Category Archives: personal growth

My Best Friends

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NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

What draws you to your favorite people? 

For me it’s presence, openness, conviction, kindness, honesty, constancy, and most importantly, curiosity.  My best friends hold me up and hold me accountable.  They ask open, honest questions, and they really listen.  They see, hear, understand, accept, and love me.  They make joyful effort to meet me in my struggles to observe, understand, and integrate my experiences—to learn.  They keep me honest, never letting me get away with small-minded BS.  And they are all master learners themselves.

Lately I notice people, mostly men, who speak in declaration, refutation, and rhetoric.  They rarely ask questions that aren’t leading, dismissing, or prelude to soliloquy.  They interrupt incessantly.  I used to suffer greatly from encounters with such haute-pedants, from the utter unilaterality of conversation.   If they listened at all, it was to argue rather than to understand or broaden perspective.  Exhausting.  Today I moderate my expectations in such exchanges.  I accept what is, let go my wishes to be understood.  I focus instead on understanding, and my learning burgeons—often as much about myself as anything or anyone else.  My best friends point me to this higher plain of attention.

Tonight I see my tribe as a small, über-productive beehive.  Every day we sisters (and some brothers) survey our vast and diverse environment for new nectar.  It can be dangerous out there, but we’re tough and make it home.  As one dances out the journey, others attend and minister with love.  Together, we take everybody’s learning and make the sweetest honey, the insights and wisdom that nourish and sustain us—that drive us onward, seeking ever farther, wider, and higher meaning and purpose. 

How does your hive make you better?

Credentials and Credibility

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NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

Who do you trust?  Why? 

Margo and I were friends.  So when she recommended Christine as a life coach, I trusted enough to make the call.  I had no idea what a life coach was; “CPCC” was meaningless to me.  But after the intake call, her credibility and expertise were well-established, and she has been my coach ever since.  That was 2005.

I spent $900 and a weekend on Zoom last month for Ozan Varol’s Moonshot Academy.  I trusted in the value of the experience based on my interaction with Ozan’s Inner Circle to date—for two days I would give and receive peer coaching in a creative and challenging environment.  And bonus, I met Andrew, Kes, and Nicole.  Each of us aims to learn, share, expand our horizons, and do more good, hallelujah!

Kes’s last blog post goaded me to differentiate between credentials and credibility—my own and others’ alike.  Do I deserve your trust in clinic just by virtue of my MD?  What about when I speak and write on communication and leadership?  Why should you trust me?  Why should I trust you?

What are credentials?  My list includes education, work/life experience, recommendations/references, and body of work (eg peer reviewed publications). 

What establishes credibility?  My list: Attitude (humility, honesty, curiosity, reciprocity); consistency and integrity; purpose; quality of relationships (and thus references).  Christine’s credentials are solid.  Like any good professional she expands her expertise with continuous study.  But her credibility stems from her honesty and integrity—who she is.  It’s why I refer patients and friends.  Their feedback glows, and Christine’s credibility expands.

So perhaps credentials are superficial—what we’ve done, what’s immediately visible…  And credibility is deep—who we are, what we’re about.  I know which is more important to me.

Two Drops from the Firehose

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NaBloPoMo 2020 – Today’s Lesson

Friends, my firehose of learning gushed forcefully all week, and I’m exhausted in that really satisfied, saturated way.  Rather than trying to gulp directly in the path of deluge tonight, I looked for the drops that fell lightly, right from the nozzle.  Of all the things I read, heard, discussed, applied, and discerned, what stood out most?  Here’s what I found:

First, an article my friend posted and quoted tonight, which resonated deeply:

I believe the entire Jewish enterprise, with Talmud as its core spiritual practice, was designed to create…a person who is profoundly empathic, deeply connected to others, and radically loving; challenging rather than compliant, more disposed to resistance than obedience, active rather than passive; bold, courageous, and risk-taking when necessary; who can not only tolerate but appreciate and navigate uncertainty, paradox, and contradiction—because life is that way; who can appreciate and deal with complexity—because life is complex—rather than retreat into the need for and illusion of simplicity; who is resilient and can hold their truths lightly; and who walks through the world bringing the insights from their lived life experience to bear as a critique on a world which needs to be repaired precisely in those ways.

… It was designed to and must be utilized again to create people courageous enough to bring their svara, their moral intuition—refined and shaped by their learning—to bear on the world around them in such a way as to create a liberatory world in which all people can thrive in freedom and dignity, without barriers to being able to live out their fully human selves. And I believe that becoming that kind of person is a radical act of resistance. 

Hallelujah.

Second, Brené Brown’s podcast grounds and graces me lately.  This weekend, treat yourself to the profound and empowering message of Elizabeth Lesser, author of Cassandra Speaks, the next book in my Audible queue.  In addition to explaining the Tend and Befriend stress response and the real meaning of power, Lesser points to the necessary inner work required to really change the world:

It’s Friday the 13th.  COVID spreads like wildfire across the country, two weeks before Thanksgiving.

Let us take care of each other.  Judge less.  Listen more.  And MASK UP.

Onward.