What Difference Will You Make Today?

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation

.”

Robert Kennedy

Here’s a “small portion of events” that represents the fulfillment of Kennedy’s aphorism:

I was putting gas in my car the other day and I noticed a man standing near the entrance to the gas station store. He was unshaven, his clothes were dirty and he was extremely thin. I thought he was going to ask me for money. He didn’t.

At that moment, an older couple approached me and somewhat frantically asked if I was familiar with the neighborhood. They were lost and asked for directions to their destination which I patiently gave them. But the more I explained, the more confused they got, asking me over and over to repeat the directions.

Suddenly, I heard a voice behind me speaking to the couple. It was the man I had seen by the entrance to the gas station store. He was correcting something about my directions. I realized that he was right and I had been wrong.

I left the couple in the very capable hands of this man. As I drove away, I waved to this man who waved back and smiled.

Cynics among us may assume that this man was simply looking for a handout but I don’t think so. He had truly made a difference for that couple and, I maintain, that was the “handout” he had been seeking. If he also got some money for making a difference, so much the better.

In fact, the “handout” we are all seeking is to know that our lives matter and that we made a difference. The reason any of us get paid for the work we do is because we made a difference.

The question I encourage you to wake up asking yourself every morning (to replace any negative thoughts that may be there as you awake) is, “What difference can I make today and who can I make it for?” The difference we will make will always be a “bending of history” no matter how large or how small the difference.

If we will just search for opportunities to make a difference for others, we will find them.  

Are Pink Elephants Keeping You Stuck?

“We are what we think, we become what we think and what we think becomes our reality.”

Source unknown

I heard a great demonstration the other day of how to deal with fear. As I recreate this demonstration, I suggest you consider a fear you have: Asking for what you want. Speaking in front of groups. Pursuing a dream. As you read, ask yourself, “What am I really afraid of?”

I was in a seminar and a saleswoman talked about her fear of calling a prospective customer because she was afraid she’d be considered “pushy.”

In response, the leader of the seminar asked her to think of a pink elephant. He asked if she had a clear image in her mind of a pink elephant. She said she did (are you seeing one?).

The leader than asked her to think of the words, “I’m pushy.” He asked if she was hearing herself saying those words. She said she did (imagine hearing yourself saying those words).

The seminar leader then asked what was the difference between the two thoughts.

Now pause for a moment and ask yourself the same question. Is there really any difference between a fictitious pink elephant and a fictitious thought?

The obvious answer is that there is no difference. Both are made up.
The thoughts we have in our heads are no more real than that pink elephant. But we behave as though those thoughts are real. Notice, for example, the thought that stops you from saying or doing something that you’d like to say or do.

Not only will we stop ourselves, we will argue with anyone who points out the unreality of our thoughts. For example, the woman didn’t immediately thank the seminar leader for pointing out that she was living in a fantasy world of thoughts that were no more real than pink elephants. She argued for her limitations and listed her evidence for believing that she will be perceived as “pushy” even though she had never been told she was “pushy” or told to never call again.

My point is we make up stories and then live as if those stories are real. We act as though our thoughts are like physical objects that are barriers we can’t get around. We made up our thoughts. We just forgot we made them up.

So the next time you’re stopped from doing what you want to do by some thought, consider that the thought is just your “pink elephant”  keeping you stuck in a fantasy world. Create your reality not by banishing these pink elephants (you really can’t control the random thoughts you have) but by recognizing that it’s just a fantasy you’ve created and it’s the fantasy, not the reality that is keeping you stuck.

Conflict Resolution: Relationship Advice From Keith Richards

“If I’m in conflict with somebody, it means somebody is in conflict with me.”

       Keith Richards quoted in Rolling Stone magazine, October 28^th, 2010

Leave it to the poster child of sex, drugs and rock and roll to give us an access to improving our relationships. As Richards suggests, consider the possibility that we are in conflict because we never quite get our responsibility for the conflict. In fact, we may not even see that we have any responsibility. Literally not see it.

Consider this tragic story that I heard on National Public Radio the other day: A man drove over some railroad tracks and was killed when he collided with a train he didn’t see. Turns out the man paid no attention to the sound of the screaming train whistle, drove around the gates that had been lowered to block access to the tracks and ignored the flashing warning lights indicating the approaching train.

How did the man miss all these signals? He was texting.

We can feel superior to this man and blame him for his irresponsibility or we can ask: When our relationships turn into “train wrecks,” what are we not seeing and being responsible for?

A friend of mine, a very intelligent and capable woman, continually complains that her boyfriend of three years never makes her feel loved. I point out the obvious (cue train whistle, guard gates and flashing warning signs): She has been complaining about this boyfriend for three years, that I doubt he will ever make her feel loved and that she should find another boyfriend. Rather than agreeing when I say this, my friend makes excuses for her boyfriend’s lack of affection.

