Tag: power

Use Your Words

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“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” – Rumi

Last Friday my almost four-year-old Mr. D responded to me when I told him that the next day we were going to Olympia for a hike, “Mine Bumblebees and me hate that place.” [Bumblebees is the name of his pre-school classroom so he was going for the group effect, I guess.] I had to laugh. Olympia is about 60 miles south of Seattle and Mr. D has never been there. What’s more – he loves hiking!

I also understand from the lead teacher at his school that the usually affable Mr. D has been recently trying out the phrase, “If you don’t let me, my mom will be mad at you.” Another gem since expressing anger is something I’m woefully bad at.

But I can relate the desire to attach to the most powerful presence I can find and try to borrow some influence. I remember seeing a sign in my neighborhood when I was going through my divorce that said something like, “We don’t want you to park here…” And I felt a mournful tug that I wasn’t no longer a part of a “we” I could hide behind.

Here’s how I unpack it for me. When I feel vulnerable, I’d like to borrow the biggest shield I can find instead of baring my naked underbelly for all to see. I think there’s more than just a little instinctual resistance to leaning in to the things that make me feel exposed. I have a well-guarded list of my weaknesses, fears, and the things I love so much that I regularly worry about losing them.

I come from a long line of smart women whose agency and power were in large part conferred upon them by the men in their life. In that system, their judgment was the sharpest tool they could wield. And I don’t mean judgment as in discernment but instead judgment of others.

But I want to live in curiosity instead of judgment, so I’ve worked hard to break that pattern. That has meant reaching deep inside me to stoke my own fire. I’ve noticed that when I borrow power from someone else, I forget to believe in my own.

I don’t have the worldly power to affect change, command resources, or make people listen but I’ve found that the most important person that needs to believe in my voice is me. When I don’t believe that I, by myself, have anything to say, it suddenly becomes true. I stop in my tracks trying to work for change in my own life.

And when I remember that I do have power to decide and make things happen in my own life, often a curious thing happens – I find helpers. Not people who I need to borrow influence from but others who are swimming the same direction and we can draft off each other.

So I come back to the thing I often say to my kids when they are upset. “Use YOUR words.” It works as advice on many levels for all ages.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Leading In My Microcosm

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“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” – Dalai Lama

I got angry at my kids yesterday morning. It was a mixture of things – things were tense on a work project so I was already primed and then Miss O’s first words on a Monday morning were “Why does Mr. D get to?” But it was a completely whopper of one – “Why does Mr. D get to sleep in his own bed?”

Umm, it’s as if all the efforts I’ve made to get her to sleep in her own room instead of mine were completely forgotten. The lighting, the sheets, the help cleaning her room, the cozy warm blankets. And I’ve done this multiple times, over and over and still she wanders into my bed in the night or chooses to start there.

So the injustice of the question pricked me and I got angry. I didn’t yell but I said it was a completely unfair question that not only had we had talked about before but also was her choice, walked out of the room and slammed a few cupboards as I was making lunches.

Anger is not an emotion I’m comfortable with. I grew up with an older sister that was consistently angry and my mom can flash pretty hot although she doesn’t do it very often. It’s not that I swallow my anger – it’s that I don’t feel it very often. I feel frustrated, disappointed, discouraged much more often than I feel mad. Or at least so I think.

But it was what happened next that surprised me. My kids didn’t fuss at all at getting ready for school on a Monday morning. They did everything they were supposed to when they were supposed to do it more or less without whining, crying or protesting. They banded together, helped each other, and cooperated beautifully.

In that respect, my anger made things work way better for me. And it made me wonder if it’s such an effective tool, why would I not choose to use it more often? Other than the fact that I’m not a very good actor and couldn’t pull it off.

That’s a theoretical question of course. My experience growing up taught me how corrosive anger is. If I used anger as a tool, I might get what I want on the surface but I wouldn’t have many real relationships – not ones where people were vulnerable and shared. Not relationships where we could dare to explore together. And it would undercut the honest expression of growth and humanity.

It reminds me of the “power over” model. Researcher and author Brené Brown differentiates power over as power that leverages fear as opposed to power to, power with and power within which are collaborative and growth models for power.

In respect to my kids, I might be able to control them better for a time if I tried to pull off a power over model but it feels like it would be a step backwards in all the learning we’ve done to try to acknowledge our emotions and still do what needs to be done. Moreover, it feels like it would prime them to go out into the world thinking that fear is an effective strategy in dealing with others. And my teeny, tiny microcosm, that feels like I’d be adding to the aggression of the world instead of the compassion of the world.

