Growing A Pair

Picture courtesy of Gawker.com

Personal growth comes in fits and starts.

Some of you are born audacious. Some are born with balls. Both real and metaphysical.

Others have to grow a pair.

I unfortunately have “selective” ones. When it comes to my family I’m fine. I can set limits without so much as a blink.

Even with others I can be direct- in business situations. But when it comes to the murky waters of pure social interaction–especially when you throw kids into the mix—I often find myself lacking.

You know, social rites and requirements. The “high school” of life. These are the hardest for me.

Sometimes when I’m confronted or having a disagreement, especially when it’s unexpected, I seem to forget to pack the big pair. I admire those whose first instinct is to fire back with both barrels. I default on to not making too many waves. It also doesn’t help that I am the one that can see the issue from all sides. Great for marketing, product creation but not so great in a disagreement with a friend. In these scenarios I need time to digest, analyze, reformat.

Here’s my modus operandi. Play fair. Be nice. Be upfront. Be liked. By everyone.

To a fault.

I know, I know, I can even hear my mother’s voice,circa 1987, “You can’t be everyone’s friend, nor do you want to.”  Call me crazy, but I will try really hard to be liked. Sometimes too much. Sometimes to my own detriment.

And that’s the problem. You can’t always be liked. Sometimes it cannot be helped. Sometimes friendships are destroyed and it happens. It’s hard for me to accept.

Buddhist followers say you play the same metaphysical storyline until you learn.

So I’m ready to change my story. Be more direct. Set limits and commit to them. Accept the fallout, however uncomfortable it might be.

Take a deep breath.

Time for a re-write.

I must not be the only one that feels this way.

“You Can’t Cure Stupid”

(photo credit: Childrensministryonline)

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“You can’t cure stupid”- Dr. Cat, life-long friend and knower of where all the bodies are buried.

I love this phrase.

Straight to the point. Right on the mark. Bulls-eye. (Also all great)

Dr. Cat, besides being one of my closest friends and God-mother to Baby Lug, is one of the finest diagnosticians working, IMHO. She works at a rural New England hospital and the stories she shares are eye-opening. So often she and her colleagues comes up against the worst symptom– stupidity– they coined the phrase “You can’t cure stupid.”

And, you know what, it’s true.

You can help, inform, teach, prescribe, order, ticket, punish but in the end it’s about individual free will. The 6oolb person, dieting to save their lives, upset they’re not losing more weight since they’ve cut back on their 2nd liter of Coke for breakfast. Or one so freaked out about lumps they refuse to go to the doctor until the fire department has to breakdown the door to take them to the hospital.

WTF?

Look, I write a lot about improving. Life. Health. Thought. But if someone is hell-bound to keep on keepin’ on the path of self-destruction then what can anyone do?

Nothing.

“Time to smarten up.” – Your Dad.

Another great phrase. Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom before we are willing to stop being stupid. I did, at least with my health. And believe you me, that is a daily work in progress. We’re all stupid about something. We’re all (metaphorically) the 600lb person on something. I’m not implying you, or I for that matter, are in dire way, but we all aren’t perfect either.

I guess we all have to look at what we do on a daily basis and ask  ”Am I being stupid” here? This could apply to health, relationships, money, etc. Probably something you don’t want to ask yourself. You know what I’m talking about. It’s there. Festering and sapping your energy in one way or another- physically or mentally.

Can you cure it? Get the help you need? Slow things down? Talk to someone? Write it down? Walk it out? Pick a wiser choice? Turn yourself around?

Only you can cure your own stupidity.

“Stupid is as stupid does.” – Forrest Gump.

Lessons From The Meanest Duck

One of my favorite stories of my Dad’s is about his time in Vietnam. It involves a duck. A boa-constrictor. Oh, and a few observations.

Around April 1967, my father was a Naval dentist, attached to the Marines, stationed in KhanSan. He’d fixed teeth, do occasional triage, even kept one man alive in a foxhole for three days with nothing but a dental kit. Always, right before patrols were about to go out, there’d be a spike in emergency tooth-aches. The hardest part, for the medical teams, was to tell these boys that they were fine and ship’em off, some never to return.

So much death, you understand why MASH (the movie, not really the show) could possibly exist. Anything to break the tension, take your mind off the potentials, help alleviate the stress of the daily.

One day, after two day patrol,  a Marine Recon patrol comes back, bearing what could only be described “the biggest mother-fucking snake” ever seen. Like anaconda size big.

