Category Archives: Relationships

Fragile Objections

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Suppose you’re sitting in a Toastmasters meeting where members are practicing their speaking skills. Suppose there are about 20 members in the room, which would be pretty typical for a Toastmasters club.

Now suppose you hear a fellow member give a speech that you find objectionable, and it bothers you to hear such words spoken within your club. The topic is permitted within the club though.

What do you do?

Do you stay quiet and keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself?

Do you voice your objections to the speaker privately?

Do you privately share your concerns with some other members about the speech or the speaker?

Do you stand up during the meeting and voice your objections in front of all the members, including the speaker?

Do you sign up to give a speech, so you can disagree with the first speech?

Do you call for a vote to kick the member out?

Do you switch to a different Toastmasters club?

Do you quit Toastmasters altogether?

How you handle this depends on your personality and how you frame the situation. Your response depends on the meaning you assign.

Some assignments of meaning will cause you to have a more fragile relationship with your club, with its members, or with Toastmasters. Other meanings will give you enough resilience to maintain a long-term connection to your club or the organization.

Here’s a very fragile assignment of meaning:

What that speaker shared is totally out of line and should never be heard in this or any other Toastmasters club. If I stay in this club (or in Toastmasters), it means I’m personally condoning what this speaker said. I cannot stomach that.

That framing is pretty inflexible. It frames you into a corner, giving you few options. This sort of framing is incongruent with a long-term membership in Toastmasters.

Here’s a more resilient and flexible assignment of meaning:

A Toastmasters meeting is a growth-oriented practice space. Toastmasters is where members go to learn and build their skills. We don’t expect perfection there. We expect and even encourage mistakes. It’s expected that some members will share disagreeable ideas. It can even be good to have our viewpoints challenged sometimes. Variety can be nice.

If you’re in Toastmasters long enough, there’s a good chance you’ll encounter an objectionable speech or speaker. If you want a more resilient relationship with Toastmasters, it’s important to take these situations in stride. If you get worked up over them, you’ll have a more fragile relationship with Toastmasters, and sooner or later you’ll find a reason to ring the bell and quit.

From the outside looking in, the difference between these frames is pretty striking. You may look at the first frame and think that of course it’s not going to work long-term if someone adopts that frame. The second frame provides way more flexibility.

Here’s a key point: You always have a choice of framing. You can lean towards resilient frames, or you can choose fragile frames. By choosing a fragile frame, you increase the likelihood that you’re going to have to ring the bell and quit eventually. With the first framing above, quitting Toastmasters becomes pretty much inevitable; it’s just a matter of time.

So consider that by adopting such a fragile frame, you’re really choosing ring the bell and quit as well. Using a fragile frame is a way of inviting the final straw moment to present itself, often before you can identify a viable final straw event.

Why do this fragility dance then? Why pick a fragile meaning when it leads to such a predictable outcome?

One reason is that people often prefer a final straw objection. It provides a neat and tidy justification for a sometimes complex decision.

Like any growth-oriented space, Toastmasters is uncomfortable at times. You invite some risk when you show up. You may feel anxious at a meeting. You may face embarrassment. Now and then you may leave a meeting not feeling good about how you did. You may feel envious of peers who seem to be progressing faster than you.

It’s hard to keep showing up and facing that discomfort. It’s also hard to say that you’re leaving because you no longer want to deal with that discomfort.

Truthfully there are lots of reasons that people may choose a fragile frame. A common reason is to speed up the arrival of a final straw moment, so quitting can be justified without having to offer up a reason like, “It’s too uncomfortable” or “I felt too anxious” or even “My heart is calling me in a different direction.”

The downside of using fragile objections is that other people often won’t buy into them. While you may feel they’re solid enough reasons to explain your bell ringing, it’s fairly easy for many people to see them as self-created justifications, just as easily as you can spot the fragility of the first frame above. People will generally let you off the hook when you produce your fragile objection, but they’ll also likely conclude that it wasn’t your real reason for ringing the bell.

Ultimately fragile objections are a crutch. This crutch begins with the adoption of a fragile frame. A key personal growth challenge is to graduate from needing to use fragile frames that inevitably lead to fragile objections. If you’re going to ring the bell, can you learn to do that without needing to engineer any justification for it.

In any area of life, you can ring the bell and quit without having to explain or justify your actions. You can quit Toastmasters at any time and for any reason, for instance. You can quit your job today just because you decide it’s time.

I think another reason people use fragile objections is that it’s a less scary way to transition. Some decisions involve a lot of uncertainty, and it isn’t perfectly clear which way to go. To decide without a fragile objection, you need to trust reality or your intuition a lot more. You also have to accept that a big decision involves risk. If it feels like you have little or no choice in the matter, it takes some of the pressure off and makes you feel less responsible for the choice and its outcome.

So one solution I’ll provide is this: Be willing to be wrong. Be willing to make mistakes. Be willing to sit in the muck of bad outcomes that resulted from your decisions.

Consider that this life is much like a Toastmasters meeting. It’s a growth-oriented space where you learn by doing. You will make mistakes. You will make some decisions that leave you shaking your head afterwards. And that’s okay. It’s part of the reason you’re here.

You do not need to engineer fragile objections to ease the burden of those decisions by artificially narrowing your options. You can choose flexible frames that give you lots of options, and you can still make decisions even when facing a minefield of risk. Now and then you’ll choose wrong. Celebrate that you’re free to do that because that is an incredible gift.

