But is it necessary?

Women often feel wrong about committing time or money to their own personal growth.  “My time belongs to my family,” you may believe.  And, particularly if you aren’t the primary financial provider in your household, you may feel guilty even thinking about investing in your own development as if it were a superfluous luxury, despite significant expenditures for the recreation and development of other members of your family. It seems that women are socialized to reflexively apply this double standard and to subordinate themselves financially, as if their contributions had no solid value to the family.

But being a mom, being a wife, creating a home, running a household — and likely holding a job as well — all involve a certain amount of wear and tear, and they necessitate some recovery.

So is self development a luxury?  There’s more research every day that shows it is not.  In this brief post, I want to share some examples of these findings.  For instance, did you know that:

• Studies show that people who work to gain insight into themselves, their fears, their reality and their stress have fewer physical issues.
• Everyday stress, as well as less usual trauma, affects the functioning of the immune system and increases vulnerability to physical illness.
• Research shows that immune function improves when people have a chance to process trauma.
• Understanding their own inner struggles with the help of therapy has been shown to result in increased metabolic stability for children with diabetes.
• Helping people change the way they think has produced improvement in conditions as varied as insomnia, irritable bowel, and even skin problems!
• Statistically, people with diabetes, asthma, hypertension and heart disease have been shown to do better physically over a five-year period if they participate in psychotherapy.  In fact, the longer the participation, the better they do.
• Preliminary studies show that not only does learning to think differently about yourself through “cognitive behavioral” strategies used in life coaching and therapy cause changes in the brain, those changes are different in a powerful way from the changes caused by antidepressant medication. It is theorized that the changes caused by personal development affect a part of the brain that increases your cognitive control over how you feel, whereas medication may merely decrease negative emotion regardless of your thoughts.  How much more powerful and permanent to be able to regulate your mood independently of a drug!

So you can see that the mind-body connection that you’ve intuitively known exists has been scientifically validated in powerful ways.  When you experience sea change — a powerful shift in your experience of self — there’s every reason to believe that your body benefits along with the renewed energy for life that personal growth always brings.

In fact, you might say that while following a path of personal transformation with a guide by your side does truly feel luxurious, wellness is not superfluous, nor can it really be called a luxury.

It’s very “in” to take responsibility for your shortcomings, and that can be a healthy thing to do.  Until, that is, it extends to taking responsibility for shortcomings that are not yours.   Automatically assigning blame to yourself isn’t always honorable; it’s sometimes just bad science.  It prevents you from seeing the whole picture — which would suggest fresh answers to old problems.

When has feeling like a Bad Person and, metaphorically speaking, Sending Yourself to Your Room ever made anything better? Doling out self-punishment does not sow the seeds needed for change.  In fact, it is debilitating; you’re less likely to have the reserves to try for change when you are feeling badly about yourself.

An alternative to reflex guilt when you’re unhappy with something you’ve done is to ask “Why?”  The objective is to promote understanding rather than blame.  This paves the way for alternatives to surface.  Here’s how it looks:

Step 1 – Ask Why?

• Why did I have that piece of candy?
• Why didn’t I take Annie’s homework to school?
• Why didn’t I walk the dog?
• Why did I need some distance from my significant other?

Step 2 – The “Affirmative Defense”

Celebrating the truth is key to sidestepping the guilt trap. Here’s how it sounds:

• Of course I ate it! I love chocolate! And also, by the way, sometimes I reach for it when I’m anxious because it makes me feel better.
• I didn’t take Annie’s work to her because my job as her mom is to build her ability to handle her responsibilities.  “Protecting” her from her mistakes would cripple her.
• You bet I didn’t walk the dog!  With only so many hours in the day, there were far more essential priorities to handle.
• Why would I be in the mood for intimacy? We just had a huge argument, and nothing has been resolved.  Once we connect again, I’ll probably feel differently.

Step 3 – Let your insight suggest options for the future.

Just as comprehending why someone has done something that hurt you allows you to move forward, looking inside yourself for the why of a choice that you regret surfaces new thinking on how to solve a problem in a more helpful way. Here are some examples, but remember, your own answers are likely to be completely different:

• Reaching for candy is a signal that I’m anxious — or a natural response to seeing something really good. Maybe next time I can insert a pause to figure out what’s going on before I inhale a box of truffles :).
• I think I’ll tell Annie why I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to bring her the things she forgets.  That way, she’ll know what to expect and, even if she’s unhappy about it, she’ll know I’m looking out for her.
• There are five people in this house; I think we could brainstorm how to make sure the dog gets a walk.
• When I pull away from my partner, I’m not being selfish or rejecting. It’s probably a signal that I need us to talk about something.

