Month: December 2017

When this post goes live, it will be Christmas Day — a time when many people exchange gifts. This year, I’d like to suggest that you give yourself an intangible gift. You can think of this as a resolution if you like. However you think of it, I’d like to suggest that you go easy on yourself next year. You’ll accomplish more if you do.

What exactly do I mean by “go easy on yourself”? Some of this I’ve said before, but it bears repeating.

Expect progress, not perfection

One of my earliest “make a difference” posts was on learning how to eat an elephant. I see so many things I want to change about myself, so many things I want to tackle, and I feel the need to take on everything right now. Those of us who struggle with this must remember: perfection isn’t possible. Growth is. So let’s take things one at a time. That list of things we want to tackle isn’t going anywhere.

Cut back

Likewise, I’ve already written about how important simplicity is in freeing us up to take care of the things that truly matter. Simplicity is a gift that many of us, myself included, have trouble embracing. The world is so full of “shoulds” — things we’re told we need to do or own. And we sometimes have trouble letting go of things, because we think we need them or we’re afraid we’ll be judged for letting go. Simplifying our lives can be a difficult task, but the result can be freeing.

Don’t be a cheerless do-gooder

In August, I wrote about the relationship between happiness and goodness. As I said then, I think that relationship is a worthy subject of debate. What’s less debatable is the fact that miserable goodness is neither attractive nor easy to sustain. As you seek to bring love into the world, remember to love yourself, too. And while you’re at it, take time to enjoy the beauty that surrounds you.

Consider your past with tenderness

Recently I’ve become aware of how harsh I can be with myself over past choices. These aren’t even bad choices. They’re merely choices I’ve made that I now question. One thing that has been haunting me was my choice to stay with the same employer for 21 years. Recently I accepted a new job. I feel a mixture of excitement and fear over the prospect of leaving my long-term employer and embracing something new. I don’t interpret my fear as “You’ve made the wrong choice.” Instead, I’ve told myself, “You stayed in the same place too long. You got too comfortable. Why didn’t you do this earlier?” I’ve looked at my long tenure in one place and asked myself if that choice was really a career setback.

I’ve been contemplating these things over the past few days, during which I’ve been reading The Way of Tea and Justice by Becca Stevens. In it, Stevens shares the stories of women who have left behind lives of prostitution and addiction. When I read the stories of women who were abused since childhood, I don’t judge them for turning to drugs to numb the pain. Yes, the choices they made were harmful, but I can understand why they made them. Were I in their shoes, who is to say that I would have done differently? When you’ve lived a limited life filled with pain, it can be hard to find the exit.

Then I realized: I understand the choices these women made better than I do my own. It’s easy for me to tell myself now that I was too comfortable and may have held myself back. But I need to remind myself of the circumstances during which I made my choices. When my grandparents were alive, I was grateful for the generous vacation time that enabled me to visit them frequently. While I juggled both work and motherhood, I appreciated the fact that my employer was a great place for work-life balance. I appreciated my workplace’s location, which allowed us to enroll our child in a charter school nearby for several years. And when my husband went through a period of career instability, my job’s stability was a blessing to our family.

Not only that, but those years with one employer weren’t even the years of stagnation I’m tempted to see them as in hindsight. I earned a promotion and a master’s degree during that time. I took on extra work that was not part of my regular duties — writing magazine columns and editing a magazine in addition to my marketing role. And outside of work, I wrote and published my first book.

Yes, I was “comfortable” with one employer for a long period of time, but I had good reasons for staying where I was, and I accomplished a lot while I was there. I need to be as gentle with myself for the choices I made as I am with the women whose stories I’ve been reading. And if you are like me, perhaps it is time for you to be gentle with yourself over past choices, too. After all, living with “what if’s” and regret doesn’t do a thing to change your life… or the world. As long as you mull over the past, you’ll remain stuck in it and unable to move forward. So let it go. If you need to ask forgiveness for something or make amends with someone, go do that. But then you need to put your past behind you and step forward into the future.

Go on a retreat

In The Way of Tea and Justice, Stevens explains the importance of retreats for those who wish to be of service to the world.

I love the image in the Gospels of the disciples going to a lonely place to find time to focus and talk with their teacher alone. They had to get away from the crowds, not because they didn’t love them but so they could love them more.

I’ve already written about the joy I take in solitary retreats, but you don’t need to spend a few days in a hermitage to benefit from a retreat. As Stevens reminds readers, you can take mini-retreats every day — even by simply lingering over a cup of tea alone or with someone with whom you can really talk. Stepping away periodically from the busyness and business of everyday life will give you the opportunity to take a breath, get  your bearings, and ground yourself as you strive to make a difference in the lives of others.

 

 

When I was in college, I joined my school’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter. I felt comfortable in our chapter’s meetings, probably because they were reflective of our small, liberal campus. But multi-campus InterVarsity events were different. I’d grown up in the Episcopal church and was unfamiliar with the evangelical subculture. What I encountered was very different from my experience. Worship consisted of praise songs led by a rock band. There were no hymnals; instead, lyrics were projected onto a screen, and you learned the tune from the band. A promotional video for a week-long summer session was filled with shots of people parasailing and water skiing and singing praise songs in a large group. Based on my initial encounters with evangelical subculture, I would describe it as loud, extroverted, and active. My opinion hasn’t changed.

It’s not that I didn’t like rock music or that Episcopalians don’t water ski. But as an introvert who loved hymns and had absolutely no interest in parasailing, I felt out of place.

While they rarely intend it, many organizations have a dominant culture. A workplace may encourage bonding or reward hard work with tickets to sporting events. This is great for sports lovers, but not so fun for people who couldn’t care less about sports. A church women’s group might include a knitting circle, while men might be encouraged to meet for a game of basketball. A church youth group might start each meeting with an ice-breaker guaranteed to inspire shy people to pray. “Please, Lord, don’t let anyone pick me!”

When an organization allows a dominant culture to form, people who don’t fit into that culture feel like they don’t belong. When my daughter was growing up, our church’s youth group schedule didn’t work well for us, but I was still disappointed she expressed no interest in youth group. Then I started to volunteer with the youth, and I understood. She wouldn’t have fit in. My own teenaged self wouldn’t have fit in. Although regular meetings did include time for small group discussions, their composition shifted from meeting to meeting. This meant that the shy kids never got a chance to warm up to their group over time. And most of the scheduled “extra” events had that “loud, extroverted, and active” flavor I associate with evangelicals: snow tubing, bowling and arcade games, a visit to a trampoline park. How could a quiet, nerdy kid ever hope to fit in?

The solution to the problem is simple: organizations need to listen and respond to all members, not just those who fit the dominant culture. And this listening needs to be ongoing. What worked 10 years ago may leave some people feeling alienated now.

Because people who don’t fit into the dominate group may be shy about sharing their preferences, leaders may want to distribute surveys to everyone in their organization. As you learn what people want, your goal is not to replace one dominate culture with another one. Instead, you should work to include people who have previously been left out. If you lead a workplace that encourages bonding by distributing sporting event tickets to employees and their guests, you don’t need to stop doing that. But if you find that some of your employees are more interested in the arts than sports, you might want to throw in some concert tickets once a year or host a social event at a small gallery in place of one of the sporting events you usually attend.

There will always be special interest groups that cater to certain individuals. There’s no need for a poker group to sometimes make knitting a part of their meetings; a Spanish conversation group doesn’t need to hold some of its meetings in French. But if you want your organization to be welcoming, it’s time to stop assuming that everyone fits in a certain mold. Listen — especially to the quiet folks, the ones who seem unengaged — and find ways to include them. Your group will be stronger for it.