In short, it feels like that the power over/anger/fear model is being a crappy leader. Especially when using Brené Brown’s definition of a leader as “anyone who holds him or herself accountable for finding potential in people or processes.” 

So, on the Monday morning in question, I choose to instead apologize for my anger and we went off to school and work with hugs all around. I sense that I’m choosing a style of parenting that takes more energy for now but in the end benefits our relationships with each other and the world. And that seems worth the effort.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Pushing the Wrong Buttons

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“If what you believe in does not impact how you behave then what you believe in is not important.” – Shaykh Yassir Fazaga

My friend, Eric, told me that his 87-year-old mom has been leaving him really long voice mail messages. She records her message and then thinks she has hung up but the voice mail then records her going about her business.

So he was on the phone with her the other day and told her that she hasn’t been hanging up. “Well” she replied, “I hit the button.” After they finished talking, he stayed on the line and sure enough, heard her puttering around.

He got her attention by yelling her name into the phone and when she put it to her ear he asked, “WHAT button have you been pushing?” She replied something that made him realize she’d been pushing a volume button instead of the power button.

After we finished laughing about that, I mused about all the times I’ve pushed the wrong button. It reminded me of the old tech support joke when one tech asked another how he fixed the user’s problem, and the tech replied, “The On/Off selector was in the wrong position.”

I think of the time I was giving my friend, Jill, a compliment on her pants and said, “Those are so cute. My mom has a pair.” Turns out I offended her greatly because who wants to look like someone’s mom? Oops, wrong button.

But mostly it makes me think of all the times I’ve tried to do something without plugging into the Source and feeling the surge of power in my solar plexus. Like the tech joke, I have often tried things with the on/off selector in the wrong position, and without the power of belief, just relegated myself to futilely tapping at the keyboard with no results.

From rock climbs to bids for work in my professional field, there has been a huge difference between doing it with the power on or off, with my beliefs and values intact or lost somewhere in the dimness. Sometimes when I plug in to a Higher Power, I realize that I’m pursuing the wrong things but I find out the course correction is much easier with the power on.

Of course, like Eric’s mom, I continue to push the wrong buttons at times. Sooner or later, I find my way back to the small insistent God voice at my core asking, “WHAT button have you been pushing?”

(featured photo from Pexels)

When We Look Closely

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“Who sees all beings in his own Self and his Self in all beings, loses all fear.” – The Isa Upanishad

The other day my son was nose to nose with our cat then turned to me and said, “I see me in kitty’s eyes.“

It reminded me of a story from the Talmud that I read in Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening:

A Rabbi asks his student, “How do you know the first moment of dawn has arrived? After a great silence, one pipes up, “When you can tell the difference between a sheep and a dog.” The Rabbi shakes his head no. Another offers, “When you can tell the difference between a fig tree and an olive tree.” Again the Rabbi shakes his head no. There are no other answers. The Rabbi circles their silence and walks between them, “You know the first moment of dawn has arrived when you look into the eyes of another human being and see yourself.”

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

I was talking with a friend the other day about Monsters, Inc. which is my son’s favorite movie these days. She asked the question, “Wouldn’t it be great if we as humans figured out how to harness laughter & love instead of screams & fear?”  

To me, it feels with almost 8 billion people on the planet like an almost overwhelming task for the dawn to break so that we can all see we are all different yet we share the same aches and pains of life. But then I breathe and remember, it happens one person at a time. It happens when I remember to be open and take the time to look into someone else’s eyes and gather the power of laughter and love.

And maybe when we exercise gentleness and closeness, it happens too between species like with my son and the cat. That is hopeful too.

Bossy Pants – Confidence and Leadership

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“Kid, you’ll move mountains.” – Dr. Seuss

The other day my 6-year-old daughter Miss O, came home from school and told me about a conversation she had with a friend at recess.

Miss O: You are bossing me.

Friend: You’ve been bossing me since Kindergarten

There are times as a parent that I try not to laugh. This wasn’t one of them – I burst into laughter and my daughter laughed right alongside me. It sounds so dramatic that way – so much better than just last year. It also reminded me how early that word bossy is introduced for these young and precious girls.

It’s the fear of being called bossy that has made my confidence as a leader falter. I say that after 20 years of having my own business, teaching employees and subcontractors and being accountable to a bottom line for both my family and my company.

