As Trish and I prepare for our home renovation, due to start this fall, we are doing a bit of purging.  I find it interesting that, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more and more minimalist.  It seems to have coincided somewhat with combining households with Trish and with retirement.  In retirement planning, advisors often talk about the three stages you move through financially:  the accumulation years, the disbursement years, and bequest.  “Accumulation” years are your working years, during which you build wealth; “disbursement” years are when you’ve retired and start living off of those investments; “bequest” is when you die and what’s left goes to people and places determined by your will. 

As Trish and I have made that transition from “accumulation” to “disbursement” financially, we seem to have also made a transition from “accumulation” to “disbursement” with material things.  Even though we both have always been more “experience” oriented than “thing” oriented, over 60 years you still accumulate a lot of things.  We’ve decided we want to trim that down now and not leave that to our heirs or, well, whomever might get stuck with cleaning out our final dwelling.  Besides, we just don’t like clutter.  The negotiation comes in when one person’s clutter is another’s prized possessions.  But I digress.

Coinciding with this drive towards simplification is my increasing awareness of the waste I generate and my desire to not send any more to landfills than absolutely necessary.  I pride myself on a weekly garbage can with as little in it as possible.  (Well, unless Trish has been on one of her “trash picking” walks, in which case our full trash can is a public service.)  So, as we purge in preparation for this renovation, we’ve talked a lot about wanting to “rehome” items as much as possible.  Enter the Facebook Buy Nothing groups.

My bestie turned me onto these treasures.  They are hyperlocal groups on Facebook in which you post things you want to give away and/or things you are looking to get.  Everything must be free.  If you want to sell things, there are many other outlets.  This is a site for rehoming things to avoid the trash can.  The area covered is small (maybe five square miles) and you must apply via your address to join.  Wanted items are picked up at the person’s home unless otherwise arranged.  I started using our local Buy Nothing group as I purge and I’ve found an unexpected benefit:  a much stronger sense of community.

Here’s an example.  Over the years, I’ve been a big fan of The Teaching Company.  They sell courses on a huge range of topics.  It started on cassette tapes, moved to CD’s, then DVD’s, and now mostly streaming (although you can still buy DVD’s).  I’d bought several courses over the years, from Understanding Probability to A Tour of the Louvre to The History of the Civil War.  Although I will admit to not having watched every single episode, one long Customer Service call later I was able to secure streaming access to most of the courses I bought.  So, the DVD’s, etc., were really no longer required.  I could have done several things with that pile.  I could have just trashed them.  Big no.  I could have donated them.  But I chose to post them on our Buy Nothing group.  In short order, someone commented that they’d be interested in the whole lot.  I PM’d my address, left the bag of DVD’s outside the front door, and he came and picked them up.  We never even met!  But here’s the thing:  I know that there is some household nearby that is currently enjoying those courses.  And in some small way, maybe because we know each other’s names and he came to my house, we are connected. 

Sometimes it can be more personal.  A different post offered a number of books related to Judaism as Trish and decided to trim our collection.  One local woman came and took them all.  As I was helping her get the boxes to her car, she told me she was so excited to give the flash cards from Trish’s Hebrew lessons to her granddaughter.  That makes the connection even more profound.  Through this little Facebook group, I’ve accessed more of my local community and that makes me feel more connected. 

Community in this country is often built around families, places of worship, and hobbies.  I did not have any children of my own, so I missed out on creating community through interaction with my kid’s friends’ families—probably the largest foundation of community.  When I was affiliated with a synagogue in the Lehigh Valley, I built a very strong sense of community but it rarely moved off the synagogue grounds.  And since my fondest hobbies are reading and writing—both solitary doings—I don’t really get much community through my spare time activities.  I’ve felt that lack of community my entire adult life.  Don’t get me wrong:  I am blessed with a strong group of friends, a great neighborhood where we know and talk with each other, and strong ties within my family and in-laws.  I have just been missing that broader connection to my capital “C” Community like I had when I was growing up.  I’ve been missing that feeling that makes “home” feel like home.

I don’t think I’m alone.  Even before the pandemic, studies have shown that most people didn’t even know the names of their neighbors and had limited connections into their local communities.  The pandemic, of course, has just exacerbated that.  When you don’t feel a connection to your community, you don’t care as much about what happens to others around you.  When you don’t interact with people in your community as whole humans you just see them as different classes of mono-dimensional people—people who drive too slowly or too fast; people who share or don’t share my political views; people who dress similarly as, or differently from, me.  And when we divide the world into two groups of people—those you align with and those you don’t—then we all ended up feeling both alone and threatened at the same time.  That’s just not good!  Healthy communities only happen when people come together.

