Welcome back, Patient Reader.  I am still not consistently sleeping well, which we started talking about several essays ago, but I’m making progress understanding why and taking Corrective Action.  We began by talking about Patience in these stressful times, followed by an initial discussion about how low Coping Energy reserves sap your patience, leaving you anxious, cranky and not sleeping well.  After a side trip last time to have a needed discussion on Perspective, we are back to finish up on the topic of Coping Energy.

For me to sleep soundly, I need to consistently rebuild my Coping Energy reserves after their daily (hourly, sometimes) depletion.  To do that, I need to be able to take a deep breath and focus on what I control (hence the need for Perspective).  This skill, because it IS a skill, is something I’ve developed over years of being in unpredictable, ever-changing, anxiety-producing situations that I’ve somehow managed to navigate “successfully”.  Successfully, in this context, means simply surviving somewhat intact.  I’m much calmer than I used to be.  Not so much because I’ve matured or gotten wiser but more because I’ve been through enough now to know that things usually work out—not necessarily how I would have wanted them to work out, but work out such that I can pick myself up and move on.  It’s time to do that again.

Earlier, I mentioned that in my professional managerial life I had to learn to treat coping energy issues in a different way than my instincts first led me.  I believed, initially, that my job as a manager and leader of a group of people was to remove as many stressors as I could from individuals and their environment to free them up to be their best selves.  That involved moving people around in job responsibilities or physical location, making capital purchases, planning Fun Activities and a whole lot of listening to people vent and complain.  It didn’t take too long for me to realize that those initiatives had limited utility or staying power.  I also noticed that different people reacted to similar stressors in different ways.  It finally dawned on me that the issue was more around the coping skills of different people rather than, necessarily, something about the environment that I could change.

I began spending time with people individually to talk about their coping skills.  Some of those conversations went better than others.  First, I had to get that person to accept that their discontent was at least partially connected to their low coping energy reserves as opposed to something that I had to fix in others or the environment.  I often never got past that point.  If I actually could convince someone that there were things they could do to improve how they dealt with their stressors, the next step was to discuss what they controlled and what they didn’t.  If, say, someone was stressed because workload was very high and/or they had customers calling and bugging them constantly about a project, we could work on project and time management skills, including strategies for how and when to talk with customers.  If they were willing to take responsibility for what they could control, I could supplement that with shifting around some work or dealing with some high maintenance customers myself.  What I often found, though, is that once they started taking control of what they COULD control then the rest started to fall into place without me having to take much action at all.  The top of the mountain looks really high when you just stand at the bottom looking up.  However, once you start putting one foot in front of the other, the top starts to get closer and closer.  The progress, however slight, keeps you moving.

Applying those lessons to my world today, what do I control?  Well, I can’t control the spread of the virus in total, but I can at least not contribute to the problem.  I can assume that I am an asymptomatic spreader and not go around without a mask.  I can assume that everyone I see is also an asymptomatic spreader and keep my distance—especially if they are not wearing a mask.  I’m not talking about sliding into paranoia and being scared of everyone I see.  I’m talking about being pragmatic and recognizing what I control.  When I see others circulating more and enjoying more “normal” activities that I choose not to take part in, I remind myself that I am making an active choice.  I can’t control their choices.  Maybe I am a little jealous because I’m tired of staying home and isolated, but I have made an active choice.  Owning that gives me power.

I can’t keep every business afloat or feed every hungry person, but I can do something.  I can give to food pantries.  I can get takeout from restaurants.  I can leave a basket of snacks out for the delivery people that make near daily stops at our door.  One thing I really enjoy?  Buying from small businesses highlighted on local and national news.  I swear by Carpe antiperspirant and my Our Place skillet.  Yes, I know there is more I could do, but when I get anxious I remember what I HAVE done.  That also gives me power.

I can’t control the politics but I can vote.  I can’t make the nightly, daily, minute-ly news better, but I can limit how much I watch and can take actions like those noted above.  I can’t make the Eagles win a dang football game but I can….well, I guess I can’t do anything about that. 

I can’t solve everyone’s isolation and loneliness, but I can connect with people I know.  That helps my need for connection as well as theirs.  I talk with my Mom every night.  Neither of us has much to share between the frequency of our connection and our locked-in lives, but hearing your Mom’s voice every day does wonders for your blood pressure.  I Zoom with my family every weekend and my college friends every couple of weeks.  These are rarely deep, life-changing discussions.  But they sure are life affirming.

And I cook.  I take my time.  I chop everything up and put the ingredients in little bowls like I’m on a cooking show.  I’m on my feet instead of on the couch and my full attention is on how soft the onions are getting.  At the end, I have a (hopefully) delicious meal.  And I made it.  That gives me power, too.

