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My Insanity is the Sanest Thing I’ve Got

If there’s one area that I tend to cause puzzlement in my friends, family and co-workers, it’s the way I approach my training, exercise and diet regime.  It’s not that they are necessarily amazed at my being into health and fitness (since lots of people are), it’s really the specifics of my philosophy and approach that give them pause or cause them to cock their heads, look at my askew and remark (after an extended sigh) “Seriously… why???”

It can actually be a little odd to explain to someone outside of the worldwide family of lifters and physical culture devotees who make this kind of strenuous exertion the best part of their days.

I have talked to or exchanged ideas with on forms a lot of people who are as into training (I almost never call it “working out”, FYI) or even more so into training than I am.  There seems to be a fairly common thread that ties all of us together into one big, borderline irrational family:

The power of transformation.

With training, you will truly get back from it what you give to it.  If you learn a bit and then work hard at what you learned, the results will come.  They just will as sure as day follows night.  They will come faster for some and slower for others, but they do come when you give yourself over to the training.

Can you see the appeal?  Think of how many areas in life where despite your best efforts and all your smarts and all your talents and all the sweat of your brow… you get diddly-squat back in return.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  It’s ridiculously frustrating.

A few years back I went to a doctor for my lower back.  He was a pretty good physician, but very, very old school.  He took a look at my x-rays, showed me how one disc was a bit narrower than the others and simply said, “You need to stop all exercising that loads your vertical spine.”  I gave him a look of “Umm… you gotta be kidding me, dude.”  He went on to say, “I don’t know what it is with you weightlifters and why you can’t seem to stop.  There are so many other wonderful kind of exercise out there.”  You can tell I really didn’t listen to him and I am trying my best to be a lot smarter about how I train… but I ain’t quitting.

I think this is why when I had someone very special and very close to me going through leukemia for several agonizing years, the weight training I did was utter salvation to me.  I could not fix her horrid illness which ravaged away at her for those 5 long years.  It was excruciating to feel so powerless to do much except to be an unyielding form of support the whole way.

My EliteFTS power rack (i.e. my baby)

But during that time while I was training?  I could effect change.  It was at least something I could control and for at least a little while, use to chisel away some of the hurt in the process.  It was also something that taught me a lot about myself and how to push through the challenging parts of life… and then I would use all of that to better support her day after day after day.  The two things began to feed each other and without that constant of my training, I’m not sure what all of those 5 years would have been like.

So the fact I hit a new personal record on my deadlifts (427.5 lbs for 5 reps, in case you were wondering… and I just know you were) tonight just makes me feel like a little bit more is right with the world… that things can make a little more sense… and that when it comes to my training, I will get back what I give.

All of which raises one question for me: If you don’t feel the same about your own exercise program… why not?

You might view me as nuts for what I do… I see it as a lone sane act in a sometimes completely insane world.

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Foundations First and Pretty Stuff After

When I was growing up, there was a decent chunk of time where I really wanted to be an architect.  Building things held a real fascination for me and the genesis of this was likely my complete and utter Lego obsession (something I’m really happy to see has been taken up by my nephews).

My Saturday mornings often fit a very neat pattern in those simpler days.  I would get up, go downstairs and pull out of the family room closet a good-sized draw string denim bag that was chock full of those magical plastic bricks.  I would open the bag up and gently spread the pieces in front of me on the floor so I could build while engaging in my other favorite Saturday activity: watching cartoons (especially the Super Friends).

wallpaper_10rittpourLegos taught me an important early lesson, although I did not truly appreciate that teaching until many years later: anything of substance you wish to build first requires a strong, consistent foundation.  Without that foundation on which to rely, you’re just setting yourself up for some kind of collapse and with it all the pretty things you built upon that weak foundation.

What I love about the analogy is how well it works in several contexts.  It applies for buildings (as in this photo for a 33 story tower as it was being built in Philadelphia) or sports teams or relationships or just that little corner of the world you call your own life.  If you don’t have some goals or guiding principles or common understanding or shared values, you will find little success or what success you do achieve is only eked out through pure strenuous effort and bullheadedness.  Not exactly the best use of time or energy, methinks.