Walking under a thunder cloud of guilt leaves all of these insights buried; it’s just not constructive or effective.  And besides, and not least by any means, it hurts you.  So – perhaps you could try not to land there.  The next time you feel the cloud thickening, I hope you’ll try this process out.  Nine times out of ten, you’ll come back with a verdict of “Not Guilty, Your Honor.”  And the tenth time, when the responsibility is truly yours and there’s been some actual damage, keep any guilt you feel proportionate to the misstep — and then let it serve its legitimate function as a catalyst for you to empathically seek to resolve the issue.

If you’ve ever stopped here and there during the day to really analyze what you’re dealing with, you know it’s a lot more than you usually articulate.  You thought you were just trying to bring in the mail — but on the way, you found the puddle the dog left, the pile of socks and shoes in the den, and wouldn’t you know — the light didn’t come on when you opened the garage door.  Or — you’re working at the computer and discover that the updated browser is reconfigured or your software has been updated — and the simple task you set out to do now requires relearning the programs before you can get it done.

Most of these handicaps are never even articulated — but you can come to the end of a nonstop, busy day feeling that you’ve accomplished nothing!  Somewhere in that pile of details, you’ve lost yourself.

When you can sort through all of that to reconnect with your own gifts and accomplishments, tired as you may be, you’ll feel positive about tomorrow.  It’s a little like panning for gold.

Start by downloading Pure Gold.  Read on to learn how to use this energy-generating tool.

1. Save Pure Gold to your desktop so opening it is quick and easy.
2. At the end of the day — or whenever you want to capture a thought — open the document.
3. In the first column, record accomplishments.  Please don’t wait to win an award!  A worthy example might be: “I was able to help Beth make a decision to take her bath without having a tantrum…”
4. In the second column, take a minute to identify what it is about you that made it possible for you to do this: “…because I could empathize with how hard it was to come in from playing in the creek…”
5. In the third column, put into words the skill attached to this quality: “… and could convey that to her.”

There’s no one right way to do this; the columns are there to trigger your thinking.  It’s okay to leave some of them blank. What you’re striving to do is to put into words how you made a difference for the people you met up with today.  So many of these things are simple and fleeting — like asking a clerk, “How are you today?” and seeing the smile of appreciation that comes from being recognized as a person with feelings.  Others are technical, like work-related accomplishments.  They may have to do with relationships.  They may have to do with encouraging, validating, championing people — including yourself.

You’re on the right path if you find yourself rereading your list and thinking, “Wow, I did that!”

By definition :), Pure Gold is a valuable document.  Use it to “pan for the gold” of a tough day.  Read it when you’re feeling blue, to remind yourself of your values, your competency, your worth as a human being.  You might even use it to help you write a resume or consider a new career path.

However you put it to use, in this instance anyway, you’ll find that it’s the gold and not the devil that lies in the details.  Happy panning!

The psychological parallel to the thorn from that rosebush is what I refer to as an emotional thorn. Past trauma is an example of an emotional thorn that needs removal, and there are many smaller examples that happen every day. If you’ve been painfully misunderstood, that’s an emotional thorn.  If your feelings have been hurt by someone’s words, even accidentally, that’s an emotional thorn.  Stumbling over your words in a conversation with your boss; having your concerns treated dismissively — these are all simple splinters that can be extracted immediately, but stand to become infected, or, at the very least distracting, if they aren’t.  Misunderstandings create barriers that can seriously erode relationships. Your own mistakes and missteps, if not understood, can leave you with a festering sense of inadequacy.  Unprocessed trauma can do this, too.  All of this spells depression.

The point of the rosebush tale is that as notoriously penny-pinching as insurance companies are, no one suggested that the thorn could stay in.  No one said, “It’s a thorn, for crying out loud. Brave up!”

This was not magnanimous on their part.  It was simply cost-effective.  An embedded thorn can become infected — and then the bills really mount up.

The fact is, I did take the ignore-it-and-it’ll-go-away approach — for close to a year, and it did (mostly) stop hurting after awhile.  From my point of view, a little pain and the sort of tattoo effect of the splinter required far less in the way of personal fortitude than doing something about them.  (Evidently the doctor had encountered many others with this same gutless orientation, a fact that I ascertained when, in a single flowing maneuver, he deftly clamped my ankle under his arm in an anti-kick position and pulled the previously concealed hypodermic needle out of his coat pocket.)

