Monthly Archives: February 2014

A Voicemail Present

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I am long since passed the age when birthdays bring parties and confetti. Nowadays, my cake has enough candles to set off the smoke alarm. Instead, birthdays now offer moments to reflect on my life and my journey.

But I still get presents. And like anyone, I enjoy a good present. This year, the best gift I received came in a surprising form. It arrived in the form of a voicemail.

I turned on my cell phone and saw a message from an old friend. He and I have been playing telephone tag for several weeks and it was nice to see his name. I pressed play and it began as a normal birthday message. “Happy Birthday, Rachel.” And then he continued “let me tell you what you mean to me.. the cool thing about you is..” He went on to enumerate the ways in which I have influenced and inspired him.

I had tears streaming down my face at the end of the message. It was such a beautiful gift. In a poignant one and half minute message, my friend made me feel loved and seen. He gave me the gift of seeing myself through his eyes.

And he has some incredible eyes. This is a friend who I admire and respect, who often serves as an inspiration to me. To know that he feels the same is deeply moving. It made me wonder if he how I feel about him.

How often do any of us take the time to tell our friends what they mean to us? How often do we thank the people in our lives for the way they shape and inspire us? How often do we acknowledge all the amazing individuals who have helped us become the people that we are today?

Research in positive psychology tells us that this giving act not only enhances the lives of those we tell, but enriches our own lives as well. The act of writing a letter of appreciation to someone who has been important to us, increases our own happiness. Gratitude breeds happiness which in turn breeds more happiness and more gratitude.

The simple act of reaching out to an old friend, a new friend, a teacher, a mentor, or a family member to tell them what they mean to you has the power to start a spiral of positivity. So sit down at the computer and write an email, or find that piece of stationary and fountain pen or simply pick up the phone. Give someone the gift of your appreciation.

Which reminds me, I have a phone call (and a favor) to return.

Six Ways to Know You are with the Right Person

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Love is in the air- or so all the commercials tell us.  Retailers sell us love and Hollywood and music sell us an image of what love should look like.  Not surprisingly, giant corporations might not be the best place for advice on our love lives.  So, if the flowers, the chocolates, and the diamonds are not the ideal way to tell if we are with the correct person, what is?  I offer six components to finding the “right” person (with the obvious stipulation that love comes in as many forms as there are people in the world.)

  1. The right person is the one you have fun with out on the town and at home on the couch. Valentine’s Day is all about going out and having an expensive night on the town. Commercials and popular culture tell us that romance and love are about excitement and glamor.  But long term intimate relationships may involve a lot of time just snuggling up at home.  You should be able to spend time with your partner wherever you find yourselves.
  2. The right person is the one, not without whom you could not live, but who has given you the strength to handle anything- including their absence. So often we think of love as the feeling that you could not go on without the other person.  There certainly is that kind of love.  But that love is not sustainable long term.  That kind of love consumes you as certainly as fire consumes kindling- hot, but depleting.  Lasting love is about a person who helps you find your own strength. You would, of course, prefer to be with your partner, but you know that you are stronger for having known them.  Their gift to you is a love that strengthens you as an individual as opposed to one that diminishes you.
  3. The right person is not only the one who holds your hand in public, but holds your head when you are throwing up. Romantic walks on the beach or holding hands at sunset are beautiful things. They are memories that you will treasure.  But life is composed of terrible times as well.  You will inevitably feel sick or weak (emotionally or physically.)  It is in those moments that you see the strength of your relationship. Is this person going to be there when times are tough as well as when you are flying high? The person who puts a cold cloth on your forehead when you are sick is probably going be able to handle life’s ups and downs.
  4. The right person is the one who is not afraid of your growth, but encourages your growth and grows along with you. If you are lucky enough to be in a long term relationship with another person, you will find that over time life changes you. This change, hopefully in the form of personal growth, is almost inevitable.  Couples “grow apart” all the time.  The right person is committed to helping you become the best version of yourself.  With any luck that person will grow along with you, increasing your compatibility.  It is not a sure thing- but it beats resenting the other person for their personal evolution.
  5. The right person is the one who knows all your deepest secrets and would never use them against you. If you trust your partner, you should be able to tell them your secrets and fears.  Moreover, intimacy means learning the good as well as the not so stellar qualities of your partner.  Being intimate with another person is about vulnerability and therefore, must also be about safety.  You need to know on some level that your partner will not use your weaknesses against you.
  6. The right person is the one who makes you laugh. They say that laughter is the best medicine.  It’s true.  Sometimes life is so absurd, or even so heartbreaking, that laughter is the only thing that will get you through.  The right person is the one who can make you laugh when you are happy, stressed or down. The right person can help you laugh at yourself and is open to being laughed at as well. Laughter doesn’t make hard times go away, but it can make those times bearable.

So, this Valentine’s Day, ask yourself if the person with whom you are sitting is the right person for you.  If they are, you are truly blessed. If they are not, it’s time for a change- either within the relationship, or moving on.

The Storms of Life

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As another winter storm bears down on New England, I engage in my pre-storm ritual: obsessively reading weather reports and blogs.  I love weather.  I love storm watching. I feel (despite much evidence to the contrary) that if I read everything I will know what the future holds. I will be able to predict what will happen and where. I will be prepared.

Of course, I am not. Meteorology may be a science but it is clearly not an exact one. Every storm teaches me that the future is unknowable, and therefore uncontrollable. My constant reading aside, the weather will do what it plans to do. Rain/snow lines will shift, low pressure systems will unexpectedly move in and my day will be affected in ways I hadn’t planned.

In short, the weather is just another area of my life over which I have very little control. The career I planned in my twenties is very different than the one I have now. The marriage I imagined as a child bears little resemblance to the one in which I happily find myself. The beautiful children I have today are very different than the ones I daydreamed about as I held my hand over my swollen belly all those years ago. What happened? Life.

