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!

We are about to embark upon a multi-essay arc.  This arc will explore some areas of personal growth that I’ve wanted to plumb for quite a while.  And like all good multi-essay arcs, this one begins with chopping carrots.  I went to the grocery store early this morning, as has become my custom on a Friday.  Not too many folk are there before 8 am and stocking is usually good.  I got home, put the groceries away and decided to go ahead and cut up the carrots and celery.  I am, afterall, a Morning Person.  (This does not mean that I am necessarily pleasant to be around in the morning, as my college friends will emphatically tell you.  Just that I get more things done in the morning than in the afternoon or evening.)

As I chopped the carrots and celery, I was thinking about Things.  The thing most on my mind this morning was a major achievement from yesterday:  I weighed in at Weight Watchers at over 30 pounds total weight loss and reached my goal weight.  This is a Big F-ing Deal, folks!  For my entire adult life, my weight has been steadily moving in one direction.  I knew what I needed to do.  Losing weight isn’t rocket science.  It is a matter of commitment.  Not willpower; commitment.  Willpower is following a bizarre restriction diet for a period of time until you lose a pre-determined amount of weight.  Once the goal is reached, you relax said WillPower and the weight comes back on.  No, true sustainable weight loss requires commitment to a permanent change.  And commitment requires making a choice around priorities.  Making a change in your priorities requires first an understanding of what your current priorities truly are, which requires some honest introspection.  And honest introspection requires you to be authentic, first with yourself and then with others.  And so we begin.

Authenticity is not an easy thing.  Being truly authentic requires seeing yourself as you are, warts and all, and embracing what you see.  Not pretending faults aren’t there.  Not hoping some less than desirable traits will just change.  Not seeing yourself as you want to be but as you are.  Only then can you change what you want to change.  I have one of those snapshot memories with a co-worker from my Air Products days.  I was in a management role by this time and navigating through my naiveté about how The System worked vs. how I thought it worked or how I thought it should work.  It was exhausting.  This coworker was also a relatively new senior manager and put forth an image of steady perfection:  never a hair out of place; dressed to the 9’s; ramrod straight posture.  I made some comment about some common failing, like having days when you just didn’t feel like coming in and dealing with the day’s bullshit or something like that.  I laughed.  She looked me right in the eye and said, “I’ve never felt that way.”  I tilted my head sideways and looked again.  This time I saw the fear in her eyes—the kind of fear that most of us had every day that showing the littlest chink in your armor would cause the lions to pounce.  I don’t think she saw that in herself, though.  It was scary to admit that vulnerability to yourself, much less others.  But without embracing it and realizing that almost everyone else carried that fear somewhere, it would eat you up.  Remember that Mandela quote, “Courage is not the lack a fear; it’s rising above it.”

Several years ago I read the autobiography of Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court Justice.  It had a huge impact on me. Not just because she overcame a very difficult childhood and young adulthood—so many accomplished people have had to overcome so much.  In fact, that is often what pushes them to such high achievement.  No, what struck me about the book was how she did not shy away from discussing all the ways she screwed up along her journey.  She made some serious mistakes along the way and STILL became incredibly accomplished!  What a revelation!  You don’t have to be perfect.  You just have to keep trying to get better.  One of Brene Brown’s favorite lines (yes, Brene AGAIN) is “I’m not here to BE right, I’m here to GET IT right.”  Sotomayor’s book spoke with an authentic voice I had never heard before and it inspired me.  When I am self-deprecating in my writing, it’s not really about injecting humor and certainly not about patting myself on the back for overcoming something difficult.  It’s about authenticity.  And hopefully encouraging others to not be afraid of finding their own true voice and embracing their whole selves—stupid mistakes, annoying traits, trials, all of it.

So, what is the journey to authenticity like and how do you get on it?  Well, I can only share my own journey.  And it is a long and painful one.  Mine required several rounds of therapy over the years made more difficult by first having to accept and embrace myself as a gay woman.  I also had to learn to accept parts of me that, while having improved over the years, are probably never going to go away.  One is a fear of being blindsided and the related paranoia that I’m doing something or not doing something or not seeing something that is going to result in my being shunned.  This came out of one of those traumatic grade school experiences that rocked me to my core.  I know that fear is still there.  But you know what else is there?  A profoundly developed sense of empathy that has served me very well, if irregularly, over the years.  See, that’s the key to authenticity.  When you embrace your whole true self, when you accept those things about you that probably won’t totally change, then you can find ways to compensate for those traits.  You can find ways to turn them into strengths; you can surround yourself in the workplace and in all aspects of life with people who have strengths that you lack; you can put voice to those traits with others AND constantly work to improve (remember: explanation is not excuse).

