As we move into the time of year when professional and college football teams schedule their play-off games, I’m sharing some of my favorite quotes from the famous Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. Take a look at some of his quotes and see which ones inspire you the most. First, here’s some history about […]
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Dynamics of Decision Making
This post is about decision-making. One of my clients sent me the following article years ago. I just stumbled upon it again and realized how much wisdom there is in it. Take a hard look at how decisions get made within your organization. What team myths are getting in your way of making good […]
The Magic of Abundance
Good day, team,
The coach’s challenge this week is about abundance. Look around you. What do you see? Do you have everything you need? Do you have everything you want? What is the difference? Are you grateful for what you have, or do you find yourself constantly longing for what you don’t?
Recently, I’ve been reading a book about life in the slums of Bombay, India. Most of the people in this book live in small, handmade huts on the outskirts of the city. They own a change of clothes, a toothbrush, a cup, a plate, a fork and a mat to sleep on. (And these are the lucky ones!) I am amazed at how happy these people are and how they experience abundance in their lives. They are grateful for the smallest things, because they have so little. I’m also reading a book about a young girl who was born into a family of billionaires and has all she’s ever wanted. Her life is characterized by continual displeasure with everyone and everything around her. The contrast between the two stories is obvious: Abundance is not about having more and more things, but about our attitude toward the things we have.
We live in a world of enormous wealth and consumerism. The selection of products is overwhelming at times. Do you ever find yourself in the store unable to decide among the 30 brands of laundry detergent on the shelf? I often think that the time I spend analyzing which brand to buy is worth far more to me than any benefit I might derive from saving money or getting better quality with the “right” choice. I have found that I’m actually happier if I have a more limited selection. Faced with too many options, I chafe for what isn’t available, and then I’m dissatisfied with what is.
Cultivating an awareness of our surroundings is one of the best ways to experience abundance. Right now, we are enjoying the beauty of autumn as it moves into winter. Geese are migrating to their southern habitats and small birds are grateful to find birdfeeders full of seeds. Each of us can experience the abundance of this season, but only if we take the time to see it, smell it, touch it. This time of year we can be especially grateful for some aspect of our indoor environment: a warm fire and a good book to read, the beauty of candlelight on such short days, or good food with family and friends around the dining table. Perhaps you buy something new for yourself to wear over the holidays and you appreciate how well it fits or how nice the cloth feels on your skin. The next time you laugh with a friend or team member, try experiencing the abundance of being rich in relationships.
When we feel abundant, we tend to attract abundance. When we cultivate an attitude of scarcity, our minds focus on what we don’t have, and in turn, we attract less of what we need and want. Try finding something in your environment this week that makes you truly grateful. Experience how happy and abundant this appreciation makes you feel; enjoy life as William Blake expressed it in “Auguries of Innocence.”
“To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.”
Have a great week!
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.
Making The Most of Our Small Moments
Good day, team,
This week’s challenge highlights a truism about our lives. In the grand scheme of things, we are here for a brief moment in time. Our lives often seem like a long adventure, but compared to the age of our sun, or the amount of time the young redwood trees in my local park have been growing, a human life is not very long at all.
This became even more apparent last Friday evening when my husband and I attended the wake of the brother of one of his colleagues. The man who passed away—affectionately nicknamed “Rabbit” at an early age by his siblings—was not very old, but he had led a full and unusual life. Some said he lived so much life in such a short one that his passing didn’t seem altogether strange. But in looking around at the eclectic crowd of friends, family and acquaintances who collected last Friday to pay homage to Rabbit, I realized that we were all touched by his death because it reminded each of us of our mortality and that we too shall travel his path sometime in the future.
When I awoke Saturday morning, I pondered this idea of our mortality. I felt a deep appreciation for being able to get out of bed, brush my teeth, walk downstairs, receive a kind “Good morning” from my loving husband, feel the swipe of the cat’s tail on my ankle, enjoy the pleasure of that first sip of coffee. Such small things, but so lovely.
Later in the morning, our grandsons came to stay with us for the weekend. Upon seeing me, their eyes lit up, and I was greeted with the familiar “Hi, Nana!” and hugs. Again, small moments, but for anyone who has had this experience with children, there is nothing finer and more life-affirming.
Someone said about Rabbit, “He had a kindness about him and a rare ability to be so present to anyone he met; he made people feel like he truly understood them and that they were special.” He exchanged those small moments of love and consideration with anyone he connected with.