Big.

This motley group of 6 or 7 fatigued teens, proudly hoisted their prize, as they should. Again, according to Dad, it was one big snake.

And it was their unit’s new mascot.

Housing such a magnificent creature was the Unit’s focus for the next day or two. Bamboo cut, cage crafted. And to feed it, not a problem. This was Vietnam, so procuring a edible creature or two wasn’t much of a stretch.

Enter the duck.

It was a big duck, duck-wise, but compared to the snake? No contest.

Probably unceremoniously shoved into the snake’s lair, someone leashed the duck so it couldn’t fly around and elude being dinner for the prized mammoth snake.

That’s thoughtful.

And everybody went to bed, congratulating themselves on their new mascot, one huge mean-looking mother-fucking snake.

Next morning: Duck alive. Huge-ass snake? Dead.

It seems the snake was pecked to death by the duck.

Of course you know where this is headed…

The Duck became the unit’s new mascot. While they had lost the huge, they figured they more than made it up by gaining the meanest mother-fucking Duck in all of Vietnam.

(I actually spent a good amount of time looking for the banner/badge/patch of this company. I couldn’t find it. Not even a picture or story. Know anyone who might? Please forward and have them contact me. My dad only had a Super-8 of the snake. Go figure.)

The Take-aways? Here’s what we can learn from the Meanest Duck episode:

• Don’t assume. Huge Snake. Smaller Duck. Duck kicked snake’s ass (or pecked it) to death. Wait to see one’s actions before you judge an individual’s performance or worth.
• Size doesn’t matter. Will to live, drive to succeed, sheer tenacity can kick Mammoth’s ass.
• Bet the money on the one that refuses to stay down. This could be in the bullet point above, but it’s worth seeing it twice.
• Embrace change, and accept new and different.  It might be better. Sure the snake is a cool icon, but a killer duck? Awesome. Memorable enough for repeated story-telling and a life living decades beyond.

So there it is. Don’t assume. Be the one that refuses to stay down. Size isn’t a factor. Embrace Change.

Remember The Meanest Duck in Vietnam.

Passive Evil.

Evil.

Is it just reserved for the person that commits an evil action or can it belong to those who do nothing to help?

You decide.

Alfredo Tale-Yax. 31 Homeless in NYC.

Stabbed several times in the chest as he came to the aid of a woman being attacked during the early morning commute.

He collapsed on a New York City sidewalk.

Of the dozens of people that walked by in the early AM, no one stopped to help him.

Not one.

One did snap a photo though. With his camera-phone.

He died. Alone. On the sidewalk.

He died because he helped.

He died because he was stabbed.

He died because not one of dozen people cared enough to hit 3 digits and press SEND.

Which one is right?

Again, it begs, what is evil?

The active or the passive actions that lead to this?

Which one?

Alfredo Tale-Yax. 31 Died Homeless on NYC sidewalk.

(Many thanks to Jessica Gottlieb, for the original post on this. I think she right on with her last sentence: “Get mad.” I am. Are you?)

The Blessings of Good Enough.

We often see "Not good enough"

I don’t profess to know everything, but much of what I do know I’ve learned the hard way- trial and error. Mistakes. I then to do the “3 steps ahead, one step back” approach- I’m a work in progress. As we all are.

So… I do yoga.

I didn’t always do yoga. I did it in the past. Then life took over, so much so that I had to stop.  Then life started kicking the ever-loving crap out of me and I stopped and spent over a month cleaning my body. Part of that clean is yoga. The focus, exercise, meditation and sweat.

And it’s better. I’m healthier. Not perfect but better.

And sometimes you have to be grateful for that.

My enlightment happened while trying to do a balance pose. I’m not so good with the balance poses, but there I was… really trying… frustrated… I got almost to there… almost..ahhh dammit!

The teacher noticing our strain and struggle paused and then simply said “Sometimes you just have to accept where you are…it might not be where you want to be, but it’s good enough.”

A-ha. So halfway I stopped. It was good enough. I felt great.

We spend so much time focusing of fixing the wrongs in our life, stressing over the missed opportunities, the fine lines of time that creep across our body, the problems with no immediate fixes. Stress, anxiety.

I forget to stop and count the blessings of being good enough.

I bet you do too.