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Will You Ring the Bell?

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During Navy SEALs training, which is really tough, recruits can quit by ringing a bell three times. Then they get a shower and a hot meal, and they’re done with the struggle.

No more physical ordeals. No more being wet and sandy. No more sleep deprivation.

And no more opportunity to be part of a SEAL team.

Afterwards the recruits who quit can offer up any reasons they want, but it doesn’t matter in terms of results. They’ve demonstrated that they will give up on the team, so the team grows stronger when they leave.

SEAL training, especially hell week, is a filter. It separates the quitters from the committed. It separates those who align with the team from those who don’t.

The SEALs have a sense of the giant pumpkins they’re looking for, including people who won’t mentally or emotionally quit no matter what, so their training tries to filter for people with the qualities they want. It isn’t perfect, but it does filter out of a lot of people who wouldn’t be good matches for the SEALs.

While you could say that these are values-based filters, they’re really behavioral filters. It doesn’t matter why someone rings the bell – only that they ring it. It doesn’t matter why someone refuses to quit – only that they never ring the bell. Ringing the bell is a simple binary behavioral test. Quit or don’t quit.

The SEALs don’t need to do complex testing for values alignment. They can just have a simple test to see who quits and who doesn’t. They let the quitters go, and they invest in those who stay. This way they end up with a fairly aligned group – a group full of people who resist quitting.

Throughout the rest of the training, there are many more tests. At each point people either pass or they don’t. The training could be seen as a series of binary challenges.

I share this because I invite you to think of this as a lens or frame for considering some of your real-life challenges. I don’t recommend using this as your one-and-only frame, but it’s a nice one for simplifying the way you look at complex problems and cutting to the core issues quickly.

How many challenges can you reduce to binary pass-or-fail tests?

Fill in the blank: You either ______, or you rang the bell.

  • started your own business
  • asked for the date
  • wrote the book
  • took the trip
  • completed the project
  • completed the 30-day challenge
  • did the workout
  • spoke your truth
  • unfriended the Trump supporter
  • finished the song
  • seized the opportunity
  • built the website
  • launched the course
  • earned the degree

Think of a goal or challenge you’re currently facing. How does it look when you reduce it to a binary challenge? Get it done, or ring the bell. Does this help you see what kind of commitment you’ll need to avoid ringing the bell?

My 365-day blogging challenge can be reduced to a binary, pass-or-fail test. All I have to do to succeed is not ring the bell any day this year. Every day the choice is simple: create or quit. Either I ring the bell, or I don’t.

Is it always bad to ring the bell? No, sometimes it’s the right move. You just have to consider how you’ll feel about it afterwards. What meaning will you assign to it?

Ringing the bell can mean years of regret, or it could mean something very positive. You have to consider ringing the bell in the context of your big picture framing.

After six years in Toastmasters, I rang the bell and quit. To me that represented a graduation. It was a success. I had invested six years in the club and went from 7-minute speeches to designing and delivering 3-day workshops on the Vegas Strip. So that particular bell produced a glorious ringing sound to celebrate the journey and what it meant to me.

Ringing the bell on my computer games business after 10 years gave me mixed feelings. It was part joy and part sadness – the death of the old and the birth of the new. It was still a positive meaning overall but very different from leaving Toastmasters.

Note also that some people will view your bell ringing differently than you do – and differently from each other. When I left the computer games field, some people treated it like a failure while others congratulated me for making the change.

One interesting way to think about your personal relationships is to ask: What kind of person will never ring the bell on you? Who is capable of being your true, long-term friend?

This loops back to the recent article on Fragile vs Resilient Relationships. A fragile relationship will lead to someone ringing the bell and quitting. A resilient relationship is one where no one will ring the bell.

Truthfully you will have to ring the bell sometimes. You have to quit the misaligned, so you can find what’s truly commitment-worthy for you. You could see life as a process of discovering those deeper commitments where ringing the bell is simply not an option.

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Behaviors, Consequences, and Alignment

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By supporting Trump a person supports:

  • Racist ideas and policies
  • Sexist ideas and policies
  • Xenophobic ideas and policies
  • Anti-science ideas and policies
  • Anti-environment ideas and policies
  • Massive amounts of outright lying (20K+ false and misleading statements in 3.5 years)
  • Massive amounts of incompetence
  • Treasonous collusion
  • Direct election interference
  • Tweeting instead of leading
  • Tons of utter bullshit that could easily populate a list 100x longer

Even if someone would otherwise be a 10 out of 10 as a human being, supporting Trump is an instant -20 added to that, meaning that the person is deep into negative territory no matter what other redeeming qualities they may have. Such a person may appear to be kind, caring, compassionate, intelligent, and possessing lots of great qualities, but this one enormous mistake in judgment is more than enough to outweigh the good.

The reasons for supporting Trump are irrelevant because it’s the behavior that invites the negative consequences and associations. It doesn’t matter what explanations or justifications are offered up. Incredible depths of ignorance, like mistaking Fox News for actual reporting, may be one cause, but the behavior alone is sufficient to fuel horrendous results, including loss of life and environmental destruction.

As Stephen Covey wrote, “When you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other.” When you do the behavior, you get the results of that behavior. It doesn’t matter why you picked up the stick, only that you did.

Supporting Trump invites social consequences as well, including the instant death of any friendship possibilities with many people, including me. The social consequences are added to the pile of results stemming from that behavior. This is all part of the stick too.