Your challenge this week is to make the most of your small moments. There is nothing more satisfying than surfacing to whatever is actually in front of you and allowing yourself to be fully aware of it. Let yourself be in whatever is happening, and revel in those small miracles that occur every moment of every day all around and within us.
At the end of our days, perhaps we can look back over the span of a lifetime and see that we allowed ourselves to be alive in all our small moments. Whether it’s the feel of the chair underneath you as you sit at your desk at work or the breeze as it softly brushes over your forehead when you walk outside, these little occurrences are what a life is made up of. Try appreciating them in whatever form they take.
As Michel de Montaigne said, “Life does not occur in large events, but in many small ones that enrich the lives we live.”
Have a good week!
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.
Appreciating The Fruits of Our Labor
Good day, team,
Today is Labor Day, and it’s a day of rest for many of us, a day to reflect on the fruits of our labors. As we move from summer to Indian summer, the cornucopia of life appears on our dining tables in the form of fresh fruit, corn, vegetables, fish, etc. It’s a wonderful time to see how we reap what we sow.
This particular holiday weekend is one of the results of organized labor in this country. Many of us don’t realize what organized labor has done for us over the years: Holiday weekends, minimum wage, health benefits, a guarantee of certain labor practices that protect employees, even weekends are a result of what organized labor has put into place for the American worker.
I grew up in a family that thought organized labor was a bad thing, and I heard many negative stories about labor leaders and the effect unions had on companies. As a consequence, I don’t know very much about unions, and so today I decided to do some research about it. I was amazed to find that much of what I took for granted as common practice in most companies had something to do with organized labor’s attempts to improve conditions for workers.
Here are a few things I learned about Labor Day:
“The holiday originated in Canada out of labor disputes (“Nine-Hour Movement”) first in Hamilton, then in Toronto, Canada, in the 1870s, which resulted in a Trade Union Act which legalized and protected union activity in 1872 in Canada. The parades held in support of the Nine-Hour Movement and the printers’ strike led to an annual celebration in Canada. In 1882, American labor leader Peter J. McGuire witnessed one of these labor festivals in Toronto. Inspired from Canadian events in Toronto, he returned to New York and organized the first American Labor Day on September 5 of the same year.
“The first Labor Day in the United States was celebrated on September 5, 1882, in New York City. In the aftermath of the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the 1894 Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with labor as a top political priority. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike. Cleveland was also concerned that aligning a U.S. labor holiday with existing international May Day celebrations would stir up negative emotions linked to the Haymarket Affair. All 50 U.S. states have made Labor Day a state holiday.”
Upon reading this background, I did further research into the Haymarket Affair and the Pullman Strike. I discovered that, over the years, many people have died trying to defend the rights of workers in our country and that the struggle to create good working conditions for people has not been without great strife and hardship. I now have a better understanding that much of what I take for granted in the workplace didn’t always exist and that those who came before me had to fight and die to increase the rights of the American worker.
This week’s challenge is to find one thing in your work environment that you take for granted and rekindle an appreciation for it. Perhaps you or your child goes to the doctor and the receptionist tells you that your cost for the doctor’s visit is a $10 co-pay; without your company’s health benefits, that visit could have cost you $150. Maybe you have to care for an aging parent and the Family Medical Leave Act allows you to do that while still retaining the right to return to your job. Recently, I found out that a friend of mine is going to take further advanced education courses that her employer is reimbursing her for so she is more qualified for her next promotion. The next time you work more than 40 hours in a week, pay close attention to your overtime pay, if you are an hourly worker. Or walk into your lunch room, cafeteria or break room: Is coffee and tea available for free there?
These benefits may seem like small things, but we live in a world where many other countries have no labor laws at all, and people, including children, work seven days a week for pennies with no one to protect their human rights. Be grateful this week for your current employment situation. It’s easy to complain about working conditions, but when you stop to consider that we work in relatively safe circumstances with people who get paid to care about our general welfare, it’s worth stopping for a moment to appreciate our good fortune.
I find the words of Abraham Lincoln best express this appreciation:
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”
Have a good week!
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.
A Small Exercise You Can Do When You’re Feeling Stuck
Good day, team,
Many people seek me out as a coach because they’re not sure what they want to do in life or they’ve been doing something (usually it’s their job) that they don’t enjoy any longer. Most people want to be able to do what they love. But often, they have no idea what that something else is, and so they hire a coach to help them discover their new path.
