Creating adult-adult relationships with your children

I received a very late b'day card ... Reasons I'm happy you were born, it read.  The sender is one of my children.  The 10 reasons written made me weep. I often receive other cards from my other child, post cards from travel destinations, thank you notes, etc. Both of these remarkable human beings treat me as a person separate and not simply their mother. They are 29 and 33 years old.I remember thinking when they were 17 and 21 that they might be two of the most interesting and fine humans I would ever meet (of course I am biased but it was also what I truly believed about them). I also thought I did not want to be stuck forever in the role of only "their mother" and never seen as a human who had passions beyond her children.  Full disclaimer:  that is exactly how I treated my parents, as if they existed only in the role of my mom and my dad. And I didn't want that relationship with my own children. I suspect my parents wanted more with me too.  I wish I had known or paid attention.  Where was my curiosity about the two remarkable humans who loved and raised me?  It was missing.But unlike my parents, I am more demanding. I knew I wanted adult-adult relationships with my children. So when they turned 21 and 17, I began a journey to make sure that was a possibility for us. That journey was treating them like they could teach me things. Of course, I still had things to teach or share with them, but I found I was profoundly interested in the world they inhabited (in spite of my fears about it) and more importantly I was interested in them and how they were navigating said world.Fast Forward: I have ended up creating a bit of a niche in coaching Millennials mid and high level executives.  I really do love them!  AND since they (millennials in general, my children in particular) were little I always had a hunch they knew things...were plugged into something different and I wanted in on that stuff.  Today, I would say this is probably always true. I used to think it was just true about that generation. I was wrong. I find it equally true about the one coming behind them. Those kiddos in Florida from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, I would love to talk to them. I am fascinated by a young woman, Emma Gonzales, still in high school, who held an entire audience on a large stage in Washington DC for 6+ minutes in silence while she simply witnessed her own suffering and that of her peers. Who are these people? I don't know but I want to...  and I hope you do too.  What if each generation that is born, along with it's particular challenges also comes with particular gifts, well suited to help society navigate a particular part of the evolutionary journey toward wholeness?But even if this is not true, what if the secret to experiencing a sense of belonging with anyone and everyone ...is recognizing that this person/generation in front of you has an experience you don't know or maybe you can't even understand BUT you might be able to  share. You could witness his or her story.  You can tell them you "see" them. They are real. Their experience is real.And that my friends is the difference.Those of you who know me, know that I don't miss a chance to "teach" to educate. BUT I also don't miss a chance to ask a "real question". My question, is born of my own genuine curiosity. All I have to remember is to not ask it aggressively so it reads as "justify yourself" but instead reads as real curiosity. So it reads as "wonder." My name is my reminder to Wonder … To Wonder what someone else knows, thinks, feels that I can't imagine.And therein lies the difference between a life of tedium and decline and a life filled with wonder and awe. 

Are you in the "real" conversation?

This is truly the 64,000 question.  Most of us engage the conversation we know how to have but often that is not the "real" conversation.  The conversation that you don't know how to have, is typically a "real" conversation, it's  the conversation you MUST have to move forward.   Other questions that are related to this one are:

• Are you doing your top priority work first or do you tackle the things that you know how to do easily first?
• Are you majoring in minors?
• Who inside you determines the focus and the direction of your energy expenditure during a day?  Is it your protective and scarcity/anxiety/stressed based self or is it your aspirational self?

Since our organizational and our personal lives are  a series of conversations day in and day out, if we aren't having the conversations that are most important (even if  hard), we can expect the following:

1. Decreased passionate engagement and satisfaction in our work and life.
2. Decreased energy, efficiency and productivity.
3. Decreased positive personal and organizational results.

But when we do have the "real" conversations, the ones we MUST have, we can expect the following:

1. Increased engagement for ourselves and others.
2. Increased connection  to our colleagues and ourselves.
3. Increased sense of empowerment, for playing big and not small.
4. Increased efficiency, energy and productivity.
5. Increased positive personal and organizational results.

If you agree you want to have the "real" conversation, the one you MUST have, the first step is COURAGE.   And where do you find that courage?  For many of us it is found in reconnecting with our personal mission and purpose for our work and our lives.  We find it through our hearts and what matters to us.  Did you know that the root of the word Courage is Coeur for heart.  Ask yourself:

1. In my moments of "Flow" in my work and my personal life, what is it that excites and compels me?  What gives me energy?
2. Why  does my work matter to me?  To others?

