Make Every Day Thanksgiving!

Of all the people who have ever lived, we are the most fortunate.  Truly.  Some experts estimate that 50 to 70 billion human beings have lived on Earth.  Most lived in conditions we can only term as “life or death.”  A little more than a hundred yeas ago most mothers expected to bury nearly half the children they brought into the world because fatal diseases and accidents stalked every family.  The average marriage lasted fourteen years because one of the spouses died.  Medicine was a primitive art.  Surgery was filthy and insanely painful.  If a common cold became pneumonia, death was virtually certain.  People commonly died from tooth infections.  Few enjoyed the amazing comforts of indoor plumbing until the 1920’s.  And for thousands of years most of the world’s population were exploited by powerful, merciless tyrants who multiplied human suffering by constant war.  Most human beings have never enjoyed human rights, reading or writing, let alone heat or air conditioning.  There is absolutely no doubt—we are fortunate.

But even if we consider our wonderful comforts and advantages, even if we value our personal freedoms to think, act, work and believe according to our own choices, we still surprisingly feel hog-tied by our own frustrations and unmet desires.  We chronically over-focus on what we don’t have, and the greatest threat to our health is our self-induced stress.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  We can feel lasting contentment and large doses of joy.  It is our choice.

Here’s how.

Recent research confirms that many of us are so over-busy and multi-tasking that we have ceased to feel our feelings.  What that means is that positive emotions are now only concepts in our minds rather than authentic emotions.  We say, “I love you” as a closing sentence on every phone call to our spouse, significant other, or children, but it’s simply a verbal habit.  Of course we love them.  We know we do.  We sacrifice for them, we respect them, we even feel empathy when they suffer or succeed, but we no longer feel the genuine emotion of heart grabbing love.  We’re too busy to.

Perhaps the easiest way to think about this problem is to recall your rip-roaring emotions when you first fell in love or held your baby.  There was a time when just being together created moments of intense and deeply satisfying emotions.  You not only knew you loved them, but you felt it big time.  It was like swimming in a warm bath of love.  That’s because you put all your energy into feeling the presence of your beloved.  You held them in unconditional positive regard.  Their flaws and shortcoming were overlooked because you experienced their essential goodness.  That’s the power of being present.  What it takes to feel that way is putting your full energy on the subject of your gratitude.  Whether it is a sunset, a quiet lunch with your beloved, or a noisy dinner with your extended family, be “all in.”  100%, a 1000%.

One habit I have found quite helpful is to practice this kind of presence with deep gratitude first thing in the morning.  Between awakening and getting out of bed I take 3 minutes and take 4 deep breaths.  I try to get the morning oxygen in all the way to my toes.  Then I ask, “What am I most grateful for today?”  I quickly settle on just one thing and then I point all my mental and emotional energy into feeling my gratitude.  I smile.  I try to linger and bring my busy mind back to this singular focus. What I feel in those gratitude-drenched moments is enoughness.  And that feeling of fullness is a kind of spiritual shield that seeks to protect me from creating irrational stress, angry fears and crippling self-doubt.  Well mostly.  Nothing of course works perfectly or all the time.  Yes, I have bad days and disappointments, I still worry and get grouchy, but I also seem to tap into a resilience that is greater than my own smallness.  For that I am very, very grateful.

So what’s the best thing we can do?  Make every day Thanksgiving.

Who’s Your Most Important Customer?

We are all vulnerable to the vitality of “customer” relationships.  In business we’re economically vulnerable.  But in our personal life we are even more fragile.  Our mental, emotional and spiritual sense of well-being is deeply tied to the quality of our personal relationships.  After all, our loved ones are “consumers” of us.  Our thoughts, moods, values, interests and personality.  And everyday they vote their feelings by the quality and level of intimacy of attention they give us.

I have two clients who are senior executives for the same high-pressure company.  They are unusual because they have been married to each other for over 10 years. When I first started working with Chad I couldn’t help noticing his enthusiasm when he talked about his wife.  He was wild about her in every way.  He thought she was a brilliant executive—creative, compelling, efficient.  On a personal level, the raves were even sweeter; he called her an amazing wife and a gifted mother.

Carole spoke about Chad as if he were a god.  The most brilliant, visionary leader she had every seen.  A sensitive husband and a loving father.  She freely used words like adore and admire, and she meant them.  To hear two people separately talk about each other with such affection and idealism is exceedingly rare.  For husbands and wives in business together, it is virtually unheard of. 

As I continued to work with Chad and Carole, I discovered two things.  One, they consciously focus on the quality of their relationship and use something called Active Advocacy.  That is, they are each other’s greatest fan, and they aren’t shy about making that known. Second, they spend time together.  Whenever they aren’t working, they are together, and they invest at least an hour a day in nothing but personal communication with each other.

So what’s up with Chad and Carole?  Are they just obnoxiously lucky?  Well maybe, but their relationship is built on pillars anyone can employ to change the energy of their relationships.  There are three main things we can do to create better primary relationships.  I call them the Three Pillars of Love:

 1.  Understand

 2.  Involve

 3.  Affirm

To Understand

The prime need of a human being in a relationship is to be understood.  We can only provide understanding when we value others intrinsically.  This means we don’t value them for how they please, fulfill, serve, or satisfy us, but for whom they are in and of themselves.  We don’t appreciate their good qualities alone but the whole package.  We treasure their extraordinary gifts and the quirks that others may find annoying.  We taste the spice that makes their entire dish unique.  Only when we value another intrinsically can empathy flow. 