This week’s challenge comes from the article “What is Work? Finding your Path by Laying the Bricks” by Sharon Glassman. The article traces the steps by which the writer’s naturopathic physician discovered her chosen profession. It also describes how, while in naturopathic school, this woman became a bricklayer to pay for her schooling. Though she had grown up wanting to be a doctor, she found over time that naturopathy was a much better fit with her values and experience. She also learned some invaluable lessons while working as a bricklayer that influenced her path as a doctor.
Most notable for me in the article was an exercise she has all of her patients do when they tell her they feel stuck in their lives:
–Write a list of how you nourish yourself: mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
–Most people have an area that’s underfed. Balance the system, and new ideas will emerge.
I gave her suggestion a lot of thought this week and realized that almost all of us are a bit askew in one or all of these areas most of the time. That is, we have to make an effort to keep them continually fed and well-balanced.
In my case, I used to meditate regularly. In the past year or so, that practice has slipped away, not because I haven’t had the time (in fact, I’ve had more time to meditate daily since I haven’t been traveling as much for work), but because, well, I don’t know exactly why, I just stopped making it a priority. So the other day I decided to start meditating again in the mornings. Already, after just a few days, I feel remarkably better: more balanced, calmer, less agitated by bothersome trivia.
Successfully adding a meditation practice back into my daily schedule encouraged me, so I decided to make a list as the doctor had suggested. I was surprised to find that the areas I thought were getting plenty of attention were actually lacking, and vice versa. My mental life gets loads of attention, and my emotional life gets a good amount too, although I need to be more cognizant of how it gets fed. But my spiritual life is somewhat lacking at the moment.
Your challenge this week is to try the naturopath’s exercise. Write down how you nourish yourself in these three areas. See if one area gets too much of your time and attention. Create a better balance by putting your energy into the areas that you’ve been ignoring or that have become stale.
See what happens when you achieve a better balance. Perhaps, as the author suggests, new ideas will emerge. Maybe your head and heart will gain more clairity about a troubling situation, or you’ll find some new inspiration by changing your weekly spiritual practice.
We may experience some uncertainty about how to live our lives in a more fulfilling way, but as the author notes, “This idea applies to the work of work itself. Some days we’re laying the bricks. Some days we’re walking on them, en route to our next step. What is it? We may not know that…yet. But that’s okay.”
Have a good week,
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
P.S.: The coach will be on vacation next week. I’ll be back to write a challenge for Labor Day.
© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Importance of Taking a Vacation
Good day, team,
As this summer ebbs and flows, I’m reminded how important it is to allow ourselves the luxury of taking a vacation. Or, if you prefer, spending time doing nothing at all.
When I mention this idea of doing nothing to some of my clients, I get an “Ugh!” in response or the comment “I can’t just do nothing. I have to do something; otherwise, I’ll get bored!” Sometimes I ask these clients to make the something they have to do be the doing nothing itself, but that doesn’t work well for people who feel that a day without achieving something is a waste. In my case, I have to occasionally stop doing everything to see who I am and where I am. There’s something deliciously calming about the experience. It’s a mini-respite.
On a bit grander scale, my idea of vacation looks like this: lying around on the beach with my husband, where the temperature is 75 degrees and the ocean not much colder, looking at a gorgeous view of the ocean with my favorite book tucked under my arm, and knowing there’s nothing on the agenda for days ahead of us. Or looking at wonderful paintings in one of the world’s great museums with fellow art lovers, having dinner at a scrumptious restaurant later that evening, and then walking back to spend the night at a lovely inn. Or visiting friends in Europe who’ve managed to create a lifestyle that encompasses much of the above on a more consistent basis. Or hiking with my favorite hiking buddies somewhere in Great Britain for the morning, then having lunch at the local pub, a nap in the afternoon, dinner that evening that includes yorkshire pudding, and later on, sitting by the fire while engaging in scintillating conversation, sipping on a great scotch. Or sitting on my front steps admiring the sunset, enjoying a glass of cold white wine on a hot summer evening, and watching the street scene (which in my NE neighborhood can be quite entertaining), thinking of not much at all, just watching the world out in front of me.
