I’m super excited to be reading from my new book Make Love Better: How to Own Your Story, Connect with Your Partner and Deepen Your Relationship Practice, at the Process Work Institute at 7pm on Thursday September 19th. I’ll share about my writing journey, talk about some of the key concepts, and read excerpts from the book.
To give you a sense of what’s really important to me, here’s a short excerpt from the end of the Introduction.
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“The belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.” Paul Watzlawick, 1976. From Forward to How Real is Real.
George Carlin put it like this: When you are driving behind a slow person who you want to pass, they are an asshole. When someone behind you tries to pass you, they are a maniac.
We laugh—because it’s true; we see ourselves. In this case it’s especially embarrassing (even idiotic) that we believe we are right, whatever our position. And it does nothing to help us get along or understand our lover or our neighbor.
As the old AA saying goes: Would you rather be right, or in relationship?
Multiple versions of reality, some contradictory, all are the result of divergent experiences and communication processes, none a reflection of an external, eternal, objective truth.
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I’m desperately upset about the president-elect of the United States, and the children in Aleppo, and our fragile planet, and so much else. I wake up in the night, scared or angry or hurting, and I can’t get back to sleep. I get obsessed with hating him for so many things, not the least of which is his abhorrent use of power.
So the other night, in the middle of the night, I got to thinking about my power—and how I use it. And then I did some inner work—a simple thought experiment that I’ll share with you here.
Read MoreWhen I’m upset, it’s always physical. My heart actually aches. My stomach comes undone. I feel a knife stabbing my back or twisting into the base of my neck. I’ve always been that way.
So it was no surprise that when Jerry and I arrived home on the evening of November 8th, 2016 after having witnessed the devastating, disorienting election results at the house of close friends, I climbed the stairs, brushed my teeth, walked towards my bed, fell to the floor and moaned. This went on. Apparently, I made a lot of noise.
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We all make mistakes. Ghosts from past errors and indiscretions come back to haunt us, if not in real life, then in our dreams. Most of us handle this in the relative privacy of our inner lives, our relationships and small communities.
If you’re in the public eye, and meant to lead a country, mistakes of judgment have serious impact.
In the creative fields and in entrepreneurship, it is seen as vogue to make mistakes, to fail and iterate. Design thinking luminaries assure us that that if we keep making mistakes and tinkering something interesting will happen—we will do our best work.
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Donald Trump is in love with me.
I know. It’s awful. But here’s why it’s true, here’s what is (sometimes) inside my head:
Make me great. Make me richer and more beautiful. Make me do well at whatever I attempt. Give me stamina. I don’t want to be sick or weak or get pneumonia. I don’t want this hearing loss—it’s embarrassing. Fix the skin that hangs from under my chin. Heal the capsulitis on the ball of my foot. Make me smarter, more able-bodied and minded. Make my mind quick again—I never used to lose a word or name when I needed it. Help me build a wall to keep out all distractions, symptoms, critical voices and vulnerable feelings. Make me better than others; make me the best. Dear god, I used to be so tough and strong—please make me great again.
And with this inner attitude, I help elect Trump. That’s why he loves me, in my dream.
Read MorePower is a huge source of conflict in the world. Intimate relationships have great potential to play a strong part in leveling playing fields.
Romantic love relationships between men and women reproduce sexism and gender inequality. Romantic love between black and white Americans reproduces racism and brings up the trauma of slavery. Romantic love between Jews and Christians of German descent or between American and Japanese people reproduce agonies from WW2. Because of the intimate context, these cross-cultural relationships provide fertile ground for the disruption of historical wounds.
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It is never easy to be criticized or accused. If our inner world is filled with self-dislike, any outer challenge is a double whammy to our fragile sense of self. So we shut our ears and hearts. We defend. We protect ourselves. Or we get mired in our own defeat.
Read MoreWhy is it difficult for a justice-seeking, well-intentioned white person (me) to dig down and investigate the dehumanizing effects of racism (or any other ism) on myself? Or to challenge others within my own group to do the same? Why is it easier to focus on issues out there, instead of inside?
There are many possible answers, and so much complexity and nuance when addressing issues of privilege and oppression. Social problems need to be tackled from many angles, including the psychological.
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To demolish racism you have to dismantle the system. You have to dismantle the parts—the beliefs, the attitudes, the values and the behaviors. ... We have to dismantle the culture of white utopia. Kevin Jones (on OPB’s State of Wonder, April 16, 2016)
Most people I talk to feel very unsettled. As it should be. Things are heating up.
I go to sleep worrying. I wake up pressured to act, to somehow be helpful. Mostly I don’t know how or what to do. So when I experience something that feels transformative, that I believe does make a difference, I want to shout it out.
