My girlfriend Melanie just posed the following question to her Facebook community: if you're in therapy/counseling, what do you think makes a good therapist?
My answer (assuming quality is a given): shared values/a shared belief system and someone who doesn't put his or her own labels on what you're processing.
I was in counseling a few years ago when I thought my life was falling apart. In retrospect, I believe this woman contributed directly to my rapid decline. On my first visit, I made a comment about how I wasn't sure if I really wanted to engage in counseling. In response, she said "Believe me when I tell you that you need it. If I ran into you as a stranger at Wegman's, I would be able to tell by your body language how depressed you are."
I should have been appalled at her direct hit but instead I was shocked at myself. Really? I must be way worse off than I thought! So I went back.
A few months later, I was describing a watershed moment in my marriage that was a quantum, positive shift in my perspective. Instead of allowing me to claim my breakthrough as my own, she said, "Don't misread that emotion. You're not feeling love; you're feeling guilt." And down I went. Again.
This woman was divorced, "never been happier," and spent session after session extolling the virtues of freedom from baggage. She also weighed at least 250 pounds. Can happiness and freedom co-exist with excessive weight? Isn't that the proverbial cover that people hide beneath? Perhaps I'm reading too much into that.
The final straw came one day when I was sharing with her another turning point in my life. I had read Mark 4:35-40 when Jesus calms the storm and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The disciples were professional fishermen who were on rough seas all the time -- yet this storm was so huge that they were freaking out. They thought they were going to die. Somehow, through all of that, Jesus was sound asleep at the stern. How is that possible? Worse yet, doesn't he care?? When they finally woke him up, he said "Peace, be still" and the water became completely calm.
That rapid shift must have been even more shocking to them because then, as the verses say, they were even more terrified. Dead calm after life-threatening seas. What the . . . ?
For me, it was just the antidote I needed. Yeah, my life was out of control. My work, at the time, was on major overload. But more importantly, if I claim to be a believer, isn't Jesus on my boat? I may feel like he's asleep but I'm not going to capsize. I am not going to capsize.
I felt a huge weight lifting.
When I recounted this life-altering insight with my then-therapist (on what was to be our last session), she responded slowly in a serious tone, "The difference between you and that parable is that you're on your boat alone and no one is helping."
What? Wait . . . what?? So I have no God? And no family that supports me? No friends who love me?
Man, have I been a patsy or what?
Showing posts with label hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hope. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
What's Goin' On?
"I don't think of myself as a poor, deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good."
(Quote from Oprah Winfrey)
What makes some people miserable with carte blanche to blame everything/everyone for their state while others take full ownership for their lives and their futures? What makes some clients jump on the "down economy" bandwagon to justify their company's declining revenues while others rally the troops?
To quote 4 Non Blondes:
And I pray, oh my God do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
(Quote from Oprah Winfrey)
What makes some people miserable with carte blanche to blame everything/everyone for their state while others take full ownership for their lives and their futures? What makes some clients jump on the "down economy" bandwagon to justify their company's declining revenues while others rally the troops?
To quote 4 Non Blondes:
And I pray, oh my God do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
Monday, January 26, 2009
On Leadership
I put the following quote -- attributed to Norman Lear -- at the end of a keynote speech I wrote for my boss recently but, upon re-reading it over the weekend, I couldn't help but think of how it parallels the state of the nation today and Obama's (and our) challenges ahead.
“To be an effective leader, you not only have to get the group of followers on the right path, but you must be able to convince them that whatever obstacle stands in the way ahead, whether it’s a tree or a building that blocks the view, you’re going to get around it. You’re not going to be put off by apparent barriers to your goal. All journeys are filled with potholes and mines, but the only way we can move beyond them is to approach them, and recognize them for what they are. You have to see that it’s only a tree, or whatever, and it’s not insurmountable. Everywhere you trip is where the treasure lies.”
“To be an effective leader, you not only have to get the group of followers on the right path, but you must be able to convince them that whatever obstacle stands in the way ahead, whether it’s a tree or a building that blocks the view, you’re going to get around it. You’re not going to be put off by apparent barriers to your goal. All journeys are filled with potholes and mines, but the only way we can move beyond them is to approach them, and recognize them for what they are. You have to see that it’s only a tree, or whatever, and it’s not insurmountable. Everywhere you trip is where the treasure lies.”
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Mini-weekend: Day 2
Another four-day work week! Or as my friend/client Dawn said to me, "You claim you're down to a four-day week but you worked all weekend. You're really just down to six days." Yeah, thanks buzz kill.
Plans for today include:
1) Laundry (in progress)
2) Getting my head around my Schwab account (God help me, literally)
3) Dinner with Miche at Olives
I also hope to dust, talk on the phone, read a bit, whatever.