My coping mechanisms aren’t perfect.  I have my days when I either don’t feel like I CAN control anything or just don’t WANT to.  That’s when I curl up in a ball and have Trish make me tea.  Soon enough, I take one little step.  I don’t allow myself to get stuck.  I take control of something and feel a little better.  Then I take another action.  And another.  And then the top of the mountain doesn’t seem quite so far off.  I’m still trying to translate that into consistently better sleep.  I’m not there yet, but I’m making progress.

So, own your need to rebuild your coping energy reserves and that YOU are the one responsible for doing so.  Take a deep breath.  Find perspective.  Remember that you have the privilege of being able to turn it all off for a bit when so many others don’t.  Focus on those little things that you can control; those little actions that you can take.  Know that you won’t be perfectly strong all the time.  But you can be strong enough to get through today and try again tomorrow.

We are in the midst of a multi-essay series probing the general subject of “personal empowerment” and its surrounding limitations.  I began several essays ago with a piece on Patience, triggered by trying to understand my inability to get a decent night’s sleep.  That led to an essay on Coping Energy, which I planned to follow with a discussion around understanding what you really control and dealing with those limits.  If you understand what you control, you can use that knowledge to build your coping energy reserves, hopefully resulting in a good night’s sleep—our overall goal.  However, after much Muddling and Life Observing over the last couple of weeks, I determined that I must first spend some time talking about Perspective.

This essay is entitled Perspective Part I because there are two very different discussions I want to have around this topic.  Perspective impacts how you react to, judge and then respond to a situation.  Experience changes perspective, as does an understanding of history.  This is part of why, as you get older, you often don’t get rattled as much.  Your life experience of seeing how situations play out and/or the impact of decisions gives you insight to better roll with what life brings your way.  I will probe that some other time with respect to commonplace work or life issues.  Today I want to spend time on a subset of the “perspective” discussion, more focused on what we’re going through now and specifically as it relates to improving your coping energy reserves.

I started writing this piece on the morning after Thanksgiving.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute to work on the essay for this week, right?  But while I’ve actually been writing and rewriting this essay in my head for almost two weeks, I’ve been struggling with how to address this topic.  I added a paragraph on Perspective in the essay on Coping Energy because the two are so closely connected.  Since then, I’ve been intensely aware of how important it is to actively court your sense of perspective especially during trying times. 

I broach this topic because most people right now are emotionally exhausted, particularly those with a strongly developed sense of empathy.  We watch the COVID map and have seen the virus spread almost unchecked throughout the heartland of this country.  I’m watching the red and purple colors of high infection rates creep closer and closer to where I live and where those I love live.  We see the suffering on the news—the exhausted hospital workers, begging people to stay home and stop spreading the virus; the restaurant and small business owners close to going bankrupt who, in turn, are begging people to come out and spend some money with them; the long food lines; the homelessness; the personal bankruptcies.  Our impotent congress doesn’t help these feelings of anxiety.  Strongly empathic folks internalize all of this despair.  It’s easy to feel hopeless and get depressed, even when trying to help others less fortunate than you are.  No matter what you do, it can never be enough.  No wonder you just want to give up at times.  Will a broader sense of perspective actually help or is it just patronizing to even bring it up?

Let’s start by remembering that we are seeing a lot of suffering at this time thanks to the news media.  The reality is that suffering is not new, nor will it go away when the pandemic does.  We are just seeing it more often and more emphatically detailed.  This is a hard truth.  Those of you involved in your community know this for fact.  It is true that we will never fully alleviate need and suffering, although that as a goal is worthy of being held close.  What matters is what you as an individual can do.  You cannot make it all go away.  But you can do something.  This is where the “what do I control” discussion becomes important and why we will tackle that next time.   Also, remember that this pandemic will end.  I know this all seems endless and while we’re going through it everything seems chaotic and unpredictable.  But history shows that this will end and with promising vaccines progressing toward approval we can envision when that might happen.  Life will return to a new normal.  That new normal might approximate “old normal” for some; it will be a totally new normal for many.  But this time period will end, we will pick ourselves up and we will move on.  It will be easier for some than for others and there will be lingering, even lasting, effects.  But we will move forward.

