Today I Give Myself Permission to be Patient #atozchallenge

It’s hard to believe that we have already arrived at P on the permission list. It’s another one of the big ones. and it took a conversation with a friend this morning to remind me of it. Up until that time, I was ready to give myself permission to be playful. It actually doesn’t take much to make me playful because I love a good laugh and a bit of innocent mischief. And there’s nothing like bonding over playful banter. True friends engage in banter, it’s the elixir of relationships. At least in my world.

But for the purposes of today’s post I’m going to focus on patience, because for most of us it’s harder to achieve than playfulness.

Before reaching this stage of life, I always thought that the older one became, the more impatient one got. In fact, I probably saw it as a benefit of older age, as a bi-product of the freedom of not having to impress. It’s amazing how one’s perspective changes as the reality of being of middle age sets in.

As a younger person, I never had any patience for patience – didn’t see the value or the need for it. I’m not talking about the patience needed for waiting for a bus or for a movie to open or a book to be released. Never having been one to stand there impatiently looking at my watch, I used that time to people watch or distract myself with other things. However, having made a decision, I used to go for it and go for it hard.

Now, not so much. Not because the hunger is any different, but now I see the value in picking my moment and scoping out the landscape.

This holds especially true for any area that involves relationships and friendships. Too often, we get blinded from the relentless pursuit of our own agenda and our own needs and fail to see that the other person is not quite on the same page. By pushing ahead with too much haste, we often burn our chance at the brass ring. And often we don’t get another shot, although we think we might.

It has been said that patience is the companion of wisdom. And I see that now. For it is hard to engage in patience or see the value of being patient without that hard fought wisdom. Over the past few years I’ve had many people come into my life to teach me the lesson of patience and frankly, my children have been trying to teach me the lesson over the past eighteen years. Quite honestly, there is no better teacher of patience than your own child or spouse. The lessons are never easy, but they are essential if we are to have the skills necessary to find happiness in the second act. For patience with ourselves is just as critical as patience with others and will become even more critical as time marches on.

We owe it to ourselves to give us the time and space we need to master new skills, obtain new outlooks and make the changes necessary to orient ourselves to a new direction. You cannot turn the Titanic around on a dime. And to turn the Titanic you will need patience and lots of it.

And people who are meant to come to you or back to you, will. As someone I know is fond of saying, what is meant for you will not pass you by – truly.

Is patience something you struggle with? What’s the best lesson in patience you have ever received?

Today I give myself permission to be patient

Today I Give Myself Permission to Matter #atozchallenge

Self esteem can be a fickle beast. Some have it then lose it, some don’t have it then find it, some never have it and some have an abundance of it. Yet others use the lack of it as an excuse for all that is not right with their world.

We are all at different points in the spectrum. We will also be at differing points during the course of our lives. Traditionally, middle age is associated with a dip in self esteem. It is said that this is the time when women enter the invisible stage. But I’m not buying it. I may yet be proven wrong, but for now, I refuse to don the cloak of invisibility. I refuse to accept that I no longer matter.

A couple of months ago there was a great article in one of our Sunday supplements about a 46 year old women who recounted her recent experiences with dating. She had four children and told the story of how she had no shortage of dates. In fact she had dated approximately six men in the last four months and put it down to an inner confidence and not shying away from opportunities to meet people. In the article she lamented that in the media there were a lot more stories of women at that age bemoaning the passing of youth and complaining of feeling invisible. She is right. In preparing for this Challenge, I looked for material in our mainstream media which painted middle age in a positive light. I wanted to be inspired by stories of women who had found themselves at this age, changed an unhappy direction or otherwise took control of their lives. Apparently, this does not sell newspapers.

So what sort of message are we sending middle-aged women? With the push into fifty and the change in demographic, apparently our spending power doesn’t matter, at least not to advertisers. Our looks clearly don’t matter, unless they are used to compare or contrast with youth.

The fact of the matter is (no pun intended) we all matter. And the main person to whom we should matter is ourselves. Hubris is never attractive and that’s not what I’m advocating. Rather, to be aware of the small and subtle things we do everyday that diminishes our needs in our own eyes.

Take a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in particular the top three. How many of us inadvertently sabotage our chance at meeting the top three? For example:

Maslow's heirachy of needs

Belong and love needs: Do you always put your needs last? Do they matter less to you than other people’s needs? Do you matter less to you than other people? You should be on par, for we were created all equal.

Esteem needs: When someone pays you a compliment for something you did, do you belittle your achievement by making a flip comment or by saying “it was nothing”?

Self actualisation: Do you seek fulfillment and growth or do you belive this is all there is and you have to settle?

I’ve done all of these at various times, but no more. I’ve gone from if you mind, I don’t matter to if you mind, I still matter. Humility is important, but too much of it and it can diminish.

