Pride and Prison

Here’s what Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson wrote as he reflected on the recent death of Watergate figure Chuck Colson.

“Pride is the enemy of grace, and prison is the enemy of pride.

Chuck Colson’s swift journey from the White House to a penitentiary ended a life of accomplishment — only to begin a life of significance. The two are not always the same.” 

 In life, there are many types of prison. Some we build ourselves:

• Self-medication through drugs or alcohol. 
• A co-dependent’s choice to live in denial rather than face a difficult realty. 
• The inability to break free of trying to meet someone else’s expectations.

Pride is our jailer. We’re unwilling to admit, “By myself, I am powerless to change,” or  “To become my true self I must tolerate someone else’s anger or disappointment.” Or, “Not I, but the Christ in me.”

Twenty years ago, an experience took away my pride and forced me to rebuild my whole sense of self. It was painful, as I’m sure Chuck Colson’s experience with prison was.  But with the help of God’s grace, I changed fundamental ways of thinking. Therapy, journaling, prayer, exercise, and friendship helped me become, not so much new, as real. The ‘real me.’ 

What about you? Are you in a prison of your own making?

What must you do to break free? 

I hope you will think--and pray--about your answer.

Love Story

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks, visiting my elderly aunt and uncle, who are 92 and 97. Theirs is a wonderful love story.When they married,  Lucille was a pretty middle-aged widow; Art was a 62-year-old shy bachelor who shared a  smalltown home with his widowed mother and a dog.

 On his 55th birthday, he  looked in the mirror, and said, “Life is passing you by. You’ve got to do something about it.”

So Art overcame his shyness enough to get involved as a youth group leader. Then he started taking ballroom dancing lessons. On the dance floor he met Lucille. For a few years after they married, they went dancing five nights a week. To show his love for Lucille, Art began memorizing Shakespeare’s sonnets, quoting one to her each night at  bedtime. Then he began to write poetry and discovered  in himself a talent he didn’t know he had.

“Art,” I said, “You’re the only man I know who has grown younger in spirit as you’ve gotten older in years.”

And that’s my message to all of us. 

It is never too late to change our lives. All we have to do is  look at where we are, decide where we’d like to be, and put the change in motion. Is it easy? No.

Doable? YES. 

Whenever Art and Lucille smile lovingly at each other, I’m reminded of that.

What's your answer?

“If a magic wand were waved so you could go back in life and make a different choice at  certain junctures, would you want to?”  That was the  question recently posed by a friend. 

At first the answer seemed easy. A spontaneous “Yes!” 

After all, who has not made an occasional poor choice? 

But on second thought...

Our lives are created by the choices and decisions and actions we take and while some are wise and some are foolish, all contribute to who we are and who we are becoming. 

I have occasionally wondered: what if I had not moved my children to the Midwest after their father died? What if we had stayed in California near their grandparents?  Some painful experiences occurred in that transition. At the same time, my son and daughter grew up to marry fellow Midwesterners and create happy, long-lasting marriages. Their unions produced grandchildren I love. 

Spiritual writer Ed Hays once wrote, “Accept all circumstances as God’s mysterious way of guiding your growth.” 

Hmmm.

Life only moves in one direction:  forward. 

Perhaps a better question to ask is this: Have I learned from the choices I made, both the good and the bad?”  

Have I grown? 

Do I like and accept who I am now? 

And especially:  Am I prayerfully open to making choices today based on compassion and love? 

Six Quick Secrets to Better Balance

Feeling a bit off-balance these days? Try some of these assignments from a talk I am giving to sales professionals. 

Secret number one: Know your mission.

Companies need mission statements, and so do individuals. Recognizing your life’s mission will help you put first things first.

Your assignment: Write a personal mission statement. Keep a time log for the next 3 weeks and observe. Are you giving adequate time to your life's mission?

Secret number two: Build a balance wheel.

Staying in balance means keeping all parts of our lives in sync: family * career * personal * spiritual * home * community.

Your assignment: Draw two pie charts. Mark one according to your ideal balance using the criteria above.  Mark the other according to how you're spending time now.  Note the difference.

Secret number three: Stay in the moment. 

Give up multi-tasking. Do one thing at a time and notice what you are doing as you do it.

Your assignment: Choose one  daily activity and do it slowly and consciously. 

For example, take a shower very deliberately. Be aware of the soapy feel on your skin, the touch of the towel as you dry, the softness of lotion.

Secret number four: Let go the non-essential. 

Release any activities or relationships that are no longer fruitful in your life. 

