Today's Post

Today's post is up on Tom Politics at http://tompolitics.blogspot.com/2009/11/transformative-leadership.html.

Baggage

I'm traveling again today. This time it's a short visit to Chicago to attend a board meeting.

Whenever we travel, we leave stuff behind and also take it with us in our baggage.

Take today to think about what you bring with you wherever you go, and whether these items (behaviors, habits, ways of being) are essential for the success of your journey, or whether, like too much heavy baggage, they interfere with your progress, slow you down, and hold you back.

We form many of our habits to cope with difficult situations, particularly those in childhood, at times when we do not yet have the full set of skills to deal effectively with the problems at hand. Later, after we develop these skills, we fail to use them and rely instead on the old habits, because they are comfortable, familiar, and worked in the past. But they are no longer appropriate for our current state.

It's refreshing and cathartic to take a hard look at your baggage, dump items you no longer need, and start to travel lighter. After all, we only have so much carrying capacity. If we are to grow, we need to make room for new behaviors, habits, and ways of being that serve us better.

Hope

Sometimes, we feel down.

Sometimes, this down feeling is more than a mood change, or a temporary low brought on by stress and worry.

Sometimes, this down feeling feels as if it isn't going to go away. We feel hopeless and alone.

When that happens, it's called depression.

If you're feeling down and have been for a while, you may be depressed. But you may not know it, because depression interferes with yhour judgment and your ability to understand your own mental state.

If you're feeling down and have been for a while, the most important thing you can do for yourself is get some help. Make an appointment with a qualified therapist, and if you don't know of one, get a referral from a friend or colleague. It's OK to let people know you want to see a therapist. There's absolutely nothing wrong with getting help for yourself. In fact, there's something wrong with not getting help for yourself if you need it.

The therapist is likely to recommend that you see a psychiatrist, who unlike the therapist, is a medical doctor and can assess your condition from both the physiological and psychological perspectives. The psychiatrist may prescribe medication for you. While antidepressants do not cure depression, they frequently offer enough of a sustained lift to enable other measures, such as therapy, to be much more effective. The medication is not going to change who you are. It will help you get back to who you are and get back on track to being who you want to be.

The second most important thing is to realize - and you have to drill this into your head to realize it fully - that your feelings of hopelessness and despair, while they may seem rational, are actually induced by your depression. Your situation may indeed be dire, and you may face a host of tough problems and challenges. But it is not hopeless. There is always, always hope.

You may also feel that talking to someone about your feelings will serve no purpose, because no one can understand you. Your therapist may not understand you completely, but you will be amazed at how talking to someone who listens and does his or her best to understand relieves you of the burden of carrying all your stress and worry and sadness inside yourself and opens the door for your healing process to begin.

There are many different kinds of therapy. Your psychiatrist may be able to recommend the best type for you. I'm a huge fan of Jungian analysis, but it's probably not right for everyone. It may take a few tries, but you'll soon find a person and an approach that work for you.

If you think you might be depressed, go get some help.

If you think someone you care about may be depressed, try to get that person to seek help. And explain, as many times as necessary, that feelings of hopelessness and despair are part of depression, the result of viewing the world through the dark filter that has descended over your consciousness. With time, and work, and proper treatment, the dark filter will lift. And the sun, which never stopped shining, will become visible again.

Have hope. Brighter days lie ahead. But you need to seize the day and get help if you want to bask in the light again.

Rust and Responsibility

It's been a week since I've posted here, and I feel a little rusty. Bright shiny ideas come to the surface every day, but if I don't express them, they start to corrode. Time, doubt, indifference, and the incessant flow of newer, brighter, shinier ideas causes the old ones to start dissolving, first at the edges, and eventually at the core, the soft white center of the Goetze's Caramel Cream finally melting away in a pool of sweet saliva as you pop the next one into your craving mouth.

It's time to start serving up delicious treats again for my readers.

Did you miss me, everyone?

Today's post is titled rust and responsibility, and we've dispensed with the rust part.

The responsibility part has two parts.

