Becoming Yourself

Developing a Better You

Month: February 2020 (Page 1 of 2)

Creative Change: How to Carve Out the Life You Want

February 29, 2020 / / 4 Comments

When the last of our kids finished college a few years ago, my wife Lisa and I brainstormed about the kind of life we wanted in this new season. We desired to live in a walkable area near one of our kids, eliminate home maintenance, have flexibility to travel, and help me transition to a writing career. To that end, I phased out of my twenty-six year music career, we sold most of our possessions and both vehicles, and moved from a house in Phoenix AZ to an apartment in walkable midtown Sacramento CA. Making those significant changes took time, intentionality, and effort, but the benefits of our radically different lives have been so worth it.

I love the flexibility and creativity of writing, but it has two significant drawbacks – it’s tough to break into and hard to make money. I’ve written three novels so far and am working with my literary agent to edit and submit them to publishing houses. There’s not much I can do about the slow pace of the publishing world – it often feels glacial. But I’m not complaining. I’m the luckiest aspiring author in the world because my amazing wife, New York Times bestselling author of twenty-four books Lisa McMann, is not only my writing coach, she’s also paying the bills while I’m in this career transition.

To help make this life change possible, I’ve gotten creative on how to create a “salary” for myself during this initial period where my work is going out but no money is coming in. It’s not actual paychecks, but I’ve found ways to put time and effort into money saving activities that have had the same impact on our budget as if I had a part-time job:

I MOVED US TO A NEW APARTMENT

We loved our beautiful apartment in a great location, but the rent was high. I asked our maintenance person what other units were available in our building. To our surprise, one was perfect for our needs and significantly cheaper. I contacted management and jumped through all the hoops to change apartments mid-lease, then went through the hassle of moving. Now we’re settled in our new place and saving a significant amount in rent every month.

I CHANGED OUR HEALTH INSURANCE PLAN

I think health insurance companies count on the difficulty of change. They know that once they’ve got you, you’ll likely stay with what you have even as the rates go steadily up and the quality of care leaves a lot to be desired. I went through the complex and incredibly frustrating experience of switching companies. Even with the help of a broker, it was time consuming and sometimes maddening. But after a few months of headaches, we had the same coverage at a more user-friendly company that was way cheaper. Another solid reduction in our monthly expenses.

I DUMPED OUR TIME SHARE

Many years ago when I was young and naive, I got suckered into buying a time share. If what the company told us at the time had been the whole story, it would have made sense, but of course, it wasn’t. They neglected to mention that even after we paid it off, we would not have “free vacations for life.” You’re on the hook forever paying increasing annual maintenance fees and random assessments that you have no control over. We were shelling out over $1,100 a year for something we weren’t using anymore. After seeing the pathetic value of the resale market, I researched a way to just give our ownership back to the time share company in exchange for getting out of our lifetime contract. We’re now free of that painful annual bill.

I RENEGOTIATED OUR INTERNET SERVICE

Often when you sign up with an internet service provider, it’s for an appealing introductory rate. But when the honeymoon’s over, the cost goes up significantly. When ours made the big jump, I called our provider and asked what my options were. It was surprisingly simple to switch over to their latest promotional offer which was even cheaper than our introductory rate. This was another “one and done” lowering of our monthly expenses.

I know our situation is unique in some respects, but I share this story to give you an example of how Lisa and I have been able to carve out the life we really wanted by being willing to think outside the box, make significant changes, and work non-traditionally.

So how about you? What do you want your life to look like? What could you do now to help today’s dream become tomorrow’s reality? Brainstorm. Investigate. Research. Plan. Make a timeline. Start small. Ask for help and accountability. If you do, you’ll be on your way to the life you really want, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

More on this topic and some helpful resources:

RISK = The Price for the Life You Really Want

How to Manage Change: A Story 26 Years in the Making

The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion by Elle Luna

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey

How to Have Healthy Relationships (part 3): Yourself

February 22, 2020 / / 2 Comments

Let’s start with an exercise – open your phone camera and flip the image so you can see yourself. Got it? Now ask yourself these questions: How is my relationship with the person I’m looking at? How well do I get along with myself? How do I feel about me?