We all need more community.  Making that happen takes effort and it’s an effort that I’ve honestly not been very good at over the years.  I’m sure that’s contributed to this sense of isolation that I’ve often felt.  Now that I don’t have my “work” community, yet have more time on my hands, I felt I should be making more of an effort to get engaged with those around me.  Old habits die hard, though, and I haven’t made much progress.  However, I can’t believe how much joy I have gotten out of participating in this Buy Nothing group!  The thought of knowing that little pieces of me are now in multiple homes in the area somehow makes me feel more a part my “new” hometown (that I’ve now lived in for six years!).  It’s a start.

When I first started this blog almost three and a half years ago, I had a lot of pent-up energy around thoughts that I really wanted to express.  Many of those early essays came from coaching lessons that I’ve given over the years and/or real hot button topics for me.  Now that those urgent thoughts have been shared, I’ve settled into a pattern where my writing is driven in large measure by what’s currently going on in my life. Those daily observations always connect back to “deeper thoughts”, so I get to fulfill my desire to share those ruminations in the context of what I’m experiencing today. 

What is sure to dominate my writing for months to come is the major renovation work Trish and I are undertaking on our home.  We love this house.  Trish has lived here for almost 30 years.  It’s a modest house in a fabulous neighborhood, conveniently located, and with great neighbors.  Trish has watched all their kids grow up.  I have been slotted into the crowd.  No one seems to be leaving.  We toyed with moving into one of the new 55-and-older communities popping up but decided instead to invest in this house and stay put.  I’m getting the kitchen of my dreams.  We are getting the second full bath that Trish always wanted as well as the master suite that she didn’t know she wanted until I told her she did. It’s a big project and neither one of us has undertaken anything like it in the past.

Originally, the title of this essay was going to be “Decisions, Decisions, Decisions” because that is what is going on right now:  a thousand decisions, big and small.  Fortunately, we’ve worked out a system that is helping this process go fairly smoothly.  I’m a Big Picture kind of gal and have focused on the layout of the kitchen and the choice of appliances.  I also am very comfortable with a wide range of decorating styles, as long as whatever is done is in good taste and put together well.  Trish has a genetic eye for design and, while not someone to lose herself for days in a tile shop, doesn’t get paralyzed by choice like I do.  We have agreed that she’ll take that first cut at design choices, aided by her brother who has an absolutely amazing eye for design and experience building from scratch, and I will provide any needed input at the end.  This means I’ll provide a tie-break vote if needed and generally agree with her choices because they are fabulous.  And they are!  I am so thrilled with how this is coming together!

I am enormously grateful for how this process is playing out because, as noted above, I get paralyzed by choice.  Give me two or three choices and I can make a decision.  And I will come to that decision quickly.  Give me a blank sheet of paper and say, “Design a kitchen, soup to nuts” and I will get nauseous.  This got me thinking back to a tool I used in my working days called the CARE profile.  Well, it was called the CARE profile back in the day.  Now it’s called the Team Dimensions Profile and is offered by a company called Training Solutions.  Find out more about it here.  I’m not shilling for the company and, in fact, may get sued for talking about it without permission but it has real merit.  The tool is used to help leaders put together balanced teams.  Understanding where you are in this CARE profile, though, is pretty useful regardless.

The basic concept is that we can’t all be good at everything from ideation through to completion of a project.  Everyone has different strengths.  The key is to understand your own strong points and then surround yourself with people who have abilities where you do not.  The acronym, CARE, stands for: Creator (generating the idea); Advancer (building on an idea to increase the possibilities); Refiner (winnowing down the choices); and, Executor (working out the details and implementing). 

I am a combination of Advancer and Refiner.  I have the occasional brilliant creative idea, but more likely that vision is a synthesis of other things I’ve seen that I put together in a new way.  Our kitchen design came out of tours of our neighbors’ houses, seeing what they had done and picking out what would work best for us.  Our final design is actually a tweak on one neighbor’s kitchen that we really like.  And while I’m pretty good at building on someone else’s ideas, or encouraging others to do such, I am best at narrowing down the choices by working through how something would function in real life.  Executing?  Yeah, best leave that to someone else.  Not a detail person, here, and too much of a perfectionist.

At one point in my career, we moved a number of our labs into a new building.  Labs are complicated beasts, yet the ability to plan the layout is a rare opportunity to really improve workflow.  We had a team in one of the labs who always worked well together and this move was no different.  One, a highly creative scientist, took a blank sheet of paper and produced a very clever layout.  The other, a detailed execution-focused scientist, made it practical and do-able.  We needed both.

Even choosing the appliances nearly did me in.  Wow, are there a LOT of choices!  I searched on line.  I asked friends for their thoughts.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t make the BEST choice and I’d have to suffer with the result.  Finally, I sat down and did two things.  First, I made my list of “threshold” requirements.  Any appliance in a given category that met those requirements would be good enough.  I didn’t need “perfect”.  Second, I chose two brands (GE and Bosch) that got high marks from my trusty Consumer Reports across the board.  We went to our local appliance retailer, list of threshold requirements in hand, and toured around.  I took his suggestions and dug into the websites to look at cousins of his picks to make the final choices.  Then I slept for a week.  Meanwhile, Trish and John were touring through granite shops, tile shops, faucet web sites, you name it.  I simply could not have done it.  The results, however, are amazing. 