In the years that I’ve had business partners for my computer consulting business, they’ve always been male and I’ve been far more comfortable with them providing the visible leadership. Even when I’ve had better ideas, more experience and am the one calling the shots.

About a dozen years ago, I owned a small office building with two business partners that housed my consulting company offices. We’d purchased the building in 2007 at the height of the market. When things got messy because one business partner told me of my husband’s infidelities and my husband was the other business partner, our partnership in my consulting business fell apart and I bought back their shares in that company. But we still owned the building together and after the 2008 crash, the value of the building was less than its mortgage.

My partners were no longer interested in being involved, the building couldn’t make ends meet and I had to do something. So I went to the Small Business Administration and asked them to restructure the loan for the building. The advisor gave me a list of things I had to do like changing all the tenant leases and restructuring the accounting.

Five months later I scheduled an appointment with the SBA advisor, showed him the list and all that I had done to meet each point. He sat back and said, “I’m impressed.” I wondered why because all I’d done was what he’d told me. He replied, “Because not many people come back after I give the list of what needs to be done.” I burst into tears. Even through my tears, he restructured the loan for me anyway and when the market came back enough so we could sell the building, I finally sold it and ended the partnership with those guys.

And still after all that, I didn’t have the confidence to call myself a leader until about age 50 when I had children as a single person and they looked at me asking “what are we going to do today?”

Brené Brown defines a leader as “anyone who holds him or herself accountable for finding potential in people or processes.”  Fortunately that’s a definition that is broad enough for me to confidently own my leadership. Given that I’ve been leading for years, one wonders why I haven’t had the confidence to do so til now.

“Bossy” says it in one word. I don’t want to be called that word that people use for girls as early as first grade (and maybe earlier).

Brené Brown has a model of types of power as they relate to leadership (link goes to a PDF of the model). She differentiates people who lead using power over “believe that power is finite and use fear to protect and hoard power” from those who lead using power with/to/within. Those leaders in the latter category “center connection and humanity with empathy-driven agendas, policies and values.”

Those are a lot of big words for a first-grader but I think it’s worth trying to talk to my daughter about how to build confidence in leadership and power. I think any leader, male or female, who works with the power with/to/within is more effective because they believe that “getting it right is more important than being right.” And building on my daughter’s sense of empathy, she can learn the confidence to work with others to lead and not fear being called bossy.

Have you ever been called bossy? Do you think of yourself as a leader? If so, what gives you confidence as a leader?

This is my fourth post about confidence. Here are the others:

I Can

Fear and Confidence

Growth Mind-set

(featured photo from Pexels)

Sacred Objects

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“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso

My two-year-old son has a stuffy he likes to carry everywhere. It’s a small pink bunny that fits perfectly in his hand and he carries it when we are biking, hiking and most everywhere else, except swimming.

Knowing how important this bunny is, I ordered a backup of the same stuffy. Fake stuffy isn’t worn in the same way so it doesn’t work to soothe if he’s lying down for a nap and I can’t find the real one – it just infuriates him. So when fake stuffy went missing for 6 months, it was no problem.

Until he resurfaced a month ago and now my son likes to carry around both the real one and the fake one, multiplying my problem of making sure we have the necessary parts before embarking on the next part of the schedule.

So, I ordered 6 backups of the fake stuffy for $2 each on eBay and implemented a rotation schedule so there’s only one out at a time but they all look more of less the same amount of worn.

It’s a silly routine but it’s made me appreciate the power of sacred objects. I drink my tea every morning from a mug that says “LOVE” and was the first thing my daughter ever bought me with her own money. Everything tastes sweet in that mug.

And when I use the tools that used to be my father’s, I feel his warmth, energy and enthusiasm welling up inside me and I’m more certain the project will turn out fine.

I have a gold-plated Angel token that I bought for $3 and carried in my pocket a dozen years ago when I was going through my divorce. The touch of it reminded me to have faith that life would work out. Although I don’t carry it anymore, when I come across it in my drawer, I smile and celebrate what faith has delivered.

I can visit the places I’ve traveled in a short trip through my house remembering the laughter with friends as we picked out Tibetan singing bowls or travel through time when I touch my stuffed koala from childhood. They are just objects but they open doors that are shortcuts to places that I want to go.

So I happily do the stuffy dance with my son. He’s taken to telling me “Don’t say ‘Yay’” when I want to celebrate a potty training victory. Something about my natural enthusiasm is overwhelming to him in that private context. Instead I channel it along with my love, sending it along with him in his sacred objects.

What are your sacred objects?

