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!!

When I started this blog, I remember worrying about running out of topics.  I worked from a list that I kept adding to each week.  But after just a few months of posting, I quickly found it more enjoyable to come up with my topics spontaneously, from listening to what people around me or my own mind was wrestling with that week.  After two years of weekly posts, I am so pleased that I have never missed one or felt that is was a burden.  I am really enjoying this platform and am so thankful for your time in reading it.  But I am going to make  change.  I love to write and have some ideas for some other pieces that I haven’t had time for, so I’m going to shift to writing in this blog every other week.  So in honor of this change, I’m going to invite you to do some of your own writing and see what you might discover.

It makes me angry at how school teaches most people to hate writing and dismiss it.  Watching my daughters write their “compare and contrast” essays, struggle with MLA notation, and be hammered with the search for topic sentences, it sometimes breaks my heart to see them become alienated from their own voice.  I know it is vital to learn to write formal essays, but I wish an English teacher would sometimes have them write an assignment that can teach them how to use writing as I have come to love it, to discover what they think and feel, to expand on a creative idea, or to just simply play.  I use writing personally to help me figure out what is going on with me, and if I can get a client to trust that I’m not going to grade their work, I use it effectively with them as well.  By putting feelings into words, you can achieve clarity and find a release. In the end, this helps us make better choices about what we really want to do or say to someone.

At a writing workshop I went to almost ten years ago, the instructor had us create two characters for ourselves.  The first was our inner critic.  We gave a name and a look to our inner critic, and thanked it for its help in editing and improving our work.  But then we asked our inner critic to step aside so that we could identify our muse.  We also gave him or her a name and identity, the part of ourselves that is creative and reckless and has a lot to say once the critic is put on hold.  This was a huge turning point for me.  Once I could begin to let myself write freely, I discovered the complete joy of letting my muse take over.  I also discovered the great paradox in writing:  On the one hand I am often completely surprised what comes out on paper if I allow it to flow, as if someone else had taken over, but at the same time, I am in complete control.  I can kill off a character, change an ending, be overbearing or be nakedly vulnerable,  I get to decide what I say, who gets to say it (I love writing as a male character), and who gets to read it.

If you’re like most people, getting started is the hardest part.  So here are a few ideas that help.  Let your muse pick out a beautiful journal.  Let him or her do some free writing in your journal each day, just ten minutes of uninterrupted writing to let it flow.  Or start with a “jump line,” such as “My father’s hands” or “When the sun goes down…”   If you google jump lines you will find a long list of great ones.  A set of jump lines I love to use with people I work with is, on one side of the page write “Want I want to tell you is…” and then after writing for ten minutes, turn over the page and write ten minutes more to “What I don’t want to tell you is…:”  It’s amazing what comes up!  Some other ideas are writing letters (you never have to send) to yourself, to a part of you, a younger you, or to someone from the past or future.  You can also let yourself write about a fantasy or rewrite the ending to a scary dream.

There is a freedom in writing if you can surrender to it.  But it does take some courage to find your muse; a part of you that wants to get out, be heard, dig deeper, wonder, shout, or try something on.  They say the pen is mightier than the sword.  So take a chance and meet your muse.  Together you can discover how powerful you can be!

See you in two weeks!

I saw this phrase in an article I was reading last week (sorry, I can’t remember the author) while preparing for last week’s blog on acceptance.  I thought it was kind of funny, if not a little corny, but even more funny was how it stayed with me during the week.  Every time I said the word “buts”, the phrase rang out, “Get off of your but.”  It helped me stop, take a second look at my thinking, and over the week, see how often I let myself off the hook so easily for acting positively on something I say is important to me.

Some of the things were little, like “I want to work out, but I don’t have time,” or “I want to eat healthy, but we don’t have anything good at home.”  Others were bigger, such as “I would love to go to Greece someday, but we could never afford it,” or “I wish I could be more like my colleague, but I’m just not as good a leader as she is.”  Every time I said the word “but,” it made me step out of my words and think – is this “but” an excuse or is this “but” my real choice?  Does it have to be all or nothing, can I do a little bit of exercise, or make some small step toward the desire?