For some reason, all of us tend to think that we need to be able to do everything equally well and we beat ourselves up if we fall short in even one area.  That’s just nonsense!  If we look honestly at those around us, we’ll notice that no one is truly strong in every part of that CARE profile.  I’m an Advancer/Refiner and proud of it!  Be proud of what you are, too.  And look to surround yourself with people having strengths in other areas.

The summer season is upon us, now, in the Northeast.  That means trips up to Poconos on a more regular basis and that means hours in the car to talk.  I am amazed at how much Trish and I always seem to find to talk about.  It’s not like we never have time to talk.  We are almost always together.  But get us in the car and amazing conversations ensue.  This, of course, is one of the reasons I love her.  But I digress.  A recent trip up to Lake Wallenpaupack gave us one of those “let’s see what comes up” conversation moments and we had a really interesting discussion around toxic people.  So, more than usual, Trish is my co-author on this essay.  Celebrate or blame her, equally.

Now, before we go any further, hear this, Dear Reader:  YOU ARE NOT IN THIS ESSAY IN ANY WAY!  It is natural to see yourself in things you read but I want all my friends and family to know that we have gone to GREAT PAINS to not use anyone we know as an example in this essay.  Just STOP IT.  You are not in here!  If anyone is used as an example in this essay, it’s me.  And we’ll get to that in a moment. If you happen to see something of yourself in this essay—since reading and thinking are a good way to hold up the mirror—then take this to heart:  truly toxic people rarely see themselves as toxic.

It would seem simple enough to begin by defining what I mean as “toxic person,” but that has turned out to be one of the most difficult parts of this discussion.  In general, Trish and I have defined a “toxic person” as someone who sucks the air out the room.  Not helpful?  A toxic person is someone who drains your energy.  Also not helpful?  A toxic person is someone who, when you see their name on caller ID, inspires you to groan and debate whether or not to pick up the phone.  I think you see where I’m going here.  It’s like the definition of porn:  you know it when you see it, but it’s hard to give a precise definition.

I will use myself as an example.  I look back to when I was in college.  I was a hormonal teenager, away from home for the first time, struggling mightily with understanding and coming to grips with my sexuality.  I knew I was gay.  I’d known since I was, what, 5 years old?  But in the 60’s, ‘70s, and even the ‘80s when I was in college, this was not a good thing.  Our culture taught me that what I felt was wrong and evil and must be purged.  I hated and feared this side of me.  I did my best to try and change it (fortunately, unsuccessfully).  I embodied angst and moodiness and unpredictability and I cried a lot.  A LOT.  I send a deep bow of gratitude to my dearest college friends who stuck by me through all of this.  I cringe, now, thinking about how toxic I must have been.  And the worst part of it was that I never (rarely?) explained WHY I was struggling so much since my deepest fear was coming out!  Thank goodness they did not abandon me or purge me from their lives.

I say that because I have gotten to a point where I have slowly purged toxic people from my own life as a self-protection mechanism.  This is not uncommon and there is much popular literature on the need to do so.  Toxic people drain your energy.  They bring you down.  You run the risk of spiraling right alongside them.  Let them go, the common wisdom says!  But.  But where is that line between self-preservation and selfishness?  When do you cross over from compassion for others to compassion for yourself?  This is where I hold up Trish and her family as models.  She and her siblings are some of the most compassionate people I know.  (This is the part of the essay she did not co-write and I’m guessing there will be battles during the editing process to see what remains in the final post.)  Each one of the four siblings has this amazing ability to talk with anyone, anywhere, anytime and make them feel like they are the most important person in the room.  I know it comes from their parents.  I never met their father, but the stories they tell (and, wow, can this family tell stories!) demonstrate his compassion.  And I had the extraordinary fortune to know their mother well, so I know for sure her influence.  There are people in this family’s orbit whom many would consider toxic, yet they continue to keep them close without falling into the spiral.  I think they are able to do this because they come from a place of love.  When you come from a place of love, there is always love to share.

There need to be limits to this compassion, and this is what Trish and I talked a lot about on the car ride.  We both get fed up when someone’s toxicity is somewhat self-imposed—by choices they have made, by lack of personal accountability, by lack of personal awareness.  Somewhat tied to this is the time arc of toxicity.  Is this person going through a defined tough time or does this toxicity just seem to be a component of who they are?  Let’s be honest, we all know people who seem to thrive on negativity.  And we all know people who thrive on trying to “fix” people in chaos, so they don’t see it as toxic. 