There’s the 80/20 rule in business. If 100% is perfect, usually getting to 80% relatively easy, it’s the last 20% that will potentially kill your product, your business or you. “The Devil is in the Details” and sometimes you have it ask yourself “Does it really make it that much better?”

Most of the time it’s “No.”

Somtimes good enough is, well… good enough.

Some companies, 37 Signals, in their terrific book, REWORK, talk how they actually force themselves to take away features on any of their new products. That’s like aggressively “Good Enough.”

I have to practice this, again I’m a work in progress. I mean, did I really need to stay up until wee hours of the morning hot-glue gunning pom-pons onto favor boxes my twin’s “Mini-wedding-but-it’s-a-3rd-birthday-so-who-made-me-Martha-Stewart?”  No. Now as their 7th birthday approaches will I do it again? No.

Wonderful marriage. Healthy, happy kids. Nice dog. My health. It’s not perfect but it is good enough and I am blessed for it.

See… I’m learning.

Soon I’m going to be embarking on 90 Day “Ass of Death Pilates Challenge” with the Fabulous Lisa Johnson and her Modern Pilates Boston. For 90 days I will be pilate-ing my tush off (or I hope to- that’s the goal because the badonkadonk I got going is Gansta Rapper size.) Of course I’ll set goals for myself- I’ve done Pilates (about 10+ years ago) and in fact, I did achieve the “ass of death.”

I was also in my twenties.

Though I’ll be writing about the whole 90 day experience, complete with the stats and pictures, I’ll have to keep it to my expectations in check. Be grateful for the experience. The improvements that will surely come,  perhaps new-found strength and flexibility. An inch or two off. A size smaller. I don’t know.

I have to remember that I am blessed if I get to good enough.

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Links to Items Featured on TheLiquidBetsy:

The World’s Greatest Thermometer

No kidding.

Imagine this.

You’re get up, you feel just awful or maybe it’s one of your kids (if you have them.)

You need to take a temperature. Now. You stumble into the bathroom looking for a thermometer. Is it the old fashion mercury don’t-drop-and-break-it-or-you-instantly-lose-braincells-from-exposure? Maybe it’s the 5 min or 2 minute stick in the ear variety? Or, as LeBetsy shudders,  the rectal baby thermometer.

Whatever. You’ve managed to locate the damn thing but you can barely see ’cause your contacts are out or you have a severe case of eye boogers, or both…

Desperately you try to get the temp, did you wait long enough? Was that a beep? Yes… no.. yes? Crap, you did it wrong. Do-over.

All you want to do is take the damn temp, take the appropriate meds and limp back to bed.

By now, you’re more awake, paying attention and you got it. The Temp! YOU GOT IT! You (or your significant other you’re dealing with) REALLY IS sick. Meds. Bed.

And now you can’t sleep. You’re awake.

Damn.

Short of a shot of NyQuil, you’re not sleeping. But it’s too late for that.

And you have work tomorrow.

This totally sucks.

Stress no more.

Enter in the World’s Greatest Thermometer!

Hooray!

Not as sexy as a Porsche but when it’s that late (or early depending how you look at it,) it starts to look pretty damn fiiiine.

Meet The Exergen Temporal Artery Thermometer.

Having twins, when one gets sick about 3 days later the other would also be projectile vomiting. Crying babies (in stereo!) and taking temperatures any other way was not an option. Our pediatrician introduced us to the Temporal Artery Thermometer, they use it to take all the kids temp at each apt. One quick swipe, maybe 3 secs, and WHAMO! temperature is taken.

(Cue heavenly sent savior music)

What no kids? I tell you, I don’t care if you’re Old Mother Hubbard or one of the boys from Entourage, you need this. Nothing stinks than being sick and having to wait for confirmation that, yes, you are feeling like crap for a reason. Especially at 3:30 am.

It’s also much more hygienic, no shared bodily fluids as it’s a swipe across the head.

Best deal- it’s  freakin cheap (around $33!!) and super easy to find.

Go to your Walgreens or Babies’R'Us (if you’re single say you’re shopping for a shower gift!), Walmart, CostCo and Sam’s Clubs.

Or make it easy and get it at Amazon.

Speaking of baby shower gifts, it’s not the cutest present, but this is what I give. And I always get a call from the new mother thanking me. It’s usually starts “I thought it was an odd gift, but last night at 3:30am (and it’s always 3:30am, why, I don’t know.)….” and ends with “and it saved our sanity!”

I should be on commission.