Recently, in an effort to be a better manager, I asked every member of my staff to complete an anonymous survey. The results were brutal: “Management has no idea what we need. Leadership is completely detached from us. Shelly is clueless.” (Ok, they didn’t actually say that last one. That’s what I felt I was reading.) When I formed a workgroup to help me make changes on the unit, I asked them to tell me examples of what exactly was meant by these comments. As it turns out, one of the issues was that our staff needs euipment repaired, and they are discouraged that we have not done it. 
 
How simple! Even in a climate where budgets have constraints and priorities compete for attention, fixing a blood pressure machine, for example, is easy stuff to arrange. Of course I will do everything I can to fix what can be fixed! But I haven’t been doing so, because, as invested as I am in being a good leader, I cannot intuit when a thermometer isn’t reading correctly, for example. I need them to tell me. So, my next
question is, “Why walk around feeling abandoned, frustrated, and as if the people who lead the department don’t care at all? Why don’t they just ask for what they need?”
 
I found my answer in, “Getting the Love you Want,”by Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. In Hendrix book, he talks about our tendency to imagine that people just know what we want. If they care at all, we think we  shouldn’t have to ask for it. His observation is that we come into this world with a caretaker/mother who is amazingly equipped to read our minds. We need to be fed, or held, or changed, and somehow, because she loves us, she knows exactly what to do to answer our cries. No asking necessary.  

However, Hendrix continues, we continue imagining as we transition into adults that expressing our displeasure (like the cries of an infant) should be enough to get the people who love us to “fix it.”
This imagining isn’t based in logic, and we might know that this expectation is impossible to meet, but it’s so basic, so ingrained, that we nearly cannot escape it. “If you care, you would _____, without me even asking,” is a concept we drag with us into every relationship: personal, professional, and social.
Yet, as we transition into adults, we have much more complex needs than anyone can meet via the mother/infant guessing game.
 
Just as a toddler learns to speak, largely so that he can get more specific about his demands, so must we learn to speak. We cannot continue to expect our leaders to guess what we want, trust them to imagine it, and become discouraged when we don’t get it. We cannot expect our loved ones to imagine what we need to feel beloved and become distant and forlorn when they fail. And in fact, we cannot expect our own, conscious, planning minds to create a path for living that meets our deepest desires for joy if we aren’t able to articulate exactly what those desires are. We must learn to voice our needs in something other than cries, frowns, or exasperated sighs of displeasure.
 
I am reminded of a girlfriend of mine who guided
  her young son while he was whining and starting to throw a fit about some want
  or another. “Use your words,” she said gently. Indeed.

Yesterday was my birthday, the day that marks another year   passing and makes me think of what I have done and hope to still do in this lifetime. I am not oblivious to the fact that I am closer to 50, now, than to 40, or that I have reached something that must be nearly the halfway point of my life. Sometimes, I can feel a little confused and disappointed by this. On the other hand, there are also great benefits to aging. For example, the things that threw me into great despair at 20 years old, aren’t even close to making the cut, these days, and I am amazed at all of the opportunities I’ve been given to learn something that actually makes every day a little bit easier. I’m sure I must have thousands of bits of wisdom tucked away in some corner of my mind, just waiting for me need them. Here are the top 10 that I can recall without much provocation:

10. Egg slicers do not work on onions. 
9. On any day that it really matters, take an extra pair of panty hose with you, because you WILL get a run.
8. There are no days when “it really matters” if you get a run.
7. Cheap, aerosol hairspray gets ink out of fabric.
6. If you loan someone money and you never see them again, it’s money well spent.  
 (On the other hand: Gel eyelashes cost $200, last only two weeks, and don’t look any different than wet eyelashes.)
5. Hearts that don’t break because you hide them are no less lonely than broken ones, but they get cheated of all the fun beforehand.              
4. The appropriate response to the oil light illuminating the dashboard of  your car is not, “Oh, look at that cute little Jeanie lamp!”
3. Almost nothing is so bad that a nap can’t help to fix it. 
2. We all have friends and advocates we don’t even know we have, and they are probably saying something nice about us, even right now.

And the number one thing getting older has taught me is:
 
1. You will be disappointed that you are not further ahead until you realize that neither are you further behind. 
 
Cheers to living our lives for the very purpose of loving with reckless abandon, learning with an unquenchable thirst, and seeking to experience every emotion and possibility our particular paths
provide. 
 
Happy Everyday, everyone!

Have you ever invited someone into your home, and discovered as  you met them at the door and brought them inside that you were suddenly seeing your home through their eyes? Have you been two steps ahead, picking up a blanket that was crumpled at the back of the sofa, or stacking mail and placing
it in a drawer, for example? These things don’t bother you. You live with them. You barely notice them. But when you see them, suddenly, through the eyes of someone who may be taking it all in for the first time, you really see them. And
you think, in a split second, “This isn’t as good as it could be. Let me make some adjustments.” 

This just happened to me with someone who came to visit me after 30 years. Only it wasn’t my actual house I felt compelled to get in order, it was my proverbial house. This well-meaning friend asked me the   simplest question of all: what do you do for fun? I had no answer. I love to enjoy the company of my friends at parties or over a glass of wine, and I appreciate feeling challenged at work, but what, praytell, do I do, exactly, for fun? 
 
I suppose what I find most interesting about this is the fact that I have been doing research and setting goals and working my own Living in Joy plan for awhile now.  I’m in  touch with Joy, per se, meaning that “all is well,” undercurrent that allows me to enjoy every experience for what it is, comfortable and uncomfortable, alike. It took awhile to get there, and I’m glad to report not only that I do, indeed, live in Joy, but that I am also delighted to be able to share that learning with anyone who is interested. But what about fun?
  
One good thing about my Living in Joy work is that I have already  answered the very difficult question, “What would you do, if you could do anything at all.” As it turns out, that puts me ahead of the game. I went back to my original answers to that very important question and found my list. I want to swim with dolphins. I want to write and travel and speak. I want to play guitar and be able to sing along. I want to find and enjoy all of that with the Love of My Lifetime, whoever he turns out to be… and lots of other“fun things.” I had forgotten those goals, in favor of learning my new management job. I had done exactly what I coach against… “Don’t give up on your dreams, while you make a living.” 

As soon as I realized that I had been operating on auto-pilot, I almost immediately felt my slump of the last year dissipate. I had things to do and things to look forward to doing. I have a mission, and that is not only to live in touch with Joy, but to have fun, too!

Carolyn Myss suggests that our SoulMates aren’t the loves of our lifetime, necessarily, but rather, are the transient souls who drop in for a moment to give us the wake-up calls we need along the way. If that’s the case, then this friend from my past is, if not the Love of My Life, one of my SoulMates. Thank you for reminding me to have fun. Thank you for motivating me to continue pursuing the things I most want to experience in this lifetime. Thank you for helping me see the dust on the shelves and the clutter on the  counter. Because my little corner of the world isn’t as good as it could be, it’s time to make some adjustments. 

So, how about it, everyone? What do you do for fun?