I still don’t have a good answer to my basic question of when I am smartly distancing myself from someone who is toxic and when I am being selfish and lacking in compassion.  I thought writing this essay would help me work that out, but it has taken me to totally different places than I thought it would.  There are no hard and fast rules, here, as with most of life.  Sometimes I have greater capacity for compassion than at other times.  Sometimes, I fear getting involved.  I can fear that toxicity may be contagious.  I guess where I need to leave things is with this thought:  Life is a series of choices.  Choose love and compassion as often as you can, and remember when others choose compassion for you.

My regular readers will be very happy to know that I continue to keep my lack of motivation, discussed last time, at bay.  I even made it to a spin class this week at the Y and have the sore legs to prove it.  Today, Trish and I got up and out early to make the 8:00 Stretch and Balance class.  Nothing could be less intimidating than this class.  It is an hour of long stretches, a bit of core work, and a bit of balance work.  Consider it pre-yoga.  And, yes, it is focused on those of us of a certain age who might consider real yoga “a bit much”.  As we were going through the class today, I paid attention to where my mind wandered.  It occurred to me that “Stretch and Balance” is a fabulous metaphor for life.  I’ll take you through the class and explain what I mean.

Let’s start with the fact that we got there.   Woody Allen once said, “80% of life is just showing up.”  We all know how true that is.  My motivation issue was driven almost entirely by a need to just get started.  Basic physics.  Getting over inertia.  That’s why experts on “getting things done” tend to recommend breaking a big task down into smaller chunks.  That lowers the activation barrier and improves the probability that you will overcome inertia and get started.  Once you get started, things flow.

The class begins with a focus on the breath and some short meditation.  There is a story I remember hearing that I think is attributed to Einstein but I can’t find a reference for it.  This person (let’s say it was Einstein) had a daily half hour meditation practice.  It’s how he started his day.  Upon hearing about how busy his schedule was going to be the next day, Einstein said something like, “Well, I’m going to need to meditate twice as long tomorrow morning.”  There is a general feeling that meditation is a luxury.  It’s something you do when you have the time to devote to it.  The reality is that meditation is something you should do to create mental space for everything else in your life.  I have not been successful at making a daily meditation practice a priority.  Yet every time I do it—and the start of the Stretch and Balance class is a good example—I find myself incredibly grounded and with greater capacity to handle whatever is in front of me that day.  The instructor also asks us to set an intention for the day, like “clarity” or “focus” or “peace” or whatever pops into your head.  I almost always land on “focus”.  Those who have worked with me over the years and suffered with my short attention span understand why that is important.

We move next into really gentle movements.  We sweep our arms up overhead as we inhale, then sweep down as we exhale.  We’ll hold our arms in “goal post” position and gently twist to the right and then to the left.  We’ll drop our right ear to our right shoulder then our left ear to our left shoulder.  These beginning movements are slow and almost seem like they aren’t doing anything.  But we are focused on timing our breathing with the movements, which allows us to stretch longer and deeper as the class proceeds.  I noticed today that when we did the “goal post twist” at the end of the class, I was able to twist so much further!  That meant my muscles were cold and tight at the beginning.  Those slow, gentle stretches started the warm up process and without them I probably would have hurt myself.  How many times in life have I jumped into something new (a new job, a new project, a new activity, a new relationship) and just took off without doing those metaphorical gentle stretches first?  Taking the time to mentally connect your breathing to the new movements of whatever you are taking on allows you to see what’s ahead of you more clearly.  And seeing what is ahead of you more clearly dramatically improves your chances of success.

As the class goes on, we move into deeper and longer stretches.  I particularly appreciate the “hip opening” exercises because my hips are always so tight.  I wrote before about the need to push outside of your comfort zone and used stretching of muscles as an analogy.  I’m always amazed at how quickly my hips tighten up when I’ve missed a few classes.  Similarly, if you don’t stretch yourself out of your comfort zone, you’ll find yourself more hesitant and fearful of trying new things.  Or you stop doing things that used to be easy and natural for you when you were doing them regularly (like driving on the highway or public speaking).  You’ve got to stretch!

Even though we move gently from pose to pose, all of a sudden, I noticed that I was shaking a little and I could hear the quiet (or not so quiet) grunts of strain from my classmates.  This usually starts when I’ve been in downward dog awhile and my shoulders are starting to fatigue, and accelerates when we transition from downward dog to a plank.  I felt it again when we moved into balancing core moves that involved keeping my legs extended and above the mat.  Funny how those gradual transitions suddenly catch up to you and you find yourself struggling a bit.  You want to drop the pose and get relief.  Just when you need to hear it, though, the instructor tells you to breathe into it and reminds you of the importance of a strong core.  How many times in my life has a steadying voice come to support me just when I was about to crack?  I think back to when friends or mentors or sometimes even strangers have appeared in my life with just the right words at just the right time to get me to focus on why I was doing what I was doing, instead of keying in on my discomfort.  I really value the times I have been able to be that steadying influence on others.  That’s why I have always loved teaching and coaching.  The opportunity to give someone the nudge to return to a healthier, more productive focus is a gift to me.

