Accepting Gifts

It's all in how you receive.

Let's say someone gives you a bouquet of flowers. You have a choice about how you will receive them. You could say, "Flowers, huh? What's HE been up to?" Or, you could say, "Carnations? He only sprung for carnations? Cheapskate." You might say, "He knows I hate Peruvian lilies -- what's he trying to tell me?" Or, you could merely accept the bouquet and say, "Thank you."

It's all in how you decide to receive a gift.

And that's true whether you're receiving a tangible gift, like we do here at Christmastime, or accepting your own inherent gifts. I am often amazed at the number of clients who can wax rhapsodic about their weaknesses and shortcomings, but when I task them with inventorying their strengths, they freeze up.

Perhaps we've been socialized away from "tooting our own horn" to the degree that we forget we've actually got a horn anyway. It does feel awkward to say, "You know, I am really good at (fill in the blank)." Try it. "I am really good at (insert your strength here)." Was that easy or hard? Did you struggle to find something to fill in the blank?

Performance reviews often focus on that which needs improvement (your weaknesses) without so much as a nod to what you're consistently doing really well. Focusing on the negative puts people in a defensive, one-down position. What a shift it would be if corporations acknowledged employee strengths and let folks play to them!

So, how do you identify your strengths? Glad you asked.

1) What tasks are you often asked to do in your workplace, home or volunteer activities? Organize the Christmas party? Entertain clients? Write a business plan? Train the new guy? Serve on a committee?

2) What are you doing when you lose track of time? Reading actuarial tables? Talking with clients? Walking outside? Writing? Preparing meals? Thinking? Working on a project with others? Being physical?

3) What things have you consistently gravitated to throughout your career? Building teams? Starting businesses? Problem-solving? Big-picture thinking? Coordinating details? Serving others?

Answering these questions may lead you, for example, to understand that you are highly socially intelligent -- great at reading other people and excellent at client service -- yet you spend a great deal of time completing paperwork. That may lead you to determine you need an assistant to do the paperwork, freeing you up to spend more time with your clients, and increasing your sales revenue.

One of the keys to happiness and satisfaction is knowing what you're good at and doing as much of it as possible. I often tell clients, "Do more of what you like and delegate the rest!"

When I work with clients to inventory their strengths, we'll identify one and they will often say, "Well, of course, but anyone can do that!" Really? Everyone can plan and execute a Presidential event for 40,000 people in a week? Everyone can prepare corporate tax returns? Everyone can make a nutritious, tasty meal in 23 minutes? Everyone can manage a group of people to a positive end result? Everyone can raise a million dollars?

I don't think so.

We tend to minimize that which comes easy to us and focus on that which comes with difficulty. We've heard this so many times: "If it's worth anything, you've got to struggle for it." My perspective is: "If you have to struggle for it, you may be trying to do the wrong thing."

Accepting and working with your particular gifts shifts your way of thinking from "There's plenty I'm not good at" to "Look at what I can do!" Which attitude, do you think, leads to greater happiness and satisfaction?

Changing Through Crisis

A woman I admire asked me to lunch last week. She's the kind of woman you note across a room -- you see her vitality, sense her kindness, adore her laughter. She's a pip.

Shortly after the waitress took our order, my friend looked me in the eye and asked, "How did you do it?" For a minute I felt a little like O.J. Simpson and ran through the many things I could have done which require some kind of explanation, or a book contract. She went on, "Because I'm going to be following in your footsteps."

Then I knew. See, I went through a painful, unexpected divorce a few years ago, and in an instance I could see the familiar wash of emotions -- sadness, confusion, pain, grief, relief -- on that dear woman's face. "You seem to have your act together now, Michele," she said. "How did you get to be so peaceful and happy?"

How'd I do it? In that moment, I couldn't think of how I did it. I babbled a little bit, pushed a pickle across the plate, and focused on listening to her story intently. Later, when I gathered myself, I told her that my journey was just a series of baby steps -- in the aggregate, more forward than backward -- toward a new life. One thing I knew for sure: somewhere along the way I made a real commitment to feeling better, and to my own personal growth.

I changed, I told her, through the crisis of my divorce. Which is a good thing, believe me! I let go of that which no longer served me and kept or grew that which does serve me -- that which allows me to be the best possible...me.

I told my friend that the same outcome could be hers, and that I'd be there to help.

I went home with a niggling feeling that I hadn't given my friend specific tools she could use to manage her crisis. I was a little frustrated -- hey, I'm a coach! I should be able to do better!

