Winter 2008–Stay on Track

If you are like most people who made New Year’s resolutions, one or more of them had to do with changing your exercise and/or eating habits.  Now that January has passed us by, it may be hard to keep your promises to yourself.  Here are five tips to keep you going!

1. Make sure that you are making the changes for yourself and not to please someone else.  Clearly identify what you hope to get out of the changes with an emphasis on the benefits to you. 

2. While it is helpful to have support, enlist the right kind and block out the negative people.  Don’t listen to anyone who says “You can’t” or “You won’t” or reminds you “You never have before.”  Be wary of friends and family who claim to support your choices but work to undermine you by saying things like “You can skip exercising just this once, can’t you?” or “Calories eaten at the movie theater don’t count”.  At the same time, if a choice is offered to you, it is better to polity decline without being overly aggressive about it.  If you start preaching or acting self-centered, people will start to avoid you.   Utilize social support, like a gym buddy, if it works for you but don’t if it gets competitive or weird.

3. Choose the most effective way for you to achieve your goal.  The most popular plans or methods don’t work for everyone.  A lifestyle change that involves changes in diet and exercise are most definitely not one size fits all.  For example, if conventional gyms don’t work for you, then choose something else that does.  If all your friends are runners and you can’t picture running unless a large dog was chasing you, then select another aerobic activity. 

4. Don’t give up on yourself if you “fail.”  If you fall off your plan, then get up.  Also, don’t try to deprive yourself of everything you want if it seriously discourages you from following through.  If you really want a sweet treat, then have one bite or taste of it.  The cold turkey approach only works for those who know that they can’t stop at just one bite, one cookie, etc.

5. Keep track of your progress and celebrate your accomplishments.  Use a calendar, a journal or some other visual guide to note your successes.  Over time, the small steps you take add up and you can really see the big picture.  Also, the more time you keep track of, the less you will notice the few times you fell off the plan and the more you will see how many times you did meet your goals.  It can also be very motivating to keep visual reminders to show you how far you’ve come.  Some people who have lost significant amounts of weight keep some of the clothes they used to wear when they weighed more and it is a positive reminder for them of what they have accomplished. 

Winter 2008-Other People’s Children, Part Two

Whether or not you have children of your own, chances are that you have run into issues dealing with other people’s children.  Maybe your child has run up to you in the park crying that some other child has hit them and you end up discovering that there is a little playground bully tormenting your children and others.  Perhaps you and your spouse finally have some alone time at a swanky restaurant, having left your own children safely ensconced with their adoring grandparents, only to be faced with a child who is crawling under other diners’ tables and wiping his dirty hands on the waitresses’ skirts while his parents are seemingly oblivious to his outrageous behavior. 

Maybe your best friend has just had a baby and can’t seem to talk about anything except the baby’s every bodily function.  Perhaps you are the one with the beautiful newborn and your friends can’t seem to understand that it’s not that you don’t want sometimes to go out with them, it’s just that there is not enough of you at the end of the day to pull that off and that hey, here is a tiny unique little individual who is totally dependent on you.  Perhaps your close friend has just told you that she thinks your spirited five-year-old is acting like a little monster and you vigorously disagree.  Maybe you’re the person who likes a particular friend but can’t stand being around her kids.

The question is: what do you do when faced with such situations?  Although, it is far from a simple matter, and much of it is out of your hands, you can take steps to reduce the negative impact of these situations by defining and enforcing your boundaries.

When It’s In a Public Space
It used to be that you only saw children in places like shops and parks, but these days, you are also likely to see them late at night in a restaurant that is not considered “family-friendly” or a bar.  Some people even bring them to job interviews.  There are many opinions about why this is going on, but the bottom-line is the trend is challenging some people’s boundaries.

Few of us would complain about a slightly rambunctious kid in a family restaurant or chain restaurant, because children have long been welcome and expected in these environments.  As long as he/she isn’t flinging silverware or plates at other diners, most of us are just fine with seeing playful kids.  Nor would most of us lift an eyebrow if a kid started pitching a fit in the mall.  Instead, we’d probably express empathy with the parent, remembering our own experiences with fussy, tired and hungry children. 

These are normal, everyday experiences with children and parents that are a part of life.  It is when children start showing up in places that we aren’t used to and crossing a seeming boundary between a child-friendly and adult-only world and behaving like the kids that they are that causes the friction. 

One former client put it like this: “I didn’t go to the trouble of finding and paying a baby-sitter for my two boys so that me and my husband could have our expensive, advance reservations, candle-lit wedding anniversary dinner ruined by somebody else’s kids running and screaming through the restaurant.”