Speaking of “nudges”, let’s talk about the balance portion of the class.  These are predominantly standing movements on one leg (like tree pose) that involve additional movements to confuse your brain.  Sometimes for good measure we close our eyes.  No one gets through the balance exercises without falling out of the poses multiple times to catch themselves.  And that is a GOOD thing.  The goal is not to be rock solid in these poses.  Our instructor reminds us that you only improve your balance skills if you are forced out of balance 25% of the time.  If you are not challenging yourself enough to fail 25% of the time, you are not going to improve.  There are a zillion life lessons wrapped up in that one statement.  First, of course, is the importance of “failure”.  Second is the importance of learning and improving from failure, not beating yourself up over it.  Third is the recognition that balance is rarely a steady state.  Balance involves gentle but constant nudges and adjustments.  I have used the concept of a pendulum before in discussing balance, instead of a set of scales, for exactly this reason.  Balance (in all things) requires constant attention and constant adjustment.  Getting out of balance occasionally is just an opportunity to get better at getting back into balance again.  Embrace it.

We end the class with a short meditation again, lying flat on our backs.  I love this part.  My muscles are all warm and tingling a bit.  My mental state is calm yet really focused.  I feel like I could take on anything!  So, yes, “stretch and balance” is a darn good philosophy as well as a good physical activity.  Challenge yourself on that—every day.

I’ve been staring at that blinking cursor for a minute or two, debating how to open this essay.  It began on the treadmill this morning, thinking about coming up to the office to write.  My plan had been to try once again to rewrite an essay I’ve been working on for literally months.  Just can’t get it right.  I normally look forward to this task.  Writing is a joyful experience for me, albeit sometimes immensely frustrating.  While I usually need a deadline to actually get myself to put fingers to the keyboard, I am always thinking about writing and I look forward to those times I actually do it.  Not today.  When my mental response to thinking about working on that essay was, “ugh,” I knew I had an issue.  I’ve been struggling with a lack of motivation in general for weeks now.  I’m not sad or depressed (I don’t think).  I’m not sick (I don’t think).  I’m not just sitting around doing nothing.  I get done what I need to get done and I still can laugh and have fun.  I’m just not feeling motivated.  So, I’m going to do what I often do when something is eating at me.  I’m going to explore it through writing and hope to understand what is behind it by the words that end up on the page.  Knowing that dealing with periods of low motivation is something everyone faces at one time or another, I thought sharing this thought process might help others, too.

I wrote about motivation this past fall.  (Read part one here and part two here.)  It was helpful to go back and read those essays, but they weren’t really addressing what is nagging at me.  What does this lack of motivation look like?  I haven’t been going to the Y more than once a week, which means few vigorous workouts.  I’ve been going on long walks outside or on the treadmill, but these are more opportunities to catch up on podcasts or read emails than elevating my heartrate.  I’ve had trouble focusing on reading, which is also uncharacteristic.  My mind has just been wandering too much.  I’ve been playing a lot of games on my iPad.  I haven’t even been motivated to watch recorded TV shows.  I haven’t been writing consistently in my journal.  I’ve been allowing myself “high WW point” treats a little too often.  Let’s just say I’ve been giving myself a LOT of grace.  I am a champion grace giver.  And, honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that. 

I think what bugs me the most is that I don’t feel like I’m living in the present.  Throughout much of my adult life, I was living for the future:  “I’ll be happy when….”  I was getting through each day, each week, each month working toward getting to some milestone—completing a big work project, getting through a difficult personal time, doing some project on the house, finally getting to go on vacation.  But once that long anticipated event happened, there would be something else in the future that I would focus on that I thought would bring relief.  Ever since I met Trish and especially once I retired, I have been living in the present.  I have everything I could possibly want and feel extraordinarily blessed.  I am truly grateful every day.  The problem right now is that I feel like instead of living in the present that I am more…existing.  (Before you start to comment, I know it sounds like I’m depressed, but stick with me a bit here.)