On the flip side, correcting that behavior reopens many doors and invites different results. And there too, the reasons for the change don’t matter. Fix the behavior patterns, and many of the social consequences can be corrected almost immediately.

When you pick up the stick, you get the whole stick. There’s no use complaining that the stick isn’t what you hoped for.

If you pick up the stick of Trump support, you invite significant consequences, including personal, social, and environmental ones. Just for starters, you invite many intelligent people to see you as a racist; there’s no getting around that because that label is part of the stick you picked up. By supporting Trump you’re supporting overtly racist ideas and racist policies, so you’re inviting some social consequences by doing so, including being labeled a racist.

If you don’t like those consequences, you can put down that stick and try a different one. There’s no mandate to pick up a stick if you don’t like what it includes.

This isn’t about finding the perfect stick since perhaps there isn’t one. But do consider the full range of consequences you’re picking up and whether you can live with those or not.

I’ve picked up many sticks where I found that I could live with the consequences because the sticks were very good overall. Others that I picked up, I set back down again, tossed away, or set ablaze because they weren’t for me.

If you currently support Trump, how do you feel about the whole stick, including the environmental damage, racial injustice, and social hatred you’re inviting? How do you feel about being a -10 in my book? You cool with that?

There are a lot of sticks out there – way more than two. If you find one that’s problematic for you, put it down and seek another. Lots of people are dropping (or burning) the Trump stick these days because it’s become obvious to them that the stick is overloaded with negative downsides, and watching things continue to get worse isn’t what people really want.

Supporting Trump damages your relationship with me and with many other people. There’s no getting around that – it’s part of the package. If you want to repair that relationship, you can. Just drop that excrement-covered stick, and pick up a different stick that doesn’t have such nasty consequences. It doesn’t matter why you do it, only that you do it.

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Fragile vs Resilient Relationships

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My relationship with Rachelle is very anti-fragile. Even when one or both of us is at our worst or when there’s a lot of turmoil going on around us, there’s little risk to our relationship. We can say or do the stupidest things, and we still stick like glue.

We have plenty of freedom to express different aspects of our personalities, to explore different values, and to make significant career or lifestyle changes, and we can still stick together through it all. It’s hard to find a vulnerable edge of our relationship where one of us might want to cross a hard line for the other person.

This was true of our relationship from the beginning. When I look back on how we first connected, I don’t see a delicate risk that it wouldn’t have worked out if one of us had said or done the wrong thing at the wrong time. It felt like there were more paths where we were going to connect deeply than paths that could deflect that from happening, like we were just meant to be in each other’s lives. I think that if we didn’t connect the way we did, we just would have connected some other way at some other time. Once we got into each other’s spheres, it was only a matter of time before we got into a romantic relationship together.

I have friendships and professional relationships like this too. They were anti-fragile in the beginning and afterwards. They formed with some sense of inevitability, and it would take a huge amount of force to break them afterwards. They aren’t so delicate as to be vulnerable to either person wanting to disconnect regardless of what happens.

I suppose a relationship could have a fragile beginning and become less fragile as it grows, but my experience is that anti-fragile relationships tend to be that way from the get-go.

Resilient Relationship Properties

High compatibility is one property that makes for a resilient relationship. If the compatibility is weaker, it makes for a more vulnerable relationship. A strong alignment of deeply held values that aren’t likely to change can help a relationship stick.

Another factor is the ability to give people the benefit of the doubt. People who lean towards a negative framing of someone’s motives are more likely to have fragile relationships. They’ll find more ways to be disappointed. They’ll assign more negative meanings to events, thereby creating more reasons to leave.

People who appreciate resilient relationships often find another person’s recurring suspicion and distrust tiresome. Such a relationship isn’t such a good long-term investment because it’s probably going to break sooner or later.

Perhaps the most important factor is a capacity for forgiveness. People make mistakes. They step on each other’s toes. They say the wrong things in. the wrong ways at the wrong times.

If you can’t forgive, you won’t likely last long in a rich and meaningful relationship. It’s only a matter of time before the other person screws up in your view, and now you’re bolting because you’ve assigned an unforgivable meaning to that event. What if you could have forgiven the transgression though? Some relationships are worth keeping. Is that issue a valid reason to dump the whole relationship? Could a more forgiving person find good reasons to maintain the relationship?

Rachelle and I both make mistakes, and we’re quick to forgive each other and to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Assigning meaning to events is often ambiguous, and it’s really nice to be in a relationship with someone who defaults to seeing your intentions as being good, caring, intelligent, etc.

It can be good to apologize when you feel you made a mistake, but the capacity to forgive is more important. If you and the other person are good at apologizing, but if even one of you can’t forgive, the relationship won’t endure. You could both be bad at apologizing, however, but if you’re both good at forgiving, your relationship will be more resilient and can endure.

I don’t feel much need for apologies from other people; for me they’re on the “nice to have” list but definitely not essential. Sometimes people apologize to me when I didn’t feel they ever hurt me in the first place. And people have apologized to me years later for events I’d forgotten and imagined transgressions I’d never perceived as such. Has that ever happened to you?

Working on my ability to forgive, by contrast, has been valuable. I used to struggle with that in the past, often holding onto hurt feelings which could slide towards anger, resentment, or the desire for vengeance. Then I read that forgiveness isn’t a gift to the other person – it’s something we do for ourselves. That gave me an important mindset shift. I forgive because it’s good for me, and it’s good for my relationships. These days I see forgiveness as a way of processing stuck energy and moving it through my body and back out into the universe.

