The power of perspective

“One moment the world is as it is. The next, it is something entirely different. Something it has never been before.”

Anne Rice

On February 19th, 2016, when you were still seven weeks from being born, I thought was going to die.  It was a sensation I had never felt before, and even thinking about it now haunts me.  

The sensation was debilitating. Completely overwhelming my body and mind.  I could feel my heart beat through every part of my body.   Simultaneously crushing my chest inward, while seemingly being ripped out of it. It caused me to be delirious. My mind was in full tailspin, circling uncontrollably.  

For someone who has never been afraid of dying, I was beyond terrified.  In bed, I lied completely and utterly still to try to calm myself.

Let's rewind to weeks prior, where I had first started feeling "heart palpitations."  I didn't really know what they were, but I had been having light chest pains.  Mind you, I am not a "healthy person."  I am significantly overweight and previously diagnosed with both high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  And while the chest pains were concerning, they were often short lived, non-severe, and given everything that was happening in life at the time, they were inconveniently timed.  I told myself that there wasn't enough time to worry about this with everything happening at work, trying to prepare for what became a maddening move, and also managing the deceptively ambiguous "parenthood preparation."

Spoiler alert if/when you ever become a parent: preparing for parenthood is like trying to do a "color-by-numbers" piece of art but being told the picture will be completely ruined if you pick the wrong hue of blue. But the instructions just say "blue" and then you are handed the below:

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"Blue"

Oh yeah. And you don't even know what you are coloring... and there are a thousand people making a case for each damn crayon. And then you have to do the same thing for every other color. It's so much fun.

Fast-forward back to Friday, February 19th. I walk out of one of the most infuriating meetings of my career, and then the above sensation starts.  Yes, this started at work.  I knew I was upset, I knew that my heart was racing, I knew I couldn't focus.  And while I had never felt heart palpitations of this intensity in the past, it was always short-lived, so I did what any stupid person would do: nothing.  It only got worse as the the afternoon turned to evening and only partially subsided about eight hours after that meeting.

The next day, your mom and I started out early, looking for a place to live due to the unexpected move I previously mentioned.  And after hours of visiting places and having absolutely no luck, my heart began to race again.

That afternoon we had planned to go to a baby class (all about how to take care of you!).  We had a lengthy discussion that it might be best for me to go home and rest given what had happened the day before, but this class was important.  We ended up going to the class and when we walked in, the nurse/teacher smiled cheek-to-cheek and said "I'm so glad you guys are here, I know you guys have a lot going on with your move."

Her statement made me pause.

Because while she somehow knew that the timing of the class wasn't as convenient as it seemed when we signed up weeks before, she vocalized our prioritization of why we were there that day.

I replied with appreciation and let her know that despite what was going on with the move (and what she didn't know had happened at work), there was nothing more important than our family and being at that class, learning to be good parents, was the only thing that mattered in that moment.

This might not seem powerful to you.  You are probably thinking, "...you didn't already know that?" But the truth is, while I knew it, I had lost sight of it.  And until that moment, I was lost in the meaningless and trivial.

But the second my perspective shifted back to what is most important to me in life, my chest pains stopped.  It was like someone flipped a switch and everything changed.  The stress and anxiety that had plagued me for the previous two days ceased.  And to think, all it took was some perspective.

As much as I wish it wouldn't, at some point life is going to get rough.  And in those moments, I would implore you seek perspective.  Whether it is understanding a new perspective, or in my case, remembering an old one, understanding an experience's relationship to your values and beliefs can completely shift your interpretation of said experience.  Seemingly monumental objects can become minuscule and vice versa. Seemingly insurmountable odds can become attainable. 

And I'll end this by reminding you that while you might perceive this to be easy and unnecessary, it is entirely too easy to lose your perspective.  Because while I was fine by that Saturday night, the following Monday morning I was visiting the emergency room.  But that is a story for another day.

Answers and Questions

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”

E.E. Cummings

I've always hated the idiom "curiosity killed the cat." While it's origins might be have some legitimacy based on the dangers of unnecessary investigation and experimentation, my qualms are rooted in the ill-defined and highly subjective word of 'unnecessary.' As a result. the phrase serves less of a caution to the unnecessary and more of a condemnation to being curious. 

Now I will admit, I am biased. My aversion to this rhetoric stems from my own inherent and unshakable curiosity. The statement therefore insinuates that a large part of me is "wrong," so of course I am not a fan. That said, and as I have mentioned before, I wholeheartedly believe that questions are where our unique opinions start and how we understand different perspectives.

