SAYS YOUR MOM: Sucking on the chocolate fossil

Welcome back Viphilus*

I’m winding up this month with my final post about things my Mom said.

To set this up I need to show you a few pictures of her.

Mom liked to laugh; I mean, all the time.

Mom was playful and whimsical … sometimes just to amuse herself and sometimes just to make us laugh. And, of course, if she made us laugh, it always caught her by surprise that we would laugh at her … and then she would lose it, laughing uncontrollably. In this next picture, Mom is pretending to do a chin-up while we were at Oaklawn Farm Zoo in Aylesford, NS. The moment we laughed at her playfulness, she began laughing … again, uncontrollably.

One day we were playing cards. My daughter, a budding young photographer at the time, took a photo of my Mom’s hand while holding her cards. She just loved taking snapshots of Granny's hands (go figure photographers).

Now, by the arrangement of the cards, can you guess what game we were playing? No? Well, neither could she ... that's just how she arranged her cards regardless of what we played. Her approach to card playing was, well ... goofy (and I'm being charitable). But she LOVED LOVED LOVED playing cards because it guaranteed a time with others where light-heartedness and merriment would happen.

My Mom had a whimsical side about her that basically told you that she didn’t take herself very seriously … although she took life itself very seriously.

Part of the whimsy that came in the package called Mom were the inane utterances that she was found of repeating … over and over … year after year … decade after decade. Most of them made no sense at all, like:

“Well, looks like you got stuck sucking on the chocolate fossil.”  Translation?  It’s what she would say to anyone who ended up dead last in a game. Any game. What’s the origin or etymology of this expression you might wonder. Who knows … it was just one of the goofy things she would say, and when pushed for an explanation, she would just say, “oh, it’s just one of those things we used to say.”  We?  We who?  If asked, she would just smile.

She was also very patient in delivering a punchline, waiting until just the moment when delivery was optimal. I’m talking patience on a time-scale measured by glacier movement … I’m talking the patience of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber To who waited for 2 decades to deliver a gag. From almost my pre-school days, Mom would challenge me with one particular riddle, “If it took a man a week to walk a fortnight, how many apples are in a barrel of grapes?" I would give up and she would give me the answer, “A train.”  I would say I didn’t understand or that that made no sense or would ask her to explain it and all I would get back was silence. <crickets>.  Some time in my twenties, like a thousand times before, she posed the riddle. And like a thousand times before, when I gave up and asked for the answer she would say the answer I already knew ... “A train.” But on this particular occasion, I somehow stumbled ... by complete accident ... on the magic key to unlock the mystery. For whatever reason, this time I responded with something like, “Seriously, how do you get that?” Without hesitation she replied, “At Union Station.” And then she smiled. Did I think what just happened, happen? Did she finally deliver the punchline because she’d been waiting for 15-20 years for me to unlock it with that question?  I asked her. She just smiled.

My all-time favourite Mom-story happened one summer when we were at the Buskers Festival in Halifax. My wife, kids, Mom and I were at the outdoor event for hours, and as expected, the point came when we needed to go to the washroom. The festival organization had set up some new-fangled Port-a Potties. The inside of them had been outfitted with a new attachment and they looked something like this picture.

Mom and Deb took the first two empty ones available. Deb came out first and came straight over to tell me that they were fancier this year and had a built in urinal on the side. Cool I thought. My Mom came out next. She came straight over to us and said, “Wow, these new port-a potties are amazing – they even have a little holder next to the toilet to hold your purse.”

My wife let out an audible gasp and said, “Mother!!!”  Deb turned to me in horror to get my reaction … but my eyes were still fixed on my Mom as my jaw was probably on the ground. With Deb facing me, my Mom gave a quick wink without a smile. Wow … she’s totally punking Deb right now, and doing it like a Pro.

Mom always looked for opportunities to insert some whimsy into her day … and into the day of others. What a wonderful gift for those of us who, at times, take life and ourselves a little too seriously. Mom taught me that taking life seriously is fine, as long as you don’t take yourself so seriously … that way you can laugh a little, or in her case, a lot.

Thanks Mom. I miss ya.

I hope to see you back next Monday where I'll have a new theme for October.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

SAYS YOUR MOM: Dangerous Half-truths

Welcome back Viphilus*

Well we certainly are seeing autumn in full swing here in Nova Scotia. Over the past few days we had daytime highs soar to the low 30s°C while nighttime lows dipped to single digits. Some love this time of year, my wife Deb included. She absolutely adores the fall … which is why she was adamant that our wedding be in October. During my meteorologist days, I just thought of the shoulder seasons (spring and fall) as the most challenging to predict as weather experienced wild swings between what was, and what was coming. It’s almost as if the weather is schizophrenic about what it is supposed to be. And sometimes that schizophrenic nature of the weather would catch forecasters off-guard as the “promise” of one thing turned sour as our rules let us down … as if the atmosphere itself betrayed us.

