Embracing change (1)

 Self-defeating behaviour, Staying positive  Comments Off on Embracing change (1)
Sep 102013
 

I was struck by what AL Kennedy said in A Point of View on BBC Radio 4 last week about how “every analysis of what makes lucky and happy people lucky and happy demonstrates they adapt fast and well to new situations and people”. I share her reluctance to allow – let alone embrace – change and I too know this attitude actually makes life more difficult for me.

Resisting change is about trying to control our world. We feel safe with what’s familiar, however unsatisfactory it may be, because we know and understand it; when things change, we have to adjust and get used to something new. Plus there’s the whole issue around how change happens whether we want it to or not, which highlights how little control we really have over the world.

So strong is my aversion to change, I would prefer to carry on struggling with outmoded technology than get to grips with an unfamiliar system – a system far more efficient and effective than the old one. I know this is ridiculous and I’m blessed with friends who are enthusiastic early adapters themselves, always in the vanguard of the technological revolution and evangelistic about the advantages of the newfangled solutions. These friends bounce me along with them and every time I’m forced to take a step forward I realise within a few days how much better and easier the new way of doing things is.

Embracing positive change may be surprisingly difficult for sticks-in-the-mud like me but I imagine most of us can see the benefit of doing so. Attempting to “impose stillness on a universe which is in motion”, as AL Kennedy puts it, is a waste of energy we could be using to embrace the change and move ourselves forward in life. But what if the change we’re willing not to happen is a negative one? Well, in some ways it’s even more important we should force ourselves to confront it. If your marriage is on the rocks or you’re about to be made redundant, refusing to contemplate the situation can only make it worse. For a start, having a good hard look at a major negative change on the horizon gives us a chance to take action to prevent it.

Even if the change is inevitable, though, being prepared for it makes all the difference to how well we can cope when the time comes. I’ve always known this at some level but it was demonstrated clearly again by the death of our beloved grandmother. We had a few months’ notice of this sad event, as Grandma’s body grew frailer and frailer and her mind became more and more detached from reality, but my sister was unable to use this time to prepare herself: between a demanding job and young children, she never has an opportunity to stop and reflect. In a quite different position, I was able to devote a lot of time and thought to coming to terms with the prospect of Grandma leaving us. When the time came, I was so well prepared that the transition was nothing like the emotional taser it was for my poor dear sister.

Embracing change, then, doesn’t necessarily mean welcoming it. It means letting it into our consciousness and gradually into our heart, getting to know it so that we’re no longer afraid of it.

There’s a lovely hymn that sums up the attitude I’m working to develop. A couple of the verses go:

Not for ever in green pastures / Do we ask out way to be, / But the steep and rugged pathway / May we tread rejoicingly.

Not for ever by still waters / Would we idly rest and stay, / But would smite the living fountains / From the rocks along our way.

Burying one’s head in the sand is a natural instinct for many people as well as ostriches but it does nothing to help us deal with life’s challenges. The world we live in is in a constant state of flux and if we don’t learn to accept that, we’ll be condemned to spend our life fighting – and losing – futile battles, such as King Canute’s apocryphal attempt to hold back the tide of the English Channel.

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A friend in need

 Relationships  Comments Off on A friend in need
Sep 032013
 

The old saying A friend in need is a friend indeed is so true: someone who is there for you in your hour of need, and not just in the good times, is a real friend. The person who puts you up when your house burns down, gives you a lift when your car won’t start or looks after your children at short notice, the person willing to solve a sudden urgent problem for you, is the sort of person you want in your life. Sadly, however, such people are not always available. And, looking at it from the other side, perhaps we are not always there for our friends when they need us.

When the issue is a practical one, as in the examples above, it’s generally pretty clear what is required and, assuming we are present and in a position to provide assistance, the only obstacle to smoothing our friend’s path is the inconvenience it causes us. We’ve made our plans and having to change them at the last minute to accommodate the shake-up in somebody else’s life may be too much of a pain in the posterior. This is a clear case when Do as you would be done by (as mentioned a few weeks ago) is an excellent dictum: if we want people to help us when we have a practical emergency, we’ve got to help them when they suffer one. Even if we never get to exchange favours with the specific individuals to whose rescue we come, it’s good karma.

When the issue is an emotional one, it all gets much more complicated. Even if we want to help, we may be put off for a number of reasons, most of which boil down to fear. If our friend is having marriage problems, we may be afraid of giving the wrong advice. If our friend has been bereaved, we may be afraid of being inadvertently tactless at such a raw and sensitive time. If our friend is depressed, we may be afraid of reaching out to them lest they grab our hand and never let go.

Giving advice isn’t always the best way to help; usually it’s better to listen and to ask questions, allowing the friend to work things out him/herself, in his/her own time. As a side benefit, this protects us from future recriminations, but the main point is that in enormous questions such as is my marriage worth saving?, everybody needs to make their own decisions. A true friend will offer support – and in some cases perhaps an opinion – but not try to control the outcome.

When someone has been recently bereaved, the danger of getting it wrong is real and often significant. In these circumstances, all we can do is tread carefully, watch reactions and apologise if we make a gaffe.

With a friend who is battling depression, the worry is not unfounded either. If we give an inch, we risk them taking a mile. This is probably the trickiest situation of the three to navigate successfully and, as someone whose life was blighted by depression for many years, I can only suggest it depends on the relationship and the state of your own mental and emotional health. If you’re struggling yourself and your friend drains you, it’s probably best to conserve your resources and sort yourself out before trying to help the other person, though if he/she is a close friend, it may be fairer and kinder to talk about it before you withdraw. If you have the strength and the patience, my own experience is that having someone show interest and concern, listen to me and offer affirmation, can bring me back from the edge of the abyss into much more peaceful pastures. Particularly if your friend suffers acute bouts of depression, rather than sustained periods of it, an injection of compassion can lift the bleak mood and possibly banish it for weeks or months.

