Archives for September 2018

Carla

September 28, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

I’ve talked several times before about my journey of personal growth. It started in 2003 and it continues today with my Six Months project and my ongoing involvement in Foundations Workshops. This letter is about the beginning of my journey.

I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on why I do the things I do, though I get hit by my blind spots from time to time. But when I first attended a personal growth program, my own self-awareness was mediocre, and I had very little idea what other people thought of themselves or me. I lacked a sense of empathy because I was self-absorbed in my own little cocoon of shame. (Shame is the feeling that results when one believes that they are inherently flawed and therefore unworthy of love and connection.) But the cocoon was warm and comfortable and I thought it was keeping me safe.

That all changed after I was jolted awake that weekend in 2003. Suddenly I was alive. I realized I needed other people. But there’s a saying that goes, “The curse of enlightenment is that you can never go back.” I had lost my warm, safe cocoon and I couldn’t return to it.

Being with a group of people with whom I could be completely myself was exhilarating, and it came with a downside. It would take only about an hour after I left a group of people before the exhilarating feeling was gone, replaced with a painful longing. It’s like the good feelings disappeared down a black hole in my soul. I couldn’t hang onto to them. I couldn’t savor them.

This is because I didn’t love myself. It didn’t matter how much other people loved me. If I couldn’t love myself, other people’s love was like trying to hold water in my hands.

Eventually I did learn to love myself. But it took years. In the meantime, I needed to find a way to cope.

From the very beginning of my personal growth journey, Carla was there. She was a person I could lean on; somebody I could fully trust with my pain.

As I write this, I wonder if other people know what I’m talking about when I say I was in pain. How can experiencing the love of other people be painful? Here’s my best explanation: I had spent most of my life numbing my negative emotions. The problem with numbing is that it also kept me from feeling positive emotions like joy and love. A person cannot selectively numb negative emotions. Positive emotions get numbed too.

So when I suddenly found myself feeling good—even high—experiencing of the love of others, a side-effect is that I could no longer feel numb. So I also opened up a Pandora’s box of negative emotions, particularly shame. Shame told me I didn’t deserve the love of others. So the more love I felt one moment, the more desolation I felt the next.

I started serving on the presenting team for the personal growth program the very next workshop after I graduated from the program. Carla was an experienced and steady presence on the team. She could feel and zero in on anyone in the workshop who was in pain, and she knew how to be with them in a way that would help ease their pain.

If you think for just a moment about how she was able to do this, I bet you can guess the answer. Carla has experienced a lot of pain in her own life. She can recognize it and respond. I don’t know the full story behind her pain because I was in my own pain back then, and I took without much giving back. Carla tells me it’s because I didn’t have it to give.

There’s two reasons why I know that Carla’s pain is there, though. The first is because she’s told me she’s had a painful past. The second is because I can see a kindred spirit in her.

Carla taught me empathy. Empathy was a foreign concept to me. Empathy and compassion don’t just happen; they have to be learned through practice. I didn’t practice empathy growing up, like many people do. I was too lonely and alone. I didn’t practice empathy as an adult, like many people do. I found it safer to keep people at arms-length. I spent years actually believing I didn’t need other people.

So when I was cracked open, out came pain. Carla was there to catch me. She wasn’t uncomfortable being with my pain and she didn’t try to fix it. She simply stayed with me in empathy and compassion. I didn’t have to go through the pain alone.

Before the workshop, I didn’t know what other people felt inside, the things they tend to hide from others. During the workshop, I understood that everyone feels pain, and my pain connected with their pain and we were the same. With Carla’s help, I was able to starting using empathy and compassion as tools to connect with others as part of the presenting team.

It was awkward at first, because I could get overwhelmed. But Carla and I worked well as a team because we both engaged participants from a place of gentleness and sensitivity. I was definitely the junior partner. I slowly learned how to self-manage and help others through their pain without getting lost in my own. Sometimes. Then usually. Now almost always. Almost.

After a while, Carla reported that she had developed a serious illness. She told me, “I’m a nurse. When the doctors tell me ‘no treatment, no cure’ I know what that means.” She’s the closest friend I’ve ever had who’s gotten so near the limits of her own mortality.

The doctors put in nerve blocks to ease her pain. She moved to Columbus, Ohio to be with a close friend and continue to search for physical and spiritual healing. We stayed in contact for a few years, but we eventually lost contact. So when I pulled up an old email address, I had no idea whether or not she was still alive.

It turns out that ‘no treatment, no cure’ wasn’t necessarily a death sentence. She’s as engaged in life as ever. We have a lot to catch up on. We’ve already started.

In the workshop, each of us has what we call our ‘contract’ and ‘purpose’ statement. Briefly, it’s a unique statement about who a person is and what the person does to live out her/his life purpose. Here’s mine: “I am a free man letting go of the bullshit, connecting in vulnerability.”

Carla was my mentor, leading me away from the bullshit and teaching me how to truly and vulnerably connect with others. Carla deserves much of the credit for helping me discover who I’ve become and what I do (my purpose in life). I can think of no higher compliment.