That night I picked up a book I'd just started reading -- Change 101 by Bill O'Hanlon. Imagine my surprise when O'Hanlon identified three keys to turn crisis into an opportunity for growth: connection, compassion and contribution. Wow! Why couldn't I have read it the day before?

So, my friend, here are O'Hanlon's Three Keys to Changing in a Crisis (and the answer to your question "Michele, how did you do it?"):

Does the crisis allow you deeper connections with yourself, with others, or with deeper meaning? In my case, the answer was (d) all of the above. Today I am more myself than at any other time in my life. I have deeper connections with friends and family, and have even made new friends since my divorce (which is not always easy to do at any age). I have learned from so many people, and listened to so many wonderful teachers. But the greatest gift is the knowledge that I am connected, in a spiritual way, to everyone and everything. This has been a deep and meaningful shift for me, and forms the very framework of my life.

Did the crisis lead you to accept yourself and others? Here's another big shift: I now know that even the most flawed person is probably doing his very best given his situation. I hold in my mind the idea, espoused by theologian Henri Nouwen, that love is best defined as making a safe place for another person to be fully himself. OK. If I am trying to bring more love into the world (which is an intention of mine), then I have to accept you for what you are and what you bring. Not who I think you should be or what you should bring...no, it's all about you, baby. Which, of course, frees up my time because I am no longer struggling with or against you. Creative loafing, anyone?

Can you find a way to give back because of the crisis? Feeling that you can help others who've been through a similar experience can be an uplifting experience. It can ease your passage through the stages of grief, and give you, again, a sense of belonging. And helping. And being a force for good in the universe. I stumbled on an amazing online divorce support group which was key to processing my experience and allowed me the opportunity to help others. I met some of the nicest, most thoughtful and generous people in the world who were either in exactly the same spot as I -- or had been there. It was very comforting to not feel so alone.

Crisis is not always about divorce. It's finding out you won't have a job in January, which is what five of my clients recently learned. It's illness, or death. It's your house burning down. It's your child in trouble. It's your brother in trouble. It's you in trouble.

We rightly tend to think of crisis in terms of loss, because there is usually something which has to go. With O'Hanlon's rubric -- making sure we make connections, have compassion and find a way to contribute -- we can use crisis to change. We turn the tables on scary old crisis and use it (ruthlessly and with no regard for its feelings) to effect positive, lasting and marked change in our lives.

Feeling Unlovable and Unworthy

What I'm about to write is not about me. It's about you. And you. And you. And the several women I spoke to last week. It's about everyone who's ever been through a breakup. It's about all of us.

When a person feels as though they are unlovable and not worthy of being cared for, they will engineer situations where that attitude is reinforced.

It may not be conscious. It may be sub-conscious. But they will go to lengths to reinforce their internal framework, best summarized as: I am a loser.

These folks will sabotage, will double-deal, will manipulate. Whatever it takes to reinforce their fundamental, underlying belief -- I am no good.

They will also tell you whatever you want to hear -- just so you pay them some attention, and, perhaps, remind them what a loser they truly are. It's extremely potent when your healing begins -- and they look at you getting stronger. Your strength completely reinforces their underlying belief: "what a loser I am because I can't do what she's doing!" Your dawning strength is a threat -- and not a motivator for them to step up to the plate and begin their own healing. Oh, it's so much easier to pretend everything is absolutely hunky-dory than to develop insight into your own behavior and motivations!

After a divorce is an especially vulnerable time for folks, especially when one partner is crushed and the other is the crusher. The crusher may do something like say, "I'm not sure I've done the right thing" after he's married his lover; or, she might pour out her heart after breaking up with her affair partner. Later, you find out the lover is pregnant, or the much touted break up never happened.

It was a lie designed to create connection between crusher and crushed.

Yes, it's duplicity. Yes, it's hurtful. And, yes, it happens.

My theory is this: the crusher gets something from his/her relationship with the crushed person. Perhaps the relationship reminds him/her that he is no good. Perhaps watching the crushed one heal is too much. Perhaps the crushed one will grow up and away from the crusher -- that can't happen! Who will remind him/her that he's a jerk? A loser? A worthless human specimen?

Because, guess what? He is desperately trying to convince his current partner that he's flawless. Wonderful. Hunky-dory.

So the crusher keeps the crushed one "on a string", saying just enough to keep him/her involved. Giving just enough clues to keep hope alive, even if the crushed one knows deep down that she's better off without the crusher in her life.