And I finally just watched Obama's speech. I don't care what MSNBC says, I thought it was powerful.
"America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."
Plans for today include:
1) Laundry (in progress)
2) Getting my head around my Schwab account (God help me, literally)
3) Dinner with Miche at Olives
I also hope to dust, talk on the phone, read a bit, whatever.
And I finally just watched Obama's speech. I don't care what MSNBC says, I thought it was powerful.
"America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Where Were You When?
I was searching for an interview that my friend Dave, who works for the AARP, had conducted with Martina Navratilova when I happened upon an article on their site entitled, “Where Were You When?” in which AARP staff members describe the ten moments they’ll never forget. Since I was not yet on this planet or too young to remember, I cannot comment on the assassinations of JFK, MLK or Robert F. Kennedy or the shootings at Kent State but some of these other events do stand out in my aging memory bank.
December 8, 1980: John Lennon is killed: I was preparing for midterm exams on the couch in my parents’ living room. I was a junior in HS and had the radio on while studying. Go figure.
January 28, 1986: The U.S. space shuttle Challenger explodes 72 seconds after takeoff, killing all seven crew members. My roommate Berrie and I were in Professor Bob Arnold’s film class at SU where he announced the news. I remember the horror not entirely registering with me until later possibly because I hadn’t yet seen the images.
November 9, 1989: Borders between East and West Germany open—leading to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. I was sound asleep in my room at Brad and Kristin’s house on French Road when my girlfriend Meg called to wake me up. “I knew this is something you wouldn’t want to miss.” Although it was cool to watch, I would rather have been sleeping. She also called a few months later, again really early in the morning, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. I’m still tired . . .
August 31, 1997: Princess Diana dies. I was in a cab headed back uptown having just left my friend Barton and his photographer friend down in Union Square when I heard that she had been shot, er, I mean in a car accident. The next morning, as we took the train out to the Hamptons to celebrate my girlfriend Laura’s birthday, the news of Diana's death was all over the airwaves. Two years later, again headed out to the Hamptons, I remember being at Penn Station as people were freaking about JFK Jr.’s missing plane. The worst was confirmed when we got to Laura’s house. It was almost a surreal, “how can this be happening again?” experience.
April 20, 1999: The Columbine High School massacre occurs in Littleton, Colorado. I honestly cannot remember where I heard this news. I remember watching the coverage and wishing that those boys could have had the foresight to realize that the pains of high school fade quickly upon graduation.
September 11, 2001: Attack on the World Trade Center. I was at my desk here in Rochester when my husband called. I immediately called a girlfriend who I used to work with in the World Financial Center to make sure she was okay. She actually picked up her phone in her office and chatted with me for a minute to tell me that they were evacuating the building. I heard later that another girlfriend from work had gotten off the subway in the WTC and when she saw everyone running, she assumed there was a gunman. So, instead of leaving the building, she stayed and hid behind a garbage bin. It wasn’t until she realized that there were no gunshots that she decided to run in the same direction as everyone else. She was halfway uptown when the building collapsed behind her.
What’s missing from this list?
October 3, 1995: The end of the OJ trial. Working at Draft, we all went in to the conference room to watch the verdict being delivered on TV. Wow. Talk about a collective groan heard worldwide!
Sidebar: I have been reading bits and pieces of Leonard Mlodinow’s book, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, which shed light on how the jury was fooled by misleading statistics. During the trial, lawyer Alan Dershowitz shared that in the U.S. each year, 4M women are battered by their male partners, yet only one in 2,500 is killed. His argument was that just because O.J. was a known abuser, the chances of him actually murdering her were slim. However, that wasn’t the relevant statistic. The opposite side of the equation, which never surfaced in court, was relevant: 90% of all battered women who are murdered are killed by their abusers. Retrial!
Pan Am Flight 103, Lockerbie, Scotland. December 21, 1988. This tragedy, more than any other, has directly affected people I know and has haunted me for years. One of my girlfriends, who was supposed to be on that flight but decided to travel in Europe a bit longer, lost many of her close friends from SU that day—along with her faith. I remember my sister calling to tell me what had happened. As a former student of the SU London Centre only three years earlier, I felt devastated by this tragedy. And 20 years later, it still makes me cry just thinking about it.
But, more importantly, what’s next?
Tomorrow: the Obama inauguration! Good luck to the man who has to pick up the pieces after “Mission Accomplished.” I can’t wait to tune in!
December 8, 1980: John Lennon is killed: I was preparing for midterm exams on the couch in my parents’ living room. I was a junior in HS and had the radio on while studying. Go figure.
January 28, 1986: The U.S. space shuttle Challenger explodes 72 seconds after takeoff, killing all seven crew members. My roommate Berrie and I were in Professor Bob Arnold’s film class at SU where he announced the news. I remember the horror not entirely registering with me until later possibly because I hadn’t yet seen the images.
