Beacon Coaching

Money. We all need it, and daily we make decisions large and small about how to use it. We are constantly bombarded with news of the economy, and many of us have definite opinions about the local, national, and world economies. But when it comes to personal finances, we are often vague and uncomfortable. Talking about our finances is unseemly, pretty nearly taboo. You can be sexually intimate with someone, but don’t ask what your lover’s income is.

Despite our diffidence in talking about it, money is a big driver for most of us – determining what job we take, where we live, and what we do. So given the fact that money will set some significant parameters on our lifestyle, it is very important to set clear financial goals. Which brings us to my question: how much is enough?

H.L. Mencken once defined wealth as any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband. And he is correct that one common measure of satisfaction with our own wealth is comparative, not absolute. Although in the real estate market it may be most advantageous to live in the cheapest house in an expensive neighborhood, in the real world it’s no fun to be the least well off in among your peer group. (Keep that in mind when you choose a neighborhood for you and your family.)

But wouldn’t we rather set our financial goals by looking at our own needs and wants rather than striving to keep up the Joneses? To that end, my husband and I have recently been discussing our financial aspirations. Now, instead of simply asking whether we can afford that digital SLR camera we’ve been lusting after, or if we can take on the ongoing expense of piano lessons for the girls, we are discussing the big picture – how much money we need to earn collectively, how much we need to save, and how much we can spend. These conversations are not always easy. I’ll confess we put them off several times before finally sitting down and facing our finances together. But after our first conversation I felt closer to Reece. And that’s because talking about money meant talking about our values, passions, and dreams. Now that’s intimate.

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What do we do when the first bloom of parenthood wears off and reality sets in? In marriage, it is called the “seven year itch,” when many a husband or wife tires of the reality of life with their spouse. But this experience is not limited to marital partners, says  divorce lawyer and mediator Alison Patton in a recent blog. Parents, too, may feel the itch.  What then? You can’t divorce your kids.

Patton describes facing the realization that her kids were flawed human beings when they were about seven. She saw reflections of her own behaviors in her children and realized that she couldn’t by sheer force of good parenting change some of those undesirable traits. They were who they were. The illusion of perfection (or at least perfectability) was shattered; the dream was gone. At this point, she gave up her fantasy and decided to focus on the positive and deal with the challenges as best she could. And like a spouse who comes to a deeper appreciation of her partner after a trying time, she fell back in love with her kids — the real ones, not the fantasy.

Like many parents, I can identify with Patton’s feelings of frustration and disillusionment and her desire to escape at times (though it took less than seven years to set in). I agree with her conclusions about embracing reality, but how do you put her prescription into operation?

Here are some tips for when the parental honeymoon is over:

1. Accentuate the positive. What psychologist John Gottman teaches about marriage is equally true for parenting. To create a stronger and happier relationship, you need more positive interactions. So instead of focusing primarily on fixing their flaws, play to their strengths. Set them (and yourself) up for success. It will help remind you of how wonderful they are and provide a stronger foundation for when you are confronted with their weaknesses … and your own.

2. Practice compassion. The Dalai Lama teaches that practicing compassion, care for the suffering of another, softens our hearts and promotes human connection and happiness. So at those moments when your kid is acting just like you or your spouse at your worst and really pushing your buttons, remember what it feels like to be in their shoes and allow your heart to soften. So even if you are setting limits, you are connecting rather than shutting down.

3. Take a break. If you are missing the freedom of your pre-parenting days, take some time off.  If you can take a whole weekend, do it. If not, get a sitter or your partner or arrange a trade with a friend and take a day or a few hours off.  You will come back energized and more able to be positive and compassionate. Who knows, you may even miss them!

4. Have something else to do. Having another outlet for your energy– a career, volunteering, or a hobby — relieves some of the pressure on parenting.  Just as you cannot expect your spouse to satisfy all of your needs for human relationship, it is not realistic to expect parenting to satisfy all of your needs for fulfillment, achievement, and meaning. At the times when parenting feels like an uphill battle, your other more successful activities can sustain you.

5. Connect with your partner. Share your experiences and support one another during rough patches with your kids.. Listen to each other’s perspective and try to find the truth in it even if it differs from your own.  Use your shared values to meet parenting challenges together.

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I hereby declare my first No-Tech Sunday a success! After hemming and hawing, resisting and justifying … I did it. Saturday night I sent my last email and made a Facebook post (about going offline, of course!), and turned off the laptop. So that I wouldn’t forget, I stuck a Post-It on the lid announcing “NO TECH SUNDAY ” And that was it until Monday morning.  Yes, I felt the urge to check, but I held firm.*

On my quest to re-condition my responses  (see previous post), I achieved the following positive reinforcement of my behavior:

Nipped several escalating conflicts in the bud because I was tuned into my kids instead of ignoring the warning signs and then trying to recover after things got completely out of hand.