Life is overwhelming and has a lot of limitations.  Money, food, time, energy are all finite resources.  How we choose to use them is really important and over time, ends up building to the significance of who we are and how we live our lives.  Each and every day we make so many decisions that it’s easy not to notice them.  One little decision does not seem to matter, but the decisions we make add up, and lead us to where we are.  I learned this week how easily I can get in the habit of derailing my valued actions by saying, “yes, but.”

So, I need to stop making excuses.  If I choose not to use my precious free time to work out, or if I choose to eat something not healthy, I need to own the decision.  And if I don’t have the money to go to Greece, I have to really ask myself how important that is to me.  If I really want to go to Greece, I can start saving and look for more the most affordable opportunities, perhaps forming a plan for the future.  “Buts” can come from many sources.  One type comes from pure laziness, BUT, others come from deeper places, like fear,  insecurity, sadness, helplessness, lack of control, or skill.  But, I am a victim if I let my world be ruled by my “buts,” which is why I liked this kitchy phrase.  It helped me step back and assess the truth of my assumptions and realize the comfortable pull of staying on our buts.

Last week’s blog contrasted the passive and avoidant experience of denial with acceptance, an active process of choice.  This week I’ve been thinking a lot more about these two experiences, and the complex relationship we humans have with our thoughts and feelings.  I see a lot of anxious people in my line of work, and tend to be a bit of one myself.  I am hardly in denial about things, as my anxious thoughts are quite active!  But these thoughts have the effect of controlling me and making me avoid things, just as denial can. When my mind tells me there is something to be afraid of (making a fool of myself in a presentation), it makes me want to run the other way (turn down the invitation to speak).  Though I’m not in denial, I still end up restricting my life through avoidance.  So this week, I decided to look a little closer at acceptance, to explore the paradox of how, at times, actually being less active in my thinking can lead to less avoidance in my behavior.

Cognitive fusion is a process that involves attaching a thought or feeling to an experience. Cognitive fusion is beneficial in many ways, like when we become interested in story lines in movies and books because we attach emotions to them, or we attach positive feelings to certain activities (hobbies) or people (our loved ones).  But when we fuse our negative thoughts with certain experiences, we begin to avoid those experiences.  So when I think of embarrassing myself through fears of public speaking, my fears are fused with the experience, and leads to avoidance.  

Ironically, the more we try to control thoughts and feelings, the more they tend to influence us in the long run in potentially harmful ways.  For example, have you ever tried to distract yourself from a unpleasant thoughts or feelings by binge watching or shopping?  Withdraw from certain people or opt out of certain activities because you don’t like the thoughts or feelings they bring up?  Have you tried blaming others, worrying, rehashing the past, fantasizing about “what if,” “if only,” or “why  me” in order to think your way away?  Or put substances in your body (ice cream, vodka, xanax) to get relief?  While they may have helped that day, what effect do they have over time?  Did the thoughts and feelings go away in the long run?  And what is the cost in terms of your health and vitality?

That is where acceptance comes into play.  Instead of trying to control our thoughts and feelings, we can “de-fuse” them.  If I think of giving a speech and get anxious, I can defuse this from the experience of being embarrassed and making a fool of myself.  By noticing my anxious feelings and accepting them, I can separate them from the outcome that leads me to avoid the experience and then in turn reinforces my feeling badly about myself.  

This type of acceptance involves developing a more compassionate relationship with our experiences.  As thoughts and feelings arise, the aim is not to control them by trying to stop them or change them, but to let them happen without letting them control us.  So I can be anxious, noticing my anxiety in how my hand shakes, how I feel a bit queezy in my stomach, but still go on and give the speech.  Who knows, the speech may go well.  I may embarrass myself or I may not, but I allow myself to be open to the new experience without making myself a prisoner of the past.  True acceptance is the ability to allow internal or external experience to occur instead of fighting them or trying to change them.  When we can accept our experience, we actually set ourselves free.

