Shaking up the Control Freak

And I'm back! Anthony and I had a wonderful, present vacation in Costa Rica, with just the right mixture of natural wonders, vigorous adventure sports, relaxing times of just being, and connecting with old and new friends across a variety of languages.

There is something about a vacation that helps you see things just a bit more clearly. Maybe part of it is that you see what aspects of your life you leave behind, and which you take with you. The stuff that you take with you seems even more glimmering against the backdrop of a new locale and new adventures.

On my trip to Costa Rica, one Samantha characteristic that glimmered and shone in the sun was that I am a control freak.

I like to be in control. Heck, I would even call it an addiction. You can see it in the way that I strive to control my time, trying to use every minute of it with optimal efficiency. You can see it in my friendships, where I control the flow of conversation to focus on what I want to focus on, and avoid what I want to avoid. You can see it in my relationship with Anthony, where I try to control where he puts his towel and how he pronounces the word "miracle."

This proved particularly maddening in Costa Rica, when I tried to control our schedule across two languages, poor phone access, and a populace that is, in general, a tad laid back.

Now, there are many good things that come with being a control junkie. Oftentimes, I get what I want, how I want it. But here is a drawback of being a control freak: there is no space for the world to surprise me. Oftentimes, the answers that we seek in our lives are waiting just around the corner, in the most unsuspecting of places... but if you are always in control, you never look in the unsuspected places. You look in the suspected ones. And so you look and look and start to short-circuit because you've found one thing you can't control, gaining insight, and meanwhile the signs around you are pointing the way.

So, I'd like to share with you an exercise from Beth and Lauren, cofounders of the Handel Group. The goal of this exercise is to shake up your nicely orchestrated routine to make space for new perspectives to enter. What you do is deliberately shift your daily routines to something unfamiliar. For example, if you always eat cereal for breakfast, try oatmeal. If you brush your hair with your left hand, try your right. If you always run down Willard Street during your daily jogs, try running down Orchard Street instead. Answer the phone with a different greeting. And so on.

This exercise in neat, because it makes you realize how familiar we are with a small set of daily experiences, and how thoroughly unfamiliar we are with an infinite number of others. Your day has a dash more adventure and intrigue in it, and you find yourself being more present in the NOW (nod to the last blog post) because you can't run on autopilot. You need to concentrate on what you are doing, otherwise you'll start brushing your shoulder, or get lost on that jog. Moreover, by loosening your iron-clad grip on your daily schedule, you allow the unsuspected to appear and touch you.

Maybe the Costa Ricans figured this out a long time ago. Maybe this trip was exactly the right thing for me, for all the unsuspected reasons.

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The here and now

Continuing with the theme of scheduling stresses, I realized recently that I spend a lot of time being somewhere else. While playing fetch with the dog, I think about all of the other things I want to accomplish before 8:00am, and will I have the time? While eating breakfast, I check my email and plan out my communications for the day. While talking to my partner Anthony, I wonder what we will make for dinner. While eating dinner, I plan out the wedding shower card I'm going to make for my buddy Sandra. And on and on.

The consequence of my rambling mind is that I don't experience the joy of the current moment. The cute about-face my dog does while diving for that toy to avoid a collision with the wall, the yumminess of the food I'm eating, and the beautiful depth of Anthony. The irony of it all is that the goal of my scheduling is to accomplish and experience as much as I can, but then when my efforts reach fruition, I don't take the time to actually experience the moment. My mind is off on the next thing. Even though I live a jam-packed life, at the end of the day I feel unfulfilled. My first response to this feeling is to say "well then, I guess I need to schedule more activities into my day, then." But in reality I have plenty of quantity, but not much quality.

My solution to this has come from meditation. I meditate for 2 minutes before doing something that I want to enjoy. During those two minutes, I close my eyes and focus my attention on my breathing. In and out, in and out. The focus brings me to the current moment, and then when I open my eyes and move on to the event itself, I am more present to what is happening now. And when the elsewhere thoughts pop into my head, I am more able to say "Not now" instead of indulging them.

Today, Anthony and I head off to Costa Rica for a vacation and the wedding of two friends, Jason and Hillary. I might blog while on vacation, I might not. But one thing is for sure: there will be many two-minute meditations :).

What theories about life do you want to be proving?

You're sitting in a cafe, on a first date with your latest match from eHarmony. As he begins to tell you about his love of 1970s science fiction, and his passion for collecting sweater-vests, you think to yourself "I knew it. All of the good guys in Boston are taken. This is what I'm left with."

What you have just articulated to yourself is a theory. Like a scientist piecing together theories about gravity or evolution, we are all in the business of forming and proving theories about the way the world works. Here are some other theories you might have heard floating around:

"Childbirth is horrible"
"My girlfriends are always there for me."
"The economy is just going to keep falling farther and farther."
"I'm good at public speaking."
"My husband doesn't communicate his feelings very well."
"There is never enough time in the day."
"One good deed deserves another."
"Romance dies with marriage."