Exceptions

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“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker

My mom doesn’t get hot meals often these days. In her senior living residence that is so concerned about COVID, meals either come in boxes delivered to her door and then she can microwave them or on the rare evenings she can go to the dining room, the kitchen is so short-staffed the food comes out lukewarm.

So I worked hard to make a great, hot meal for my mom when she came over for dinner last night. Not that she complains about the food at her place but I know she is tired of cold meals in boxes after two years of this protocol.

My rule at our house is that no devices are allowed during meals. My son, tired after his first day back to daycare, protested that rule but it was short-lived and we got everyone to the table.

Mid-way through the meal, my daughter was done, left the table and was playing around while the rest of us ate. My mom was telling me a story and went to pull out her phone to find a meme that was in her story. My son was distracted by what my daughter was doing and might not have noticed but I put my hand over my moms and quietly reminded her of the rule.

I felt a twinge of embarrassment enforcing my own rule with my mother who I was trying hard to please. It’s not like my mom is always on her phone. It’s also quite possible that the kids wouldn’t have noticed. And, I had the power to make the exception.

But it struck me that’s the thing with leadership that’s important – to live by the rules that you set even when you have the power not to have to. And although I rarely feel like I have any power, I do have the responsibility of living up to the standards that I set, which is a power in and of itself.

It was fine – my mom just told me the meme. It was about Barack Obama writing Betty White a birthday card when she turned 90 years old. In it he said he couldn’t believe she was 90. In fact, he was so skeptical that he thought she should send him a copy of her birth certificate. 😊

(featured photo by Pexels)

The Most Influential Person in the Room

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“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain

When we drive to school, my son often says “go this way” as I back out and points to the direction opposite the way we need to go. The other day we had a couple of extra minutes so I humored him and went the way he wanted down our block – then I turned, turned and turned and we were back on our way. That little change to give him some control made him so much happier.

This little exercise reminded me of all the choices we make and as we do, how they help us narrate our own story. I also brought to mind the quote from humorist Kevin Kling “we need to rewrite our story sometimes just so we can get some sleep” that I talked about in the post I wrote for Aspiring Blog about the power of telling our own stories. I’m reblogging it here because I think there is so much goodness in remembering the power of our own stories:

I was listening to an On Being podcast where Krista Tippett was interviewing American humorist and storyteller Kevin Kling. He was born with a disabled arm and then in mid-life was in a motorcycle accident that paralyzed his other arm.

He was talking about the PTSD that came with his accident. With it came anger and inability to sleep and when it resurfaced with a vengeance years after the accident he was talking to his therapist about it.

She said that he needed to retell the story with a different ending – tell the story as if he didn’t hit the car and he reached his destination. He did that and it worked! He was able to sleep again. His takeaway was: “We need to rewrite our story sometimes just so we can get some sleep.”

That line caught me by the throat and hasn’t let go. Because it means that our bodies believe our own storytelling. It means that while I think a storyteller is someone like Kevin Kling, it is actually my own storytelling that matters most.

It means that the most influential person in my life isn’t my boss, my loved ones, a beloved actor or author, or even Oprah Winfrey – it’s me.

So I’ve pondered the stories I tell myself. The two most cataclysmic things that have happened in the past ten years of my life are when someone told me of the infidelities of my husband I’d been married to for eight years and the marriage fell apart.

Then once I was divorced, I choose to have kids on my own as a single parent. Someone said to me when my firstborn was about 6 months old, “I wish that he [my ex-husband] hadn’t wasted so much of your time.” And I replied something like, “It’s okay, that marriage and its downfall got me to meditation and where I needed to be.”

I rewrote the story of heartbreak and loss as the impetus to put me on my current path with these two beautiful children I love dearly. I believe that the Divine has used all of the past to get me where I needed to be which I genuinely believe to be true. But it is also a story that helps me be very happy where I am instead of mourning what I’ve lost.

In talking about the story he’s rewritten so that he can sleep, Kevin Kling said that of course he wakes up every morning and has to contend with the fact that his arms don’t work as a result of the fact that the accident did really happen.

Stories can’t change the circumstances of our lives, but they do change how we relate to those circumstances. Knowing this I’m carefully checking my current inventory of stories to make sure I’m telling myself the right ones!

Trust Falls

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“The angel seeing us is watching through each other’s eyes.” – Rickie Lee Jones

My friend Eric was over the other night and my daughter accidentally did one of those “trust falls” when she tripped over something, fell backwards and he caught her. She thought that was so much fun that she wanted to do it again and again.

