Enthralled by Covey and Maria Montessori

Just tossing up a note to say that I'm in the midst of a Steven Covey read-a-thon. I've listened to 7 Habits in the car while reading 7 Habits/Family, and pre-reading 7 Habits/Teens before giving it to my stepson.

Simultaneously, I've been reading some of Maria Montessori's books about her teaching method. I'm shocked by how similar some of the basic concepts are.

Bitching and Moaning Revisited

On Yom Kippur, we attended our synagogue's family service with my 3-year-old son. Perhaps the most charming part of the event was the way he would sing along, even in Hebrew, but only in his Cookie Monster voice. Cute stuff. But I digress.

As a part of the service, one of our rabbis introduced the idea of the Complaint-Free World. We were each issued purplish rubber wrist bands of the Live Strong ilk, and presented with the plan: Wear the bracelet, and each time you catch yourself complaining, switch it to the other wrist. The goal? To wear the wristband for 21 days, the length of time it takes to change a habbit, on the same wrist without having to change it.

I've had mine on ever since that afternoon, and I'm finding it changes wrists on average once a day. Sometimes I switch it in advance because I sense a whining session coming on and I just acknowledge it and switch as payment before I start. Sometimes it goes for days without moving. Once or twice, I've switched it for massive internal whining when I felt wronged by something, even though I wasn't actually complaining to another person. And once last weekend, I changed it 3 times in about 15 minutes at a party because I was unable to hide the fact that I was pissed at my husband. When my mother-in-law asked me what was wrong, I told her I couldn't tell her because I'd have to change my wristband. And then I realized that threatening to change my wristband in those circumstances was code for the bitching I wanted to do, and so I changed it.

I am notoriously hard on myself about things like this.

The church that sponsors the program will send you a wristband for free, and takes donations to fund the operation. They even have instructions for how to properly remind someone else to change THEIR wristband.

Don't you wish everyone had one?

Story: Part 2 - plotting next steps

Late April was springing and beautiful. I dedicated myself to finding another job, but not TOO fast -- after all, I did have some severance, and some savings, and it felt like a rare chance to enjoy spring.

But without taking any time off, I established a pattern that surprised me -- I got up early each day, far earlier than I had as an employee, and went to my desk with a cup of coffee and an enthusiastic spirit, eager to take on the project of finding work and managing my life until I had found one.

I took the concept very seriously -- right now, my job was to make sure that my bills were paid. I suddenly was much more interested in where my money went than I even was during my divorce at the worst of my "going to live in a box" paranoia. I had spreadsheets of all of my bills, and reconsidered everything. Cable was one of the first things to go. Interestingly enough, one of the things I *did* spend money on was my house -- I arranged to repair and cover the wood trim on the outside of my 1950's bungalo with vinyl, terrified that I wouldn't be able to pay for it, but also certain that it needed to be done and that somehow, I'd find a way to handle it.

For about 2 hours every morning, I searched job boards before the start of the regular business day. Monster, HotJobs, Dice, Washington Post job listings -- I searched them all, and gathered a list of all of the jobs that might be plausible. Then I went out into the day, taking my coffee and a magazine onto my back deck to enjoy the morning air, feeling that I'd accomplished a lot in the hours I would usually have spent dressing and commuting, and now, when my day would have just been starting, I was able to pick how I wanted to spend my time for most of the rest of the day.

After breakfast, I planned what I'd do for the day. I was able (and needed) to cook much more than I usually would have, and eating food made from actual! raw! ingredients! became part of my day. I bought a crockpot, and discovered that it's possible to make an amazingly good stew by just throwing a few raw things and some broth into a bowl and plugging it in. I also enjoyed doing other enhancements to my house, painting some rooms that were still the dingy off-white of my married days, and finally completing the task of cutting up the nasty beige carpet and hauling it, bit by bit, out to the curb.

At lunchtime, I did another round of work, often researching the companies where I'd found promising ads, revising my resume, and taking the opportunity to learn some new skills. I began playing with Web graphics, something I never did get good at.

In the afternoon, I made phonecalls to former colleagues, initially for suggestions on possible jobs, but after awhile, after they suggested consulting opportunities, I began to look around for people who needed a temporary technical writer or editor.

I picked up a short-term project, working for a woman I had myself hired (and been devastated to see laid off in an early round as our company imploded) a couple of years before, and enough money came in to pay the mortgage without biting into savings that month. A fencing buddy came through with a job writing a manual for a piece of software that paid another month, and gave me the flexibility and freedom to enjoy my summer.