I started thinking about foundations the other day because I’ve been in a bit of a funk of late.  Nothing incredibly extreme, mind you, but not a ton of fun any way you slice that bad boy.  Part of the reason you can tell I’ve been in a funk is the utter dearth of blog postings popping up here.  I’ve not been feeling (or probably acting) all that fierce or mighty.  So, the other night I tried to settle in for a bit of thinking time without distraction… and uhh… that’s actually a bit hard.  Anyone with a Droid, iPhone or Blackberry will know the feeling – it’s like you are just so damn connected, you’ve forgotten how to disconnect yourself, even for a little while (unless you are asleep and even then you’re probably having dreams of apps and snarky text messages).

Often when life feels funky, I need to find myself something to pour my heart and efforts into.  Maybe some of that is just pure distraction from whatever is truly bothering me, but a lot of it gets back to the foundational values or principles I’ve set up for myself to live by.  If I can find one thing that is a core value for me and I can really focus my efforts on it for a while, slowly but surely the rut begins to fade and just becomes an unpleasant memory that also dissolves like morning mist in the sun’s heat.

While some who know me well may laugh at what I’m about to write, I think this is what I might do: get myself re-dedicated to my exercise and health plans.  I know… I know… I’m the guy with the gym in his basement and who posts videos of himself on YouTube of doing all sort of funky training.  I hear ya people – really I do.  The hard thing is that even that has taken a hit of late where it feels too much like a chore to get myself lifting or doing my stretching as I should or really being good much more often about what I eat or getting a good night’s rest every night.  I think if I give myself an extra push in this area, I will begin to enjoy it again as I should and get some momentum going… and that momentum?  It tends to have a positive carry over into other areas (at least that’s my sincere hope).

Today was a good start to all of this with the first outdoor soccer game of the season, a 5-2 win for Maniacs FC (the team I am the captain of).  I felt focused and in good shape all game long… but most importantly, I just had fun.  Isn’t that the point anyway?

So onward I go and the blogging will be much more consistent (as my next post will illustrate).  Here’s to getting back to the foundations on which we build our lives… because with their strength, we can build beautifully.

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You’re So Positive, That It’s A Negative

0762412550 Back in 1952, a Protestant minister from Ohio published a book whose title, over time, has become a catch phrase unto itself.  That man was Norman Vincent Peale and the book is The Power of Positive Thinking.  It’s almost become a cliché unto itself in terms of people talking about how to get through difficult times – “Be positive!  You know – the power of positive thinking!”  It’s also one of those things that someone can say to you when you’re mired in the midst of a complete bog of suckdom that makes you just want to go upside their head.  Oh come on!  Don’t act like I’m alone on that one.

Anyhoo, as someone who does my best to maintain a good frame of mind (with varying degrees of success, admittedly), this piece over at Psychology Today’s blog (brought to my attention by the good folks at Lifehacker) jumped out at me a bit.  While I am certainly a fan of trying to keep things in perspective and seeing the good, even in bad moments, I’m always intrigued by those who cut across the grain.  People who challenge commonly established dogma tend to intrigue the hell out of me.  I’m not always going to agree with them, but I will certainly try to take a few nuggets from whatever they may have to say.  Except for those dudes who are obsessed with the whole Mayan calendar and 2012 nonsense.  Dude… please.  Take it down a few notches.

The point of the blog piece by Srikumar Rao is simple: when we constantly put events or situations we encounter into the black and white buckets of “good” and “bad”, we will end up on the losing end one way or the other.  Why?  He explains:

No matter what happens to us in life we tend to think of it as "good" or "bad". And most of us tend to use the "bad" label three to ten times as often as the "good" label. And when we say something is bad, the odds grow overwhelming that we will experience it as such. And that is when we need positive thinking. We have been given something bad, a real lemon, and we better scramble and make some lemonade out of it and salvage something out of this "bad" situation.

How tiring and tiresome!

So if we say something is bad, we are highly likely to have the experience of that event being bad.  We will then likely feel compelled to make something good of that situation… and now the pressure is on.  It’s certainly an interesting view.

