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29 Apr 2012
React(ive) or respond(sive): you have the choice……
You have two choices when faced with difficulties or problems at work: you can react or you can respond.
If you repeatedly respond (think, plan, choose your actions) rather than react (fight, flee, justify, blame, explain) you will ultimately to trusted as one who can initiate and be innovative and trusted at your workplace.
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18 Apr 2012
Have a conflict you’d like to address?
- Work hard at respecting the individuality of your opponent at every level. The minute you stop respecting the other party you begin to lose. The minute you‘re callous, or you are bitter, shaming, or condescending (all signs of disrespect), neither party will head toward the best outcome of any conflict.
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21 Mar 2012
A note to each son: When I say I love you, I want you to know what I mean
- I want what is best for you even if it is difficult to identify. Given that I am older and considerably (hopefully temporarily) more educated than you are, you are going to have to buckle down and accept that I usually have the edge in this area.
- I am prepared to go to bat for you and against you to secure your highest good. We’d all prefer the former.
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14 Mar 2012
If there is not more to your life than being a parent your children are really in trouble
- Get your focus off your children. Your children were not meant to be your family glue, your idols, or your reasons for being. If there is not more to your life than being a parent your children are really in trouble and you are soon to be horribly disillusioned.
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11 Mar 2012
Secure a powerful week:
- Decide that what other people think about you is none of your business – and then live like it. This will especially help you to resist taking yourself too seriously. You are just not that important, really. Once you know that AND believe it, you’ll be aghast at how significant your voice will be in whatever context you operate.
- Repair misunderstandings quickly.
- Affirm others honestly but without ulterior (stated or unstated) motive. Affirming others so they will do what you want or so you may get what you want is manipulation in one of its darkest shades.
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01 Mar 2012
A life of Grace
- Makes room for the marginalized.
- Offers hospitality to strangers.
- Allows others room for frequent error.
- Exercises immediate and planned generosity.
- Communicates efficiently, clearly.
- Removes guesswork and the need to mind-read.
- Forgives rapidly and keeps short accounts.
- Ignores hints and expects others to be forthcoming about what they need and want.
- Shares life very deeply with a few people.
- Embraces correction.
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20 Feb 2012
Doing what you really want
We’d all be better off if we designed our lives and careers around what we really want. “Smelling the roses” would come naturally. If more people followed their heartfelt passions, men and women would live deeper, more integrated lives.
There would be fewer wrecked relationships. Money would be what it is: a means to an end.
Doing what you really want is not the same as immersing yourself in some self-centered, lustful desire or living as if you are the only person on the planet.
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15 Feb 2012
To the man yelling at the waitress who interrupted his phone call…..
Your rudeness to the woman serving you is never justified, impressive, or attractive. I can’t help wondering how you treat people you live with, those whom you think you love, if you can so humiliate a stranger.
Forgive me for my little aside with “think you love” because it is really impossible for authentic love and the kind of contempt you are currently revealing to come from the same source – even if they are aimed at very different people.
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11 Feb 2012
Gerard Manley Hopkins – an eye for miracles
The poets of old had eyes for God’s goodness in small things. I want that. I want to be able to see God’s hand in nature. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) for one, enjoyed dappled things. He could see the miracle in rose-moles upon the trout. Patterns and contrasts upon farmland captured his imagination. He was ecstatic about the finch’s wing. Comparing colors in the sky to the colors upon a cow, and seeing the beauty in both was of great inspiration to him. Some of his insights are in the psalm entitled Pied Beauty.
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Reader questions and other insights (click on heading for full article)
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Tough meetings?
- Hold onto yourself, not the agenda, not the outcome, not winning, not proving yourself right or someone else wrong – simply hold onto yourself. This means remain responsive, creative, and playful, rather than become reactive and combative.
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My parents favor one child over the other and SAY so…….. Help!
“My children are very involved with their grandparents on both sides of the family. My parents, unlike my husband’s parents, play favorites. They actually SAY things about which child they favor and for what reasons. I have tried to talk to them about this but it doesn’t seem to help. It amuses the children (11, 12, and 14), it makes my husband cringe, and it embarrasses me. What can I do?” (Edited)
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A partner’s statement after severe hurt and betrayal…
I forgive you no matter what.
Forgiving you is an act of healthy self-love.
It is not about you, which I know you will find surprising.
I value myself and therefore I have decided to live without resentment, bitterness, sarcasm, or self-loathing.
Consequently, I am free of you and your careless ways. I am free even of the understandable urge to resent you.
I forgive you because it is my only healthy option.
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Two of my three sons ignored Mothers Day
Two of my three adult sons ignored Mothers Day. I waited the whole day for a card or a text message or a phone call. I waited in vain.
Every minute spent waiting was unfortunately wasted. The waiting, the watching, held you back from the many adventures the day potentially held for you.
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It’s my in-laws
“The problem in our marriage is my in-laws. My wife has never really separated from them as a daughter to become my wife. We are newly married (two years) and have no children. She runs to them for everything. In return, they give her everything she wants. She is an only child. They are determined to keep it that way. They even talk to her in this embarrassing weird childish tone. In good times she sees and talks to them everyday. The bad times come when I want us to go away for a few days, or change our routine a little. She gets concerned about how rigid they are and how our changes will upset their routine. If I ask my wife about when she will let up a little she gets really upset and then they get upset.” (Edited)
Your individual growth must become your focus. You cannot grow your wife up. You cannot make her let go of her parents. You cannot make her parents let her go. But you can grow yourself up. Increase your tolerance for all their pain, forge ahead with healthy challenges, and invite your wife to join you in becoming an adult.
Further reading (click on heading for full article)
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16 May 2012
Tough meetings?
- Hold onto yourself, not the agenda, not the outcome, not winning, not proving yourself right or someone else wrong – simply hold onto yourself. This means remain responsive, creative, and playful, rather than become reactive and combative.
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16 May 2012
My parents favor one child over the other and SAY so…….. Help!
“My children are very involved with their grandparents on both sides of the family. My parents, unlike my husband’s parents, play favorites. They actually SAY things about which child they favor and for what reasons. I have tried to talk to them about this but it doesn’t seem to help. It amuses the children (11, 12, and 14), it makes my husband cringe, and it embarrasses me. What can I do?” (Edited)
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15 May 2012
A partner’s statement after severe hurt and betrayal…
I forgive you no matter what.
Forgiving you is an act of healthy self-love.
It is not about you, which I know you will find surprising.
I value myself and therefore I have decided to live without resentment, bitterness, sarcasm, or self-loathing.
Consequently, I am free of you and your careless ways. I am free even of the understandable urge to resent you.
I forgive you because it is my only healthy option.
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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