These are difficult times for many. The media continues to bombard us with "bad news" every day. It is easy to get caught up in the "doom and gloom". There are difficult stories everywhere and we don't have to look far in our businesses, neighborhoods or families to find examples of people struggling. And while I don't believe in looking at the world through "rose colored glasses" or being a "Pollyanna"....I do believe that our personal and shared destiny will be determined by our bravery, our attitude, our conviction and our actions in the face of adversity. I think its critical that we act professional, with kindness, that we reach out to others and give them hope, that we provide solutions, that we are each a part of the solution and not the problem.
Fear rules many people. Recent polls show a high percentage of Americans have a great fear or dread of losing their jobs. For some people this kind of fear is paralyzing. And yet, we can help each other by encouraging, by pointing out that although we have 8% unemployment we have 92% employment (which you Will never see in USA Today or The New York Times).
A long time ago I learned that saying "I will try" is often a half hearted statement that probably carried with it the expectation of failure, but when I said "I will".....there was a kind of inner commitment that heightened the probability of completion of a task or objective.
In this blog I have talked about Self Talk before, but it feels like now, more than ever positive Self Talk is more important. I encourage everyone, including myself to use: I am, I can, I will and to look for the opportunities to touch others with encouragement and a positive spirit.
Fear rules many people. Recent polls show a high percentage of Americans have a great fear or dread of losing their jobs. For some people this kind of fear is paralyzing. And yet, we can help each other by encouraging, by pointing out that although we have 8% unemployment we have 92% employment (which you Will never see in USA Today or The New York Times).
A long time ago I learned that saying "I will try" is often a half hearted statement that probably carried with it the expectation of failure, but when I said "I will".....there was a kind of inner commitment that heightened the probability of completion of a task or objective.
In this blog I have talked about Self Talk before, but it feels like now, more than ever positive Self Talk is more important. I encourage everyone, including myself to use: I am, I can, I will and to look for the opportunities to touch others with encouragement and a positive spirit.
2 comments:
Your observations about the struggle inherent in life are wise in illustrating how fear can manifest as a result. (And I forgive your diss of my beloved New York Times which I read daily.)
I remember vividly a time when someone I loved was locked in the battle with the positive self talk of “I will try”, witness as I was to one particular struggle. Her outsized energy having brought us recreationally to a gym in the East Village, one day the owners asked me if she wanted to participate more fully and join the girls’ team. Possessing as she did the three main components for success in gymnastics: small, strong and flexible, so began the adventure of my eldest daughter who became a competitive gymnast from 7 – 12 years of age.
Both my daughters completed all their schooling at the Lycee Francais de New York where the French harbor a decidedly non-American view of the importance of sports to an education. It became one long, continual ballet to collect her at dismissal, jump into a cab to race to the Village, changing into a leotard in the backseat while eating her “gouter” (snack…). Her regimen was to train for four hours nightly for a total of 21 hours per week. Many nights she returned home her hands all blistered from the uneven bars, bloody with gaping open tears called rips. I marveled at the persistence demonstrated at such a young age.
The team’s coach was Jack, transplanted from Alabama and now living the large life in Manhattan as a gay man. Jack’s outrageous in your face attitude and exactitude exerted an enormous influence on her young life. As an example, a small portion of their warm-up comprised of climbing ropes in a V straddle, the equivalent of using only upper body strength in the process. She was insanely buff!
cont'd...
Through the years of this adventure with my daughter, despite her many medals and trophies, I also saw her learn to face fear at a tender age. It was remarkable that at the lower levels of competition the girls were fearless, throwing themselves into acquiring new skills with abandon and possibly very little thought. Then came the day, for almost all of them, when the fear factor appeared. For my daughter, she became irrationally afraid of doing some combination of a back tuck on floor exercise and beam. I mostly recall her anguish and the acute feeling that I had failed in my efforts to be positive, give encouragement and "part of her solution". Her continued struggle to master this fear was ultimately in vain and "I can" remained "could not". It seemed a sad end to her gymnastics career as eventually her education took precedence and she abandoned this effort.
What I took from that experience was the understanding that when we are young we often have little to no fear; we simply learn it as we grow older. Thinking of those who make the Olympic team, I realized that they had harnessed the ability to work beyond their fears and conquer them. What a great gift this is to learn well at a young age.
A few years later, I observed that the notion of success and failure might not be all black and white. My daughter gained from this experience persistence and a drive to excellence, ultimately instrumental in her gaining acceptance to the Cornell School of Architecture. Admissions openly sought candidates who had exhibited the ability to focus, fail, and try again as architecture school is ridiculously arduous and demanding on a physical and psychological level. I better understood their prescience in seeking such young people who had demonstrated early in life some of these qualities.
What pleases me is that she has acquired the art of transferring skills learned at one time, in one way, to a new endeavor. Her ballet and gymnastic training have made her an extraordinarily gifted yogi – it is simply breathtaking to watch how she manipulates her body so easily with the muscle memory from her formative years. This is the most excellent lesson that I hope she has learned, that it is useful to build on your successes, even if we encounter fear & failure in some form, to design her future.
Post a Comment