The ONE BIG POINT for any kind of leader (spoiler: It’s Covey’s first habit)

“You don’t have to be a “real leader” to be a leader.” At least, that’s what one of the participants in my training told me this week. 

But I disagreed as soon as I heard the beginning of his story. Because he IS a real leader. So I told him that. 

“Yes, but I mean: I wasn’t leading a real team of people towards some real kind of objective” he replied.

… and that’s where he told the story that makes my ONE BIG POINT here.

“I was sitting at the dinner table after lunch on Sunday and my little girl told me she was still hungry. She always wants more than anyone else,” he added. “Normally I start making offers of things she could eat and, of course, she replies that she doesn’t like this or that or doesn’t want some other thing. But this time I did something different.”

When I asked him what, I was particularly happy. Not by what he actually did, nor by the “result” achieved. But by the fact that in only his first day of training with me the week before, he had got the ONE BIG POINT I want all training participants in my my leadership courses to get.

Yes, there is a ton of stuff you can do to be a good leader. And even more things you can put your focus on at any given time. You can set clear mission statements and align people to them, you can help people with motivation, create strategic action, coach and give good feedback … etc … etc…

But that’s not the ONE BIG POINT.

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“Well first I did what we learnt” he replied. “I stopped and I thought for a second. Just to break the natural cycle. I realised I didn’t want to do the things I normally do that lead to the results I normally get.”

So I asked again: “Cool. But what DID you do?” and he told me he simply said to his daughter that she should go to the kitchen and figure something out for herself.

“Really?” she replied with a big smile.
“Really!” he said. And off she went.

Then came the pure gold: He was about to get up and follow her to the kitchen when he asked himself: “Do I REALLY need to go and watch her? Do we REALLY to talk more about this?” Again, he slowed down his natural reaction just a little …

“Have fun!” he told her, his bum stuck solidly to his chair. And indeed, she did.

So this is my point, THE ONE POINT : 

(Remember, its actually Covey’s first habit, but I figured if I acknowledge that and totally agree, I can say it’s my ONE BIG POINT too right?)

It doesn’t matter if you call yourself a “real leader” or not, if you have a formal team to manage, a family you love or a some other group of people you work with. It doesn’t matter if you do things one way or the other, just like it doesn’t matter if you tend to focus on the “tick-in-the-box”, KPIs or service-level agreements, the well-being of people or the development of their competences.

What matters is that if you just slow down a moment, stop and bring some focus to what you DO want, what IS going on and ask A FEW GOOD QUESTIONS, you’ll already be doing a lot better than a lot of “leaders” who just jump into their natural (often) unconscious behaviours.

“Well played” I already thought…. But the story wasn’t quite over yet.

He told me that about an hour later his daughter came proudly back to the family with a chocolate cake, a smile and a cuddle for Dad 🙂

Well played again, I thought 🙂

That’s a great leader!

(Dedicated to Hans)

Thanks for reading 

If you are interested in joining one of my training sessions or helping your teams to get a better grip on leadership or other topics, have a look around and see what captures your interest. Check out the “About Me” page and don’t be afraid to “Contact Me“. Hope to see you soon !

How to stop procrastinating about a decision – the simple way

Some decisions come easily. It’s a gut feeling and you just know what to do. But other decisions can get us stuck forever. It took me almost two years (2006-2008) to finally decide to work for myself.

I was recently asked how I did commit to that decision and I remembered the process a good friend took me through. It is essentially a “risk management” type process which you can use to forget about long lists or worries and woes about how it will all turn out…

My decision to work for myself did not come without the usual worries : What if it doesn’t work? Will I make enough money? Is it the right time? In the summer of 2008, I was expecting my 3rd child, had bills to pay and my wife was a full-time mother. I didn’t want to get it wrong. And as we all know, fear is a wonderful way to do nothing. In fact, I had already been ruminating for nearly two years.

One day I spoke about it with my friend Kevin and he asked me a few questions that finally sealed the deal. When you are faced with worry about if you really can decide to “do that”, these might help you …

If it works ….

Kevin asked me to estimate on a scale of 1-to-1o the likelihood that it would work out. At the time, I was a learning and development manager with a great bunch of contacts of like-minded learning people and I was planning to start-up as a freelance trainer. I figured someone was bound to give me some work. I had loads of energy, felt very creative and was good at networking. And I had no doubt about my ability to deliver. I estimated a “7”.

Then he asked: “If it does work, how would you measure the impact scale of 1-to-10?” adding that I could think about happiness, money, pride … whatever I wanted. I answered immediately with a conservative 10 🙂 It was exactly what I wanted for so many reasons, I would manage myself and my time, make great money and be much happier.

What if it doesn’t work?

Kevin immediately followed up with that one. “Now estimate from 1-to-10 the negative impact if it doesn’t work out”, he said. On that day, I had 20,000 euros in a savings account, which would give me quite some buffer for not having work immediately. I figured that if I didn’t have ANY work in 6 months, I could double-down for a few more months before I’d be forced to look for another job. As a 30-year old with a pretty nice CV at that time, I thought having a “failed” 9-month attempt at entrepreneurialism wouldn’t be the end of the world. I could always spin-it nicely and surely I’d get another good job one day? Even flipping burgers would pay the bills if we cut back. I estimated the potential impact of failure at a “2”. It would only be money after-all.

And then he asked me: “And what is the likelihood of that all going wrong?” At this point, you might be asking yourself if this method is worth anything at all. Surely these estimations are not worth anymore that that? But as I said in a previous post, we all have tendencies to make up stories that are not worth much. So if you’re already lost in those stories, why not bring a little method to the madness?

