In our time, pressure seems to be everywhere. There is a wealth of information like never before, which means we could find out about anything we wanted, only this takes time, so we look for “drip feeds” that will give us up-to-the-minute updates and we assume our sources do a reasonable job at finding and telling things as they are.
Reality is a bit different, unfortunately. Most of our information feeds are controlled by a fairly small group of huge profit-driven conglomerates, which make their money by selling. To sell well, they need people to “see red”, so they inspire fear via TV news broadcasts, bold newspaper headlines and various other methods.
The result of this is the general view that violent crime is everywhere, that different people cannot live together in harmony and that all too often, the only way to sort things out is to wage war on another ethnic group or country, even at the cost of “friendly” life.
Ronit and I have lived with our kids in a number of places around the world, where there were different cultures, different languages, different food and different climates. We have lived in Arlington Texas and Sunnyvale California in the USA. We have lived in Thailand and in Singapore. We have lived in Israel and in 2 big cities in Australia. We also traveled to many places, including Mexico, France, Philippines, Korea and China.
When we arrived in each one of these places, we naturally focused on the things that were unfamiliar and strange to us, because we needed to get used to them in order to be able to live comfortably. We noticed the local clothing, the local rules of driving, the style of the local buildings, the local manners and the local money.
But after a while, once we have settled in, all we could see was people – human beings, just like us, who get up in the morning, work for a living, have a family, care for their elders and sometimes struggle with life’s mysterious ways. We noticed couples holding hands and smiling at each other, kids running around screaming with excitement and parents looking worried when their child climbed too high or went too far away. We heard complaints about parking being hard to find, the ever rising price of fuel, the unpredictable economy and the distrust of politics. We saw women searching frantically for something in their purse and men panicking as they notice the time. We joined families as they watched big shows and played in the playground.
Everywhere we went, we saw good people.
Now, some people find it hard to spot the good people and I think I know why. You see, by design, our brains interprets anything that looks, sounds or feels like us as trustworthy and good, because it affirms us. By the same design, we become suspicious of things that look, sound or feel different to us.
The problem is there are sometimes obvious things that look different, while the similarities are harder to find and require effort.
One of the things I have said to many people many times is this:
The more you know about another person, the harder it is to judge them. If you knew everything about them, everything they did would seem like the best thing to do and the obvious choice. Being them, you would do exactly what they do
Ronit and I have immersed ourselves and our kids in other cultures and gradually understood more and more of their customs. People who live in the same culture all their life (especially in the same place) and receive filtered information about other groups and other places are not likely to find that understanding. When they bump into people who do things differently to their local custom, they suspect them and protect themselves against their influence.
In many places in Europe, the population is rapidly becoming heterogeneous, especially since the Soviet Union was dissolved and the European Union was established. In the USA, over 1.1 million people became permanent residents in 2008 alone and over 4.4 million from 2005 to 2008.
Australia is a country of immigrants. Of nearly 24 million residents, over 4.4 million (18.3% of the population) were born outside of Australia, mostly from non-English speaking countries. In 2008, 1½ times more people were added to the population of Australia through immigration than through birth. Looking back 3 generations, most of the Australian population came from somewhere else and many still retain their original culture to some extent.
Lots of people now work with colleagues in other countries. Many serve clients in other countries or purchase from suppliers in other countries. Unfortunately, not a small number of people have lost their jobs to people in other countries.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to “stick to your own”, isn’t it? If you think about it, it is going to be far more difficult for your kids!
So what can you do?
Whenever we go out to events with a large crowd, I like to play a little game with myself (if you are smiling to yourself now, please stop it and stay focused). I choose a person, a couple or a family and make up a story about them. I watch them for a while as they move around, touch things, speak, gesture and interact with other people. Then, I imagine what it might be like to be them.
When I see a couple with stern faces who hardly talk to each other, I imagine how they got up in the morning and had a fight. When I see a little girl crying and her father comforting her, I imagine she fell and got hurt or wanted to buy something and was disappointed.
I ask myself, “What may have happened for this person to behave like this?” I try to put myself in their shoes, or rather their emotional state, sometimes by matching their body language or facial expression. I try to BE them for a second.
Some of these people are black, some are Muslim, some are Asian, some are big, some are thin, some are short, some are sunburned, some wear sandals, some wear fancy hats, some are old and some are bound to a wheelchair. I really don’t care.
To me, they are all people. Good people.
In my imagination, they feel scared, they feel happy, they worry about their relationship with their spouse or their all-of-a-sudden opinionated teenager walking around looking too inviting, they give up chatting with a friend to push their toddler on the swing, they wonder what others might be thinking about them and are surprised when a stranger (guess who) smiles at them a big smile of understanding and identification.
Often, I share my stories with Ronit and the kids. I think it is important for my kids to see good people, because they are everywhere, but they are so easy to miss. I believe that for our world to be a good place for my kids to live, they have to see the good people in it and in doing so, they will become good people too.
What about you?
Gal
At the end of high school, my teen daughter Eden took a personal development course for teenagers and came back very disappointed. In a two days workshop, every speaker talked about hitting rock bottom before finding the light and that light, for some reason, was a way to make money.
4 years after her loud confident protest, Eden protested again.
Let’s try another example. Who gets your bonus points now?
I strongly believe that overusing the rock bottom technique promotes celebrity idolizing, lottery addiction and overnight success chasing. I can hear my daughter saying to me, “Mom, I never want to hit rock bottom to succeed. I would rather sleep in my soft, heated bed, have a family that supports me, enjoy my food at home or at a restaurant, study something I love and be successful”.