Dating friends recently asked me about the keys to a healthy, long-term relationship. Since then, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve learned in twenty-seven years of marriage to my wife Lisa. Beyond that, what have I learned in forty-nine years of deep connections with family and friends? To help clarify my thinking, I’ve been doing a series of blog posts here at Becoming Yourself. The first key I talked about was intentionality (read that post here), and the second was about expectations (read that post here).

The phone exercise was an introduction to this week’s key:

To have healthy relationships with OTHERS, you need a healthy relationship with YOURSELF

We know this intuitively, right? Most of us have been in or observed enough relationships to know that without positive self-worth and a clear sense of identity from both people, relationships tend to go badly. Without these anchors, an unhealthy codependancy and “clingyness” sets in. When we aren’t comfortable in our own skin, we always want a friend or our partner around because we don’t like being alone or we expect a relationship to solve our problems. While someone else can help you, bring out the best in you, and make life more fulfilling, they can’t fix you. Only you, and I would add God, can do that.

Some of this is personality driven. I’m an introvert, and I love to be alone with my own thoughts. Extroverts naturally enjoy being around other people much of the time. But regardless of your personality type, I think there’s a core issue of relationship to self that we all need to face. If we’re not okay with the person in the mirror, we’re going to have a really hard time being in healthy, long-term relationships. Why? Because the best thing you can bring to a relationship is a healthy you.

So how do you have a healthy relationship with yourself? I could recommend positive self-talk, concentrating on what you’re good at and the nice things people say about you, helping others and doing good in the world, etc.. Those are all wonderful things that will help you feel better about yourself, but I don’t think they address the core issue. When it comes to a positive relationship with yourself, I believe the most important thing is this:

IDENTITY

Who do you really think you are? If in your heart you believe you’re bad, spoiled, broken, a mistake, unworthy, stupid, or unlovable, then no amount of pep talking in the mirror is going to change that. But if deep down, you believe you’re wonderful, worthwhile, beautiful, wanted, cherished, prized, and loved, that’s going to radically impact your sense of self.

So how do you have the later view instead of the former? My best advice is to anchor your identity in something bigger than yourself that won’t move or shift or fail. For me, that’s God. I believe I was created to be in relationship with Her/Him (God is beyond gender binaries). That God desires to know me. That I’m more than a cosmic accident of time + matter + energy + chance. I build my sense of identity on a foundation that says no matter what I do or what happens in this life, I’m God’s child and always will be. That makes me feel really good about who I am, which enables me to give myself fully to others.

I know that for some of you, the God thing is a non-starter. I get it. We’ve all had different experiences and have different views on God and spirituality. That said, I think we all have the same core questions and issues to face, and one of the biggest is “Who am I?” You don’t have to base your identity on God, but you do have to base it on something. Make sure whatever you choose is big enough, strong enough, and unshakable enough to survive the storms of life. Careers, money, abilities, goals, activities, and other people are all great, but they’re also impermanent. Who will you be when they’re gone? How you choose to answer the question of identity will have a major impact on your relationship with yourself and in turn, your ability to have healthy, long-term relationships with others (for more on finding your identity, see my post here).

So how are you getting along with that person in the mirror? What do you ultimately believe about yourself? What will you choose as the foundation of your identity? Answer those questions well, and you’ll hold another key to deep, lasting relationships. And you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was originally published February 23, 2019.

How to Have Healthy Relationships (part 2): Expectations

February 15, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I recently had some dating friends ask me what the “secret” was to my twenty-seven year marriage with my wife Lisa. Rather than give an off the cuff answer, we decided to get the four of us together to discuss it. Since then, I’ve been thinking about how I would answer that question. What are some of the keys to developing and maintaining not just a marriage, but any healthy, long-term relationship? As I shared in my last post, one key is intentionality, taking specific actions toward the goal of building the relationship.

The second relationship key I want to share is a little slipperier. Harder to pin down. Constantly moving and adjusting. Often unspoken and unrealized, even to ourselves. What is it?