Enter my Mom. There were times over the years where her kitchen-wisdom set us up to receive some inviolable truths about life. Some of these truths turned out to be clichés and slogans throughout all the kitchens … as if all our Moms all had been schooled in life-lessons by the same ancestral Mom. And in comparing notes with other sons and daughters … our Moms really did sing from the same song-sheet.

But there was a problem. A few of these songs … not many, but a few … taught us about truths that were, well, uh … not completely true. And to be clear, it’s not because our Moms were subversive or malevolent or filled with malice. Our Mom’s taught us what they had been taught. It’s just that they themselves didn’t realize that the truths of their own Moms were incomplete … half truths … truths that promised the world worked a certain way when, in fact, it didn’t always. At the risk of getting a tad nerdy, it almost reminded me about how the physics we all learned based on Newton’s ideas of the universe works most of the time and makes sense most of the time … except in circumstances when it doesn’t work, in which case, it REALLY DOESN’T WORK. Quantum physics taught us that Newton’s rules appear to work for the most part, but that a whole separate bunch of rules apply under specific “other” circumstances.

Let me introduce you to two such half-truths from my Mom; two Newtonian truths that get quantum-smashed under certain circumstances. And to prove that you and I (whoever you are) came from the same ancestral Newton-Mom, I’ll bet you were taught the same two truths / slogans / clichés.

1.  If at first you don’t succeed ……

I didn’t have to tell you to finish the quote because you couldn’t help yourself. It was drilled into you in cult-like fashion. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

This is a powerful “truth” that high performers have not only been taught, but have metabolized. It is true because many, if not most aspects of life require the competency of persistence and stick-to-it-tiveness. People who don’t quit simply accomplish more. There are some, if not many challenges that are simply overcome through sheer determination to not give up. And the non-quitters have become almost folk-heroes … like Edison, who after being unsuccessful hundreds of times in making a working incandescent light bulb, finally made a break-through because he had not given up. What makes the Edisons of the world heroic is not their genius nor is it even their ability to be persistent … it is their complete conviction that persistence WILL eventually win the day.

That’s the Newtonian truth. Now for the quantum smash … trying again and again and again doesn’t work for everything. When a child learns to ride a bicycle, his mother/father waits for him to fail and fall off or fall over. This inevitably happens. The parent picks up the child, puts him back on the bike, wipes his tears, and encourages him by telling him to “try again.”  The “try, try again” method works really really well for learning to ride a bicycle. Eventually, simple persistence will win the day and the child will learn how to ride the bike. Mom’s slogan, “if at first you don’t succeed …” gets emblazoned in the child’s neural network as a “truth” about life … setting him up to FAIL for things for which the “try, try again method,” is actually inappropriate and completely wrong.

Like what? About a decade ago my son determined to get in better shape. He spent time at the gym, learned new eating habits, and over the course of about 18 months, dropped more than 130 lbs while also increasing dramatically in strength. I learned one day that he was able to do a leg press of more than 900 lbs. Holy Charles Atlas Batman! Over 900 lbs. How the heck did he do it? Was it by sheer determination to not quit? Did he try to push 900 lbs, failed, and then came back day after day after day until finally he could do it? Of course not. All of us know that he started with lighter weights and slowly built an increasing capacity through the skilled use of a different word: TRAINING.

I had learned the same thing a few years earlier when it came to making changes in my emotional state and behaviour. Mom’s wisdom of “try, try again,” failed catastrophically when it came to making behavioural and emotional changes. However, through a skilled use of training I increased both my emotional and adaptive capacities.

Most of my efforts now are aligned with helping people to understand when to stop TRYING and when to start TRAINING. Virtually all complex personal growth comes when a person abandons the concept of TRYING in order to adopt the concept of TRAINING.

2.  That which doesn’t kill you ……

Can you finish that sentence too? Again, we must have had the same Newton-Mom. There are numerous half-truths passed along from Mom, but the reason I want to highlight this one is that it is so pertinent to those who easily self-sabotage. Oh, and the full quote is:

“That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Of course, the wisdom behind this is that whatever it is that doesn’t kill you is probably some form of hardship or trial that creates suffering in you, and suffering has the ability to create patience and persistence in you as it stretches you beyond your comfort zone (because inside your comfort zone … there is no suffering). Mom’s quote is the wisdom behind the truth, “no pain, no gain,” and clearly, pain means that your comfort zone has been busted, which opens the door to gain, growth and increased strength.

