Recently I have been hearing the word loyalty a little differently and I realized that it had been a really long time since I had heard the word used outside of the context of retail and how to keep us shopping in the same stores. And I started thinking…
The Merriam-Webster definition of loyal:
When I heard something talking about being loyal to his or her friends recently, it almost made me sad when I realized it had been a really long time since I had heard anyone say anything like that. And it made me wonder in a world where we are told to have personal boundaries and look out for ourselves, have we lost sight of loyalty? So I started reading…
One of the first things I found what this article on PsychologyToday.com. The title says it all, “Loyalty is Overrated.” The article makes several, well thought out points about how loyalty can be a liability to us and can actually have a negative impact on us.
While I couldn’t argue some of the points that author made, it made me really sad to read it. Are we really in a place as a culture that loyalty has fallen out of favor?
A couple of years ago I read, “A History of the Wife,” by Yalom. (It should actually be the A History of the Anglo-Saxon Wife as it really isn’t a full exploration.) In it, Marilyn Yalom looks at the evolution of “love” and “marriage.” At it’s inception, marriage was a transfer of property. A woman (actually probably a girl) would be essentially purchased from her father to her husband. In Greek and Roman times, a wife was considered to be the ultimate mate if she was “loyal” to her husband and believed that he would come home even after being gone for years at war with no word.
By today’s standards, I’m told, that if you don’t get a response to a text within four hours, the relationship is probably over. I’m certainly not implying that things were better for women back then, but that part has shifted. Something that has not shifted is that men in those days were allowed (perhaps even encouraged) to have sex outside of monogamy but women could be murdered for such behavior... There has been less of a shift for us there.
For me, loyalty is a ‘stick-to-it-ness’ that means that I (and others) can make mistakes but that the people around me will in time forgive me. It means trust, even when that feels hard. What does it mean to you? Does it mean something different than it used to? I would love to hear from you!
As the midyear point approaches, I’m definitely thinking about all the things I need/want to get done this year. (The actual midpoint, by the way, is the weekend of July 1st in case you were curious.)
I’m an Air Force brat so we moved a lot growing up. I remember when we would move and have to organize a new home and all the stuff that families come with, one of my father’s jobs would be the attic. He was in charge of getting every up there when we moved in, organizing it and removing it when we moved. If I’m totally honest, I can’t remember ever going into one of our attics. When my mother and I didn’t know where to put something, it typically went into the attic. I remember in each home, my father would complain that my mother and I seemed to believe that the attic was a magical place with infinite space and storage.
For some reason, the planning habits I started the year with have gone into hiding. I seem to have forgotten that if I don’t have it scheduled, it doesn’t exist. I have caught myself in the last couple of months, making these long to do lists and telling myself they will get done by the end of the week. But sure enough, the following Monday very few of the tasks on the list have gotten done.
Here is a closely held personal belief:
If you want different results, you need to DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
Of course there are some notable exceptions but this is totally true about my schedule and bad habits. I can’t continue to treat my time like the attic (an infinite amount of time and space), I need to do something about it.
In Jen Sincero’s book, “You are a Badass” she says, “You need to go from wanting to change your life to deciding to change your life."
I hear that all the time, “I just need to do it” or, “I’ll get it done.” But typically when I ask how, I’m meant with a blank stare. If it were as simple as “just doing it” it would have already been done!
Recently, someone asked me to help them get organized around a large project due at the end of the year that requires a lot of thought and planning. I was floored with the person showed up to our planning meeting without their planner!! I’m good but I’m not magic.
There are two organization methods I’m going to suggest to you today. I think both work for different people and neither is better than the other but some will work better for some than others.
Both are time consuming so you are going to have to sit down and really commit to making this happen.
I heard about Bullet Journaling friend a close friend last year. She is creative and busy. As a work from home mom of three kids all under the age of four years old, she has started her own calligraphy and design business and she is active in her church and mom group. She swears by the Bullet Journal Method.
What I like about this method is that it makes you sit down at the end of the month and take stock of the month and look at the upcoming month. What I don’t like is that my handwriting looks like that of a serial killer so I’m not about having to write/draw it all out. But this works for lots of people (as I learned by going to YouTube) so I offer it up to you as a solution. As I do not know this system as well, I would encourage you to click on the link above and watch the video from the person who devised it!!
Step 1: Start with a list. A long, uncensured list of all the things you want to do before this year is over. Personal, professional, big and small, all of it. Get it aaaallll out and on paper. Don’t zip through this, really take your time and be thoughtful.
Step 2: Knowing that there are 6 months left in the year, look at your list and think about what is most important for you to have come NYE. What will build you up? What will bring joy? What will be the most meaningful.
Step 3: Draw 6 boxes with the remaining months of the year. In the boxes divide up the projects/tasks into the boxes. Post this somewhere that you can see it and refer back to it until the end of the year. I keep mine under my laptop but hanging it on a wall near your desk in your office is a great place for it too.
