Dadisms: Timeless Wisdom From the Men in Our Lives

Last month we received very positive feedback about our Mother's Day column featuring "Momisms".  Several people emailed us and shared some of their own favorite momisms while others, anticipating a similar Father's Day column, shared some of their favorite dadisms.  So as not to disappoint, here are a few favorite dadisms, each with a brief application highlighting the wisdom they contain, as it applies to personal and family wellness. Of course both momisms and dadisms can be spoken by either parent, as well as by other important adults in the lives of children. This week we offer them however, with a special spirit of gratitude to all the fathers, uncles, grandfathers, and other male mentors in our lives who imparted these timeless bits of wisdom.

Money doesn't grow on trees.  This common saying submitted by a reader is a good reminder that just about anything we wish to achieve requires perseverance and sacrifice.  Good health doesn't grow on trees.  Healthy relationships don't grow on trees.  A strong spiritual life doesn't grow on trees.  Good grades don't grow on trees. Even money in the bank doesn't just happen. Each of these "fruits" are the result of habits and disciplines practiced over an extended period of time.

  If you can't say anything nice about someone, don't say anything at all.  Another reader shared this bit of wisdom that her Dad regularly shared with her.  Curtailing our negative and hurtful words about others is a habit that can be practiced over time.   It takes a great deal of energy to be negative, energy that is better spent instead being a voice for positive growth and change, and helping to create positive, healthy relationships.

It will work out in the end.  The reader who shared this dadism remembers his father saying this to him when he was going through a hard time in his early 20's.  He said he appreciated that his father didn't minimize the fact that he was, in fact, going through a hard time, while at the same time his father provided hope for him that things would work out in the end.  Offering honest hope to others is a true gift.

A little dirt never hurt anyone. This is a classic dadism from my own father.  This would be said when a fork, or a plate, or even a piece of food dropped on the ground or floor.  There are perhaps two important lessons here: You are tougher and stronger than you think you are and, and things don't have to be perfect to be enjoyed.

Don't forget to check the oil.  This saying reminds us about the importance of preventative actions in maintaining wellness.  Checking the "oil" of our physical wellness means getting regular check-ups and addressing problems as soon as they arise.  Checking the "oil" in our family relationships means being proactive about keeping those relationships strong. All types of "checking the oil" help us avoid more  "expensive repairs" down the road.

I'm so proud of you.  Some men have a hard time saying the words "I love you" and so they substitute others expressions of affection like "I'm so proud of you." However this pride and love was expressed, it meant the world to us, and is a reminder of how important it is to express our affection for one another.

So in honor of all the men, be they fathers, grandfathers, uncles, or other important male figures in our lives who have loved us and continue to love is, Happy Father's Day!

We would love to hear your favorite Dadism.  Please post it on our Living Compass Facebook page, or email to us at scott@livingcompass.org.

A Time to Work, and A Time to Play

Every week I ride the Amtrak train between Milwaukee and Chicago, as I live in Milwaukee but work much of the time in downtown Chicago.  The train ride, only 90 minutes in duration, is a great part of my week.  I look forward to my train time because it allows me 90 minutes of uninterrupted time to focus on work I need to get done.  There is even a “quiet car” on the train where no cell phone use and no loud conversations are allowed, providing working folks like myself a quiet environment.  Within a few minutes of sitting down, my laptop is out and I get in such a work flow that I hardly notice that ninety minutes has passed and we are pulling into Union Station in Chicago. My ride this week was a completely different kind of experience.  I boarded the train early and decided not to sit in the quiet car, as the train wasn’t crowded and seemed pretty quiet.  I was so engrossed in my work that when the train pulled out of the station I became aware that there was something very different going on around me.  I looked up from my laptop and there to my great surprise was a group of people I rarely see on the train, a group of young children and their parents!

School is out and nothing beats a day trip with children to Chicago to visit the museums, Millennium Park, the zoo, and the tall buildings. Now I love children, but I must confess that my first reaction on the train that morning was to get up and move to the quiet car, where surely there would be no children and I could get back in my work flow.  Something in me told me not to move, though, and so I stayed put and ended up having a delightfully different kind of train ride to Chicago.

I kept my laptop out, but didn’t  work more than ten minutes throughout the entire ride.  Instead, I sat back and just watched and listened to all the children that were all around me.  I never did learn whether they were all riding the train for the first time or not, but I’m guessing they were, as they shrieked with delight almost the entire way.  “Look, look we are crossing a river right now!” “Hey everybody, I see horses out the window over here!” “Whoa, look how tall those buildings are!” “I wonder how strong the engine must be to pull all of us.”