Conversation is vital to understanding.  Couples who are romantic talk a lot.  Little conversations throughout the day. Other couples, on the contrary, seem to get their entire talking life “over with” when they’re falling in love.  During those hormone-enhanced early days, they lose track of time and talk all night.  But lasting romance requires continued soul conversation.  Without knowing the depth of our beloved, there is nothing real to love.  All we see or hear is the superficial, the practical.  We lose sight of the good stuff, the soul stuff.  

To Involve

A blissful relationship requires hands-on involvement.  It is not enough to tolerate the interests of our loved ones; it isn’t even enough to support them.  If we want love that lives and breathes, we must involve ourselves in their interests.  At least some of the time.  We don’t have to be involved in everything they do, but we should try to be involved in the special things.  The things that appear to give them special satisfaction.   That’s where the love payoff really is. 

To Affirm

Affirming is simple.  As soon as you notice someone doing something well, being kind or thoughtful, expressing his/her gifts, or looking good, you mention it.  Say it as soon as you think it.  The habit of affirmation is one of the most powerful loving skills you can develop.  Why we keep our positive thoughts a secret is a great mystery.   

Dan Baker, Director of the Life Enhancement Center at Canyon Ranch, cites research confirming this. “When we affirm others, we use parts of our neo-cortex that generate positive moods.  Affirming stimulates neuro-transmitters that are mood elevators.  Those who affirm and love others are making themselves happy.”  It’s simple.  Want to feel better?  Make someone else feel better.

Of course the three pillars of love don’t just work with a spouse or romantic partner.  Understanding, involving and affirming can turn up the quality of any relationship whether with children, parents, friends, even customers…everyone.  And it’s free.  It costs nothing, but the payoff is life’s jackpot. 

 

This article was originally published in The Deluxe Knowledge Quarterly KQ3 2008.

Love Giants

This past week has been an emotional Tsunami.  My wife and I were on a plane taxing down the terminal when she got a phone call that her mother, Barbara, had suddenly died.  Those are calls we refuse to believe will ever come.  Her mom was 74 and she had wrestled with the diseases of old age, among them diabetes and arthritis and two knee replacements, but her sudden death was unexpected.

In some ways she’d outlived her body.  Nearly five years ago when Barbara was racked with relentless arthritic pain and exhausted by serial illness she seemed to get very close to death.  My wife Debbie wouldn’t stand for it.  She sat on her mother’s bed and told her that she had to stay for her father’s well-being.  For reasons beyond reason her mom rallied and lived in a broken body with her big, zesty personality turned on high until last week.

What happened to Debbie’s dad, AJ, during these past five years was what was remarkable.  AJ was born to work.  He’s 80 today and still operates his business as if his pants were on fire.  But for the past 5 suffering years he also took care of his wife.  He learned to clean, cook and gently help her.  He took her shopping and out to lunch and often just sat and listened.  He learned patience and self-sacrifice in ways he’d never learned for his first 75 years of life.  All Barbara wanted was just to be with him.  Just in the same room.  Not that she was quiet.  We once took her to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and she shrieked so much unrestrained laughter the audience started laughing at her laughing.  Barbara loved life so much she fought for every sacred second of it.  But AJ was transformed by her struggle.  He went from just being a powerful man to a man overpowered by his own love for his wife.

Two days after Barbara passed, my brother Tom called to tell me my mother was slipping away fast.  She is nearly 91.  She’s lived a full and amazing life.  As a girl she ran like wind and could hit the long ball.  She played first base on an all boys team.  She married Dad, moved from Los Angeles to live on a cattle ranch and help build our tree house.  She was also a community leader and the prettiest mother in my school. Four years ago she got full-blown Alzheimer’s.  The tragedy of it was she knew she was losing her mind.  Her memories went from being on mental videotape to a slide show to just an empty slide tray.  She has steadily regressed.  She became a teenager again making silly jokes and pouting when she was limited from climbing the stairs.  Recently she became like a toddler having lost her vocabulary and having to point at what she wanted.  Debbie and I flew back to California and drove 6 hours to Mom’s house.  When I saw her I was shocked.  She has become as an infant.  She simply smiles now and holds my hand and strokes my face.  She’s peaceful.  She’ll probably live a few more months.  My brother Tom rearranged his business firm so he could operate out of Mom’s house for the past 4 years.  He hired a couple of aids to help him and he’s been the primary caregiver.  Tom is 55.  He’s in many ways a typical bachelor.  He has a messy room and loud ideas.  But what’s bigger are his ideals.  What’s happened to him is a transformation.  He is so kind, so loving, so caring to Mom it is nothing short of heroic.  The word selfless doesn’t begin to describe him.  And he says there is nothing he’d rather be doing.  He’s become a very tender man.

When Debbie and I got to the emergency room to see her mother’s lifeless body, I was struck with the realization that everything we think is important isn’t.  Not the daily life stuff, not the job stuff, not the geo-political stuff or the economic stuff.  What’s really important is how much we love.  It was plain to me.  And as for my brother and father-in-law…well, they are love giants.