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Sooner or later, the triple whammy is going to get you.
It got me recently but this time I managed to learn something from it. I discovered how to be great.
The triple whammy started with the boyfriend whammy. We
split up over emails. How sad is it when all you’ve got left to say can be summed up in a tersely written exchange?
Days later, whammy #2 hits. The stock market plunges 777 points, a nice symmetrical number signifying no end of
pain, worry, and fear.
Then, just when I’ve forgotten things happen in three’s, I get a call from a headhunter telling me I’m too senior for all available positions. Doesn’t “too senior” sound suspiciously like “too old”?
Not a good week.
They say the measure of a person isn’t how many problems we have or don’t have. It’s how we handle them that really count. When your life goes to pieces and you find yourself broke, alone, and eating too much ice cream, what do you do? Sit by helplessly, a shell-shocked expression frozen on your face? Add caramel sauce to your ice cream? Stockpile canned goods in preparation for The Day of Reckoning (whatever that is)? Or call up your friends and bore them to tears with your sniveling, whimpering, self-pitying rant?
Personally, I’m partial to the latter. But this time, I hit a snag because my friend, Susan, changed the rules without me knowing.
Here’s how it went. I called up Susan and as I’d done a million times before, I asked her how she was doing. My voice had an unmistakable victim ring to it aimed at drawing her into commiseration. Just when I expected her to say, “Gee, you sound awful. What’s wrong?” she came out with, “I’m great.”
I looked at the phone thinking I’d misdialed. “You’re kidding, right?” I said. “You’re never great.”
“No, things have changed,” said Susan happily. “I’m really great.”
What’s the world coming to when you can’t share a little venom, rage, and frustration with a friend? It was like she’d been kidnapped by aliens from Planet Great-oh and reprogrammed into some annoyingly, boringly happy person.
There wasn’t much to say after that. I hung up and thought about the dire situation. Then it dawned on me. Maybe Susan’s new attitude had something to do with her recent venture. She had launched a parenting approach through a membership site, www.energyparenting.com. Her approach was based on the work of therapist, Howard Glasser.
I started reading. The genesis for the Energyparenting approach was Howard’s experiences as a “difficult, intense” kid. He was the raised nail that always got hammered. It taught him two things: being hammered hurts. And, being hammered is a form attention. When that hammer comes down on you, you’ve got your parent’s energy and presence totally focused on you. And who doesn’t love attention, no matter what form it comes in?
The Energyparenting approach turns that upside down. It teaches parents to redirect that negatively focused attention to the good things kids do. And we’re not talking giving a kid a perfunctory pat on the head with an, “Oh that’s nice.” We’re talking about truly seeing a kid’s success and verbalizing it with specific, realistic, heartfelt acclaim.
I called Susan back a few hours later. “Okay, I think I get it. I get the great thing.”
“That’s great,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been reading your website trying to figure out why you’re so great these days,” I said.
“Why?” asked Susan intrigued.
I drew in a deep breath and launched in. “Before, when I read all that stuff about the power of positive thinking, I never really got it. Sure, I could imagine positive things but I couldn’t hold those thoughts. Reading your site made me realize imaging isn’t enough. Seeing is believing!”
Susan thought about it for a moment. “Not sure I follow you,” she said tentatively.
“I finally got that before you can consistently think positively,” I explained, “You have to see the positive. And even seeing isn’t enough. You have to say the positive. That’s what you do with the kids. You see the good in them, you say it, and then they can own it. Right?”
“Yes,” said Susan brightly. “That’s it.”
“I couldn’t do that before,” I went on. “I was missing the seeing-and-saying part. I was too conditioned to watch out for danger and to worry about what’s around the corner. It’s a primitive survival thing. If you’re looking for trouble you’re going to find it.”
“And if you’re looking for the positive side of life,” Susan continued for me, “You’ll find that, too.”
“Exactly,” I said excitedly. “And even though the positive has always been out there, I never really stopped to acknowledge it, to truly see it. When I read your site, I realized, if the seeing-and-saying can turn a difficult kid into a little darling, it should work for me. I can be great, too.”
Susan laughed happily. “Oh, Pammy, you already are. We all are.”
“That’s just great,” I said teasingly.
What if we started seeing-and-saying the positive? I mean, not just looking at it but really seeing and acknowledging it with specific words that specific, honest, and clear. How would that change your life?
© 2008 ZANTIUM LLC
BIO:
Everyone knows you only talk about sex in secret. Everyone but me that is. I’m Pamela Tames and you can hear more about my take on sex and the older woman at http://seasonedsex.com/. Who’s doing it, how they’re doing it, and what keeps them doing it. Now, for those all thinking, ‘that’s got to be one short website,’ let me respectfully say, ‘oh, so wrong.’ Just see for yourself.
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