It has been a little more than a week since my older daughter has been home from college, and I am immensely impressed with how she handled her first year.  It certainly was challenging, not only in terms of her classes and learning to handle the pressures and changes of college life, but in talking with her, I have been really struck by the perspective she has gained from choosing to leave California and attend a school in the South, where she was very different.  Her insights have really stayed with me, especially as I am preparing for a trip outside of the United States, and finding myself a bit nervous.  It really got me thinking about how we take our sameness for granted, and while it’s comfortable, easily fitting in is not always the best for our personal development or for our understanding of and compassion for others.

At first it was fun to be different, she told me.  As soon as she told people where she was from, she instantly had a topic of conversation and was easily remembered.  She was exposed to different foods, customs, and ways of speaking, often finding humor in the contrasts.  But over time, the realization of deeper levels of differences emerged, from the lack of common experiences to differences in political views, and even interpretations of relationships, communications, and cultural norms.  It was often tiring to explain herself, she told me, and be on guard for ways in which she might misinterpret others or say something that others would find challenging, or be judged by a preconceived notion of what someone thought she would be like.  Being different became isolating she found, and even painful, at times.  She longed for people who intuitively understood her meanings, preferences, and accepted them.

“What a great lesson, though.” she told me, as she tried to imagine what it would be like to be a constant minority in the world.  She also recognized the privilege of being able to choose when and how she revealed her status as different.  Being blonde and blue eyed, she could easily blend in until she chose to tell people where she was born and what her religious upbringing had been.   Even the relatively small chasm between her and her school community had a big effect on her.  While she absolutely chose her school in large part to experience a different culture, what she didn’t expect was to experience the effects of being different on such a deep level, longing for opportunities of similarity and the comfort of sameness.  “I am so much more aware and sensitive,” she explains, “of everything I took for granted.”

So why am I nervous to travel abroad, I ask myself, and experience being different?  I love to expose myself to new people and places and have looked forward to this trip for a really long time.  Being different involves being vulnerable, it occurred to me.  I might need to ask for directions in a different language, trust a vendor to give me an accurate price, or, God forbid, need medical help.  I will be at the mercy of others to understand my needs, respect them, and take them seriously.  Being different involves continually fighting the preference for and the ease of sameness along with the prejudice and misperceptions of perceived “other”ness.

Decades of research support the notion of our preference for sameness.  We choose employees and partners who are most like us, we sit with those we look like, and we tend to hold in higher esteem people whose beliefs are most like our own.   Even in schools and communities of great diversity, we tend to congregate and separate ourselves into similar groups within them.  Research also shows we assume more in common with people we perceive as similar and project greater differences with those we assume to be different, regardless of actual measures of sameness or difference.  Perceived similarity has the effect of bonding and attracting people to one another, while perceived differences have the effect of alienating and engendering distrust.

It takes a lot of courage to be different, and that is one of the many reasons I am inspired by so many of the people I work with, who have endured great prejudice or stigma in their journey to grow and heal and connect with others.  And it is also one of the many reasons I am proud of my daughter, for her courage to be vulnerable and her strength in being who she is, even if it means having to explain it, defend it, or just feel alone with it.  I am grateful for the enlightened reminder she has given me to be more open to others, especially someone who might be new, unique, or different.  I am definitely more aware of how important it is to put myself in the place of being the different one every now and again, but also how important it is to have my people to come home to.

Welcome back, Sierra, you have been missed!

We all lead busy lives, cramming more in each day in order to be successful.  We make lists, take short cuts, and look for every trick to be more efficient.  But in these past few weeks, I’ve really noticed something important about my multitasking, frantic “to do list” way of life.  It frequently puts me in a position of living life in a hurry.  And according to Carl Jung, “Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil.”  Seems like pretty strong words, doesn’t it?  But as I thought about my hurry, I have to say, there is a lot to what he says.  The cost of being in a hurry is a far greater than I had realized.

I did a little experiment in thinking about this topic.  I made a point to really be aware of how my life goes when I’m in a hurry and when I’m not. When I’m in a hurry, life becomes about me.  For example, running to the grocery store to pick up something before I needed to be somewhere else, I became annoyed at the lack of parking spaces, I was frustrated that I could not find the right aisle for what I needed, and then I was extremely impatient with the checker who seemed to be too friendly with her customers, wasting my time.  Everything and everyone was judged in terms of how it was effecting me.  On another occasion, going to the very same store with time to spare, I had a very different experience.  I was happy to park a little farther away, taking a walk to enjoy the beauty of the day and the warmth of the sunshine.  I noticed a man looking confused and stopped to help him.  I chatted with a woman standing in line at the check out stand and even joked with the clerk.  My eyes were open to other’s needs and I actually felt happy connecting to strangers.

