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Keeping the Commitment

There's an old song written by Burt Bacharach made famous by Dionne Warwick that says "Make it easy on yourself ... because breaking up is so very hard to do."

When considering my romantic history, romantic notions aside, breaking up was in fact easy to do. Painful, but easy. Keeping a commitment is what can be VERY hard to do. What's worse, is that it almost seems as if the commitments to yourself are the hardest ones to keep. Other people you supposedly love get the Second Place ribbon in the Short Shrift Commitment competition. This is assuming that you love yourself. The even older Mills Brothers song lays it out with, "You always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn't hurt at all."

Keeping the commitment is the subject of Say It By Heart the week of June 30th. A listener asked that Robert Pruitt and I continue our conversation about stepping out of our boxes, and tackle the toughest part of the journey: Maintenance Road. As always with Robert, the conversation is deep, enlightening and fun.

Isn't it wonderful to know that you can take on the challenge of taking your life to a higher level and still have a good time? Robert's energy always reminds me of that. I've liked him since we first met several years ago. He reminds me of my family in so many ways. We can't get through anything without creating some level of comedy. Why should anyone? For years I kept a quote by my bed by a minister whose name I can't remember. That minister's gift to me was the message that, as best I can remember it, if you're going to laugh about something later, you may as well laugh about it now.

So, I wish you a good laugh today. Save your biggest laughs for yourself as you struggle with keeping your commitment to yourself. If you're going to blow your diet, enjoy the moment then get back on your program. If you're going to skip a workout, revel in whatever you decide to do so you can return to your regimen with a happy heart. If you've got "work to do" and you decide to watch a movie or read a book, then make them worth the diversion and divert back feeling renewed. The struggles are what make meeting the goals so sweet.

Take the Choice Challenge

I'm saying that to myself as well as anyone else. Everything from my dreams to my fortune cookies have been  telling me that's it's time to choose. In my heart I know I've come to a fork in the road, but I just don't feel like the personal baggage sorting and retooling to venture down the road not taken. I've done that a few times before, and not always voluntarily. So, I've been just metaphorically standing at the fork, wishing I could just pick it up and eat something. At the same time, I'm thrilled. I know in my heart that whichever way I choose will be worth it. Of course, therein lies the challenge.

To make matters more challenging, I chose to interview the author of Drunk with Wonder for my internet radio show, Say It By Heart. I didn't know it would be a challenge when I chose to do the interview. It turned out to be one of the most difficult shows I've done to date. Not because he was a difficult interview subject. Steve was great! It's just that the book awakened the part of me that had fallen asleep waiting for me to step away from that fork in the road. At one point during the show I found myself in a rare position: speechless.

It wasn't any individual thing Steve said that stilled my tongue. It was the cumulative effect of the conversation, what I'd read in the book and the sensation of having the ground shift beneath me. So I went with it. It felt crazy, unprofessional, stimulating and right.

The Say It By Heart featuring Steve Ryals airs the week of June 23rd. Here are a few lines from the book:

• "Those who choose the path of fear and lack are simply not aware that they have other choices, but choice is always available if you have the eyes to see through the veils obscuring the truth."
• "Discernment is learning to listen to and trust your natural knowing."
• "Pain is physical, suffering is emotional. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."
• "You don't need to do anything in order to prove your worth, because you have always been priceless."
• "How will you live your life now that you are aware of your potential?"

How will we? We can start by taking the challenge. It may sound airy-fairy, but the feeling is tangible bliss. Enjoy!

Top Performers Start Within

On Say It By Heart for the week of June 16th, I talk to a woman who actually had me stumped. And that's hard to do in a conversation.

Judith Orloff is the author of The Top Performer's Guide to Leadership. It's a little book packed with big ideas about how anyone can be a top-performing leader. I loved the fact that the first chapter is called "Self-awareness." It is essential for leaders to mine the treasures they have inside. Judith gets anyone who opens her book to do that by asking several questions. I couldn't answer a couple of them, but they got me thinking.

The questions: "Can you name what you are afraid of in other people? Do you know why you are afraid?" How would you answer those questions? Judith has several others. How about these: "What do you admire about a person that makes you think they are smarter or nicer or better than you?" "What do you judge or dislike about yourself?"

Judith has you thinking deeply about several things throughout the book, including vision, communication and conflict. The best part of it is, which you will hear when you tune in to the show, that she almost sounds too gentle to have built a successful career dealing with the toughest aspects of business. So for those of you who think you're too nice to take on the tough parts of leadership -- even if they are only in your mind -- Judith Orloff is proof that it can be done.