Slept better and longer because I went to bed earlier.

Read my laugh-out-loud funny book (Richard Russo’s Straight Man) in bed for a half hour instead of checking email.

Reduced guilt-feelings. It felt good to honor my values of family and being present.

And, perhaps most important:

The realization that I DIDN’T MISS ANYTHING IMPORTANT. When I finally checked after 32 hours offline, I felt a mixture of disappointment and relief to find that remarkably little had happened, and nothing that couldn’t wait.

It also turns out that I was probably doing my brain a favor, as well.  In Outdoors and Out of Reach, Studying the Brain, technology writer Matt Richtel reported on a group of neuroscientists who deliberately took a no-technology vacation to think and talk about the way the brain works when allowed to unplug from the myriad digital devices that dominate their existence.  (I’d like to see the grant proposal to fund that particular research junket!) In a more recent article in the series, Richtel reported on UCSF researchers’ findings that the brain needs rest time

Keeping one day tech-free is not a new idea. I used to work with a wonderful group of Orthodox Jewish lawyers, all of whom observed the sabbath and were unreachable from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. While outsiders might view this this observance  as a restriction, it was also a liberation. And though orthodoxy may have a connotation of extremism,  what I saw among my colleagues was a culture that promoted balance – a time for work, and a time for family and higher purpose. What could be bad about that?

So, in the name of balance and liberation, I am going observe my Tech Sabbath again next weekend. Who wants to join me?

*Full disclosure: I did have to turn on the computer to find the Evite with the address of the birthday party my daughter was attending, but I scrupulously avoided looking at anything else. Also used GPS to find the party.

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Do you feel annoyed and burdened by email and yet feel a perverse desire to check it throughout the day, even when you don’t really need to? As if maybe something really interesting or important is waiting in the Inbox? (This hope is usually disappointed, of course.) In an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air Tuesday, New York Times technology reporter Matt Richtel explained why we persist in this behavior. It’s called intermittent reinforcement.

Although most of the time our email is not exciting, every once in a while we find something rewarding – an email from a friend, a response we have been waiting for, a pleasant surprise. These unpredictable rewards condition us to continue seeking gratification by checking our email frequently. We are like the rats in BF Skinner‘s experiments. Skinner found that rats who occasionally received a food reward when they pressed a bar would repeatedly press the bar, to the point of neglecting other vital activities like drinking and resting. Their behavior was in stark contrast to the rats who received consistent, reliable food rewards; they pressed the bar until they had their fill and then resumed playing or napping until they wanted to eat again.

Thinking of my own behavior in terms of a conditioned response to unreliable stimuli put it in such an unappealing light! I suddenly could see the compulsion for what it was – a vain and somewhat obsessive attempt to satisfy my hunger for … what, exactly? “I’m no rat!” I declared ….. and then I had to forcibly restrain myself from stopping mid-paragraph while blogging to ….. you guessed it.

It turns out that intermittent reward is the strongest reinforcement, the hardest to extinguish.* But I am determined to try to get this particular rodent-like obsession under control and re-condition my responses. This week I will consistently reinforce alternative behaviors, such as turning off my computer or pda when I don’t need them, and rewarding myself for completing a task without interrupting myself. Like now. I just finished my blog, and I will reward myself with a good night’s sleep. I’ll let you know how it goes. And if you have any ideas for how to kick the habit, please share them by leaving a comment. (Go ahead! Be the first!)

*Parents of young children know this … even if you cave in only once to the request for popsicles your kids will beg you every time you hear that telltale jingle of the ice cream cart.

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The United States’ Declaration of Independence holds that all people possess the unalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I learned this in school, and then somewhere along the line I got the idea that to pursue happiness was somehow selfish or shallow. But the more I study and work with happiness, the more I know that Thomas Jefferson was really onto something.

Fast forward to my beach read this summer: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love. I’m going to spare you my review – what I admired about the book and what annoyed me – and instead share the following excerpt in which Gilbert writes about the teachings of her Guru (yes, she has a guru) regarding happiness:

“….people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t you will leak away your innate contentment.”

Happiness must be pursued, (Gilbert took her quest all the way around the globe), and the Founding Fathers recognized that the right to pursue happiness represented both an individual and a public good. To be happy is neither selfish nor shallow, but rather a fundamental expression of what it is to be human, as well as a benefit to society.