Another factor that shows up in my relationships is the ability to trust the person’s ability to grow. This is a failsafe that can preserve many relationships. If a big problem arises, can you trust the other person’s ability to grow and change? Could you also trust your own ability to grow and change? Can you see the potential for this growth and change to make your relationship stronger and more resilient over time?

Since I regularly work with growth-oriented people, I’ve seen some amazing changes in people over the years. I’ve also seen big changes in myself. So I have a deep trust in people’s ability to grow. And in fact, just knowing that someone is growth-oriented helps me trust them more.

Honoring Fragile Relationships

If you invest in a fragile relationship and it breaks, there can be some sadness and grief over that. But if the relationship was indeed lacking in the qualities necessary for long-term resilience, you could say that it would have broken sooner or later. If one final straw incident is what it takes to crack the relationship, it was too fragile to endure.

When a fragile relationship ends, try not to beat yourself up about it. Instead, honor the relationship by acknowledging what you learned from it. It had its time, and now it must move aside to make room for other relationships to come into your life.

Also consider the nature of the fragility that led the relationship to break. Where was the connection lacking resilience? This can help point you towards more resilient relationships.

Fragile relationships may be temporary, but they can still be deeply meaningful. When such a relationship comes to a close, whether or not it’s of your choosing, it’s good to reflect on it and acknowledge what it means to you. What you can appreciate about it?

Investing in Resilience

What does a resilient relationship look like for you?

Here are some qualities I’ve noticed about mine.

One critical quality is laughter. Laughter helps us bond and serves as a pressure release valve. It strengthens the capacity to forgive. It helps us focus on our commonalities instead of our differences. It gets us off our high horses and brings us down to earth. A relationship with a high capacity for laughter is more resilient. When the laughter evaporates, the relationship becomes a lot more fragile.

Another essential quality is play. See the Core of Play article for more details on that. When a relationship loses its core of play, its fragility increases. Play goes hand-in-hand with giving someone the benefit of the doubt. People can make the most ludicrous moves in life sometimes, but if you can frame their actions through the lens of play, you can forgive easily and avoid unnecessary hurt and resentment, if only by recognizing that in any game, people tend to pursue their own self-interests, and there is no need to hold that against them.

A resilient relationship gives people space to learn, grow, and reinvent themselves. If your relationship frames you or the other person into a corner, it will be more fragile. If your framing gives you and your partner some room to roam and explore, there’s less chance of running into a final straw moment that breaks the connection.

A common reason that people reject me and run, even after years of reading my blog, is that they’ve framed me into a corner of their minds. They’ve built a false image of me that doesn’t give me room to actually be myself. So when I inevitability violate their expectations (which were unreasonable to begin with), the relationship cracks on their end. Sometimes they’ll blame me for violating the false image they built, as if I was even aware that I was supposed to follow those rules.

Yet there are readers of my blog who’ve been with me since the first year or two, and nothing I’ve shared since them has caused them to bolt. Their image of me gives me space to be the explorer I am without their having to “ring the bell” and quit on me whenever I get into something new.

Fragility Testing

Some people who have a lot of relationship experience will deliberately test other people to see how resilient or fragile the connection is likely to be. This can occur at any time during a relationship, but it’s especially common at the beginning.

It’s like indirectly asking: What will it take for you to quit on me?

Personally I’m not into this as a deliberate practice because I find that this sort of testing will happen on its own. When I connect with someone new, it will be relatively easy for them to discover a reason to reject me early on. I’m open enough about my life that fragile connections tend to come to light early.

I actually like it, however, when someone does this kind of testing on me. It tells me they’re probing for fragility, and I actually see that as a respectful thing to do. It helps me them figure out whether to invest more in the relationship or if it will hit one of their fragile edges.

Even so, fragility testing won’t identify all of the potential points of fragility. How can it? Could you devise a thorough disclaimer for all the reasons someone may find to reject you and share that upfront? You’d have to identify all possible explorations you haven’t done yet (but might someday), decisions you haven’t faced (but might someday), changes you might experience, etc. So that’s an impossible task, and this means that despite all of your best efforts, you will encounter some fragile relationships, and they may not reveal their fragility right at the beginning.

Beautiful Fragility and Beautiful Resilience

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I can see the fragility in my first marriage was there from the beginning. I can see how easy it would have been to knock it off track in the first few weeks or months by making slightly different choices. There were forces pulling us in different directions that we had to overcome. There were near-breakups in the first few years.

Even though we stayed together for 15 years, that fragility was always present, and we had to keep avoiding the fragile edges to preserve the relationship that long… until we were no longer willing to do so because we needed to grow beyond those edges.

In my heart I honor and appreciate that relationship. Despite its fragility, it was a good relationship for us both. We learned and grew a lot together. But there’s also this feeling that breaking up was inevitable. It was just a matter of time. There’s no regret or blame about how we might have done things differently. There’s beauty in fragility.

There’s also beauty in resilience. I love the spaciousness and freedom of resilient relationships. I love the mutual trust. I love the long-term investment potential. I love the flexibility. I love how such relationships stretch and bend yet don’t break. I love feeling deeply accepted as I am.

Human relationships can be fragile or resilient. By accepting this instead of resisting it, it helps me regard my relationship with life as always resilient – by choice.