Step 4: SCHEDULE IT! Now that you have figured out what month things need to happen in, chop the project up into a to do list and assign days/times that you are going to do them. Note: the to do list is not enough. You must actually SCHEDULE the tasks or this entire process is a waste of time. I use a DayMinder brand planner that has monthly and daily break downs by the hour. Don’t under estimate your need for rest. If you don’t plan breaks, it will be easy to get overwhelmed and fall behind. There is nothing wrong with a day off.
Are you ready to take control of things again?! I would love to hear if you went with the Bullet Journal or the big picture plan.
(Just a quick note, I am not an affiliate of nor do will I be paid in any way for my support for any of the sites/books/products I discuss in this post.)
It’s June and we are nearly half way through 2017, I don’t know about you but it has flown by for me. For some of us, this year has not been what we planned for at the beginning of the year. I have seen it with my friends, at work and even for myself. A lot of us started off the year pretty strong, but we have veered off the path we saw for ourselves and now have to reconfigure.
Generally, when I think about organization I am talking about one of two things; stuff and time. I almost always start with stuff because I sincerely believe that living in a tidy, clean space can free your mind to be more creative and productive. We will talk about time later this month.
If you have sat with me for more than 10 minutes in the last year, I have probably told you how much I love the book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo.
For those of you that haven’t…. I love it! I read the book at a time in my life when I felt like I really had no control over so many of the things going on around me. When I read Kondo’s claim that if I followed her method, I would never be cluttered again, I thought that sounded like a crazy and impossible challenge, there was no way. I think she is on to something.
The first challenge in the book is to sit in a space and think about what you want to do, who you want to be and how you want to feel in that space. That is before you get rid of a single thing, before you reorganize a thing. I enjoyed this exercise. It had me thinking about rooms differently than I had in the past. It wasn’t about how it looked but more about how it felt.
The second is to start purging. I’m not going to go through her entire method but the core of it all is that if it doesn’t spark joy, it is time to let it go. As I looked around my rooms, I realized that I had a lot of things around me that weren’t really me. Some didn’t fit who I am today, though they once had. And others never did but they were gifts or hand-me-downs and I felt obligated to keep them. I gave myself permission to shed them.
Finally, she is not a big proponent of buying organization stuff. As much as I love the Container Store even now, she doesn’t believe you need more stuff to get your current stuff organized. Basically, she says that if you only have things that spark joy, you can find a way to organize them that does not require that you go out and purchase a bunch things to put them in, you often use things you already have.
So it’s been nearly a year and a half since I read the book and I have donated, sold or trashed roughly over two dozen trash bags worth of stuff and I still find myself checking if things spark joy or if it is time to let them go. I had no idea I had that much stuff!!
I understand why she says you won’t go back to the way that you once were because it is so much better with things tidied up! It is easier to keep things clean, it is easier to relax, and it is easier to just do life without stuff in the way. I don’t want to go back to how things were before so I can see why she would make the claim that you won’t go back or ‘relapse.’
Time is the only thing we can never have more of. Love and time are the only things of value we can’t buy. After going through and really cleaning, purging and sorting things I have more time to think, work, live than I did before. Cleaning feels like less of a chore and more like self care than it ever has before and I often do it without even really noticing.
If you aren’t in love with your space or how you feel in your space, I challenge you to look around and think about how to love it more. How to love your time more.
(Just a quick note, I am not an affiliate of nor do will I be paid in any way for my support for any of the sites/books/products I discuss in this post.)
It is National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month so I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite things that brought home from the Texas Symposium on Teen Pregnancy.
Hands down, my favorite thing from the symposium was the Teen Empower booth!
To raise money, they sell these great t-shirts that say things like, "Vulva is not a car!"
Teen Empower is an Oklahoma based non-profit working to educate and steer teens away from high risk behaviors through school and community engagement.
I bet you didn’t know that was a thing! I will admit, it isn’t as cool as National French Fries day (which is on July 13th if you need to mark your calendar) but I would argue that for a whole lot of reasons that teen pregnancy prevention is way more important.
As some of you know, I spoke that the Texas Symposium for Teen Pregnancy in March and I had a great time. I learned and listened and felt grateful! I am so impressed with the people I met there. It was so cool to be surrounded by sex educators and researchers who to want to empower teens and their families to live the lives they most want.
It was also a really interesting reminder that living in Austin, I have access to different resources that so many of the more rural Texas communities.
And to me this can start in small ways even when kids are toddlers by giving them the proper names for the genitals, they are shameful or dirty, they are body parts! I also keep around books that have illustrations and information about the body. Encourage your kids to ask you! You don’t have to know everything but you can become a resource to them.