It's a tantalizing game of cat and mouse, in which the feelings and needs of the crushed one are of no moment. It's, once again, all about the crusher.

Crushed people can find themselves in an unenviable position of being the third wheel in the new relationship between the crusher and the lover. Often, the new relationship is balanced by the mere presence of the former spouse. "If it weren't for (fill in the ex-spouse's name), everything would be perfect!" This fiction allows the new couple to defer addressing all the issues in their own relationship by focusing on the Evil Former Spouse. It's more hunky-dory.

If I had a dollar for every new partner who conspiratorially said to me, "Well, you know, her former husband was gay/impotent/an alcoholic/abusive" or "His ex-wife just gave up on sex/is a gold digger/is overprotective of the kids/is lazy and doesn't want to work", I would be a wealthy woman living a life of ease. [On an island in the Pacific. With a pina colada in one hand. Laying in a hammock. Swaying in the breeze...Oh -- am I off on a tangent? Pardon me. It's that time of year.]

Carl Jung famously posited that we each have a light and a dark, or "shadow", side. The shadow is that part of our Self which makes us feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. When a relationship starts as an affair, often the "shadow" of society's opinion of infidelity is too much for the new couple to bear. So, they ignore it and find plenty of stuff to lay at the feet of the former partner. Which allows the new couple to mosey along, burdenless. Hunky-dory.

Or so they think. Remember: what you resist, persists.

Sometimes crushed people hold out hope against hope that the crusher will "wake up" and come back. Honey, if their fundamental belief remains "I am a worthless loser", coming back will be no relief to anyone.

In the last week, I've had several clients who have allowed themselves to be hurt by staying engaged with their crusher. It's heartbreaking. And it's very, very human.

Thinking about how it feels to be manipulated may help crushed people become more resolute. No more studying tea leaves to figure out what's really going on. No more surmises about his intentions. No more Nancy Drew (or Frank and Joe Hardy). When someone who finds him/herself fundamentally worthless tells you they love someone else -- regardless of what comes after that part of a sentence -- move on. Take anything else they say with a grain of salt. Or maybe a shaker of salt.

Clinging To Money

So, you have two gold coins. They are the only
gold coins you have in the whole wide world, so you
hold them tightly in each fist. Then one day you
actually meet the leprechaun at the end of the
rainbow with his pot of gold.

He says to you, "Dip your hands in and you can keep
as much gold as you can carry." If you dip your
hands in with your fists clenched, holding tightly to
your two gold coins, how much gold can you scoop?
Uh, none.

But if you open your hands, allowing those two gold
coins to possibly slip out, how much gold can you
scoop?

When you open your hands, you can hold so much
more. When you close them tightly, there is no room
for more than what you’ve already got.

I developed this little story to illustrate the “issues”
many people have around money. Most of the time
we cling to what we think money does for our status,
and what we perceive money can do for us. I can’t
tell you how many times a client will say, “I know I’m
not happy in my job, but to do what I truly love I’d
have to take a cut in pay!” Hmmmn. Perhaps. But
doing what you love is, just like the commercial,
priceless. And, remember this: do what you love,
and the money will follow.

I was recently in a meeting when a man declared
that his objective was to make $10,000 a day.
Again, I thought, “Hmmmn.” Will $10,000 a day make
you measurably happier than, say, $9,000 a day?
Would you be even happier at $12,000 a day? Is
there an end in sight, or will you always incrementalize
your happiness – ‘til you get to the point where you
can never make enough to be “happy”?

Can you tell me who’s got their gold coins grasped
tightly in their fists?

I have the most wonderful CPA. His name is Stan
Friedman, and I’ve worked with him for quite some
time. Many years ago, Stan told me that he saw a
direct correlation between how much clients give
away and their income. When he told me that, I was
intrigued and made an effort to look at how I
allocated my money. And Stan was absolutely right.
The more I gave away, the more I got. The happier I
got, the less I felt I needed. And still, more came to
me. It's nutty!

Don't get me wrong. It's better to have a dollar in
your pocket than have none. Having been in both
situations, I can personally testify to that
statement. Being paid what you're worth is affirming,
and having financial integrity is fulfilling.
But, when you give yourself the freedom to be generous,
the world opens up to you. Generosity begets
abundance. Don't take my word for it -- give it a
try.

Clinging tightly to an idea that money = happiness...
limits you. It restricts your access to the
underpinnings of true happiness, which are, simply,
doing what you love and are good at. You can't help
but be rewarded for that, my friends.