Back to my weight loss journey.  It’s now a week later and I’ve maintained for the first week.  Good start!  The journey began not with me listing what I had to do differently but with understanding what was keeping me from doing those things differently.  And THAT begin with authenticity—seeing myself as I am.  The next step:  identifying what my priorities truly are and what I then want them to be.  We’ll pick that up next time.

The picture that accompanies this post is of a wild morning glory flower from a vine that popped up in an outdoor pot a couple of years ago.  Trish and I both love morning glories and every year she diligently nurtures plants from seeds or we buy young plants from a nursery.  We plant them indoors, in our sun room, and the vines wind up a series of drift wood pieces and trellises.  The delicate flowers bloom for just one day each, opening with the sun and closing by dusk.  The vines bloom from midsummer until early fall when they die back.  They never seem to regrow, so we start over each year. 

We have never been able to grow these plants outside, but wild vines do of course exist.  The vine in our outside pot probably originated with a seed in bird poop, deposited by one of the hundreds of birds that come to our feeders.  We were stunned when the flowers started to appear one year.  Not just that the vine grew and flowers bloomed, but that the vine was so prolific!  One day we counted five blooms on the one small vine!  And it punched out those flowers daily for months.  And it came back the next year.  And the next.  That, my friends, is resilience.  I marvel at that vine.  How does it not just survive but thrive under such difficult conditions?  And that thought, of course, got me to thinking about resilience in general.  It’s a struggle to be resilient under normal times; it is nearly impossible to find resilience these days.

Last time I wrote about my current difficulties in letting go of petty annoyances (some not so little) when I used to be able to let things roll off of me like proverbial water off a duck’s back.  That’s all about coping energy, something I have coached about often over the years.  And coping energy is strongly tied to resilience.  “Resilience” has a couple of useful definitions.  The first reads, “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”  The second, “the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.”  The second, of course, can apply to a human as well.  Much has been written on the topic of resilience and my thinking has been formed by lots of different thinkers (ok, mostly by Brene Brown, but you knew that).  What follows, though, is not a scholarly treatment.  They are my own musings.

When I was working, I often coached people on coping energy when the stress of the work environment got to someone.  This activity picked up in frequency when we moved from Air Products to Intertek, the former a comparatively slow paced R&D environment and the latter a fast-as-lightening contract lab.  I had to do no little amount of coaching on myself as well as others!  At first, my approach was to find out what seemed to be causing the most stress on someone and then see if I could find a way to reduce that stress by removing the stressor.  It could have been a project, a lab responsibility, a customer, or even a working relationship.  After a while, I realized that approach just didn’t work.  First, the same stressors did not have the same effect on other people.  Second, once I removed one stressor, another one took its place.  It wasn’t the environment, I realized, it was something about the person.

In some cases, the person’s temperament was just not suited to the environment.  No matter what we did, it just wouldn’t work.  Those people needed to move on and find an environment in which they could be successful.  But in most cases, the issue was resilience tied to a lack of coping energy.  When I wrote last time about how I seem to have lost the capability to keep certain stressors from getting to me, I put that in the context of having had, in the past, so many high impact stressors going at once that the more minor ones were easy to deal with.  That’s not exactly the right way to put it.  The reality was that I had developed some pretty impressive levels of coping energy along with some serious resilience—and I mean that in both definitions of the word.  The question for today is: how?  How did I build that resilient nature, how did I nurture it in others, and how can I get it back today?

As I’ve noodled over this for the last week or so, and listened to Brene’s podcasts, what crystallized in my mind was something that should be painfully obvious (but instead is just painful):  resilience comes from looking within, dealing with what you find there, embracing both your weaknesses and strengths, and paradoxically allowing yourself to not be resilient from time to time.  I remember some of those days while at Intertek.  I felt like the world was just caving in around me.  As the GM, I had to be careful to not show that to anyone else except a couple of trusted co-workers.  But I certainly would go into my office, put my head in my hands, and just shake for a while. 

The key is to not get stuck there.  You should allow yourself to feel, to absorb the difficulties and even to wallow in it for a bit.  But then realize that it’s not all hopeless; that there is a way out; that there ARE things you control; that you CAN do something and make progress.  “Courage is not the absence of fear,” said Nelson Mandela, “but the triumph over it.  The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”  Similarly, resilience is not the absence of despair but the triumph over it.  Resilient people do not ignore a bad situation or act as if it’s not as bad as it truly is.  Resilience is recognizing the difficulty, being a little afraid, and plowing forward anyway, staying focused and knowing you just have to keep going.  You have it in you!  I know you do!

