Becoming Yourself

Developing a Better You

Category: Personal Development (Page 34 of 56)

How to Have Healthy Relationships (part 1): Intentionality

February 8, 2020 / / 0 Comments

It all started with a recent trip to visit my parents in Michigan. With them being in their late seventies and my mom having various health issues, I want to spend as much time with them as I can. I enjoyed hearing my mom share interesting stories from her past. With my dad, a retired teacher with a PhD in philosophy, I had the kind of intellectual discussions about “the big questions of life” that we both enjoy.

One of the things I talked with my dad about was the importance and difficulty of maintaining meaningful relationships through the changing seasons of life. He’s wrestling with that due to being in retirement and caring for my mother. It’s also a pressing issue for me now that I’ve moved away from longtime friends and changed from a group-based music career to the more solitary life of a writer.

When I returned home, I ran into some friends. I was happy to see them together – they’ve been dating seriously for about a year but had experienced some struggles in their relationship lately. I told them that relationships are hard, and even after twenty-seven years of marriage, my wife Lisa and I still have to work at it. They said they wanted to ask us for our “secret” to a healthy, long-term relationship. I said we certainly don’t have all the answers but would be happy to get together and share some thoughts.

Those conversations with my dad and my friends got me thinking about relationships. While that’s a huge topic, my baseline is this – I believe that relationships with self, others, and God are the heart of a meaningful and fulfilling life. Even if the God part isn’t for you, I think most of us would agree that relationships are important, even critical, to our personal development and enjoyment of life.

So how do we nurture and maintain meaningful relationships? Thousands of books have been written trying to answer that question. For the purpose of this post, I’ll just touch on one idea. For me, a key factor in successful relationships is intentionality.

What is intentionality? It’s effort expended for a specific purpose. Intentionality is action toward a predetermined goal. Simply put, if your desire is for meaningful relationships, you’re going to have to work at it. You won’t drift into them any more than your closet, desk, or garage will drift into neat organization. Life doesn’t work that way.

When my son Kilian moved to Sacramento after college, he didn’t have many friends in the area. He chose to be intentional about developing relationships by going to nearby meetup.com events – rock climbing trips, board game and trivia nights, Game of Thrones watching parties. Through those efforts, he’s made some great friends. It never would have happened without him being intentional.

As I look back on my own life, one of the most helpful intentional actions I’ve taken for relationship building is automation. It’s simply setting up a recurring pattern of interaction with people like I schedule auto payments for important bills. For ten years, I’ve had a standing Thursday noon lunch appointment with my great friend Ty. Having that understanding between us eliminates the well-intentioned but often useless “this was great, we should do it again soon” factor from the equation. Life is busy. The important gets sidelined by the urgent. Because of that, even now that I’ve moved out of state, Ty and I still “meet” every Thursday at noon via FaceTime. There are some weeks when it doesn’t work out, but by intentionally planning a connection for every seven days, we stay consistent.

So what would applying intentionality look like in your relationships? Are you in a season where you need to find new friendships? Have you drifted apart from someone and need to reconnect? Maybe some of your current relationships need some attention. Whether the relationships that come to mind are with yourself, others, or God, the concept is the same. If you want to have meaningful, life-giving relationships, focus your efforts. Come up with a plan. Do the work. Expend the energy. Make the call. Send the text. Automate the connection. Be intentional. If you do, you’ll take another great step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was originally published February 10, 2019.

Vive la Différence: Supercharge Your Personal Growth by Widening Your Circle of Friends

February 1, 2020 / / 2 Comments

It started with my wife Lisa and I heading out for a walk. In the lobby of our apartment building, we noticed a woman we’d never met before and introduced ourselves. Her name was Helen. We began chatting and found her delightful. She had moved into the building by herself a few months earlier and didn’t know many people. We exchanged contact info, and Lisa encouraged Helen to reach out to us anytime.

Later that evening, I got an email from Helen inviting us to lunch. We happily accepted, and a few days later we enjoyed a meal together in a local restaurant. Over the course of several hours, we had a fascinating, wide-ranging discussion about careers, life experiences, religion, politics, children, food, and travel.

We learned that Helen is an amazing person with a powerful life story. She was born into a Jewish family in Poland the day before Hitler invaded and spent her early years in a Siberian labor camp. She endured incredible hardships in various countries before immigrating to the United States as a teenager. Helen speaks several languages, has a dry sense of humor, converses articulately on a wide range of subjects, and, at age seventy-nine, is probably in better shape than I am.

As I reflected back on our interaction with Helen, I realized it was much more than just an engaging lunch. As a person committed to becoming the best version of myself, spending time with people who have different backgrounds and perspectives than my own is vital. While having friends who are of a similar age and season of life is wonderful and important, I’m sharpened and stretched in different ways when I expand my circle of relationships to include people who are not just like me.

We are put on this planet only once and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.

Roger Ebert

Helen and I are very different people. We have differences in upbringing, culture, language, gender, generation, spiritual perspective, and life experiences. But through spending time with her, I found that my thinking about life, myself, and the world around me was enriched, broadened, and wonderfully challenged. And along the way, we found common ground in our love of music, Japanese cuisine, politics, long walks, and our search for meaning and purpose in life. I’m a better person for being able to call Helen my friend.

So how about you? Do you have people in your life who see things differently? Do you seek them out? Are you exposing yourself to new ideas and perspectives? If you only surround yourself with people who look, think, and act like you, your growth will be significantly limited.

