A Holiday Gift for Ourselves – 4 Tips

The beginning of this article isn’t going to sound very “holidayish”, but I promise as you read on, you’ll see the connection and its relevance to you, so hang in there with me.

This topic came to me recently because of a new challenge (marketing my second career) that feels daunting. I bought books on entrepreneurship, took a course on marketing, but still no clear direction has emerged. So, what do I do? I seek encouragement.

Walking with my friend Jere in Princeton, I spill out my feelings of inadequacy. “I was a teacher all my life. I’m not a salesperson. I’m retired. Other people in my course seem to have gotten farther (the old comparison voice is still with me.) Even though I have a strategy I’m not comfortable with it.”

“It’s understandable, Gail. You just need to find the right support to help you take effective action. You did it with your book, which shows you can do it with this new challenge. I’m so impressed with you with all you’ve done. You can do this!” I have other versions of this conversation with my sister, my husband and a handful of close friends.

I am drawn to motivational quotes and write them on notecards that stare up at me from my beside table or hang from the windows behind my writing desk. Each day I read them for an infusion of self-belief.

“If you are positive you’ll see opportunities instead of obstacles.” Confucius

“Measure your worth by your dedication to your path – not success or failure.”  Elizabeth Gilbert

“The credit belongs to the (wo)man who is actually in the arena…who strives valiantly.” Theodore Roosevelt

In the evening when I watch TV with my husband Gus, I jot down inspiration from interviews with people who’ve been challenged and succeeded.

I’ll just say it. I struggle with faith in myself. When it comes to working on a challenge that I don’t feel a clear direction with, or presently have the skills to tackle, I need encouragement. I need support to believe I have what it takes to make my goal possible. You might ask, so what’s wrong with that?

It’s a Matter of Perspective

My perspective! When I recognize that I’m frequently seeking encouragement from the universe, I chastise myself. “I can’t believe you’re at this place again! I would have hoped with all the moral-boosting you did to write your book, you’d have faith in yourself for good!” My tone is that of a disappointed mother, and the feelings of shame make me cower in a corner of my foot.

“What we don’t need in the midst of struggle is shame for being human.”

— Brene Brown

Shame is not a friend I like to hang out with, so once I clearly recognize her, I seek ways to let her go.  In my training as a coach, I guide clients to reframe, or look at their negative thinking from a more positive empowering perspective. Ah, yes Gail, let’s reframe the shame! Here’s my thought process:

Another way for me to look at seeking encouragement is that it’s actually a strength. It’s a positive attribute to build myself up when facing a challenge. And the frequency of my pursuit shows my passion, determination, and focus.

I honestly feel uplifted and more self-respect just saying those words.

Challenges Come in Many Forms and Packages

The December holidays are such a mixed bag. They can bring great joy and also lots of anxiety, sadness and loneliness. How about you? What challenges you at the holidays? Is it anxiety to please others or prepare perfectly for your family and friends? Does it bring up sadness or disappointment? Or are you like me and have a goal you’re working on and are judging yourself for where you’re at with it? Here’s my tips that I’ve drawn on to help me through my struggle and may be helpful to you, too.

Tips to Empower You During Challenges

1.     Recognize your inner judge voice when it shows up. Mine criticized me for needing encouraging words. The judge is in us all, but it’s not who we are.

2.     Once you recognize how you’ve judged yourself reframe the statement with another authentic, positive way to look at the part of you that you judged.

3.     It’s so empowering to me to remind myself that I’m human and much of what I feel that makes me feel shame others feel, too. Whatever I’m experiencing I’m not a defective person, or worse than others because of it. I love this from my book, The Affirming Way of life: See the Good, Speak the Good, Spread the Good: “A big part of being human is to make mistakes, suffer, and feel inadequate—not just us but everyone. It helps to understand that countless people have critical voices in their heads.”

4.     Words can be so empowering. Seek supportive, encouraging words from family and friends for comfort, upliftment, motivation…whatever you need. Be open about your doubts and self-judgement with others you can count on to encourage you. Be aware of words that jump off a page and speak to you. Encouraging messages are there for us if we pay attention.

As my husband Gus wisely said when I shared this topic with him, “Just as food fuels our body, positive encouraging words fuel our souls.”

Wishing you inner kindness, appreciation of your humanity, and lots of love this holiday season!

The Affirming Way of Life: See the Good, Speak the Good, Spread the Good  makes a wonderful holiday gift for anyone at any age you want to share the gift of positive words with.

