Grading on the Curve

When I was in college I had professors who would grade on a curve.  I always hated those classes because it wasn’t about learning the material; it was about competing with every other student in the class.  Now I am seeing that same theory applied in the workplace, but this time attached to performance reviews.

I learned in my statistics class about probability theory and the normal distribution.  Given a population set (a class or a company) you would expect their values (grades or performance rating) to fall on either side of the mean, and if you were to chart this pattern you would have the bell curve.  The bell curve and the statistics behind it are designed to study set populations and then be able to use it as a prediction tool.  I understand that these statistical analysis tools have their place.

When a professor or a company begins to grade on a curve, they are taking a predictive tool and twisting it.  Suddenly the people are conforming to the measurement instead of the measuring device to the people.  It also takes a standard to be measured against and renders it useless because the standard is constantly moving depending on the performance of the population.  When using a bell curve to set the standard the message sent is that conforming to statistics is more valuable than the performances of the individuals being measured.    

I use to grade myself on a curve, comparing myself to my friends, classmates, co-workers, even perfect strangers.  There were times when the comparison would leave my ego inflated, such as when I received the highest grade or special praise for a job well done.  More often than not, there were people who were better than me at the task at hand and my self-confidence would dip when I compared myself to those who had done better.  No matter which side of the bell curve I was on, my confidence very much depended on other people.

I no longer ask myself how do I rate compared to other people.  The questions I ask myself these days are as follows:

• Did I do my best in this situation with the resources available at the time? 
•  What can I learn from the situation? 
•  How would I do it differently next time?

Do I still get disappointed with myself? Occasionally, but only when I know I didn’t do my best work or dishonored what I knew to be true for me.  I no longer look outside for comparison.  I have only to look inward to find the true measure of myself.

Learning to Receive

Early Saturday morning I had the privilege of having a Spiritual Coaching session with a fellow classmate.  The process she took me through revealed to me something I thought I had dealt with a long time ago.  It reminded me that our biggest issues are revealed to use like layers of an onion, slowly revealing themselves to us a layer at a time.

I was raised to be INDEPENDENT.  I capitalize it because it was distilled in me in so many ways.  The bottom line is I wasn’t supposed to ask for help, I needed to learn how to do manage for myself.  In no way am I complaining about how I was raised.  This particular skill has been very useful.  Even when I got sick with Fibromyalgia in college, I didn’t give up - it wasn’t an option for me.  I had to prove I could be independent.  I even deliberately stayed away from dating until I could prove to myself that I could support myself.

The challenge I find myself with now, is that I can’t ask for help when I need it.  Being INDEPENDENT is great if you are stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere surviving by your wits alone.  However, that is not the situation I find myself in.  I live with my husband and we enjoy a great extended family and many friends. 

How do I go from being INDEPENDENT to independent and connected to my community?

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought over the past 2 days.  What I realized is that I don’t ask for help.  I get frustrated with the situation until someone offers to help me.  This strikes me as being passive-aggressive, which isn’t how I want to present myself.  Later on Saturday I had to go to a bookstore and decide to put my new found insight into practice.  Instead of wondering through the bookstore forever trying to find the section I was looking for, I went promptly to the help desk with every intention to ask for help in my search.  Instead what I said was “I am looking for x.”  I laughed at myself later because I realized I had made a statement of fact instead of a request for help.  My challenge is to learn to ask for help. 

I know how to ask for help, but why is it so difficult for me to put that into practice?  The realization is that I don’t want to be turned down.  I don’t want to be rejected.  When I ask for help I am being vulnerable in a way that I am not comfortable with.  I don’t want to appear weak or in need.  In essence, I don’t want to be human.  It is time to embrace my human nature.  I don’t know everything, but what I do know is this way of thinking no longer serves me.

If I want to continue to be of service to others, I need to learn how receive service from others.  A few years ago a friend said to me, “You are always there when we need you.  Give us the chance to be there for you.”  I had let myself forget that sometimes the best gift you can give, is letting someone else help.

Standing in Resistance

Sometimes I feel like an unruly two year old in my conversations with Spirit.  “ NO! NO! NO! I don’t wanna!”  This past week Spirit pointed out to me how my inner toddler has come out to play surrounding a situation I’ve been unhappy with.  I have to laugh at myself when these moments of insight come and the mirror is being held up for me to see just how much resistance I’ve been putting up.
 