Life always maintains a resilient relationship with me on its end. It always forgives me. It always invites me to play. It always gives me the benefit of the doubt. It always unconditionally accepts me as I am.

By recognizing that this relationship is always anti-fragile on life’s side, I must acknowledge that any fragility in this relationship isn’t coming from life or from other people. It can only be coming from me.

And that reminds me that fragility is a choice.

We always have the option to tread cautiously around other people to avoid running into any fragile edges. Or we can live more like free spirits and be fully ourselves, smashing those fragile edges to smithereens whenever we encounter them. What’s left when all the fragile edges break? What’s left are powerfully resilient relationships with people and with life – the kind that we couldn’t break even if we tried.

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Stamped From the Beginning

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Today I finished Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped From the Beginning, which is about the history of racist ideas in the USA. I found it insightful and eye-opening, and it gave me some meaningful perspective shifts on racism.

I’m glad I read this book after White Fragility because the former book was much more lightweight, a very basic starter book compared to the scope and depth of Stamped From the Beginning.

In particular I found it illuminating to consider that racist ideas ultimately arise from self-interest, which often includes economic interests but could also include social interests, political interests, career interests, and more. People and societies lean towards racist ideas when such ideas benefit the self-interest of enough people. This same self-interest leads to racist social norms and government policies as well.

I appreciated learning about the relationship between racist ideas and racist policies, and it was helpful to consider how self-interest binds them to each other. When there’s a demand for racist ideas to fuel more racist policies to advance the self-interests of enough people who want them, more racist ideas are spawned, which leads to racist policies. Then those racist policies can produce outcomes that generate even more racist ideas and in turn more racist policies.

For example, when Southerners wanted to take advantage of the demand for cotton production, this created more demand for new racist ideas to justify an increase in slavery, a racist policy.

We still have a similar pattern of self-interest fueling racist ideas today. Trump has voiced racist statements aplenty, including “Laziness is a trait in blacks,” “Go back to their huts,” and many more. And he’s promoted many racist policies, including the border wall and the “law and order” position, which negatively affect some races a lot more than others. With some people he clearly gains favor by expressing racist ideas and promoting racist policies, so this can be motivated by self-interest. The behavior persists because people keep rewarding it.

He’s certainly not alone. As the book points out, many Presidents (including Obama) have gone a similar route, promoting racist ideas and racist policies, particularly when it was politically beneficial for them to do so.

One new term I learned from the book was uplift suasion, which “was based on the idea that White people could be persuaded away from their racist ideas if they saw Black people improving their behavior, uplifting themselves from their low station in American society.”

The burden of race relations was placed squarely on the shoulders of Black Americans. Positive Black behavior, abolitionist strategists held, undermined racist ideas, and negative Black behavior confirmed them.

I don’t recall hearing this term previously, but I’m familiar with the concept behind it. It was eye-opening to consider that uplift suasion is a racist idea – and also highly ineffective at helping to create parity among races.

This book gave me a better understanding of racism and why it’s been so persistent. I don’t recall linking racism to selfishness before, but now I can see how much sense that framing makes. Now when I see racist ideas being expressed or racist policies being promoted, I’ll be inclined to ask: Who benefits from this? A good place to start would be to consider the self-interest of the very person doing the expression or the promotion.

If you’d like to learn a lot more about the history of racist ideas and policies in the USA, I can definitely recommend this book. It’s dense with details, so it’s not the type of book you’d want to rush through. I feel like it’s still generating more ripples in my thinking, and I like books that have that effect on me.

As soon as I was done, I immediately started on the book How to Be an Anti-Racist from the same author. Now that I have a better understanding of the historical context and the connection between self-interest, racist ideas, and racist policies, I want to learn more about how to apply this knowledge and act in alignment with it.

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Why I Like My Life So Much

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I did some reflection in my journal about why I like my life so much. Here’s what I came up with:

Space for Reflection

I like that my life isn’t overloaded with so much activity. Sometimes I get really busy, but over the course of a year and during most months of the year, I have plenty of time to think, reflect, and ponder.

This month a number of friends told me how much I seem to be a person of deep thought. I do love to think deeply about many different topics, and I’m genuinely curious about so many aspects of life. For someone like me to be happy, I absolutely need abundant space to engage in deep thought.

I can’t really help doing this. Most of the time I’m not even aware of it. It just seems normal to me to keep asking questions about the nature of this reality. I’m always trying to connect more dots and deepen my understanding of how life works.

I feel less happy when I fill my schedule with too much activity and don’t have as much time to think.

I especially love morning runs because they carve out an hour of thinking time each day. One reason I like going for longer runs is that I gain more time to think and ponder.

I find thinking to be a gloriously rewarding activity. It’s been super important for me to create a lifestyle rich in time to think. It definitely makes me happy to have this kind of lifestyle.

Money on the Back Burner

The world of money sometimes interests and excites me, but much of the time I find it rather mundane and boring for my tastes. So I usually prefer to keep this aspect of life in the background instead of the foreground.

I still consider money when making business and life decisions, but I prefer not to base decisions mainly on financial concerns. I’d rather make decisions based on other forms of value, such as appreciation, exploration, or growth.

For me to be happiest, I’ve found it best to see income generation as a problem to be thoroughly solved, so financial concerns don’t get in my way too much.