With this perspective in mind, knowing that we are being bombarded by heartbreaking news but that we are still moving forward toward the end of this pandemic, what is it that you can actually DO? I implore you to first take care of yourself.  That is the primary rule of caretaking—you are no help to anyone else if you do not take care of yourself.  “Put your own oxygen mask on before assisting others.”  Ignore what’s going on outside of you for just a second and ask, “Am I ok?”  Are you eating well and exercising; maybe some meditation; trying to get enough sleep; getting a good belly laugh every day?  Part of taking care of yourself is helping others, of course.  Anyone who volunteers knows that.  But you can’t take care of others to the detriment of yourself. 

Now open up that window a little bit and ask, “Are those I love ok?”  They need you but they don’t need you (necessarily) to be a superhero.  They just need you to be you and to be in their lives.  I can’t say this too many times:  YOU ARE ENOUGH.  You, just you, just your beautiful self, just your beautiful flawed self, IS ENOUGH.  And that “you” is needed by those you love.  You don’t need to “do” anything special.  Just be there for and with them, as they are there for and with you—even if it is over the phone or Zoom.  I know you want to do more.  I know you are exhausted and tempted to just tune it all out.  Remember that it is enough to just be present with those you love. You can help those in need once you, yourself, are solid. 

Take some time and get grounded in all of that.  Then you can take that deep breath and wrestle with understanding what it is that you truly control and what to do with that information.  That’s how you’ll build your coping reserves, and we’ll get to that next time.

Last time, we began a new multi-essay series on…. well, I’m not sure what the over-arcing topic of this series is, yet.  We are still trying to figure that out.  I began by talking about the problem of my on-going sleep issues which led to a discussion about my lack of patience.  Clearly, I hit a nerve with that discussion, considering all the feedback I got on sleep or the lack thereof!  I appreciate all the suggestions and insights.  While the use of my sleep issues was mostly a rhetorical device to lead into these essays, the problem is real and I’m open to all ideas.  Trish is no help.  She can drink five double expressos while playing games on her iPad right up until the time she turns out her light and still be asleep in 30 seconds.  It is the Skill of Her People.

As I ruminate on my Patience Triggers in the wee hours of the morning, it is clear to me that I have dangerously low reserves of Coping Energy these days and that contributes to my angst.  I am also certain that I am not alone in having this problem.  The ongoing stressors of the pandemic, civil unrest and the divisive election has drained our reserves of coping energy from the moment we awake.  There is not much left over to deal with daily stressors like work, family and people who don’t use their turn signals.

What is Coping Energy?  Coping Energy is that part of your energy reserves that allows you to maintain perspective during times of stress.  You have a finite level of this energy at any given time and during moments of high stress and anxiety (cough, 2020, cough) you burn through that reserve quickly and are left with a hair trigger of impatience with everyone and everything.  So, if I am ever going to be able to sleep soundly again, I need to understand what is draining my Coping Energy reserves and how to refill them.

Now, as with many of the topics I cover in a 1200-1500 word essay, I am well aware that entire careers (or at least PhD theses) have been built around understanding Coping Energy.  I am going to share with you, here, only my own observations, success and failures which I hope give you some insight into tackling the challenge of maintaining your own coping energy reserves.  My first observation is that, annoyingly, we usually build coping energy reserves not by any conscious act to improve them but by simply going through stressful times.  Much as stretching a tight muscle allows you to move that muscle more easily, when you come out the other end of a stressful situation, surviving the experience alone has taught you how to better cope.  “That which does not kill you makes you stronger,” indeed.  It makes you stronger by stretching your coping energy reserves.

Looking back over my own experiences, the time period from 1997-2006 probably drove the biggest increase in my coping energy reserves.  Over that decade, I first moved as a single woman to Mexico to take on an International assignment.  I had no clue the difficulties I would have to navigate, from the basics of learning to live in another country (oh, and speak a different language) to the feeling of being professionally isolated and having to figure out many work issues mostly on my own.  Then I repatriated to a job that was, admittedly, too big for me at the time, with all my friends suddenly working for me.  And then 9/11 happened and the bottom fell out of the business.  Over that decade, it was one body blow after another, day after day after day.  I was learning to be a manager and leader with precious little coaching in a world that was incredibly uncertain.  The only way to survive was to create coping energy reserves out of nothing.  By the time that decade was over, not much could rattle me.  I could almost always say to myself, “You’ve been through worse.”

Another critical piece related to this topic, as noted above, is Perspective.  I’ve been meaning to write more on this subject, and will, but let me leave a few thoughts here more directly connected to this issue of Coping Energy.  I know better than to dismiss someone’s pain just because I may think it is trivial in the grand scheme of things.  Your pain is your pain and is related to the perspective that you’ve gained from your own experiences.  When you are six and you’ve lost your favorite stuffed toy, that is a horrible pain.  When you are a teenager and you’ve experienced your first real breakup, that is a horrible pain (Donny Osmond and “Puppy Love” be damned).  When you look back on your young self, you realize now that you had a whole lot worse pain coming.  But at that time, with the perspective on life you had then, that stuff HURT.  This difference between your young self and your older self is the creation of reserves of coping energy hard won from difficult experiences.