Foundations Workshops

September 21, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

This is the story of the most significant thing I’ve ever done for me.

In 1982 a Dallas businesswoman named Thelma created her own personal growth seminar company called Choices. Her partners in the early days were Phil McGraw (as in Dr. Phil) and his father. She still runs these seminars in Dallas and Vancouver, despite approaching the age of 80.

In 2002, Thelma’s son Eldon branched out and created a seminar company of his own with his mother’s blessing. He called it Choices II.

I invested in a real estate project in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee developed by my long-time friend and business partner Randy. Eldon wanted to host his seminars in Randy’s chalets. This was a big opportunity for Randy, because the seminars would be held several times per year, including during the off season.

Eldon had only one condition: Randy had to attend the seminar. Eldon reasoned that if Randy understood what was happening in the seminars, they would have a better working relationship.

This was how I found myself at the local Applebee’s listening to Randy tell me about this seminar that changed his life and how I had to attend it. I was skeptical and didn’t really want to go. But it’s hard to say ‘no’ to Randy, so Jamie and I both made plans to attend. I figured I’d gain some benefit simply because I was taking time away to work on myself. I didn’t have big expectations.

It’s hard to explain what the seminar was (and is) all about. Everything they taught could be found in a self-help book. You know, those books that have practical exercises at the end of each chapter that people always skip. The huge difference between reading a self-help book and attending the seminar is that the seminar has you practice those skills experientially. Whether it’s in large groups, small groups, or one-to-one, participants share with each other and get to see how others respond. It’s tremendously healing.

I’m tempted to tell you about everything you would learn by attending the program. Instead I’ll tell you what I learned by attending the program.

I discovered that people weren’t put on this earth to judge me. They were too busy worrying about themselves.

I learned that people felt the same way I did. I got to see their insides. On a human level, they matched my insides. I had always compared my insides to others’ outsides, and found myself lacking. But I wasn’t alone, and I wasn’t uniquely defective. In fact, I wasn’t defective at all, though it would take many years for that fact to sink deeply into my heart.

I found that the main reason I was depressed was that I lacked connection with other people. At the time, I had my family but nobody else I could truly be myself with on a regular basis. I realized this was a major factor in my depression, and I needed to get out of my comfort zone to forge new connections.

The program offered the opportunity to volunteer, and I eagerly signed up immediately after I finished the program myself. At the age of 42, I had found my calling and my purpose. My own path of personal growth involved connecting with others and helping them discover their own healing.

Eventually I would assume every leadership role in and out the room: small group facilitator, coordinator, large group facilitator, team captain, mentor, donor, board member, board chair, and president.

I got a little ahead of myself by listing those last four leadership roles, so let me back up a bit. After several months, Thelma withdrew her support for Eldon’s program. So Eldon reorganized under the name Adventures and continued on without her support. I continued to volunteer for Eldon’s programs.

After about a year, the program started to have issues with low attendance. So I started donating money for scholarships to people who wanted to attend but lacked the means.

At some point, my support crossed the line from healthy to unhealthy. I didn’t realize it then, but it is possible to enable an entire organization. I use the term ‘enable’ in the same sense that a family can enable a person’s drug addiction or other bad behaviors. In this case, propping up the organization so it would not fail was keeping the organization from taking its own hard steps toward self-sufficiency.

Eventually word got around that “anyone who actually pays to attend the program is an idiot.” It was time. I withdrew my financial support.

I did so knowing that the organization would have to lay off its employees. So on the day the employees were laid off, I rehired them and created a non-profit organization to continue the program. We called it Foundations Workshops.

I’m certain that Eldon and his family felt they were victims of a coup. I would have felt that way if it happened to me. All I can say is that there were reasons I took this action that I will not air out like dirty laundry in this forum. I still feel I did the right thing. But the better way would have been for me to not put Adventures in a position where they were dependent on my financial support in the first place.

Unfortunately I had not learned that lesson yet, as Foundations was now dependent on my financial support. We did have several good years with our largest attendance. We expanded into Canada. We helped jump-start a spinoff organization in Chattanooga, Tennessee called TrueYou.

Eventually attendance at Foundations and TrueYou declined as well, and I found myself in a familiar position. As we say in the workshop, “Mistakes are repeated until learned.”

After laying off the staff for a second time, Foundations became an all-volunteer organization operating only in Portland. Its only ongoing expense is the monthly fee on a storage locker. We plan several workshops per year, holding the workshop in a local hotel. If we don’t get a minimum number of participants, we cancel that particular workshop. Now free from my financial enabling, the program is finally self-sufficient, and has been on stable financial footing for several years.

My involvement in Foundations has been life transforming. It’s better to give than to receive, and I’ve been privileged to give for 15 years now. My Master’s Degree in Positive Psychology and Certificate in (personal) coaching flowed directly from and were motivated by my involvement in this program.

I’m now the most experienced facilitator in the program. After facilitating well over 100 workshops, I’ve become quite effective in the room. I’m very proud of this. I only wish I had the opportunity to apply my skills more than a half dozen times per year. I’m actively looking for opportunities to coach and facilitate other groups.