Unfortunately, apart from informing management at seemingly “adult” type restaurants or establishments, like movie theaters, of your unhappiness and asking to be moved, there is little else you can do if children are behaving badly in a public space.  Obviously, it is the parents who are responsible for the children being there to begin with and for controlling their behavior.  Parents rarely enjoy being told that their kid’s behavior is ruining someone else’s experience, however.  I have even heard parents tell a restaurant’s wait staff, “Can’t you just watch them?”

Likewise, parents will likely not react well to the news that their little angel is the terror of the playground or classroom.  They may even accuse your child of being overly sensitive.  One choice might be to avoid being there at the same time or go to another play area altogether, depending on the severity of the behavior and the ages and natures of the children.  How you handle each situation is a matter of defining where your boundaries are and if your children are involved, how they are able to deal with the situation on their own. 

I’ve noticed that some establishments are erecting boundaries of their own.  I’ve read in the news recently that some restaurants, finding themselves acting as babysitters, are choosing to eliminate their children’s menus in an effort to discourage people from bringing their children into adult environments.  At one doctor’s office that I visited recently, a sign informed clients that “no children under 16 are permitted in the office,” right alongside the sign that said “payment is expected at the time services are rendered.”  Even that bastion of child fun, Disney World, has gone as far as declaring one restaurant, Victoria and Albert’s, as off-limits to kids as of January 2008.  At prices that start at $125 per person, it is not likely to affect many people.  Besides, there are 97 other restaurants to choose from at Disney World.

What if Your Child is the Problem?
Having said a lot about defining your boundaries about other people’s children, it’s probably a good idea to look at your own children, if you have them.  Do you inadvertently subject your friends to your children’s bad behavior?  You might enjoy taking your child everywhere with you, but do you find that your friends are starting to avoid you?  Have you noticed that your old friendships have evolved, moved on or ended as a result of children?

Relationships change over time when people go through different experiences such as marriage, having children, changing jobs, divorce and so on.  Friendships, particularly between women, can be greatly impacted by the arrival of children, especially if they are of dramatically different ages or if only one of the friends has kids. 

Take the situation of “Dora” whose children are older or “Rose” who doesn’t have children, who may be facing a situation where her friend “Lucy” just had a newborn, is exhausted and doesn’t have time for herself, much less her friends.  Does this mean that the friendship is over?  It certainly doesn’t have to be if both friends understand that changes happen, are open to discussing things and are willing to make adjustments and compromises to maintain the friendship. 

“Lucy” may curtail some of the “poopy talk” that she shares with her friends that also have small children when she is with “Dora” and “Rose.”  Likewise, “Rose” may suggest a Saturday morning at the playground with the baby instead of drinks after work, understanding that “Lucy” just doesn’t have the time or energy at the end of a workday to go out, even if she could miraculously come up with a babysitter.  Maybe “Dora” offers to take care of the kids or come over and fix dinner once in a while, remembering what it was like to have sleepless nights with a new baby.

“Rose” may learn to take an active interest in the children and that providing child-rearing advice or criticizing “Lucy’s” husband for not pulling his weight is not appreciated from someone who doesn’t have kids.  As her kids get older, “Lucy” may learn to set boundaries such as not allowing the children to interrupt phone conversations or not bringing them uninvited to parties. 

Clearly, the arrival of children need not spell the end of friendships if both parties are committed and communicative.  What happens though if a friend tells you that your kid is behaving badly?  Most people say that they want people to tell them if their little one is acting out of bounds when they are not around or don’t personally witness the behavior but the reality provides plenty of examples where parents did not appreciate the feedback.  If you get the news that your child is not the angel you think he/she is, then consider the following before you blow up in anger at the messenger:
Do you…
· ignore crazy behavior and/or make no attempt to distract the child from fussy, whining behavior?
· find yourself frequently defending your children’s behavior or your type or lack of response?
· avoid giving consequences for behaviors?
· often rationalize your child’s behavior as energetic, high-spirited or precocious?
· set your child up for a difficult situation by bringing them into adult environments with no strategies (toys, coloring books, snacks, etc.) to engage them and prevent bad behavior?
· find it difficult to tell your child “no” ?

And if you are the friend who thinks that the child is behaving badly, ask yourself the following questions before you speak up:
· Is the reason the behavior is bothering you because the episode is bringing back something in your past, such as a difficult period of your own childhood?
· Does the child’s behavior remind you of a person about whom you have negative associations?
· Is the child’s behavior grating on you because you share a similar personality trait?
· How do you think that the feedback will be received?
· How serious is the situation?

If you do decide to say something, be sure to speak directly to the parent.  Most parents do not appreciate other people telling their children off.  If specific behavior needs to be addressed, try sandwiching the feedback between two compliments or speak in general terms about another kid who has that behavior and see if the parent makes the connection.  If you decide to keep your mouth shut, you can choose to just tough it out, limit the time spent with them or avoid being with the children altogether by meeting up with the friend solo.