Personally, I’m not sure I would view this as a stressor, but more our natural reaction of “Well, I don’t like bad… so how do I find something of value in this moment?"  Where’s the silver lining?”  I know I do this, but I am the first to admit it’s about 1,000 times easier doing this when viewing a tough event a friend is enduring as opposed to turning the penetrating eye of clarity upon myself.Good to Great

This recalls for me an excellent portion of Jim Collins classic book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t.  One of the points Collins seeks to make about companies who are able to transition from being merely good to being exceptional is that they need to be committed to succeeding, but all the while, they must squarely confront the brutal facts.  In order to illustrate this story, he discusses a meeting he had with Admiral Jim Stockdale, the highest ranking officer kept as a POW in the infamous Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War.  Listen to this clip of Collins explaining his meeting with Stockdale:

It’s a powerful and challenging thought: the ones who didn’t make it were the optimists.  Stockdale was able to survive because he was 100% resolute in his belief of prevailing, but he did that in light of the brutal facts of being held prisoner in an absolute hellhole.

Maybe you really can be too positive… but only if you do so in an utterly blind belief about your circumstances or why you are seeking to be positive in the first place.  The “Stockdale Paradox” is a notion I find truly appealing and defining because it’s sort of like optimism with a truly wicked chip on your shoulder.  In an odd way, it’s part of what has inspired me to push through some challenging times the last few years… that life may be giving me a lot to handle… but I’ll be damned if I let myself relent for a moment because I will come through.

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Heed the Calling

In Latin the word vocare is a verb meaning “to call” and is the fundamental root of our modern day word “vocation”.  These days a vocation is often used as any term to connote work in a general sense, but it’s important to get back to the old, dusty Latin to bring fresh life to the word.  To me, not everyone’s job is a vocation… although I believe pretty much any job can be.

It’s less about the job itself and more about your own personal feeling and passions towards that career.  In other words… is it your true calling?  The thing that gives you juice and life and purpose?  The thing you cannot imagine NOT doing on a daily basis?  The thing that while the money may be nice (or maybe even not so nice), you do first because it speaks to you on a deeper level first and on a financial level a very distant second.

Today was a day I was privileged to interact with two very cool groups of people at the Gengras Center in West Hartford, CT: the students who go to school there and the teachers for whom their work is their vocation.

Gengras Center The Gengras Center is (as their Web site describes) “a unique, special education program for elementary, middle and high school students with intellectual, developmental, learning disabilities, and related behavioral challenges.”  I was invited over for their Career Day and to talk a little bit about my job.  Now, I was a little anxious leading up to this as I was thinking, “How in the world do I make ‘ethics officer’ sound interesting and keep their attention?”  I opted with the easy solution… free schwag.  Shameless, I know, but gosh darn it, worked like a charm! 

I handed out these squishy stress toy fire trucks (one of the products my company makes) and everyone seemed to love them.  Believe me, I needed it.  There were guys there with Harley-Davidsons and soldiers and the guy from ESPN next to me with the sports highlights and 2 laptops.  I was just the dude in a suit next to a table covered in little foam fire trucks… but thank God for those suckers!

But I ridiculously digress.

I truly enjoyed myself today because of both groups of people I got to spend time with.  First, the kids are fantastic and had enthusiasm and excitement to spend some time talking to me… even if I was not nearly as cool as a soldier in uniform.  The smiles and their eagerness to introduce themselves to me just won me over instantly.  I am very much hoping for an invite back at some point.

And the people working there?  There is something that grabs my attention of seeing someone who is committed to what they do.  It can be completely mesmerizing.  During the moments where I was waiting for the next round of kids to come through, I did my usual people-watching where I observed the staff just going through the regular “stuff” of their day.  I could see many staff members who just beamed when a kid smiled or was polite to one of the Career Day guests or did something well… and as corny as it sounds, it was heart-warming.

And that is a lesson in perspective, my friends.  Those are people who are working one damn challenging job that would leave anyone drained at the end of the day… but those moments that I was privileged enough to witness with them being immersed in what they do and loving it?  It’s inspiring and humbling all at the same time.

So the lesson I took from today is this: regardless of someone’s circumstances or the life they find themselves in, there is always a chance in any given moment for some real happiness (even if fleeting) to be found.  Every single one of those moments, whether long or brief, is completely worth it and is worth taking a moment to savor.

Thanks to everyone today… students and teachers alike… who gave me a chance to savor a few of their own moments.

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However

kevin 096

I’ve noticed a few things over the years.  One or two observations on the human condition.

We, as human beings, are inherently flawed.

We are capable of unspeakable cruelty.

We hurt the ones we love the most.

We can be foolish.

We can be ignorant.