On a bit grander scale, my idea of vacation looks like this: lying around on the beach with my husband, where the temperature is 75 degrees and the ocean not much colder, looking at a gorgeous view of the horizon with my favorite book tucked under my arm, and knowing there’s no agenda for days ahead of us. Or looking at wonderful paintings in one of the world’s great museums with fellow art lovers, having dinner at a scrumptious restaurant later that evening, and then walking back to spend the night at a lovely inn. Or visiting friends in Europe who’ve managed to create a lifestyle that encompasses much of the above on a more consistent basis. Or hiking with my favorite hiking buddies somewhere in Great Britain for the morning and then having lunch at the local pub, a nap in the afternoon, a dinner that evening that includes yorkshire pudding, and sitting by the fire while engaged in scintillating conversation, while sipping on a great scotch. Or sitting on my front steps admiring the sunset, enjoying a glass of cold white wine on a hot summer evening, and watching the street scene (which in my NE neighborhood can be quite entertaining), thinking of not much at all, just watching the world out in front of me.
Do I have your attention yet? This week’s challenge is a reminder that if you haven’t taken a vacation this year, now is the time to go or at least plan one for the fall. I wonder how many of us haven’t spent time doing the things that made us really happy when we were kids. I used to spend my summers in Cape Cod and in Maine. One of my favorite things to do was look for shells on the beach. I haven’t done that in many moons. Perhaps I could arrange a vacation around that idea. Maybe you haven’t been fishing in a long time, and could plan such a vacation with your kids or grand kids. One of my friends recently traveled to Peru and tromped around Machu Picchu, then took only local buses into small villages and made friends with some Peruvians who took her in for a week and infused her with their loving hospitality and culture. She’s made new friends for life.
We forget that the process of renewal and regeneration is crucial to our well-being. We forget how to take a vacation and find ourselves steeped in too much to do, in lives that have become increasingly difficult to keep up with. Sooner or later, we forget what makes us happy and how to let go of all the things that keep us trapped in our daily existence. Life becomes very narrow, and our ability to think new thoughts, feel different feelings and experience new sensations diminishes to a dangerous degree. As my shaman used to say, “Don’t let your inner fire go out.” In other words, don’t let the momentum of daily life hypnotize you into taking care of it every minute of every day, using up so much of your energy that there’s nothing left to reignite your flame.
The dog days of summer will be over before we know it. Don’t miss the chance to enjoy some of it by relaxing, refreshing and doing absolutely nothing, if it pleases you!
Have a good week,
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.
How To Set Healthy Boundaries at Work
Good day, team,
By special request, I’m resending a challenge I first sent out in October 2006; it’s still relevant today.
The coach’s challenge this week is about setting healthy boundaries with people at work. Professional boundaries are important because they define the limits and responsibilities of all members of a team. When workplace boundaries are clearly defined, the organization works more efficiently because redundant work assignments are eliminated and people are held accountable for specific tasks. When everyone in an organization is aware of who is responsible for what, a healthier workplace results. It then becomes very difficult for someone to blame others for his or her failed or inadequate performance, and managers can clearly identify superlative contributions.
With professional boundaries and priorities clearly defined, a group can function effectively even in the absence of its leader. If everyone on a team understands what to do, how to do it, and when to do it, then team members feel safe in their roles. A smooth-functioning organization is a tangible demonstration of the team leader’s commitment to mutual success, which creates trust. Every team leader is responsible for setting the tone of the group by clearly defining acceptable and unacceptable workplace behavior.
Effective leaders understand that failing to define boundaries, having no boundaries, or having inappropriately rigid boundaries can negatively affect their organization and employees. In some cases, boundaries need to be firm. For example, lying, stealing, and verbally or physically abusing others are never allowed.
It may sound as if the responsibility to create a smooth-functioning organization falls only upon the team leaders; however, every team member has a role to play. Each person must be willing to speak up to a colleague or supervisor, clearly define any problem, and help find a resolution that works for everyone.
Interpersonal boundaries must also be negotiated, because they substantially impact workplace productivity and the quality of the social environment. Parameters for interacting include the following:
* The tone, attitude and approach co-workers use with each other.
* The ability to focus on work objectives even when people dislike each other or are in conflict.
* The ability to effectively set limits with those who have poor boundaries.
* Clearly defined consequences when a boundary is violated, and actions that back up these words.
Here are some suggestions for setting healthy boundaries with your team members*:
1. Know your limits: what you can do well within the allotted time frame.
Don’t exaggerate your ability by overselling it. Give accurate estimates. Delivering a good product on time will improve your credibility, while missing deadlines or delivering a substandard product will only hurt your reputation.