But you have to want resilience; you have to work for it.  Coping energy and resilience don’t just happen.  Sometimes, going through something really difficult shows you that you are stronger than you thought you were.  Sometimes experience alone teaches you the same lesson even if the situations were not dire.  Regardless, you have to do the hard work on yourself to accept who you are or who you have become and then put in the effort to change those things you don’t like so much about yourself.  And THAT comes down to Personal Accountability, one of my favorite hot buttons.  Resilient people have taken the time to do that navel gazing, understand and accept their flaws, and lean on their strengths and those around them to make things happen.  Believe me, I have learned all this stuff the hard way.

So, now each morning I look out the window and I see that wild morning glory vine punch out another flower or two and I marvel at the simple beauty and strength.  And I remember that resilience is hard won but worth the effort.  Especially these days.

As we navigate through the stages of this pandemic, I’ve noticed a recent shift in discussion on the news shows.  They are clearly showing the strain of finding new topics to discuss, but this is a good one:  As  states and municipalities slowly relax stay-at-home orders (except here), people are asking, “Which of the changes we’ve had to make through this time of shut down are actually going to stick?”  Studies on “change creation” indicate that it takes, typically, 6-8 weeks of dedicated practice of a new habit for that change to become permanent.  Those studies don’t typically talk about that “dedication” being forced upon you, but the outcome is the same.  We’ve been “shut in” long enough, now, for some of the changes we’ve made to our daily lives to become permanent—if we choose.  Noodling on this concept has gotten me thinking a lot about the process of change.  (Needed disclaimer:  as with many of the concepts I write about, this topic could be a few PhD theses, none of which will be mine.  Much has been written on the topics of change management and change creation.  I am presenting only my own poorly researched observations.)

There are a lot of common sayings regarding change:  “Necessity is the mother of invention” (attributed to Proverbs); “The only thing constant in life is change” (attributed to Heraclitus); and “You go first” (OK, that one is mine).  Change is around us all the time, yet it is human nature to resist change—even change that would be considered in our best interest.  It’s not so much that we think that what we have is good enough or preferable.  It’s just what we know and whatever this “change” is, it’s something we don’t know.  That brings to mind another saying: “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t” (another Proverb).  A great example of that is the computer I am typing on right now.  This Lenovo laptop is probably 5-6 years old.  In “computer years” that’s about 90.  It’s heavy.  It’s wonky.  The battery power sucks.  It can take forever to boot up.  Occasionally, a demon takes the thing over and I have to remove the battery to kill it. Now, I have enough money to buy a new laptop.   I am no technophobe; it’s not a big deal to me to switch over to a new system.  Why don’t I do it?  Well, there’s my well documented tendency to procrastinate.  There’s the fact that Trish keeps telling me I should get a new computer, which creates immediate resistance.  More than anything, though, I don’t do it because while there are things about this laptop that bug me, they don’t bug me enough that I feel the unknowns associated with getting a new computer are worth the aggravation and risk.  I know it will be better “on the other side”.  I just don’t want to go through the tangle of the change.

Let’s take a bigger, more critical issue for this nation: healthcare.  (Yes, I am going there.)  It is well documented that we spend more per capita on healthcare for worse outcomes than any other developed nation.  We are spectacular at expensive, heroic emergency care yet horrible at preventive care.  Our system of hundreds of different healthcare providers has led to an explosion of administrative costs relative to patient-facing costs.  And, of course, there are millions of Americans (27.5 million in 2018, about 8.5% of the population) without any health insurance at all.  Of those who have it, about 2/3 have private insurance, either through their employer or the commercial market and the other third are on programs like Medicare and Medicaid.  The one thing in common?  Most everyone complains about whatever healthcare system they have.  They complain about out-of-pocket costs.  They complain about availability.  They complain about the bureaucracy and red tape to get things done.  You’d think people would be clambering for some sort of change that would make healthcare simpler, less expensive, and more effective.  (DISCLAIMER: I am not endorsing any particular solution this problem.  I have my opinions, but I will keep them to myself.)  There are people truly suffering out there!  “Medical bankruptcy” is a real thing, for one, and lack of access to good care literally kills.  Why aren’t more people agitating for change?  Because for the vast majority of people, the system they have is good enough based on what they expect from it.  “The Devil You Know.”  When will change happen?  One way is when a critical mass of people are so horrifically underserved by the current system that only change is acceptable.  That’s what’s known as a “revolution”.  And it’s quite rare (and often bloody) for change to happen via revolution.  The other way is for leaders to show courage and compassion and press for change in the face of resistance.  Yes, it has happened.

