Silver
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Silver
Dancing With Ghosts
When I was 17, my best friend died in a car crash. I thought the world would stop. At the very least, I thought it would pause. The day after Adele was taken off life support, I was astonished that the businesses in our small town of Rockland, Mass. were open. Didn’t they know? Didn’t they care? I wanted to shout at passersby walking nonchalantly down the sidewalks, “Adele is dead! How can you act so normal?!?” I would overhear people talking about everyday events and the buzzing in my head grew louder and louder. The buzzing was the sound of my suppressed screams.
The death of a loved one is undoubtedly the worst change we are asked to endure. Death is a constant reminder that life is inherently unfair.
I am remembering Adele more than usual because on Saturday the Rockland High School class of ’71 gathered for our 40th reunion. I wasn’t there but the buzz about it on FaceBook has sent me down memory lane. Anyone’s High School years are generally remembered with mixed feelings. This is a time of angst when one struggles with self-image, socialization, sex, love, “fitting in,” separating from parents and testing the limits, ungracefully.
The desire to get out into the world is combined with the fear of letting go. Some leave and never look back. Others will consider High School the best years of their lives. Not so with us. Our senior year was a terrible year of mourning for the 200+ members of my class and the entire school. Everyone from the principal to the janitor grieved. Each day, as we walked the hallways to change classes, we passed her memorial. In bold letters it read – Class of 1971-In Memory of Adele.
We were kids who had grown up with death hanging over our heads starting with “duck and cover” rehearsals in elementary school.We all knew someone who had a bomb shelter for the inevitable nuclear attack. Our Dads were WWII vets who came back with unidentified Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Mine would drink too many beers on a Friday night and cry at the kitchen table, shaking his head saying, “You can’t imagine what it was like.”
We continually brushed up against death, watching the Vietnam War waged on television. Some had brothers or cousins who went and never came back. We were the ones who held our breaths hoping it would be over before any of our friends were drafted.
In May of 1970, the year before we graduated, we watched with horror the TV coverage of the massacre at Kent State when the Ohio State Guard opened fire on unarmed college students who were protesting the invasion of Cambodia. When the smoke cleared, four young people were dead and nine others wounded.
Two months later, Adele, so deeply impacted by that event, would be gone herself.
Wherever we looked, past, present or future, what we saw was death. When Adele’s passing brought it into our laps it was like the lid blew off what we had been holding back since first grade. Mourning her gave us permission to mourn our lost childhoods, our innocence and what had been promised to us by our country’s founders: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We were convinced by then that it was all a lie and we graduated hard and cynical, atrophied in grief.
Her death shaped us as none of those other events had. Instead of mourning the fact that we might lose touch after graduation, most of us couldn’t get away fast enough. It was too painful to hang around; we wanted to distance ourselves. Friends I’d known since first grade became shadowy memories as I drank to forget and then drank to remember and finally just drank.
These 40 years later those painful memories actually give me hope. They are proof-positive that even terrible changes can be endured and that ultimately, one can recover enough to have a beautiful life.
This morning, as I gazed at the sun rising over the beautiful waters of Hawaii I realized that instead of staying mad that “life goes on,” today I am grateful that it did. And I’m so happy that I got to know and love Adele. Instead of remembering the pain, what I focus on now is a precious memory that was the essence of our friendship:
It is an August day of our sophomore year. Summer is coming to an end. The weather is perfect and the ocean is warm as bath water. The “gang” is spending the day on White Horse Beach, laughing, playing, flirting and loving each other with the pure enthusiasm of youth.
Our parents are due to pick us up in an hour and Adele and I are walking down the beach, huddled under the same towel and talking about profoundly important matters. I feel a surge of pure joy in the moment and realize just how much I love her.
Do I still miss her? Yes. But every once in a while I turn on the radio and hear Bridge over Troubled Waters (“our” song), and I know she orchestrated the timing to remind me that I can dance with her whenever I want. There is, however, a catch: I can only feel her presence in moments of happiness. I think it’s because she’s in such a happy place now that she’s no longer willing to be around sadness, even for me.
One day I will join her. And that thought makes me happy.
Dancing with Upsets
My favorite definition of the word upset is: an unfulfilled expectation. You were expecting X to happen but Y happened instead and now you are upset. Expectations play a big role in Dancing with Change. Whether you are a child, an adult or an adult behaving like a child, when you become upset it is important to ask, “What was I expecting to happen that didn’t?” You will be blown away by how quickly you can get to the bottom of what’s upsetting you.