2. Tactfully and openly communicate about goals and limitations.
Don’t try to undersell or misrepresent your ability. Underselling artificially prevents you from being able to demonstrate your professional skills, which might affect your career advancement. When discussing your limitations, focus on what you want and what you are willing to do to get it. Keep your focus on your positive intentions; ask for help when it’s needed to ensure good quality work; actively engage in problem solving; and don’t complain about the problem. Ensure that others are receiving the message you intended by asking for feedback when it’s not forthcoming.
3. Be available to discuss differences and reach agreements.
Reflect back your understanding of the other person’s needs, interests and concerns. Attempt to negotiate win-win solutions.
4. Don’t be afraid to let people know if they’re acting inappropriately. Workplace bullying is much more common than we think; it can come in the form of expressing undo negativity toward another, intentionally excluding others from team activities, or ganging up on someone. It can also come in the form of domination by withholding information or not actively engaging and contributing to the work. It’s important to let people know when they act inappropriately, that it is unacceptable and won’t be tolerated. The emotional health and safety of an organization depends on direct and clear communication when someone has trespassed on a professional and/or personal boundary.
This week, try setting healthy boundaries with your team members. You’ll find that establishing boundaries and priorities go hand in hand because they both help manage interpersonal relationships in the workplace. Together they go a long way toward establishing productive work environments based on trust. Competent and credible leaders understand these principles and consistently model them for their staff.
Have a great week!
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
* Special thanks to the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program at UCSF for most of the information in this challenge.
The Value of Taking the First Step
Good day, team,
This week’s challenge is about a dilemma I’ve wrestled with for the past couple of years. I think it’s one that many people can relate to: wanting to do something and not being able to find the way to do it, to continue to stay motivated or to push yourself into a completely unknown area to get what you want.
I’ve been trying to put these coach’s challenges into a book for the past two years. I’ve written one each week since 2004, so somewhere in the neighborhood of 200+ challenges about a variety of subjects. But every time I try to get them published, many things get in my way, I lose momentum and yet another month goes by without any progress.
Maybe because I’m a coach I’ve been analyzing why I can’t seem to accomplish this project. Lots of other people publish books about all kinds of things and don’t seem to have a difficult time doing it. So where do I get stuck?
Recently, I realized that, underneath it all, I have a pretty negative attitude about self-help books and, in some ways, about the coaching profession. I walk into a book store and see all the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” type books, and they make me want to run out of the store as quickly as possible. I look at the e-mails I get from various coaching associations, federations and institutions I belong to, and the message is so often the same: “Live your best life,” “I have the secret to unlock your dreams,” or the one I saw last week “How to remember what you learned in kindergarten.” The last one made me laugh. A client once said to me, “I really don’t understand why I pay you money to remind me about what I learned in kindergarten.” Of course, if he remembered what he learned in kindergarten, I would not have to remind him, but that’s another story.
So what do you do when you love to write and, for whatever reason, this is the mode in which you express yourself, but you just can’t get it together to take a book project to completion? How do you get past the bad attitude and the cynical voice in your head that says, “Who really cares about all this stuff?” “Why would anybody be interested in reading it?”
Fortunately, I have lots of great clients and friends who encourage me to put these challenges in a book if for no other reason other than they would like them indexed by subject so they can go back and read the ones that might help them with a particular challenge they are facing. And, when I think about it, this is the whole reason I want to compile them in a book in the first place.
My good friend and sometimes coaching associate Kate Dwyer sent me this great comment by Eleanor Blumenberg, of Santa Monica, California, in reaction to a piece in the current N.Y. Times book review.
“I continue to be amazed at the number of advice books listed each week in the book review as best sellers. I have led a long, productive life based on only two pieces of advice, both of which I learned as a preschooler some 80 years ago. First, I try to play nicely with everybody; second, if I am crabby, I take a nap. What more does anyone need to know?”
At the end of the day, I happen to agree with Ms. Blumenberg. It doesn’t mean that I think the coaching profession is just a bunch of hooey; I’ve seen too many people derive great benefits from it. But there is a practical side of me that often feels we all talk too much, and if we could remember some basic principles with which to guide ourselves, our lives might be simpler.
