so she wouldn’t lose them.

Miss O and I have been talking about secrets lately. Her second grade class is doing a section on identity and she’s learning the distinction between what is secret and what is private. One of the large parts of Miss O’s identity is that she doesn’t have a dad. Is that secret or is that private?

When she first asked me if she had a dad, she was three-years-old. It went like this: “Did I have a dad when I was born?” I answered “no” and waited for the follow-on question. And then she asked, “Did I have a dog when I was born?” I said “yes” and then she moved on to, “Did I have a cat?”

Following her cues, I’ve told her more and more as she’s asked. Mostly that I wanted kids so much that I went to a doctor to help me have them. It’s not a secret in any way and I want them to feel complete openness from me about how we came to be a family, even if they choose to keep it private.

The other day, Mr. D asked for the first time if we had a dad and when I said “no,” Miss O jumped in to say, “We’re special because Mama had us without one.” Okay, so I have to work on the messaging but not having a dad definitely isn’t a secret.

I suppose we all go through the figuring out the difference between what is secret and what is private. For me, what is private doesn’t take any energy to keep boxed up. It’s like inviting people over to my home. I don’t invite everyone I know into my house. And, for those that do come over, most people just visit in the kitchen. There aren’t many people that I invite up to the tiny space on the third floor. It’s messy up there but I don’t keep it locked.

When we were talking about secrets, Miss O wanted an example. I dug deep into my memory from high school to find an appropriate scenario understandable by a seven-year-old. I came up with the story about my best friend who was dating a boy named Craig. A new girl had recently been hanging out with my best friend and me, and one day when my best friend wasn’t present, the new girl told me she’d been making out with Craig behind my best friend’s back. But of course, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, especially my best friend. Ugh, I can still feel the weight of that secret.

I landed on the distinction that secrets are something you’d be ashamed if anyone found out. Things that are private aren’t anyone else’s business.

Maybe the keys sewed to the journal are a great metaphor. The lock reminds others to stay out but the barrier isn’t so high that you have to hide the keys away.

I wrote a related post about my learning not to keep secrets on the Wise & Shine blog: Can I Tell You a Secret?

Discernment

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“It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech.” – Mark Twain

One of my favorite words these days is discernment, especially when it applies to my own actions. That is to say, when I take the time to discern to what I should or should not be doing.

Oxford Dictionaries defines discernment as “the ability to judge well.” I think of it more broadly as taking the time to choose how I apply my energy and time. Also, to notice when I’m trading routine for quality.

Lately I’ve been writing my blog posts on the morning of the post instead of what I’d done most of the year, which is to draft something the day before and finish it the morning I post it. Putting a little time between when my fingers hit the keyboard and when I hit “publish” served to give me space for reflection and hopefully be a little more thoughtful.

Discernment tells me I need to stop publishing every day so that I have more time to think about things. So that I can do a better job. Maybe three thoughtful pieces a week instead of five slapdash ones. And now I’m laughing because of the post I wrote about Interrupting the Pattern earlier this week – it’s hard to break a habit.

What role does discernment play in your life?

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Long and Winding Road

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“Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.” – Leo Buscaglia

My five-year-old daughter has been saying to me lately, “I want to be a scientist so that I can keep finding bigger and bigger numbers to tell you how much I love you.” Aww, so sweet. She gets my attention and a hug every time she says it.

It makes me think of why we choose the jobs that we do – to impress others, to have enough money to feel safe, to differentiate ourselves, to do something until we figure out what we really want to do. I think back to college and why I choose to study Electrical Engineering. It had a lot to do with a man I was dating who was also an engineer and EE was the engineering major that required the most math classes and I loved math. It’s turned out to be a fine basis for what I really like to do which is to solve problems for people. There are a lot of ways to have jobs that help people but that was the route that I took and it’s worked out.

But I winnowed out a lot of other choices. I worked at an engineering firm as a receptionist one summer in college and realized I didn’t want to have a job just sitting behind a drafting table,  I worked at the expresso stand in the building that housed the architect majors and realized that the pressure of long lines wasn’t any fun. I spent enough time in the EE labs with other engineering students to realize I didn’t want to hang out with other engineers. In other words, there were a lot of “no’s” along the way.