The Surprising Gift of Vulnerability

Do you shy from being vulnerable and sharing your struggles with others?

Reaching for my phone, half awake, I am greeted with a blog post from my son Theo’s favorite high school teacher, Mr. Armstrong. The opening sentence is, “I just taught from my living room (due to the pandemic) what will probably be my last high school English class ever.” Oh no! I am so sad, for Mr. Armstrong and all the kids who will miss out on delving into their being with the most amazingly life-changing teacher. The really heart-wrenching part is it means the disease that makes him unsteady on his feet and challenges his speech, has gotten the upper hand.

I know all this because he vulnerably shares who he is on the page. Reading between the lines, I hear him explore and expose what it means to live with an incurable disease. And watch him embrace and express his passion for passing his life wisdom onto his precious children and students. He says, “I tried to be my most honest, vulnerable self. For the students sake. For my sake. In fact my best teaching often happened in the privacy of my heart and mind.” His words just split me wide open. Jay makes me think about the power of vulnerability to bring us peace and wisdom. 

Owning Our Life

What courage it takes for any of us to show our insecurities, our self-doubt, our weakness, even our ugly parts. But it’s not just us, it’s everyone. Every single one of us knows we possess less-than-perfect-parts—because we’re human! And when someone like Jay shows us his pain, his truth, it opens us to ours. What a gift! His writing brings me insight into why I revealed so much of my own life challenges and suffering in my book, The Affirming Way of Life: See the Good, Speak the Good, Spread the Good.  

If you’ve read my book or blog (even if you haven’t, I’ll give you a taste my of nakedness on the page), you know it took me a good portion of my adulthood to heal myself from a dysfunctional childhood living with my loving, bipolar mother. I’ve shown you my struggles of raising my one precious son with ADHD, in a school system unprepared to support his learning style. I’ve told you about my stormy relationship with my step-mother who blocked me from getting close to my dad. How my husband and I were mired in negative attitudes toward each other (they piled up from years of not discussing our grievances and hurts) until a momentous conversation that set us on the road to rekindling our love for one another. Add to that my lion’s share of negative self-talk. And this is just a summary!

 I share who I am in the hopes it will help others accept and embrace their less-than-pretty-parts, too. And in the process see that living an affirming way of life is possible even with all of our imperfections. And there’s more.

Unraveling my experiences on the page, has helped me to own my life. I gain perspective. I distance myself from the situation. And I see a brave woman who just wants to love and be loved.

Vulnerability Deepens Relationships

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness.”

— Brene Brown

There’s a bonus to sharing our shameful parts. It helps others feel safer to open up to us with their fears, insecurities and less-than-pretty-parts. And that’s where deeper more meaningful relationships are born.

Writing this piece, helps me remember when a friendship became a sistership.

For the first ten years of my friendship with Lynn, I turned to her for support and encouragement as I navigated through a very unsettled time of my life. She empathically listened and offered wonderful advice as I spilled my anxieties and fears. Yet she never opened up to me. In my eyes she had the perfect family life and was the together person I hoped to become.

A shake-up in her life, cracked her perfect façade—her husband left her. She turned to me for the support she’d always given me—and our deeply loving, most authentic sistership was born.

Lynnie (she became), shared with me her need to appear perfect living with her perfection demanding husband. She revealed that she too had a bipolar mother (such a surprise, I thought I was the only one at the time), and cried to me about her fears and insecurities of being alone for the first time in her life.

For over 40 years now we share the precious gift of sistership. Our relationship is so close because we both share our full selves together. We truly listen, embrace each other’s shameful parts, and see the best in each other when the other can’t. My vulnerability opened two hearts to create the deepest of relationships.

Vulnerability Brings Peace and Wisdom

It’s all about opening. Opening our own heart and mind to feel our pains and our shame. When we are brave enough to crack our shell and embrace our very human innards we open to the flow of peace.

Wisdom grows, as we continue to share in our trusted relationships, all the complexity of being our very human self. And that’s the opportunity for everyone of us!

Your Takeaways

• Openly sharing who you are, your doubts, imperfections and fears makes you more real, more human.

• Writing or journaling our pains and doubts can help us own our beautiful imperfect life.

• Reach out to others you trust with your pain. It can not only heal you, but build the most meaningful life-enhancing bonds!

• The pay off of making peace with your full self, is wisdom.

WHY NOT EMBRACE YOURS AND OTHERS VULNERABILITY AS A STRENGTH!

