Grace

“We communicate grace to one another by holding space for people when they are hurt or terrified, instead of trying to fix them, or manage their emotions for them. We offer ourselves as silent companionship, or gentle listening when someone feels very alone. We get people glasses of water when they are thirsty.”
~ Anne Lamott, in an interview with Amazon.com

(holding space. thank you.)

MeMyBook&Eye Preview: Find Your Strongest Life by Marcus Buckingham

When Thomas Nelson offered me the opportunity to review Marcus Buckingham’s Find Your Strongest Life through their Book Review Bloggers program, my first thought was this: There’s something immediately suspect about a man–no matter how well-educated–telling women how to be happy. I’ll go ahead and say it.

However, I only made it a few pages into the book before I was sold on what he had to say–not only his message, but his methodology. This captivating and well-conceived book isn’t your typical self-help offering. Strongly grounded in research and in Mr. Buckingham’s experienced career in evaluating and drawing conclusions from statistics, Strongest Life, offers more than a feel-good message. It offers a recommended practice of achieving the strong life of joy and success we all seek.

Mr. Buckingham begins Find Your Strongest Life by quantifying the paradox I’ve seen so often among women today–the fact that although we have achieved an increased number of career opportunities, pay scale plateaus and glass-ceiling breaks, women still lack happiness. As Buckingham concludes from the available research, “Over the last forty years women have secured for themselves greater opportunity, greater achievement, greater influence and more money. But over the same time period, they have become less happy, more anxious, and more stressed; and, in ever-increasing numbers, they are medicating themselves for it.”

Telling.

Find Your Strongest Life pinpoints some key commonalities at the emotional level among women who’ve created “strong” lives, or lives that are both effective and fulfilled. These “strong” lives build on and expand moments when women are being true to themselves and their innate personality traits and unique gifts. He calls them moments when we have an undeniable sense of self-efficacy–when we are at our most assured and engaged, filled with joy and hope.

After interviews with countless women, Buckingham also recognized a common thought “practice” present in women living “strong” lives. The practice runs right up my alley in that it involves paying attention to our own lives, noticing those “strong moments” when we are at our best selves. By nuturing and expanding those moments, we build our strongest life.

Although Mr. Buckingham doesn’t explicitly address the issue of faith directly, I believe that with a measure of discernment the approach he advocates can help us recognize the gifts and skills God has given each of us as women. By prayerfully examining actions and situations that truly give us joy without the deceptive constraints of guilt, others’ expectations, “should haves” and “ought tos” we can begin to make choices that reflect the unique spirit God has placed within every person.

Finding Your Strongest Life includes a “Strong Life Test” designed to measure women against nine key life roles and determine the “lead” and “supporting” roles each individual was designed to play. Mr. Buckingham offers techniques, inspiration and many real-life examples for how to accept those roles and play to our strengths. His easy-going and down-to-earth prose was credible and a delight to read–so much so that I want to read it again!

I’ve decided to include Find Your Strongest Life as the next MeMyBook&Eye reading selection. While I’d recommend you getting a copy for yourself, you can always read vicariously with me over the next few weeks as I delve a little deeper into how this book affects my adventure in paying attention. I’m planning one or two more posts in the current 10-10-10 series, and then I’ll be ready for some strength training. Stay tuned!

MeMyBook&Eye: Working the Numbers, Ep.2

No, it’s not Monday, but I didn’t want Banned Book Week to snuff out MeMyBook&Eye entirely. So, now showing at a special time, it’s 10-10-10 Episode #2!

Suzy Welch’s “life transforming idea” in the book 10-10-10 offers a process for making decisions based on how the consequences measure up in 10 minutes, 10 months and 10 years. The ways in which those consequences influence our core values forms the basis for intentional choices that help us live a life of our own making. I like it.

It’s obvious from a few key chapters in the book that Ms. Welch is well-versed in evaluating the requirements and responsibilities of the working world, and anecdotes from her own experiences are resounding evidence of her understanding of the particular struggles of working women. Chapters Five and Six offer insights and eye-opening examples of how 10-10-10 can be applied effectively to the work arena–both in business strategy and in personal work decisions.

