Finishing what you Start

Linears and  Holographics

ALL Kinds of Minds

• Tortoises and Hares
• Detailers and Concepters
• Prioritize First vs. Do it NOW
• DECIDE and Do vs. Go with the Flow

WHY won’t they LISTEN?

We humans are funny critters.  We want everybody to do everything OUR way.

Secretly, we sincerely believe that whatever we have figured out effectively for our own lives would transfer to anyone else’s – if they’d DO IT RIGHT!

THIER problems would magically disappear with OUR solution,
IF ONLY they’d:

• try hard enough
• give it enought time to become habitual
• “want to” badly enough
• stop resisting
• or procrastinating

 – or really wanted a solution and not simply a chance to complain!

Except for ME, of course

As a Coach, I have worked very hard to jettison that kind of thinking.  For the most part, I have.  But I got kicked off my lofty perch during a recent conversation with good friend and colleague Kate Kelly (now receiving chemo as an out-patient, for those of you who don’t already know that).

We were going ’round and ’round, each trying to get the other to understand our own point of view, absolutely certain that as soon as the other understood what we were saying, we’d immediately AGREE.

Nope.  We didn’t and we wouldn’t.

In exasperation, Kate finally said, “THIS is why nobody can give advice to anybody else!”  With all due respect to my dear friend, I heartily disagree with THAT statement.

We  CAN  ”advise” – but we must be willing to leave respectful space for the other to totally IGNORE our advice because it is not a good fit for THEIR world-view, their values, or their way of approaching things.  

And we have to keep a close eye on our underlying thoughts, to make SURE we are not subconsciously “should”-ing all over them in our hearts!

And we must remember that it’s always a lousy idea to attempt to, in the words of Jungian analyst Robert Johnson, “teach an old man’s lesson to young men.”

And it would probably be a good idea to get permission before jumping in with our brilliant thoughts and opinions on the subject!  Sometimes people just want to vent.

Live and Let Learn

Regardless of our secret beliefs, most of us grudgingly permit others to run their own lives their own way with a minimum of grousing or but-inski – UNTIL  there is some kind of diagnosis in place. Then things get really dicey.

We like to believe that anything we say is “for their own good,” don’t we?
And while that’s not completely false, it’s not exactly true either.

We don’t want to worry about them.

And we certainly don’t want to worry about the impact of their diagnosis on our lives.

We want them to take CARE of themselves (so we don’t have to worry about the impact of their diagnosis on our lives).

We want them to learn HOW to take care of themselves so we don’t have to worry about taking care of their lives for the remainder of ours.

And Stand Back Jack if we can pull RANK!

If we happen to be PROFESSIONAL caretakers or advice givers, we’re not used to having our pearls of wisdom scattered around the pigpen: doctors, lawyers, therapists (coaches?)

We may be among the best examples of charge-neutral and lack of attachment in our respective fields, but when it comes to those in our personal lives, not so much.

We can be some of the worst “do it MY way” folk anybody knows.

What about PARENTS?  Aren’t we supposed to take their advice to heart?

Even if that doesn’t mean, “Do what I say, not what I do,” God didn’t hand-inscribe a set of universally relevant tablets for parents to deliver to the subset of the masses they happened to give birth to.

But, especially when a loved one has a diagnosis, we tend to forget that little detail.

And there is no rank higher than the one who got there first:  those “I’ve been through this myself and let me tell you that . . .”  folks.  (gulp – guilty as charged!)

Unless, of course it’s the really, really old dudes and dudesses looking back on their lives.
Depending on the age of the advice-ee, “really, really old” could be as young as thirty!

If they’d ONLY . . .

Most of ALL, it seems, we don’t want to have to take precious minutes from our lives
to finish what they start.

Fair request, but where is it written we must?

We have to remember that just because WE need work honoring our own boundaries, it does not mean the fall-back is permission to tell our Beloveds HOW to finish what they start.

Unless we are twins separated at birth, we probably don’t have a clue about their best way to do much of anything.

Nor does it mean they MUST finish what they start, even if we live with them and can barely walk throught the house without tripping over unfinished project detritus.

Bounderies, boys and girls, THAT’s the segue here: setting them, expressing them, honoring them, restating them, bribing others to honor them . . . all in the next article.  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile. if you ring in with some examples of where your diagnosed Beloved is making your life crazy, I’ll try to work some possible solutions into the Boundary posts – no “advice” here, just a few little concepts and techniques that have been known to work for a great many others.

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• If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit – Don’t blame the FOOT!
• Transformational Rant
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Related articles around the ‘net

• Tortoise or Hare??? God doesn’t care!!! (expressionsbyneenee.wordpress.com)
• The (real) tale of the tortoise and the hare: Ross D. Tyler (antoniopinon.wordpress.com – a TOTAL reframe — in verse!)
• In 2011… Make Each Day Count! (monicadeliz.wordpress.com – FUN, feel-good video!)
• The Age Old Fable (socyberty.com)
• Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted on the Young By Mary Schmich (jackysunchaser.wordpress.com)
• The Legacy Project – Cornell’s compilation of advice from oldsters to youngsters