I like having years’ worth of savings, so even if all of my income switched off suddenly, I could coast for a long time – plenty of time to create new income streams, even if I had to start over in a whole new field from scratch. And even if the savings evaporated, I’ve invested enough in a variety of income skills that I feel that I could replenish it as needed.

“Get the money problem solved once and for all” was something I worked on for many years. I like having this area of life solved well enough that I can give more attention to other aspects of life.

Exploration

I love to explore. I get bored easily, so wandering through different learning experiences is a big part of my life. This also gives me plenty of source material for connection more dots.

Centering my life around exploration and discovery was a terrific choice that has made me way happier than investing in a traditional corporate career.

Interesting Friendships

Friendships are a big source of value for me. I especially like connecting with people who are a bit unusual. I’m often sponging mindsets and ideas from other people, testing them for myself to see how well they work.

I’m good at making new friends quickly. I tend to just assume friendship with new people instead of feeling like we have to go through a long building phase together. I think life is too short to do otherwise.

Having dozens of growth-oriented friends (and hundreds if not thousands of looser connections) makes me a lot happier than when I used to have no growth-oriented friends. I especially like that lots of interesting invitations and ideas flow to me through my friendship network. I appreciate the ongoing stimulation this provides, even though sometimes it feels like the flow is a bit too high, and I have to withdraw a little.

A Wife I Adore

Last but definitely not least, my marriage to Rachelle is a key source of happiness. I appreciate her every day. Being in love for 10+ years is absolutely wonderful.

Every day I get to share the words “I love you” multiple times with someone. What’s not to like about that?

We spent a LOT of time together. It’s rare for us go more than a few hours without interacting, verbally and through touch and affection. Somehow we naturally make each other happier. When people see us together, they can tell we just belong with each other.

Even when we aren’t doing any particular activity, we enjoy each other’s beingness. Spending time together doing just about anything is very satisfying for us. This makes us optimistic for the future too. It’s a special feeling looking forward to spending so many more days together.

These are just some aspects that create happiness in my life that came through while journaling. There are others of course – a healthy lifestyle surely helps – but these have been more top-of-mind for me lately.

What makes you happiest? If you have a happy life, be sure to pause and appreciate what’s going well. And if you’re still working on getting there, see if you can identify what specific changes need to happen to increase your long-term happiness. Then do what it takes to truly solve those problems one by one. Even if it takes years or decades, the time is going to pass anyway. You may as well give the gift of happiness to your future self by investing where it counts.

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Core of Play

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While pondering an update to my mission statement, I was thinking about how to frame relationships, and this line popped into my mind:

My relationships are based on play.

My relationship with Rachelle fits this like a glove, and I think it’s why we’ve had 10+ happy years together. Same goes for my best friendships.

This applies to more than human relationships, like my relationships with work, creative projects, personal growth experiments, writing, speaking, courses, coaching, hobbies, etc. There’s a core of play when the flow is strong and healthy.

When a relationship loses its core of play, it seems to be on its way out and won’t endure, or it devolves into something not worth preserving.

What happens if you reflect upon past relationships with the lens of play? Any insights generated from that?

If you’re considering a transition in some area of life, could it be that the old path lost its core of play (or never had it to begin with)?

Consider the lens that a healthy relationship is really about play. I’m not saying that this is absolutely true. Just look at your past relationships through this lens, and see if it sparks any interesting realizations or reassessments. When you reflect upon the story arc of the relationship with respect to its changing level of playfulness over time, what do you see?

Also consider that you have a relationship with your work. When that relationship loses its core of play, does it ever work?

Consider the ripples that play generates – connection, caring, bonding, happiness, enjoyment, appreciation, respect, cooperation, etc. Those can be valuable in any relationship context – both in work and your personal life.

Injuries can still occur, but in a context of play (like a game), they’re quickly forgiven. When people lose sight of the play aspect, then an injury may be taken more seriously though.

What can be objectively accomplished with a frame of seriousness that can’t also be accomplished at least as well with a frame of play?

One way to think of play is that it maintains the intensity of seriousness but ditches the attachment. It lightens the experience of full engagement, allowing you to focus on the present moment activity without worrying so much about the outcome. The lens of play removes the clinginess without being forced to descend into goofiness.

I’ve always appreciated playful relationships more than others. That’s been true of romantic and sexual relationships, connections with colleagues, coaching or mentoring relationships, friendships, and even random acquaintances. Playfulness elevates the mundane, making it more stimulating but not stressful.

Play can be a tough value to respect unless you test it enough and see what it does for you. When you observe that investing in play generates strong results with good consistency, it’s easier to trust it. Also observe the results you get when you lose the connection to the core of play. Which results do you prefer?

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Seeking the Final Straw

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Here’s an interesting pattern: When people are heading towards a major transition, they often wait for a “final straw” incident before making a move.

In other words they wait until some arbitrary event happens that’s good enough to quality as the final reason that pushes them over the edge.

So an incident happens at work, and that becomes the reason for quitting. Or an event happens in a relationship, and that becomes the reason for breaking up. But of course those events are just catalysts for the transition, not the true reasons for moving on.

These inciting incidents serve as convenient triggers to finally take action to deal with a long-term misalignment. Such events may also be used for the purposes of explanation – to a boss, to a relationship partner, to coworkers, to friends and family members.