“What were you expecting to happen that didn’t?” is also a great question to use when interacting with others. Think about how useful this question would be when you are:
– Managing a team
– Providing customer service
– Parenting
– Interacting with your spouse
– Trying to please your boss
Imagine being at the Customer Service counter in a store. A clerk is trying to calm an upset customer. The clerk says, “I really want to get to the bottom of this. Please tell me what you were expecting that didn’t happen.” What you are seeing is the clerk setting a context for the conversation that gives both parties power to resolve the problem.
The uses for such a brilliant question are endless. Whenever someone is upset, ask the question and then listen. Many negative situations can be diffused as a result. The act of merely asking the question implies that you care about why the other person is upset and that alone carries a lot of weight.
I am on vacation with my grandchildren. What a luxury—a week to just hang out by the beach and have fun. As I watch them interacting with their parents, I am struck by how often we ask (actually demand) that children dance with change.
Last night Abbie and Christopher wanted to go miniature golfing. We adults couldn’t get our acts together in time for that to happen. Naturally, they were upset. We used it as an opportunity to teach them about dealing with change. We wanted them to understand that life doesn’t always go as one might hope.
This morning, as I reflected on the event, I started to wonder how understanding we adults would have been if the roles were reversed. When children delay something that we want to do, are we equally understanding? I haven’t always been. Usually when children are the delay factor, I have gotten upset and what follows is a lecture on the “rules” or “respect for others’ time.”
As a child, the rule I always hated was, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Yuck. The Dancing with Change version of that same hypocrisy is that we want everyone else to fully embrace the DWC step Accept that which cannot be changed. However, when it comes to our own response to change, acceptance is nowhere in sight. We want to manage and control events in the face of overwhelming evidence that it can’t be done.
So, when children get upset over changes they cannot control, we lecture them about being more accepting and “rolling with the punches” that life inevitably delivers. But heaven forbid we should follow our own sage advice.
As you go about your day and week, and you get upset, practice asking, “What were you expecting to happen that didn’t?” Then, start noticing where it would be effective in situations you observe. This question is a powerful tool that will help you more gracefully Dance with Change.
Dancing with Changing Realities
Do you have competing realities living inside your head? On the one hand, you have complete confidence that everything is going to work out while, in the background, a tape of doom and gloom is running.
Welcome to my world.
I’m usually holding the possibility of two “realities” in my mind. The first is of the “happily ever after” variety, the second is “my world is coming to an end.” What’s true about both of these “realities” is that neither has happened—I made them up!
I think everyone has competing scenarios. It’s likely a survival mechanism passed down from our ancestors. Be too optimistic, you’re liable to let your guard down and get eaten by a hungry lion. Be too pessimistic and you won’t come out of the cave at all. Two extremes, both potentially deadly.
What’s interesting about this survival mechanism is that the quality of your life is determined by the amount of attention you give to each scenario.
When I was in the throes of my clinical depression, the ratio of my pessimism versus optimism hovered around 80/20. (By the way, if you’d like to figure out where you stand, check out the free questionnaires on http://www.AuthenticHappiness.com).
Today, I would say I’m 85% optimistic, 15% pessimistic.
This is why I love the question, “Is everything okay right this minute?” It gives us great perspective. An important teaching that helped pull me out of my depression is that living in the past is ridiculous because it’s over and done and dreading the future is equally ridiculous because we make ourselves sick over something that likely will never happen. If you choose to “future trip,” (making up a story of what will happen in the future) why not make up a story of the “happily ever after” variety? After all, they are just stories and you are the author of every one of them!
My friend Sandy obsesses about what her financial situation will be when she is old. I ask her, “Is everything okay right now?” and the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” The mortgage is paid, she has business coming in, there is plenty of food and even some money left over for fun. But all of it is ruined by the pessimistic view she holds of her future, even though she is taking action about it—putting money away and planning for retirement.
Am I advocating for turning a blind eye toward important issues? Not at all. I think we should plan for both our immediate and distant futures. Action cancels fear every time and planning is an action—worrying is not.
Being pessimistic serves a very useful function. It alerts us to the need for protective strategies and motivates us to be proactive. But when pessimism turns to worry, it has outlived its usefulness. At that point it changes from being an advantage and becomes, instead, a detriment.
Worry is a detriment to your physical health, emotional well-being and peace of mind. It is not simply a bad habit; it can seriously hurt you if you don’t develop some strategies to counteract it. In my case, it turned into a clinical depression that lasted for three decades.
