Category Archives: Friendship

Tactics for Tough Times: Don’t Go it Alone

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Our country values the myth of the “rugged individualist”. We are enamored with the resolve of one person to succeed in the midst of adversity. We have been socialized through cultural influences to believe that we, too, must be a rugged individualist.  In fact, popular culture perpetuates the message that you are the most important person in the world- “this Bud’s for you”. You can do it!

When it comes to thriving in change and creating a life you love, it has to be accomplished with others. Comrades. Amigos. Family. Because the fact of the matter is, none of us is as smart as all of us. Community works.

If we want to strengthen our resilience, our thriveability, we can’t go it alone. We must rely on our relational resources.

  • Our social networks. Given the technology that was available back in the 1960′s, it was suggested we were six degrees removed from anybody else on the planet. Remember the game “six degrees of Kevin Bacon”? It meant that between you and anyone else on the planet there were only five other people. Find the right people and you could meet anyone. With today’s technology that separation is now three degrees. Two other people are needed to meet anyone else in the entire world. My wife and I discovered fairly quickly that we are three degrees removed from Barak Obama in two ways (punchline here). So, your social networks can help you to not go it alone. There is understandable caution on digital relationships, but the collective hive can often provide resources you are looking for.
  • Our intimate bonds. Let me ask a question: “how do you know who you are?” Really, how do you know?. I would answer by stating we know who we are only because we are in close relationships with other people. Our closest friends and allies are those who know us well, who have helped define us, and keep us honest when we deviate from that identity. They reflect back to us the core elements, good and bad, of what makes us, us. When I was at a very low point in my life, my counselor told me to give people the honor of ministering to me. Though it went against my “rugged individualist” nurturing,  I humbly relied on a select few, intimate friendships to help move through the tough time. I thank God for them everyday.

What might keep us from close relationships? Is there anything practical we can do to nurture the relationships we have? I’d love  your comments

 

 

The persistence of joy

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My lived experience has been an attempt to effectively migrate the quandaries of change by tapping into the persistence of joy. In a previous post, I defined joy as that smoldering internal ember that refuses to be extinguished despite
repeated external attempts to douse it.  Happiness is embedded in our
constitution and is a protected right.  Yet happiness is fleeting in
our attempts to capture it.  Joy, on the other hand, captures us.

Joy is the deep undercurrent of life. Independent from any temporal realities, joy compels us to tap into the transcedent dimensions of our lives.  The two eternal dimensions that buoy joy are humor and hope. Both are in desperately needed today.

Humor: This is the closest we can come to facing our failures and moving on with renewed vigor.  When we can laugh at ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in, we are engaging in a very courageous act; for both our egos and our culture don't like to be laughed at.  Yet it is the discovery of humor and the act of laughter that disarms them both. As the great American philosopher Jimmy Buffett once said, "if we all couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Here are some suggestions for finding humor and engaging in laughter:

  • Listen to comedians.  Most comedians will tell you that their humor is inevitably birthed from pain and insecurity.  Some of my favorites are Jim Gaffigan and Demitry Martin, and Ken Davis
  • Share a bottle of wine (or two) with great, close friends and loosen up the nerves enough to laugh with one another. A nice affordable merlot that does the trick for me is Red Diamond

Hope: I define hope as an act of the will that stubbornly leans into and moves forward against the headwinds of life. It is a refusal to be knocked down completely. Hope exists at the interface between the temporal and eternal. All that separates this world from the next is a sigh. That deep, audible exhalation of sadness or duress is the signal to begin leaning forward. 

Here are some suggestions for accessing the will and leaning forward in hope:

  • Nurture the soul. This is best done in contemplation and silence. It is very hard in our noisy world, but try sitting silently for 20 minutes. Let any thought that comes your way to flow along out of your consciousness so that can be fully presence with the eternal.
  • Don't go it alone. Share your worries and fears with those who can be trusted. The act of verbalizing them with others can normalize your situation and provide much needed camaraderie and support.
  • Absorb stories of lives lived hopefully in the midst of extraordinary bleak circumstances. You will learn how powerfully resilient the human spirit is when enriched with hope.  Two wonderful ones are: The book "A Paradise Built in Hell" and the movie, "Life is Beautiful"

I wish you all joy as you move forward into the new year!

Social Media Guidelines

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Social media is changing the game in how we relate and how we work.  How to use it appropriately is still being explored.

Here are some of the official guidelines for social media at Intel.

If you participate in social media, please follow these guiding principles:

  • Stick to your area of expertise and provide unique, individual perspectives on what's going on at Intel and in the world.
  • Post meaningful, respectful comments—in other words, no spam and no remarks that are off-topic or offensive.
  • Always pause and think before posting. That said, reply to comments in a timely manner, when a response is appropriate.
  • Respect proprietary information and content, and confidentiality.
  • When disagreeing with others' opinions, keep it appropriate and polite.

Finally, Intel strives for a balanced online dialogue. When they do moderate content, they moderate using three guiding principles:

The Good, the Bad, but not the Ugly.
If the content is positive or negative and in context to the
conversation, then they approve the content, regardless of whether it's
favorable or unfavorable to Intel. However if the content is ugly,
offensive, denigrating and completely out of context, then they reject
the content.