It's All About Relationships -- With a Twist!

In my years of being in relationships at work, socially, and at home, I have come upon an observation that seems to stay consistent over time.  Gender perspective fascinates me, and I’ll be curious to read if you experience anything similar. Warning: sexism is alive and well in these viewpoints; I painted with a very broad brush.

In the world of work, I and other women often say, “The work will speak for itself.”  Our hope is that if we work hard, exceed expectations, and show initiative that reward and recognition will follow.  We don’t want it to be about whom we know, because that is fraught with landmines, from sexual harassment, to gossip and misunderstandings, to favoritism. We don’t want to get ahead for any of those reasons.

Outside of work – we focus a lot (a LOT) on relationships.  Relationships fuel the majority of our conversational topics, our reading, our movie choices, and the books we read.  Relationships make our world go round.  Slightly exaggerated, our life outside of work can be summed up in this graph:

   

And when we want to talk to our significant others about “The Relationship” he can be caught with some version of eye rolling or we’ll hear a mumbled “Please, no not the talk!” escape from his lips before he can pull it back.  There is not much “letting the work speak for itself” on the home front.  The relationship’s ups, downs, foibles and missteps will be discussed, debated, examined and scrutinized, if we have our way.

However, at work, do you find, as I have, that guys tend to take the opposite view from us:  at work, they focus on THE RELATIONSHIP!  (And we thought it was called politics).

Guys don’t leave their careers to the off chance that someone will notice their hard work and reward them.  They initiate.  They make sure to have time outside of office hours to connect in a way that doesn’t always happen in the task-oriented office environment (the business lunch, for example, our couple’s equivalent of date night).  Men and their bosses often share hobbies together: skiing, golf, mountain-biking…they find the common connection and they schedule time to do it.  They SCHEDULE TIME TO DO IT.  (This is women’s  “you never plan anything with me” talk, #147).  The other observation regarding the focus on relationships at home vs. work is that it can’t sustain evolution and time.

It’s obvious that the landscape is changing and has to change as the numbers of women in leadership roles grow. As I said earlier, we have adopted this no-nonsense approach to business relationships because we don’t want our intentions to be misunderstood.  We therefore become idealists who hope that we can keep it simple: work hard and our work will speak for itself.

The move to the middle happens when both sides shift from their extreme. Maybe women can bring a little more of our focus on relationships into the business world.  It would serve us well, because it IS all about relationships. We can take time to relate to our co-workers of either gender and engage fully in the moment.  We pride ourselves in being great at multi-tasking, but thinking about the next thing while doing the current thing only means we aren’t really present.  People can sense that.

And for the guys reading this who are really good at business dinners and networking breakfasts and coffee meet-and-greets would probably do well to give equal effort to the important relationships that don’t happen over spreadsheets and email – the important people in our private world who make life really worth living.

You Talking to Me?

Enjoy this vision of a very young Robert De Niro from the movie Taxi Driver, practicing the line that is also the heading of this post.  Now let it go, because he’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I am talking about is the importance of knowing ourselves.  “You talking to me?” Yes, maybe I am.

Too many of us strike out into the adult world without enough sense of who we are, and what we want.  Things like what we value, what we need, what we have to offer aren’t just quizzes in a Cosmo magazine: they’re the underpinnings of building a life you intended to have.

But many of us walk out of the door and just turn automatically in some direction – without much of a destination in mind. Yogi Berra famously said, “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.”

A lot of us take a long time to figure this out. Yes, I’ve got my hand raised. If our late arrival to this understanding only affected ourselves, that wouldn’t be so bad.  But we drag a lot of people with us when we experiment and explore during our relationships. Some of this is meant to be pre-work.

Until and unless you have at least some of the core aspects of personality, preferences, and pet-peeves discovered in yourself, how can you know what you are offering to another?  And how can you possibly know what you want from a friendship or partnership with another, if you are just winging it?

What do you value? What are your strengths?  What do you want to get better at?  Where do you most easily find your connection to the Being that is your God? How important is physical appearance to you (your own, and another’s)?  What, if anything, would you be willing to change about yourself if someone wanted you to? How would you feel if someone wanted you to change to be with him or her?  Do you want to validate your upbringing by raising your kids the way you were raised? (“It was good enough for me…”). Or do you want to do a 180° from how you were raised? Is saving money important to you?  What have you always wanted to do? Where have you always wanted to go? How much togetherness do you require – how much solitude? Do you yet know that what bugs you about someone else is probably at its core what troubles you about you?

This is a lifetime’s work, spending some part of every day very aware, in quiet reflection, acceptance and presence. The exploring, growing, experimenting and risk-taking, the making mistakes and engaging compassionately with yourself is never really done.  Don’t make the mistake of waiting until you have it all figured out (you never will) before you let yourself open your heart, your soul and your life to another human being.  You’ll miss half the fun!  Have a good grasp, though, of the essentials: your essentials.

In Search of Change

I’ve had many phases of growing up female. There are so many voices shouting at us, telling us, for example, that we shouldn’t idolize a Barbie figure, and then not really changing the social context that made us want that tiny waist, those big boobs, and the legs that never end.  You females who were born after my generation was supposedly have it easier, but my view is, you have it tougher.