November 9, 1989: Borders between East and West Germany open—leading to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. I was sound asleep in my room at Brad and Kristin’s house on French Road when my girlfriend Meg called to wake me up. “I knew this is something you wouldn’t want to miss.” Although it was cool to watch, I would rather have been sleeping. She also called a few months later, again really early in the morning, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. I’m still tired . . .
August 31, 1997: Princess Diana dies. I was in a cab headed back uptown having just left my friend Barton and his photographer friend down in Union Square when I heard that she had been shot, er, I mean in a car accident. The next morning, as we took the train out to the Hamptons to celebrate my girlfriend Laura’s birthday, the news of Diana's death was all over the airwaves. Two years later, again headed out to the Hamptons, I remember being at Penn Station as people were freaking about JFK Jr.’s missing plane. The worst was confirmed when we got to Laura’s house. It was almost a surreal, “how can this be happening again?” experience.
April 20, 1999: The Columbine High School massacre occurs in Littleton, Colorado. I honestly cannot remember where I heard this news. I remember watching the coverage and wishing that those boys could have had the foresight to realize that the pains of high school fade quickly upon graduation.
September 11, 2001: Attack on the World Trade Center. I was at my desk here in Rochester when my husband called. I immediately called a girlfriend who I used to work with in the World Financial Center to make sure she was okay. She actually picked up her phone in her office and chatted with me for a minute to tell me that they were evacuating the building. I heard later that another girlfriend from work had gotten off the subway in the WTC and when she saw everyone running, she assumed there was a gunman. So, instead of leaving the building, she stayed and hid behind a garbage bin. It wasn’t until she realized that there were no gunshots that she decided to run in the same direction as everyone else. She was halfway uptown when the building collapsed behind her.
What’s missing from this list?
October 3, 1995: The end of the OJ trial. Working at Draft, we all went in to the conference room to watch the verdict being delivered on TV. Wow. Talk about a collective groan heard worldwide!
Sidebar: I have been reading bits and pieces of Leonard Mlodinow’s book, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, which shed light on how the jury was fooled by misleading statistics. During the trial, lawyer Alan Dershowitz shared that in the U.S. each year, 4M women are battered by their male partners, yet only one in 2,500 is killed. His argument was that just because O.J. was a known abuser, the chances of him actually murdering her were slim. However, that wasn’t the relevant statistic. The opposite side of the equation, which never surfaced in court, was relevant: 90% of all battered women who are murdered are killed by their abusers. Retrial!
Pan Am Flight 103, Lockerbie, Scotland. December 21, 1988. This tragedy, more than any other, has directly affected people I know and has haunted me for years. One of my girlfriends, who was supposed to be on that flight but decided to travel in Europe a bit longer, lost many of her close friends from SU that day—along with her faith. I remember my sister calling to tell me what had happened. As a former student of the SU London Centre only three years earlier, I felt devastated by this tragedy. And 20 years later, it still makes me cry just thinking about it.
But, more importantly, what’s next?
Tomorrow: the Obama inauguration! Good luck to the man who has to pick up the pieces after “Mission Accomplished.” I can’t wait to tune in!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Rochester: Made for Living
The cover of the current issue of Solar Today has the following headline, "Sustainable Cleveland: How the city is reinventing itself as a clean, green center."
I read this and wondered, why isn't Rochester doing something like this? We've lost our brand identity -- if we ever had one. We have no impassioned "hook" to get the general populous reinvigorated about living and investing here.
Ignoring the Radio Shack-inspired logo, our homespun "Made for Living" campaign simply covers the basics on why Rochester is seemingly a good place to live. But, it's flat. And I'm not pointing fingers at whatever ad agency developed it. They were just working with our current state. But what is Rochester's future?
I've been thinking about this for a few years. Ever since I read an article in Yoga Journal about how the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan is measuring itself on "Gross National Happiness." According to this article, they used Buddhist principles to identify four specific "pillars" upon which Gross National Happiness rests: good governance, cultural preservation, environmental conservation, and economic development. These may be difficult to quantify but presumably can be analyzed objectively.
Although "happy" is not a word I would even remotely use today to categorize Rochester, with a little work it could be. The city itself is a dichotomy. One one hand, we have urban decay (i.e., a soul-less inner city complete with housing projects on our riverfront) and nothing inviting along our lake shore except an infamous local rock club and tattoo parlors. On the other hand, we have pockets of hope for city revitalization (e.g., ARTWalk, Corn Hill Landing), stunning natural resources (e.g., Lake Ontario, the Genesee River, the Finger Lakes), a number of architectural gems, amazing cultural institutions (e.g., the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester City Ballet, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Geva Theater), top-notch school systems, and in my opinion, one of the best talent pools in the world: highly intelligent and well educated. In addition, unlike some other cities, the people here are extremely down-to-earth and, for the most part, willing to work hard. I really love the people here: they are by far our best differentiator.