When we get some bad news or when something unpleasant happens, it’s normal to be in a state of disbelief.  After the shock begins to fade, our coping kicks in, and we begin to integrate and deal with the challenge we face.  But sometimes, unfortunately, people stay stuck, refusing to acknowledge an issue and along with it, its consequences.  This psychological state is known as denial, and in and of itself can create a host of problems.

Denial, as a long term strategy, is very problematic.  If we’re not able to acknowledge something, we’ll continue in a path that’s harmful to us, as well as block ourselves from doing anything to cope in the future.  If we deny our problem drinking or our smoking, we continue to do harm to our bodies, as well as prevent ourselves from getting the help we need to quit or even reduce the harm.  If we refuse to admit that we have an anger problem, we’ll not only hurt the people we love, but cut off from opportunities to repair the damage we’ve done and lose any chance to change our pattern to make things better in the future.

In the long term, reality always wins, no matter how we try to deny it.  And that’s why denial is so hard on relationships.  This aspect of denial is often overlooked when people in denial, or using denial’s close cousin, minimization, say, “it’s my body” or “it’s my decision,”  because it’s our loved ones that feel the responsibility and the consequences when we are in denial.  They worry, try to talk to us, and then feel helpless.  In  many ways when someone is in denial, it is the one who loves them who carries the burden of concern and fear.  And to make matters worse, a person minimizing or denying a problem will often react to the loved one’s efforts to help with blame.    It leaves a loved one with an unfortunate choice, continue to fight and confront, or go along with the denial, allowing it to continue in the effort to maintain peace.

It’s interesting to note that one of the biggest predictors of whether someone has a drug or alcohol problem is not the report of the person themselves, but if someone in their life has expressed concern about their behavior.  So please, if someone has the courage to express concern about you or a behavior you engage in, give it some thought.  We all have issues we prefer not to think about or acknowledge.  Being afraid and being stuck are part of being human.  But the difference between denial and acceptance is the key.  Denial is a passive response and with it is the avoidance of reality and then opportunities for coping.  While acceptance is an active process of making a choice to do what you can about the things you can control and accepting the things you cannot. Acceptance is a way of actively holding the truth rather than trying to run from it.

Most of us will face a situation in our lives where we feel helpless.  Whether it’s an unfortunate diagnosis for ourselves or loved one, an accident, or a traumatic event, when bad things happen it’s natural to be overwhelmed and become exhausted, feeling like every day of coping is like swimming alone against the current.  Personally, I have been feeling this way in response to my mother’s decline with her neurological degenerative disease.  Despite her best efforts at fighting the effects of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, it breaks my heart to see her struggle to maintain her ability to swallow or speak even a single word at this point.  I had been feeling like we were both drowning.  Fortunately, I attended a conference in Phoenix this weekend, put on for patients and family members by the CurePSP Foundation.  What I received in terms of knowledge and connection has rejuvenated me, offering me support and resources, and a new perspective.  I share this with you this week in hope it might help someone else feeling beaten and helpless with their own struggle, whatever it may be, find a source of some empowerment.

Knowledge is indeed power.  While there is no cure to my mother’s illness, the series of lectures and presentations filled in many of the gaps I had, some I didn’t even know I had, in terms of understanding what was happening to her.  Some of the quirky behaviors I thought unique to my mother, I learned were actually not uncommon, and now understand why they happen.  In learning about the research of the cause of the disease, it relieved fears about heredity and the feeling she carried that she had somehow done something wrong to expose herself to the illness.  I came away with strategies for some of our challenges and a better sense of what to expect moving forward.  The knowledge I gained already is helping me to shift from helpless frustration to thinking about what I can do.  From little changes in how to interact with my mother to communicate more effectively, to resources that I became aware of, all the way up to the big picture of advocacy, I now have things I can do to help her, help me, and hopefully help others.  I can’t begin to describe the inspiration I got from the people I met, too far along in the disease to benefit from research, signing up to donate their brains for research when they pass.  Each expressed actual gratitude for the opportunity to do something beneficial.