Assignment 1:  Say no to requests that don’t fit with your mission.

Assignment 2: Acknowledge your own essential needs. (Not wants, but needs.) When our needs aren't met, we get resentful.

Assignment 3: List ten gifts of time or energy you'd like to give yourself. Commit to making five of them happen in the next two months. 

Secret number five: Delegate more. 

Give your children the opportunity to become self-sufficient and build self-esteem by doing more tasks at home: clean their rooms, wash their own clothes,  take a turn preparing family meals. At work, ask yourself if you're holding onto tasks that you could delegate.

Your assignment: Delegate a task to someone--spouse, kids, or work colleague--that you have held onto. Notice what happens.

Secret number six : Worry less.

There are two times not to worry: If you can fix the problem, stop worrying and go fix it. If you can't fix the problem, stop worrying because worry won't change anything.

Your assignment:  When you catch yourself worrying, say aloud the word "Stop!" Turn the worry into a problem to solve or into a situation that you are willing to accept.   

Are you cheerful Happy? Or both?

Opera singer Beverly Sills, http://www.beverlysillsonline.com/ had the nickname, "Bubbles." She was known for her cheerful attitude even in the face of private grief (Two of her children suffered disabilities).  

 “How do you stay so happy?” one interviewer asked. “Oh, I’m not always happy,” she replied. “I am always cheerful. There’s a difference.”

Yes, there is a difference. Happiness happens to us; cheerfulness is an attitude we can choose. And researchers have found that feelings follow actions: so if we act as if we’re cheerful, we will gradually become so.

Try it for a day: Respond in an upbeat manner no matter what the circumstances. I'd love to hear from you if you discover it makes a difference.  I believe it will. 

Enthusiasm Takes You Further

     Years ago, when I went looking for my first job, wise advisers urged, “Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience.”

     How right they were. Enthusiastic people can turn a boring drive into an adventure, extra work into opportunity,  and strangers into friends.

    “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

     It is the paste that helps you hang in there when the going gets tough. It is the inner voice that whispers, “I can do it!” when others shout, “No, you can’t.”
   
     We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder as anyone knows who has ever seen an infant’s delight at the jingle of keys or the scurrying of a beetle.

      It is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such a youthful air, whatever their age.

 
      At 90, cellist Pablo Casals would start his day by playing Bach. As the music flowed through his fingers, his stooped shoulders would straighten and joy would reappear in his eyes. 

 

     Poet Samuel Ullman wrote, “Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

 
      How do you rediscover the enthusiasm of  childhood? The answer, I believe, lies in the word itself. “Enthusiasm” comes from the Greek and means “God within.” And what is God within is but an abiding sense of love -- proper love of self (self-acceptance) and, from that, love of others.

 
       Enthusiastic people love what they do, regardless of money or title or power. If we cannot do what we love as a full-time career, we make it a part-time avocation: the head of state who paints, the nun who runs marathons, the executive who handcrafts furniture. 

       

       We need to live each moment wholeheartedly, with all our senses -- finding pleasure in a back-yard garden, the crayoned picture of a six-year-old, the  beauty of a rainbow.  Don't waste tears on “might-have-beens.” Turn tears into sweat by going after “what-can-be.”

       Enthusiastic love of life puts a sparkle in our eyes, a lilt in our steps and smooth the wrinkles from our souls.

How high is your A. Q.?

Long before researchers came up with the idea of E.Q.--Emotional Quotient-- I coined the phrase A. Q. or Anxiety Quotient.
It’s my observation that people appear to start life with a built-in level of anxiety--like an inner bucket which we fill to the brim whether our anxiety is about terrorist attacks, earthquakes, or “OMG, are people gonna notice the zit on my chin?”

Another name for people with high A.Q. is Worry Wart. It’s the mom who drives her kid crazy by insisting, “Take a jacket. Just in case.”

Or the wife--in this case, a friend of mine--who told her new husband, “Honey, call if you’re going to be late coming home because if I don’t hear I go from late to death.”

Or the micro-managing boss who anxiously hovers over every project assigned to a subordinate.

High A. Q. can paralyze. We cling to what we know. We huddle in our comfort zone. We turn away from anything new. Or different. We fail to see the power of expanding horizons. We don’t risk.

Is your A.Q high, low, or in between? To lower it, start small. Keep a journal for a week and jot down what makes you anxious. Reread it a week later. Notice how few of your worries actually came to pass.

As for me, I try and remember what Jesus said to encourage his disciples not to be anxious: "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"

To learn more about the book on Emotional Quotient, go to www.Amazon.com