We can be cold and unfeeling.

We can be lazy and uninspired.

We make the same mistakes over and over and over again.

However…

We have a capacity for overwhelming kindness, especially in the face of adversity.

We can love to a depth that humbles the receiver of that affection.

We can be completely thoughtful and considerate.

We can be connected and empathetic and understanding.

We can reach out to others with warmth and peace.

We reach dizzying heights of creativity, innovation and utter brilliance.

We can learn and learn well.

In spite of all the ills we are capable of, I focus on the good we can do.  The human mind, heart and spirit soldier_and_child1241048146

Our flaws serve to make our goodness shine by comparison, like a bright white image against a stark black background… and I believe we do well much more often than we do ill.  That’s my philosophy and what keeps me going every single day.  It’s easy to see the problems every day, but if you think of the simple interactions with most people on most days?  The good is there and I place my focus on that.

It’s why my blog tagline is “Relentlessly push yourself forward”… so that’s what I do… the best I can.

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From Whence Shall Come the Quit?

Roberto-Duran-Gives-Up-001In exploring the connection of mind, body and spirit, I am a bit fascinated by the  moment of surrender.  It’s not from a morbid sense of curiosity, but more from the vantage of why does it happen when it happens.  What causes us to stop?  To relent?  To “No mas” a la Roberto Duran?  It can certainly depend on the activity in question.

The genesis of my fascination has nothing to do with obsessing over having given up at some point.  We all end up at that place one way or the other.  I want to figure out why it happens and then get better at pushing past that moment if possible… well, provided it’s an activity I give a damn about.  It’s not like I am going to study like a medieval monk to master the art of eating broken glass or some crazy nonsense like that.

So at the moment where it all comes apart, I want to know why.  An example may be in order:

Think of someone deep in physical training of some kind or another.  Perhaps it’s a powerlifter constantly seeking to move bigger and bigger weights or, at the opposite end of the training spectrum, the marathoner who conditions herself to run for 26.2 freaking miles.  (Umm, as you can tell, I am blown away by long distance runners because I cannot imagine trying to run that damn far).

For either of these individuals, which will usually quit first?  The mind as it obsesses over each pound or each mile?  The spirit as the will to go prove something wanes in the face of greater and greater physical demand?  Or will it simply be the body reaching some point of pure capability when one more pound or one more step is completely impossible?

In these cases, I find it is usually much less about the body and a lot more about some combination of the mind or spirit.  The body can accept an inordinate amount of physical work (for periods of time, mind you) provided the mind sees some value/end goal and the spirit stay strong.  The trick is to keep those things well in mind.

What about a test of the mind?  Does this change the equation at all in terms of the weak link from the body/mind/spirit continuum?  Possibly.  I think of people pulling all-nighters where their only limit is pure physical exhaustion (or running out of caffeinated beverages).  That being said, I am still tend to think mind and spirit may give out before the body.  The all-too-common declaration of “Good God, I think my brain is full…” jumps to mind for me, likely because I have uttered it a few times when deep in study back in law school.

In the end, I think that the greatest bang-for-your-buck in learning to push past previous points of failure is more of a mental and spiritual challenge, even if the activity you are seeking to improve is primarily physical.  Take Michael Jordan – physically gifted? Definitely.  But Michael Jordan did not become MICHAEL JORDAN because of his physical gifts… it was because of an absolutely indomitable will to win.  He was just plain mentally tougher than anyone else on the court.  Period.

And how do you build your will?  Great question.  For myself, I am going to take it in 2 parts since I need work on this as does… ohh… pretty much everyone.  First, pick some activity that is about discipline and work on it.  Second, build up this activity sloooowly.  For instance, I want to be better about developing this blog, so starting next week, I am getting up 30-45 minutes earlier in the morning to write posts, comment on other blogs, do Twitter, etc.  It’s not earth-shattering, but it requires extra discipline and sometimes there is something cool about doing a hard, lonely thing.  You need to do it slowly in order to notch up a few successes along the way.  If you are working on running a marathon, maybe you start doing a few of your runs at the crack of dawn or purposefully at the end of a really long day for the sheer purpose of knowing your mind will rebel mid-way through your run and will begin to rationalize why cutting it short and heading home for “American Idol” is really not that bad because you can run tomorrow.