We can bemoan this woman’s apparent blindness to the obvious or we can ask what we are not seeing and being responsible for. “What you see is what you get” is more than just a clever saying.

Keith Richards reminds us not to feel superior to anyone because they don’t see what’s obvious to us (isn’t it obvious that texting while driving is a bad idea? Isn’t it obvious that someone who has never made you feel loved isn’t likely to ever do so?). There’s plenty we’re blind to that, I’m sure, is obvious to others.

Perhaps, as Richards notes, we literally don’t see that if we’re in a conflict, the person we’re in the conflict with is also in a conflict. That maybe we are keeping that conflict going and not the other person. That our inability to see the other person’s reality is the reason we’re in conflict and not because of some “irrationality” on their part.

This is why I recommend listening without argument to every piece of feedback you receive about yourself. You may be blind to something that is obvious to others and their feedback may keep you from being hurt in a relationship that can turn into a “train wreck.”

Having Fun Yet? Lessons from “Good Will Hunting”

Have you seen the 1997 movie, “Good Will Hunting?”

Matt Damon plays a troubled, self-educated genius (Will Hunting). He falls in love with a Harvard student played by Minnie Driver (Skylar).

In one scene, Will and Skylar are having coffee at an outdoor café. Will stares lovingly at Skylar who is absorbed in her organic chemistry book. She really needs to study, she tells him, because she wants to get into medical school.

Will asks if he can help and Skylar asks if he has ever read about organic chemistry. “A little,” Will replies. Skylar thinks he’s joking. “No one reads organic chemistry for fun,” she says. Will doesn’t reply.

It occurs to me that Will might be thinking, ”Of course some people read organic chemistry for fun. I do.”

Indeed, some people study calculus for fun. Others have fun reading English or French literature. What one person finds boring another finds to be a blast. I had the insight that fun, as well as every other emotion we experience, is created, not discovered. Reading organic chemistry is fun if one chooses to see it that way. There is nothing inherently boring or exciting about anything. Anything.

Consider the possibility that this is true of all our experiences. We think that one experience is inherently more fun or enjoyable or exciting than another. Just the opposite is correct. We create the feeling and then attach it, incorrectly, to the experience.

That night, I had a conversation with a woman who was worried about money because she had less money than she would like and she was suffering because of it. She dramatized her worries by saying she was “in survival.” Her circumstance of having less money than she would like describes the condition of every human being on the planet no matter how much money they have. She chose to call this condition being “in survival.”

I’m not saying poverty is preferable to riches (or that riches are preferable to poverty). But consider what becomes available if we accept that our happiness is independent of our circumstances and that we can be happy no matter our circumstances. Not because those circumstances are inherently happy or unhappy but because we choose how we will be in the face of our circumstances.

We think our circumstances have to be great for us to be happy. This is a trick we play on ourselves to keep us trying to fix our circumstances and then wondering, with each fix, why we aren’t yet happy (certainly a new car, new house, new relationship, new job will change everything. Right?).

Until we recognize that our happiness is independent of our circumstances, we are doomed to live the saying,”The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

Change Management: We Aren’t Creating A Future…We’re Recreating A Past

Have you noticed that history repeats itself? Have you noticed that today’s news is exactly the same as the news from 100 years ago? The settings for the stories have changed, but the stories are the same: What’s happening in the latest war? What scandal is grabbing our attention? How’s the economy doing?

On a personal basis, are you in a relationship where you are in conflicts that never gets resolved? Are you in a job that has grown boring because nothing ever changes? Or are you in a job where change is constant but you’re unhappy because you look into the future and can’t see how things will ever change? Have you noticed that life isn’t quite as exciting today as it was when you were 7 and hated to go to bed and couldn’t wait to wake up?

Why does our human history and our personal history keep repeating itself? It’s because we don’t really create a new future. We simply repeat the past and call that the future. Instead of creating a new future, we recreate a past that has already happened and call that the future.

Consider these decisions from the past that create our behavior in the future: We didn’t like spinach in the past, so we decide to never eat spinach again in the future. We didn’t like a ballet we went to, so we decide we’ll never go to another one in the future. We’ve been on diets, lost weight and put it on again, so we decide we’re never going to go through that frustration again in the future.  We trusted someone in the past and got burned, so we decide we’ll never trust again in the future. We resisted change in the past so we resist change in the future as well.

Change, by definition, occurs in the future. But what evidence do we tend to use to decide what to do in the future?  Don’t we, in fact, tend to look for evidence from the past

and then make decisions about how we’ll behave in the future?

We look to our past experience, project that experience out into the future and imagine that the future will be just like the past. And, guess what? It usually is. In fact, the future can’t be anything other than some variation of the past. We’ve created that future by predicting it from our past. Case closed!