It’s hard to justify transitioning. You may feel you need a big enough reason to justify what looks like an extreme action. Otherwise you’ll seem unreasonable or crazy, like your announcement is coming out of the blue. Moreover, you need a reason not to feel guilty afterwards. You may feel better if you can point the finger at someone else for pushing you out and giving you no other option. Then the decision seems like it’s out of your hands – you had to act based on the inciting incident.

The incident can be big, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes people latch onto the most trivial of events to use for their final straw moments.

Some unwashed dishes left out could be the final straw that sparks a relationship breakup, but is that the real reason? Even the ensuing argument may not contain the real reasons for the breakup. The final straw event is just a convenience.

This is something to watch for within yourself. Is there any area of your life where you may be waiting for a final straw moment? Are you waiting for your boss, a friend, or a relationship partner to cross some arbitrary line, so you can finally cry foul and transition away from that connection? Is it possible that you’d even feel relieved if such an event occurred, like you finally had permission to move on without looking like the bad guy?

I’ve also seen this pattern come up when people are challenged working on some aspect of their lives. The struggle builds until they’re actively looking for a good enough reason to quit. They just need some kind of socially acceptable trigger moment to make it happen – an illness, a minor injury, a disagreement, a small failed project, an unexpected bill, etc. Then they can justify quitting, leaving, or transitioning.

What if people wait and wait, and a qualifying incident doesn’t come up? Then they’ll usually engineer one, often subconsciously. Have you ever seen someone go through a transition after an inciting incident, observing that they actually caused that incident and that it wasn’t something that anyone else actually did to them?

If you put a certain cause in motion, you’re basically baiting someone else to help you move closer to a transition.

I’d say the key lesson here is to be aware of this pattern and stay on the lookout for it, both in yourself and others. When you spot it in another person, encourage them to share their honest feelings and transition sooner without the need for an inciting incident. When you spot this pattern in yourself, question why you need an inciting incident to lean on and whether you can just be honest and change course.

The final straw event is a crutch. You don’t actually need it. When you realize that you’re waiting for a final straw event to occur, let that be your final straw right there – a clear enough signal that it’s time to make your move.

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White Fragility

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Earlier this week I read the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, which is about how resistant white people can be when it comes to discussing and learning about systemic racism.

I thought the book had some interesting insights, although it was more academic and less emotional than I expected. I was expecting something punchier and more story-based whereas sometimes this book felt like a corporate training manual. I also thought it was a bit short relative to the weightiness of the topic. Overall I still found it worth reading, so I’d recommend it if you’re curious about it.

I took the main lesson to be the importance of considering other perspectives and being sensitive to them, especially when communicating. There isn’t necessarily a single clear and correct approach.

For example, suppose I tell a story on my blog that involves a black friend of mine (with his permission). Should I mention his race or not? Should I begin the story with “A friend and I…” or “A black friend and I…”?

My previous inclination would be not to mention his race unless I thought it was critical to the story. But am I attempting to be racially color blind then? Note that this isn’t the same as being racially aware.

Who am I to say that race isn’t a factor in the story? Am I trying to dodge some potential judgment by leaving out that detail, which may actually matter to some people and could change what the story means to them?

Many stories could be interpreted differently when considered against the backdrop of systemic racism, such as a story about academic or business success or failure. And as White Fragility points out, this backdrop is always present when people of different races interact.

So this book helped me understand that being racially color blind isn’t a good standard to adopt – it’s a pretty fake one actually, and it doesn’t help.

What if I do the opposite and tell a story about “my black friend.” Now it introduces another issue, like I’m trying to prove to the world that I have black friends. Regardless of my actual intention, many people could interpret this as a really inauthentic effort to wrap myself in interracial friendliness. I can understand that perspective.

Note that even publicly acknowledging that I read White Fragility may induce different reactions in different people. Some may be happy (or even delighted) that I read it and that I’m blogging about it. Others may see it a statement like, “Hey, look at me. I care about social justice too!” Some may appreciate that I read it but dislike what I have to say about it.

If you want to know the actual truth, I wasn’t super enthusiastic to read this book. Some people nudged me to read it many weeks ago, but at the time I was much more interested in other topics. I only opted to read this one after finishing all the other books that were in my queue, partly because I saw that it had a strong effect on a friend. If not for curiosity about her reaction, I might not have read this book this year. One source of resistance is that I thought the title was a marketing trick to bait people, and after reading the book, I still feel that way about it. I found the title a turnoff much like I’m turned off by books that have “F*ck” in their titles. I think a more accurate title for this book would be: Lessons from Corporate Racial Sensitivity Training.

I think some white people who read this book may be frustrated by it, concluding that no matter what they do in certain situations, they can’t win – you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I think that attitude misses the point though. I see the point as being more about listening, sensitivity, and consideration and then making decisions based on awareness. It’s not about following tight rules to be error-free with everyone, which would be an untenable goal anyway.

I’ve already learned from 16 years of blogging that if I write about sensitive topics, someone is likely to interpret what I say very differently than my intentions. So in one sense, it’s true that I can’t win per se. But I don’t need to win, which really means to offend no one. That’s a pretty ego-based way of looking at the situation and not particularly helpful. This isn’t about winning or losing as an individual.

I can still be sensitive to different potential interpretations when I write. And that awareness can help me write more clearly. Sometimes I’ll add extra clarifying words or statements to stave off potential misinterpretations. If I can anticipate a misunderstanding before it happens, I can put in a little more effort to prevent it. It still won’t be perfect, but it’s an improvement over being tone deaf and ignorant.

