A win-win with the in-laws

At a holiday party last night, I watched two married friends of mine, Beatrice and Jonas, come up with a beautiful solution to a dilemma they were facing with Beatrice's mother. So I thought I would share it here as a really great example of creative problem-solving in this holiday season.

It's a tale as old as organized religion: Bea's mother is a church-going Christian, and every Christmas she brings her husband and two kids to mass, even though they are not religious themselves. Neither Bea and her brother enjoy attending the mass (her brother listens to audiobooks during the service), and yet they attend because they fear that their mother will be sad if they don't. Enter Jonas. Jonas is not religious, and does not want to go to mass this year. What to do?

Stage 1: Justifications
At first, Jonas and Bea railed on organized religion. The hypocracy, the brainwashing, the artifice. They gathered mountains of evidence as to why church was an abomination, and hence why Jonas was completely justified in saying No to Bea's mother's request. Bea just shrugged. I know, it's silly, she said.

Stage 2: What are the real issues here?
Then the conversation shifted a bit. Bea explained what her mother was really looking for in mass: to spend time with her family, doing something religious. That doesn't seem so unreasonable on Christmas, does it?

Stage 3: Resolution
With the real goals of Bea's mother laid out, it became clear that going to mass was not the only option. Bea realized that her family could work at a soup kitchen instead. The family would be together, and reaching out to the poor could definitely be a religious experience for Bea's mother.

The moral of the story here is that if we move away from a place of justifying our own positions and toward an understanding what the other person really wants, we oftentimes find that there are many mutually-beneficial solutions. Instead of a compromise solution, which had been Bea's appeasement strategy in the past, Jonas and Bea's mom could collaborate on a solution that would ensure a happy holiday for everyone.

Have a joyous holiday season, everyone!

Image courtesy of http://www.squiglysplayhouse.com/ArtsAndCrafts/ColouringPictures/Christmas/

Lessons from training a puppy

My partner Anthony and I recently adopted a Papillon puppy, Ptarmigan. The more time I spend training her to do the things that dogs should do -- use the litterbox, rest peacefully in her crate, come, stay, sit-- the more I realize that all of us humans have an inner puppy.

You know what I'm talking about: the yiping, whining voice of "I don't want to take a bath. I'd rather play with my squeaky duck toy!" Substitute "the internet" or "my favorite food" for Mr. Duck, and "going for a run" or "organizing my closet" for the bath, and voila!

We're much more sneaky about it than dogs are, though. Instead of crying and yelping, we concoct a bevy of excuses that rationalize why we should be playing with Mr. Ducky instead of getting that bath. I had a rough day and I deserve some chocolate cake. There's plenty of time for organizing my closet later. Maybe I'll hurt my knee if I run-- better not risk it.

We get caught up in these excuses, and lose sight of the simple, real truth: you know you should get your bath, you'd rather play, and you're whining about it. Dogs operate on this level of simple, honest truth all the time. They want to play, you want them in the bath, and that is that.

Training your inner puppy is not that much different than training a real puppy. Through repetition and persistence, we are training Ptarmigan to do her business in the litterbox instead of in the corner of my office. Goodness knows what appeals to her about this particular corner, but for whatever reason she delights in using it as her private commode. Over the past 14 days, we have shifted how she thinks about doing her business:

Day 1: "I want to do my business in the corner, so I'll do my business in the corner."

Day 14: "I want to do my business in the corner, but I know that I should do it in the litterbox, so I'll use the litterbox."

We haven't taken away her desire to use the corner--I'm sure the magical appeal is still there-- but instead we have trained her to ignore that urge and go in the litterbox instead. The more she goes to the litterbox, the more it becomes "just what she does." She doesn't entertain an internal dialog about the corner vs. the litterbox anymore.

This is where we need to go with our internal puppy. No internal dialog about the pulses and minuses of exercising vs. sitting on the couch, or rationalizing why we should eat a donut just this once. Through practice and repetition, we cut out the thinking and just do. One of the best results of this state of doing is that our inner puppy is quiet. No more whining.

I leave you now with a great example of litterbox-esque training that our parents did on us when we were kids... afterall, kids are even closer to puppies than adults. Do you think that as a kid, you enjoyed brushing your teeth? Probably not. Do you brush your teeth every night now? I hope so. Do you whine and yelp about it every night? I didn't think so :).

A new adventure: entering the Blog-o-sphere

Welcome to my new blog!

About two years ago, my friend Bree planted the seed for this blog. At the time, it seemed like an overwhelming task... did I really have anything to say? Two years and several adventures later, having defended my Ph.D. and become a coach with the Handel Group, I now know the answer: you bet!

I will use this blog to share with you my thoughts about spurring personal growth, developing integrity, building beautiful relationships, communicating transparently, and owning the power that we all have to author each and every chapter of our lives. And other topics as they crop up :).

I leave you this evening with a quote that celebrates the beauty of the journey that has landed each of us where we are right now, which, incidentally, is the exact right spot for us at this moment:

"I'm so glad that you finally made it here
With the things you know now, that only time could tell
Looking back, seeing far, landing right where we are
And oh, aren't we aging well?"

-- Dar Williams