Watching this, I was trying to think who I trust to catch me. As I started listing all the wonderful people in my life in my head and thinking whether I’d trust them to catch me if I metaphorically fell (like if I got sick), I started automatically providing excuses why I wouldn’t ask. Like there’s Lindsey but she is so busy, there’s Eric but he just started a new job, there’s Katie but she’s a half hour away, and there’s my mom but she should be enjoying her senior years.

I had to meditate on this for a while. Why is it that I don’t “trust” any of the people that I really and truly trust? And the answer is my own fear of vulnerability. I don’t want to ask. I fear having to ever own that there are some days I’m a hot mess on the inside.

Of course this is all thankfully hypothetical but also represents my ongoing battle with over-preparing for life. It’s not just now. I can think back to when I climbed mountains and I would check the packing list over and over so that I wouldn’t have to ask anyone to borrow anything. Or sleep with my contacts in so I wouldn’t be late to tie into the rope team when we’d leave for our final summit bid in the middle of the night.

When I really dig deep, I see that I trust my spiritual guides like my dad and God much more than I do living people. Because I don’t have to ask out loud!

When it comes to trust falls, I think it is far easier to be the person catching than the person falling. Unless you are a 6-year-old and then you love doing the falling. But if I remember correctly from the group building exercises I’ve done in the past, you have to both do the falling and the catching.

A good reminder that we have to practice vulnerability. So I’ll go first. I started blogging regularly because working remotely and being a parent means that I don’t have enough conversations with adults that go deep. That leaves me feeling this weird kind of loneliness that isn’t bored or even unhappy but just scared I’m missing the point.  So I write but I don’t advertise this to anyone outside the blogging community just in case I’m overreaching. But I aspire to one day own all of me and to know the power of doing so.

Whoa! That was scary. But I’ll catch you if you want to take a turn!

Power Stance

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu

The other day I was texting with a friend who is buying a house and trying to work out the timing of when she can move in to the house. I offered her my help for whatever she needed to make the transition – my garage to store stuff, temporary housing for her dog and two cats, whatever and this was our exchange:

Her: If I think of anything that would be easy for a mother of 2 who barely has time to breathe, I will.

Me: Screw limiting what you ask of me to what is easy. That’s the wrong filter for the nature of our lives, friendship and power as humans. We have been friends for 25 years. I would do anything in my power to help and being asked would give me the extra capacity to go beyond my limitations. You are worth any amount of effort.

Her: Laughed out loud. Point taken, ‘And screw limiting what you ask of me to what is easy. That is the wrong filer…’ You are shifting to hella power stance. That entire text was astonishing in the best way. I love you, friend.

By the end of that exchange, we were both laughing – and I also felt the power. But it made me think about whether I see myself through the filter of not able to do much because I’m busy mom with two kids. I have to admit that I do – especially when I’m considering working out, dating or planning trips with my kids. The last one, limiting the trips with my kids might be sheer self-preservation though.

But looking at these things through the lens on my text, I know I’m dimming my possibilities when it comes to things that are hard. I know that I am downplaying my power to what seems rationally available. Partly because I’m a planner and partly because I’m human. But I know I can do more.

About a year and a half ago, when my son was 4 months old, a friend of a friend came to town because her college aged daughter had been hit by a car that had jumped the curb and struck her while she was running. I had never met the mom who came to care for her daughter but she was sleeping at the hospital or on the floor of her ex-husband’s place so I offered her to come stay in my guest room whenever she wanted. And over time she did and then the daughter came too as she was healing from having the top of her spinal cord fused to her skull, a brain injury as well as a shattered shoulder and arm. And then another son came for a bit as did the girl’s boyfriend. Pretty soon I had 4 people sleeping wherever I could make beds until the sweet girl was well enough to move on to what was next. And that beautiful young woman was a miracle to watch as she was so positive as she not only went to the myriad of doctor appointments and occupational therapy appointments but also processed the trauma of being hit from behind. It was such a wonderous miracle on so many levels! I didn’t know any of these delightful people until they came to live with me for about 3 months and yes, I had a newborn and I four-year-old, was working and also sleep deprived. But none of that matter because I had stepped up to help and God gave me the strength not only to do so but also enjoy it!!

So, I know first hand that there is a helping hand from a Higher Power when I step up. I know that when I stop limiting myself through my own filter of what’s humanly possible, great things can happen. I know there are miracles to be witnessed when I show up with my faith on. Now, I just have to do it!