My great ah-ha this week is that by being in resistance I am prolonging the situation I do not wish to be in.  Once I learn what Spirit has sent me here to learn, only then will I be able to move out of the situation onto the path I’ve seen coming.  I’ve been so eager to move onto what I know is coming, that I forgot that to take the steps immediately in front of me.  I forgot that I need to crawl before I can learn to walk, then run.  I was wanting to run, when I didn’t have the fundamental skills necessary for the task.

Thank you Spirit for showing me how necessary learning the fundamentals are.  I feel a great weight lifted now that I understand why I am still in the situation I am in.  Time to buckle down and learn what I am here to learn.
 
The truth as I know it, is that we would rarely choose continue to learn and to grow if we were comfortable all the time.  It is in the times of our greatest discomfort, that we have the most incentive to make the necessary improvements to better ourselves.  What is uncomfortable in your life?  What are you are learning from the situation so that you do not have to continue the pattern?

What's in a story?

I’ve recently been introduced to the idea of storytelling.  This is the not the story telling that occurs around a campfire or in novel or song; no, this story telling is about the stories we tell about ourselves.   

We are all story tellers, speaking to others of our defining moments, of the journeys we have taken, the sufferings we have endured. The stories we tell shape our lives, not only the past when the story occurred, but they also affect our present, and if we let them, our future.

The following is a story I have often told myself about setting goals.

As a kid I dreaded the month of January, not only was the excitement of the holidays over, but every year my teacher would assign us the dreaded “New Year’s Resolution” assignment.  I hated this exercise.  It felt like a waste of my time and I could rarely think of goals I wanted to accomplish, so I always put the same goals year after year.  “I want to lose 5 lbs.”  “I want to learn to speak Spanish.” “I want to be better organized.”  These are all fine goals in and of themselves, but they weren’t the right goals for me because I never meant it.  It was always another assignment to get through.  As the years went by and I had the same goals each year that I had still not accomplished from the year before my story became “I hate goal setting.  I’m not any good at it.  I can’t follow through.”

I’ve carried this story with me into adulthood.  I dreaded employee performance reviews, not because my performance was bad, but because they always asked the same question: “What are your goals for the upcoming year?”  Since I’d told myself for so many years that I wasn’t good at achieving my goals, I always set the bar very low, so that I knew I would reach it. I never wanted to try for something that would be a stretch for fear of not being able to accomplish it.

Since becoming a Life Coach I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of goal setting.  How could I as a Life Coach help other people move forward with their lives and ask them to set goals for themselves, I couldn’t do it for myself.  Intellectually I understood the importance of goal setting and how powerful it can be, but I just wasn’t comfortable with using this tool myself, so I set about to change my story.

Today I received a great gift that has helped me to change my story about goals.  During the course of a conversation about my energy levels I had with a woman I’ve known for a few years she told me, “Alison, when you set yourself a goal, it is like you are standing in Virginia and you cast out your anchor all the way to California, and then you proceed to drag yourself down the line to your goal.  You have such strong energy when you set a goal for yourself no wonder you are tired.”  This was such a gift because this person did not know I’d been wrestling with the concept of goals, nor of the story I’d been telling myself.   Seeing what I’ve done with my live from her perspective helped me overcome my previous story about setting goals and my ability to achieve them.  It gave me the opportunity to look back on what I have accomplished with my life so far and to realize that I have achieved my goals, the difference is, I achieved the goals I set because I wanted to set them, not because someone though I should.

My new story goes something like this…

When I set my heart on a goal, I put all my energy into completing that goal until I have achieved it.  For me, goals worth achieving come from the heart, not the head.

This new story feels so much more empowering than the old story that was holding me back from reaching for what I really want because I didn’t think I could get it. Now I know the truth, I am as powerful as I choose to be.

What is your story?  Does it hold you back from achieving greatness or propel you forward?

Seeing Through the Eyes of Gratitude

I recently began a week long exercise in keeping a gratitude journal.  Each night I would write down all the things I was thankful for, sometimes just a simple line, sometimes writing a paragraph, but always acknowledging the blessings in my life. 