During my work years I took many a course on “change management”.  I know all about the 20/30/50 rule: whenever you are trying to drive change, 20% of the people will be with you from the beginning; 30% will never accept the change fully; 50% are watching you and waiting for you to convince them to join the 20% or the 30%.  (Our natural tendency is to focus attention on the vocal negative 30% instead of the silent, convince-able 50%.)   There is another piece to change “creation”, though, that I’ve never heard discussed in these corporate settings—probably because it would make people too uncomfortable.  I have found that to move people to a particular change, you have to first propose something so out there and so unfathomable that the change you really want sounds reasonable in comparison.  Think about how merchants often present pricing on their products:  “You’ve seen cookware sets like this sell for $100, $200, or even $300!  But we will send you our outstanding set for the low, low price of only $40 (plus shipping and handling)!”  As you were watching the commercial, you may have been thinking “I’d pay $20 for that.”  If they had thrown out that $40 price tag, you’d think “no way!”  But by setting out that multi-$100 comparison, the $40 looks like a bargain.  We, um, used to do a version of this in setting customers’ price expectations for new products.  We never intended for them to pay the top price.  But the “middle” price, our real target, would have looked too expensive without it.

Creating organizational and cultural change is frankly no different.  That’s why negotiations never begin with what you really want to get.  And it’s why us more moderate thinkers need to be grateful for the radical fringes.  They push the boundaries of broad thinking so far out there that the more moderate changes we advocate for look reasonable.  Without that “out there” agitating, any change would seem “too much”.  Each time we achieve a moderate change, we need to push those edges out again.  That’s how progress happens.  Move the needle.  Get comfortable.  Have people that make you uncomfortable again.  Move the needle.  Think about the social and regulatory changes that have happened just over the last half century that are now the lowest level of acceptability but that were unthinkable not too long ago.  Want to go back to polluted drinking water and air that makes you choke?  Fifty years ago, that’s just how it was and any regulatory laws to change it were considered business-killing.  Guess what?  Businesses innovated, the air and water cleared, and those same businesses are more successful than ever.  “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Want invention?  Create necessity.  (Yes, I know regulations can go too far.  See last time’s essay on Balance for thoughts on that.)

So how does all this rambling about “change” relate to what we’re going through today?  We are navigating a huge disruption right now.  We’ve been shut in for a couple of months where I live and we have at least another few weeks to go.  And nothing facilitates “change” like disruption.  We have been forced to change how we do a lot of things out of necessity.  More people are working from home.  There is more of an emphasis on distance learning.  Both my Mom and I have learned how to use Zoom.  People are using online shopping for things they never did before, like groceries.  People have been starting up new businesses to support the needs of homebound customers.  This disruption has driven a lot of change, but most of that change has been around adoption of capabilities that were already there.  Telemedicine, as an example, has been around for a while.  But it has become more of a norm now that people have learned to navigate it.  I anticipate it will stay high on the menu of choices of consuming medical care. 

Some changes will stick, some will not.  We will almost certainly think about our lives “before COVID-19” and “after COVID-19”.  We are at an inflection point.  This is where real progress can be made.  Give some thought to what you’ve learned about yourself during this pandemic and which of these changes you want to make permanent. What have I learned?  I’ve learned that there are some changes that I fiercely do NOT want to stick.  I have learned how much I miss giving my Mom a hug.  I miss workouts and casual lunches with my bestie.  I miss the communal groan in a spin class when the instructor tells us to do something we don’t want to do and then we all do it anyway and share the joy of a tough workout.  I miss in-person connection and will work hard to remember to value community.  We’ve all stretched ourselves throughout this time.  Let’s make sure it was worth it.

Pandemic Diary Day….?  I’m not sure what day.  Like most people, I have a lot of time to think these days.  The thoughts are not always deep and insightful.  Often the thoughts are things like “What the heck is the tune that they use for the Sponge Daddy jingle?  I know that tune, but just can’t place it.”  I am embarrassed at how many times and ways I’ve tried to Google that.  My thoughts are also along the lines of “Why on earth do people throw such random trash out of their car windows?”  These thoughts happen on my walks around the neighborhood.  Or when I accompany Trish on one of her trash pickup activities along the roadway.  What IS it about those 5 Hour Energy shots that must make people immediately toss them out of the car window when they drink them?  And don’t get me started on why people think cigarette butts are biodegradable.  But I digress.