I loved watching the kids and soaking in their unbridled enthusiasm for all that they were taking in.  Without realizing it I had soon entered a different state of flow, a play flow as opposed to a work flow.  Here I was riding the same train I always ride, but I was now experiencing it through the eyes of children and it was therefore a completely different experience for me.  I didn’t plan this experience, it simply arrived as a gift.  It was a gift I almost missed by moving to the quiet car, but thankfully I listened to that voice that told me to stay put.

I share this experience with you because the reason these children were on the train is that school is out and summer has started. As we all travel into this season of summer, perhaps my experience can be a reminder of the many opportunities that summer uniquely provides for all of us to play.  If there are children in your life, or just children whose presence you get to enjoy the way I did on the train, perhaps they can help you, as they helped me, access the spirit of wonder and play that is within us all and is so important to our well-being.  Or perhaps it is just as simple as taking time to connect with the inner child within each of us that in years gone by filled our summer days with seemingly endless spontaneous play.

Of course for the rest of the summer now, I will have to make a choice when I board the train.  Do I head for quiet car so I can maximize my work flow, or do I choose to sit where the children are and maximize my play flow?  I imagine I will sometimes choose one and sometimes the other, because we know, “to everything there is a season….”  Yet summer seems like the perfect season to remember the importance of spontaneous play and to choose it more often than not.

Leading Well

The news was not good this week for two leaders in the public eye. First we learned that Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, was indicted for allegedly structuring bank withdrawals to evade bank reporting requirements and then making false statements to federal investigators all to cover up a thirty year old act of sexual misconduct with a minor. A few days later we learned that Sepp Blatter, president of the world soccer organization FIFA, announced his resignation in the midst of an investigation involving accusations of immense corruption and scandal for the organization he has led the last seventeen years. Such stories of corrupt leaders are not uncommon, but as a person who thinks a great deal about the topic of wellness, when I hear stories like these, I always pause to wonder about how and why such leaders end up becoming corrupt. When a leader is exposed as having engaged in unethical behavior, whether it is in the field of religion, politics, education, public service, medicine, sports, or public service, I often hear people exclaim, “This person had to have known that what he or she was doing was unethical.” Most leaders have probably completed numerous courses on ethics and are well aware that their actions are unethical. They are simply hoping not to get caught.

I believe that what causes leaders to fail ethically is not a lack of knowledge about what is unethical, but a lack of wellness and integration. When a leader is not well, when he or she is experiencing a hidden sense of inadequacy, shame, or emptiness, he or she is vulnerable to developing an addiction to money, drugs and alcohol, power, or sex. The pattern of leading an unethical life does not usually emerge overnight, but develops gradually through months and years of making small, dishonorable decisions, at work or at home. This process is then minimized or denied by the person who, if they were well, would certainly “know better.”

What I am talking about here is the inner life of a leader. Because much of public leadership is, well, public, it is easy to get drawn into a leader’s public gifts and personality. It is easy to think that we know a public leader based on his or her public persona, but the truth is that the real character of a leader is revealed by his or her inner life and only those who are closest to the leader know if he or she is leading from a place of integration and wellness. Eventually, we will all find out if a leader is living an integrated life or not, because as with Hastert and Blatter, the truth always comes out.

Whether we are public leaders or not, the truth of this applies to all of us. Each of us has ethical values that help us make decisions, which for many of us are grounded in our religious faith. These values serve as a compass to guide the important decisions in our lives. The public failings of leaders are a reminder to us all that in order to stay true to these values we need to develop daily habits and disciplines that keep us emotionally and spiritually centered and well. We also need to be grounded in a community of relationships that provide honest feedback to us if and when we are starting to make decisions that are out of alignment with our values.

There is no pleasure to be found when it is revealed that a trusted leader’s life is not integrated and begins to unravel, but it does serve to remind us that living an integrated life, a life where our spirituality and values are integrated into and inform all of our daily decisions, requires humility and diligence for all of us.

Inspired By Our Graduates

I love graduations and graduation parties. While I won’t personally be attending any such gatherings this year, I love to see the pictures and hear the stories about the graduations of other people’s children, friends, nieces and nephews, and grandchildren. I find myself being moved just hearing stories about the graduation celebrations. As I reflect a little further on why I love graduations so much, I realize that I love them because they so clearly celebrate two values that I hold in high esteem. The first value is the importance of community. Of all the pictures I have seen of graduates so far this year, I notice that it is rare to see one that does not include other people standing with the graduate. It might be a relative standing with the graduate, or a favorite teacher. It might also be other classmates who have walked with the graduate toward his or her special day.