An interesting side commentary, here, is the role that your own coping energy reserves play in developing a sense of empathy for others.  When you have navigated tough times, two things happen.  First, you can easily catch yourself having limited sympathy for those who totally stress over things that you feel should be easily handled (see above).  Second, you develop enormous respect for those who have navigated situations even more difficult that your own.  As a manager of large groups of people, I first felt that my job was to take away stressors from those who worked for me, clearing the way for them to be more productive.  After a while, I realized I was not doing them any favors.  I could look around the department and see people in similar roles or situations who handled the stress of their daily lives very differently.  I began to focus more on helping those who handled the stress less effectively build their coping energy reserves.  I was not always successful.  First, those people had to embrace that they did not cope well and accept the need to take steps to improve those skills.  Taking personal accountability is a courageous move and many prefer to wallow in victimhood.  (This is such a hot button for me, as you know by now, that I am not even going to link back that essay again!  You can find it yourself if you are interested.)

So, Master, you must now follow your own lessons.  How did you coach people before in how to increase their coping energy reserves?  Those lessons always started with a discussion around “what do you really control?”  And that is where I must start right now.  I’m beginning to see where this essay series is headed.  It’s around personal empowerment and the limitations on that, isn’t it?  OK, we’ll pick up next time discussing this question of “what do you control” and the ever-important follow up question of “how do I accept and/or change that?”

Hold on tight, folks, because it appears we are about to embark upon another multi-essay arc of indeterminate length.  The last arc, inspired by my recent weight loss journey and begun over the weekly chore of chopping carrots, was on the topic of creating sustainable personal change and growth. That topic began with a discussion on Authenticity.  This arc is inspired by my apparent inability to get a good night’s sleep.  These thoughts were begun in my journal, either late one night or early one morning or both, trying to understand why I can’t seem to fall asleep or stay asleep.  As of now, I’m not sure what the overriding theme or goal will be of this essay series.  I just know that there is something I need to figure out and I’m bringing you along for the ride.

Being the Scientist and Problem Solver that I am, I will apply the Scientific Method to figure all this out and start sleeping like a champ again!  Let’s see.  First step is to make sure I’ve identified the right problem: I can’t consistently fall asleep and stay asleep without the aid of chemistry.  Is that the problem or a symptom?  Let us now do a Root Cause Analysis to figure that out.  (Isn’t being a Scientist FUN?!)  WHY can’t I sleep well?  It could be that I’m a Woman of a Certain Age—there could be physiological reasons.  It could be that I’m retired and am not spending my days and nights totally stressed and frustrated with work which tended to make me fall into bed exhausted every night.  It could be that our cat, Bridget, likes to jump on the bed as I’m trying to fall asleep, take a mouthful of blanket and then start walking awkwardly back and forth over me in what we’ve taken to calling The Dance of Her People.  It could be that 2020 has just been a s@*t storm mash up of a global pandemic, civil unrest and an exasperating political climate that has me wound tighter than a two-dollar watch.  I’m guessing there are contributions from all those factors.  Now, how do I fix it?

I will start with an observation:  I have zero patience these days.  It is stunning to me how quickly I snap.  I snap at Trish for interrupting me when I’m trying to concentrate on something important, like reading the daily Comics.  I snap at cars on the road for doing the same sorts of things that they are probably yelling at me about.  I snap at the TV for not having something on that I want to watch.  And I snap at poor little Bridget who just wants some attention and really wasn’t biting me that hard.  I just snap.  I go from perfectly fine to a monster in an instant.  I have a level of crankiness just below the surface that I feel constantly.  And it keeps me from sleeping well.

I have also been thinking about Patience after last week’s webinar on “The 10 Things They Never Teach You in Leadership Training.”  (Insert shameless plug to view this webinar for free here.)  One of the learnings I shared is that, when you are a leader (be it in a business setting, community setting or even family setting) it is critical that you show a consistent countenance to the people in your organization/family. You may be going through a roller coaster of emotions daily, but you don’t want to take others along with you unless there is something they can do about it.  If your business is tanking and you need extra effort or your family is going through a crisis that requires all hands on deck, by all means share the information and the emotion.  But if what you really need is for people to focus on doing their jobs or your family to just live their lives because that is what they can control and they can’t really help with your issues then you must keep a steady presence.  They look to you, as the leader, for cues on how they should be feeling.  If you are calm and confident, they will be, too.  You need to be able to think before you react or speak; listen and understand before you respond; take in the world around you calmly, if critically, and think things through before you next act.  I don’t want those around me to be so affected by my ever-changing moods.  It’s not healthy for those relationships or for me.  But being able to do that takes, among other things, Patience. 

