Many Ways to Say I Love You

Disappoints.

They are, OBVIOUSLY, inevitable in life.

Question is: How do you deal with them?

This is especially relevant for us parents out there striving to model an optimal approach.

Carol Dweck has a lot to say about this. In Self-Theories, she tells us that those of us with a growth mindset (or perhaps more accurately: those of us when we are demonstrating a growth mindset!), RUB OUR HANDS TOGETHER with focused delight when we face challenges.

She says: “The hallmark of successful individuals is that they love learning, they seek challenges, they value effort, and they persist in the face of obstacles.”

I’m also reminded of the great meditation researcher Richie Davidson. Recall that he’s the guy who asked the Dalai Lama if he could hook his monks up to funny contraptions to study their brains for the first time.

In The Emotional Life of Your Brain, he tells us: “My research has consistently demonstrated that recovery from the minor challenges we administer in an experiment, such as being burned by the thermode or seeing an upsetting picture, is strongly correlated with and predictive of how someone copes with real-life adversity, particularly how quickly they recover. Resilience on the little things is therefore a good indicator of Resilience on the bigger ones… If they recover quickly from the little setbacks, they tend to be resilient in the face of big ones, and if they become paralyzed by or obsess over the little things, they tend to be laid low for a long time by the big things, too.”

All of which begs the question (one more time!): How are YOU dealing with life’s little setbacks.

Pay attention. It matters. A lot.

Practice with the little stuff so a) you can handle the big stuff when it (inevitably) arrives and b) your little ones have a noble model of how to do the same!

+1. +1. +1.

It ALL adds up.

P.S. This ALSO reminds me of an incessant theme to my work with Phil Stutz. (We recently celebrated our 100th coaching session, btw. :)

He and I CONSTANTLY come back to the idea of what he calls “micro-transactions.” The big stuff? It comes through the little things. The SUPER-TINY micro things.

P.P.S. David Allen said the same thing in our interview on Getting Things Done. The sublime? He says that enters our lives via the mundane.

+1. +1. +1.

It ALL adds up.

In fact, how about some more wisdom on the theme? … →

Did we discuss the importance of “little” things? :)

Do I repeat myself? Very well, I repeat myself.

So did Mister Rogers.

And the Buddha.

Here’s how he put it: “Little by little a person become evil, as a water pot is filled by drops of water… Little by little a person becomes good, as a water pot is filled by drops of water.”

One more time: Here’s to honoring the little things. The stuff that leads to all the “big” things but doesn’t come with “fanfare and bright lights.”

And… Here’s to remembering that WE (as parents) are growing as much as our children in the process of becoming the parents we aspire to be.

+1. +1. +1.

It ALL adds up.

I’m laughing as I type this imagining the scene I’m about to share.

It’s almost seven years ago. Alexandra is in labor with our first E: Emerson. (Not to be confused with our second E, Eleanor, who was born four years later. :)

So…

We were blessed to have a home birth with our wonderful midwife (Mary Jackson). We’re something like 10+ hours into the labor. It’s the middle of the night. We’re in the shower. Haven’t slept in 30 hours. We’re a little tired.

And, we’re a LOT naive about what’s about to happen.

I can vividly remember being in the shower joking about how we “needed a vacation.” (HAH.)

Parents out there: Laugh with me. (And, feel free to laugh AT me. lol)

Little did we know JUST how dramatically our lives would change in a matter of hours. Wonderfully, of course. But INEXTRICABLY.

As all parents know, a flip switched the moment our son was born and we were born into the sacred role of parents. (Vacation? Um…. Not for awhile! Hah.)

Which leads us to the second part of this Idea.

Alexandra and I like to joke that there are two kinds of people: Those who have kids and those who don’t have kids.

Only…

The people who *don’t* have kids don’t know that there are two kinds of people. They think (and, again, I laugh as I type this) that having a couple cats is kinda like being a parent.

Um. Yah.

Not so much.

PARENTS: Sending you love and high fives and the secret handshake. Let’s do this! :)

Whenever I read the word “complex” I think of Joshua Cooper Ramo’s wisdom from The Seventh Sense.