Last week, in the midst of everything bad, I witnessed the power of art, specifically theatre, to create a situation that almost forcedpeople to empathize. I've written before about this special power of art. Sarah Lewis calls it aesthetic force. Not force by gunfire. Not force that maims or leaves us lifeless. But force that leaves us “changed—stunned, dazzled and knocked out.”
Read MoreOn Orlando: Some Feeling-Thoughts
Last Thursday night, four days after the deadly massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, I attended a vigil at the Q Center in Portland Oregon. Like many people, I had been moving through the week in a daze of grief, anger, fear and hopelessness, trying to wrap my brain around the complexity of the intersecting, colliding and exploding issues that ended in the horrific rampage. Over 100 shot and 49 killed, mostly LGBTQ, mostly under age 30, the worst massacre ever perpetrated by an armed US citizen with a legally purchased assault rifle designed to destroy as many people as possible in as short a time as possible.
Read MorePicture this: Week 3 of a five-week Intensive Course. About forty people—from different (and warring) countries, cultures, religions, races, genders and socio-economic backgrounds—are in attendance. The students have different levels of education, health, physical abilities, English language capacity and range in age from twenties to seventies.
Read MoreLately I’ve been carrying a lot. The world is in a mess. So much bad and scary stuff is happening. My clients are crying; they enter my office, hearts ravaged by life and love. I feel it all, even when I’m supposed to be off. Even though my personal world is filled with privilege and goodness.
Read More“If you inspire people to do their own thing, I think that’s the greatest thing. One always hopes for that…” Patti Smith
It’s the 40th anniversary of the release of Patti Smith’s revolutionary album Horses, an album that changed my life and launched my short-lived career as a punk rock star.
So much inspired me about this album, from Robert Maplethorpe’s iconic photograph on the cover, featuring Patti in gender bending church-boy attire sourced from (my then favorite store) Salvation Army (the record producers wanted to pretty her up but she wouldn’t have it), to the shocking and irreverent beat poetry in her lyrics—Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine. Above all else, I loved that she couldn’t sing very well—not in the standard sense, and she did it anyway. She didn’t look or act like a female was supposed to and she stayed true to herself. This was beautiful to me.
Read MoreExpertise can act like a drug. It puffs us up, puts us on top of the world—especially when we’ve paid our dues and earned the role through years of hard work. But like most drugs, it has a side effect. Stoned on expertise, we forget what it’s like to be a beginner. This cognitive bias is known as the curse of knowledge. And it is most noticeable in highly specialized fields that require a lot of study or experience to master.
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After a serious accident, a client unexpectedly found himself in a rehab facility. Most of the other patients were quite a bit older than him, and in more advanced stages of decrepitude. He confided to me his first thoughts, I am not like them, I don’t belong here, were swiftly cleared away—when he called a nurse to wipe his ass.
We want to feel powerful, or even better than others, any chance we get. Not so easy with one’s ass hanging out, or in my case, my eyeballs.
Read MoreDerrick, a high level Creative Director, knew it was time to move on—he should finally be done working for somebody else. Well known in his field, and with many awards to his name, it would be the next logical step, the one his friends assumed he should take, a move that would make his proud mom prouder. In addition to being a brilliant Creative, my client was a genuine nice guy and supportive mentor; he was certain he could do a decent job at managing people.
Until this moment, until this very conversation, he believed that his decades long struggle with anxiety and the havoc its physical symptoms had wreaked, was a curse—a weakness that had stopped him from achieving more status and acclaim.
But was it?
Read MoreAndrea, the CEO of a large advocacy program for disadvantaged children has been at the helm of a nationally known organization for six years. She manages a multi-million dollar budget and wields tremendous power. But she is not a power monger. A deeply ethical woman, she is committed to walking her talk and living by her principles in every aspect of life.
Andrea is a team player, a consummate collaborative leader.
Read MoreEarly failure can be crucial to success in innovation. Because the faster you find weakness during an innovation cycle, the faster you can improve what needs fixing. Tom and David Kelly
You can’t be a loser if you are a learner. Arny Mindell
I paint best, when I couldn’t care less. When my expectations are low because I’m sure I suck anyway. Maybe it’s dusk and I can’t see well. I grab a canvas that’s already been painted, find some old tubes with ill-fitting caps and lumpy crusts and scrape yesterday’s paint from the palette. Tada. Now that I know I’m not wasting good paint, I’m willing to make the most terrific mess.
Read MoreI love blaming others. And I know I’m not alone in this.
It’s easy to complain, or gossip with co-workers (who share my point of view of course), about the messes and mistakes that have been made. Such diatribes stoke my indignation and reassure me that someone else, someone with more power, is at fault. After all, I’m not the ultimate boss.
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