With that said, why can't we reinvent ourselves? We have so much to offer. What would it take to become "the happiest city in the U.S." or "the healthiest city in the U.S."? Are either even desired? If so, how would we measure ourselves?
I have this daydream where I win the lottery (which may be difficult given that I don't really play). That aside, in this dream, I gather local leaders and economists (business, political, not-for-profit, education, religious, etc.), couple them with interesting, non-locals like Malcolm Gladwell, and use the money to treat Rochester like an incubator and invest in out-of-the-box recovery programs.
Like painting over the graffiti in the NYC subway system, maybe we could hire unemployed teenagers in the inner city to paint houses and plant flowers. We could train them and equip the teams with free paint (perhaps with a generous donation/co-branding opportunity from a firm like Benjamin Moore) with the hope of getting people to take greater pride in their homes and neighborhoods . . .
Along those same lines, perhaps we can create our own "Trading Spaces" program where the unemployed learn basic design principles along with useful skills like reupholstering. Donated items could be refurbished and either sold to raise money or given to hardworking but impoverished families in dire need of an internal "face lift."
From my distant standpoint, it appears that there are a number of organizations working independently to make a difference. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad thing. However, I do feel we might be better served if we had a cohesive, collective vision for the future of Rochester along with fully aligned resources. But I'm a political outsider. If any of this is being done today, then someone needs to market it more effectively.
Please, give us hope.
I read this and wondered, why isn't Rochester doing something like this? We've lost our brand identity -- if we ever had one. We have no impassioned "hook" to get the general populous reinvigorated about living and investing here.
Ignoring the Radio Shack-inspired logo, our homespun "Made for Living" campaign simply covers the basics on why Rochester is seemingly a good place to live. But, it's flat. And I'm not pointing fingers at whatever ad agency developed it. They were just working with our current state. But what is Rochester's future?
I've been thinking about this for a few years. Ever since I read an article in Yoga Journal about how the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan is measuring itself on "Gross National Happiness." According to this article, they used Buddhist principles to identify four specific "pillars" upon which Gross National Happiness rests: good governance, cultural preservation, environmental conservation, and economic development. These may be difficult to quantify but presumably can be analyzed objectively.
Although "happy" is not a word I would even remotely use today to categorize Rochester, with a little work it could be. The city itself is a dichotomy. One one hand, we have urban decay (i.e., a soul-less inner city complete with housing projects on our riverfront) and nothing inviting along our lake shore except an infamous local rock club and tattoo parlors. On the other hand, we have pockets of hope for city revitalization (e.g., ARTWalk, Corn Hill Landing), stunning natural resources (e.g., Lake Ontario, the Genesee River, the Finger Lakes), a number of architectural gems, amazing cultural institutions (e.g., the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester City Ballet, Rochester International Jazz Festival, Geva Theater), top-notch school systems, and in my opinion, one of the best talent pools in the world: highly intelligent and well educated. In addition, unlike some other cities, the people here are extremely down-to-earth and, for the most part, willing to work hard. I really love the people here: they are by far our best differentiator.
With that said, why can't we reinvent ourselves? We have so much to offer. What would it take to become "the happiest city in the U.S." or "the healthiest city in the U.S."? Are either even desired? If so, how would we measure ourselves?
I have this daydream where I win the lottery (which may be difficult given that I don't really play). That aside, in this dream, I gather local leaders and economists (business, political, not-for-profit, education, religious, etc.), couple them with interesting, non-locals like Malcolm Gladwell, and use the money to treat Rochester like an incubator and invest in out-of-the-box recovery programs.
Like painting over the graffiti in the NYC subway system, maybe we could hire unemployed teenagers in the inner city to paint houses and plant flowers. We could train them and equip the teams with free paint (perhaps with a generous donation/co-branding opportunity from a firm like Benjamin Moore) with the hope of getting people to take greater pride in their homes and neighborhoods . . .
Along those same lines, perhaps we can create our own "Trading Spaces" program where the unemployed learn basic design principles along with useful skills like reupholstering. Donated items could be refurbished and either sold to raise money or given to hardworking but impoverished families in dire need of an internal "face lift."
From my distant standpoint, it appears that there are a number of organizations working independently to make a difference. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad thing. However, I do feel we might be better served if we had a cohesive, collective vision for the future of Rochester along with fully aligned resources. But I'm a political outsider. If any of this is being done today, then someone needs to market it more effectively.
Please, give us hope.
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