Time for a Change--Moving Notice

I have been a long time Blogger user and I currently have three blogs I post on, though not as often as I would like. As a writer, I am very picky about the content and I refuse to blog unless I have something really important to share. This is one of those times.

I have launched a new website for 180 Coaching and I am working with my designer to integrate this blog into my wordpress website. There is no easy way to migrate my blogger readers to this new site unless you voluntarily make this switch. So I invite you to visit 180coaching.com and join me at this new location. Click on the bottom footer to subscibe to the blog via RSS feed or by email.

See you there!


photo by Laura Scott

Happiness Leads to Success, Not the Other Way Around

A recent article featured in Inc.com titled Happiness Makes Your Brain Work Better by Jessica Stillman highlights the work of Harvard psychology researcher Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage who, makes the compelling argument that “rather than thinking of success as the source of happiness, we should think of happiness as a source of success.”

Achor believes we can choose happiness and if we do so our brains will function better and we will achieve greater success.

"We found that optimism is the greatest predictor of entrepreneurial success because it allows your brain to perceive more possibilities," said Achor. "Only 25 percent of job success is based upon IQ. Seventy-five percent is about how your brain believes your behavior matters, connects to other people, and manages stress. "

So how you choose happiness? Acker believes it might be as simple as choosing to be grateful and suggests that we write down three things we are grateful for each day for 21 days. This simple habit of finding things to be grateful for can change your mindset and open yourself up to opportunities for greater success. (Check out the accompanying TED video on this article for more tips on changing mindsets).

Twenty one days of being grateful? What is the risk in trying that?

Flickr Photo by Hawkexpress

The Ties that Bind

A client recently gave me a wonderful book for my library titled Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirschenbaum. This book features diagnostic questions which you can ask yourself to help you determine whether you should stay and work on your marriage or leave your marriage.

Diagnostic question #5 is this: In spite of your problems, do you and your partner have even one positively pleasurable activity or interest (besides children) you currently share and look forward to sharing in the future, something you both like…?

No? Nothing but the kids to keep you together? But shouldn't that be enough?

No, says Kirschenbaum, who writes:

Children aren’t glue and shotgun weddings don't work out. You probably know people who had kids in the hopes that it would pour some cement into the shaky foundation of their marriage. We all root for that to work, but we all know how often it doesn't. Children will keep you connected, that's for sure, but is not the kind of connection that has much to do with your love for each other. People fall in love and make a bond before there are children and they have to stay in love after the children have left home; if you want to look first sign of life (in your marriage) you've got to look beyond the children for it.

This diagnostic question is important even for couples who do not have children. Shared activities are important to a marriage, even if it's just preparing a meal together. These activities give couples a chance to share, to talk, and to engage in something that both parties find pleasurable or entertaining. Shared activities and interests can be a key bonding agent provided both parties take equal pleasure in those activities.

If you and your partner do not have a shared activity or interest, consider sitting down with your partner and creating an inventory of favorite activities and interests and find places where there's a match. Then make a commitment to do these activities together at least once a month. Preferably without children in tow.

Flickr photo by Mr. Thomas

“Unnatural and Undervalued”: Childless in Australia

The title of this recently published article out of Australia pretty well sums up the findings around the stigma and perception of childlessness: ‘Unnatural’, ‘Unwomanly’, ‘Uncreditable’ and ‘Undervalued’: The Significance of Being a Childless Woman in Australian Society.
And while I agree with their findings, I was disappointed to read that the co-authors Stephanie Rich, Ann Taket, Melissa Graham and Julia Shelley based their observations on interviews with only five childless Australian women (please, it’s a large country, surely there’s a few more women out there to interview!).

Small sample aside, I was interested that they did note one important curiosity—that childlessness for women is considered normal at young adulthood but “abnormal’ for women in their late thirties or early forties. So true!

So why does childlessness move from being perceived as normal to abnormal over the passage of say ten or fifteen years? Is the assumption of the “maternal instinct” so prevalent that we are all expected to be a mother or in baby lust by a certain age, and those that are not are then seen as “abnormal”?

Or, is it that while some folks can understand why a woman or man would wish to postpone parenthood, there is very little sympathy or understanding for those who indefinitely delay parenthood, or very publically opt out altogether?

I suspect is may be a bit of both, as is noted in the abstract for this article:
“While childlessness is increasingly acknowledged, it is still not completely understood.”