The next question I have for myself is, “What’s happened?  What moved you from ‘living’ to ‘existing’?”  Honestly, I think the cause is getting shoved out of my routine.  Chalk this one up to the long list of “pandemic impacts”.  We have established that I am a homebody and, due to my fortunate life circumstance (retired, financially comfortable, enjoy cooking, like spending lots of time with my wife), the pandemic restrictions have not really been a hardship on me.  Don’t get me wrong!  I very much enjoy traveling and being with friends!  I’m just not used to it right now and restarting these activities has been, frankly, disrupting.  Our two week trip to Utah in March was fantastic (except the journey home) and a true bucket list experience.  But it threw me out of my routine and I can’t seem to get comfortable again.  Of course, I’ve allowed myself to get a little too busy.  I went to see my family in Atlanta a few weeks after coming home from Utah; I’ll be going to Baltimore for a long weekend to hang with college friends between penning this essay and publishing; and, the following weekend I’ll be going back to Atlanta for Mother’s Day.  In between all of this, Trish and I are kicking off some serious renovations on our house, including a big redo of the kitchen.  I am super excited about this, but talk about disruption!  We plan to move out of the house in the fall when the work begins and we have about three million decisions to make before then.  Interestingly, it’s not the decisions that are disturbing me.  I’ve been having fun researching appliances and annotating the designs.  It’s thinking of going through the process—packing up half the house, moving out, moving back when it’s all done—that has me overwhelmed.  It’s like climbing a mountain to get to the valley on the other side.  You know that the valley is worth the effort to climb the mountain, but all you see in front of you is that big hill.  There’s a lot more.  I cut out a whole discussion about the progression of my glaucoma and the things I am doing to save my sight and how I obsess about that.  I cut out some family issues that have me distressed.  I cut out lack-of-sleep stories.  Trying to keep this to under 1500 words!

The final question is, “What do I DO about this situation?  How do I get myself back?”  Writing, of course, helps.  It helps me better define what’s nagging at me.  Once it’s defined, I can face it.  Writing also gives me the accountability.  I’m not just talking about putting this out there for those who read my work, or even the fact that now my mom and sister will probably keep checking in on me until I can report progress.  It’s mostly about creating accountability within myself.  I don’t just want to exist.  I’ve worked too long and too hard (both at my career and on myself) to not take better advantage of every day in front of me.  It’s a conscious choice every day—do I allow myself this moment of low energy or do I push myself to take that first step?  I am acutely aware of the activation barriers I need to overcome to do something.  Those barriers can be easy to overcome (“Get up and cook dinner if you want to eat at 6:00.”), a little more challenging (“Put make up on every day again, even if just to cover the dark circles under your eyes from the glaucoma meds.”), or significantly challenging (“Go to spin class.  You know you’ll feel awesome afterwards.”)  Go back to those first steps around personal accountability and intention.  What is important to you today?  Just today.  You know those little successes build.  Pick one thing that is important for you to do (or not do) today.  Getting this first draft done was my one thing today.  That felt good.  Maybe I’ll pick another.

Stopping yourself when you slide into a motivational dip is important.  No one is going to do it for you.  Own up to what is causing it.  Writing does that for me.  What works for you?  Give yourself enough grace to take the pressure off but not so much that you don’t take that first step.  I think I’ll be bookmarking this essay for future reference.

CODA:  I’m editing this essay after the trip to Baltimore for a college reunion.  It was three exhausting days of overeating, overtalking, and overenjoying life.  It was also just what I needed.  I thought I’d come back and pick up my struggling just where I left off.  But, after a couple of days of sleeping excessively and eating oatmeal and beans, I am raring to go!  So, here’s a good message:  feeling a lack of motivation?  Go spend time with people outside of your daily bubble who love you.

An anecdote is really just a story, focused on a particular person or situation.  Merriam-Webster defines an anecdote as “a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident”.  I do love storytelling—I am, after all, a writer of sorts.  And I’ve used storytelling all my life, particularly during my work years.  Nothing helps sell a customer or a business plan or a job like a good story.  So, anecdotes have a strong positive side.  But they also have a negative side.  Anecdotal information can be misleading or, worse, misdirecting.  Since I recently spent a lot of time on airplanes and in cars, I’ve had time to ruminate on anecdotes a bit and we’re going to unpack that a bit today.  (This is why Trish rarely asks, “What are you thinking about?”)

What better way to start a discussion on the power of anecdotes than with a story!  I’m sure you’ve all seen the commercials for Prevagen, a supplement sold as a way for those of us “of a certain age” to improve our memory and mental sharpness.  When I first noticed the commercials (it’s been on the market since 2007), the manufacturer made some pretty specific claims about the clinical effectiveness of the pill.  Then I started reading about claims that the product didn’t work, that the company was being sued for false advertising, and that the FDA had come down on them pretty hard.  The product is still available, of course, but the commercials no longer refer to clinical studies that prove efficacy.  Instead, the commercials show folks from various walks of life giving testimonials as to the benefits they ascribe to taking Prevagen.  This is not false advertising.  I have no doubt that there are people who firmly believe that there is a causal connection between taking Prevagen and improvements in their mental function.  They can tell their stories.  But their experience does not prove a broad, scientifically valid clinical effect of the product.  (Brace yourself.  There is probably an essay on the Scientific Method coming.)  These stories are just that—anecdotal information relevant only to the storyteller.  But it can encourage others to think, “Well, maybe it will work for me, too.”

