Photo Credit: Yemelia Nova
Husband and I have been married for 12 years as of next Sunday. Craziness. For those of you who know us, we are a super happy couple. Just the right combination of independence and codependency. He says he could do laundry if he had to. I don’t think he could. Likewise, I think I could get out of bed in the morning if he didn’t bring me coffee. I probably could, if I had to.
As nice as those things are, they don’t really matter. The flowers he forgets to buy me don’t matter. It doesn’t really matter when I schedule a board meeting on his birthday. The biscotti I lovingly make for him doesn’t matter. His endless support of my insane schedule doesn’t matter much either.
What matters is that we are both paying attention. We are not zoning out; endlessly numbing ourselves with life’s distractions and busy-ness and just going through the motions. Which is easy to do. It’s easy to get lost in all the stuff. Especially right now. Though let’s be real about the fact that this is not a new problem. It’s just a very heightened problem in this moment.
Mark and I have learnt that when we start failing as individuals, we start failing as a couple. It’s never the other way around. We struggle collectively when we struggle individually. When we stop working on ourselves. When we numb out and stop challenging ourselves to grow.
As part of the burn-out series, I was asked how we support our teams as we try to not burn out ourselves. It’s a question I get reasonably frequently. It’s an important consideration but it’s also a distraction. Just as I strengthen my marriage when I optimize myself, we help our teams when we help ourselves.
For years I tried to get Mark to do yoga. In vain. Nothing worked until I dedicated myself to my practice. He saw the change in me. He saw how happy, strong and grounded I was. That was the point he decided he wanted to start. As we show up and grow up we provide the space for others to decide the same. Or not. We can’t change other people, we can only change ourselves.
One of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves when we are not getting what we need from others, whether loved ones or employed ones, is “what is my part in this?” It’s a hard question to ask and it’s an even harder one to answer. Where can you be stronger, where are you not paying attention?
It’s easy to make everything someone else’s problem. To have impact and influence, we need to make the problems ours. Own it.