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Leave Pride On The Side
Now and then, I’m afforded the opportunity to share in a vehicle donation community project. It is the cooperative endeavor of several hands to make refurbished transportation possible to a person or family in need. It is absolute goodness. It happened again this past week. As the recipient was passed the keys, he commented about times in life when we need to leave pride on the side and ask for help. I was struck by the visual of an item being left behind, cast aside its value exhausted. How often does pride, or its equally debilitating sibling fear, get in the way of our asking for help? Or admitting to…
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Taking Good Care
The change in the seasons has ushered in a round of colds in our house. Oddly, this time I started it. Patient zero. So begins all the things we do to take extra good care of ourselves…better sleep, healthier foods, and an abundance of vitamin C. The irony, of course, is that if I had been doing those things all along, I might not have gotten a cold in the first place, or in the very least, it wouldn’t have been as bad. Taking care of ourselves strengthens our immune systems. The same holds true for our emotional and spiritual selves. The principle of self-care building immunity transcends our physical wellbeing.…
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Being There
What does it mean to be there? In the last month, I’ve attended two funerals and officiated a wedding. To attend: to pay attention; listen or watch attentively; to direct one’s thoughts; to be present and ready to give service. Within each definition, there is an implied choice. When we choose to be there–to attend, we are choosing to give someone our time. It’s a bit staggering to think about time as an asset when you consider how nonchalantly we squander it surfing , scrolling, and devoting hours to Candy Crush. Time may be our only innate and yet fully transferable asset. A friend shared recently that he’d chosen to pass on…
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Better Than Perfect
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.” –Mahatama Gandhi My brain innately seeks certainty. Consequently, during in-between moments, at halfway marks, and for those times when I don’t have all of the information, my brain happily compensates. It negotiates facts, guesstimates variables, and does a mental squint to support the perceived invincibility that accompanies the feeling of certainty. Being certain kind of feels like being in control. Pesky doubts and insecurities are mitigated. Outcomes are managed and planned for. Unfortunately, experience has shown that control or controlling is just a placebo antidote to being afraid. It doesn’t actually remove the threat. It just makes us feel like the threat is no longer there.…
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Don’t Yuck My Yum
As much as we strive to be unaffected by the opinions of others, most people do care what other people think. We are social creatures, and mutual acceptance is an integral part of society. As it happens, we are everybody else’s other people. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we have power in the lives of those around us. Our friends, coworkers, and family all care to greater or lesser degrees what we think. If you are still balking at this idea, consider the power of social media to influence. An entire industry has grown up around the ability of social media (i.e., our opinions) to influence others. Shares and…