We seem to accept the wisdom of promptly removing foreign objects.  And it’s patently obvious that you can’t remove a splinter by loudly asserting to the person that a broken leg would have been a real pain.  Has anyone ever successfully removed a shard of glass by simply proclaiming that it’s no big deal?

Emotional thorns, whether they’re your own or someone else’s, are best handled in the same action-oriented way you’d take if you got a splinter from the deck.  Like splinters, they’re actually very easy to remove, and they don’t have to escalate into an infection.  And they won’t, if you’re willing to take them seriously and address them.

It takes some courage and trust to expose hurt feelings so they can be healed.  Here are a few tips to get you started:

• When feelings are hurt, don’t demand of yourself (or anyone else) to “ignore it and it will go away.”  If you think of it metaphorically, that’s simply nonsense!
• Instead, seek to understand it — even if your own actions turn out to be the source of the pain. You might say to your child — or spouse — “When I kept reading my book when you were talking, you thought I didn’t care about what you were saying.”
• If you were on the receiving end, start with a question — like, “What should I take from the fact that I’m talking about something that is important to me, and you are continuing to read?”  If you begin to see that the other person is simply too busy to listen right then, a toxic blow to your self esteem is averted. If there’s more to it, you can have a constructive conversation.
• Validate, don’t deny.  Whether it’s about your own uncomfortable feelings or someone else’s, acknowledge them.  “Your [my] feelings are really hurt,” starts the process of eliminating the emotional thorn.  “It’s ridiculous of you to be angry,” by contrast, makes the area redden and become more painful.
• Get help to work through trauma.  It’s not only the event itself that can affect you on for decades after it’s over; even more so, it’s the beliefs you develop about yourself as a result that create “infection” that needs to be treated.
• Small splinters count.  Isn’t it amazing how you can tell when there’s the tiniest of splinters in your finger or your foot?  That signal allows you to remove it before it gets embedded or infected.  Small emotional splinters work the same way.  Your awareness of feeling slighted or invalidated is a signal to take action.  By learning to deal with these everyday occurrences easily, painful dips in your mood will level out and your relationships will deepen.
• Sometimes removing the thorn is as simple and silent as validating yourself — a quick acknowledgement of your own feelings.  This becomes second nature, replacing the less helpful reflex to chastise yourself for feeling upset.
• Can you ever ignore an emotional thorn?  I’d rather see you develop the reflex to validate your own feelings than to ignore or suppress them.  Remember — acknowledging discomfort doesn’t mean you have to take action.  But be careful here; it’s a slippery slope once you start dismissing rather than acting on your feelings, and that choice often has more to do with keeping others happy than taking care of yourself. Unless the situation is of no importance, it’s better to deal, either within yourself if that’s where the discomfort is coming from, or with the other person, if change is needed.

This quick podcast will introduce you to a downloadable tool for juggling the priorities in your busy life so that you can continue on the path of becoming the person you’re meant to be. Download the “Balls in the Air” tool here.

Right click to download.

Invincible Voice is loaded with tips, insight, inspiration and conversation about vibrant, depression-free living. It’s all about moving from being invisible to being invincible. I’ll talk about why women give up their voices and how you can get yours back. In the process, we’ll look at parenting and how it affects children’s capacity for resilience — and the impact of the way you were parented on your vulnerability to depression as an adult. We’ll explore the impact of trauma on voice; lost voices in the workplace, how to raise daughters to joyfully be exactly who they are — and that’s just a sample!

When you need a little inspiration, a gentle nudge that reminds you of your own value, or ideas about how to support your friends, kids and colleagues in sharing their unique voices, just listen in on any one of these calls.

Finding your voice will change your life.

To receive the links to weekly podcasts, subscribe to the Sea Change ezine here. You’ll be added to The Self Development Place email list to be notified of the topics for future Invincible Voice podcasts as well as about other happenings at The Self Development Place.

Tips on how you can avoid having your energy drained right out of you – actually, how to reserve your own energy to be applied where you really want to apply it.

Listen here:

Download here.

Invincible Voice is loaded with tips, insight, inspiration and conversation about vibrant, depression-free living. It’s all about moving from being invisible to being invincible. I’ll talk about why women give up their voices and how you can get yours back. In the process, we’ll look at parenting and how it affects children’s capacity for resilience — and the impact of the way you were parented on your vulnerability to depression as an adult. We’ll explore the impact of trauma on voice; lost voices in the workplace, how to raise daughters to joyfully be exactly who they are — and that’s just a sample!