The second step is COMMITMENT and action.  After you have brought to the forefront of your heart and mind the meaning and purpose of your life and your work, then make a list of the conversations you are avoiding, including any with yourself.  Rank order the list from easiest to most difficult. Then, make a commitment to go after them one at a time, until you have made it through the list.  Starting with the easiest allows you build on your successes and achieve positive momentum to continue to engage the "real" conversations that arise in all of our lives.The third step is to APPRECIATE and acknowledge yourself for shifting avoidance to positive forward moving action.   

The ideal and the real...

Mom's pin-curled hair, now loose and blowing in the March Wisconsin winds as she applies the clothes pins to the wet laundry on the clothes lines strung through the backyard by my father.  Four children, I the oldest at 8 years, followed by three more all two years apart.  Her life.  Her busy and full life.  Many fighting for her lap and her attention.  "Mama",  "Mom", "Mary" ...my mother and many mothers' lives in the 1950s.  It was a different time.  Another time.   Or is it?I watch my young friends, juggle work schedules and a variety of enrichment classes for multiple children.  They are having their children closer together, like my parents generation did.  And they are having larger families.  As I sit on the large patio of the local city golf course looking out ...and back in time...I am struck with the cycles of life.When I was in that jam-packed family and house-holding phase of my own life, I missed time to read, time for me, time for museums, brunches and gallery walks.  Now I have much time for all of these things.  And I miss the sound of "mom" "momma".  I miss being sought after and adored.  I miss the fullness.  The busyness of it all.  Truth be told each phase of life has its exquisite beauties AND the places it falls short.  I advise a young client who currently has no romantic love in her life to enjoy this time because when love finds her again her life and time, will no longer be primarily about just her and her own preferences.  But do I heed my own advice?Not so much...Do I wake up excited about being the sole person I get to please and care for today?  Somedays.  Today, this day, I glance back and wish that I understood 20 years ago that to everything there is indeed a season.  Such a life-long challenge for this visionary, this midwife of change and possibility, to fully embrace whatever cycle I am in, rather than lean into the next "ideal" vision, I glimpse.  For too often that "ideal" arose out of an anxiety or sense of lack.  Years back, when covered over in motherhood, I wondered if there would ever be time for me again.  Would there be enough?  Was I enough?  And when I thought that thought I was leaning away from the reality of my life without deeply embracing it for its particular beauties and flaws.  So often the inner dialogue then was "I better..."  "I need to..." "and I have to..."So now when I hear myself say "I better______"  and note an anxiety that time is running out, or that something negative will happen if I don't act now, I breathe and question that thought.  Same thing with "I need to______".  or "I have to_________."   And often I discover that these thoughts have fear-scarcity-lack or some sort of anxiety lurking at their base.For example, today I could say to myself  "Nancy you need to appreciate your current state of being single."  And if I respond to that inner command it is ultimately a lack-based response.  Ditto, if I say "Nancy, while you are still single you better enjoy and make the most of it."  But, what happens, if I say to myself,  "Nancy, lucky lady, you get the privilege of a low maintenance life with enough time to focus on those things that you set aside during the years you were raising your children"?Shift is what happens.  Shift inside of me.  Shift to a deep gratitude and a wholehearted embrace of the life I have been given.

Psyche (aka your unconscious): Holds all the trump!