I am living proof that it’s possible to replace the habit of worry. I say replace because you cannot actually break a habit. Instead, you replace it with new, habitual behavior.
So what is worry? It is a pattern of obsessively thinking about worse case scenarios. Before I offer some alternatives, stop for a moment and ask yourself, “What could I do instead of worrying? What might be some behaviors that would be more useful?” Write down your answers. I’d rather have you come up with alternatives than use my strategies because, if the idea comes from you, you’re much more likely to put it into action.
Here’s a clue. If worrying is what you DON”T want to do, what is it you WANT to do instead?
I’d love to hear some of your ideas. Email them to me: Silver@SilverSpeaks.com and I will post them. If you’re stuck, and that often happens when you’re in the throes of a worry cycle, email me anyhow and I’ll send some suggestions, things that have worked for me.
Consider for a moment what life would be like if you could significantly reduce the amount of time you spend worrying. The benefits for me have been many:
– I sleep peacefully through most nights (for many years, obsessive worrying kept me awake into the wee hours);
– Nightmares, once frequent, are now rare (think about it. If you are in the habit of worrying all day, how would your subconscious know that it’s time to turn it off when you sleep?)
– I feel more in control. Worry is focusing on something about which you feel you have no control. Since you get more of what you focus on, worrying ensures that you will notice even more things you can’t control.
You will always live with competing realities. The trick is to stack the decks so that “happily live ever after” is always miles ahead of “doom and gloom.” It’s a competition—ONE of them has to win! Your choice.
Dancing with Changing Relationships
Have you ever noticed that your Inner Guide never rests? Mine has been relentless for two days now, letting me know that I’m on the wrong track. Does it speak to me in words? No, thank goodness. If that were the case, I’d be like one of those pictures you see in Internet ads, my hair standing on end, looking like I’ve been electro-shocked.
No, my Inner Guide communicates with me through my emotions. So does yours. (Not through my emotions—that would be weird—but through your own.
I’ve been down. Nothing really serious but to quote my four-year-old friend Zoe, “yucky”. Enough to capture my attention. I believe, without question, that you get more of what you focus on. I know that if I indulge these negative feelings for very long, the results will not be pretty.
So how do I “feel my feelings” (which psychologists tell us is healthy and necessary) without wallowing? The answer lies in asking the right question: what are your feelings trying to tell you? I asked that question after meditating this morning and this is the answer I received:
You are working far too hard at figuring things out. Just relax and enjoy the ride. You have already attracted abundance into your life. Now seek that which makes you happy.
Wow! My Inner Guide is not only wise but also very smart. Yours is, too.
My feeling down is certainly an “appropriate” response to what’s going on. It had to do with two things:
First, my partner Bill’s serious illness, a scary reality we live with every day. Neither of us dwells on it much and we both believe it to be a temporary setback. And yet, when I saw a TV show where someone died, I fell apart. Normally, I choose to avoid shows that might make me feel bad but this was a rerun of Ally McBeal, a comedy—who knew it would get so darned serious?
Second, I “broke up” with a longtime friend I love very much. Why? Because of various changes over the last decade, I believe the friendship is no longer serving us. In fact, it felt to me like it was doing us damage. In the vernacular of Dancing with Change, I heard the refrain of the new song and decided to sit this one out.
She and I have been trying for years to make it work and there comes a time for some friends to part, much like couples do when things aren’t working out. We were stepping on each other’s toes in a number of very painful ways. Opting to sit this one out causes an ache within me but I believe that, in the long run, we are both better off.
Why do we cling to things that don’t make us happy, that actually make us unhappy? Relationships, jobs, that frying pan with the missing handle…the list goes on and on. We have been trained to believe that anything worth achieving must be a struggle. Do we ever question that wisdom? Here is a quote I love from author Stuart Wilde: Effort is a natural part of our physical state, but struggle is effort laced with emotion, and that is unnatural and unholy.
We seem to be addicted to struggle. If you look at the number of self-help books and courses that sell every day it is evident that many of us think there is an “answer” out there. If we just find it, then everything will fall into place.
Well, it’s true. There IS an answer. What we fail to realize is that we find it on a regular basis. We apply it, things fall into place and we’re happy. However, in a very short period of time, we get used to our new circumstances and then we want more. We go looking for a new answer and the cycle starts all over.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting more. It is how we grow. But wanting more doesn’t prevent us from enjoying what we have. Only we have the power to do that.
