Respect The Hard Stuff, Celebrate The Good Stuff.
Perspectives: Respect the hard stuff, Celebrate the good stuff.
The original title for today was “Perspectives: Are they right? Is it time for a change?” Which is neither interesting nor descriptive. So let’s stick with “Respect the hard stuff, Celebrate the good stuff.”
A recent coaching session with me as the client opened up some insight that I want to share. First, to share how amazing productivity and organizational coaching is, and also some insight about what I learned!
To set it up, I am taking a Productivity Coaching course right now and it is amazing. I am always a better coach while taking coaching courses. Maybe I just always need to be taking a coaching course! The new skills, the weekly practice and honing of the skills, it’s great. There are 4 of us in the class, from all over the globe, an East Coast, a West Coast, Me here in the Midwest, and a classmate from Australia!
More importantly, they are phenomenal coaches, and I am fortunate to spend time with them, listening and learning. We demonstrate coaching and I am coaching and getting coached often. And it reinforces for me how life changing our chosen profession can be, and that we are fortunate to be able to help people in the way that we do. Well, that was a long, unintended commercial for organizational and productivity coaching!
This coaching course started in the middle of April. And between my first and second classes, I had yet another carcinoma removed, my third in 14 months, this time from my shoulder. The procedure was straightforward and I am healing well. I have learned many things over the last 14 months. The obvious things, like wound care and studying up about basal cell carcinoma. I have already worn sunscreen for the last 25 years. This damage is likely from 40 years ago when I was a child and no one knew about SPF.
And here is the awareness I gained in a recent coaching session: I don't want this to be significant. The diagnosis, the process. I’ve done this three times, I've gotten good at this. I don't want it to be a big deal because I don't want anybody to worry about me, I don’t want to feel like cancer has a hold on me. I don't want to be a bother or a burden to anybody.
But, if I keep belittling it, writing it off and ignoring it, I am not learning more from this experience, and I am probably going to push the healing process and not take care of myself as I should. In the short term and the long term.
I will admit, I haven’t been taking it easy. On my work calendar, I did not give myself the required three weeks of light duty. And while I won’t say my actions are causing me harm, I will say they aren’t doing me any good. I don't want it to be significant so I am acting as though having this procedure is not significant.
I didn’t want to change my client’s schedules. I didn't want my family to worry about me. I don't want to inconvenience anybody. And it’s kind of working, because I don't really feel like I am putting anybody out. But I'm also not making good choices. Because I also don’t want to be inconvenienced or worried.
And that perspective is a problem. I have not been respecting the significance of the procedure, the diagnosis and the healing. I have not changed my behavior. And that has to change. As I write this at 10 days post op, I’m sore and I need I need to pay attention to that and adjust.
Continuing on as though nothing has happened when something has happened, I am depleting my resources faster than I should. I am tired, I am cranky, I am sad. And I'm never those things. And that's frustrating. So with my newfound awareness and shifts in perspective this week, I have made changes and have lowered my expectations for myself down A LOT so that I can heal, and I am grateful for the coaching process for helping me figure this out.
And now, take a leap with me:
The learning here is that we need to be aware of and also be ready to review our perspectives, and then adjust as necessary! We can seek awareness of what our perspectives are, reflect on them, review them, look at them from a couple different angles to determine if they're really right or not and if they're really helping us or not. Sometimes they're not necessarily wrong, but they're not as clear as they could be, and that murky view keeps us from living our best life.
Using my recent procedure and experience as an example, objectively, basal cell carcinoma is the least threatening of skin cancers. It is completely treatable, it doesn’t spread. In many ways, it really is not anything to worry about. That perspective is true. But ignoring the significance of having the procedure and blowing off the required healing could delay healing and cause other issues, which means I need to change that perspective.
We’re going to shift to positive now, I promise! Because here’s the thing: We need to acknowledge when events and behavior are significantly Good, too!
I was talking to a friend recently, also in leadership. And they said something along the lines of “of course I am going to take on this really big responsibility, someone has to”. Another perspective of that same conversation would be, “Yes, I will be courageous and work really hard and take on these responsibilities and selflessly serve my community.”
And I realized that not acknowledging significantly good things is also a skewed and unhelpful perspective. This is another example of how perspectives can become skewed over time.
We can overnormalize or become a little too resilient. We’re not wrong or lying, but our perspective can become unclear, or narrow. And we run the risk of minimizing the good stuff, too. If we don’t acknowledge just how remarkable a person or their actions are, that person doesn't get to celebrate or be celebrated. And we should celebrate. We can be proud of our achievements, so long as pride isn’t our only motivation. My friend can be proud of the work they are doing, and so can you and so can I.
When we aren't truthful with ourselves and others, or we aren't objective in our perspective, when we downplay hard work or courage or kindness or compassion, we aren’t learning from those experiences, either. They might go unnoticed, they might even disappear. We need to make sure that we recognize the significant things as significant. Mmm.. Significant.
We can aspire to be kind, compassionate, driven, motivated. We can aspire to accomplish things, be productive. Serve others, take care of our families. All of those things. And we need to recognize them as noteworthy, because they are.
We need to recognize and appreciate and have gratitude for these things that make each person, and appreciate them in others and ourselves. We need to acknowledge progress and successes. To not recognize the significance of the hard stuff and the good stuff, we end up with skewed perspectives.
Because otherwise we run the risk of not seeing that in ourselves and also not seeing that in others and in the world around us. And that sounds like a very, very dull, boring, ungrateful, unappreciative lack of joy, lack of fun, lack of lots of things. We risk forgetting that we can do and have done hard things and can and will do them again.
Buried in the middle of today’s episode is this paragraph:
The learning here is that we need to be aware of and also be ready to review our perspectives, and then adjust as necessary! We can seek awareness of what our perspectives are, reflect on them, review them, look at them from a couple different angles to determine if they're really right or not and if they're really helping us or not. Sometimes they're not necessarily wrong, but they're not as clear as they could be, and that murky view keeps us from living our best life.
Boiling that down, we’re back to: Respect the hard stuff, Celebrate the good stuff.