When we ourselves are in need, we do well to bear in mind all these fears and do our best to allay them. If someone offers help, we must accept it in the spirit it’s intended and not carp or criticise. We must also be aware our friends have limited resources and we must never ask more than they feel able to give at any one time – being consistently needy makes for a one-way relationship and it’s unreasonable to expect our friends to keep this up.

When a friend needs help, we must be brave in offering it. There is nothing more desolate and frightening than having no-one to turn to when life deals a blow. We would hate to be in such a lonely place ourselves and we can’t allow a friend to inhabit it either. We may make the odd mistake in our clumsy attempt to help, but these will be forgiven because we did something, while everybody else was passing by on the other side.

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Are you listening?

 Relationships  Comments Off on Are you listening?
Aug 272013
 

With the ease and speed of communications these days, the emphasis seems always to be on telling people things, talking, conveying information. Listening always seems to take a back seat.

One reason for people not listening as well as they might is the endless distractions from other forms of communication. The mobile phone on the dinner table has become a bone of contention and I, for one, hate it. Of course, if something vital is going on, you need to be contactable and able to respond instantly, but if it isn’t you don’t. Put the damned thing out of sight and earshot and let’s have an uninterrupted conversation.

The ‘respond instantly’ thing is another element that erodes good listening. Because we all expect each other to react to our electronic communications within minutes of our issuing them, this leaves no time for reflection. Even face to face, if someone doesn’t start speaking as soon as we’ve stopped, we tend to assume they haven’t heard us or they have nothing to contribute, when in fact they may be thinking about what we’ve said and considering their reply.

So often, the real message is not in the words themselves but in the tone, the accompanying body language and in what is left unsaid. This is why we have to be especially careful when communicating by email, text and other media where views and feelings are expressed through words alone. But the problem, where there is one, usually goes much deeper than this.

In many cases, the reason people fail to listen adequately is that they are too self-absorbed to tune into what someone else is saying. If I tell you I’ve hurt my foot, what I’d like in return is some interest and sympathy, not a long list of your own ailments. If I tell you I’ve lost my job, I’ve got a new car or I’ve just come back from Cuba, what I want is for you to engage with what I’ve said, not take it as an invitation to talk about your own situation.

Listening is a skill worth cultivating. Not only does it nurture our relationships, it also allows us to learn all sorts of things we would otherwise have missed. Polonius’s advice to his son in Hamlet, “Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice”, is not so much about teaching Laertes to respect and value other people as encouraging him to reflect on what he hears, gather information, not jump to conclusions. As the Roman Epictetus said (along with many others after him), “We have two ears and one mouth so we may listen more and talk the less”.

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Letting someone else walk in your shoes

 Relationships  Comments Off on Letting someone else walk in your shoes
Aug 202013
 

The flip side of trying to find out what life feels like to another person is to facilitate that other person’s understanding what life feels like to you. Part of the value of self-awareness is to be able to describe our perspective to someone else.

The tension I struggle with is how to give the right amount of information about myself. Too little and we risk misunderstanding; too much and I risk both overloading the other person and feeling exposed. I’ve talked before about how I used to feel compelled to regurgitate the accumulated traumas and shame I carried around with me all over anyone who stood still long enough (see Judicious use of self-disclosure). This was not the way to go and I have since over-compensated by becoming very cagey about my private life until I get to know someone pretty well.

I feel I have over-compensated because it doesn’t feel natural. I’m a naturally open person but I’ve regretted opening up to people so often over the years that it feels safer to err on the side of caginess. Well, it is safer. Safe isn’t always the best or most important thing a course of action can be but for the moment, at least, it suits me. And if you have a tendency to feel over-exposed, I recommend you train yourself to be more circumspect about baring your soul to people you don’t know well enough.

But the point I want to make today is that once you do get to know someone well enough, if you want to have a fulfilling relationship with them – of whatever type – it will help a lot if you can give that person the information they need to be able to understand you. This, of course, is a huge and ongoing task and its success depends also upon the other person’s willingness to listen and capacity to comprehend, but in the same way as you need to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, you have to be prepared to lend your shoes for them to try on if they’re going to get a sense of how you see the world.

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Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes (2)

 Relationships  Comments Off on Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes (2)
Aug 132013
 

As I said last week, do as you would be done by (to use Charles Kingsley’s terminology from his novel The Water Babies) is a great rule of thumb: treat others in the way you would like to be treated yourself. However, there are pitfalls in this unnuanced approach because people are all different. As George Bernard Shaw put it: “Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.”

It took me forty years to understand that other people can see the world in a radically different way from me – and still be right! Their reactions, expectations, hopes, dreams and fears may not line up with mine at all. I find it extraordinary now that something so obvious had never occurred to me but I was brought up that X,Y and Z perspectives and feelings were the correct ones and anybody who perceived or felt otherwise was misguided and weird.

Before I grasped this fundamental truth, I was frequently surprised and upset when I gave what I would have wanted and it was not well received. And I was equally perplexed and offended when what other people gave me was not what I wanted but – I realise now – what they would have wanted in my position.

The most successful relationships are those in which the channels of communication are wide, unblocked and in constant use. In order to treat other people in the way they would like to be treated, we have to know what that way is. As we get to know them, we may be able to guess with increasing accuracy, but the safest course is to ask. Conversely, if our own needs are not being met, we have to explain to the people around us what we’d like them to do. It’s only through talking and listening that we’ll all learn to get it right for each other.

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