Patience, I’ve determined, is a choice in behavior, not an immutable characteristic.  And that kind of sucks.  If something is a choice, then I must own the decision that I make and the outcome.  It is much easier to play the victim, but we’ve discussed before what a bad idea that is.  OK, fine.  I own it.  I know how important it is, for my own sanity and those around me, to take in information and process it clearly and calmly.  I want to be more patient, but I seem to have limited capability to achieve that steadiness these days.  And clearly it is related to my sleep issues because I lie in bed and ruminate over the day’s Crankiness Triggers until I either start listening to a podcast, get up and start reading, or take a sleep aid to knock me out.  Anything to stop my brain.

We are now about 900 words into this essay and so far, I have done a lousy job trying to frame a discussion.  I’ve done a lot of whining and made a sorry attempt to define a Problem to Solve but if you are still reading this essay, it is probably to see if I have any insight on how to improve my Patience Quotient.  This is where I realize we have a lot more work to do and why this discussion is going to spill into a few more essays.  I am well aware that things that keep my brain churning at midnight and later suddenly seem less patience-sapping in the morning, even if I didn’t get a full night’s sleep.  And that means that my ability to be patient, to maintain perspective, is related to my reservoir of coping energy.  Since exhibiting Patience is an active process, it takes energy.  If my level of coping energy is low, my patience is strained.  So, how do I effectively refill that reservoir when there is a big old drain from it all day long?  That is what we will take up next time.

We’ve made it!  For the past several essays we’ve been on a journey discussing personal growth.  Making change stick is a very difficult and long process, requiring real commitment.  But before we could tackle the subject of Commitment, we had to first discuss Authenticity, Vulnerability and Priorities.  Your own commitment to this journey (or is it persistence?) has finally paid off!  At least, I hope it will.  I was talking with Trish the other day about my writing process.  Sometimes, I write an essay almost totally in my head and it comes out on paper with very little effort or editing.  Sometimes I have a bullet list of points I want to make or stories I want to tell and I work off of that outline when I sit down to type.  And sometimes, like with this topic, I have the topic alone when I sit down and have no idea what might come out.  I’m as interested as you are to see how I’ll tackle this subject!  To be honest, these often become my favorite essays because I really learn something about myself or find new ways of articulating a concept that brings me clarity.  And these days, clarity on anything is a good thing.

I’ve been using the example of my recent weight loss journey to illustrate the difficulties in creating real change within yourself.  It’s an example that most people can connect with and one that has been on my mind constantly since I started the journey (with intention) on New Year’s Day of this year.  In fact, that is part of the commitment process: keeping the topic front and center.  Our family and friends can certainly attest to our keeping this topic front and center!  I am acutely aware of how often something regarding weight loss and food works its way into most conversations we have.  Let me take this opportunity to apologize, then, for talking your ears off about this (since family and friends make up the bulk of my very patient readership).

In the previous essays in this series, we discussed that you can’t create lasting change until you get to real commitment.  You can’t get to real commitment until you honestly assess your priorities and ensure that they are aligned with your commitment.  You also cannot honestly assess and then change your priorities until you can be honest with yourself about what your priorities truly are, as shown by your actions.  Once all that is lined up, you need to take a few minutes to differentiate in your mind “will power” vs. “commitment”.  I touched on this earlier, but it deserves a bit more air time.  Will Power is involved when you choose not to have a third piece of pizza on Friday night.  Commitment is involved when you choose not to have pizza every Friday night, but to make it an occasional treat.  Will Power is involved when you choose to not honk and flip a finger at the idiot who just cut you off.  Commitment is involved when you choose to almost always recognize that while that person may indeed just be an idiot, they also may have honestly not seen you or are preoccupied by a serious issue in their family or just need a little grace—so you take a breath and ease off the gas.  Will Power is staying at work late to finish a project that got away from you.  Commitment is making a more regular effort at planning so that it becomes rare for that to happen.  In short, Will Power is short term effort that gets you a prize but has a defined time limit.  Will Power is holding your breath.  Commitment is an ongoing effort, made consciously such that the effort becomes habit, to create the prize of permanent change.  The process of Commitment will certainly require Will Power now and then.  Reliance on Will Power without an eye on Commitment will just burn you out.  Unfortunately, our American culture does not help us here.  We reward Heroic Effort that Solves a Big Problem (Will Power) instead of Steady Excellence that Keeps Big Problems from Happening to Begin With (Commitment).