I want Bill not to have cancer. But he does. And it is ridiculous for me to spend any amount of time worrying about what might happen in the future. Today he is here, feeling reasonably well and being as active as can be. On a daily basis, we make a concentrated effort to enjoy what we have—a strong and abiding love for each other.
Bill & me, enjoying life
I want more from my friendship and, for whatever reason, it wasn’t happening. I take full responsibility for that. I could spend more years struggling to fix it, to somehow make it work but I choose not to do that. There are those who might consider me a poor friend but I believe I would be a worse one by trying to make it work. I would continue to hurt her and myself. Is that what friendship is supposed to be?
So here I am once again trying to figure things out when the message I received was to relax and enjoy the ride.
The Law of Attraction says that you get more of what you focus on. When I choose to focus on how wonderful life is right now and how grateful I am for what I have, my happiness is ensured, no matter the circumstances.
Life continually lays change at our feet, some good, some we’d rather not have. We wouldn’t want it any other way—the ever-changing circumstances are what make life interesting. The more we can learn to dance with them, the less “yucky” time we will have.
Final Step – Dancing With Change
The steps of learning to Dance with Change:
One: Accept that which cannot be changed.
Two: Choose—will you dance or sit this one out?
Three: Determine how much of this new dance you already know.
Four: Determine your role—Lead or Follower?
Five: Focus on learning the new dance.
Six: Start with the frame—it’s everything.
Seven: If you step on anyone’s toes, apologize and keep dancing.
Eight: Find partners who are better at the dance than you and learn from them.
Nine: Once you’ve mastered the steps—practice, practice, practice!
Step Ten: Once you’ve mastered the dance, make it yours!
Step Eleven: Relax and enjoy!!
Once you’ve gone through all the steps, you have earned the right to have fun. Learning anything new can be a struggle. Getting to the point where you have mastered it is where the fun begins.
No matter what you’ve learned—a new process, computer program, a better style of communication or a way to shave 10 minutes off your daily commute—if you don’t take time to enjoy it, what was the point?
This is where so many of us shortchange ourselves. If you’re not experiencing a sense of satisfaction at work or at home, it is likely because you are not taking the time to relax and enjoy what you’ve accomplished.
We are a society of “What’s next?” and, although that’s certainly one reason we’ve accomplished so much, it’s also a big contributor to our growing sense of dissatisfaction. Without taking time to enjoy the fruits of our labor, we live in a world of what’s not done instead of what is and that can only lead to frustration and a foreboding sense that somehow we are “not enough.”
What change have you recently adapted to that is worth celebrating? Here are some examples to stimulate your party gene:
– At work or at home did you have a day all planned out only to have it turned upside down by circumstances? Did you STILL manage to accomplish good things? Then you adapted to a change. Celebrate!
– Did you go into work with an expectation of a routine, fairly easy day only to have the phones ringing off the hook with customer demands? If you were able to get things accomplished, then you adapted to a change. Celebrate! – Did your commute present unexpected challenges? If you arrived at your destination, even if late, you adapted to a change. Celebrate!
– Have you, like so many of us, opened up an Internet program only to find the developers have made some more “improvements” (and without consulting you, no less!)? If you’re still able to successfully use this program, then you adapted to a change. Celebrate!
We adapt to change every day. We are skilled at it. Whether it’s a change in what our loved ones need or want from us, priorities at work, traffic detours on the way to work or something as simple as opening the refrigerator to discover you’ve run out of eggs, you are adapting as you go. When you are able to recognize your own talent for adaptation, it becomes much easier to roll with the big changes that take place. You become someone who responds smoothly to change instead of reacting.
Relax and enjoy! There are few emotions that feel better than satisfaction. Each time you bask in your accomplishments, no matter their scope, you take one more step toward evolving into a master of change.
Relax and enjoy! Share your victories with others. I had a wonderful talk with my dear friend Alice last night who lost her daughter to cancer a few years ago. Our conversation was laced with her sharing some of the small victories she has managed despite her grief. For example, her daughter had always been the one who made a big deal out Alice’s birthday. Knowing this, Alice made her own arrangements this year to be surrounded by people who know and love her best. She was still saddened by the absence of her daughter but she adapted by making sure she was encircled with love.
Adapting isn’t always easy. Many changes are ones you would never have asked for if you had a vote. But, like Alice, you can take even the worst of circumstances and feel proud of how you are adapting.
You are the one in charge of how change impacts you. Allow me to suggest, one more time—when you have figured out how to get on the other side of a change—relax and enjoy!