On Finding Holy Spaces

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In Jewish liturgy and writings, there are many names for God, several of which are considered too holy to say at all and some that are confined only to prayer. However, the name for the divine from the Jewish tradition that most inspires me is not one of those. It is the word Hamakom, translated as “the space” or “the place.”

What does this mean? For a religion that does not confine God to a physical form (the second commandment prohibits Jews from making a graven image of the lord), what does it mean that one name for the divine seems to tie god to a physical location? This is a name that’s seems to limit God.

But that translation is too literal in nature- for descriptions of God, in the Jewish tradition at least, are always metaphoric. What does it mean for God to be “the space”?

For me, this meaning is found in stillness- the stillness one encounters in prayer or meditation. It is the mental and heart space that is both entirely present and eternal at the same time. To be still so that one can hear the voice of the divine (or universe or whatever spiritual tradition in which you find yourself), is to tap into a power and energy that is contained within you and all around you in the universe.

The word, Hamakom comes from the Jewish tradition, but its meaning extends beyond the confines of the Jewish faith, or really any religion at all. Hamakom is about being present. It is about finding the space in yourself in which you can be one with something larger. It is spaciousness of spirit and mind.

How can we bring this space into our lives? For some the access road is prayer or meditation. For others it is exercise or quiet walks in nature and for others still it may be a generative space of creativity- music, dance or art. The key is that Hamakom can be found in each of us but is not contained solely within us. The access point must begin in the present moment but it simultaneously extends to the eternal. The point of entry is in the individual- the point of enlightenment is in connection.

Where do you find hamakom? How can you bring that space into your life?

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.

The Pros and Cons of the Curated Life

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As a Communication professor, I often give my students an assignment that they have dubbed the “cyber stalking” assignment.  I ask them to choose a friend and find out as much as they can about that individual online.  I tell them to use a critical eye, as if they were a future employer.  What do they see? What are the implications of every photo, every comment, every update?  All of it communicates something about the individual.

After this assignment, my students are invariably shocked at the picture that has emerged and I then urge them to scrub their own digital presence (no more photos holding red plastic cups!).  I explain that the internet has become a log of our lives, an addendum to every cover letter and resume we send out, an attachment to every performance review at work.  I stress the importance of curating your online presence.

But lately I have begun to see the downside of a curated life.  All those students and friends who have taken to heart such warnings now present themselves well online.  They post beautifully constructed facades of vacations, achievements, happy accomplished children and the results are, well, isolating.

For many of us with friends scattered around the country and the world, social networking sites (and even the holiday newsletter) are the primary way that we learn about each other’s lives.  But what we learn from the curated life is only half the story.

The child who starred in the dance recital or won MVP in little league or came in first at the spelling bee, also has meltdowns over homework, suffers from anxiety attacks, talks back and slams doors, is bullied or is a bully. The friend with the great promotion works 80 hour weeks and hasn’t seen her friends or spouse for dinner in 6 months.  The college friend who always looks so cheerful in her photos is deeply depressed over losing her job, but is too ashamed to post it.   But to read the updates you would never know.

The result of this is that it makes it harder for everyone to talk honestly about the meltdowns, anxiety attacks, conflicts, bullying, the challenges of working, living, and parenting.  The result is that we are all left alone to cope.  Coping is especially hard when we believe we are the only ones.

The curated life turns each of us into our own PR agents.  We may look great on the screen, but the process leaves us little room to be real.

The answer may not be to stop curating, but to pick up the phone, or better yet, meet in person.  Call a friend and tell them what’s really going on.  When you are with others, be real about what is going on in your home.  More often than not, the other person will feel relieved and open up about their challenges as well.

An Awakening

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Something is happening.  It is percolating in our society- bubbling up in disparate and surprising places.  It is born out of a deep spiritual dissatisfaction with American society though its manifestations are profoundly positive.

We see it in education where parents, teachers and students are revolting against high stakes testing and common core standards. They do so because they love learning and they believe that an emphasis on scores and quantitative data obscures the meaning of education.  They are tired of a rat race that is so focused on future careers, that it loses sight of raising happy, healthy citizens.