"Dare to Dream"

That was the the theme of today's "Sixth Grade Class Promotion Exercise Celebrating the High School Graduating Class of 2014" at The Arts & Technology Academy in Northeast Washington, DC. I was invited to be the Keynote Speaker, and loved every minute of it.

John Legend's "Dare to Dream" was the class theme song, encouraging them to "Just dream to fly as eagles fly across the sky." The star students' shining faces, sophisticated suits and shimmering white dresses proved they could dress for high-flying success, but their demeanor showed they have what it takes to earn it.

The ceremony was a Rites of Passage Beautillion/Belle Presentation that did my heart so much good that I was getting as misty-eyed as some of the parents. I felt like I could because I'd actually met a majority of the students early in the school year. My sister, one of their teachers, worked with me to have the students attend the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference in September of 2007. They looked like kids then, not the mature young ladies and gentlemen I saw today. Several of them recognized me before I recognized them!

In keeping with their theme, I challenged them to DREAM BIG, DREAM CRAZY and have a DREAM TEAM. In a nutshell, I said that to Dream Big you dream beyond where you are right now. To Dream Crazy you dream beyond what you can see right now (and you know you're not the other "crazy" if you're asking yourself questions about how to turn your dream into reality). To have a Dream Team you get your parents, teachers and friends to support you in realizing your dream.

Being in their presence today was like being in a dream. I was surrounded by people of different ages and backgrounds who were working together toward a common goal. I could feel their pride and sense of accomplishment. I could hear Head of School Errick Greene whisper "I love my kids" throughout the program. There was a lot of love in that room. I admit that the celebration restored some of my faith in humanity. Hey, we all need our cup refilled once in a while.

Once again, CONGRATULATIONS to The Arts & Technology Academy's (former) 6th Graders. My prayer as I end this day is for everyone to dream of being in a room full of love, as I was today, and for that dream to come true.

Confession: I'd Love A Week Without The Usual Political Talk

I have a confession to make: I love being in conversations. I even love conversations about  religion, politics and the impact of religion on politics. But here's the big confession: I am thrilled that I may actually get a week or two without feeling like I have to absorb the usual political talk. I like that I won't hear entire presidential candidate speeches or people telling me what they think about what the candidate just told me.

I want to hear more about rising prices and jobless claims and what can be done about them, but without the political spin. I want to hear more about how we're helping veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, without political sniping. I even want to hear about Jonathan Kellerman's upcoming book (I'm a huge fan), which can be done without a hint of political posturing.

Can one of the television networks do a nice follow-up on how people are surviving weather-related disasters or a huge fire? How about a well-written, beautifully-crafted obituary about the next celebrity we lose? And make it a whopping 3 minutes. It does not make sense that we seem to have more channels carrying more news than ever before, but with less time for humane explorations of human experiences.

And here's a tip for the cable networks: hire more on-air political types. Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews may be news junkies, but they deserve some time off.

Sharing The Pain Of The Past

We all have something in our past that we don't want to talk about. It could be something that was done to us, or something we did to someone else, but the fact of the matter is we want to leave it in the past.

The problem with that is that, as we know, the past doesn't seem to pass. It's almost as if we could be cut in half and, like a tree, the rings of experience would be laid bare. And very hard to talk about. So I like to suggest that when we crank up our courage and decide to share our past we have at least three "factors" present, and not necessarily in this order:

1) The need to share our story. We feel certain that the past story is keeping us from feeling whole, fully experiencing the present and stepping into our future. And if we don't share it we will begin or continue to suffer.

2 ) The person we've decided to share our story with is someone we can trust. This is sometimes hard to measure, and the relationship may change in the future, but all we really have is the present so we must do our best to measure the weight of a person's heart. However, this person could be a professional such as a therapist or coach who will keep our secret.

3) We feel comfortably courageous. We feel we have the strength to share our story, the necessary language and an opportunity that supports sharing our truth.

Then there are people like Billy D. Jarrett. He courageously shares his story of childhood abuse, anger and violence with strangers in his book Pretty Much Dead. We discuss his experiences on Say It By Heart the week of June 9th. Sadly, I have heard many women share their stories about growing up in homes filled with violence and anger, but men rarely share similar experiences. If Billy had grown into a violent and broken man, it would almost make sense. But his story is further evidence of the fact that history is not destiny. We always have the ability to take what was most painful about our past, and create a life of purpose. What a blessing!

So let's share more of our stories, liberate ourselves from the pains of the past. Start by admitting them to ourselves.