So let’s go back to weight loss.  Many people choose some sort of restriction diet to lose weight.  If they have sufficient will power, the weight will come off.  But without the recognition of, and changing of, whatever the habits were that put the weight on, we all know what will happen: once you relax the requirement for will power and allow the return to previous habits, the weight comes back.  Now that I have reached my goal weight, my journey is not over.  It will never be over.  And that’s because the goal was not really weight loss.  The goal was to change my relationship with food so that I stay at a healthy weight.  Weight loss was part of the benefits of the initial stages of the journey.  I smile when people congratulate me on reaching my goal weight and then say, “Now you just need to keep it off!”  They say this as if the hard part was the weight loss.  The hard part is just starting:   making sure these new habits that led to the weight loss actually stick.  The hard part is the commitment, but the hard work was around embracing reordered priorities.  Of course, this whole process is applicable well beyond weight loss.  Whether you are examining your job or a relationship or how you handle money or how you keep your house, the process to create lasting change is the same.  Keep being honest with yourself; keep assessing your actions against your priorities; continually recommit to those priorities, and the commitment to lasting change will be there. 

I started this essay series just after I reached my weight loss goal.  As of this writing, I have maintained that goal weight for six weeks (even lost a couple more pounds) and earned my Lifetime Membership in Weight Watchers.  Yes, that’s awesome and I’m very proud of myself (and of Trish, since we are on this journey together) but my sense is that now the real work begins.  What gives me hope is that I don’t feel deprived, that I really enjoy how we eat now.  We have “treat nights” when we ignore the points and just enjoy “less nutrient dense” foods because they taste good, but now I really want those point excursions to be worth it!  That food had better taste good!  And, honestly, my body craves the more nutrient dense diet the next day.  But I also know how easy it is to slip into unhealthy habits because Big Food has created a really unhealthy ecosystem all around us.  It actually pisses me off that I had to become a person of leisure and means to create a healthy lifestyle and that it takes incredible conscious effort to maintain it.  Everything from highly processed foods in the grocery stores and overly engineered produce and meats designed for shelf life and low cost instead of nutrition, to the size of and what’s in fast food and restaurant meals have normalized a diet that is killing us.  So, I’ve got one more essay in me on this whole topic:  the danger of accepting normalization of “bad things” and the need to fight back on that acceptance!  Stay tuned for a rant next time!

Welcome back, Intrepid Reader!  If you’ve been following along recently you know that we are in the midst of a multi-essay arc (of still indeterminate length) around personal growth—principally around making a change that will actually stick.  (If you need to catch up, read the first essay on Authenticity and second on Vulnerability.)  These musings began over the repetitive activity of chopping vegetables.  Some people think in the shower or on a “run”.  I think when chopping vegetables, although not deeply enough to cut off fingers.  It’s a balance.  The thinking began as I ruminated over my effort the last 8 months or so to lose weight.  I am successful this time (present tense purposeful, Trish, so do not change it) and was thinking through why.

The process of creating change that truly sticks is not an easy one, or we’d all be perfect creatures.  It requires true commitment based on honest priorities which in turn requires being truly authentic and vulnerable with yourself.  We’ve tackled Authenticity and Vulnerability.  It’s now time to discuss Priorities.

I will begin with a pet peeve.  If someone ever says to you, “I really wish I could [go somewhere, do something, donate to your cause], but I just don’t have enough [time, energy, money],” they are lying to you or themselves or both.  What they are really saying is, “I don’t place a high enough priority on that.”  People always always always ALWAYS have enough time/energy/money for those things they place at a high enough priority.  (OK, yes, there are always extreme situations.  I’m talking about normal everyday life.)  I had a friend who would constantly poke me about how I “threw my money around” going out to eat.  My love for Chinese food was a particular trigger for this person, for some reason.  I would go out to eat maybe once or twice a week with friends.  Let’s say I’d spend $50-75 a week going out.  This same person who loved to dig at me about throwing my money around at restaurants would go through at least a carton a week of cigarettes.  Similar expenditure, according to my research partner Google.  It wasn’t the money.  It was the relative priority she placed on going out to eat.  I placed a WAY higher priority on going out to eat than on buying cigarettes.  For her, going out to eat was a waste of money.  At least while there were cigarettes to be bought.  Regardless, we both had enough money to do what we wanted.  We just had different priorities.  I shouldn’t have been judged on my choice to spend money on restaurants any more than I should have judged her for spending money on smoking.  Where I draw the line is when people say that something is important to them, but their actions make it clear that whatever that something is, it’s not a high priority.  People don’t like to be confronted about where their priorities actually ARE versus where they would like to THINK they are.  And that goes for discussions with yourself as well.  In fact, we are probably most disingenuous with ourselves.