Talk about them and start early. At the conference I learned that statistically speaking maternal values are more predictive of behavior than paternal values. (When I asked why that would be, the researcher presenting said she wasn’t sure.) That doesn’t mean that fathers shouldn’t speak up, it does but it does mean that kids are looking to their parents for guidance on this issue.
Remind them that everyone develops on the inside and the outside at a different pace. What their friends may feel ready for may not be right for them and they don’t have to do anything they don’t want to do.
In Texas schools, they only teach abstinence. Texas pretty consistently ranks highly in states with teen pregnancy. The conventional wisdom is that it is because we only teach abstinence in schools. That is probably a big factor but I have to wonder if shame isn’t a factor as well. In the south, particularly in more rural areas, you just don’t talk about those things. Sex is implied but rarely if ever discussed.
I know that this can be an uncomfortable conversation to have with your kids. But keep in mind, if you don’t, who will? Your kids want to please you and live up to your expectations but you have to tell them what they are in order for them to be successful.
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” -King James Bible
“Having money isn’t everything, not having it is.” –Kanye West
Whether we chose to admit it or not, money is power. We do have a choice though, will we hold the power or will we assign it to money (or to people with it)?
This may be a really good time to stop for a second and notice what you have already accomplished. We often get so focused on doing more, getting better, getting closer to that allusive goal post, we can forget to reflect and be grateful what why we have already built.
What can you reflect on financially and be proud or grateful for? Have you caught up on the bills? Paid off a car note? Tackled a loan? Have you been faithful about retirement or college fund savings? Anything! Find something that you can say you have done right with your money, even if you aren’t where you want to be financially today.
Now let’s look to the future. What do your values (not your “shoulds”) tell you that you need?
[I equate “shoulding” on yourself to s$%ting on yourself. I pay attention to anytime a sentence or thought begins with I/you SHOULD. Why?! Who says?]
Anyone who knows me really well knows that I hate debt…. Like a lot. My journey isn’t yours but in the spirit of sharing, in order for me to feel free to explore other financial goals, I needed (for me- no one else) to pay off my student loans. Pursuing that goal was totally for and about me and it was really interesting to get (unsolicited) feedback from others. I often heard things like, ‘You don’t need to do that you should do this…’ or ‘I’ll never pay off all my student loans’ (as though it was a frivolous goal). But it meant a lot to me so I kept at it. I’m stubborn!!
I don’t really care what your goal is, but I challenge you to take your power back when it comes to money. Set your financial goals for yourself and keep them for yourself and your family.
There are so many financial philosophies out there. When you are thinking about your values and using them to guide your goals, I encourage you to find one for yourself to help give you structure and ideas; a community of like-minded people to support you when it is difficult to reach the finish line.
Before I list some names, I will preface by saying I am not endorsing any of these as a solution and I know that no plan is perfect. We can find flaw anytime we search for it. Instead of searching for flaws, perhaps you can find nuggets of support for yourself.
David Bach (I mentioned one of his books in my last post, I find him really helpful.)
Suze Orman (She has resources on all sorts of things even wills and estate planning.)
Dave Ramsey (Believes in living debt FREE and has a lot of free resources on his website.)
Since this month is tax season, I thought it would be the perfect time for us to think about money together.
Each year, there are random surveys of why people get divorced. People are presented with a list of one to two word options for why they got divorced. Each year the top three are typically:
That makes sense, right? Each of those is really complicated and has very deep meaning and implications.
A few years ago I read, “Smart Women Finish Rich” by David Bach. (He has written about a dozen books some geared towards women, others are more gender neutral.) His book was the first ‘financial philosophy’ book that challenged me to think about my values around money. Which is something I wasn’t even challenged to do in graduate school!! There was an entire class devoted to sex therapy and you could specialize in child therapy but there was no content on specifically helping couples/families work through financial challenges! How to talk to kids about money, how to work through financial abuse, how to spot financial abuse!
I have come to believe that it isn’t part of a counseling curriculum largely because it is such a social faux pas to even discuss it!! We could spend days guessing at how that got started, but let’s just dive right in!
What values does money represent for you? What is important about money to you?
The answer is different for all of us and it should be. What are your values around money? What does money represent to your and your life?
In his book, Bach says that it is nearly impossible to stick to your financial goals if you don’t know what your money values are rooted in and I really agree with him. Does your spending reflect your values? Or does it reflect your fears?
So here is my challenge for the next two weeks!! Make a list of what your values are around money and talk to someone about them. I would love it if you shared them with me and it could be a really powerful conversation to have with a family member. 
I’m at the symposium and having a great time learning and getting to know researchers and practitioners that are passionate about improving the lives of adolescents. Looking forward to share more with you in the future!
This afternoon, I will give my presentation on breaking down THE talk with parents and supporting them throughs process of educating their children about sex and sexuality.