Thanks Newton-Mom, but now for the quantum-smash. That expression actually isn’t true for everyone. It’s actually only true for those who understand, through experience or faith, that trials and hardships and suffering and pain CAN lead to increased growth ... so they let it. People who read these kinds of blogs are more wired that way than those who don’t. For those who understand that there is no gain without pain, Mom’s truth is really TRUE … and for them, hardships make them BETTER. It makes them better and stronger because they don't resist the internal process that suffering initiates in us ... the process of growth.

But there are a very large number of people for whom those same things don’t make them better, they actually just make them BITTER. These are the cynics who through their own sense of world-weariness believe that pessimism is the only useful worldview in that it protects them from disappointment and false hope. Trials and tribulations, for these types of people, only fulfills their prophecies of a universe-gone-wrong and they see no value in capitalizing on their suffering, but rather, they attempt to build a more impenetrable veneer so as to be invulnerable to similar future disappointments. They don’t get stronger or better because they refuse to adapt to the reality of the vagaries of life. They get weaker. For them, all we can really say is that, “that which doesn’t kill them, just makes them more miserable.”

My Mom wasn’t a genius, but she was actually pretty wise. I think she knew # 1, but she absolutely proved to me that she fully embraced # 2. My only criticism is that I wished she had articulated the limitations of those slogans while I was in my younger years. Although granted, the slogans wouldn’t have been as punchy with the caveats and exceptions.

I hope to see you back next Monday as I explain what it means to “suck on the chocolate fossil.”

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

SAYS YOUR MOM: Choose Ignorance

Welcome back Viphilus*

Last week I spoke about the importance of not flattering yourself and thinking that everyone is thinking bad things about you … because almost nobody is thinking about you at all. We each have an incredibly strong internal defence mechanism which constantly scans the environment looking for threats and danger. Whether you believe that this defence mechanism is the product of thousands of years of adaptation through genetic mutations beginning in our more primitive times when our ancestors were hunters in a harsher environment … or simply instilled in us by God … or a combination of the two … the fact is that this is in us.

This defence mechanism is important to survival and when it is working well it enables us to get out ahead of danger by correctly predicting threats before they turn in to a real-and-present-danger (I’ve been looking for an excuse to use that line). This mechanism can actually become quite finely tuned and present itself as a highly honed skill. For example, in the Bourne series of books and movies, the Proponent, Jason Bourne, discovers that he has innate skills of self-defence (a product of special-ops training that he had forgotten because of amnesia) where he is able to interpret and see real threats in things as simple as glances and silences.

I have a friend who spent a measurable portion of his life in prison. He tells me that in that environment, one that is arguably harsher than the one in which I have lived my whole life, it is very important to your survival to know how to interpret the difference, not just between a glance and a stare, but even in different kinds of glances, based on the situation, the person, the crowd, their body-language and a hundred other intangibles.

OK, very few of us have skills trained into us through special-ops trainers or prison … but we all have a lot more skill in interpreting our environment than we think. Our experiences, beginning when we were babes-in-arms, have taught us how to interpret micro-expressions on people’s faces. Through this skill we know when someone is angry with us or when they are happy with us. We can infer sadness, elation, fear, joy, anxiety, serenity, and dozens of other subtle emotional states. Now we all have varying skills in this area but unless you have a brain dysfunction which makes it impossible for you to pick up on these subtle signals (in which case, don’t ever play poker), you are remarkably good at this.

Sometimes, this mechanism gets whacked: messed up so much that you interpret almost everything as a threat. I’m seeing more of this all the time in people. If that describes you then go back and read last week’s post (again and again and again, if need be). But if you are “normal” (don’t ya just love that word), then you are pretty skilled at interpreting the emotional state of others.

Almost everyone assumes that since they are “good” at reading people, then they are also good at inferring motives. Almost everyone believes that they know WHY other people do the things that they do. And it goes further. Most people also believe that they are skilled at inferring character strengths and weaknesses in other people and that they are good (really good, actually) at determining WHY people behave the way that they do.

And therein lies the problem; all of us absolutely stink at it. I mean we suck big-time at inferring or knowing the WHY behind people’s behaviour. But the problem goes much further. I wish I could say that our tendency simply goes to the dark side, but it doesn’t … it goes to the schizophrenic side. It turns out that all of us have this natural tendency to do two things when interpreting a person’s poor behaviour:

1.    Interpreting others: they behave poorly because they have a character flaw or they are “bad/immoral” or they are against us;

2.    Interpreting ourselves: circumstances made it impossible for us to behave well and we have a valid excuse for the poor behaviour.