Sometimes I do start stitching together thoughts that end up in an essay and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about “balance”.  The visual I chose to use with this essay is not a set of scales, like you often see with a blinded Justice (anyone else have an issue with Justice being blinded, like someone is trying to pull something over on her?).  The scales imply that balance is a static activity.  You load two opposing “things” on the different pans and wait for the scales to steady.  Then you can see which one is obviously “better”.  That works well if you are measuring something physical like a weight.  It’s not a very helpful analogy when you are weighing actions and consequences.  I’ve written about choices and consequences before.  Today I want to talk about how to balance competing priorities/needs/wants.  And to do that, I need to use the visual of a pendulum.

Achieving balance, in my mind, does not result in a static state.  We’d love it to be static.  “I am finally in balance!” you think on a good day.  Until it’s not a good day anymore.  Balance is a dynamic process, constantly swinging through that elusive balance point but never staying there.  My goal is to try to keep the amplitude of the swings as low as possible.  I like things to be steady.  I do have a tendency to motion sickness after all.  Have you noticed that there are others that seem to like to swing that pendulum as far to the extremes as possible?  They love those swings.  Well, bless their hearts.  (Anyone from the South knows what I mean by that.)

“Balance” in this context can take many forms.  There is balance in your diet; in your emotions; in your relationships; in your problem solving process.  The difficulty in achieving a sense of balance is accepting, as Brene Brown says, that you can carry two competing truths in your mind and not have to choose between them.  Let me give you an example.  We have previously established that Trish has no spatial skills when it comes to loading dishes in a dishwasher.  I will open a nearly empty dishwasher to find one small bowl—ONE bowl—sitting smack in the middle of the bottom rack.  Usually lying diagonally across a couple of rows of spokes.  This trait, to me, is not a positive one.  I do not like it.  But do I throw up my arms, scream something about closest-packed-configurations and go running out the door?  No.  Well, not yet.  And that’s because she has a few other characteristics that I find quite charming and lovable and, on balance, I can tolerate (and rearrange) the dishwasher.  That’s an easy one to balance.  The negative issue is of much less importance to me than the positive issues so I can reconcile the dishwasher thing.

More tricky can be balancing competing priorities of different constituencies, like family members or work colleagues.  I remember a scene from The Wonder Years, with the narrator talking about his parents and how they negotiated differing preferences.  The example was tile for the kitchen floor.  He didn’t like her choice; she didn’t like his; so, they compromised on one neither of them particularly liked.  Or there is the example of balancing spending needs in a business against profitability.  You need both, but not one to the exclusion of the other.  Or, as noted above, balancing your diet.  If you swing the pendulum too far to the “good but tasteless” side, you risk swinging the other way too far to “bad but delicious.”  Trust me.  I have done this experiment.  And so have you, I would guess.

Here’s one that’s a bit tougher and that we are all struggling with right now.  We’ve got this crazy virus circulating that we don’t know a lot about yet.  We know that it seems to be highly contagious and that people can spread the virus without showing symptoms.  We know that a majority of people who pick up this virus will show no or mild sickness but that a small percentage have a horrid reaction, end up in the hospital, may be on a ventilator for weeks, and many die.  Our first very valid reaction as we were learning about the virus was “Ack!  Everyone stay HOME!”  In parts of the country, hospitals were becoming overwhelmed and we had no treatment, no vaccine, no way to stop this thing besides staying away from each other.  But then, people started suffering in other existential ways:  millions have lost their jobs, we have lost trillions in economic value, and we’re facing an economic recession that may take a long, long time to recover.  We’ve got to get people back to work and start shopping again!  (Remember, our economy is 70% consumer spending.)  How do we balance those two very valid, very serious conditions that are in opposition?