And the last word on mind and matter goes to Mark Twain:

Mr Twain I couldn’t have said it better myself! So forty is not the new thirty and fifty is not the new forty. It just doesn’t matter. What matters more is the way we see ourselves.

What matters most to you?

Today I give myself permission to matter.

Today I Give Myself Permission to Listen #atozchallenge

We spend our lives believing we have to talk to impress people. We spend more of our lives thinking about what to say next even if what comes out of our mouths is an emotional reaction to what we just heard.

By doing so we are missing out on the best that life has to offer. For at middle age, I have learned to appreciate the cues that the world sends me. Cues come to us in a whole lot of ways and we use a variety of senses to pick up on them. Listening and seeing are obviously two of the most important. The third tool that is generally needed is intuition. However, if we are always talking, trying to get our own point of view across we are less likely to pick up on these cues and more likely to miss opportunities.

The same can be said if we are constantly looking inward and fail to consider our relationships and the needs of others.

To listen well and often, takes wisdom as Oliver Wendell Holmes alluded to in this wonderful quote:

To pickup on cues, it is not enough to be knowledgable it is also necessary to be wise. And more often than not, it is necessary to still the rehearsal of our own impending performance in our head.

Listening to others is the first requirement of understanding. There is no better compliment you can pay someone in this day and age than to give them the benefit of your full attention. It’s part of the reason that therapy and counselling thrives, sometimes all that is needed is to feel that one has been heard. Therapists, counsellors and best friends know that validation can only come from within and by active listening and strategic questioning they will lead you to find your own answers and that validation. I think the same philosophy applies in a marriage. The feeling that you are listened to by your spouse is fundamental to relationship longevity.

I will admit to being an expressive. Never shy about coming forward in a business meeting or in public speaking, it has served me relatively well to date. But I can now see bigger value in just sitting back and listening more often than speaking. This insight has led me to see that more often than not, it’s the same people always doing the talking and therefore the opportunity for new ideas and progressive input is unnecessarily limited. A great leader knows how to listen and to empower even the wall flowers in the team to share their ideas. It is no different in social circles. Sadly, it doesn’t happen too often, probably because we tend to equate talking with power or more importantly silence with weakness. Neither is actually the case.

I have also found that listening has another dimension, that of listening to yourself. We all need to strategize about the decisions that need to be made in our own lives. And we need the physical and head space to do this. We need to stop listening to the noise of business (laundry, cooking, cleaning, car maintenance etc) once in a while and focus on the strategic issues that will affect the bigger direction of our lives. Busy will get you through the next day or week, but strategic will determine the road ahead and create the platform for your busyness. We cannot work out life goals, priorities and identities unless we give ourselves permission to listen to our heads, our hearts and work out the questions we need to ask ourselves. At least I can’t. I need to stop my external talking and find the space to process all the inputs and self-dialogue.

So space to listen and process is not a luxury it is a necessity and I have given myself permission to create it.

Listening is not a weakness. We will not be measured by the number of words we speak, but the impact of them. Blogging is a case in point.

Today I give myself permission to listen.

Today I Give Myself Permission To Heed The Red Flags #atozchallenge

Friendship. There’s nothing like it.

Even in marriage, friendship is the foundation upon which love is based. No friendship and marriage can be a real lonely state.

Hand in hand with friendship comes loyalty. Hand in hand with friendship comes give and take.

Can there come a time when enough is enough? And how come we usually never know we have reached “enough ” until long after that point has passed?

And why are we wracked with guilt even when walking away was the only real option left to us?

Who can argue with Kenny Rogers’ great line from The Gambler?

You gotta know when to fold’em, know when to hold’em, know when to walk away, know when to run

But how do we really know when the time comes?

Loyalty is a huge one on my list. I was always taught to stand by my friends. In midlife my friendships mean even more because I have a healthier appreciation of the odds against really connecting with someone. But loyalty can’t be blind.

It is said that in midlife people commonly go through their phone books and scratch off names. The realization usually comes that it is better to focus on quality rather than quantity. I haven’t deliberately done that exercise, but I have become a bit more discerning about with whom I spend my time. That’s not to say I’m not wracked with guilt about those I choose to distance.

So, I have to remind myself to heed the red flags.

The following saying has become my recent favorite:

I want to believe the best of people, I think most people do. But it has come at a personal cost. Perhaps I have befriended too easily in the past. The challenge, I think, is to remain open and receptive enough to avoid the cynicism that comes with being too protectionist. There’s totally safe and then there’s social.

Liars, drama queens, attention seekers, manipulators and passive aggressors need not apply.

Today I give myself permission to heed the red flags.

Is this a tough one for you, too?