When you are around people whose stories aren’t similar to yours, do you merely tolerate their varied perspectives or do you genuinely try to understand them? Are you open to seeing what you can learn? Being strong in your views is not a bad thing, but it can unintentionally lead to arrogant, dismissive, or demeaning attitudes and behavior. It’s a trap I’ve fallen into before, one that I regularly have to remind myself to avoid. I don’t think I’m alone in that struggle.

So if you’re committed to personal growth, if you want to become a better version of yourself, I challenge you to seek out people with different perspectives. Invite them for lunch or coffee. Ask open ended questions and then truly listen. See what you can learn. Be open to having your opinions changed. Share your own thoughts with humility and respect. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was originally published Jan 19, 2019.

How to Connect With God: My Daily Practice

January 25, 2020 / / 0 Comments

In last week’s post How to Find Direction in Life’s Fog, I wrote that, during confusing times in my life, God was my best source of “fog burning sun.” In response, a regular reader asked if I would share some of my process for how I connect with God.

Honestly, I was hesitant. While I often write about how my spiritual perspective helps me become a better version of myself, I know that some of you come from different faiths or no faith at all. I respect that, and don’t want to come across as “preachy” or forceful of my worldview. My goal is simply to share things I’ve learned on my personal development journey that may help you walk your own path, whatever path that may be.

Then I remembered something – many of the best things I’ve learned from others did not come from their insights on a particular topic, but from their sharing the ways they practice personal development in their own lives. Even if they come from a very different perspective, I almost always glean a helpful idea or tool.

So with that in mind, I decided to share a brief overview of how I approach the “how to connect with God” question. If this isn’t for you, feel free to stop reading now and check out the another post on the site or wait for next week’s installment. Still interested? Read on.

How to Connect With God

To give some context for my practices, here are some of my fundamental beliefs:

  • A loving, powerful, intelligent, eternal Higher Power exists and is the creative force behind the universe (I use the term God, but this power goes by many names).
  • God wants to be known but will not force Herself/Himself on us (God is beyond gender binaries).
  • A life-giving, intimate, conversational relationship with God is possible.

Why I believe those particular things is not the purpose of this post. That said, here is my daily process of connecting with God:

MORNING

I start the day with a five-minute stretching routine while I steep a cup of hot Tetley brand English black tea in my Harry Potter tumbler. I sit in a comfortable chair in the library corner of our apartment and begin a practice with three loosely structured parts:

Listening

For 10-15 minutes, I center myself in silence. Sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes I leave them open, depending on what feels right or how sleepy I am. Some days I let my thoughts wander. Other times, I use various meditation techniques like centering prayer, or focusing on my breathing, a word (God, love, peace, etc.) or an image (a lonely beach, a mountain meadow, a fireplace, etc.). The particular technique isn’t important. The goal here is to quiet my mind and heart to a listening posture where I’m receptive to anything God might bring to my mind.

Talking

After listening, I begin talking with God. I start with thanking God for who She/He is to me and for things I’m grateful for. Then I think about people and situations I care about and ask God to provide them with the help they need. Finally, I consider my own needs and desires and express those to God, asking for strength and guidance to live well. This usually takes about 30 minutes.

how to connect with God
My chair in our corner library

Learning

After talking with God, I read some type of spiritual writing for 10-15 minutes. I’ve read and studied the Bible for many years, but lately have been drawn to other writings such as The Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald (spiritual poetry about pursuing God), Walking With God by John Eldredge (was incredibly helpful for me in establishing conversational intimacy with God), and the daily emails from Richard Rohr (a Franciscan priest, author, and teacher who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico). After reading, I listen to a spiritually focused podcast while I run the stairwell in our apartment building for about 20 minutes. Current favorites are Another Name for Everything by Richard Rohr and The RobCast by Rob Bell.

That is the cornerstone of my connection with God routine. It usually takes about 75-90 minutes. As a writer with a flexible schedule and a 50 year old empty nester, I can take that extended time in the mornings. I’ve done some version of a Listening / Talking / Learning routine regularly for 40 years, starting with 2 minutes for each section and building gradually. This included seasons where I was in school, working day jobs with set schedules, and raising young kids. It’s definitely harder during some stretches than others, but with tenacity and a little creativity, it can be done. I believe we make time for the things we truly consider important.

AFTERNOON

Throughout the day, I try to maintain an “unstructured awareness” of God’s presence through intermittent thoughts and spontaneous, silent conversation with God while I write, run errands, do chores, watch TV, whatever. A wonderful little book that taught me this concept is The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.

EVENING

Before bed, I stand on our balcony and talk through the day with God. Did I use it well? Accomplish what I set out to do? Learn or experience anything new? Even on hard days, I try to thank God for good things like health, relationships, a home, food, God’s presence, and meaningful work. Combined with my morning routine, these practices bookend my connection with God, providing both a positive start and a peaceful close to each day.

So there’s my personal take on how to connect with God. Take anything that may be of value to you and toss the rest. If you have questions or would like clarification or expansion on anything, please leave a comment below or email me through the “Contact” tab above. If you’re willing to leave a comment sharing how you connect with God, I’d love to read it.

Whatever road you choose, I wish you all the best on your journey toward Becoming Yourself.

« Older posts Newer posts »

Never Miss a Post – Subscribe Here!

© 2024 Becoming Yourself

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