In the “olden days”, being proud of yourself involved the risk of being considered arrogant and only people in superior social standing could afford to take that risk. I thought the definition of pride has long changed from external approval to recognizing self worth. So I was very surprised to hear the adults in the camp, who are leaders and educators, sharing stories of hiding their own success to avoid being seen as bragging by others.
Growing up in a house that confused pride with arrogance and never hearing the word “I am proud of you” was not very helpful in making me proud of myself (being a sick girl and a bad student with a bad behavior did not help either). I remember glimpses of pride when I hit a ball in a street game and being good at sports, but generally, pride was not part of my emotional vocabulary.
Many years have passed since this first awareness. The good thing about personal development is that it never ends and even when you think you have reached a desired state or understanding, there are higher states and understandings waiting for you to reveal them. The most important things I refined when I was 16 were my basic 
Life is a choice! Regardless of how horrible the situation is, you have a choice. Practice choosing. I could choose to be a good student, I could choose to behave, I could choose to be healthy and you know what, when I realized it, I chose all these things!
Refining my basic 
On camp, at night, when the kids went to bed, I entered their rooms and told them that at night, before they go to bed, it is a good time to fuel their ships with motivation by going over the day and taking happy moments and successes that positively reflect on the way they see themselves. We then had one round of “I’m proud of myself” in each room.
This week, I was asked by one of my clients about the formula for a successful, healthy and happy life, but as much as I wanted to give him the formula, I could not.
People are divided into two groups – the ones that live life aimlessly, surviving from one day to the next, and those who look for the formula and wish to direct their efforts towards a chosen destination, rather than get up in the morning and find themselves in a place they do not like.
today and what will happen tomorrow. But for planners, certainty is the currency of life and they believe they can avoid pain most of the time and that is better than flowing and getting hit hard.
In different areas of life, we probably sit on different sides of different fences and, whether we are on one side or the other, we choose the side we think will give us what we are looking for.
The world is full of different people, with whom we have relationships of varying closeness and intimacy. More often than not, we find ourselves in conversation with someone wanting to say something, but saying something completely different, because saying what we think would produce the wrong results. This even happens with our partner sometimes, not to mention the kids.
There is one particular scene, in which his ex-lover, played by Robin Wright-Penn, tries to seduce him and he softly says to her, “I’m really sorry, but this isn’t going to work”. He is so sincere about being sorry, while at the same time being very clear he is not going to go along.
In fact, I have gone further than this and said things I had meant to say many many times and things I had kept for quite some time (I am not going to quote those here). Regardless of the outcome, I felt whole and at peace with myself. I was also proud of myself for growing as a person and becoming an honest communicator.
Absolutely everybody receives some criticism in life. Some of us have the misfortune of growing up with critical parents, while others bump into their first critic at school, but we all have to face criticism at some point, right?
The recipient is past-focused and interprets the comment as “You didn’t get me the ice cream I like this time”, instead of “please do it next time”
Essentially, believing that people always do the best they can will stop you from blaming them for not doing what you want just because you want it. Any feedback you give them will then be positive, future-focused and presented as a request. If they think your request is good for them and is within their power, they will do it.
Now answer this question: If you rolled back time and went back to being that same person at that time and place, could you do anything differently?
Winners and Losers
About half way through my walk, when I was already going at a good pace and feeling pretty pumped, I saw a young Chinese woman leaving one of the houses and saying goodbye to a young man standing on the doorstep.
Suddenly, the young woman noticed a bus at a stop about 200 meters away. She became visibly uptight, her pitch rose and she looked like she was asking the young man what to do (as I do not speak Chinese, this is all my interpretation).
The man gestured towards the bus and looked like he was urging the woman to run for it and try to catch it. She kept pleading with him until he joined her and they started running toward the bus stop.
By the time they decided to run and crossed the street, I had been half way to the bus and it was still there. There were no passengers in sight, its doors were closed and it kept waiting.
I looked over at the young couple running on the other side of the street. She was running half-heartedly, as if she thought the bus would surely drive away before she caught it. He was just running alongside her, slowing himself down to her pace to support her all the way.
About 30 meters before they reached the bus stop, the bus pulled out onto the road and drove away. By then, nearly 2 minutes had passed and would have caught the bus easily.
Eden’s Philosophy class typically ends at 8:50pm, after which she walks to the bus station and catches the bus home. That evening, the class ran a bit longer and only finished around 9:10pm.
As she was walking towards the bus station, Eden saw her bus already standing there. She said to her friend, “Hey, that’s my bus”.
Her friend said to her, “Go ahead and catch it”.
“Will you be OK?” asked Eden, because it was that time of night.
“Sure”, said her friend, “Go for it”.
Eden sprinted towards the bus and reached it panting heavily. As she got on, the driver smiled at her and said, “You’re lucky you caught me. This is the last bus for today”.
Eden had not known it, but the buses are scheduled according to the normal end time of class, 8:50pm, which leaves plenty of time for the students to make it to the station and board their bus home. Still, when she saw the bus, she ran for it with everything she had.
The way I see it, this sums up very nicely the difference between winners and losers and presents a lesson every parent should be teaching every child repeatedly:
If there had been even the slightest doubt in her mind that evening when she had decided to run for the bus, I hope my story helped her choose to give life all she has got every time.
Have a winning day,
Gal