Ultimately, it is up to the parties involved how to handle these situations, but it still boils down to defining what your boundaries are, how and when you will enforce them and how important each relationship is to you.  One person may say, “If you like us, you like us and if you don’t, we really don’t care.”  Another person may say, “Even if we are at different points in our lives, I cannot picture ending a friendship over a child.” 

Conclusion
Whether in public spaces or in our evolving friendships, we end up dealing with other people’s children.  There are not many options for dealing with either set of situations, but these are clearly timeless issues based in boundaries—the ones parents set with their children, the ones a person sets with their relationships, the ones companies and establishments set with their clients and the public.  What about you?  Have you encountered any of these situations?  What are your boundaries?

Winter 2008–Subscribe to Blog via E-mail or Reader

Now, instead of checking my blog for updates, you can subscribe to have new posts sent directly to your e-mail or alternatively, subscribe to receive a feed of my blog in a newsreader, such as My Yahoo! or Bloglines. To sign up for these free services from feedburner, just go to my blog at http://gardenof5senses.wordpress.com and click on the appropriate link in the right-hand column. 

Since November, I have been blogging daily around five coaching topics:  Mondays– Focus on the Season, Tuesdays– Getting Your Needs Met, Wednesdays– Transition Tip, Thursdays– Living in the Present “Sense”, and Fridays– Honoring Your Values.  I invite you to read for great advice, strategies and tips to help you create the life that you have dreamed of leading and I encourage you to share your own insights and experiences to help others, too.

Fall 2007–Personal Message

Although the calendar tells me that winter is still a month away, the snow outside says that it has already arrived for us here in Moscow.   Our autumn was short but glorious in the colors of the turning leaves and brilliantly blue skies.  I hope that the season finds you well and not as cold as we are.

Some time ago, I wrote an article called “Other People’s Pets.”  I have been intending to follow it up with similar articles on a parallel theme and the next up is this newsletter’s article “Other People’s Children, Part One.”  Dealing with children is a much more complicated issue than the one dealing with pets but still centered on defining and enforcing boundaries.   In this first of two parts, I talk about how to handle the issue in your home and when visiting someone else’s house.

I am always interested in what my newsletter subscribers would like to read about and encourage topic submissions so the other article in this issue stems from a reader’s request.  “Lost and Found” is an article with tips and strategies about how not to lose things in your life.  This season’s newsletter also contains news on my newly revamped presence on the Internet and an offer for a free e-booklet for new and existing newsletter subscribers to help you start the coming New Year off right. 

I will be on vacation in Cyprus during the last two weeks of November, so if you e-mail me while I am gone, you’ll get an autoreply about that.  Of course, I will attend to any requests upon my return.   Wishing you a lovely holiday season whatever the weather outside!

Best wishes,
Vivian Banta
Quote of the Season:
“Your life can’t go according to plan if you have no plan.”
Anonymous

Fall 2007–Lost and Found: How to Keep from Losing Things

“Nor is the earth the lesse or loseth aught.
What from one place doth fall
Is with the tide to another brought.
For there is nothing lost but may be found, if sought.”
Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”

For more than one person in my life, I have been the one who finds things when they have been lost or misplaced.  People who don’t know me really well think that I must be incredibly organized but the truth is that just I have a system that works and a good visual memory. 

When making changes in your life or simply trying to survive a transition that has been forced upon you, it is incredibly helpful to have such a system in place.  Not only does it keep things from getting misplaced, but it can also save you the time you waste looking for them, reduce clutter in your physical environment (which can also lessen the noise in your head, incidentally), make chores easier and less time-consuming, and help you to replace things if they are well and truly lost.  Simply put, properly and consistently done, it can help you to create space and time for yourself.

There are four basics to setting up a system:
· Install an organizational method that works for you and your lifestyle.  Not everybody wants to take their house and car keys and put them in a valet sitting on their bedroom dresser.  Some people prefer a key hook located on the wall near the front door.  So, choices vary.  Simply choose something that works for you and use it consistently.
· Incorporate the system in your everyday routine.  Few people like to admit that they have a daily routine, but most of us do.  If you retrieve things from the same place each and return them to the same place consistently, you reduce the likelihood that the item will get lost.
· Improve your overall environment, and your chances of locating a lost item, by keeping things neat and tidy.  It’s harder to find something in a cluttered room than it is to locate it in a simple environment. 
· Institute a policy of asking before borrowing and then returning other people’s belongings as soon as you are done with them.  You don’t want to become the reason that someone else is unable to locate something when they need or want it.

