Laying My Cards On the Table

I had a meeting at work today with two superiors.  There had been some conflict, some fear, some hurt feelings.  I went into the meeting with a little trepidation.  I came out relieved for having had the meeting.  Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just be honest about how we feel.  If you are like me you play it through your head a thousand times, each time imagining a different response to your thought of statements, and then you think of how you would respond to that and how they would respond and... blah, blah, blah.  That mind game can keep me busy for hours or even days.  Isn't it a relief to just have the meeting and honestly try to express your thoughts in a positive way?  Lay your cards on the table and let the chips fall where they may.  Did just that today and it felt GREAT!  I didn't have to go negative or get dramatic.  I didn't have to go around and dish the dirt with people not involved.  In the end I realized I had the power to make a choice.  To give my trust or to close my mind to that possibility.  I think this pledge has helped me be more willing to trust without fear.  After all in the end if someone stomps on my trust, it really isn't my fault now is it?  You see I don't have to be perfect.  That means I can make mistakes and be OK with that.  The ability to be flawed and at peace with it is the greatest freedom I have ever known.  Don't get me wrong I don't want to embrace my flaws and keep them forever.  I want to improve.  But it is OK to have flaws, to acknowledge them, maybe even to laugh at them.  Perhaps that is one of the side benefits of this pledge?  I can only tell you that having taken the pledge to say nothing negative about anyone for a year has changed me in more ways than I can count.  Try it for yourself and you'll see.

Is "Truth" Negative?

In my attempts to say nothing negative about anyone I am constantly faced with a nagging question:  Is truth negative?  Or even more to the point:  Is my perception of the truth negative?  Here is a hypothetical situation.  If I observe that someone is dishonest and I warn another person about this dishonesty, have I said something negative about someone?  I certainly think of dishonesty as a negative, so is reporting about this negative a violation of my goal to say nothing negative about anyone?  Don't I have an obligation to warn someone who is likely to be a victim of this dishonesty?  Of course I do.  I am comfortable with that decision.  But alas life is not always that black and white.  What if I only suspect the dishonesty?  What if the only way I can confirm or dispel my suspicions is to have conversations with other people concerning my observations and theirs?  Now in that gray area am I saying something negative about someone?  If because of my pledge to say nothing negative about anyone I remain silent do I become an unwilling accomplice to the dishonesty?  Now what if the negative behavior I observe isn't dishonesty, but arrogance or low self esteem, or abrasiveness, or any one of a million human behaviors that I would label as negative?  Well anyway I think this illustrates the complicated grid I must navigate in order to even attempt such a pledge. So how do I decide what is a negative statement?  The only answer I can really give is motive.  Not theirs, but mine.  I must be honest with myself about my motives in speaking.  It is always a temptation to justify myself in saying all sorts of things "for the good".  But if I am honest with myself, really honest on a deeper level, sometimes I find that I must admit, even if it is honest, even if it is for the good of another, I derive some pleasure from the act of carrying this negative information about one person to another individual.  And right there is the real root of the problem and the real solution if I am able AND willing to look at it.  Do I derive some self satisfaction out of reporting the shortcomings of someone else?  Does it make me feel better about myself to point out the wrong actions of another person?  That is the real purpose of my pledge.  To be honest with myself.  To attempt to take no pleasure ever from speaking of another person's bad actions.  To not seek to build myself up by cataloging the errors of other people.  What I learn about myself, my motives, my "dirty little pleasure" in reporting "for the good" how other's are wrong is where my real progress is found.  So again I find that in any effort to change and improve my outward actions in this world, the real job is not just trying to be good.  Progress is only possible on this outward journey through an inward journey that reveals to me my faults and makes me desire to change them.  So if I am to "be good" an effort to simply do the right thing will never work.  To "be good" I must find where and why I am not.  OK, that is deep enough for a Saturday morning.  Time to decompress and enjoy this bountiful day!

Having a Good Day in Bad Times

Right now there is a lot of uncertainty in my life.  OK, there is always a lot of uncertainty in every one's life if we are honest about it.  I guess what I am saying is that I am more aware of some uncertainties in my life than usual right now.  Of course like most folks, uncertainty breeds fear in me.  When I look at an uncertain future my mind always seems to want to choose the darkest possible outcome and focus on that as if it were already reality.  Sometimes I can manage to cheer myself up by reminding myself that I cannot tell the future and there is no use in feeling gloomy about what is really just imagination.  Sometimes I can even convince myself to imagine a brighter future than the one my mind has conjured up.  But there are times that those mental tricks just don't seem to work and my mind stays focused on a future I really don't want.  It is at those times that I use a trick that some very wise people taught me and that is staying in the moment.  Living life in the moment can be quite beautiful.  You see no matter what tomorrow may hold, today wasn't too bad.  In fact today was pretty darn good.  I took my beautiful daughter to lunch.  I helped her deal with some things she needed some help with.  I had some coffee with some friends.  I got to work at two different jobs I really enjoy with people I really like.  And to top it all off I got to come home tonight to my loving family.  When I stay focused on today, life is pretty good.  Now you might be asking yourself what this has to do with saying nothing negative about anyone?  Well the answer is that when I allow fear of tomorrow to creep in and rob me of the joy of today I find myself anxious, depressed, worried and OK sometimes grumpy.  It is at those times that I am MUCH more likely to want to blame someone, anyone besides myself and in so doing lash out with a negative statement.  Yes, negative thinking leads to negative talking.  This is nothing new, in fact it is ancient wisdom, but it doesn't really mean a thing until I apply it to myself at THIS time, today, this minute.  Believe me, if I want to find a million things to worry about, they are there waiting for me.  But, when I choose to count my blessings instead, you know what?  They are there waiting for me too.

On the Verge of BIG Changes

Have you ever felt you were on the verge of big changes even though you weren't quite sure what those big changes would be?  I have felt that way for months!  I have been dealing with all of the usual feelings associated with big change: Fear, Denial, and only very recently a sense of excitement.  What a blessing that sense of excitement has been.  Oh I still have the fear, but the denial has almost left me.  You know, sometimes I think we just want to hang on to what we know even if it is killing us.  Unfortunately many of the things I am hanging on to in my life are doing just that, killing me, literally.  I'm not beating myself up here or even being hard on myself.  I am for the first time being honest out loud, and I am doing it here on my blog.  If you check, I haven't written on here in months.  My quest to say nothing negative about anyone has NOT ended.  It haunts me everyday.  A couple of posts back I wrote: "Now I find myself at a point where I can either let it slip away, quit outright, or go in deeper and make a new commitment to do whatever it takes to continue."  That was true, but there was a third option I forgot about and that was putting it off and dragging my feet.  That was not a concsious decision, but it was the decision I made.  I can see it in hindsight.  I'm not even saying it was a bad decision.  It was necessary because at the time it was all I was capable of doing.  If all of this sounds like I'm beating around the bush, then maybe you've never been through it, but if you have you know just what I am talking about.  I desire nothing more than to get back to my quest to say nothing negative about anyone, and I know the ONLY way I can do that is to face my fears.  I think I'll stop writing there, because I believe that is a REAL breakthrough!  I have learned if I want to say nothing negative about anyone else than I must face... ME.  I can't promise to write more soon, but I can promise you that this pledge has changed me and it continues to change me.