We form our theories based on our life experiences. But once we have a theory, we usually see the world through the lens of that theory. In other words, we selectively collect evidence that supports our theory. For example, if your theory is that "I am good at public speaking," then every time that you deliver a well-received talk, you smile and say "yup, that's me!" If you once give a talk that does not end in thunderous applause, you are likely to shrug and say "the audience must have been in a food coma" or "it's too bad that that audience isn't into my line of work." Because, heck, you're good at public speaking, so it couldn't have been you.

The thing about theories is that they are subjective-- you can pretty much gather evidence for any theory you want. For example, when I was recently hanging out with a couple of married friends, Jill and Mike, the topic of conversation turned to the relationship that Jill had with her friends. Mike was adamant that Jill's friends took advantage of Jill, and treated her poorly. Jill shook her head and said that her friends were great people, and that she supported them through their hard times just like they would support her if the roles were reversed. Jill and Mike brought up a few different examples, and on each one they had their list of evidence for why the friend was or was not taking advantage of Jill. And each was compelling.

The beautiful thing about this subjectivity, then, is that you can choose which theories you want to be in the business of proving. For example, in a blog post a few months ago, I described my attitude toward getting my wallet stolen in a coffee shop. Instead of the theory "it is a real bummer getting your wallet stolen," I opted for the theory of "it's no big deal getting a wallet stolen." And guess what? It really wasn't a big deal. Yes, I canceled my credit cards, and we changed our locks. But it was like brushing my teeth... nothing noteworthy.

Here are some other great examples of reauthored theories:

"I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I am lost," reauthored to "My heart knows what I want to do, and the clues are all around me."

"Cleaning my bathroom is so annoying," reauthored to "Cleaning my bathroom is rewarding."

"It's impossible to stay in touch with my friends and family because they have moved so far away," reauthored to "I can have meaningful relationships over the phone, and I have plenty of time and money to visit as often as I need to in order to build the relationships I want."

"I make a lot of bad choices," reauthored to "I make a lot of good choices."

Once you switch theories and believe the new one, it is amazing how easy it is to prove it. You start to notice the good phone conversations you have with your friends, the time you made the wise choice to take a cab instead of the subway, and the little things in your day that you enjoy doing (which, pieced together, can give you the big picture of what career you would be passionate about). Moreover, you create more of those experiences, because you want more evidence to prove yourself right.

We're all in the business of proving theories: which ones would you like to be proving?

Image courtesy of jana739.wordpress.com

Cultivating Positivity

I recently noticed that I was harboring (heck, nurturing) a storm of negative thoughts. One of my particular favorite flavors is about time, and how I am never going to get it all done. Here is a brain dump of last Tuesday:

• "How can it be 3pm already? I've gotten nothing done!"
• "Oh crap, I'm traveling to Costa-friggin-Rica in two weeks, and we don't have any hostels booked. Gotta add that to the list... but when? Ahhh!"
• "Stupid dog just peed on the floor... again. She's never going to get this litterbox training thing! Gotta find time to take her to obedience school. Why hasn't Anthony booked obedience school yet? I thought this was his job."
• "I should have sent those bachelorette party invites out last week."
• "Taxes are going to be so complicated this year. Uggggh."
• "I didn't go on that run today I had hoped for... I feel flabby."

And on and on and on. At some point, I snapped out of it, and realized that I had been treating these thoughts like the weather... big ol' pieces of hail falling down and hitting me on the head. Ouch!

But the truth is, negative thoughts are not like weather, but more like the clothes we wear or the food we put in our mouths... entirely under our control. When these thoughts popped up in my head, I chose to look at them, expand upon them, and give them a nice cozy home in my mind. Yeah, what about that obedience school? Let's dwell on that for a while.

Given that negative thoughts are a choice, so too are positive thoughts. Oooo, let's bring in some of the. Please. So I have prescribed a simple positivity exercise for myself, that I repeat a few times per day. I make a list of 10 good things that have happened so far in the day. And I take a few seconds just to celebrate each one.

• "I emptied my inbox. Yay me!"
• "I really connected with Megan on our call today."
• "I am proud of that article on parent traits I wrote today."
• "That quesadilla for lunch was fantastic."
• "Anthony gave me the cutest smile this morning."
• And yes, "My dog just hit the litterbox! Good girl!"

For an added twist, I sometimes swap lists with Anthony at the end of the day. Good news is best when it is shared, afterall. And there is the added benefit that learn more about what is important to Anthony.

It's amazing how much this simple exercise tickles and massages the soul. Feels so good... I'll take this warm rain over hail any day.

The goal: Happiness

My friend and fellow journeyer, Duane, recently pointed out to me that I have thus far forgotten to discuss an important premise on this blog: why do any of this personal development work in the first place? It seemed to Duane that a lot of this stuff is about people being hyper-critical about themselves, or people telling other people that they need to change.

So let me explain how I see the role of this blog, and the work I do.