In a situation like the story about Prevagen, it’s pretty harmless if someone accepts an anecdotal testimonial as being broadly applicable, or at least applicable to themselves.  As long as the supplement is safe to use (not guaranteed by the FDA, by the way), then the biggest harm is parting with a bit of money and pride.  It’s also mostly harmless when you are providing examples from your own experiences to teach a lesson, such as all the stories I tell when I’m coaching someone.  The key, of course, is to keep in mind that these are examples and, as the disclaimers on all those commercials remind us in teeny, tiny print:  individual results may vary.  When I launch into my story of the random walk that was my career progression, I always provide the disclaimer that these were my experiences associated with my particular situations at the time I was going through them.  The idea of telling the story is not to say, “This is what I did, so if you do the same things, you’ll have the same outcome.”  It’s to start the conversation to dig deeper to understand what may have led to the outcomes I had and what is relevant to the situation the listener finds themselves in at the moment.

Anecdotes run rampant within our news media, of course.  I subscribe to a daily news digest called The Flip Side.  Each day, they pick a current topic and then present a sampling of commentary from the conservative right and the liberal left.  The two sides rarely disagree on the same statement.  Rather, they choose anecdotes that support their view and ignore anecdotes (and data) that support a different view.  Neither is wrong, really.  They are choosing to focus on different aspects of a topic.  A conservative might focus on the fraud and waste of our social safety net programs.  A liberal might focus on the success stories of how these programs brought families out of poverty or gave people a chance to pull themselves up with the support of basic assistance.  They are both right.  There are many examples of both waste and success.  These programs are never going to get better and more effective, though, if we only focus on the stories we prefer.

To really dig into what I mean, I am going to share an anecdote from our recent travels.  While we were in St. George, Utah, for a week, we found a little sports bar that we really liked.  We liked it enough to go there two nights in a row and we liked our server enough to ask for her table when we came for the second night.  So, let me tell you a little about Sandra.  We were asking her about life in Utah and she told us a bit of her story.  As part of that, we learned that, as a server, she earns only about $2.10/hour in wages since there is an expectation that she’ll make up the difference between that and the minimum wage through tips.  But she needs to share her tips with the bar staff and the bus staff.  She works six days a week and just can’t make ends meet.  She and her partner lost their house in the housing bust in 2009, they can barely make their rent payments now, and they are expecting a rent increase when their lease renews shortly.  She plans to move into her Mom’s house, renting a basement apartment from her.  She has no idea if they will ever get any further.  Her attitude was fairly positive, considering.  She is a very hardworking, nice person who just can’t get ahead in this world today.  We left a nice tip on the credit card check and then gave her some extra cash to put directly into her pocket.  When we did that, she looked a bit horrified and said, “I didn’t…I wasn’t asking for…” but we wanted her to have it.  So, what are we to do with this information (besides having this blog post go viral and everyone in Utah patronizing Guru’s in St. George and giving Sandra huge tips)?

One temptation is to say, “This is what’s wrong with our economy today!  Hardworking average people just can’t get ahead!  We must increase wages and reduce housing costs.”  Another response is to think, “Clearly, she’s made some poor choices and made her bed.  Hardworking honest people can get ahead if they work hard enough.”  My response?  Ask more questions.  Thanks to Google, I know that the Federal requirement for tipped workers is indeed $2.13/hour with an assumption of $5.12/hr in tips, taking the presumed wage up to the current Federal minimum of $7.25/hr.  Besides Utah, 15 other states hold to this minimum and another 15 states don’t crack $5/hr in wages before tips.  Let’s say that Sandra works 50 hours/week and manages to get that average in tips to bring her wages up to $7.25/hr.  That’s $362.50/week or $18,850 per year, before taxes.  A 2 bedroom apartment in St. George rents for about $1000/month.  It’s a pricey place.  But they still need servers who can afford to live there.  Even if Sandra’s partner brings in the same wages, they barely clear the recommended hurdle of 30% of gross wages on housing.  

The data tell us her situation is tight.  But we know no more than that, and that she seems like a good person.  I can’t tell you anything more about Sandra’s situation and history.  I can’t tell you what she could have done differently.  I don’t know if she makes good choices or not.  I’m not going to pass judgment on her or the large number of people in her situation.  But this anecdote reminds me that there are a lot of people in her basic situation and struggling.  You can choose to believe her story is representative or that it’s an outlier.  You can call up any number of anecdotes to support whichever solution you prefer to these and other problems.  And you know what?  Everyone is a little bit right.  Our world is complex enough that multiple solutions will be required to address the range of situations in which people find themselves.  All we can do is this:  ask questions to understand how representative is the anecdote you are hearing.  Is this situation wide spread or rare?  Regardless, remember the humanity and uniqueness of the persons involved.  Everyone needs a little understanding and often a little help at times.  We’ll talk about judgment next time.  And, of course, always tip your server well!