This, people, is when we can hold two competing truths in our minds.  We can respect the need to minimize spread of this disease as well as the need to open our economy.  What I worry about are the pendulum swingers—the ones who see “opening” as meaning back to the pre-virus norm of packed beaches, restaurants, theaters, ball parks with no restraints.  I also worry about the ones who say we must stay in total lockdown until there are no more cases of this virus anywhere.  Neither are constructive.  It is not an affront on your liberty to wear a damn facemask when you go out.  Nor is it an attack on the Second Amendment to limit seating in a restaurant.  Nor are we all going to die if golf courses open up or I go get my hair cut (as long as we take reasonable precautions like said facemasks and minimizing contact).  We just need to be smart about how we “reopen”.  Nudge the pendulum toward the balance point and be ready to nudge it back the other way if needed.  Recognize you will not get everything you want but neither will others who are pushing the pendulum in the other direction.  And above all, pray that we can keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed so that if you or someone you love is in the unfortunate small percentage that need them, our healthcare workers will be there and ready.

Our goal is to constantly strive for balance, recognizing that you will often approach balance and even be “in” balance for brief moments, but more often you will be looking for data to help you ease toward it.  It’s about holding those two opposing truths in your mind and knowing that it is ok to, say, like a particular political candidate enough to vote for them but not agree with everything they say or have done.  Similarly, you can find something you like and respect about someone you don’t particular enjoy working or spending much time with.  It’s not hypocritical.  It’s pragmatic and balanced.  And you can love someone dearly and still curse softly at how the dishwasher is loaded.

In February of 2002, Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush, was taking questions at a Pentagon briefing.  In response to a question around the lack of direct evidence supporting the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Rumsfeld gave this answer (in part):

“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.” (Wikipedia)

Rumsfeld was highly ridiculed for this “unknown unknowns” comment, mostly in popular media, but the man was on to something.  The graph that accompanies this article, of the Dunning Kruger effect, was sent to me by my beautiful and talented niece who is in graduate school for Plant Pathology (and who clearly takes after her Aunt Sherri).  She sent me this graph following a vigorous text discussion around the frustrations of grad school in the natural sciences.  You started in an undergrad environment, in which you are taught sound theory after sound theory and then go into a laboratory to conduct well-designed experiments that are supposed to be neatly completed in an afternoon or two.  Everything is fact.  Everything happens as expected (eventually).  And you began to think you knew how the world worked (as you annoyingly explained to your non-scientist friends).  Then you got to grad school.  And facts were not so cut and dried anymore.  There was nuance and boundary conditions.  Theorems like Newtonian physics explained everything until they didn’t and it was only by recognizing that there were facts that did not fit the existing theory that other theorems like Quantum Mechanics were developed.  And then there was “real” research, when you explored hypothesis after hypothesis that your experiments could not confirm.  It was a lonely dark tunnel of seemingly dead ends.  But you kept searching for truth.  And eventually, you found some.  What an incredibly important lesson to learn—because that is how life works.

I saw the Dunning Kruger effect play out over and over during my career as I coached young scientists.  The confidence they had!  OK, many times it was arrogance.  But they all learned, one by one, that they didn’t know as much as they thought they knew.  The best of them began with that sense of humility already; the most successful developed it.  Humility gives you not just a respect for what you can learn from others but a hunger to do it.  Enlightening someone to the fact that there is much they don’t know that they don’t know is one of the trickiest human interactions to navigate!  It wasn’t that hard when I was coaching those who were looking to me for insights already, but it was damn hard when I was trying to gently enlighten peers or superiors.  There is a very fine line you have to walk between embarrassing someone and convincing them.  And that line moves around as a function of their hard headedness and defensiveness.  I should know.  I’ve had to have my head knocked quite a few times!  Sometimes you just need to give someone grace because they have zero desire to be enlightened or you know they will come to it in their own time.  Sometimes you have to push forward because if you don’t there is the potential that bad things will happen sooner or later.  Regardless, don’t judge someone on their lack of knowledge.  Focus more on their willingness to learn.

I have mentioned before my love for non-fiction and how during my working years I kept collecting books, looking forward to retirement when I could finally READ to my heart’s content!  At first, it was wonderful!  I could read a little something, have a few questions, and then go down rabbit holes as much as I wanted to fill in my knowledge.  Very quickly, though, I learned that trying to be a Renaissance Woman in the 21^st Century is a losing proposition.  The more I learned, the more I realized how much I didn’t know which made me want to learn more.  It doesn’t help that I get a daily email from Book Bub with discounted ebooks—I want every one of those histories and biographies!  Yes, it’s a virtuous cycle, but it’s also a little vicious.  I have gotten overwhelmed by how much I realize now that I didn’t know I didn’t know.

