Change Your Life: Living Skillfully

Hi. This is the start of a new series with the theme “Three Things I’ve Learned”. I’m going to take everyday aspects of my life and look for three life lessons that can apply to anyone who wants to develop as a person. It’s a good practice for me, as well as being, I hope, helpful to you. I’ll be running it in parallel with my video series on Seven Steps to a Change Plan.

photo credit: elbfoto

I enjoy having plants around, particularly flowering plants. I’m a fairly erratic gardener, but plants often seem to do well for me in spite of that. So a few years ago, I bought a flowering orchid at an orchid show where they were selling off surplus plants. It didn’t flower again for several more years, but towards the end of last year I noticed that it had a spike on it. I started encouraging it with orchid food – though I’m not sure how much difference that really made. It was going to flower regardless.

About mid-October, it was out, and I brought it inside where we could enjoy it. If I’d cut it, it might have lasted a week if I was lucky, but I left it on the plant, watered it occasionally, and just last week the last flower started to die. It had bloomed for more than three months. (I once had a cyclamen that flowered continuously for over a year.)

photo credit: catlovers

So, what did I learn from my orchid?

1. Plants will bloom when they’re ready to bloom. So will you and I.

Something that I see over and over with clients who come to me for help to change is that their issue has been going on for years, and they’ve been unhappy about it for at least months before they were ready to take the action of coming to see me. I’ve been asked by concerned parents if I can “make” their son or daughter stop smoking, and the answer, sadly, is no. They’ll look for ways to stop when they’re ready to stop, and not before. I wish I knew how to create readiness to change, in myself or other people, but I don’t – any more than I can make an orchid bloom before its time. (I know professional orchid growers can force blooming, but you get the idea.)

2. If you want it to last, leave it attached to what nurtures it.

I know that the positive changes I’ve seen in myself over the past few years are not just random – they’re a consequence of having practices in my life which nurture what’s blooming. They have roots. If I tried to separate them from the roots, they’d die very quickly.

3. Even so, eventually it may come time for the blooming to stop, for now.

This isn’t inevitable, of course. Personal change is not actually the same as flowers blooming; it can last the rest of your life. But if we think of a bloom as a practice or something of that nature, there are plenty of things that have come into my life, had their time of blooming, and gone again – but they could be back. I used to paint, for example, but haven’t done that for a while. Eventually I will take it up again, in its time. Enjoy your blooms while they last, without concerning yourself too much about how long that’s going to be.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the Three Things I Learned from Gardening. Next time: Three Things I Learned from Engineering!

Technorati Tags: life lessons

I’m not an engineer. I did once take a single postgraduate software engineering class (though most engineers would argue that that isn’t real engineering). But I’ve worked with a lot of engineers in my role as a computer support person for maintenance tracking software, and I respect and enjoy their approach to life’s challenges. It’s not an approach that’s suited for every circumstance, of course. In situations of human emotional intimacy, it may be entirely the wrong approach – or maybe not, if we look at the principles behind it.

photo credit: ralphbijker

So here are the three things I’ve learned from engineering.

1. Assume there is a solution to every problem.

Engineers are great problem-solvers. That’s their natural bent, their default mental attitude. They approach every problem with the unspoken conviction that this problem can be solved, by us, using the resources we have and the techniques we know about.

Sometimes, of course, the problem can’t be solved, or can be solved but not at a reasonable cost, or would require resources or techniques that we don’t have. But that’s not the engineer’s starting point. One tendency I dislike in myself is that I often start out assuming that something can’t be done. A good engineer starts out assuming that something can be done, and then sets out to find out how.

photo credit: telmo32

2. Don’t assume you know what the solution is until you understand the problem fully.

I allude to this principle in one of my Seven Steps to a Change Plan videos. We limit ourselves too much if we start out assuming the solution before we’ve fully explored the problem. This is something I catch myself doing with my clients sometimes. It’s why it’s important to have a variety of techniques available and be practiced in not only using them, but also deciding which one to use. But the key thing is: Understand what the real problem is before you set out to solve it, otherwise you’ll solve the wrong problem and the real problem will still be there.

There are plenty of examples of engineers solving the wrong problem, of course. But a really good engineer will explore the “problem space” first before the “solution space”.

photo credit: Meanest Indian

3. It costs one-tenth as much to maintain something correctly as it does to fix it when it breaks.

The application of this one to personal relationships is obvious. The time and effort you spend on keeping your relationship healthy on a day-to-day basis is going to be much less than it would cost you to restore it if it broke. Whatever else has happened in my day, I try to make positive contact every day with my wife, even if it’s only a hug or a kiss goodnight. We spend time listening to each other and talking about our concerns, because if we just let things drift, one day one of us will be in for a nasty shock. We’ve both seen it happen to people we know.

Same thing with your own health, of course. You can spend some extra time, effort and maybe money on healthy eating and exercise now, or pay the costs of neglected health later – medical bills, arduous rehab, and restricted activities.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to sell prevention. Factory managers don’t value it, and nor do we as individuals. The future isn’t real to us. The present is real to us, and in the present, we could spend time and effort on routine maintenance, or we could use it for something urgent. And why is it urgent? Could it be because you’ve neglected routine maintenance?

photo credit: aussiegall

There we are, then: Three things I’ve learned from engineering. I hope you’ve found something to apply to your life.

Technorati Tags: life lessons, engineering