Many years ago, I heard some relationship advice that stuck with me.  The advice was simple:  Always try to give more than 50% in any relationship.  I took that to mean that if both people tried to give more than 50%, there was a good chance you’d end up pretty even.  And if both people felt that the relationship was “even” then it had a better chance of succeeding.  I tried hard to put this into practice, particularly in romantic relationships.  I found it wholly unhelpful, though.  Be it a romantic relationship, a friendship, a work relationship, whatever, I found that if I consistently worked to give more than 50% then I started feeling resentful.  I was waiting for the kind of reciprocation I expected and I was often disappointed.

My “aha” moment came only over the last few years.  I finally realized the true meaning behind that advice:  Always try to give more than 50% in relationships because there are always things the other person does that you just don’t notice.  The goal, then, is not so much about doing more; it’s about noticing more.

Before Trish and I moved in together, I had been living alone for 10 years.  She had been living on her own for at least that long.  When you live on your own for an extended period, you quickly internalize that if anything is going to get done, you need to do it yourself.  Once we were in the same house permanently, I began to notice little things.  I’d go to empty the bathroom trash can and it would already be empty.  I’d go to scoop the cats’ litter boxes and they’d be clean.  I’d go to unstack the dishwasher and the dishes would have been put away.  Maybe not where I would put them, but put away nonetheless.  It started to become a bit of a competition in my head:  dang it!  She got to the trash before me AGAIN!  I started to get a little worried:  Does she feel that I’m not pulling my weight?  I don’t want Trish to get resentful toward me the way I’ve been resentful toward others in the past.

When I first moved in, I would walk by anything that Trish put on the stairway to upstairs.  She put it there, I figured, so she’d do something with it.  Finally, she calmly (but with an edge in her voice) said, “If something is on the steps, please take it upstairs.  If you don’t know where it’s supposed to go, put in on the couch in the office.”  So noted.  Similarly, we’ve established that I hate talking on the phone, particularly to people I don’t know.  So, when a call needs to be made, it’s usually Trish who makes it.  While this has been a consistent source of strain, she kind of accepts it.  She reads my body language and picks up the phone.  I will occasionally “make the call” during a time of duress, but I typically save it for when heroics are required.  And there are so many little things that one or the other of us just does, like the trash and the litter boxes and putting things back in the fridge or taking Costco purchases down to the basement. 

Like most couples, we’ve worked our way through a reasonable division of labor.  She gets enjoyment out of working the yard, so that’s HER thing.  I guess I should put “enjoyment” in quotes because there is often crankiness, exhaustion, and (this being Trish) a bit of blood, but anytime I suggest we hire a yard service I get a bit of side eye and, “I like doing it.”  Well, ok, then.  Similarly, I like doing the laundry.  More specifically, I prefer the way I do laundry to the way Trish does laundry.  Instead of trying to push “my” way on her, I just take responsibility for it.  Those things can be easily negotiated, yet once they are worked out, it’s still important to NOTICE when they get done.  There are a lot of “thank you”s flying around this house, not out of a sense of obligation or a recognition of extraordinary effort or even being overly polite.  It’s because we both notice when the other does something.  As I noted above, when you’ve had to do it all for so many years, you really notice even the little things.  The added benefit is that I’ve gotten incrementally better at resisting procrastination.  I don’t want to put off doing something that I see needs doing in case she beats me to the punch.

Gift giving is another area where you can tell how much attention someone pays to others.  Trish is a great gift giver.  I was stunned those first few years when I opened gifts that were just, well, perfect.  “How did you know?” I’d ask.  “I paid attention,” she replied.  Conversely, my gift giving tends to be like the little kid who gives Dad a baseball cap—in kid’s size.  In other words, I would tend to give people gifts that I liked myself.  I considered it sharing my joy.  It really was more assuming that if I liked something that the other person would (or should), too.  Not always on point.  I’m finally learning to pay attention better, to notice when someone expresses interest or joy in something and note THAT as a gift for them.  Although, honestly, how many pairs of socks or Penn State branded clothing does one person need?  (EDITOR’S NOTE:  Never question the merit in socks or PSU gear.)

My argument with all this relationship discussion is that I’m finally learning how to “notice”.  This is really important in a work setting, particularly if you are a manager of people.  I wish I had understood this sooner.  I know that there is so much I just didn’t notice every day, particularly when it came to job roles I was less familiar with.  Nothing is more demoralizing at work than feeling that your efforts are not seen or appreciated.  As I look back on how I’ve interacted with a range of people throughout my life, I cringe when I think how self-focused I was.  And still am, to a slightly lesser degree.  I am a work in progress.  As Brené Brown reminds me on my coffee mug every morning:  I’m here to get it right, not be right.  (One of the most on-point birthday gifts I’ve ever received, by the way!)

So, yes, the advice is to always try to give more than 50% to make up for all the little things another person does that you don’t notice, but the real goal is notice more.  I try to “notice” more with every contact I have.  It’s important in friendships.  It’s important in family relationships.  It’s important at work, for sure.  It’s important with random people you interact with throughout your day.  It makes people feel seen and valued.  It deepens connection.  And it will help others to “see” you better, too.