Where is the “understanding gap” in your experience?

Flickr photo by Amandabhslater

Is Your Love Conditional?

As we make our way into the year 2012, I think about all of the crazy New Year's resolutions I have made or failed to make and I think of the one question that is occupying my thoughts these days:

To What degree Is My Love Conditional?

The photo above does so much to illustrate just how we make our love conditional--conditional on someone else stepping up to the plate, or changing, or doing something that we feel shows us their love and respect.

What if, even for one day or one week, we truly loved unconditionally? How would that change our world?

Flickr photo by Massdistractions

Change is Hard but We Do it Anyway

Alfred Alder 1879-1937

“It is the feeling of inferiority, inadequacy and insecurity that determines the goal of an individual’s existence.”

Alder and Sigmund Freud were colleagues in the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society but Alder never bought into Freud’s theory that humans were primarily guided by the unconscious mind. Alder believed that birth order and what he termed the “inferiority complex” played a significant role in the development of the human psyche and that even very young children consciously seek power in their world.

Alder believed we are motivated by our goals and our perceptions of ourselves, factual or not, and he understood that a singular fixation on a goal and our beliefs or “fictions” about ourselves and the likeliness of achieving that goal can make us intractable and resistant to change. He wrote: “The hardest thing for humans to do is to know themselves and to change themselves.”

Yet millions of people are seeking to do just that through coaching. Change can be hard but the motives to change can be so great that the person is driven to do something different and break a pattern of thought and/or behavior. A hundred years after Alder was developing and lecturing on his theories, we are finding pathways as individuals and as a society to embrace change and examine and discard the “fictions” that keep us stuck.

I think Alfred Alder would be very proud.

Are the Childless More Likely to Divorce?

Are the childless more likely to divorce? This was the question posed to me by Vicki Larson, a journalist for Huffingtonpost.com, recently, and it gave me the opportunity to clarify.

She contacted me because she wanted to know why childless couples are more likely to end up divorced than couples with children, and this is how I responded in the subsequent article titled article titled “Are Childless Couples headed for Divorce?”

"Not all the childfree are intentionally childfree couples," Scott discovered…"A good chunk are postponers, those who delay parenthood."

Sometimes couples delay to the point that fertility problems arise. "Then the question of ''When should we have kids?' morphs into 'Should we have kids?" Scott says, forcing couples to explore other ways to have a baby, such as adoption, surrogates or in vitro fertilization (IVF). That, she says, can be extremely stressful and can lead to a fracture that a couple can't get past. In fact, many infertility specialists recommend marital counseling.

"If one partner desperately wants to try to have a child and one partner might not put as high a priority on it, that could be a deal breaker," she says. Often a couple hasn't discussed what point they stop trying -- how much money, how much time, how many procedures. Many women often feel like failures and feel less close to their partners; for many men, the fertility process can turn sex into anything other than pleasure. "I hear from men who say, 'This isn't fun anymore. I feel like I'm sperm on demand,'" Scott says.

What I wanted to express is that childless couples are childless or childfree thorough different pathways--either they have:
1) Intentionally delayed parenthood by taking actions to prevent conception; or
2) Tried to have a child but have not yet conceived, are infertile, or haven’t tried that hard (note the recent media focus on sexless marriages); or
3) Have had a child through live birth or adoption and have lost that child; or
4) Intentionally decided not to have biological children and remained childless through deliberate actions to prevent conception, or through termination of a pregnancy.

If you are childless because of 1), 2), or 3) and you and your partner are not on the same page decision-wise, or in a different stage or mourning or acceptance on the issue of children, there is a risk of a fracture. And if you are childfree because of 4) when both partners had agreed on remaining childless but one partner has since changed his or her mind that can be a serious issue too. In any case, it’s stressful, more so because you have a choice, unlike parents who already have kids and can’t take them back to the store for a refund.

So yes, the childless are more likely to divorce, some because they separate before the kids come along and are thus are not motivated to stay together because of the kids, some because they can’t agree on the number or timing of children, and some divorce for the same reasons couples who have kids get divorced: incompatibility, infidelity, emotional or physical abandonment, whatever.

So can you say that the childless have higher rates of divorce because they don’t have kids? I don’t think so. But I think you can say that some childless couples divorce because they are at odds about how they feel about not having children.

Flickr photo by madmolecule