It strikes me as I continue to wind my way through life figuring out what’s next that the “no’s” are a tool that I need to have more respect for. It reminds me of a story about Thomas Edison who as he tried to invent the light bulb tried a lot of different materials to be the filament. When asked if he got frustrated with each experiment he replied that he didn’t because each one taught him what not to use. That inspires me to both know that even though I’m in mid-life, I am not finished having choices and also to understand that what I don’t do is as important as what I do.

As for my daughter, I assume she will change her mind about what she wants to be many times. I’ll take the hug and sweetness and try to gently steer her towards discerning what is meaningful for her own God given talents.

Loving the Bad Cat

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“It never hurts to see the good in someone. They often act better because of it.” Nelson Mandela

I used to have this cat, Simon. He was a Siamese mix that I inherited from a neighbor when she went to study in Hawaii for two years. She moved back from Hawaii but never returned for the cat. I suspect it was because he was a bad boy. He’d break into other people’s houses, he’d fight with other cats, he’d get locked in places like neighbor’s garages that he should have never been in the first place. A classic Simon story was that I had a neighbor, Steve, who hated Simon because he was always getting into his stuff. Steve lived in a duplex and when someone new moved into the other apartment, he was showing them around the basement with the washer/dryer the two units shared. As he was saying to them, “The most important thing is that you can never leave this door open because there is a cat that likes to come in here.” The new people asked what he looked like and as Steve replied they interrupted, “Like that cat right there?” And right behind Steve’s shoulder was Simon sitting up on a shelf smugly looking at them all.

Simon was so smart with such a big attitude that he was very amusing. He’d walk with me and my dog for 12 blocks, always looking around like he was the secret service agent keeping us safe. He was a snuggler too. Whenever he bothered to come home, he’d climb right into my lap and collapse there. But when push came to shove around his bad behavior, I’d always distance myself from him, “Oh yeah, that’s a cat that I inherited.” Like I did at the very top of this story. His bad behavior was disrespectful and rude, two things that I don’t see myself as so I think I just couldn’t own up to him.

I’m thinking of this because my five-year-old daughter this morning told me that she got in trouble yesterday when she and her friend were at the park with her friend’s caregiver. They went to an area that they were told not to go in order to climb trees. I assume that this was a pretty mild incident given that I heard about it from my child a day later and not the caregiver or the other parents. But it was notice that I’m crossing the threshold of parenting where my child can make choices outside of my control and supervision. And it raises the question about how to manage the myriad of feelings that come with it, specifically the judgment that comes with it – my judgment of my child and my fear of judgment by others.

There are two examples that come to mind about parental reactions to bad behavior. The first is a notable case from when I was growing up about a prominent family in the town. The dad was the editor of the newspaper, the son, who was then in his 30’s, got arrested for serial rape and the mom tried to bribe the judge and have the prosecutor killed.

The second story is on the other end of the parental spectrum and is a video that I saw a dad had posted online of his daughter running to school. He had posted it to shame his daughter for lying about what had happened to her bike.

Between those two examples is probably where most parents operate, I hope. I am finding that I am at my best when I let go of my judgment and instead choose discernment. When I am judging my child’s behavior, I feel the constriction of my viewpoint into not only what have they done but also who that means they are. Even when I don’t say half of what I’m thinking because I’ve declared that there will be no name calling in my house because the research that shows shame does not work, my thoughts jump to judgment. But when I am able to move through that into discernment, I can feel myself open back into curiosity. Both about how to best teach the values that I think will be most helpful and also about what conclusions/lessons my child has already learned before I even say anything. Crossing between judgment and discernment requires at least one deep breath.

So I asked my daughter why she thought that area of the park was out of bounds and what she might do differently the next time she’s invited. She had pretty good answers and we talked through the gray areas. It was better than anything I could have lectured on my own.

Postscript: After many different types of behavioral intervention for Simon and one time when he died and had to be resuscitated on the operating table as he was getting another cat’s tooth extracted from his back after fighting, the vet finally prescribed some kitty Prozac for him. He stopped fighting and breaking into other’s houses and he lived to 19 years of age. He lived with me for 14 of those years so I guess he was my cat after all.