Now you know why history keeps repeating itself. Organizations often create futures (called “strategies”) based on the past and then live into that past...not the future. Individuals create futures (called “visions” or “dreams”) based on the past and then live into that past…not the future.

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy: We create a future based on our past and then wonder why the past is just like the future.

But to create a truly new future we have to let go of the past. It no longer exists. But we also have to recognize that the future doesn’t yet exist either. We can look back and see that we’ve created our past. What’s not as obvious to us is that we’ve already created our future by filling it up with so much of our past.

You know why the saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” is a cliché? Because it’s so obviously accurate. But today won’t be the first day of the rest of your life is it’s already filled up with what you did yesterday.

Today, when you create your to do list, really create it. Not from your past, but from what you choose for your future. 

Conflict Resolution Training: Lessons From “The Soloist”

Have you seen the movie, “The Soloist?” It’s based on a true story about Steve Lopez, an LA Times reporter and Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless man whom Lopez encounters on the street.

Ayers was a brilliant musician with a great future ahead of him until he started hearing voices in his head that told him the world was an unsafe place. These voices led him to a life on the streets where the reporter encountered him.

We may think we’re very different from Nathaniel but are we really? Don’t we also believe some (certainly not all) of the voices in our heads? Like us, Nathaniel didn’t believe every voice he heard. But he did believe some of them.

Consider the possibility that it’s the voices we do believe, the one’s we’re sure are “true” that keep us stuck.

For example, consider the statement, “Change takes a long time.” Let that one rattle in your mind for a moment. This is a statement commonly held. Almost everyone I encounter believes it.

But is it true or are we, like Nathaniel, believing voices that aren’t real?

Consider instead this voice: Change happens in an instant which, of course, it does. We experience this almost daily when we go from a dreaming state to a waking one.

It’s actually not the change that takes a long time. It’s getting ready to change that takes a long time. How long do smokers wait before they decide to quit? How long do dieters obsess before choosing to stick to a diet? How long do people who “hate exercise” delay before going for a daily walk?

The change happens in an instant. It can take a lifetime to get ready for that change. Some people never do.

Now consider being in a relationship where there’s conflict. How long do we wait before making the instantaneous decision to give up being right? How long do we wait before making the instantaneous decision to forgive? How long do we wait before making the instantaneous decision to listen to what people tell us they need to resolve the conflict?

We define the waiting as “hard” and confuse that with the actual change which is easy.

So watch “The Soloist” and, as you do, imagine that a little bit of Nathaniel is in each one of us and it’s that “Nathaniel within” that keeps us stuck doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

Conflict Resolution Training: It’s Time To Change Our “Human Nature”

Folks, it’s about time for “human nature” to change. Whose “human nature?” Yours and mine.

Have you noticed that the news today is basically the same as it was yesterday, a year ago, a decade ago and a hundred years ago?

Perhaps the “news” of your life is the same as it has been for decades. I spoke with a woman the other day who hadn’t talked to an uncle for 16 years because she thought he had criticized her hairstyle at a family gathering when she was 12.

It seems that we are stuck in a time warp of conflict and recrimination.

I was listening to a radio show and the host facetiously said, “Let’s kill all the judgmental people.” While you may laugh at this, it accurately reflects the reason the world is as it is. In fact, it accurately reflects why all our personal “worlds” are as they are.

Consider that we will stop the fights in our life if we will stop fighting. We will feel less judged if we will stop judging. We will resolve our conflicts if we give up having to be right.

We act as though our conflicts are “out there” with the other people in our lives and, if they would only change, our world would be just fine.

The transformation in our thinking about “human nature” will occur when we stop putting “human nature” out there with other people and realize that it is our human nature we are speaking of and our human nature is endlessly malleable.

“You can’t change human nature” is exactly accurate if we think of human nature as only what other people possess. We can always choose to change our own human nature.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke about the man who goes to his doctor because he has a terrible pain in his head. The doctor asks him when the pain started and the man answers, “When I began hitting myself in the head with a hammer.” The doctor asks the patient, “Why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer?” The patient replies, “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

We laugh at this joke because we recognize how close it hits home. We “know” we can change our behavior any time we choose, yet we keep hitting ourselves in the head with our version of a hammer. But the joke is on us. We act as though it’s the other person who is wielding the hammer.

Unlike in the joke, however, it may not immediately feel good when we stop hitting ourselves in the head. Anything we’ve been doing for a long time will be missed. We’ve become comfortable feeling a particular way and we don’t feel good when we stop. In fact, we miss that feeling because we no longer feel like ourselves. Or, put another way, we miss what we’ve come to identify as our “human nature.”

But if there is ever to be any hope for changing our lives and changing what we read in our newspapers, we‘ll have to be willing to accept discomfort in exchange for peace.

Put another way, we can stop hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer anytime we choose.