Pick your hard lonely thing. Tell yourself you just need to push through it ONE time and then do it.  A few days later?  Do it again.  Let the momentum build and the will shall follow.

Be fierce.  Be mighty.  Above all else, just give it a shot so you at least know you didn’t let a chance for something better slide on by.

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Re-Mojofication

Mojo.  An absolute fantastic word that is truly difficult to define.  You could go with what our good friends at Merriam-Webster and say it is:

a magic spell, hex, or charm; broadly : magical power <works his mojo on the tennis court>

That’s pretty good… not great, but a fairly solid B on the grading scale of life.

I tend to think of mojo more from the Dr. Evil definition from Austin Powers:

Austin Powers always defeats me because he has mojo… The libido . The life force. The essence. The right stuff . What the French call a certain I-don’t-know-what.

Granted that seems rather vague, but the vagueness is the beauty of it all in the end.  Mojo is the juice that gets you going and excited about life.  It’s passion, but with a bit of a funky twist.

Mojo has been on my mind of late, mostly because I have had a loss of it for a variety of reasons.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not exactly all-world when it comes to dealing with change, but despite that fact, life has given me a bit of it over the last year or so.  Funny how life works like that – you would think it would just listen to my wise counsel on how things would go, but apparently not.  Slowly but surely, I woke up to find myself just not quite feeling it… and that’s really the problem with losing your mojo.  It’s not as if you are struck by a blinding white light like Saul on the road to Damascus, but it’s more of a slow creep that nibbles away bit by bit when you lose your vigilance.

Heck, a prime example of my mojo loss was this very blog that means quite a bit to me.  I had to go back and look at it today to see when my last update occurred… February 28th.  Yeesh.  But I was just not feeling the inspiration or the muse to make this blog happen… so today, I decided “Aww screw this” and sat down to write the words you read this very moment.

But let me be crystal clear in my view of the loss of mojo… it doesn’t happen because of what life does to you.  Not at all.  It happens because of how you respond to what life throws at you.dwight-gooden(2)

For instance, let’s say life went all circa 1985 Doc Gooden on you by throwing you a  major curveball – the kind that no one alive is going to be able to deal with well.  Break-up.  Job loss.  Illness of a loved one.  Those things are certainly going to drop you in your tracks for sure and any of those scenarios takes a lot of time, effort, patience and faith to pull through.  In that sense, no one on earth should expect someone dealing with anything like that to immediately bounce up and say, “Well dagnabbit all!  Life is all about how I respond and not allowing anything to be done to me!  I think I’ll go watch Mary Poppins and whistle a happy tune!”

But at some point in that coping process, it becomes a lot less about whatever happened and all about how you respond to it.  For bigger life changes, that period is longer and you shouldn’t beat yourself up for not bouncing back like a damn superball.  You cannot be low forever.  You cannot mourn for an eternity.  You cannot go all Brian Wilson and lock yourself away in your house for years while wearing a bathrobe as your fashion statement on a daily basis.

Which is why I love this Nike commercial so much:

Because it’s about at least pushing yourself to see how quick you’re gonna get up.

As always, the words I write in this blog do not come from a place where I am sitting idly back and pronouncing forth how I think everyone else should live because I have it all figured out.  I write this because it is equally a challenge to myself to do more, to be better and… in this case… to reclaim my mojo.  I just hope detailing some elements of my own personal fight gives hope or insight or even just a sliver of amusement to those who read this.

So to end it all, I give you the example of Sylvester Stallone.  No, seriously.  While Sly makes for a very easy target these days, it helps to think back to his earliest days before he was a big star.  Why?  Because in spite of everything he faced and all the hurdles in his way, he kept his mojo working against a Fat Bastard world that was seeking to sap it all from him.  Listen as Tony Robbins tells the story of Rocky:

Mojo – use it or lose it, people.  It’s far easier to keep than to reclaim.  I let it slip and now I’m working hard to get it back.

Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war.

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The Aging Athlete and Fighting the Inevitable

Last night was the third game of the basketball league I just got involved in after not playing at all for several years.  While I have been in some of the best shape of my life of late… well… let’s just say my hoop skills are not what they once were.  I mean, not even within the same ZIP code.  It’s not that I was amazing at any time in my life, but I was a solid outside shooter, played good defense and could push the ball decently well on a fast break.