So, here is a look into my reading life.  Besides a shelf full of books like Biomimicry and The Sixth Extinction, a wish list with the likes of Sapiens and Value in Ethics and Economics, I am a faithful reader of The New Yorker and Longreads (which sponsors both longform journalistic efforts and curates a reading list).  I gravitate to longform journalism because there is the effort to go more deeply into a subject, turning over rocks and going past the quick assumptions about a subject.  Here is a sample of what I ingested just over the last week:  Returning Britain’s agricultural processes back towards traditional farming with a detailed look at the knock on effects of different farming techniques on the natural balance; the growing trend of participative Underground Railroad Reenactments and their impact on people of all socio-economic backgrounds; a profile of author Yuval Noah Harari (which is why Sapiens is on my wish list); whether or not Jeanne Calment really was the oldest living person at 122 or a fraud, with a deeper dive into how these investigations look from the perspective of different stakeholders; a comparison of the 1930’s concerns about democracy’s survival to those of today, reminding us that when we talk about “worst I’ve ever seen” it’s still only a “time drop” in the bucket of history; diamond mining in Botswana which gave a fascinating history of not just the industry and some key players but a nice primer on Big Diamonds of History; the search for a woman missing in British Columbia for seven years; and, how the CIA secretly sold encryption services to gullible governments around the world.  I learned something fascinating (and previously unknown to me) in each of these articles!  Each one has broadened my perspective on something I didn’t realize I needed some broadening on. And they all make me hungry for more.

I promise I AM heading somewhere with this line of discussion and it’s to emphasize this point:  you cannot know everything, but you can stay aware that there is always something more about a topic or a situation that you don’t know. Look for more perspective.  Remember that there is more to “truth” than your personal life experience.  As a scientist, I’ve been taught to almost never think in absolutes.  Situations are never as simple as they seem (or as simple as we want them to be) and it is critical to always want more information.  The Longreads articles, in particular, give me glimpses into lives so different from my own that I continually marvel at my good fortune for the life I was born into.  I’ve always had a lot to say on assumptions, and I’m guessing I always will.  I am humbled every day with new examples of incorrect assumptions I make about someone’s life or situation or background or knowledge.  There is so much I don’t know that I don’t know—only now, instead of scaring or frustrating me, it inspires and motivates me.  I hope it can be that way for you, too.

[Editor’s Note:  I read pulpy fiction novels and happily remain wedded to my simple beliefs. Sigh.  Trish]

First, I commend you for actually reading this essay.  I can hear the groans when you saw the title.  Conflict and conflict resolution are often among the least favorite topics of people everywhere.  Few people like conflict (save for those with a Character Disorder); fewer people still enjoy conflict resolution.  Yet the existence—nay, the preponderance—of unresolved conflict is, I’m convinced, at the root of a lot of emotional pain and suffering around us.  I would hazard to guess that unresolved conflict is at the root of a lot of physical pain, as well.  I mean this both of individuals who end up committing violence as well as those in leadership roles who start wars (that others fight and die in) because of their conflict with another leader.  (By the way, nothing I say below will apply to world leaders.  I have no clue what might resolve those conflicts.)

Before I begin my pontification, a little disclaimer.  There will be people reading this essay who have formally studied this topic and can speak with much more authority than I.  They, and you, may or may not agree with my views on this subject.  I am sharing with you my observations and strategies, which (sometimes) work for me.  Consider this food for thought in finding what works for you.

Conflict between humans is as old as, well, humans.  (I’m sure it also exists in the animal kingdom, but conflict resolution strategies of animals is outside the scope of this essay.  Well, mostly, since humans certainly can behave like small-prefrontal-cortex animals.)  Conflict also introduces itself to us at a very early age—“mine” is an existential statement of toddlers and usually kicks off conflict with anyone around.  For some reason, I have lately become very sensitive to conflict around me.  Maybe it’s because I am very lucky in that I don’t have a lot of conflict in my life these days.  I’m retired, so I don’t have conflict with work; I am in a wonderful relationship with someone who jumps on conflict as quickly as I do and communicates really well.  (I like to say that there are four of us in this relationship:  me, Trish and the “me and Trish” that are observing the “me and Trish” in the relationship and constantly talking about it.)  I also have weathered such intense conflict in my life that whatever comes my way these days feels tame by comparison.  So, I am very sensitive to the conflicts we, as a country, are embroiled in due to political differences (see previous discussions on yelling at the TV) as well as to conflict I see amongst family members and friends.  Hence the need to discuss.