Around 3:00, I knocked off, whether job searching or doing consulting work, and the end of the day often saw me hiking the trail around a nearby lake, or riding the bike I bought for myself shortly before all hell broke loose. A backpack held a notebook and pen, and I toyed with the idea for what I thought would be an interesting book. Parts of it still sit on my hard drive, overtaken by other events in my life, or perhaps just marinating.

What I found was that my early morning, noon, and late evening work hours allowed me to really enjoy what felt like expansive freedom, despite the fact that I was working as many hours as ever at my job. Being able to pick my time and plan my approach, though, gave me a whole new way of seeing things.

I did truly come to think of myself as a small business in this time. It was energizing, exciting -- I felt alive in a way that I hadn't experienced before. Completely alone, not tied to any other person in a significant way, I felt absolutely free to make my choices independently, and as long as the bills were paid, I was winning.

My family, however, was very concerned about my situation.

Next: Generational debate over the importance of the traditional job.

Story - Part 1: The Layoff

It was April of 2001 when the company I had worked for for nearly 4 years finally hit the dirt for the last time. Our small startup, fueled by the dot-com expansions of the late 1990s, imploded on itself one last time, this time taking me with it.

I'd seen it before more than once, and been part of preparing for it before more than once, so when I saw the tell-tale signs of a layoff without warning, I knew that this time, I was in it. My usual lunch companions (or at least, those who were left at this point) left sheepishly, after muttering excuses about having to go to lunch early. Those of us left in the office received an email to come to the conference room for a meeting. I walked out into the hallway and found other people who hadn't put 2 and 2 together yet.

"What are we doing?" they asked.

"We're getting fired!" I shouted with enthusiasm -- "C'mon!" I broke into a Wizard of Oz skip on the short walk to the conference room. They stared at me like I'd lost my mind.

We'd seen it coming for ages. Our company had missed our IPO by less than 24 hours with the sudden downturn of the NASDAQ the previous fall, and a series of emergency measures to save us, including being purchased by another company, simply hadn't gained traction. Some of us held onto hope that we could at least package up our product so that eventually it would be saved. And it didn't hurt that the job market in our sector after the NASDAQ "tank" was weak, to say the least.

At the meeting, we were told of our separation packages, the COBRA benefits available to us, and thanked for our dedication in such a troubled environment. Personal information was exchanged. We returned to our desks to find that our network access had been cut off, and we had each been assigned an escort while we packed our desks, got our personal files from our hard drives, and exited the building. I remember a feeling of exhilerated freedom during my walk to my car -- quite the opposite of what I'd expected to feel at such a moment. Others trudged to their cars, voiced concerns about finding another job, walked with stooped shoulders. All I could think was "it's a beautiful day, and I'm finally given permission to go be a part of it."

I took in a deep breath of clean spring air and decided to go for a walk when I got home. I thought about how I could cut some expenses; after all, I was fairly recently divorced and paying the full mortgage on a house I had not expected to own on my own when we bought it several years before. I did have six months of salary saved, somehow -- in the early days of my separation and divorce, when I joked to my divorce lawyer that I feared "turning into a bag lady or living in a cardboard box," I'd also begun to save money compulsively, to be sure I could protect myself in just this kind of situation. In fact, I'd taken to throwing my loose change into a salad bowl on my dining room table, so that I'd always know that I had enough money to call for a pizza if I really, really wanted to. When I finally cashed in that salad bowl of change several years later, there was nearly $400 in it.

Filled with optimism and relief, I went home, hatching plans in my head for how I'd manage my job search and what I would do next.

Mr. Universe as role model?

On the recommendation of my favorite coach Mike Litman, I picked up a copy of ARNOLD: THE EDUCATION OF A BODYBUILDER and began reading it last night. Expecting it to be fully an autobiography, I was rather surprised to find that half of it is diet and exercise instructions for bodybuilding, with the aim of "becoming huge," something I, a 43-year-old 5'7" woman with a 3-year-old child, don't plan to be doing any time soon.

However, I was really impressed by his instinctive understanding about how to motivate himself to achieve his goals. Learning at an early age that he was able to control some things about the world and himself but not others, he apparently innately understood how to capitalize on that, set goals, and never waiver, no matter how much negative feedback he received.

His focus on staying on the high road, too, was impressive. There's a long (for the book, the autobiographical portion of which is only perhaps 100 pages) story about moving to Munich to take over management of a gym, and the subsequent realization that the man who hired him and brought him there from Austria was intending to make him his lover. Although understanding that it would further his goals faster if he went along with it, Arnold also knew that he would get there with his pride and integrity intact without the assistance, and without sacrificing his values in the process.