All the preparation in the world, all the good advice, all the self-help and parenting books, could not prepare me for the ways that life intervened. I could not have predicted the ways that love, economics, ambition, violence and illness would affect the trajectory of my life.  All the reading and planning could not have prepared me for the ways in which life would alter and change me- shifting priorities, values and beliefs.

Control is an illusion.What mattered more along the way was knowing myself and being open to learning more.When life challenged me, my willingness to adjust, go with the flow and when needed, set limits, allowed me to grow as a person- to not only survive, but thrive.

We focus a lot in our society on being prepared. And preparation is important. Too often though, we focus on the wrong kind of preparation. We prepare for life’s storms never realizing that forecasts change and that the storm we prepared for is seldom the storm that arrives. We cling to dogma and ideas about the way things should be instead of looking within to build strength to find our own truths.

What I have learned is that flexibility and humility are my lifelines; knowing what I can and cannot control and learning to ask for help when I am tossed in the waves of life’s hurricanes.

I suppose that I like to watch storms because it provides me with an illusion of control. But I know now it is an illusion. I know that I can no more control the storms of my life than the storms in the Gulf Stream. But with the weather I can pretend. So, today I’ll buy the loaf of bread and the gallon of milk and enjoy watching the storm, if and when it hits.

Volkswagen, We Need to Talk

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GoldieBlox, meet Volkswagen.  I think you have a lot to talk about.  Specifically, Volkswagen, don’t speak.  Listen.  You see, GoldieBlox is a toy company that markets engineering toys to little girls.  It asks them to summon their inner engineer and not their inner princess.  As a company, it takes seriously the intellects and aspirations of little girls and encourages them to grow up to be scientists or engineers or just full human beings with brains.

GoldieBlox won Intuit’s small business competition and secured the opportunity to air their celebration of young girls’ potential during the Super Bowl, an evening that is usually dedicated to demeaning and degrading images of women (yes, I’m talking to you, GoDaddy).  Their ad showed little girls collecting all of their sickly pink toys and launching them off into space in a rocket they built themselves.  “So come on ditch your toys… girls build like all the boys” plays in the background to the tune of Quiet Riot’s “Come on Feel the Noise.”

This is where you come in, Volkswagen. You see, you also aired an advertisement during the Super Bowl, and you are also interested in engineering.  Your farcical ad imagined that every time a Volkswagen reaches 100,000 miles an engineer gets his wings. Yes, somehow in 2014 you managed not to show any female engineers gaining their wings.

Wait, what do you say, Volkswagen.  You say that in your defense there was a female engineer in the ad.

I am glad you mentioned that because I was going to.  I assume you were referring to the lovely white coated be-speckled brunette in the elevator (we know she is smart because she is wearing glasses!!!).  Yes, the brunette who slaps the male engineer for what she deems to be inappropriate touching as a result of him sprouting his wings.

You see, that’s kind of the problem.  You think she counts.  But in your ad about engineers, your female engineer is still just a sexual object. You don’t take women seriously, which is foolish for many reasons, including the fact that we buy automobiles.

So, please, sit down.  Have a chat with GoldieBlox here.  They may be able to help you to see women as more than objects, and perhaps even hire a few.

When you’re done, GoldieBlox, I’d like to talk to you about visiting some schools.

Life Lessons Brought to You by Super Bowl Ads

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I love watching Super Bowl commercials (especially when my team isn’t playing). I think commercials are well produced stories about our society and I enjoy watching (and critiquing) those stories. I can’t say I was impressed with all the ads last night, but there were two that spoke to me as a coach.

The first ad was the Radio Shack ad in which celebrities and characters from the eighties stormed a lonely dilapidated Radio Shack demanding they get their store back… (the eighties called, they want their store back.) It’s a funny ad. I sat up when I saw it because, well, I have been to Radio Shack in the last couple years and had the same thought. Many people had. The ad is effective because it is an acknowledgment of a real problem for the brand and a bold repositioning of the business as a result.

The second ad that spoke to me was the Cheerios ad where a little girl bargains with her father for a puppy after learning that she has a baby brother on the way. The commercial features the same family that appeared in their controversial 2013 ad. Why was the ad controversial? Because the beautiful family featured is biracial. The advertisement received praise for spotlighting a family that looks like so many American families do today, yet at the same time, General Mills discontinued the comments on the youtube video after the forums became locations for airing racist attacks.

Why do I like the ad? First of all, because the ad is adorable- but also because Cheerios doubled down. They heard the criticism and they rejected it. They proudly declared “this is who we are.” They took a stand for what they believe in and what they stand for.

In thinking about the ads, I realized that they are related. Both companies were criticized. Both companies responded to their critics. Radio Shack heard the criticism, recognized its validity, and pivoted as a result. They listened, learned and acted. Cheerios similarly heard the criticism, and they rejected it. They didn’t accept the vision of the world or of their brand that their critics had. They used the criticism as an opportunity to confirm and celebrate their identity.

So why do these two ads speak to me as a coach? One of the most enduring truths is that taking criticism is hard. No one likes it (no matter what they say). But criticism always represents an opportunity. These two brands faced criticism and responded in diametrically opposed ways. But it is clear that they both heard their critics. One accepted the critique and the other rejected it. But the criticism gave them the opportunity to reflect.

For individuals (and not mega corporations) the same holds true. Listening to criticism gives you the opportunity to reflect and grow. Not all criticism is valid, but it has the advantage of making you stop and assess its validity. You can stop and define who you are. The judgments of others should not rule your life, but this does not mean that you should ignore them altogether. Criticism can represent opportunities to learn about yourself, your values and your goals and take powerful stands in honor of those things.