Even more important are the many people who I get to connect with on a deep and personal level. I know I can tell them anything and they will not judge me. They know the same is true about me. Many of the letters in my Six Months project are to people I met through Choices II, Adventures, Foundations, or TrueYou: Rick, Ron, Savannah, Carla, Bret, Janice, Jeff, and others.

Although my personal growth has not gone in a straight line pointing upward, I can always look back a year or two and see how far I’ve come. The truly scary part (in a good way) is that the more I grow, the more opportunities I see for continued growth. My Six Months project is one of those opportunities. Thank you for joining me in this journey.

Nostalgia

September 9, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

New and Old: My childhood home as it appears in 2018

It’s wondrous how certain experiences can trigger a memory that transports us back to an earlier time. It could be an old song. It could be the sight of somebody who resembles an old friend. It could be the scent of a fragrance or a musty odor.

For me, it’s all of these, and also about a place. Two places, actually.

I was raised in South Euclid, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. I lived there since before I have memories and didn’t move until I was 17. Then I moved to Clinton, Mississippi. After living with my parents for a year, I moved into the dorm at Mississippi College, also located in Clinton.

Old and New: First day of Kindergarten in 1966

So my entire childhood until the age of 22 was spent in one of two places. Virtually all of my childhood and adolescent memories are set either in South Euclid or on the campus of MC.

I was in Ohio recently and decided to visit South Euclid. Although I didn’t write letters to anyone in Ohio, the trip was very much in the spirit of this Six Months project.

This was only my third trip to South Euclid since I left there 35 years ago. As I’ve written before, I didn’t feel like I was leaving any friends when I moved from there. I’ve never spoken to anybody in South Euclid since I left. I don’t have so much as a Facebook friend from there.

So I got to look at buildings, streets, and houses. I saw my childhood home again. I was surprised to see how small it is. I get the sense it could fit completely inside the house I live in now. Because it was what I knew, the size of the house seemed very normal to me. Everybody in the neighborhood was lower-middle class. Or maybe just 1960s middle class.

I don’t know how nostalgia feels to most people, but for me it feels like an empty, painful yearning. Part of the problem is that there’s nobody to see in South Euclid. I have the same issue when I visit MC. I don’t usually visit MC while classes are in session, so the campus is typically empty. It feels cold and soulless, like a cemetery, with brick buildings standing like tombstones.

The emptiness brings back the loneliness of my childhood, the lack of friends and poor socialization. Although I finally found a group of guy friends at MC, my poor experiences with girls—and lack of experiences—reinforced my own belief that I was defective and unlovable. I wouldn’t be able to fully shake this belief until I was in my forties.

When I visit South Euclid or MC, I inevitably feel regret. I want to go back and have a do-over. I fantasize that I can be reincarnated with all my existing memories and social skills and be placed back into my own past. Then I remember what it was like to be a teen and wonder whether that’s what I want after all.

I think what I’m describing here is trauma and its effects. I never considered myself to be a victim of trauma. After all, I had a good, intact family. I wasn’t abused. My parents provided for my every need except for my emotional needs.

But psychologists are now expanding the definition of trauma. We don’t have to suffer a big, momentous tragedy or unspeakable abuse to suffer the effects of trauma. Small suffering over a very long period can produce the same symptoms. And I was socially isolated for my entire childhood.

But… this trip was a little different. I didn’t experience more than a tiny twisting of the gut I was used to feeling when stepping into my past. I visited the place in the woods off school property where I used to hide during recess so other kids wouldn’t see that I was alone. But I wasn’t transported back into that lonely little boy as if I was reliving the experience.

I credit my Six Months experience with this. I was able to stop going back to the places of my past, and truly experience the people of my past. These experiences are what philosopher Martin Buber calls I-Thou encounters, “a turning toward another with one’s whole being.”

Through this project, I’ve had the excuse I needed to revisit the people of my past, particularly the young women with whom I felt inadequate throughout my painful adolescence. I’ve kept a couple of their letters private due to either their wishes or mine.

I can now see that I wasn’t defective. I was just hurting, self-protective, and self-absorbed (as anyone in chronic pain would be). And others weren’t rejecting me specifically. They were just hurting too, and trying to figure things out as best they could.

I no longer yearn to have a do-over with my childhood, because I am content with my own self-image in the present. Though I still think it would be cool to get to relive parts of my life. Maybe I’d buy stock in Apple.

I am filled with gratitude to the people who gifted me with the healing of my past. And there’s still more people to see!

There is a creek behind my childhood home. On the other side of the creek is a narrow strip of woods. I would play in the creek and in the woods almost every day.

As my 57-year-old self was walking down a trail through these woods, I was suddenly transformed into the little boy from a half-century earlier.

But this time it wasn’t painful. I felt free, like children do. I wanted to run, like I used to do so often in those woods.

Unfortunately, my body protested. I would have ended up out-of-breath and sweating, which wasn’t the feeling I was going for. So I just kept walking, and imagining, and being that little boy. And it felt good. I was happy to be him.

Is this what nostalgia is supposed to feel like?