Molly Davis's Blog, page 34
October 29, 2019
Circling Back
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Feedback is always a gift. Not because it is always right, but because it offers us another perspective. Honestly, I can’t count the number of times I’ve posited that idea to people. Whether in a workshop setting or with individual coaching clients, I’ve outlined the advantages of being willing to hear what others have to say about and to us. About how the feedback of others offers us a perspective other than our own, and can help us see into our blind spots, become better communicators, leaders, colleagues, partners, parents, and friends. And, it can help us become better writers too.
It’s easy to preach the importance of developing not only a willingness, but also an eagerness to receive feedback. However, like most things, it is much, much harder to practice than preach. This morning over breakfast I asked Tom what he thought of my latest blog post. He liked it, he said, although he had one small suggestion. He is one of my best and most trusted editors and I’ve learned to value his feedback (mostly), but this morning my inner hackles immediately went up. He commented that there was a line that felt disconnected from the rest of the piece. It was a metaphorical jump too far for him. Of course, it was the one line in the post that I liked the most, and frankly thought was what pulled the whole piece together at the end. His feedback, in that moment, did not feel like anything close to a gift.
However.
Taking some time to let those raised hackles settle back down, I considered how I might take his suggestion to make a line I loved even stronger. Could I wordsmith things just a bit more and get an even better result? Of course, as often happens when my first response is defensive, with a little reflection I was able to see things in a different light. One that was only made possible through the feedback of someone else. It allowed me to circle back and take another look. As a result of his perspective, one different than my own, the piece held together even better. A line I loved to begin with became even stronger.
Feedback is always a gift. Even when it doesn’t feel like it.
(Revised version: A Circle)
Photo by Adrien Olichon from Pexels
October 28, 2019
A Circle
More than a few years ago I was facilitating a small one-day workshop for a client on what it takes to work well as a team. The classroom was set up in rows, and there were about ten participants. We kicked it off with introductions, a few questions, and then jumped into the materials. I’m usually pretty good at quickly establishing rapport with those in the room and helping them engage in a collaborative learning experience. This day however, nothing seemed to be clicking. The energy in the room was low and people were obviously anything but engaged.
One of the participants, a young man with a warm smile and what felt like a big heart raised his hand. “This is a class about teams, right? What if instead of sitting in rows we moved our chairs into a circle?”
We did, and it worked. It was practically magic how quickly the energy in the room began to shift as everyone worked together to rearrange the room so that it became a shared space. Rather than focusing straight ahead at the front of the room, we all looked together towards the center, everyone there able to make eye contact with everyone else. Since then I’ve never facilitated a class on anything to do with teams in any configuration other than a circle.
Since then, that young man with the warm smile and the big heart has gone on to bigger and better things. Today Cody Goldberg is the Executive Director of Harper’s Playground, a foundation committed to “Building a more inclusive world, one playground at a time…driven by a vision of a world in which no one is left out.”
Harper’s Playground designs and builds playgrounds that work for everybody. Playgrounds that are inclusive and inviting, and springing up far and wide because Harper’s Playground generously shares their information on what is needed, what works, and why it works with anyone who asks. A few years ago Cody and I met for coffee and reminisced about that classroom where we met one another for the first time, and moved the chairs in the room into a circle so that no one was left out. Cody shared that circles are a part of every one of their playgrounds. Why? Because a circle makes room for everyone.
I spent some time today at Luuwit View Park in Portland. It was obvious that Cody and the Harper’s Playground vision had been incorporated into the design, as circles were a part of almost every aspect of the park. Our current times feel as if we are living as if we still believe the world is flat, forgetting that we have long known that it is round. Like a circle.
And a circle?
A circle makes room for everyone.
Pixels.com
October 27, 2019
Grace Under Fire
We all need it.
We all want it.
Grace under fire.
When the going gets tough, which happens randomly on any given day, how do we learn to show up with grace? For ourselves and everyone else?
I’m not sure, but I think it starts with awareness. Of catching ourselves in the act of reacting, and making a choice - and yes - we have a choice - to respond in a more grace filled way. It takes practice to learn to do it differently. And thankfully, most of us encounter more than enough opportunities to practice.
Photo: Pixabay on Pexels.com
October 26, 2019
The Halloween Party
“My goal” he said, “is come this fall, I want to want to invite you to our annual Halloween party”. At the time we were sitting with Bob, our potential builder, in his kitchen. Over cups of coffee, we poured over our plans and talked about the ins and outs of building the home we envisioned. By the end of our time around that kitchen table, we sensed that we’d found the guy for us.
We’d met with other builders to get estimates for our project, and to a person, they were first and foremost, all about the money. Don’t get me wrong. When it comes to building a home, money matters…to everyone. However, other things matter too. Like honesty, trust, respect, and a shared commitment to the end goal. In other words, in working together, we weren’t just building a home. We were building a relationship too.
Having talked to numerous people since embarking on this adventure, most people who have a home built for them don’t usually end up with the kind of friendship that we have with Bob. In fact, in the spirit of Halloween, I’ve heard far more horror stories than ones with a happy ending.
Sure there were snafus along the way, and sometimes writing those checks took my breath away. But there were no tricks, and plenty of treats along the way, and none of us ever lost sight of the end goal. A home we loved, and finding ourselves at the next Halloween party.
The first year we went as a homeless couple with signs around our neck that read Will work for house. The next year we simply turned the signs over to read Will work for mortgage. Which, by the way, has been worth every penny!