At the start of the exercise I thought of myself as a pretty grateful person.  I take time to enjoy the way the breeze feels on my face, the color of the sky at sunset, the first bloom of the season.  What I found is that I was barely scrapping the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  In the past when I have kept a journal I have found it difficult to find anything to write about, but this was different, I had trouble putting my pen down each night.  I would go to bed with a smile on my face because all my many blessings were fresh in my mind.

Never once during my week of gratitude journaling did I mention that I was grateful for my health.  I only recognized this in hind sight when I wound up in the ER the following week.  Health is one of those things like the car starting in the morning that we just take for granted until something goes out of whack.  It made me renew my vow to practice gratitude.

So here is my gratitude list for that day in the emergency room

• I am grateful to my husband for spending the day driving me to the doctor’s office and then to the hospital
• I am grateful my doctor’s office was able to quickly process my information and try to make me as comfortable as possible.
• I am grateful the hospital has valet parking for the ER so that my husband could stay with me, instead of spending time parking and finding me later.
• I am grateful for the quick admittance to the ER.  There was no wait to get a room.
• I am grateful for drugs they gave me to help reduce the pain.
• I am grateful for the support of a friend who works in the hospital who took the time out of his schedule to come see me.
• I am grateful for the health insurance that made this whole ordeal much easier to deal with.
• I was grateful to be released to my own bed at 11:00 p.m. that evening instead of having to stay overnight for observation.
• I am grateful for the staff that helped move me to tests and made the day go very smoothly.
• I am grateful for the licks of my puppies who welcomed me home that evening and who did not disturb me in my sleep.
• I am grateful for the support of my supervisors who continue to give me time to work around doctor’s schedules.
• I am grateful for the support and prayer of friends and family as we look for answers.
• I am grateful to my doctor for being so proactive and getting me into specialists and tests much faster than the average waiting time.
• I am grateful for the 6 lbs. that I have lost
• I am grateful for the opportunity to change the way I eat

So, am I grateful that I wound up in the ER? I don’t know that I would go that far, but it was a great opportunity to practice being in gratitude.  I think my outlook changed what could have been a terrible experience.

You don’t need to have anything drastic happen for you to begin your own exercise in gratitude, but I certainly found it helpful to look for the silver lining.  They say seeing is believing, but I think it is the other way around.  If you believe it is so, you will see it that way.  Because I was looking for opportunities to be grateful I found them at every turn.

Retreat to Advance

A few days before I attend a spiritual retreat my mom relayed to me a conversation she had with my brother on the topic of retreats.  Rather tongue in cheek he informed her that at his church only the women retreat, when the men get together they “ advance”.  This stayed on my mind during my weekend retreat as I considered what it meant to retreat.

When used as a verb dictionary.com states that to retreat is an act of withdrawal, often used in military terms either as a forced withdrawal or a strategic tactic.  As a noun it is a place of quiet and solitude often used for prayer.

My brother’s play on words about not retreating always advancing reminds of someone who will continue driving for hours instead of stopping to ask for directions.  In the end, who finds their way with more ease and grace, the person who pushed ahead stumbling blindly trying to find the path?  Or the person who stopped to considered where they were going and how to get there?   For me taking time for retreat, whether a few moments of meditation or a weekend at the beach, is about taking time to reflect on where my life is going and if it is the direction I want to take.  Only by making the time to retreat out of my everyday business into a space of quiet reflection can I hope to advance in a meaningful direction.

Life and Death in my SoulCollage® deck

I recently created two new cards for my SoulCollage® deck.  On the surface these latest cards seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum from each other. 

My “Mother” card represents my desire to be a mother as well as my power to create as I give birth to my new business.  I nurture myself and others through my SoulCollage® workshops, my Life Coaching practice and my garden.

My “Death/Transitions” card seemed to be a natural addition to my deck.  I’ve had an image I’ve been holding for a while, knowing eventually I would create a “Death” card.  I felt it was a mandatory addition to my deck as eventually we all encounter death in some form in our lives, culminating in our own physical deaths.

I was struck by the irony of creating these two cards so closely to each other, but then I realized that they go together naturally.  In order to create the changes I am working to manifest in my life I need the energy of the death card to clear the way for new things to come.  Then I will use the mother energy to create what it is I want in my life.