Since your actions tell you and everyone else around you what your priorities truly are, if you are not happy with your actions then you must change your priorities.  Do you understand, now, why we had to first dive into authenticity and vulnerability?  Being able to be honest with yourself about what your priorities truly are is a pre-requisite to being able to change them.  And stop beating yourself up!  Often, people label themselves as “bad” or “worthless” or even “irredeemable” because of some action they took based on screwed up priorities.  You are not fundamentally a bad person because you chose poor actions based on priorities that you didn’t realize you’d embraced.  Focus on the actions and priorities, not the fundamental human being.  (“I’m here to GET IT right, not to BE right.”  Remember who said that?) 

So let’s look at sustainable weight loss as an example.  I wanted to lose weight.  As I noted previously, my weight had been creeping up a pound or two a year for a couple of decades.  Losing weight is not rocket science: you simply need to consume fewer calories that your body burns for energy.  The devil is in the details of consumption.  We need food to survive, but food consumption is wrapped up in so many other things.  Food can be comfort.  Food can be a stress management tool.  Food can be something you simply enjoy a lot.  Food can be a boredom reliever.  And food can be deceptively caloric.  For me to lose weight, I had to understand why I was putting it on in the first place.  What were my priorities around food and eating that led to the weight gain?  What about my priorities needed to change?

My “why” around weight loss was simple.  Yes, I wanted to look slimmer and fitter but my real concern was that I was putting on a lot of belly fat.  I KNOW how unhealthy belly fat is.  I also have my Dad’s blood chemistry, which has had me taking statins for more than a decade already.  And my Dad had a triple bypass at just about my age now, barely avoiding a heart attack that would have killed him.  I was scared, but I was still gaining weight.  When I was really honest with myself, the issue was that I enjoyed food and simply didn’t want to put in the work.  I was scared of the medical repercussions, but apparently not enough to prioritize weight loss over laziness and not wanting to deprive myself.  This realization did not mean I was a bad person!  It meant my priorities were off.

I knew I ate a lot of healthy things, but I ate A LOT.  I enjoy food and portion control was a real issue.  And I snacked a lot.  If food was in front of me, I ate it.  I swear must have had a food insecurity issue in a previous life!  For me to lose weight, I needed to force myself to track what I put into my mouth—every morsel.  Some of my favorite foods needed to become occasional treats and not regular consumption.  And I needed better data to know where those hidden calories were.  I needed to fundamentally change the way I ate and change it for good.  That sounded like a lot of work and I didn’t want to do it.

Admitting that to myself was really hard.  At first, it was easier to just accept that “it is what it is”.  It took the better part of a year to go from “I understand what’s keeping me from losing weight” to actually taking action.  The reason for that is that taking action required commitment.  I understood what my priorities were and how they needed to change.  I’ve used the example of weight loss, which is a common frustration/goal, but this thought process can be applied to anything about your life that you are not happy with.  Begin, of course, with making sure you focus on things that you can control, but each of us controls a whole lot more than we think (see: Personal Accountability).  If you’re not happy in your job/relationship/home/whatever, what is keeping you from making a change?  If you truly do want a change (meaning that what you would have to give up to make the change happen is worth it), what about your priorities is keeping you from moving forward to commitment?  Getting to commitment is what we’ll tackle next time.

Last time, we began a multi-essay arc inspired by my recent weight loss.  I was not actually digging for kudos by using my weight loss journey as the example to frame this discussion, but thanks for the encouragement!  (Blush)  The discussion is really about how to create lasting change, which involves real commitment driven by clear priorities, which in turn begins with being truly authentic with yourself and others.  Last time we discussed Authenticity and I said that this time I’d start in on Priorities.  I lied.  As I read your feedback and thought more about this whole arc over the last week, I realized that there is one more topic closely tied to Authenticity that we must discuss and that is Vulnerability.

Even the word “vulnerability” can make people cringe.  The words “vulnerable” and “vulnerability” have a connotation of “weakness”.  It brings to mind some scene in a drippy drama where the protagonist, having just experienced some loss or break up or serious setback, weepily begs a love interest or friend through averted eyes, “Don’t hurt me!  I’m so vulnerable right now!”  Even the online dictionary definition of “vulnerability” reads “the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally”. 