The end goal is to be happy. How do people become happy? From my perspective, happiness comes from doing what you want, in the body you want, with the people you want. It means actively designing every aspect of your life, of which, at the Handel Group, we believe there are 18. It means setting a dream for each area, and living those dreams. In other words, great happiness comes from authoring the book of your life in whatever way you want to, and writing a darned good plot for yourself.

The thing is, oftentimes we do not design aspects of our lives. We don't have a clearly-defined dream for our body, relationship, or career. Or maybe we do, but we're not living it. And this is where my work begins. I help people decide what they want the book of their lives to say, and then help them put pen to paper and create. It's not an easy process, because we're all in the business of making up cockamamie as to why we can't have what we want, and why we really don't want it to begin with.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you want the book of your life to say. You could choose:

• "Embracing the unpredictable: the life of a global wanderer" or "The virtues of routine: the beauty of the 9-to-5 schedule."
• "A house of children's laughter" or "A house of meows."
• "The high-powered adventures of the world's richest CEO" or "Getting from A to B: the hidden world of a mail sorter."

The important part is that you are writing a book that inspires you, and that keeps you eagerly turning the pages, day after day.

Two birds with one stone

I read a great quote from Robert Stavins, a Harvard professor of business and government, in the New Yorker a few weeks ago:

"Let's say I want to have a dinner party. It's important that I cook dinner, and I'd also like to take a shower before the guests arrive. You might think, 'Well, it would be really efficient for me to cook dinner in the shower.' But it turns out that if I try that, I'm not going to get very clean and it's not going to be a very good dinner."

I love this idea that the two birds you would get with that proverbial one stone might not be as fulfilling as one bird deliberately chosen.

Another great example of this tradeoff comes from my colleague Weston. When he entered college, his two passions were chemistry and painting, and so he initially planned on becoming, you guessed it, a paint engineer. The guy who figures out the chemistry of new paints. There must be someone out there who has that job, right? It seemed like a great idea, until he realized that this career would bypass both the creative expression of painting (which is what drew him to paint in the first place), and the most exciting cutting-edge areas of chemistry research, thereby leaving him unfulfilled on both counts. So he chose one of them, and is now a thriving biological chemist of world renown.

We choose these chimera activities for a variety of reasons. Maybe we are indecisive about a choice between two things that excite us, and so we try to do both. Maybe we are afraid of taking a leap and choosing something that is risky, and so we hold onto something that is more stable at the same time. Sometimes this strategy works well, but other times it holds us back from pursuing our passions whole-hog. Painting. Chemistry. Cooking that really great meal. Nothing feels quite so great as trying all-out for something that truly excites you.

In this day and age of multi-tasking, it’s worthwhile to take a step back and make sure that we are picking and pursuing our birds deliberately, and not just going for the riccoche shot.

Designing Your Life, Part II: The PR Agent

Most of the people in the MIT Design Your Life class are looking for better relationships. They want to find true love and companionship, or develop it in existing relationships. Heck, don't we all?

This connection with other people can be found by developing intimacy in our relationships. What is intimacy? It is being transparent: sharing the real you.

But most of us aren’t in the business of sharing the real us. Instead, we employ a PR agent in our head who spins how we think and feel so that it is palatable to others. The agent censors most thoughts through a filter of "if I say this, how will I look? Will other person still like me?"

Just take a look at your favorite celebrity mag as an example. Brangelina has a big fight and Angelina moves her herd of kids to her mother's house in Florida. "She's taking the kids on a vacation to get some sun" claims Angelina's PR agent. "Brad will be joining them shortly."

The problem with employing PR agents is that our relationships then become conversations between agents. Mine will talk to yours and they will invent a fabulous story. Sounds great to anyone overhearing us on the subway. But we sure don't know much about the actual people represented by those agents. Do we really want to have relationships with our friends and family similar to our relationship with Angelina Jolie?

Here are some examples of the PR agent from the class participants:

• My friend is really self-centered and it annoys me sometimes, but I would never tell her this because it would ruin our friendship.
• If I tell my advisor that I don't want to be an academic, it will destroy our relationship. Therefore, I am deliberately vague when he asks me about my future plans.
• Sometimes I wonder if I still love my husband, but I am afraid to disrupt our marriage because he gives me security and stability. So I pretend that everything is fine.
• Any time I try to discuss my career with my mother, she lectures me, and so I just avoid talking about my career with her.
• I sometimes pretend that other people's ideas are mine so I look smarter.
  

Each of these people felt disconnected from their friend/advisor/husband/mother, and was looking for a greater sense of connection. Given the PR spin they have been feeding these people, it's no wonder.

The solution? Tell the truth. Let the real you come out and play... you don't need a PR agent. The real story, while more quirky and messy and can-of-worm opening, leads to a deep connection and a sense of pride and confidence in yourself. If Angelina is having a fight with Brad, it really is OK.

Image courtesy of http://www.benghiat.com