Available on Amazon

Taking Notes: A Love Story

I’m honored to share a guest post by my son Theo’s favorite high school English teacher, Jason Armstrong. His blogs at his website WriteOnFightOn, take my breath away. Jason, a youngish father of three and a passionate writer, is living with Cerebellar Ataxia, a degenerative disease that impacts motor skills, coordination, vision and balance. I mention the disease, because with vulnerability and humor he puts on the page what it means to be challenged and human. After each of his posts I come away feeling deeply touched and more real. Read on and see for yourself.

In a world with Nicholas Sparks it's hard to write something original about love.

Love is a well-traveled topic. One, I'm sure, you've taken plenty of notes on.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is engraved your heart and scrolled among the stars.

Love is in air. Love is an open door. And, if you find the right station, love is a battlefield.

Anytime you write about love you ink a fine line between cliche' and Nicholas Sparks. So, in my attempt to avoid such fate, the only thing I can offer is a secret love story about love. So secret that when my wife reads this, she will know it for the first time.

I've written about my health issues and personal shame and failure but writing about love is something I've avoided. For me, writing about love is a little embarrassing. A little too revealing.

And plus, how do I write about love in such an authentic yet impenetrable way that it's not the subject of dissection, comparison and judgment?

Truth is-- you can't.

It's simple emotional physics (which should've totally been a 90's emo band name).

To love is to want. And to want is to have weakness. Therefore, you can't open yourself to love without subjecting yourself to dissection, comparison and judgment.

I fell in love with a girl when I was 16.

The first time I saw her standing in the blue painted threshold of the doorway to her biology class I just knew, with an absolute bone-certainty that I would marry her one day.

And 10 years later I did.

Even though that story is absolutely true, I understand you're skepticism. And I don't blame you.  It seems too easy and yet, at the same time, too impossible. Too Nicholas Sparks.

So I'll tell you another story that's more believable. Yet, in some ways, just as fantastical.

Cindy and I are sitting at large round table, the kind guests sit around at weddings. We're in the back of a Las Vegas hotel ballroom, the kind couples rent for weddings.

Except instead of a DJ, there's a UCLA professor at the far end of the ballroom. He's standing on a stage, behind a podium. To his right is a movie screen holding an MRI of a human brain. A brain whose cerebellum is damaged. A cerebellum that looks a lot like mine.

The room is filled with people of all ages. Some people in wheelchairs. Some people clutching canes and walking sticks. The same haunted glow in everyone's eyes.

We're in Las Vegas attending the National Ataxia Federation's annual conference for patients with neurological disease because seven months earlier I was diagnosed with cerebellar atrophy.

Cindy and I are surrounded by people of all ages stricken with rare neurological diseases. ALS. MS. Huntington's Disease. Brain tumors.

Some people sit with their spouse. Some sit their parents. Some sit alone.

The UCLA professor is discussing advancements in stem cell research as a way of improving and repairing brain growth.

Cindy is beside me taking notes.

Her hand moves in small yet amazing ways. She is writing down what the professor is saying as fast as he is saying it.

Her penmanship is catholic school perfect. Her notes are well-spaced and organized and her margins are aligned.

It was a secret moment in my history. One I've never told Cindy about.

A moment of enormous fear yet as my eyes trace the ink-curls of her words, a small moment of enormous comfort and safety.  A moment where love was learned. A moment when I finally realized I was lucky enough to find a woman who cared more for me than I could possibly care for myself.

A moment that gifted me the eventual courage to roll my shoulders and write these sentences--

Let my cerebellum soften to oatmeal. Let my brain cells explode. Let my eyes go blind. Because there's a girl with green eyes standing in the blue doorway and she's not moving. And she never will.

And that is what love becomes. After all the romance and celestial promises of the initial courtship, love becomes a lifetime of small moments that add up to make something enormous.

But even that seems Sparksian.

A chronically sick man whose hands are shaking, whose body aches, whose teetering on the edge of self-destruction is sitting beside his wife in a Las Vegas ballroom. They're high school sweethearts. They have three children together. But seven months ago things suddenly got harder.

And yet she still takes notes.

As the professor speaks and the damaged brain that holds the screen looms like a thundercloud over the room, with her free hand, she reaches across the table to hold his hand, to ease him, to feel his pain.

Jay is a published author, an award-winning teacher, and speaker. He believes in the power of storytelling and that life favors the brave. You can contact Jay and read more of his writings on his blog writeonfighton. org.