Here are some more specific ideas about how not to lose…
Your Cell Phone, Jewelry, Wallet or Purse
The key to not losing these items is to consistently replace them in the same spot each day.  Some people use a dresser top valet to store these items.  Others put them in the same place on the kitchen counter each night.  Choose a clear, empty spot that doesn’t interfere with anything else and use it every time.

Your Keys
As with the above item, try to place keys in the same location each day.  Use a key hook cabinet mounted on a wall, a drawer in or a small bowl on the entryway table, a container in your bedroom, etc.  Additionally, make sure that you have spare keys.  You can put them in secondary locations and/or with a designated person as a back-up.  Some people have also had success in using a paging device to locate their keys when misplaced.

Your Car
First, take care of the obvious things such as car alarms, garages and locks and keeping your VIN number and license plates recorded.  For protection against misplacing your vehicle in a large parking lot, like at a shopping mall or airport, though, you can do an incredibly simple thing.  And no, I’m not talking about wandering through the aisles pressing the security alarm of your keys, straining to hear the “beep—beep” of your car as you mutter to yourself, “I think it’s around here somewhere…” 

No, my suggestions are to park in the same general area each time if it’s someplace you go regularly or to take down the number, level, etc. of the parking area on a piece of paper or on your cell phone or other electronic device.  Failing that, look for distinctive landmarks (not neighboring cars that may well be gone by the time you return!) to remember your space.  Don’t trust your memory alone.  Shopping malls and airports and the like are chaotic, disorienting places for most people and by the time you are done, the memory of where your car is may well be missing from your brain. 

Your Contact Phone Numbers and E-mail Addresses
Your policy about any type of important information such as phone numbers and e-mail addresses of key contacts should be to install and maintain redundant systems.  What I mean is to record and store the information in multiple formats and in multiple locations.  So, in addition to storing it on your cell phone and your PDA, you could perhaps store the information physically in a business card holder or an address book.  You can also back-up the information electronically in a secondary e-mail account or on a spreadsheet or Word document.

Your Own E-Mail Address
If you have an e-mail account with a service provider or with a free service such as Yahoo or Google, be sure to update the back-up or secondary e-mail on record periodically.  If you lose your password or lock up your account, you may need it to retrieve the password or have it reset.  I know more than one person who has lost complete access to their account, including all of their stored e-mails and the ability to use that e-mail address in the future because the back-up e-mail address was defunct and they were unable to access it or because they had completely forgotten which one it was and couldn’t tell the provider the correct information.  So much of our lives are conducted via e-mail these days, so take the steps necessary to protect yourself in this arena.

Your Computer Files
First, make sure that you have taken steps to prevent your data from being lost or corrupted from the outside.  Install and use a good power strip, virus protection, e-mail scanners, firewalls and other software to protect your computer.  Then, take the steps to regularly maintain your computer’s operating system and create back-ups of your files on external drives.  You may even want to make physical print-outs of certain documents.   If you keep up with regularly scheduled maintenance and back-ups, you lessen the chance that you will lose your favorite songs, photos and videos as well as your critical data.

Your Receipts, Warranties and Service Agreements
First, identify what kinds of information you want to keep and for what purpose.  Perhaps it is for taxes or because you have things under warranty for service or maybe you are insuring yourself against loss.  Then, set up a system to file this information.  For example, one easy way to do this is that I learned from my father is to staple the original and a copy of the receipt (the ink on store receipts may fade over time) to the inside cover of the instruction manual of the item.  Put the manual and the warranty stuff altogether in a file folder.  That way, there is only one main place you need to go for any of that information.  If you need the receipt for insurance purposes, place a copy in your safe or a fireproof box.

Your Pet(s)
Most people know to get their pet an ID tag of some kind to wear around their neck.  I also recommend installing a microchip in the pet, if you haven’t already done so.  More cities are requiring this and many microchip manufacturers provide animal shelters with free scanners.  The chip is small enough to fit into a hypodermic needle and lasts for the life of the pet.  Additionally, take photos of your pet over time.  If you only have photos from when they were babies, it is unlikely to help you locate it should the pet be stolen or lost.

Your Friends
As busy as our lives are, it has become increasingly harder to keep in touch with friends as the years pass and distance, sometimes in miles, increases.  Technology, however intrusive in some ways, is a tool that can be harnessed to help you to stay connected with your friends and family. Use your Outlook or an occasion reminder system from Hallmark or Birthday Alarm to remind you of important dates.  Utilize social networking sites, photo sharing sites, blogs and e-mail as a way of keeping up with what’s going on with the people in your life.  Choose a system that is easy for you and for them to use and stay with it.

As you can see, the key to not losing things is to consistently utilize a method for keeping track of them.  It takes time to get in the habit, but once you do, you’ll be playing with more peace of mind and spare time than playing “hide and seek” with lost things.