What these photos confirm is that graduates have not achieved their goals on their own. It takes a village to support a graduate. Others have made sacrifices for the graduate to succeed and without a community of support it is not likely the graduation that is being celebrated would be occurring.

The second value that graduations celebrate is the value of self-discipline. A supportive community, while necessary, is not sufficient in of itself to get a person to graduation. Each graduate also needs to develop the habit of self-discipline. Self-discipline can be defined as the ability to exchange the pleasure of short-term gratification for longer-term goals. So graduations are not just celebrations of acquired knowledge, but also of the fact that the graduate has acquired the habit of self-discipline.

Graduations are typically celebrated at the end of a multi-year process and thus indicate that the graduate has learned to practice self-discipline over an extended period of time. The graduates have formed the kind of daily habits that have allowed them to accomplish in this longer-term achievement.

Graduations are probably so moving to me because the two values that they celebrate are in fact two of the values that we all need in order to experience the fullness that life has to offer. Community and self-discipline are essential for all of us, not just for those attending school. With the combination of self-discipline and a supportive community, any of us can learn and grow in all kinds of ways. Self-discipline and a supportive community are keys to our spiritual, emotional, physical, relational, and vocational wellness.

So let’s celebrate with great delight the graduates in our lives! And as we do, may we also remember that these graduates can inspire us to reach for some of our own goals.   Is there an important long-term goal that you have? If so, then the chances are that you, too, can best reach that goal through a combination of practicing self-discipline and surrounding yourself with a supportive community.

Remembering Those Who Make What We Do Possible

David Letterman signed off the air this week after hosting 6,028 episodes of The Late Show over 33 years. The guest lists for the two nights prior to his final show were announced well in advance, but the line up for his last night was kept a secret, and suspense built throughout the week as to who would appear on Dave’s final show.  

I watched his last two shows in their entirety. I watched the second to last show because Bob Dylan, arguably the greatest songwriter of modern times, was scheduled to appear and I watched the last show because I too was curious to see who would be featured in his closing episode. To my surprise, the only famous celebrities that appeared on the final show were ten people, each of whom contributed just a single line to the final “Top Ten” list, “The top ten things I’ve always wanted to say to Dave.” Some of the guest celebrities that contributed to this list included Steve Martin, Barbara Walters, Tina Fey, Peyton Manning, and Bill Murray.

What impressed me most about Dave’s final show was that by far the longest segment featured a taped tribute to all the people who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes all those years to help him succeed. This segment was framed as a “day in the life” for the Late Show and showed Dave interacting with all the people who come to work with him everyday but are never seen on the air.

At first I wondered why he was taking all of his precious last minutes of air time showing us people none of us have ever seen before--air time that could have been used to parade more celebrities across the stage. Later in the show, however, as Dave thanked all the behind scenes people that he had featured in his long clip, he explained why he had given them center stage on the last show. Then I understood. He explained that without all of these people behind him he would have not been so funny and he would not have been able to enjoy the success he has enjoyed in front of the camera. He went on to say that these people, the ones we had never seen, deserve all the credit because, in reality, they had worked a lot harder on the show all these years than he had. Dave then thanked his wife and son who were in the audience along with his mother, now 94 years old, of whom he showed a picture as she used to make regular appearances on the show. He thanked all of them for being such a supportive family.

The lesson for me in all of this is the importance of taking time to remember and to thank all the people who make many of the good things in our lives possible and those who support us in ways we don’t always acknowledge. This lesson seems perfectly timed as we, as a nation, prepare to celebrate Memorial Day. All of our lives are possible because of people who have gone before us, working and making sacrifices so that we can enjoy the lives we have.

Who are the behind the scenes people in your life, the people that make what you do and who you are possible? How might you remember them and give thanks to them for what they have done or what they are currently doing? Some of them may have passed on, but we can still pause, remember, and give thanks for what they have done as well.

Much like the crew at the Late Show these people in our lives may go unseen and unacknowledged. This weekend however offers us an opportunity to remember to thank others around us who help and support our successes. While we are doing this it is equally important for all of us to stop and thank the service men and women who now and in the past have served our country, often out of or sight, honoring in particular on Memorial Day those who have given their lives to make our lives possible.

There is an African proverb that reminds us “It takes a village to raise a child.” It also takes a village to create and host a life. What could be a better way to celebrate Memorial Day than to remember and thank those who have given so much to help us succeed on the stages of our own lives, those behind the scenes?