More and more neuroscience is demonstrating the limits of the logical and the rational.  Thus proving C.G. Jung, (Jungian Psychology) to have been a prophet.  The power of the unconscious, the mysterious and unfathomable, within each and everyone of us is truly breathtaking.  AND it is efficient!  How does it get better than that?!I write about this because there are tools that one can use (many of which I have practiced for almost 2 decades) that help us actually hear the voice of our own psyche.  AND why that matters is because it turns out ..that it is not "Father who knows best" but Psyche.  (Yes, I am that old!)Our own sweet souls are what will make the best and happiest decisions on any and all matter of preference for each of us.  Whether it be the next car we buy, the person we live with or career path we take...or which pair of shoes to buy and where to go for dinner.    Psyche (soul) always speaks to us in the language of feelings, energy, moods and dreams.  She is always letting us know what will make us happy in the long run.So why aren't we happier?  Because our Strategic Mind generally overrules her and so quickly we often don't hear her at all.    She says, "I want light and space."  Strategic mind jumps in with "We can't move, we don't have time and where will we find....blah, blah, blah."  Conversation over...except it isn't because Psyche will now start to disturb our peace with ennui or discontent or weird dreams.  AND she won't stop.Our distrust of her is part and parcel of our inherent distrust of joy and happiness.  (See my post:  Trusting Joy).  Most of us trust suffering and struggle more than we do joy and happiness.  That is why we mostly change through the school of hardknocks.   What would happen is when Psyche whispered "I want light and space." we would respond with curiosity with "Tell me more"?Maybe we allow Strategic Mind (SM) to register it's concerns immediately...but in the spirit of a brainstorm, instead of control.SM:  "Look, the easy way would be to change our exisiting space if that is possible, but why is it you want light and space and are there other ways we could achieve that, because moving is a a big chunk of time and money?"And then the ideas surface.  The brainstorm is on.  Strategic mind doesn't have to and should not just say "yes" to Psyche, it is meant to be a true conversation between the rational and irrational within us.  We can learn how to stay in the tension of the conflicting needs within our own minds, knowing that one day something greater than either "move or stay here and ignore the need for light and space" will emerge.  Einstein said, "you can't solve a problem with the level of thinking that created it."  I say, ask yourself where you are stuck.  AND put those two opposites together and ask "how can I have both X and Y?"  Then settle in and wait, trusting that an answer will come.  Stay open.  Wait for what is fresh, new and alive to arrive.  

Part 1: Moving from one year into the next ...

Let my history then, be a gate unfastened to a new life and not a barrier to my becoming.  David Whyte   We humans are such funny creatures.  We have stories about everything and everyone ~ even ourselves!  Maybe especially ourselves.  And unfortunately, we ~ I ~ stick like crazy glue to that story.  Think about it.  When was the last time you surprised yourself by allowing some otherness, some unknown frontier to rise up and … arrest you?  Alter your path?  Carl Jung called that God.  We often think it is the devil!  How dare life deliver anything but our expected results, right?What is also true of us, is that most of us have a story that often differs in small or large ways from others’ stories about us.  Today, on the eve of a new year, we invite you to step outside your story about your history and who you are and who you can be.   Who exists beyond that story?  Discover your unknown, your unclaimed otherness, your becoming.…not known because not looked for…(T.S. Elliot)  So, why not consider seriously aligning with the call of 21st century life?  To trust and welcome the unknown, rather than resist it.  “To learn to love the unknown for itself, to take it gladly like a lantern to help you see where ordinary light will not go.”  For me this line suggests we align ourselves with a positive expectancy, similar to what we felt on Christmas morning as children.  What would be under the tree for us?  Our most cherished desires or something else, yet still wonderful?  Maybe more wonderful?  You are leaders, whether you are leading just yourself, into authenticity or an organization of hundreds.  You are leaders.  And you are 21^st century leaders, living in challenging, uncertain, and unpredictable  and terribly complex times. Now, how do you find your way to say YES to that fierce embrace?

EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

AND

EVERYTHING IS AT STAKE.

What an amazing time to be alive and part of history.  If anyone needs to become comfortable in the unfamiliar, the unknown, it is us: we rational planners and doers. I invite you to place, who you think you are, what you think you love, and what you think is possible for and through you, on your right side.  Set them down.  And allow your left side, your own dear unknown, to offer, to reveal, to announce itself to you.  As you move from this year passing away, it matters to name what is done and complete for yourself so that you can create the space to invite new growth and imagination into your life in 2013.  Consider using these questions to help you become clear about what needs to recede or die back in your life:

1. What is finished, complete in your life now? 
2. Where have you achieved substantial mastery and need to allow that particular gift to recede in order to create space for your next level of growth?
3. Where in your life might you be taking a strength of yours and over using it, or applying it to something that doesn’t need it?   For example, let's say you are a good idea generator.  You have most of them at meetings.  But what if NOW it is time to develop discernment.  The ability to pick between ideas, the one that will really hit it out of the park.    That means listening and observing and reflecting.  Opposite of the idea generator mode.  But if you keep going to the “creative” idea generator, it will actually become a liability.    This is an example of over-doing a strength so it becomes a liability.