When you need a little inspiration, a gentle nudge that reminds you of your own value, or ideas about how to support your friends, kids and colleagues in sharing their unique voices, just listen in on any one of these calls.

Finding your voice will change your life.

To receive the links to weekly podcasts, subscribe to the Sea Change ezine here. You’ll be added to The Self Development Place email list to be notified of the topics for future Invincible Voice podcasts as well as about other happenings at The Self Development Place.

For instance, in the interest of writing this post while I grabbed dinner at Cracker  Barrel (the bums discontinued the apple chicken special and I’m stuck with a scrambled egg sandwich), I have texted my dear friend Ralph to ask if he can remember the conversation about the weeds.  As I sit waiting for his reply, I imagine him suddenly appearing at the table; perhaps (I imagine) he had intended to surprise me by being at my house when I returned from the office tonight and, upon reading my text, has hopped in the car in order to surprise me here instead.  Even though he sort of hates Cracker Barrel.  This, I imagine, is why it is taking him forever to respond to my text about the weeds.

I think my whole face lights up at the thought of looking up and finding him there.

After what seems over-long, I text again. “You’re not sitting in my living room or something, are you?”

“No,” he answers, “but I could be in 35 minutes.”

Now my face clouds over.  I need to do the taxes tonight, I really do.  And that means saying no when it feels like Ralph wants me to say yes.

“The truly best thing for me to do is finish expenses and mileage tonight,” I answer thinly, and my energy shifts to stress and guilt.

“Okay, I’ll call after 9,” his words appear, muted by cyberspace.

“I really need the answer to my earlier question about the weeds,” I text him back. “I’m trying to write it up.”  I hope just enough of my impatience coats the words to summon up a response.

“When you get stuck in the weeds, you just reverse the engine for a short time.  Then you can go forward at full speed again.  Same for life, too.”  This has taken him several minutes to type.

“I know that part,” I say in exasperation, “I said most of it!  I’m trying to remember the context of our conversation. “

“Call me when you get home, that’s easier,” he answers.

This is his final word, Ralph has laid the phone down.  “Hmph,” I say to myself.  So much for getting the post done over (cold) scrambled eggs.

We are now stuck in the weeds.

If there’s one thing I know from my clients, it’s that having a conversation through email or texting is a high-risk venture.  I have gone from delighted to guilty to peeved in the space of less than 100 words.  Ralph, I begin to realize, has no idea of this.

In fact, it occurs to me a half hour later when I’ve arrived home, that Ralph is a two-finger typist, and when it comes to texting, well, let’s just say that his hands, while breathtakingly gentle, are not precisely delicate.  Sort of like typing on the pinhead keyboard with baseball gloves.

And – I feel my face positively blanch at this realization — he’s been unlucky to have some really painful arthritis in his fingers that he speaks little of.  What in the world am I thinking, asking him to text volumes!

After nine, he calls.  I tell him how badly I feel about not being available tonight.  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he says happily.

Happily. Up to this point, I have assumed that he is frustrated with me and perhaps have been preemptively frustrated with him in response.  Now suddenly all is well!

Here’s the point.

Disconnects in relationships come about invisibly, but not imperceptibly.  Suddenly the energy between two people changes.  When we had first talked about this, it made me think of a boat ride I’d taken with my kids in the Outer Banks.  The Sound was very weedy that summer, and the boat kept stalling, much to its owner’s dismay — it was his new boat.  Each time the engine choked, he would reverse it, dislodge the weeds and then the boat would surge forward again.

Similarly, if you can go briefly into reverse when a conversation breaks down, you can figure out and affirm for each other where things went wrong.  A good measure of understanding and empathy is often all it takes to dislodge the misery and pick up happily where you left off.

As for the chocolate cake — this is the cover image to a proposed coffee table book called Choose the Chocolate Cake: 1001 Joyful Alternatives to an Egg Sandwich.

Which won’t be hard to come up with.

Procrastination?  Fear? Laziness? Flat-out rebellion?  I didn’t wonder;  instead,  I turned my back on my desk,  brought order to the kitchen and then headed for the garden window.