The other incredible source of power I was able to tap into was the connection to others; a common humanity.  There was an immediate sense of intimacy when I walked in the room for the first time, seeing the wide eyed facial expressions (typical of the disease as a result of eye muscle issues), the canes, walkers, and wheelchairs, the bottles of liquid thickeners, and alarms going off to remind people of medication times.  I was able to hear the stories of many others with both similar and differing journeys.  It helped me actually appreciate that while my mother has had a long tragic decline, she has not had to endure hospitalizations from pneumonia or broken bones as many others had.  I felt a sense of gratitude, myself, at being able to share my accumulatd knowledge with daughters and sons whose parent was recently diagnosed.  I was also able to put the anonymous names of Board members on the CurePSP website together with faces, and hear stories of their own losses and motivations to serve.  I spoke with researchers, neurologists, social workers, and caregivers, all dedicated to understanding the illness, finding a cure, and improving the quality of life for themselves and others.

When struggling with a life changing event, it’s easy to become isolated and feel the burden is more than you can bare.  And it is true, because no one can do it alone.  We need others to help us stay afloat, to show us the way, and to follow behind us.  This weekend, thanks to the generosity of people who serve, people who study, people who donate, and people who share, I still feel the power of the raging current, but I have knowledge as a life preserver and others to float alongside with down the unpredictable bends in river.

Sad fact I learned: Dudley Moore, may his memory be for a blessing, died from complications of PSP.

What research shows is that sleep is actually a learned habit.  Our body develops sleep patterns that are easily disrupted with changes in schedules and stimulation.  Repeated nights spent worrying or tossing and turning in bed teaches the body to associate the bed with arousal and alertness.  To address the problem, we need to help our body “relearn” to associate the bed with relaxation and drowsiness.  Sleep experts refer to three types of “learning” that can help re-establish sleep patterns:  sleep hygiene, stimulus control, and sleep restriction.

Sleep hygiene involves creating a routine that will best enhance sleep.  Physically, we need to avoid caffeine 6 to 8 hours before our bedtime and avoid nicotine, which is also a stimulant.  Also avoid alcohol after dinner.  While alcohol can promote the onset of sleep, it often disrupts your natural sleep patterns, so you should avoid it up to 4 hours before you go to bed.  Regular exercise is really important to getting good sleep, but if done within two hours of bedtime, it can elevate your nervous system instead of relax it.   Your bedroom environment should be very dark, using dark out shades or eye masks can help, cool in temperature, and quiet.  White noise or earplugs are good for this problem.  Give yourself time to wind down before going to bed, and do the same routine each evening so that it becomes associated with sleep.  Avoid sleep medication.  Sleeping pills work only very temporarily and create sleep problems when used over time.  

Stimulus control involves the goal of reconnecting your bed with sleeping through learned association.  The bed should only be used for sleep and sexual activity:  no television, phone, computer use, or reading in the bedroom or in bed.  These activities, especially ones that involve a screen or stimulating material (yes, you Scandal fans) get in the way of associating relaxation with your bed.  Also, you should delay going to bed until you are sleepy.  If you don’t fall asleep relatively soon, get out of bed and return when you are drowsy.

