Category Archives: gratitude

Honesty and Integrity

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NaBloPoMo 2018:  What I’m Learning

Last day!  I’m feeling a little elated.  Not sure if it’s Day 30 relief and success, the abnormally large caffeine load I had today, or my awesome breakfast date…

I wish you all to have a friend like Donna.  She is one amazing woman.  A leadership coach, wife, mom, and fellow cosmic journeyer, I count myself infinitely lucky to know her this time around on earth.  I bet we’ve known each other longer than that, though.  We met in this life about 9 years ago.  I can count on one hand the number of people I remember propositioning for a coffee date on our first meeting, and Donna is one.  We meet every two or three months to commune, share, and grow.  I consistently experience two or three separate intellectual and spiritual epiphanies each time.

Today was no exception, and possibly even an exponentially positive anomaly.  Like I said, I’m caffeine loaded and coming off a 30 day freestyle writing challenge—I was primed!  The conversation was so profound I had to type out some notes afterward, as I sense future writings to spring therefrom.  Day 30 was the perfect day to meet her!  I have synthesized and integrated deeply this month thanks to this daily blogging discipline, and sharing with Donna was the quintessential culmination of it all.  I now share with you my favorite segment from our egg-and-toast-laden love-in.

I described a values exercise I did reading Dare to Lead by Brené Brown.  From a list of over 100 words including accountability, courage, faith, openness, respect, and truth, I had to choose two core values, or think of two of my own.  Brown writes:

The task is to pick the two that you hold most important.  …almost everyone…wants to pick somewhere between ten and fifteen.  But you can’t stop until you are down to two core values.

Here’s why:  The research participants who demonstrated the most willingness to rumble with vulnerability and practice courage tethered their behavior to one or two values, not ten…  and when people are willing to stay with the process long enough to whittle their big list down to two, they always come to the same conclusion that I did with my own values process:  My two core values are where all of the ‘second tier’ circled values are tested.

Values list

Dare to Lead, page 188

I listened to this book twice before I received my hard copy from Amazon.  I could. not. Wait!  In anticipation of doing the exercise, I thought the whittling process would take a long time—that I would agonize over it.  But as I skimmed the pages approaching the list, in a cosmic flash, I realized my two: Honesty and Integrity.  It was one of those ‘you just know’ moments, but I had to check in.  Really?  Was I sure?  How did I know?  How could I prove it?  I turned the page and scrutinized every word, comparing it in importance to these two.  Accountability?  Yes, but not as much.  Equality.  Fairness.  Gratitude.  Learning.  Openness, Optimism, Stewardship, and Wholeheartedness:  all important, but not nearly so much as Honesty and Integrity.  I was done.  As surely as I felt self-actualized in seventh grade, I am sure these are my core values.  A few days later, I was describing this moment to another thoughtful and astute friend.  She mulled for a moment and said, “Yes, I agree, I see these as your core values, too.”  Wow, I cannot think of a higher compliment.

Today when I told Donna, her first response was, “Honesty and Integrity… What is the distinction between the two?”  What a great question!  I had a vague, intuitive idea, but had never taken the time to think it through.  As happens so easily when I’m with Donna, and as a person who talks to think, the answer poured forth after only a few seconds.  I used a real life example:

Let’s say my friend asks me, “Does this dress make me look fat?”

Honesty compels me to answer truthfully.  Yes.  Honesty keeps me from lying.  That is outside of my core values, no can do.

Integrity helps me choose my words.  This dress does not flatter your figure the way a different style would.  We are here to choose the dress that makes you look positively stunning and we will not leave until our mission is accomplished!  Integrity frames my response in line with all of my other, ‘second tier’ values: kindness, diplomacy, empathy, love, loyalty, and all the rest.