Thoughts on the Value of Work

“Sociologists have long held that work is a primary source of identity in our lives, giving us direction and purpose and serving as the organizing principle of our days.” (pg. 102)

Right there my mind started protesting. I’m a working mother, but wait a minute. Is work really a “primary source of identity.” Sure, a “work ethic” is a litmus test of character, but what about work itself? As I read through Chapter Five I began to realize that somehow my circle of influencers had convinced me that work should be devalued–that it’s value should be set aside, if indeed it had any value in the first place. I realized that, at my core, I really don’t feel that way. I DO see work as valuable–and not just the work that feeds starving children. When it comes to women in the workplace, there is a segment of our culture that perpetrates the concept that women shouldn’t find fulfillment in work. And, all too often, that segment centers in people of faith.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe work should be the “be all and end all” for women, or for any human being for that matter. I don’t wonder why my family can’t appreciate my desire to work. I don’t struggle with what’s most important. My gifts and my home life win hands down. But, I like my work. I enjoy what I do. I find it fulfilling and stimulating. I “identify” many aspects of myself through work, as the sociologists say. And, while it doesn’t necessarily govern my full purpose in life, I do have certain gifts that I want to put to use in the world outside the walls of my precious home base.

Indeed, whatever form an individual’s work takes, be it work in an office, work in a field or work in a home, the act of working is valuable. The act of setting goals and accomplishing tasks is valuable. The act of giving something all you have until it is complete is valuable. The act of resting when it is done is valuable. There is dignity and a commonality with God and creation in the act of work, for even God Himself wills and “work(s) for His good pleasure.”

Sustainable Solutions

I like Suzy Welch’s approach to creating work satisfaction and fulfillment in the traditional job sense. The phrase “sustainable solutions” stood out as important. Sustainable choices and situations are not affected by the passing influx of cash or credit–money or affirmation. In fact, in the three primary considerations Ms. Welch suggests for determining work values, pay day didn’t really factor in at all. She suggested asking the following questions:

1. Does the job allow me to work with “my people?” Or, does it require me to put on a persona? Finding peers and colleagues who share your values and appreciate you for who you are authentically is an important work fulfillment meter.

2. Does my job make me smarter? Stagnant water produces all kinds of stinky organisms that eventually squeeze the life out of a life-giving substance. Fulfillment requires growth. Without it, opportunity dies. Work that challenges us creates a sense of value.

3. Does the work give me meaning? Ms. Welch calls it the “joy factor.” And it’s ok to acknowledge it and search it out.

The Fallacy of Balance

I’m reading a lot about this these days and realizing just how true it is. “Balance” is a myth. I know from experience that working women–working mothers, especially–often spend a lot of time trying to “balance” work and home. The reality, however, is that there can’t be equality among values. Ms. Welch makes the very valid observation that “balance” is about trade-offs. It’s about finding the tipping point at which your life begins to stray from what you want it to be about.

In seeking to line up my roles as employee, manager, wife, mother, friend, homekeeper, [insert yours here], I have to know how my values line up. They can’t all be top priority, and only I can determine how important each one is in creating the overall life of value I want to lead. Something has to take precedence.

Precedence doesn’t mean that at times we won’t shift priorities to accomplish the need of the moment, but we have to keep the “main thing” the main thing (as I remember from my old days in the MSU Baptist Student Union). The 10-10-10 process seems to be a good vehicle for determining when that shift is important and when it is a smokescreen fo guilt, distraction or just plain impulsiveness. Values equal choices. There’s no getting around it. If values are to govern our lives and inspire action, then they will invariably require choices–defacto, conscious or otherwise. Deal with it. And, choose.

All too often we let the opinions or values of others dictate how we set our tipping point–whether it’s a boss or a screaming child or a well-meaning friend. But, noone can really determine my values but me. Noone can set MY priorities because noone can live them but me.

We choose our values with our eyes open, and we must own the consequences. A rich life is full of trade-offs, determined by what is most valuable to us. Forget the well-intentioned disapproval of others or the self-imposed guilt associated with a loss of “balance.”  Let your choices reflect your “most.”

Thanks for the wake-up call, Suzy!