First, we need to be responsible for our own choices and the outcomes of those choices. It is dysfunctional and unhealthy to blame others or resent them for the outcomes of choices we have made.

Second, we need to take responsibility for expressing our feelings, through clear communication, to those we love and for whom we care. Most people are not magicians, and few can guess why another person is feeling a certain way. We may be able to get a sense of the feeling itself from body language or lack of communication; these can signify anger, frustration, disappointment, sadness, or resentment. But we cannot divine the reasons for these feelings, or respond effectively to these feelings, unless the person feeling these feelings expresses them to us. Indirect expressions of feelings are likely to lead to confusion and misinterpretation, which in turn cause a breakdown in the communication process.

Some of us are rusty when it comes to initiating communication and carrying it through with clarity. Some of us may never have developed this skill at all. But it is essential to learn it if we want to have successful personal and professional relationships. We can't keep our feelings to ourselves, or hide them where we hope someone else might look, or post them inappropriately in a public place for the world to see. We must communicate directly and effectively. It's the only way.

Tom Aplomb Schedule

Tom Aplomb will be on vacation from blogging from 23 through 30 October.

You may see an occasional post, but I can't promise anything.

Please use this time to visit the archives and use the Search box to find posts relating to your areas of interest.

Tom will return with a new post on Monday 2 November.

In Praise of Praise

Yesterday, a friend who reads my blog complimented me on a recent post and encouraged me to keep up the good work. I had not known that this friend was a reader, so his comments came as a most delightful surprise. Aside from my joy in learning that someone whose opinions I respect and whose counsel I value liked what I was writing, I felt a deep sense of appreciation that my friend took the time to let me know. I was moved.

Most of us are always trying to make things better, and we live and work in a culture that places a high value on constant improvement. As a result, we criticize incessantly. We're rarely aware that we're criticizing, because the criticism comes couched in the form of advice, suggestions, guidance, nips, tweaks, and tucks, and while it can be constructive, it usually isn't.

I've written previously about the importance of encouraging and nurturing creative ideas. But today's post is about praise. Praise incorporates encouragement, in that we are likely to feel encouraged when we receive praise. But pure praise serves a different function. It makes us feel appreciated. And when we feel appreciated, we feel happy. And when we feel happy, we feel more inspired. And when we feel more inspired, we feel more energetic and enthusiastic. And when we feel more energetic and enthusiastic, we do a better job. And when we do a better job (if we have a smart boss or partner or friend), we receive more praise, and the virtuous cycle continues, because we want to hold on to that happy, inspired, energetic, enthusiastic feeling.

So praise actually results in improvement, but the improvement comes from within the person receiving the praise, not from someone else's advice, suggestions, guidance, nips, tweaks, and tucks.

You cannot overestimate the importance of praise in motivating people, whether they are your family, friends, or colleagues.

Go praise someone today. If delivering praise is not something you already do regularly, you'll be astonished at what happens.

Take Care of Yourself

Last night I felt a cough coming on. Actually, this cough has been lingering since I had a bad cold several weeks ago. I am traveling at the end of the week, and I do not want to be sick on my journey.

So this morning, I decided to take it easy and take a slightly later train to work. I used the extra time to make a big hearty breakfast, consisting of a mushroom omelet, bacon, fried potatoes, and toast. It was just what I needed. That and an extra cup of strong Starbucks Sumatra, all consumed in the comfort of a warm bed, seem to have done the trick.

If you're feeling sick or tired or low, or you just feel like you need a break, take care of yourself. The world can wait an hour or two, and if you have something important on your calendar, you can try to reschedule it.

The point is, listen to yourself. Your body generally tells you what it needs.

The same is true of your mind, your psyche.

If you're feeling lonely, reach out to a friend. If you can't find a friend, reach out to an acquaintance and try to make a friend.

If you're feeling frustrated, go get some exercise or listen to some soothing music.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, take the time to break things down into bite-sized pieces you can handle.

If you're feeling depressed, talk to people. First family and friends but also a professional who knows how to help.

Listen to yourself. You know what you need. And you know how to get it. And only you can get it for yourself.