Would you like to join me in pursuit of happiness? I’ll be writing more about it, so stay tuned.

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How can you stay motivated when you are overwhelmed by a To Do list as long as your arm? Or when everything feels like drudgery and you just can’t make yourself get started? One way I help my clients get into action is to connect them to the purpose underlying what they are doing. Tying one’s activities to a greater mission can transform them from chores into meaningful work.

Think for a moment about an artist, a painter perhaps. From the most mundane point of view, her work could be described as menial labor: set up the easel, get out the paints, mix a color, dip the brush, make a line, clean the brush, dip again, make some more lines. Dip, paint. Mix another color. Make some more lines. Repeat until her fingers cramp and her back aches. Ugh.

Now re-imagine this activity in its most meaningful light. Each color, each stroke of the brush is part of rending a vision, a manifestation of passion and inspiration, a work of art!

Here are some everyday examples of how this works:

When my husband worked at the biotech company Genentech, he and all the other employees – from the research scientists to the IT staff to the people who fed the mice in the labs – were frequently reminded of the human beings whose lives had been saved by their drugs. They were all made to feel part of the fight to cure cancer, a truly inspiring mission.

A participant in the Craigslist Foundation Bootcamp last weekend sought coaching because she was procrastinating about writing a press release. I asked her to articulate her mission, and suddenly the press release was more than just a bunch of words she had to write but was a vital part of her mission to reach out to and serve her community. She wrote it the next day.

Some mothers in one of my workshops were complaining about laundry when one mom piped up that she felt enormous tenderness and connection to her daughter as she folded her tiny little clothes. Suddenly all of us were dewy-eyed. Drudgery transformed!

This is not to say that you will feel all verklempt as you wash the dishes or fill out your expense reports. But much of what we do can be tied to a higher purpose, and staying connected to that purpose can help lighten our sense of burden.

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Are you satisfied with your work life and performance? Here are some great questions to ask yourself if you want to improve your effectiveness, satisfaction,  and overall happiness.

1. What are my top three work priorities? Biggest challenges?
2. What are my three greatest strengths?
3. What is my greatest weakness?
4. When and under what circumstances am I most effective?
5. How do I waste time and energy?
6. What would make my job more fun? What would make me feel proud?
7. What am I tolerating?
8. What work relationships are most important to me and who are my strongest allies?
9. Where do I most want to grow?
10. What does success mean to me? Where would I like to be in one year? In five years?

Answer these questions in writing and use your insights to identify what is working and what is not. This is the first step to changing your work habits and improving your performance. Establish clear goals – with deadlines – and monitor your progress.

Or, if Do-It-Yourself is not your speed, call me and we’ll schedule a sample coaching session.

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As my children and I boarded the plane at SFO bound for Lake Michigan, the pilot invited the kids into the cockpit for a look. One by one they sat in the pilot’s seat while I took photos with my phone-cam. It was cramped but jolly, and then Matty informed the pilot, “I have lice.” Although I knew I shouldn’t, I felt a wave of embarrassment and shame. I snapped my last photo, thanked the pilot, and hustled the kids to our seats.

Lice carries a stigma of poor hygiene, poverty, bad grooming, and disease (all of which are unrelated to lice infestation).  And on top of that, people are afraid of catching it. Mention lice and watch people take a step back, and within seconds begin scratching their heads. Even our school’s well-intentioned policy that keeps the names of children with lice confidential while revealing the existence of the lice in the classroom, conveys the impression that having lice is shameful.

But I was determined that my children (all of whom, along with me, were infested) should not feel shame. So I told all the moms I met on the beach, brazened it out on my Facebook page, and asked for advice on a parents’ listserve. And instead of being shunned, I was showered with sympathy — and with advice from many friends who had been through this most inconvenient blight. Granted, the support was often in hushed tones (“My daughter would be mortified if she knew I was telling you that she had lice,” said one mom, when in fact her daughter has already told me) But many more families in my orbit had been through it than I ever would have known if I had kept our lice a secret. Thanks to all of you!

It was a good reminder for me that like many things that are a source of shame or private pain, there is a world out there of people who have been there, done that. And when you connect with them, they can be a great resource.

I remember finding such a community after I suffered a miscarriage nine years ago. Up until that time, I had only heard of one or two, always in whispers. But once I told my story, I found that nearly half of the women in my acquaintance had miscarried as well. I took comfort from their stories and listened to their advice and felt less isolated and alone.