I don’t subscribe to that definition, though, in this context.  To me, allowing yourself to be vulnerable is one of the singular most courageous acts a person can undertake.  Being vulnerable is making a decision, taking an action or just committing to who you are even though that choice might leave you exposed to being hurt, taken advantage of or just embarrassed—but doing it anyway because the benefits of doing so are worth the risk of the downside.  None other than my spirit animal, Brene Brown, says, “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”  (I highly encourage you to invest 20 minutes and watch her TED talk on Vulnerability.  It is one of their most popular ever, will help you understand what I stumble through in the rest of this essay, and I hope will turn you on to one of our greatest contemporary thinkers.)

It’s counter intuitive to think that embracing vulnerability can make you a stronger person and leader.  How else, though, can you truly improve upon your already wonderful self if you are not willing to recognize and embrace those traits of yours that need changing?  Or if not truly “changed”—since in many ways we are who we are—then balanced with other traits?  But first you have to “see” those traits.  A real and effective leader does not believe she has all the right answers nor knows more than anyone else in the room about everything.  NO ONE has all the right answers or knows more than anyone else in the room about everything!  It is not a weakness to say, “I don’t know much about (fill in the blank), but XXX does and I want her in on this discussion.”  Traditionally, leaders in the workplace would have a very small group of people with whom they could admit “I don’t know”—the people with whom they could be vulnerable.  However, keeping that admission too close to the vest means that the circle of knowledge they relied upon was too small (and probably inbred).  That, my friends, is what has led to the downfall of many a large corporation and not a few small countries.  (I’m not saying get up in front of everyone and say, “I don’t know nuthin’!” with a smile.  Jeez, people, there is something in between!  I’m saying seek counsel more broadly than just your two or three best buds and when you don’t know, SAY you don’t know and that you’ll find an answer.  Don’t make stuff up.)

Certainly vulnerability and authenticity are pre-requisites to healthy human relationships of all kinds.  Think about relationships with pets.  Most of us have had a cat and/or a dog.  Those animals are so special to us because their love is unconditional.  They just want us to love them and they love us without judgement.  OK, so maybe cats judge, but that judgement is OUT OF love.  And when a cat chooses to sit in your lap it is the highest compliment!  Which is why people will not move for hours if a cat is sleeping on them.  Anyway, the unconditional non-judgmental love we get from our pets allows us to be fully authentic and vulnerable with them.  We don’t put on airs, pretending to not be upset or proud of ourselves or bored or whatever we are feeling.  They get the true US.  We tell them our deepest darkest secrets and most important thoughts because they won’t judge us or answer back or argue.  They just listen.  And love us.  This is why we are so unbelievably broken up when they die.  Not because they hurt us or abandon us or even betray us, but because we love them so purely.

If only we could be like that with PEOPLE!  But that’s hard because people DO judge and they DO talk back and argue.  And they sometimes leave.  And say horrible things on their way out the door.  So we save that vulnerability for our pets.  Avoidance of pain is probably the principle reason behind lack of vulnerability—hence the courage involved in being vulnerable.  I could go on and on about the importance of vulnerability and authenticity in your relationships with other people, both at work and more broadly, but what I want to focus on is that openness turned toward yourself.

Vulnerability is a pre-requisite to authenticity—only by allowing yourself to feel hurt and fear and anxiety can you accept those difficult things about yourself and only then can you start to change them.  So what keeps us from being honest with ourselves?  Maybe we can be vulnerable with pets because they just keep looking at us with love, no matter what we say, yet when we try to be honest with ourselves our brains talk back.  We judge ourselves.  We hold ourselves to a level of perfection or achievement or constancy that we would NEVER hold anyone else to (except maybe politicians of the opposing party).  I will admit that I have a really hard time being as honest in my journal as I know I should be because it’s all written down and someone may read it someday.  But isn’t that the point, Sherri?  Your flawed self is still pretty awesome.  Not perfect.  Not totally constant.  Certainly not lacking in contradiction.  But awesome nonetheless.

So back to the example of my weight loss journey over the past several months.  To be able to make the commitment that I needed to create a permanent change in my relationship with food, I had to begin with an honest look at the reasons why I had the relationship with food that I DID.  (No, I’m not going to get into that here!)  Understanding and accepting why I had gotten to the point that I had gotten to was that first critical step toward change.  It’s that way with any change, be it weight loss, a job change, a relationship change, any change of habit.  Weight Watchers starts the process by having you define your “Why?”  WHY do you want to lose weight?  Once you have the true “why” you can move on to looking at your priorities and what is keeping you from supporting that “why”.  I promise we’ll pick up there next time!