Sleep restriction is also about training your body into patterns of healthy sleep.  It involves restricting the amount of time you spend in bed to the amount of time you currently spend actually asleep.  Research shows sleep restriction to be extremely effective for improving sleep, even though initially you may experience mild sleep deprivation as a result of the technique.  Sleep restriction involves calculating and keeping track of your sleep efficiency, which is the percentage of time you are actually asleep during the period of time you are trying to sleep.  For example, if you usually go to bed at 10 pm and wake up at 6 am, you are in bed for 8 hours.  Of this time, it takes you an hour to fall asleep, you wake for 30 minutes in the middle of the night and are up 30 minutes before you get up.  So, your actual sleep time is 6 hours of the actual 8 hours you are in bed, so the sleep efficiency is 75%.  Sleep restriction would mean reducing your time in bed by 2 hours.  You could either go to bed late, or get up earlier.  After sleep efficiency reaches 85% or greater, the time in bed can be increased in 15 to 20 minute blocks.  Time in bed is increased each week if you achieve 85% or greater.  The pattern is continued until efficiency starts to fall below 80% at which time you decrease sleep by 15 to 20 minute blocks.  You continue the process of increasing or decreasing sleep time by 15 to 20 minute blocks until sleep efficiency falls between 80 to 85% on a regular basis.  This is usually achieved in just a few weeks.

When people have sleep problems, the mere anxiety about sleep can be stimulating and make it difficult to get to sleep.  When you go to bed afraid of what the night will bring, you reinforce the wakefulness and alertness.  Before going to bed, try listening to a relaxing visualization that you can download from a meditation app, or just listen to soothing music.  You can listen to a classical music piece and pay attention to one instrument at a time.  This is mediation without having to even focus on meditation.  And if all else fails, try listening to a book on tape about a subject that doesn’t interest you. Personally, listening to tax advice tends to do the trick for me!

Before handing back a very challenging Spanish test, my daughter’s teacher gave them a handout entitled “Eight Reasons to Celebrate Mistakes.”  While my daughter and her classmates were not so amused, I, as her mother, appreciated the intention.  We live in a culture that values success and winning so much so that we lose sight of the process of learning and put tremendous pressure on ourselves to always be “right.”  When we put so much emphasis on avoiding mistakes, we lose sight of the learning and can become paralyzed, afraid to take any chances.

I wish we had a better word than “mistake.”  According to the dictionary, it means “an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong.”  I often wish we could call them “learning efforts” to avoid the judgment.  Especially when it comes to the bigger efforts of living, such as talking a new job, moving to a new place, or ending a relationship.  How often I hear people berate themselves for making such a “huge mistake,” discounting the courage of taking a chance and the experience obtained from trying something new.

So often we value and applaud “change” but set ourselves up by expecting that every change has to be for the better.  If things don’t work out as planned and hoped for, we often go beyond disappointment to the burden of shame.  How painful that is and often how unnecessary.  Sometimes we do make mistakes that require us to apologize or even feel guilty or ashamed, but these are situations that involve moral failures, or true lapses in our judgment, when we act on impulse or in a selfish manner.  These are the times we most certainly must make amends and acknowledge our error.  But I often see people generalize the notion of a mistake to a choice that was made with the best of intention.

In order to avoid mistakes of living, we would have to avoid taking any chances.  And the point of the hand out the teacher was trying to make was that learning happens through mistakes.  We try and we get feedback.  Feedback is how we learn not only Spanish, but also about ourselves.  It is the feedback that is the key to self awareness.  Sometimes we  try something new to see if we can expand our capacities, such as building the stamina to climb the mountain, or go to a group to learn how to tolerate the desire to drink.  And other times we try something new to see if it is a better fit for us, such as dating a new person or taking a job in a new environment.  Regardless of the outcome, which is seldom so black and white as being “right or wrong,”  we grow and change through the effort.  If we can avoid the embarrassment and the judgment, we can embrace the learning and the experience of expanding ourselves.

I love that the Spanish teacher walks her talk.  She gives the students a chance to re-submit their test with new answers.  The point is to use the feedback.  When we see the player score the touchdown or the musician accept the grammy, we only see the tip of the iceberg.  Ask anyone who has had success to tell you about the effort it took to get there and the non-successes it took along the way.  And then, after their moment of fame, they have to go out and start again, putting themselves out there with the chance that things won’t go as well the next time.  Learning to live with risk is the only way we can move forward.  So, instead of hanging our head in response to a mistake, why not celebrate the chance to learn?