It’s been over 12 years since that first morning around Bob’s kitchen table, and tonight we are looking forward to another great Halloween party in their home. No costumes required. Kind of like our friendship.
Pixabay on Pexels.com
October 25, 2019
Plan B
It is so easy to get derailed. You have a perfectly planned day, and then suddenly all hell breaks loose with things you didn’t anticipate, couldn’t anticipate, probably didn’t want, and yet have to be handled. Now.
Cue: Plan B
Probably no surprise, today was one of those days. It meant setting aside some important things that I had planned to do in order to take care of some urgent things that I hadn’t. At one point I was sitting in the “sick room” at our little school because it was empty, connected to the school wi-fi because ours couldn’t handle the task at hand, managing two iPhones in an attempt to transfer data from one to the other, while talking to Apple Support on another iPhone where my call had been escalated to a senior advisor. All the while trying my best not to swear in front of the nearby students as I took notes on a scrap of orange paper from the pumpkins they were cutting out to decorate the school hallways.
Eventually the mission was accomplished, and the fiasco had only taken a mere five hours out of my carefully planned day.
But then who ever said we get the day we planned just because we planned it? If we steward our time well, hopefully we do more often than not, but other times we get the day that shows up and rains on our carefully planned parade. That’s when we get to cue Plan B, and as much as I hate to admit it, I think that’s a good thing.
Plan B forces us to loosen our grip on the need to have it our way.
Plan B helps dispel the illusion just a little bit more that we are in control.
Plan B reminds us that it really isn’t all about us.
Plan B teaches us to be more resilient and less rigid.
And…Plan B challenges us to be graceful and gracious in spite of it all. (steep learning curve)
Thank you Plan B.
October 24, 2019
New Shoes
Most pilgrims who walk the Camino de Santiago end their journey at the Santiago de Compostela cathedral, often celebrating the mid-day Pilgrim Mass. Others however continue on to the fishing town of Finisterre. There it has been the custom for many to *burn their hiking shoes as a final act of their pilgrimage.
Those hiking shoes, probably well-worn, have served their purpose, having gotten them to “the end of the world”, and now they will need new shoes to take them wherever their road leads in the future.
Life is a continual act of letting go of what might have once served us, but no longer does. Of burning away the old in order to make way for the new. Of unpacking our bags and taking stock of what we carry, and repacking with the essentials necessary for the next leg of our trip. Of practicing new skills and putting old ones to rest. Of burning our old shoes and breaking in new ones.
Whatever it is that got us here will not get us where we are going.
(*this practice has attracted much criticism due to the obvious environmental impacts and safety implication.)
October 23, 2019
Addressing "It"
Worry and anxiety are voracious energy consumers. They live in the thoughts that wake us up at 2am in the darkness, gnaw at us through the day, and like the news feed at the bottom of a TV screen, relentlessly assault our attempts to stay grounded and focused. If we can isolate those sources of worry and anxiety, clearly identify them, and begin to address them one by one...just imagine the mental, emotional, and creative bandwidth that would be available to us.
What are your current sources of worry and anxiety?
Choose just one.
Perhaps that one that if you could take care of whatever it is, or at least get it to a place that it no longer consumes your thoughts and fuels your fears, you would have more room to breathe. Be able to think more clearly and creatively.
Break it down.
Attack it piece by piece.
You may not be able to totally resolve the issue or complete the task, but making headway in the right direction gets you one step closer.
And just imagine the mental, emotional, and creative bandwidth that will be available to you.
Photo by Ylanite Koppens from Pexels
October 22, 2019
All The Difference
In my work I frequently, as in almost always, hear client’s frustrations with how things are. They talk about how things should be different. Could be different. Would be different if only…and it is the “if only'“ things that suck up all of their energy, leaving little to none to engage with how things actually are.
It boils down to this, the sooner we stop wishing things were different, the sooner we can get on with actually making a difference.
Photo by Engin Akyurt from Pexels
October 21, 2019
Shake A Stick At It
It was a cold, wet, dark, drizzly morning in our little neck of the woods. But rain or shine, Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle needs to get outside and get some exercise, and frankly, so do I.
Heading out it didn’t feel like there was much joy in the air, and to be sure, there are days when joy can be hard to come by. Part way down our road we came upon a downed branch from a nearby tree. It was almost twice as long as Gracie with smaller branches sticking out all over, and my thought was to toss it off to the side of the road out of the way of cars. Just throw it away, be done with it, and check the walk-the-dog-in-spite-of-the-cold-wet-dark-drizzly-joyless morning off of my list.
Gracie, however, had a different idea.
She grabbed that stick by one of the branches and took off at full tilt. She shook it this way, and then that way. Head held high, tail up in the air, she pranced up the road, raced in circles, lost her grip on the branch, and snatched it up again. Shaking a stick at the cold, wet, dark, drizzly morning, up and down the road she pranced, around and around the field she raced. She just simply wouldn’t, or more likely couldn’t, quit. She was brown, curly haired joy from tip to tail. Pretty soon, so was I—minus the curly brown hair and tail. Joy, it seems, is contagious.
Rather than shake our fist at a dark day, maybe we can try being like Gracie, and shake a joyful stick at it instead.
October 20, 2019
Making Light
Humor is simply the best.
Except when it’s not.
Well timed, humor can lighten things up.
Inserted at the wrong time it can make light of situations that are anything but.
Laughter may be the best medicine. But only if everyone involved finds it funny.
