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Here is your daily dose of Wisdom for Living Your Best Self!Benjamin Franklin set up a system whereby he continued to work on his endeavour of achieving moral perfection.

The way his project was set up reminded me of what Scott Adams says in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is a great book with lots of wisdom which we shall perhaps explore at another time.

For today, I want to focus on what he says about setting up systems rather than focusing on goals:

"You could word-glue goals and systems together if you chose. All I’m suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of...

Some of us need to reminded that even as parents and adults, we do not have to always be in the giving position. That it may be harder to ask for help than to offer it AND if we challenge ourselves to learn to ask for help, we will be doing ourselves and those in relationship to us, a big favour!

As we develop our validation skills, we may get the emotion, the experience or the meaning behind it wrong.

This makes sense, because after all, we are trying to get a glimpse of someone else’s experience from our world view. Our lens and their lens are not the same. Our experience is not the same as their experience. We are trying to visit a foreign land and we may struggle to understand the language and the customs.

So, when you are trying to validate and get it wrong, remind yourself that it this is common and that you are learning. Your continuing effort to do this is the most important thing for your relationship.

To clarify your understanding of your loved one’s internal world, try some open-ended questions such as:

There are, of course, many many ways to validate. The essence of validation is to demonstrate that you recognize their emotions and that given their experience and world view, it makes sense that they would feel that way.

Here are some examples:

Here is what I am hearing you say (summarize what the other person has told you).

So what should we do instead?

Try validation.

Very briefly, human beings desire to connect. We communicate because we crave connection. And that connection comes from being heard, understood, and appreciated.

Validation is one of the most important relationship skills and one that few of us are naturally proficient at. We need to be intentional in developing it. This is the hard work of being in relationship but the rewards in terms of connection and intimacy are SO worth it.

Effective validation has two main components:

What do we do though, if they share that they are struggling or not feeling great emotionally?

How do we make them feel better? How do we cheer them up?

Have you tried any of the following?

·      Let’s focus on gratitude.

·      It could be worse!

·      We have it better than so many people.

·      At least it’s not [fill in the blank].

·      Look on the bright side

·      Just put a smile on your face and tough it out.

·      This too shall pass.

·      Don’t worry; things will work out.

·      You/We shouldn’t feel that way.

...

Ask family members to think of their "rose, bud, and thorn" of the day:

Please remember that the point is not to discuss why they think a particular thing is a rose or a thorn. Please do not discuss how their "thorn" is not so bad or try to get them to see the rose amongst the thorn!

That is NOT the point of this exercise.

The more we are able to validate and listen with understanding and compassion, the more open the others will be to moving beyond their current feelings and emotions.

It is call Highs and Lows. It is a great way to spark off dinner conversation about the happenings of the day.

Ask people to think of their "high and low" of the day – this is the best thing that happened to them during the day, and the worst thing that happened to them.

Give everyone a chance to think, then have everyone share with the family.

Once again, it is up to the person whether they want to explain and elaborate on their feelings about what happened, or not.

Conversations like this are very helpful in letting our family know that we can talk about the hard and challenging stuff as well as the happy and positive stuff. That both our successes and our challenges can be discussed and will be met with validation and understanding.