He admits to his failings, too -- his use of women as sexual objects only, his tendency to aggressiveness to build up his self-image when he was not yet himself convinced of his own value. But one of my most important take-aways from this book is that each time he reached the realization of a weakness, whether emotional or moral or physical, he immediately took corrective action. His calves were not developed compared to the rest of his body? He brought them up to his standard. It was the obvious next step. And he extended this into other parts of his life, taking the same approach with his mental and emotional development.

The book was published in 1977, and the photos of the exercises show a Conan-era Arnold. I'm eager to find a Governator-era biography that shows how his fundamental understanding of how to achieve his goals has played out in his acting and political careers.

Much as with his approach to bodybuilding, where you bulk up to get the volume, and then refine to get the detail of muscle definition, I feel certain that the mental Arnold in this book is a bulked-up but not refined product. It would be most interesting to see how he refined his mind after 1977.

Backsliding....

One week, I feel like I can take on the world, like there is NOTHING on earth that I can't accomplish. One week, I feel like I can't be trusted to simply keep myself and my child passably hygienic and in one piece without supervision. What the devil is the difference between these two weeks?

My theory is that it has to do with the people I am surrounded by. That if I am surrounded by people who expect my best, I feel like I can give my best. If I'm surrounded by people who see me as inadequate, or convey that they see me as inadequate, I feel inadequate. That how I see myself is, in large part, affected by how I see myself mirrored back in the eyes of the people around me.

I was a 21-year-old college graduate in my first job doing secretarial work in 1987, doing mailings to a group of educators. Not challenging work -- in fact in retrospect, it was darned dull, except that the material itself and the environment was so fascinating. The work, though? Dry as toast.

Last week, I met up with those educators again, and repeatedly had to explain who I was and why I was there. And during that day, I felt something slowly seep out of me. "Hi, back in about 1988, I used to send you packages of educational materials." I made jokes about it. "It was my DNA on the back of those stamps!" I joked about how long ago it was. "Back at the dawn of time? I used to mail you stuff." The best responses were simply the ones that said "Oh, yes, I remember you!" and then let it pass. The worst were the ones who were effusive about what a good job I did and how much they appreciated it. I couldn't figure out why those bothered me so much. Ultimately, I've concluded that it's mostly because I really didn't think what I did there was particularly important, and certainly didn't warrant excessive, what seemed to be labored, protracted appreciation. It was a lifetime ago, and I put boxes in the mail because I had no discernable professional skills. 20 years later, I've worked in a completely different field long enough to have a reasonable reputation and expertise in something that has no meaning to this group of people.

I tried to be gracious and laugh it off, and succeeded until the conference director, as I was thanking her and making my exit, told me to "stay in touch, but you know - not every day."

I arrived home, and my husband told me that our son hadn't even noticed that I was gone. The next morning when my darling son awoke, he told me that he didn't want me -- he wanted his Daddy.

Wow: talk about feeling like you don't have any street value!

I'm looking now for ways to protect myself from this feeling in the future -- this feeling of having no value to others in my world. What are the things that I need to do, surround myself with, and focus on in order to keep my awareness of my value, even when I'm around people who clearly can't see it?

Right now, I'm thinking of books that I can read, lectures I can keep on my iPod, touchstones that I can keep with me that keep me centered when the world around me is eroding my sense of self.

I'm open to suggestions.

Trick for offloading anxiety

For as long as I can remember, I've carried a bubble of forboding in my chest. It's heavy and cold to the touch, and it lives behind my sternum, a little off to the left. Some days it's bigger, some days it's colder and more tightly packed -- but it's always there.

Why I have it is the stuff of years of therapy -- but nothing I've done has ever made it completely go away.

I was surprised to read an article (which I can't locate at the moment, but will try to find) that addressed this issue, and gave a method for, if not getting rid of it, at least "tapping" it to release some of its contents. It's a three-step process.

Step 1 - Gather all of the anxiety together into a single bubble. (Imagine my surprise, learning that I wasn't the only one with a bubble of anxiety!) There may be little bits of it spread out throughout your body. Sieve yourself bottom to top to gather together the bits into a single bubble.

Step 2 - Mentally, insert a straw into the bubble to allow its contents to escape. I envision this like putting a straw into a juicebox, and then squeezing slightly -- the anxiety pours right out through the straw.

Step 3 - Once the bubble is depressurized, remove the straw.

It was shocking to me how clear it is that holding this anxiety is simply a habit, and the mental imagery of essentially bleeding it off helps me to relieve it. The article from which I got the image suggested doing it as often as needed, until you are able to maintain the habit of NOT carrying the anxiety to begin with.