This leads me to the next expression that my Mom taught me when I was in my twenties:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."

Before I explore this a bit, let me first say that when my Mom said these words to be, they did more than impact me. They stopped me dead in my tracks … floored me … changed me. I was astounded at her wisdom and knew instantly that, of course, she was right in a profoundly Yoda-like way. It wasn’t until a couple decades later that I learned that this truth about human beings was well-understood and catalogued by psychologists, who refer to it as the Fundamental Attribution Error.

As I started investigating psychology texts and social science studies I soon came to realize that this was exactly (and I mean EXACTLY) what Jesus was pointing out two thousand years ago when, at the end of a powerful sermon, he told the large crowd:

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.  (Matthew 7:1-5)

Implicit in his words is the implication that we all do this. He was right … we all do. We all see our own dysfunctions or misbehaviours with mercy and grace and we cut ourselves a large amount of slack by providing an excuse or reason for our actions. However, we judge others much more harshly, extending little grace and mercy, and assume that their dysfunction is rooted in character weakness or innate badness.

Queue Mom: 

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."

Long before I read the psychology books or knew to metabolize Jesus’ words more deeply, my Mom was basically telling me, “Look … Bob acts the way he does because he doesn’t know better, not because he’s a bad man.”

Why did that change me? How could it not? There’s a huge difference between assuming that Bob is just lazy or that he is malevolent or that he is vengeful or that he is change-resistant or that he is … well, fill in the rest with your own negative choices. The truth is that for the most part, Bob acts the way he does because he doesn’t know better. He’s ignorant. Mom was trying to teach me that, “if you have to choose a reason behind WHY people do what they do, then before you jump to the conclusion that they are trying to hurt you, a more likely conclusion is that they are simply ignorant and don’t know better.”

Mom said, “choose ignorance!”

If you go to the hyperlink that I provided for Fundamental Attribution Error you will see that it covers a wider range of motives than simply malice. For example, when Sally shows up late for work 2-3 days each week, we assume that she’s lazy or inconsiderate. Perhaps a better interpretation is that she is simply undisciplined and is actually filled with anxiety because of this dysfunction in her life. She would love for someone to teach her how to unclutter her house and life so that she could implement greater structure and improve her behaviours across the board.

In his amazing book about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells a story that makes this point in a poignant and powerful way. He tells of being on a bus or subway where a father sat staring blankly, oblivious while his children ran amok, bothering the other passengers. Covey said he gently chided the man that his children were bothering other people and he needed to control them better. The response from the man was a paradigm-shifting moment for Covey. Turns out that they were returning home from burying his wife and the kids’ mother. OK, you can swallow hard now. Covey was making the assumption that this was a bad father who never disciplined his kids and who didn’t care how his kids were imposing on everyone around them. Of course, the man was simply numb as he returned home with his kids to figure out how to go on living on his own, without his life-mate. Gulp!

What difference does your interpretation make? If you that assume Sally is lazy or inconsiderate then you have already erected a relational wall that will prevent you from ever getting to know her well, and you certainly could never see clear to doing anything to help her. If, however, you assume that she just doesn’t know better, then just-perhaps you might befriend her and, in time, be able to show her a better way. Of course, she will never listen to you or care what you know until she first knows that you care. And here-in (for me) lies the biggest casualty of the Fundamental Attribution Error … it is a huge obstacle to relationships … which means that it is a huge obstacle to life, because life is all about relationships.

My Mom taught me to give people the benefit of the doubt. I’d like to say that I learned that lesson immediately and learned it perfectly … but I would be lying. As you will hear me say often in this blog, not all lessons-taught are lessons-learned. I didn’t actually LEARN this lesson until 2002-2003, following my breakdown. Of course, Mom’s words came back to me and helped me piece together a number of other truths that are important to my overall effectiveness in life, but some of my self-sabotaging ways could have ended twenty years earlier had I actually learned that lesson when she delivered it. I miss her.

I hope to see you back next Monday.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"

SAYS YOUR MOM: Don’t flatter yourself

Welcome back Viphilus*

Happy Labour Day (for those of you living where this holiday is celebrated).

This month I am going with the theme: “Says Your Mom,” which is a short collection of some profound things that my mother taught me that have helped me to fight my self-limiting, self-defeating and self-destructive tendencies.