This window is probably the reason I bought the house.  In fact, damaged and cracked as it was when I viewed the house, my offer was contingent on its repair.  The size of a small bay window, right beside it is a little round black pedestal table covered with a raspberry table cloth, black place mats and the coolest bowl I’ve ever owned as its centerpiece.  In the window, scattered here and there with little bird statues and tea candles, are a philodendron, three or four pothos in varying shades of health, an ivy plant (actually, the surviving strands of a rather lovely hanging basket that Expected Too Much), the one remaining plume from a spider plant with a similar history of demands to which I did not acquiesce, two hanging baskets from last summer, both still covered with white blooms with pink centers, two pots of that pretty green and ivory viney stuff rescued from the window boxes outside my office — and four little pots of deep purple morning glories.

Okay, two pots now.  Morning glories are not forgiving about being let to dry just a bit.

Previously, my watering policy has always been: If you’re particular about how much and how often, this is not the hotel for you.  However, I’ve made an exception for the morning glories.

I read an article about ten years ago that described placing a lattice in the living room window and training morning glories to it during the winter.  What a joyful idea!  But, a bit large to start with (likewise the project of forcing bulbs, which also intrigues me), so I shelved both ideas.

Finally, this winter I ordered morning glory seeds — Burpee Scarlett O’Hara and Heavenly Blue from Hirt’s Gardens.  I planted them in four little pots (whose previous residents are now numbered among the Dear Departed due to incompatibility with the Policy): one cheerful pot-bellied mug, creamy white with spring-green ferns and a braided handle; a cracked giant white coffee mug, and two terracotta pots.  In the spirit of the Policy, I summarily dumped in enough dirt to fill them, tossed the seeds on top, sprinkled a bit more dirt over that and then made an exception by Keeping Them Wet.

Just like that, they grew!  Who knew it could be so easy?  And now, two of the four are healthy climbing vines with beautiful deep lavender blooms.  Unlike the white flowers which abound, the morning glories do not produce a new bloom every day.  Their relative rarity makes them precious; I check for new ones each morning, and the other day found four!

So, piles of work notwithstanding, I spent about twenty minutes trimming each of the plants in the window and clearing away dead leaves from the bottom shelf.  While at first blush this might seem to amount to removing the evidence of my neglect, really it was cleaning away what was spent so the green and purple and white could gleam through.  It made me blissful.

I went on then to tackle my desk very efficiently.

Here’s the point.

Unlike procrastination which is avoidance based in fear, paying attention to and following your own energy will often take you exactly where you need to go.  I needed the shot of well-being that my flowers and a (relatively) clean kitchen give me in order to be able to apply myself to the challenging work on my desk.  More of an investment than an expenditure, the twenty minutes spent on the window were easily made up by the impact of that time on my ability to focus, plow through the work and liberate myself for the rest of the weekend.

Accomplishing anything, no matter how small, can grease the wheels for you to delve into more difficult projects.  Surrounding yourself with things that give you a sense of well-being and self-efficacy builds your reserves so that you can handle the frustrations that inevitably accompany challenging work.  By paying attention to what you’re drawn to, you will be able to discover things that, by their very presence, will energize you and inspire you to bring out the best in yourself.

Believe it or not, perfect is not better than good enough.

Whether you’re searching for the absolute best deal on a car, the most perfect coffee maker or trying to be a flawless parent, seeking perfection is very likely to (1) decrease your happiness; and (2) inhibit your children from developing to their full capability!

Listen here:

Download here.

Thomas Leonard, considered the father of coaching, coined the term “tolerations” to refer to everything from a drippy faucet to a toxic relationship; things that bug you, but that you tolerate. Whether you’re shoving things to the back of a closet or to the back of your mind, it’s costing you. In this call, you’ll have a chance to identify what you’re currently tolerating and learn why you ought to stop.

Listen here:

Download here.

Invincible Voice is loaded with tips, insight, inspiration and conversation about vibrant, depression-free living. It’s all about moving from being invisible to being invincible. I’ll talk about why women give up their voices and how you can get yours back. In the process, we’ll look at parenting and how it affects children’s capacity for resilience — and the impact of the way you were parented on your vulnerability to depression as an adult. We’ll explore the impact of trauma on voice; lost voices in the workplace, how to raise daughters to joyfully be exactly who they are — and that’s just a sample!

When you need a little inspiration, a gentle nudge that reminds you of your own value, or ideas about how to support your friends, kids and colleagues in sharing their unique voices, just listen in on any one of these calls.

Finding your voice will change your life.

To receive the links to weekly podcasts, subscribe to the Sea Change ezine here. You’ll be added to The Self Development Place email list to be notified of the topics for future Invincible Voice podcasts as well as about other happenings at The Self Development Place.