I noticed the same thing running late to a meeting.  Suddenly, the traffic lights were my enemy and the other drivers were competitors on the roadway.  I realized how I not only became a victim to everything around me, but how I felt entitled to control the world for my benefit alone! Others were obstacles rather than fellow travelers.  I was tense, annoyed, and judgmental.  Stressful?  Heck, yes!  But even more so, what I discovered was the effect being in a hurry had on my attitude, my relationships with other people, and with life in general.  It was a downright spiritual awakening!  You cannot live in the present when you are in a hurry.  You won’t notice beauty, connect with other people or other beings, and there is no way you can be in touch with yourself.  When you’re in a hurry, you’re focused on the outcome, mostly your own, and not the process.

So, can I say I won’t be in a hurry from now on and suddenly live a slower life?  Not likely.  But I am going to make it a goal to change some of my frantic ways.  If I leave a few minutes earlier, or choose to put off doing an errand to a day when I have more time, I reap so many more benefits than I realized.  And when I am in a hurry, I will take more responsibility for my attitude and its effects on other people.  What is that little sign people have on their desks?  

When faced with a big decision, it’s natural to choose based on what you think will help you best achieve your goals.  For example, you take a promotion knowing it will provide more money for your family.  Since your family is so important to you, you think this will make you happy.  But after months at the job, you aren’t very happy at all. What happened, why don’t you feel good since family is your top priority?  The job requires longer hours and more travel.  While meeting your intended goal, the actions actually took you farther away from what truly mattered, actually being with your family.  

I see this type of situation play out frequently with people who come in to see me wondering why they are so exhausted and depressed.  They’re working so hard to achieve their goal, maybe even reaching it, and yet they feel empty.   In these situations, it often helps to take a step back and think clearly about the bigger picture – your values.  By clarifying and prioritizing your true values, only then can you make decisions that will support a life that brings satisfaction.

Values are desired qualities of your life; who you want to be and how you want your life to feel.  They are guiding principles that when lived by bring you joy.  Values are not rules.  They are freely chosen qualities, like the “pursuit of knowledge”, “kindness”, or “non-conformity”.  As soon as we feel like we have to follow a value, it becomes a rule or something we feel we should do, which drains our sense of vitality.

People tend to  report more life satisfaction when living their values and feel frustrated and depleted when their values are suppressed.  Values are ongoing, like a guiding light or the north star.  They tell you which direction to head, but you never really get there.  Goals, on the other hand, are finite.  They are the steps that we achieve along the way as we aim toward our values.  So setting our goals to be in line with our values will be important in making sure our efforts lead in the right direction.  In order to help evaluate this, a good visual to use is a Bull’s Eye .  First think about your values in the four areas of work/education, relationships, personal growth/health, and leisure.  Picture these values at the center of your bulls eye, the center you want to aim toward.  Next place an “X” on the target for each of the four areas to represent where you stand today, how close to your desired values you feel you are living in each area.  The farther away you place your “X” from the center, the more you feel you have lost touch with your values.  Now you can think about goals and action plans (think of these as arrows).  By engaging in these goals or action plans, will this help you move closer to the Bull’s Eye of your values?  Like in our example, making more money, which meant travel and long hours) did not support the real value of feeling close and connected to family.

There are no rights or wrongs in choosing values.  In fact, the more honest we can be with ourselves, the better.  For example, people often feel they should have “kindness” or “giving” as a top priority.  But when you volunteer for fundraising, you find it draining.  In fact, curiosity may be a higher value for you, and your time might be better spent reading or doing research.  Values are not exclusive, either.  They are flexible.  We can combine them, such as doing research to help a charity, or choose to prioritize one over the other in given situations.  We may need to prioritize our value of justice in dealing with employees at work, and humor with our friends.

Below is a list of potential values.  I invite you to look through them and rank them as very important, not so important or low importance.  Don’t overthink it or judge your choices.  The more honest you can be about your values, the more you can shoot your arrows in the direction of your satisfaction.  It’s a great feeling when you reach a goal that lands close to your values.  Like every sport, however, it takes time to learn, and we miss the mark a lot in the beginning.  But show up to practice, analyze your goals and efforts, and you will see and feel like a winner!!