Ellen Grace Bowyer (nee Burleigh), born in 1929, was a pure pleasure to family and friends, before she went to be with her Lord in early 2012. She spent over 40 years in insurance, spending her final decade or two of that time working with executives in that industry. Her marriage to my Dad came with significant challenges, including being born at a time when women worked out of the home while also being a consummate homemaker who did everything to keep the family fed, clothed and the home functioning well, with love. She always had a bit of a religious bent to her but never really came to know God until the late 70s when she declared Jesus to be the God of her life. Mom also had a boundless capacity for love and compassion.

The part I want to focus on though was her dual mature. Mom was a perfect blend of serious and fun-loving … craftiness and dumbness … intelligence and ignorance. There were times when all of us thought she was as stupid as a brick, only to discover that she was “stupid” like a fox. The things she taught me are truly countless. I hope you enjoy the posts this month, starting with a Yoda-like utterance that I heard from her when I was in my late teens or early twenties (before I had ever heard about a character named Yoda):

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what other people thought about you if you realized how little they did.”

I’m not sure that she ever fully understood the depths of my social phobias when I was young. I missed a great deal of school in grades 5, 7 and 11 because I was sick. Now I did present at doctor’s offices and hospitals with real physical (and some debilitating) symptoms and problems … but the sickness originated in my mind. At least that’s my current day self-diagnosis of the pre-1976 Peter. And the real driver of that mental/emotional sickness was fear: fear of people’s perception of me. I was mortally afraid of being embarrassed or being seen to be incompetent. We can analyze that to death, but I’d prefer to just look at the solution. Queue Yoda-Mom.

“You wouldn’t worry so much about what other people thought about you if you realized how little they did.” The wisdom behind this sentence is the simple truth that while many (most?) of us expend an inordinate amount of energy worrying or fretting about what others are thinking about us, the stark reality is that they aren’t thinking about us at all. In fact, chances are that they are actually obsessing about what you are thinking about them.

This was Mom’s way of telling me to stop flattering myself because nobody was thinking about me. That truth was a powerful aid to me. With God’s help I was overcoming my driving fears, but it was really important to have this simple truth-nugget to reflect on every time that old mindset started coming back to the surface … when the old jungle path was trying to invite me to clear it once again (see my July posts about Jungle paths). I furnished me with a dose of reality to ground out the negative charge building in me … a charge which would eventually have me filled with anxiety, making me hyper-vigilant about my mistakes, ignorance and weaknesses. Now it is a good thing to be conscious of those things, but never hyper-vigilant, because then the mind obsesses and the mistakes, ignorance and weaknesses become the drivers because of the mind’s over-attention on them.

Mom was a clever old gal. I don’t know if she knew exactly how much I needed that sentence in my life, but she did know of humanity’s generic tendency towards being self-absorbed or self-focused. So let me pass on Mom’s wisdom to you … listen to her; she knew what she was talking about. If you:

1. obsess on what other people think about you;
2. have imaginary arguments in your mind with Ben  because you “know” that he will be against your idea;
3. are filled with anxiety because you “know” that the Joneses think you are living prodigally;
4. wonder why Sally didn’t properly acknowledge you when you passed her this morning;
5. wonder why  John seemed cold and aloof to you at the meeting last night;
6. wonder why your brother is angry at you (as evidenced by him not returning you calls);

… then consider the following …

1. stop flattering yourself … chances are that NOBODY is thinking about you.
2. maybe you are so nervous around Ben that you actually make mistakes more often … so you can change that yourself.
3. maybe you feel guilty because you actually are being wasteful and foolish with your money … don’t blame the Joneses for that (they probably aren’t even thinking about you).
4. Sally might have been distracted by her own thoughts and didn’t actually see you.
5. John might have been feeling ill from a bad burrito he ate for lunch that day.
6. Your brother might just be insanely busy and just not considerate … or he might have done some foolish things that now have him in trouble and he is too embarrassed to talk to you because he is afraid you’ll judge him.

You’re likely saying, “Yes Peter, but sometimes my fears are founded and my thoughts/concerns are valid.”  And you would be right. But in my experience, choosing a more positive interpretation is better for your emotional state, which ultimately is better for maintaining a healthy relational spirit. Fears drive us to be hermits, which usually just reinforces the social fears … and the downward spiral begins.

Mom knew what she was talking about … listen to her, and stop flattering yourself. Nobody is thinking about you.

I hope to see you back next Monday.

Blessings Viphilus,

Your friend, Omega Man

OCA Training

* Viphilus means, "lover of life"