What I want to add to that viewpoint is that while asking questions is great, simply imploring you to "ask the hard questions" is like me telling you to run a marathon. The basics seem so easy: just put one foot in-front of the other. But to run well, it takes technique, skill and practice. In the same way, learning to ask questions well doesn't come without practice; it is a skill that is acquired.

To be clear, while I agree that there are no dumb questions, all questions aren't equal. Some questions are better than others.  And while it sometimes takes 'dumb' questions in order to get to better questions, make no mistake that the 'dumb' questions don't just magically turn into better ones. It is the combination of questioning at great volume paired with layering depth to each question to obtain truly insightful answers.

One method that I learned from from reading A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger is the "five why" method, which I lovingly think of as the 'toddler method.' It is simple: after your initial question, ask "why?" five times after each answer. For example, if a college student asks themselves "why didn't I make an 'A' on that test?" the answer might be "I didn't study." Normally, people stop there. They didn't do well because they didn't study; so next time, study. So simple! Except that isn't always the case. It could be something more similar to this:

• Why didn't I make an 'A' on that test? I didn't study.

• Why? I didn't have the time.

• Why? I didn't get home from work until 12:00 am.

• Why? I needed the extra money to pay for rent.

• Why? I am two months behind on rent.

• Why? I am renting an apartment that I cannot afford.

Now we are talking about something completely different. The problem isn't studying at all. And until the actual problem is fixed, it will likely be hard ever to make a real change.  Sometimes, it only takes three 'whys', and sometimes it takes ten, but the point is to keep probing until you get to the root of the answers.

Another method I use is simply restating questions or expanding upon them to distill answers into actionable steps.  In the example below, I start with one of the most referenced questions in society (and in my opinion, a dumb question), and change it into an internal dialog that might lead to having a more meaningful life.

1. What is the meaning of life?

2. What is meaningful in my life?

3. What makes them meaningful?

4. What other things have similar characteristics?

5. How can I add these things to my life?

These are just two of what I am sure are hundreds (if not thousands) of methods, but my point is that inquisition is how we understand what is actually happening.

In my experience, answers are a commodity. If you haven't found the answer you are looking for, you probably aren't asking the right question.  So instead of searching for answers, search for questions. And don't just search for any question, search for a more beautiful one.

P.S. I wish someone would have asked five "why?" the first time someone said "curiosity killed the cat."  Maybe there was once a wolf named Curiosity.

Rewriting your life’s rules

"Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be."

Shonda Rhimes

This is a very special guest post from your mom:

My whole life I have tried to play by the rules of a game that somebody else has written for me. In doing so, I was told, you will achieve success. But the part I never understood was what if success isn't necessarily the same for everyone. What if it happens to look differently for me then it does for the person sitting next to me. We are all told to follow the same rules but yet are we all playing the same game? 

In spite of my reservations, this game was all I knew and so I relentlessly pursued this idea of being just like everybody else. Of defining myself by external factors that were set out for me.  I thought if I acted a certain way, dressed a certain way, and valued certain things, I would be just like everyone else and I would be happy.

Yet somehow I always felt myself falling short of reaching goals that were set out for me by others. And I struggled with confusion and frustration. It looked so easy for everyone else, why wasn't it so easy for me? 

As I grew older, an extraordinary thing happened, I learned how to play the game. Suddenly I was wearing the right clothes, I knew just the right thing to say, and I could honestly say I was "winning" at this game I had struggled my whole life to play. I was busy being exactly who I was supposed to be (and having a lot of fun doing it) yet I wasn't being me. 
And for the first time I realized it wasn't that I couldn't win at this game, it was just that I didn't want to. So I had a choice, I could continue to exhaust myself trying to fit into this definition of who other people thought I should be, or I could let it all go and not just write my own rules, but redefine the game. 

You will have so many people in your life who want to define you and who will feel uncomfortable with the fact that you don't neatly fit into one box or another and I know this will not be easy. But while I was taught that there is only one path to follow, your dad and I believe that there are multiple paths that you can choose. 

We believe that there are many different roads that can each lead to happiness, success and fulfillment but nobody can choose that path for you.

If I could only teach you one lesson, it would be don't let other people define who you are. Everybody has a different idea of what is right or wrong based on their own personality, culture, race, religion, economic status, and family background. Don't spend precious time and energy worrying about whether or not you are living up to somebody else's idea of what life is supposed to be. Figure out who you want to be and strive to become the best version of yourself. And no matter what you decide (and even if we don't always agree) your dad and I will support you, stand by you, and love you no matter what.