The world of families who have experienced suicide is also a source of comfort to me, even thirty years since my own brother took his life. Despite our growing understanding of mental illness, there is still shame attached to suicide, and I am grateful to know that my family is not alone.

I don’t mean to equate the nuisance of lice with the pain of miscarriage or the profound loss of suicide. Rather I want simply to remind us all that keeping our troubles secret fosters the belief that there is something shameful about the truth. If instead we share, we find another way of connecting to one another and to our shared human condition — bugs and all.

FYI: If you are facing lice, I recommend this video by my  and science writer Beth Weise.

Now, back to my combing …..

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I have a client who is completely fed up with her job. She is spread too thin, underpaid, under-resourced, isolated, and dissatisfied. She has tried hard to make the job work better, but it has now become clear that the fundamental problems with this job are not going to change. She sees that it will never provide what she wants and needs from her job: financial reward, respect, teamwork, meaning, and balance. If this job were a boyfriend, her friends would all be urging her to dump him and find someone more worthy.

And yet she is finding it difficult to leave – in part because she feels trapped by a bad job market, and in part because she finds it painful to let go of the hopes and dreams she had when she took the job. Despite her disappointment, she can still see the potential that attracted her to the job in the first place. It feels like a loss and a failure to give up and move on.

We coaches often talk about having a vision and going for it. But sometimes you try as hard as you can to make something work and circumstances beyond your control make it impossible. So when do you quit and how can you overcome your feelings of disappointment and failure?

How do you break up with your job?

Step 1. Assess whether your needs are being met. A job, like a relationship, needs to align with your values. Identify the things that are most important to you and the things that you would like to have. If your current situation doesn’t meet all your “non-negotiables” and many of your “nice-to-haves,” then you know that it is not long-term viable and it’s just a matter of time until you leave.

Step 2. It takes two …. Just as you can’t fix a relationship single-handedly, you can’t hold yourself responsible for a poor work environment or bad management. If you have tried hard to make things work, acknowledge your effort and don’t blame yourself. Recognize what you have done to try to resolve the problems at your job. And also recognize the elements that are outside your control. Don’t blame yourself.

Step 3. Learn your lessons. Reflect on your experience and extract whatever lessons you can learn from it. What about this job works and doesn’t work, and what should you seek in your next position? What attracted you to it, and were there warning signs at the first date (interview) that you should have heeded? Are there things you would do differently next time?

Step 4. Allow yourself to mourn, but don’t wallow. Letting go of a dream, like breaking up, can be painful. So cry on a friend’s shoulder, write (but don’t send) a pissed-off letter to your boss, or do whatever you need to do to acknowledge the loss you feel.

Step 5. Move on. Just as the excitement of a new relationship can help heal the wounds of the old, the prospect of a fresh start at a new employer can help you get over the loss of the dream job that wasn’t. Once you have resolved to break up with your job, take your non-negotiables and nice-to-haves lists, and begin looking for your next position. While I wouldn’t advocate going on any first dates until you have ended a relationship, job interviewing is another matter. Especially in the current job market, unless you can afford an extended period of unemployment, it makes sense to find your next job while still employed.

Step 6. Be choosy. Don’t trade one dysfunctional relationship for another. Use what you have learned in Steps 1-3 and keep looking until you are confident in your choice. Depending on your situation and the job market, you might be looking for Mr. Right (your dream job) or Rebound Guy (a transitional step to ward your dream job). Either way, make sure your decision is grounded in your values and your lessons learned.

P.S. These steps are good for relationships, too!

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A good friend of mine recently asked me if being a coach makes me feel like I have to do everything perfectly. I told her that I don’t feel that way, but that I do feel an obligation to “walk my talk.”

But what does that really mean?

For me, it means that I need to do what I ask of my clients:

* Dream big
* Set specific goals
* Be accountable
* Take action
* Question assumptions
* Stretch
* Risk failure
* Celebrate success
* Care for myself
* Be grateful

The list goes on …. geez, that’s a lot! And of course there are many times when I am not walking my talk. Maybe I know what I should be doing but I don’t. Or maybe I don’t know what I want and am spinning unproductively. Or perhaps while I am caring for others I let my own needs go unmet. As anyone who knows me can testify, I am as susceptible to these lapses as any other mortal.

And perhaps that’s where being a coach serves me well. Yes, I do feel a responsibility to walk my talk and not linger too long in the not-doing. But I also try to treat myself compassionately – not to beat myself up. Thanks to the many clients who share their dilemmas, anxieties, and frustrations with me, I know I am in good company. All our lives are a work in progress.

And I know how to get back on track: I call my coach. That’s walking my talk, too.

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