We see it in the slow food movement, where people are joining together to promote local communities, traditions and farms.  They seek to restore pleasure to eating, asking people to sit down together for a meal- to savor both the taste of the food and each other’s company.

We see this in the NFL (of all places) where the Seattle Seahawks are including meditation and yoga in their training.  Even in the violent sport of football, this team has found the benefit of caring for the entire player- for his soul, his body and his mental well-being.  They believe they can excel in the game (and their record supports them on it) and take care of their players.

What do these things have in common? They are rejections of the status quo.  They are rejections of our society’s relentless pursuit of the end-result without any regard for the process or journey.  They are statements that the journey matters.  They are affirmations of the importance of being human; of all the different ways of being human.

There are others out there doing innovative things; resisting the march to conformity.  We should honor and encourage these movements (even if we personally might not choose them) because they broaden our definition of what it means to be human.   This broader definition opens up greater possibilities for all of us.

Lessons Of The Dream

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“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

Fifty years later Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words still inspire.  They still call us to our better selves, rallying us in his cry for a moral and just society.

What is in the power of these words that still resonate today- even amongst those who have never felt the stinging bigotry of segregation, the brutal violence of racism? Dr. King’s voice is haunting as it demands we honor his dream of justice.  We cannot help but be by moved by his idealism and moral courage.

On another level, we can all relate on some level because we all have dreams.  Some are narrower in focus- for ourselves and for our children.  Some are broader- imagining a world of economic justice or an end to war (things of which Dr. King also dreamed.) But we are all united in having dreams. But sometimes are dreams seem too far and unattainable.

It is perhaps easy in today’s fast moving, global society to believe that our problems are insurmountable- that idealism is synonymous with naiveté.  Too many of us romanticize the past- believing that in the 1960’s once could change the world and that now it is no longer possible.

The truth is, of course, much scarier.  In the 1950’s and 1960’s the problems of segregation and racism also seemed insurmountable.  Change seemed unattainable.  What makes Dr. King’s message so powerful and scary is that it was more than his dream.  It was his life’s mission that he worked tirelessly to achieve. What is scary is not that things cannot change now.  What is scary is that they could if we backed up our dreams with action.

We cannot and should not dismiss idealism as merely dreams.  We cannot give up on making our lives and indeed, everyone’s lives, better simply because it is difficult.  Dr. King’s dream involved sacrifice and perseverance.  It involved action and commitment.  It was a bold dream fueled by moral conviction and fierce courage.

It is tempting to walk away from Martin Luther King Day congratulating ourselves as a nation for how far we have come (though it is clear that on many levels Dr. King’s dreams are not fully realized).  It is tempting to long for a past when such change was possible and cite the reasons it no longer is.  But we should hear Dr. King’s message as a rallying call to our dreams, a shining example of what is possible when dreams are backed up with actions.

What can you do today to make your dreams come true?

Resolutions vs. Commitments

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It’s coming. You know it is- maybe this week, maybe next week, but by February, you know it will have arrived- the moment when you decide that your New Year’s resolution is just not worth it.

One of the problems is that you made a resolution and not a commitment. Resolutions are decisions you make to do or not do something. Commitments are about being dedicated to something larger, whether it is yourself, your community, or a value.

In coaching, I ask my clients to make commitments, not resolutions. Commitments are firm and binding and at times, require sacrifice. But commitments give our lives meaning. There are many different types of commitment. Commitment to our values invests our lives with meaning. Commitment to ourselves fills our lives with integrity and purpose. Commitment to our families strengthens our bonds. Commitment to our work increases productivity and satisfaction. Commitment to the Divine infuses our lives with the sacred. Commitment to our communities engages us in the collective and brings us together.

So this year, throw away your resolutions and start making commitments instead. The stakes are higher but the rewards are better. If you feel yourself faltering, enlist the help of friends, loved ones or a coach to help you hold to your commitments.