Now? Hoo boy.  It’s not just the skills being rusty, but the lack of confidence in not playing in such a long time.  Well, that and the fact that I really don’t want to put my team in a bad spot… which probably just makes me more tentative. Kind of a vicious cycle.2009_10_cleats

After I subbed out with a few minutes left to play and watched the rest of the game  from the sidelines, I had a strange moment of reflection.  I had to make a choice: (a) work harder on my game; (b) accept the state of my game as it is; or (c) or hang up the sneakers entirely.

I had a moment like this playing soccer this past Fall.  I found myself not keeping up with the forwards I had to cover or getting winded too easily.  I am someone who has a lot of athletic pride, so the notion of just accepting things as they were was simply untenable to me… at least in soccer.  Also, I really was not ready to go gentle into that good night by playing in a less competitive league… so the decision there was to get myself in better shape or stop all together.  I went with a personal ass-kicking and the results (at least for the indoor soccer I have been playing) have been great.

But these moments I experienced are likely not going to be passing things.  At the delightful age of 37, they will only return and likely with shorter and shorter intervals between them.  While I certainly do not feel like I am 37 in terms of my outlook or how I feel, I know that there is a certain inevitably that comes with the wisdom of years.

Part of this is a matter of life getting in the way.  We get older and have more job and family responsibilities… we get a little bit more sedentary… play our sports just a little bit less… and then the years slip by and you end up standing on the sidelines of your rec basketball league wondering what in the name of all that’s holy happened to your jump shot.

In fact, I am stubborn about the notion that the problem with aging and athletics is really a lot less about the physical changes from time and more about the reduction in total activity.  Of course, it’s totally possible I view it this way because this is a philosophy whereby renewed effort should be able to return some of the sparkle of former glory… and I want my sparkle back.

So for the foreseeable future, I will not go gentle into that good night and will rage, rage against the dying of the light.  I have no reason to give up… no reason to quit… and truth be told, few things stir my blood like a good challenge.

And this challenge?  Oh this challenge is a good one for me.

And this will be my anthem:

Everybody gets knocked down. How quick are you gonna get up?

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On Giving, Listening and Buttered Toast

A few years ago, a colleague at my previous job turned to me one day and said the following: “You know something? You’re probably the nicest person I’ve ever met.” Truth be told, it’s possibly one of the best compliments I ever gotten and could ever really get… you know, besides those compliments I give myself on my looks through this words of this very blog.  To channel the bards of old (The Sugar Hill Gang)… I don’t mean to brag, I don’t mean to boast, but I’m like hot butter on your breakfast toast.  Truth.toast

My response to my colleague on being given this compliment was pretty simple: “It’s just how my Mom raised me.”  That’s less of a slight on my Dad (from whom I get my sense of humor and ability to chat about seemingly anything) and more just the fact that my Mom is very genuinely focused on treating people the right way.  That deeply affected me and sticks with me every day.

What got me reflecting back on all of this during my commute into work (where seemingly 75% of my blog inspirations come from) was I was thinking over the idea of giving.  As a corollary to the whole niceness part of me, I try to give of myself when I can.  Most of my giving is focused on a more personal level with my family, friends and loved ones.  I also do a bit of volunteer work with a youth group, but the bulk of my actions take place on a much individual level because that is just where I tend to find comfort and connection in such matters.

Giving can be a bit of a funny thing.  For a lot of people, it can be a fairly difficult thing to do.  I see two basic reasons for this being the case:

  1. The fear of no return on the “investment”.  If I do something for this person, do I really know they would do the same for me in return?  Or will I even be recognized or given credit for what I did? Fair question.
  2. The fear of being taken advantage of.  If I am nice and giving to people all the time, won’t I just come across as an easy mark for people to take advantage of?

I’ll take these one at a time.

On the return on the “investment” of giving, it’s only natural to want to know if that same person would do the same for you… or at the very least, for you to be recognized for your efforts.  That’s a pretty natural reaction and one I’ve had before for sure.

My own struggle (and one I do well with at times and much less so at others) is to get comfortable with the idea of the giving being its own reward.  Sounds like insanity right?  But if you spend some time thinking about it, I think you will find this more and more to be the case.  If you are giving in a context that is meaningful for you, you are probably more concerned about the benefit that person receives than what credit you will receive for the act.  I obviously have very little (if any) scientific data to back that statement up, outside of my awesomely impressive intellect, but I do believe it to be the case.