Not all conflicts are alike.  There are conflicts with people in different types of relationships:  romantic, familial, friendship, workplace.  There are conflicts amongst equals and conflicts in which there is a significant power imbalance.  There are conflicts with those you know deeply and with acquaintances.  As such, there is no singular or perfect way to handle conflict.  But there is one thing all conflict has in common:  conflict that is not resolved never goes away.  It just gets buried, sometimes deeply and sometimes just under a thin veneer, and it will most likely rear its ugly head again.  Usually at a really inopportune time!  Until resolution, expect discomfort at some level with your conflictee.  The passing of time may lessen the awareness, but it is still there and it will color your relationship.  So, our first bold faced comment: Do not ignore conflict; ignoring it will not make it go away.

Are all conflicts worth wholehearted resolution? Frankly, no.  Since I will never be able to resolve the conflicts I have with a range of TV pundits, or with a stranger I overhear who makes a comment that really burns, sometime you have to just let it go.  “But, Sherri,” you remind me, “didn’t you just say that unresolved conflict never goes away?”  Why, yes, I did.  But if resolving those conflicts (which are really one sided disagreements, in all honesty) is not important to a relationship then the best response is indeed to let it go.  Simpler words were never written yet a more difficult act has rarely been undertaken.  I get so mad at myself when I lay awake at night, mulling over an interaction with someone I’ll never see again over something that I wanted to have handled differently, or thinking about things someone has said on TV or on some form of social tweety facegram.  Why do I let these people live rent free in my head?  This would be when we segue to a discussion of deep breathing and mindful meditation, but, again, subject for another time.  I want to discuss conflict that can and should be resolved.

Workplace resolution can be the trickiest.  “Conflict” when there is a real imbalance in power (boss/subordinate or similar) is not something I really consider true conflict.  That is a “suck it up and deal with it” situation for the person lower in power, even when a more powerful person is trying to admit to a wrong.  Power simply wins.  You have the freedom to leave the environment but the choices for many are really limited and really difficult, so most are stuck with bad feelings and ruminating over the situation at 3 am (see: “let it go”, above).  And this is why so many people can’t wait for their workday to end.  Owning what you really control in situations like this is hard, lonely and requires a lot of intestinal fortitude.  Complaining is easier.  I’ve done my share.  I’ve ultimately been happier when I’ve owned what I can truly control, but that didn’t happen until very late in my career when the consequences of owning it were more to my liking.  We’ve discussed choices and consequences before.

So let’s finally talk about conflict resolution amongst equals, with people you know well and care enough about to want to continue an on-going relationship.  Damn, it’s hard.  And it’s hard for two reasons:  if there is conflict there is hurt; and, to successfully resolve the conflict you will need to make yourself vulnerable to the person you exchanged hurt with.   I’ve read a lot of Brene Brown’s work and if you aren’t familiar with her, I highly encourage a look.  She writes a lot about vulnerability and how being vulnerable with others is one of the hardest things you will ever do, yet is so necessary to any type of healthy relationship (including with yourself).  So much anger out there is masking pain that people refuse to acknowledge out of fear of being vulnerable.  It takes courage.  And, by the way, you need a willing partner in the process.  It takes two to tango in many things in life; conflict resolution is one hell of a dance.  YOU may want to resolve a conflict.  You may even reach out and ask for a sit down to resolve the conflict.  But if the other person isn’t ready to open themselves to the discussion, it won’t work.  And, unfortunately, the hurt will just sit there.  Sigh.  We’ve all been there.

If both of you truly want to resolve the conflict, then you both need to be able to practice good listening skills.  Yes, listening is a SKILL.  And you need to talk face-to-face.  Do NOT try to do this remotely if at all possible.  Before you start the discussion, you need to remember this:  Your goal is not to defend yourself and remake your point.  Your goal (“you” plural) is to listen to where the other person is coming from.  Understand the situation that caused the conflict from the other person’s perspective.  None of us are mind readers.  You need to hear what is in each other’s heads.  Each person needs to put the emphasis on understanding the other—not on being understood themselves.  Don’t worry about making sure you are understood.  If you are doing this right, mutual understanding will be the outcome.  If you really do this (and I have found it much easier to facilitate these kinds of conversations than to engage in them myself), then a solution/resolution is often easy to find.  If not, you agree to disagree, but usually the pain and hurt are lessened because there is mutual respect.  Remember, you DO like/love this person!

Even just writing this essay has given me a stomach ache.  I see so much pain in the world!  It just doesn’t have to be this way!  We don’t have to be angry all the time or uncomfortable around each other.  Take a deep breath.  Ask for help if you need it.  But be brave enough and kind enough to crack open your defenses and get that conflict resolved.