So what’s the challenge this week? Frankly, I’m not too sure. Maybe it’s about aiming to accomplish one specific project, and, no matter how much self doubt you experience, continuing to strive for that goal. Perhaps it’s about challenging yourself to find the basic values that guide you day by day and to remind yourself of them more often. You choose this week, and let me know how it goes.
Have a good week,
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Dangers of Certainty
Good day, team,
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been tuning in to a recurring message that’s come from the news media, friends, clients and even a bumper sticker a few days ago. The message is “Beware of certainty.”
This week’s challenge is about the danger of being so convinced about something that your mind and heart become closed to any other possibility. Here’s a good example of what I mean.
Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense during the Johnson administration, died a few weeks ago. There’s been much written about him lately, but what struck me most were clips from the film “The Fog of War,” a documentary that includes many interviews of McNamara reflecting on how his views had changed over the years. In one scene, the interviewer asked him to speak about how his views on the war in Vietnam changed over the years. Here was a man who was absolutely certain that the Russians were behind the push of communism into Vietnam. If Vietnam fell to communist ideology, so would all of Southeast Asia, victim of the domino effect: If one falls, the entire row falls. Now, in his later years, McNamara realized how mistaken he had been and how almost all of his decisions about the war had been based on faulty thinking.
Over time, he began to see that his certainty had caused the deaths of thousands and that much of what he had based his decisions upon wasn’t true. Earlier in his career, he said with complete confidence, “It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives.” He came to regret these words, and many of the actions he took during the war haunted him until the day he died.
Similarly, the Bush administration was certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq poised to use against the United States. Life-changing decisions were made based on the administration’s certainty. We now know that those decisions were based on false information.
I wondered this week why people cling to certainty and the false sense of security that comes from thinking it’s this way or no way. Why do we feel more secure when someone says, “No doubt about it”?
In one of his interviews, McNamara explained that, as a younger man, he had been taught that indecision and lack of certainty were seen as signs of weakness. Even if you weren’t 100 percent certain, you had to show others that you were completely convinced that your decisions were correct. Where doubt existed, the potential for opposition and rebellion could occur.
History has shown us many examples of how dangerous this kind of thinking can be. The Holocaust is probably our primary example. And yet, as human beings, we can see how much we desire a simple, sure solution to all our questions. The desire to come up with an answer, to put something in place, is very strong. The feeling of getting it done and not having to think about it anymore is satisfying.
I’ve learned how important it is to question my thinking, particularly when I am completely convinced of something. I try to remember that there is no such thing as an absolute and that my thinking is often influenced by my present circumstances. Change those circumstances, and my thinking and feelings change as well.
This week, try questioning your certainties. Ask yourself, am I missing another way of seeing this situation? Is my belief in this subjective? Is it possible that I might be wrong or that I’m basing my certainty on information that is not completely true? Am I able to see other points of view? Are my views excluding others from participating? Are my thinking and actions encouraging inclusiveness or exclusiveness?
One of the best ways to broaden our thinking is to ask others what they think. If you see yourself being absolutely certain of something, ask someone who doesn’t always agree with you what he or she thinks. I often check my thinking with my husband. He and I have similar values, but he often has just enough of a different viewpoint to get me to open my mind to new possibilities. I’ve also used the Internet to give me new ways of viewing situations. As much as I don’t like overly conservative viewpoints, I will go to such Web sites to read what people who disagree with me think. I’m always surprised by how certain they are of their views! In scoffing at their viewpoints, I have to admit that it’s the certainty in my liberal views that makes me judge the certainty in theirs.
In the editorial section of the newspaper this morning, I read a piece written to President Obama by a man who is dying. He appeals to the president to be honest with the American people about the economy. He writes, “So even as you speak words of hope and quell our fears with your steady presence, let us know that you proceed in the spirit of not being too sure because you cannot be, because no one can be, because a global economic meltdown is unprecedented in scope and nature.” Earlier, he quoted Judge Learned Hand: “The spirit of liberty is the spirit of not being too sure.”
Try asking better questions and digging more deeply into your opinions and views. See if there’s another way to look at the world around you. Remember that being flexible in your thinking and approach gives you more room to move when circumstances change, which they invariably will do.
Bertram Russell wrote, “The whole problem with the world is fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
Have a good week,
Kathleen
Kathleen Doyle-White
Pathfinders Coaching
(503) 296-9249
© Copyright 2009 Pathfinders Coaching, Scout Search, Inc., all rights reserved.