Here’s how he puts it: “When Holland chose the word ‘complex,’ he was making an important distinction. Complicated mechanisms can be designed, predicted, and controlled. Jet engines, artificial hearts, and your calculator are complicated in this sense. They may contain billions of interacting parts, but they can be laid out and repeatedly, predictably made and used. They don’t change. Complex systems, by contrast, can’t be so precisely engineered. They are hard to fully control. Human immunology is complex in this sense. The World Wide Web is complex. A rain forest is complex: It is made up of uncountable buzzing, connecting bugs and birds and trees. Order, to the extent that it exists in the Amazon basin, emerges moment by moment from countless, constant interactions. The uneven symphonic sound of l’heure bleue, that romantic stopping point at dawn when you can hear a forest waking bird by bird, is the sound of complexity engaging in a never-the-same-twice phase transition.”

Complicated vs. Complex.

Parenting?

That’s COMPLEX.

(So is Optimizing, of course. :)

Discipline.

It’s a nuanced part of the wonderfully dynamically personal approach that parenting requires.

I’m reminded (yet again) of Angela Duckworth’s wisdom on Wise Parenting (see this +1) from Grit. Her basic model? We need to have Warmth/Love AND high Standards.

Too little Warmth with too high of Standards and we run the risk of becoming Authoritarian.

But…

Too much Warmth with not-so-high Standards and we run the risk of becoming Permissive.

Warmth + High Standards? That’s Wise.

P.S. Fred also said this about warmth: “While children certainly need to learn about rules and consequences, they also need the staunch support of grown-ups who help them believe they can make it through.”

P.P.S. Whenever I think of setting limits/imposing constraints I think of some wisdom I picked up from Steve Chandler years ago.

He says that Alan Watts once said that tennis is much more fun with a court. And, he always liked to chat about this Stravinski quote: “The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision in the execution.”

“I’m sorry.”

Those are very powerful words.

I can’t remember where I learned this from Dan Siegel, but one of the most powerful things he taught me was the idea of “repairs.”

You lose your cool.

Note: It happens. EVEN TO MISTER ROGERS!!!!

Then what?

Then, when the “heat of the moment” passes, we repair the relationship.

“I’m sorry” is a great way to do it.

I like to add in a discussion of what I could have done differently, using the “Needs work” language we talk about a lot.

Then, our “Oops” moment of parenting imperfection (again, EVEN MISTER ROGERS LOST HIS COOL!!) becomes an opportunity to not only model appropriate repair behavior, but gives us a chance to chat about how to use those imperfect moments as learning opportunities to Optimize and get a little better the next time.

Remember: Never waste the data!!

So…

Got any repairs you need to make?

If you feel so inspired, see if you can trim the time between your next Oops and your next repair!

You know how I often talk about the word or phrase that an author seems to come back to most often in their books?

Well, Fred talks a LOT about “perfection.” (And, “feelings.”)

It was clear that he wrestled with his own imperfection quite a bit. And, his wife Joanne beautifully establishes the fact (!) that, although amazing, Fred was definitely NOT perfect.

With that, let’s remind ourselves of the science of self-compassion and the Tibetan concept for “guilt” with Seneca’s sense of a “healthy amount of shame.”

First, Seneca.

Almost exactly 2,000 years ago, he told us: “Be harsh with yourself at times.”

As we discussed in the Notes on Letters from a Stoic: As with all the virtuous means, there’s a virtuous mean here as well.

TOO MUCH harshness is destructive—we’ll develop a sense of self-loathing that’s a weakness. Aristotle would consider it a vice of excess. TOO LITTLE harshness on the other hand, and we run the risk of missing opportunities for growth. That would be a vice of deficiency.

The virtuous mean rests right there in the middle path—where we’re appropriately correcting our weaknesses WITHOUT self-criticism per se, just a nice firm look in the eye and a smile as we embody more and more of our ideals while burning out, as Rumi would say, the dross that clouds the silver.

Which leads us to the Tibetan word for guilt.

Oh, wait. They don’t have a word for guilt!!

The closest they have is “intelligent regret that decides to do things differently.”

And all of that leads us to the science of self-compassion.

After our first few months with our very first cohort of Optimize Coaches, I’d say that THIS is one of the most frequent themes we come back to AGAIN and AGAIN—reminding ourselves that no one is perfect and that none of us ever will be.

As such, it’s wise to remember the three facets of Kristin Neff’s wisdom from Self-Compassion: 1. Common humanity (we ALL experience the same challenges); 2. Self-kindness (be nice to yourself!); 3. Mindfulness (notice when you slip into self-criticism and practice 1 and 2 :).

There are many ways to say I love you.

Here’s one.

I love you.

Hope you enjoyed this quick look at a great book and I hope you have another amazing day, my beloved neighbor.