EXPECTATIONS

What are expectations? They’re the assumptions we have about the way things will be. What’s going to happen. How life is going to work out. They can be good or bad, realistic or crazy. Our brains are loaded with expectations about everything from the weather, to how our career is going to develop, to how good a movie will be.

Relationships are no exception. We all have relational expectations whether we’re aware of them or not. They’re influenced by a lot of things – how we were raised, the relational experiences we’ve had, the relationships we’ve observed first hand, even what we’ve read about or seen on TV and in movies. We have built in, usually subconscious expectations of what our relationships will be or should be like.

So here’s the big problem:

UNMET EXPECTATIONS ARE THE GREATEST SOURCE OF RELATIONAL CONFLICT

Think of any problem in a relationship, and you can usually trace it back to an unmet expectation. It might be about sex, handling money, punctuality, cleanliness, work ethic, religion, child raising, communication, how you spend the weekends, you name it. We all have expectations about how those things will  or should go in a marriage / dating / friendship / family /  fill in the blank type of relationship. When our expectations are the same as those of our partner, things are usually smooth. When they’re not, we have problems.

So what’s the solution?

EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT

What do I mean by that? Let’s start with three ways you might be managing your relational expectations poorly:

  1. You have UNCLEAR expectations – when you don’t even realize or acknowledge your own assumptions, biases, and desires for your relationships, you’re destined for trouble. If you’re feeling upset, frustrated,  or angry about your relationship but don’t know why, try to pinpoint exactly which aspect(s) of your relationship is causing the disconnect. Think specifically about each area of your relationship (money, work, sex, time, communication, etc.) and see which ones cause a negative emotional reaction. A hidden unmet expectation is probably the source of your feelings.
  2. You have UNREALISTIC expectations – when the expectations you have for your partner or relationship are too low or too high, you’re going to have problems. For example, if you don’t have a good sense of self-worth, you could have too low an exception of being treated with respect. Conversely, if you base your expectation of what your romance will be like based on what you see in movies, you’re probably setting a bar no relationship can reach over the long term.
  3. You have UNSPOKEN expectations – when you don’t voice your relational expectations to your partner, they’re bound to cause trouble. You may subconsciously be expecting the other person to be a mind reader. While assuming a certain degree of sensitivity is reasonable, thinking “if they cared about me, they would just know” is usually not. When you assume the other person understands your unspoken expectations and still fails to meet them, then you assign bad motives to their behavior when in many cases they are completely unaware that they’re disappointing you.

Now let’s look at three ways you can counter those problems and manage your relational expectations well:

  1. IDENTIFY your expectations – think through what you believe should be true, or what you desire to be true, about your relationships in various areas (money, work, sex, time, communication, etc.). If it’s not clear to you, it’s probably not clear to your partner.
  2. BALANCE your expectations – as with most things in life, it’s all about balance. About being reasonable. As in our previous example, setting your assumptions for a romantic relationship based on what you see in the movies is probably too high, but settling for no romance at all is probably too low. This takes time to figure out and will change as you get to know your partner better. Their past, internal wiring, and their own set of relational expectations will impact what are reasonable expectations for them to be able to meet. There’s nothing wrong with setting growth goals for your relational expectations either, as long as you do number 3.
  3. SHARE your expectations – in real estate, it’s all about “location, location, location.” In relationships, it’s all about “communication, communication, communication.” Once you’ve identified and balanced your expectations, it’s time to communicate them. Clearly. Repeatedly. Patiently. Gently. Respectfully. And remember that how you say something is just as important as what you say.

So how are you doing with managing your relational expectations? Are any of your expectations UNCLEAR, UNREALISTIC, or UNSPOKEN? Are you ready to IDENTIFY, BALANCE, and SHARE them? If you are, dive in! Put in the effort. It takes some work upfront, but the benefits are amazing and long lasting. You’ll feel the tension drain away from your relationships and enjoy a peace and closeness you never thought possible. You can do this! And if you do, you’ll take another giant step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was originally published February 16, 2019.

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