On the fear of being taken advantage of… that’s something I wrestle with all the time.  The last thing I would want is someone kind of hovering around in my life in hopes of using my good nature to their personal advantage.  I’ve been pretty successful in this regard… but not perfect for sure.  The people I can tell who are being leeches?  Cut ‘em free.  I’ve enough on my plate without worrying about them.

But beyond that, the reason I try not to worry on this too much is that I would rather be focused internally on where I am doing the right thing than on whether someone else either thinks I am doing the right thing or is taking advantage of my doing the right thing.  It reminds me of a notion from the autobiography on Warren Buffet I am reading entitled, “The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life” by Alice Schroeder.  From a somewhat young age, Buffet has been driven by staying consistent to what he calls his “internal scorecard” about whether he is doing the right thing.  By comparison, his mother was overly focused on her “external scorecard” and lived in order to meet the expectations of others first.

But I have seen (even just recently with a friend of mine) the after effects of those who have given so much to another only to have that best part of their nature trampled upon by someone they trusted and loved.  It’s completely devastating to see because that giving portion of us as human beings can truly be one of our best traits.  I don’t want to see that crushed in anyone.

So a piece of advice I have for those who worry about the aforementioned fears in giving… here is a simple form of giving to a try: listening.  Yup, listening.  Powerful and simple and something you can do daily with just about anyone you meet.

Listening is possibly the easiest kind of giving to do and creates a level of benefit for all involved that is amazing.  The person you are listening to will experience a moment where someone else truly cases about what they are saying.  And hey, if you really need to have a personal reason as to your own benefit, the speaker will also find you to be a more genuine and caring person.  And it’s just such a small effort to put in for someone else and hell… you may even learn something in the process.  I’ve focused on becoming a much better listener because (1) there are few things more annoying than talking to someone who just responds to everything with “mmm hmm… yeah… yup… sure” when you can tell they did not really hear a word you said; and (2) it’s just plain good karma and a great way to deepen your relationship with just about anyone.

Now take this advice and go forth and maybe you too can be the hot butter on someone else’s breakfast toast.

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Do You Forgive For Someone Else or For Yourself?

As the nice little Catholic boy that I am, the fact that Lent begins on Wednesday has been on my mind.  Lest anyone rolling across this post is not entirely clear on what Lent is all about, it’s essentially the 40 days that lead up to Easter.  It kicks off with Ash Wednesday and although Mardi Gras or “Fat Tuesday” is the day before, it’s not an official part of Lent, per se.  It’s more the “Let’s get all that sinning out of the way now! WOO!”

There are usually 2 traditions associated with Lent that most people know:

  1. No meat on Fridays; and
  2. Giving something up.40DaysAnd40Nights

Heck, there was even a movie with Josh Hartnett that was all about a guy  attempting to give up sex for the 40 days of Lent.

Now, my Mom would always point out that you don’t need to necessarily give something up for Lent, but you could do something instead.  Maybe volunteer or make some kind of a positive change.

Well, this year I have been fresh out of ideas so I did the logical thing and turn to the magic of the Interwebz to see what was out there. I did give some thought to giving something up, but anything I thought of was something that would be good for me to give up, like caffeine. So coming across this post caught my eye a little bit and, in particular, 2 suggestions on it’:

  • Create a good habit; and
  • Forgive.

I like them both, but as I give it more and more thought, I cannot help but feel that the truly worthwhile thing to do would be to forgive any grudge or slight I’ve held for too long.  Perhaps it’s the fact that forgiveness… and I mean real forgiveness… is possibly one of the most difficult things in life to do.

In the combination of “forgive and forget”, most of us can do a fair job of putting a hurt caused by another out of mind or jamming it deep within the gray matter of our subconscious… but to really and truly forgive?  To recognize that someone else did something something awful to us?  And what if that person never even said they were sorry?  Is it possible to forgive in that situation too given the fact that forgiving the unrepentant might be giving a gift to someone who simply doesn’t deserve it?

It’s a fascinating notion to consider because one of the potential benefits to the person doing the forgiving is the release of a lot of mental or spiritual weight by letting go of resentment and anger.

So is forgiveness for the person who committed the slight… or for you?

Maybe it’s just the perfect blend of both.