You will still make mistakes, and you’ll still be judged for them. But when you do stumble on some issue, can you discover why? Can you lean towards greater sensitivity and understanding? Can you turn it into a growth experience?

Most of the ideas in White Fragility weren’t new or surprising to me, but there were a few angles I picked up that did surprise me, so I like that the book educated me on these blind spots.

For instance, I didn’t know how problematic it could be for a white woman to cry during a racially mixed discussion or training on race, especially after someone of a different race shares a story about racial injustice. Now I have a better understanding of why that can be a really bad turn of events and why extra care ought to be taken to avoid tears in that context.

One perspective is that the white woman is genuinely moved and can’t help herself. But another perspective is that it can too easily lead right into a negative downward spiral that derails the discussion and could lead to a conflict where some people are offended by her tears while others feel a need to defend her. Such situations can even descend into violence. Moreover, there’s a huge negative history around white women’s tears leading to black people getting hurt. So when considering the other perspectives on this, I can see why stifling those tears or leaving the room might be a sensible option and why crying in such a context could be a really bad idea. I can also see how this situation can be so perilous due to different people assigning different meanings to those tears.

I don’t feel that this book gave me clear cut answers, but I do feel that it increased my awareness about how people may assign meaning differently when race is part of the context. I didn’t always agree with some of the book’s conclusions and recommendations, but I can understand why it recommends what it does.

Overall I found it easy to relate to the general idea of white fragility due to how closely it connects with a context I have a lot more experience with: the fragility of people who eat animal products. I see a lot of parallels between the avoidance of discussions on systemic violence and oppression in both contexts.

I can’t really know how it feels to a black person when a white person acts racially color blind, but I sure know how ridiculously lame it feels to a vegan when a meat-eater pretends to respect veganism, especially while eating a meal of animal flesh. I know these aren’t the same, but connecting these contexts helps me to better understand how pathetic such fragility looks and how utterly oblivious people are when demonstrating it. This realization also makes me want to push back more when I see people doing the fragility dance, regardless of the context.

I feel like I got the most value not directly from the book but from doing my own inner processing and journaling afterwards. What I most value isn’t what the book taught me but rather how it served as a catalyst for thinking about some deeper issues. I don’t want to detract from the book’s core focus on racial issues; however, I do feel I gained more from reading this book that extends well beyond the area of race. The issue of fragility is a powerful one that shows us in many other areas of life too.

What White Fragility doesn’t provide are long-term solutions to systemic racism itself. It doesn’t share how to overturn and replace the old systems. It’s more about confronting and acknowledging that we all have a relationship with this system, even if that relationship has been hidden. It invites consideration of other perspectives and how our actions may be interpreted differently that we’d expect. It invites us to become less fragile (i.e. avoidant) and more honest and aware.

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Words Are Actions

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Some people claim that actions matter and words alone don’t count for much.

That philosophy may be popular, but it isn’t based in truth.

Words matter tremendously. Words are actions, and they absolutely do count – at least as much as any other form of action does.

Words influence people. Words create impact, even when you’re not trying to be impactful. Words create ripples. And words incur responsibility.

With words alone you can change the course of someone’s life. You can affect someone well beyond (or contrary to) your intent.

The law recognizes this too. You can go to jail just for your words if you choose the wrong ones, including in countries that profess to have great freedom of speech. And you can most assuredly be sued for your words.

Intent may be considered, but the bigger issue is impact. With your words you could contribute to damaging someone’s health, ending a job or a relationship, or even ending a life.

You could also inspire someone to make a major positive change in their life. You could reduce someone’s stress. You could help form a healthy and positive relationship.

You can have these effects with words alone.

How many transitions would never have occurred if certain words had never been voiced?

How many regrets trace back to words alone, whether spoken or unspoken?

You don’t need a large platform or audience to have impact with your words. A small number of words communicated to one person can be unexpectedly life-changing.

I guarantee you that your words have already affected people – and will continue to affect them – in powerful ways you don’t see at all.

How often have you done some extra processing on someone else’s words but unbeknownst to them? Maybe these were words in a book or article you read. Maybe an offhand comment from a friend got your attention. Maybe a politician’s latest lie made you feel stressed.

Did you always tell the person who wrote these words about their impact on you?

Does it matter that the person may have had a different intent? Can their words still have impact beyond their intent?

Does it matter if the person assumed that words aren’t important?

Does it matter if the person doesn’t see words as having much value? Or if they don’t even remember writing or speaking them?

You could still be deeply affected by words regardless of intent and expectation.

Now consider that your words are doing the same. Even when you don’t intend or expect them to be impactful, they sometimes will be. And this is happening a lot more often than you realize. People just aren’t telling you about the effect your words are having on them. Just as you’re keeping silent about your extra internal processing, so is everyone else around you.

The impact of your words is much greater than your ability to see or measure it.

Words are powerful. Don’t discount or downplay that power. Your words may very well be the most impactful actions of your life in the aggregate, leaving a bigger mark on this world than all of your other actions combined.

Choose your words intelligently, with care and consideration for the hidden impact they can have, whether or not you ever see evidence of that impact.

You can’t fully control how you influence people, but you can make better choices by being sensitive to the impact your words can have. You can consider those unseen impacts. You can choose to speak the truth and to speak with empathy.

Honor your words at least as much as you consider the impact of other actions. Your words are more powerful and influential than you’ll realize.

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