Thus, Honesty tells me what I cannot do.  It gives me constraints and standards.  Honesty is the guardrail, the floor for my code of conduct.  Integrity then tells me what I can and must do.  It defines the realm of possibility, meaning, and purpose—the Why, How, and What.  How can I be the best friend, mom, doctor, wife, speaker, and leader?  It is the accelerator and steering mechanism that keep me in the lane of who I am.  Or, Honesty is the launch pad; Integrity creates the universe of potential.  I swear I got goosebumps.

Phrases that recur often in my speech and writing are “walk the talk” and “lead by example.”  I always ask myself if I exemplify these, and they are the yardsticks by which I measure all those who lead me.  One cannot do either without Honesty and Integrity at work all of the time.  Brené Brown calls integrity “living into our values rather than just professing them.”  Hallelujah.  I feel the most at home, confident, and grounded when I know I’m living deeply in my Honesty and Integrity.  When I’m outside of these, I feel viscerally uneasy.  I cannot tolerate it, or I can only with great suppressive efforts to manage the dissonance.  I lose sleep; I get irritable and restless.

Practicing Honesty and Integrity is not always easy, though.  Facing the ugly and disappointing truths about myself and my dysfunctional patterns, and then holding myself to a higher standard of conduct—internal benchmarks of behavior and relationship—these aspirations create stress and tension on multiple levels of consciousness.

In the end, though, I know that as long as I hold these two values in front, they will light my right path.  I know I will make mistakes.  There will be times when my behavior absolutely does not exemplify these values.  I wanted to write a blog post right after my A-ha! moment reading the book.  But I was afraid someone would recall a time they witnessed the opposite of these values in my actions, and call me out on it.  But I’m not afraid anymore.  I’m not perfect.  And I’m striving every day.  That’s good enough, because it is my best.  Honest—I swear on my Integrity.

 

 

Things We Take for Granted

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NaBloPoMo 2018:  What I’m Learning

When I’m sick the sinus congestion often resists the efficacy of all medication.  I lie awake at night mouth breathing, almost choking every time I have to swallow my own secretions.  Those are the times I really appreciate when I’m well.  The past year, even though I am mostly recovered from knee surgery, I’m still always aware of my one-sided non-normalcy.  When I do my single leg exercises, it’s staggering how I can just do it on the right, and on the left I honestly struggle, as if I could never do some of these things before.  This morning, driving the kids to school and then myself to work navigating slush, sleet, poor visibility, and the inevitably slower traffic, I was grateful that I could simply push the ‘SNOW’ button on my center console and suddenly I had a 4-wheel drive.  You can actually feel the incremental increase in stability and traction—amazing!  Thank you, my engineer friends and family!

Last night was the first real snow of the season in Chicago.  Part of me still hates living here—I absolutely abhor the weather.  But today I found myself grateful more than annoyed.  My kids are old enough to get themselves out of bed, dress, groom, and feed themselves.  We all leave together, and though that morning time in the car can be groggy and silent, it’s still time together.  I drive a car I really like to a job I really love, where I work with a team of generous, funny, kind, and collaborative people.  I have this really warm Land’s End parka with the big, foofy faux fur hood, and I can walk from the parking garage to the office in total comfort on most cold days.

I have job security, health insurance, a great house (with reliable heat and running water, a home gym, and plenty of space for us all to both spread out and gather together), more books than I can read (right now), two healthy parents, a boatload of amazing friends, a universe of information at my fingertips, digital connections with people all over the planet whenever I want, and a phone that takes and sends pictures, for crying out loud.  I don’t have a formal gratitude practice right now, but holy cow, this is a lot to be thankful for.

Not sure what makes me think of the things we take for granted:  Our health, the people in our lives, our homes, our livelihoods.  Think of the thousands of people devastated by wildfires all over the west this year.  In the blink of an eye, imagine all your possessions and the physical spaces of so many cherished memories—all memories themselves.  Imagine your sister, daughter, son, nephew, best friend–missing.  When did you last see them, talk to them?  What transpired between you?  Imagine going about your life, assuming you can handle flu if you get it, then an hour later feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck, then dying of flu a week later.

