Category Archives: Women

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Committed

I have just finished reading the book Committed, A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame.  I didn’t read her blockbuster so I wasn’t really familiar with her writing style.  I completed enjoyed the book.  Gilbert, does a great job of giving the background on marriage and shows how it has changed throughout history.

With a daughter getting married this year, the whole topic of marriage is on my mind.  I’ve been married for 27 years and so I feel like I have some understanding of what is involved.  I do know though that every marriage is a private and personal world that is co-created by two unique individuals.  No religion or political party can ultimately control what happens in that relationship.

I like how Gilbert makes peace with her own views on marriage.  I found this book well worth reading. It was especially eye opening for me around ‘Christian’ marriage.  As Gilbert writes, ” One the authorities have failed at eliminating marriage, and once they have failed at controlling marriage, they give up and embrace the matrimonial tradition completely. …But then comes a more curious stage: Like clockwork, going so far as to pretend that they invented marriage in the first place.  This is what conservative Christian leadership has been doing in the Western world for several centuries now – acting as though they personally created  the whole tradition of marriage when in fact their religion began with a serious attack on marriage and family values (p.263).’

Wow – I recommend you read the book to find out the context for that quote.

Another quote from the book that I liked:

Of all the actions of a man’s life, his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all the actions of our life, ’tis the most meddled with by other people. – John Selden, 1689

I don’t think I’ll give this book to my daughter yet – a lot of what Gilbert writes about needs to be viewed with perspective.  Love is blind and maybe when it comes to marriage that can be a good thing.  We all need to find our own way in this mysterious union between two people that we seem driven to desire.

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The 4-Hour Workweek

I have to admit it – the title of this book got my attention.  So when a friend gave it to me to read I was skeptically intrigued.  At just a little over the half way point I have noted some things I will try.  I’m not sure I’ll ever get to a four hour work week but I’m no Timothy Ferriss!

All things about vision attract me these days and I really liked what Ferriss had to say about vision:

Most people will never know what they want…”What do you want?” is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and actionable answer.  Forget about it.  “What are your goals?” is similarly fated for confusion and guesswork.

Instead he suggests the question you and I need to ask is, “What would excite me?”

There’s another way of looking at vision.  What would excite you?  Make a list of five things that you find exciting.  Add that to your vision thinking.

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Alice in Womanland

Watching Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland reminded me of the challenges many women face.  Alice must decide whether to conform to the expectations of society or be herself.
I loved the metaphor of size in this movie.   Initially Alice can’t quite get the ‘size’ issue right. She gets small to get into places and to make herself invisible to threats.  She makes the right choice in the situation given her lack of confidence in being Alice.  She then goes for the larger than life persona.  A little more in your face and certainly worth trying given the situation.

However, as the movie progresses she understands that she doesn’t need to make herself bigger or smaller to be who she is.  At the end
she  slays the real dragon – the box that she is clearly too big to squeeze into. She just needs to be Alice.

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Ouch!

Conflict can be nasty. It hurts the people involved and it hurts the people drawn into it. During times of conflict clear communication becomes more and more challenging. Within family and organizational systems conversations that are repeated with the intention of clarifying issues frequently make the truth in a situation more obscure.  Each retelling of a conversation is like a copy of a copy – less clear than the one before.

People often resort to the cliché ‘you see one side of the story and I see the other, the truth is in the middle.’  Not necessarily.  One person may be closer to the truth.  Both parties can in the wrong.  To think it lies in the middle is simplistic.  The root of conflict is deeper than the situation we are in – it reaches into our past, our beliefs about each other, it can include feelings of betrayal and our understanding of God.  We may not even understand ourselves why we are as upset as we are – and yet we somehow think we can communicate it to someone else with clarity.

I think we should limit our conversations.  I know for a blog on communication that might seem odd but really more words don’t help – especially if it was our conversations that led to the conflict to begin with.

If you find yourself immersed in a conflict right now take a day off talking about it.  If you really need to process it center your conversation around this question: ‘Where have I made mistakes in this situation?’ You can’t resolve anything unless you are willing to get the log out of your eye.  Once we do that, grace flows.

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What Magazine Will Have Your Picture on the Cover in 2010?

This year Ellen fulfilled a goal of getting on the cover of O Magazine.  Only one other person has shared the cover with Oprah.  It was an outrageous dream and goal for Ellen but she isn’t known for holding back when pursuing a goal.  She did what she had to do to make it happen and it happened – in a big way.

I’m thinking about my goals for 2010.  I’ve got some that seem like a stretch but nothing really outrageous. I’d like to be a little more out there.

Would you like to have your picture on a magazine in 2010?  Or maybe you want to have it on the back cover of a book you are writing?  Or maybe you would like to be on the front page of a newspaper.  I had a friend get a cover story on a major newspaper just last week – her first for that newspaper.

Be outrageous. Set a crazy goal for 2010.  Something bigger than losing ten pounds.  Something unthinkable and then commit to making it happen.