Giving an A

Several years ago for my birthday Melody our daughter gave me a book entitled "The Art of Possibility" by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander.

The subtitle is "Transforming Professional and Personal Life." I probably thought yeah, yeah, here's another one of those transforming books. But it really has the potential of transforming me, if I could just remember to apply one of the best practices in the book.

It's Practice 3, or Chapter 3: Giving an A.

What I got from my reading this was that if you would start every relationship by giving the other an A, you would be surprised at how different your attitude would be toward that person. The author is a professor and he would tell his class on the first day that they all have an A. He's given each one of them an A. Now, they will have to work very hard to lower that grade. He found that the students had a completely different approach to his class.

Then the author suggests that this could really change relationships. I remember when I was first introduced to this idea that it completely upset my way of thinking. I didn't know it, but I found that I automatically gave everyone an F and they had to work hard to raise that grade. In other words, my natural way of thinking was critical and judgmental. Hmmm...

I'm about to face a new relationship and found myself saying, I need to give this person an A instead of having negative thoughts about how I'm going to handle certain things. Immediately I had a changed way of thinking. Amazing! This person will have to work hard to lower that grade.

I think what happens is that I start watching for positive things instead of negative things, and then when something negative might happen, I'm surprised because I wasn't expecting it. Brings to mind the old adage: you find what you're looking for.
MB

Making Plans

This year in May, Paul and I will celebrate fifty years of marriage.

For a couple of years we've been thinking about how we'd like to celebrate.

For awhile we thought we would like to have a big gathering.

We would ride up to the celebration on our motorcycle. The only problem with that one if I had thought it through would be the "helmet hair" thing. That's a real problem for a woman on a motorcycle. Between sweating and the smashing of hair, you look really lovely when you stop to eat and discard the helmet. I have a pin I wear that says "I love helmet hair." That's a lie!

Then we thought one of the entertainments would be my brother and I clogging. I think I must have wanted to overcome the idea of two little old people celebrating their fiftieth. My image of that through the years is old, old people who have finally gotten to this point.

As the time has drawn closer, Paul and I have realized we might just want to get away by ourselves and take a trip and celebrate the day all alone. How strange is that? What I think is happening is that we're both still working and we deal with people all the time. Sometimes we just get "peopled out."

This is still January and our thoughts may change, but right now we're looking forward to taking off and having an anniversary trip. We'll see.
MB

Boomer! Sooner!!

Go Sooners!

Enough said.
MB

Looking Forward to 2009

Happy New Year to you if you are reading this!

In our family we have several important events we are expecting to happen in this new year 2009.

The first major event is that our oldest daughter will become the grandmother to twin grandsons, which of course means that we will become great grandparents to our second and third great grandsons. This should happen during the first half of March.

The next major event is that Paul and I will be celebrating 50 years of marriage. What?!?! How can that be? We're still enjoying being married, we're still learning new things about each other, and we're still best friends. I thought that was supposed to change over the years. Hmmm... We talked last year about celebrating this event this year with a big celebration including a country and western dance, but as the time approaches, we're seriously thinking about skipping the country and revisiting Hawaii and spending a week together on the beach. That's more appealing to both of us.

Wade's book should be released in the spring. That will be a major event. I was privileged to be one of the ones who was asked to preview the manuscript. I'm eager for the release.

Last Saturday night my 91 year old Mom treated 9 of her children and most of their mates to supper at a local Chinese restaurant. There were 18 of us altogether. This is a monthly event scheduled for the first Saturday night of each month, but this one was special because Mother wanted to treat everyone. As we talked and laughed, we're realizing that more and more of us are retiring and our grandchildren are growing up and life is moving on. To an onlooker we probably look like a bunch of old people eating together. To us I think we still see each other as kids growing up. We had a fun, fun time and it was over at 9 pm. Time for old folks to head home and go to bed. : )

Looking forward to all the things I know about that are coming in 2009 and anticipating the things that will happen that will be a surprise.

Life is good.
MB