I’m not trying to be dark or macabre here.  I’m just noticing how much I have, and how much I don’t truly appreciate it most of the time.  I try to be present to the kids as much as possible, engage fully when they talk to me (and fail more than I want to admit).  I really notice their smiles and laughter.  I look through my Facebook feed for pictures of friends and their kids.  I stop to admire flower buds every day in the spring, and bugs on the sidewalk.  I have gotten better at seeing the trees turn gradually green in May and golden in October.  I see pictures of the kids as toddlers and it feels like a hundred years ago and just yesterday, all at the same time.  And don’t even get me started on photos from high school, college, and med school—OMG we were kids!

Another day tomorrow.  Who knows what will happen, how my life could be turned upside down or inside out?  Or not?  Will it feel mundane or miraculous?  I’m learning—reminded, really—that most days, I get to decide.  That’s pretty groovy, I say.

Rally

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NaBloPoMo 2018:  What I’m Learning

In my first practice it was common for whole families to be my patients.  Grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, cousins, and other webbed relations.  My fondest memories of those years revolve around witnessing the love, tension, and ultimate cohesion of these complex units of humanity.

One day Grandma came for a routine follow up visit.  We reviewed her blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol numbers.  She wanted to lose some weight.  Everything was stable, but something seemed off.  I could not put my finger on it, and when I asked if everything was okay she said yes.  This scenario repeated maybe once or twice more over some months, and slowly we agreed she was depressed, though I’m not sure if I ever used that word.  There was no trigger, no event.  She had not had a history of depression.  She was just down, she did not know why, and she could not make it go away.

Grandma came from a culture and a generation that did not feel comfortable doing talk therapy.  She was also reticent to take prescription anti-depressants, even if they might help her feel better.  But she was happy to see me more regularly, just so I could keep track of her medical problems and make sure she was okay.  We reviewed the same list each time: fatigue, low mood, anhedonia.  No suicidality, biometrics stable.

Sometimes I would also see Son, Daughter-in-law, or Granddaughter.  I would ask them how Grandma was doing.  They never used the word ‘depressed,’ but they described how she was ‘kind of down,’ ‘sad,’ ‘going through a hard time.’  And then they would tell me what they were doing about it.  Someone would always be at Grandma’s house, keeping her company.  Sister would invite her out to lunch.  Granddaughter would take her out shopping.  Everybody attended to her just a little more, rallying around her, and nobody ever talked about why.

Grandma herself rallied, and her depression lifted over time.  In Chinese the expression for this is equivalent to having ‘walked out’ of it, like depression is a long tunnel in the mountain.  What a privilege to bear witness to this phenomenon—the family saw Grandma walking in a dark place, and they moved in a little closer, each with their own candle, lamp, or torch.  They helped light her way, and they all walked out with her together.

I had a shit day today, mostly of my own making.  Cramming in too many things, all scheduled too close together, trying to do too much, falling down on multiple levels, and adversely affecting multiple people around me.  I almost bailed on a chance to be with an amazing group of people tonight, out of exhaustion and self-loathing.  But these were my friends and I had not seen many of them in several months.  I felt quite listless at the beginning of dinner, not unlike I imagine Grandma felt.  But as I communed with my tribe, reconnected, and met a new friend, I started to feel better.  The yummy duck helped, too.  They could intuit a shadow on me.  And with gentleness and respect for boundaries, my friends rallied around me.  It was not pity or sympathy.  It was genuine empathy and wishes for my well-being.  So I rallied, too.

Things feel overwhelming more often now than before.  The anger, bickering, blaming, and self-righteousness I see, hear, and feel all around (and within) me really gets under my skin—ha, literally, I guess.  I know this will never be a permanent state; I will feel better tomorrow.  It’s also an interesting opportunity to observe how I’m walking the self-care talk—including the self-compassion part.  Fascinating.

Well friends, that’s what’s on my mind tonight.  My patients save me by teaching me.

I’m going to bed.  So I can rally some more tomorrow, and maybe help someone else do the same.