Moving

“The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.” (genesis 1:2)

“Though the earth was formless and void, God was busy. The universe was static, but His Spirit was not. He wasn’t waiting for administrative approval to take an active role in the grand, defining moment of history. He was in motion. Even in the darkness, God was making His presence known.”
~ Vernon M. Whaley, Called to Worship (2009)

You know how I love words, and I’m always curious about their origins. So… I looked up the Hebrew word used here, seeking more on the mysterious nature of this “moving” of God’s Spirit. It is transliterated rachaph, and the lexicon I read defined it as “to be moved, affected, specially–with the feeling of tender love, hence to cherish.”

Yes, that’s quite moving.

Waking Up on 9/11

“We are living in a time of pervasive sleepwalking.”

I first read this quote back in 2000, and it has stayed embedded in my thoughts ever since. It speaks to the numbness we often feel in lives of complacency. The statement was attributed to the Greek 20th century poet, George Sefaris (circa 1939) in a book I read called Inventing Paradise by Edmund Keeley. It was an account of the so-called “generation of the 30s,” writers who cut their teeth during the years surrounding World War II in Greece, many from the exile to which they fled during the German invasion. It chronicled their activities and lifestyles through the war, the Greek occupation and the subsequent civil war. The book was primarily about Henry Miller and his friendship with many notable Greek nationalist poets, and it contained beautiful excerpts from some of their writings–many of which were not political in nature, but told the story of daily life in their homeland. George Sefaris was one of those poets. He spent much of his early life in exile, but later became a diplomat and was the first Greek to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963.

In reading the book, I found it very compelling that through writing so vividly about life as a Greek, poets like Sefaris tapped into common thoughts and hopes that transcend geography. Such is the way of poetry! Henry Miller wrote of George Sefaris that he “had begun to ripen into a universal poet–by passionately rooting himself into the soil of his people.”

So, why am I writing this now? On this, the eighth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on our country, I’m thinking about the pitfalls of freedom–how though we are jarred from our slumber, we often so quickly slip back into its complacency. I almost forgot about 9/11. Eight years ago we were riveted to our computers and radios at my office. The second plane hit the towers shortly after I got to work. By the time we got out of a scheduled client meeting, the towers were down. This week it’s been just a fleeting thought.

As I often do, I was looking through one of my old journals this week and found my notes from Inventing Paradise, including Sefaris’ quote, and I could clearly remember the vivid thought process surrounding Keeley’s description of that time period. I read the book in 2000, a year before the attacks of September 11th. In my journal entries, I recorded how accounts of the German occupation of Greece and the subsequent exile of many citizens reminded me that the only reason I can learn about some of the atrocities that occurred then is that those poets and statesmen survived. The stories of the ones who were murdered can only be pieced together, and some may never be told.

In 2001 we had the benefit of video cameras, cell phones, impromptu photographers and all that 21st century technology has to offer to record the events of 9/11. We have amazing collections of photos like those from the LIFE collection above documenting the heroism of so many. Still, some stories are only pieced together, and some may never be told. In these past eight years, the concerns, red or orange alerts and daily images of destruction have diminished. The shock and horror are not nearly as acute. And, though it’s colored much of our public and social policy, at times in the day to day it’s so forgettable.

My how freedom so easily settles into complacency of spirit. We live in the excess of a generation who has never known famine, lasting fear or often the sacrifice required by honor. My generation. September 11, 2001 only gave us a glimpse. Sadly enough, our freedom is often taken for granted because we only know how to be free. We’ve never experienced anything else. The events of 9/11 were the closest my generation has come to thinking our freedom was in real jeopardy–and even that jeopardy has turned more into an outrage and a springboard for the hot button issue du jour.  When I read about the pervasive apathy or disillusionment associated with “generation X,” I wonder. What do we have to be disillusioned about? We’ve lived our whole lives in the lap of freedom’s luxury. Entrenched in freedom, I can so easily default to laziness, restlessness, and ingratitude–to being asleep to the things that really matter, to the responsibilities inherent in this place of freedom. George Sefaris’ observation of 70 years ago is telling. Have I become lulled by my excess, my good fortune to have been born free and my privelege to have been granted freedom for all my life? Have I settled again into slumber, into contentedly closing my eyes to the world and the stories I encounter each day? Am I sleepwalking through this life of freedom?