Yes, you have more options; there has been progress with equal pay, Title Nine, Family Medical Leave, and other legislation.  But you have been raised by a generation that has hovered over your every decision. We have tracked you down with cell phone features that let us know your every move.  We have made you report in at every change of plan.  We have taught you that you cannot rely on yourself: that you need us.  We are intrinsically connected to your lives, and in many cases, long after we should have urged you out of the nest and watched you soar higher than we ever could have.

But we didn’t.  We hovered.  We opined.  We suggested. We controlled.

Now that you are an adult, what’s a girl to do?

You want control back, but it scares you.  You want to experiment, to take a risk, but you don’t really know what that feels like.  How could you, when we should have been letting you take risks when you were young and we were there to be your guide, but instead we tried to protect you from everything.  We got away with so much when we were young!  We raised you as if our childhood had been mere reconnaissance for raising you. You want to stop worrying about disappointing others – but you’re too worried that others really do know what’s best.  You’re reading a stranger’s blog, after all, right? 

I’ll offer four changes that are still working for me:  first, you just start.  You start with noticing. Are you doing something because you want to, because you’re drawn to it, and you feel lightness and joy involved?  Or are you doing something because you fear not doing it? 

Next, you start connecting with others who are on a similar journey – hopefully some who are a little farther along on their excursion than you.  There’s nothing like a milepost marker to inspire your endurance and keep you feeling that what you’ve taken on is doable.

Third, write it down.  Whatever it is you want, there is power in committing that intention to paper.  Whether it is a material goal, to buy a house or a brand new car, a vision of a healthy relationship with another, a physical challenge, or a career aspiration, write it down. I discourage putting an age association with any of those, however.  They are arbitrary, and I’ve seen more bouts of the blues because someone didn’t hit their goal of this or that by age thirty, or whatever age was the dream.  Does it really matter if you’re thirty or thirty-three when you run your first marathon, write your first published piece, or have your first baby?  No, it really doesn’t.

Fourth is, well, I’ve saved the best for last.  Learn to meditate.  If you once knew but drifted from the practice, resume it.  Even a commitment of two minutes a few times a week will make a difference.  I’ve newly returned to the practice, and am quite a rookie.  I’m experimenting with meditating in silence, to music, and with a guide.  Each has brought me a special peace and awareness of connection with…everything and nothing. Don’t let that 70’s vibe scare you.  There is something to this.

My daughter once shared a lesson she learned from someone else with me.  When you are at a crossroads, feeling indecisive, take a few steps in either direction.  It really doesn’t much matter which.  It usually won’t take long for you to realize whether you took the path that will serve you best, or not. 

What a Girl Wants

I mentioned the Barbie-body pressure in my prior blog.  In the interest of full disclosure, I've helped mother nature make a change I consider to have been an improvement. I suppose what I consider key in the process of deciding was being able to live with or without the change, and being happy either way. The rest of my physique has been earned the hard way, through fitness and nutrition. I started my workouts with simple curiosity - could I change things I'd accepted as just my physical fate? Each month that I saw positive results made me realize that I had placed limitations on myself that I could actually move past.  

So where is all this taking our conversation?  It has to do with the current public dialogue about body shaming, and outcries for being happy with our body. I’m all for acceptance.  We come in all shapes and sizes, and media and advertising would do well to stop pushing one type to us as the ideal: and they (media) are changing. Did you ever think you’d see the day you would find unpadded bras in Victoria Secret?! Yep, now they not only have several styles, they’re embracing the concept of multiple body-types in their advertising.

I understand the recent point being made about not calling models plus-sized if they are not skinny – they are models: drop the “plus-sized”.  It’s not much different than calling a guy who is a nurse a male nurse.  Isn’t he simply a nurse? 

When it comes to accepting our bodies, or dedication to improving them: where does self-improvement end, and where does obsession begin?  Think of the spectrum of all things this could pertain to: make-up, exercise, nutrition, supplements, dying our hair… 

At the other end of the spectrum, where does healthy acceptance end, and neglect begin?  This spectrum that at one end says watching calories is okay, but beware of its obsessive extreme, eating disorders, is murky.  We can consider that being of a medium weight is merely not subscribing to the Barbie-body pressure. We can also talk about overweight and obesity as problems of health, and not of appearance. On face value, that isn’t being critical or body-shaming, but it does depend on the context of the discussion.

For many in southern California, especially, it’s hard to settle for an aspiration of good health and graceful aging when it has become so acceptable to get injectables and BOGO plastic surgery.  I’ve known a few people who, once they start, can’t stop.  “Natural” becomes very unacceptable.  I’ve heard this story more than once:  “I went into the plastic surgeon to get a consult for a [insert any procedure here] and he asked “But what about [insert additional procedure here]?”  In other words – it didn’t matter that she wanted to take care of something that probably bugged her for a while, he pointed out where she wasn’t physically perfect (whose standard?!) and it became her new must-have.

So be careful.  The best advice I can give is don’t expect whatever you do to make your life better.  You might feel in better proportion – but if you had pre-surgery anxiety about the future or regret from the past, they will be waiting for you when you come out of surgery.

#body-shaming #implants #plastic surgery #acceptance