So I thought about it: I have a good network, I’m creative etc etc …. I reckon its a “2” again.

When you have measured probability and impact of the reward/risk, its time to do the maths

Anyone who has even been a project or risk manager already knows what we are doing here. Its a typical method. If you want to do it better, you can ask some experts and experienced people to throw in their thoughts on probability and impact. Or you can be a dreamer like me. Either way, you can use this tool to make a decision.

The final step is to multiply the results for reward / risk.

In my case, the result for “reward” was 7 (likelihood it works) x 10 (impact if it does) = 70

The result for “risk” was 2 (likelihood it doesn’t work) x 2 (impact if it doesn’t work) = 4

… and that was that: 70 vs 4. I couldn’t help but say “OK …. I gotta do it”

Now: You can question this method all you want. But this is a tool for when you are stuck with questioning things. So if you are stuck with an important decision, try this and let me know how it goes.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Good luck!

Stay safe,

D

Facing facts

Yesterday, inspired by my 14-yr-old, I wrote a post called “Facing Fear“. Today I caught myself posting on Facebook that I was “making up stories in my head”. Then I remembered this quaint little acronym : “FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real”. Meditating on that this morning has been helpful and led me to focus instead on facing the FACTS…

We all have our monsters. Some of them exist in the real world and we are right to be scared of them. But many of them are just stories we have made up in our heads.

The Buddha is reported to have said that “all pain and suffering comes from attachment to desire and ego”. This is not to say that when you get burnt, the fire didn’t cause you pain. But to say that much of what causes us distress is our attachment to some story we have made up in our head (some form of “ego”) that we can’t let go of.

To better understand this, let’s take an example : Suppose you have a meeting to go to and on the way, your car breaks down. That little voice might say “Oh no, I’m screwed” or “This is terrible” or “There is nothing I can do about it”.

What is happening? You had a plan and something happened. In this new moment, you have a memory of the past planning you did and things you wanted (to have a meeting) and an idea about what you want to happen in the future (to go to the meeting). Neither of these things now correspond to the current reality (not going) and you get annoyed, stressed, worried etc… It is the separation between reality and story that causes the pain. It is the separation between reality and story that IS the pain.

If you think about this a little, you’ll see that much of what annoys you, stresses you, makes you angry (or even makes you happy!) is not “true” in the traditional sense.

So what is this ego? What are these stories? What does all this mean in REALITY and how can we get out of it?

If you want the Buddha’s answer, do the research. If you think you can turn off this “ego”, try meditation (good luck!). And if acceptance is your thing, thats cool too. But a little bit of “cheap psychology” and fact-checking might help too.

MANY of the things causing the fear we have are simply not based in reality. A voice in our head is telling us all sorts of things. Most people have a tendency to over-identify with that voice, as it were “me” or “the real me”. Others believe is is just a thing that happens in your body over which you have no control, just like your breathing or your hair-growing.

When this little worrying voice comes up, here’s how it goes: First, there is a thought that comes out of nowhere. You can’t help it, it just happens. Somehow, on autopilot, you compare that (random, uncontrolled) thought with your memories and/or wishes for the future. Then you make conclusions and predictions about “what IS”. This is all normal.

But, in the words of Mr Dylan “It ain’t me babe”. It’s just a thing that happens. A thinking habit. A PIECE of what you DO. But not you, and oftentimes, not true. And to be more philosophical, it’s pretty strange to attach oneself to all this non-existant stuff. The past is gone and the future doesn’t exist yet. In short: Right now is just right now: Stuff is happening, including a little voice in your head. That’s it.

So check the facts. Example in case: In today’s economic and health situation, I am (was?) today worrying about the future. I am capable of telling myself “I’ll run out of money” or “No-one can help me” or “This thing could go on forever and I won’t be able to be freelance anymore”. These are normal worries for everyone IMO. But they are not “truth”, in the sense that they are not current reality. They are that little voice thinking about a (thus far) non-existant future and a (gone) preferred past.

This is not to deny that things might turn out as I imagine. And IMO I would be naive to think it will all be all right out of pure optimism. That would be just the same functioning : more stories in my head.

So what DAN? What do you want to really say?

Check the FACTS. Anything that isn’t fact NEEDS to be accepted as no more than a story or hypothesis to test or include in risk-analysis. But not more. Not worry, not stress, not fear. If you can already separate for yourself what IS true and what is your own story, you are going in the right direction. Try it..

When I see things on social media about what might happen for the Corona virus, it can almost immediately create worry in me (without any effort from the real me :). What do I do? I check belgium.be for the latest facts. Everything else is conjecture, fakenews and fear-mongering.

When I worry about paying bills and wonder if anyone will help me, I check the facts. I heard something about loan repayments being put off. Research… call the bank.

How many times in your life did you worry about something only to find out if didn’t happen? And how many times did you think “Oh, I should have checked that, or thought about that” ? This is hard to do because we get swept away by the worry, the little voice.

There is a lot of stuff in reality today that IS problematic for people. I do NOT deny it and I do NOT suggest ignoring it. I only add that there is also a lot of worry not properly grounded in fact. Go check.

Good luck to all.

More from me on this whole “stories” and “perception” thing:

• I can’t and the amazing truth about us all
• Speaking the truth and non-voilent communication
• Obligations don’t exist

2 of my short stories:

• The man who made up stories
• The depressed inventor

…otherwise, I would strongly recommend checking out YouTube videos or books from Alan Watts. I don’t want to start listing all my favourite links to this guy. Just know that he was the first (1950s) and foremost expert on Eastern Philosophy, including Zen Buddhism. If you dig anything I said above, you might like him too.

Facing fear

I will admit it immediately: This post IS inspired by all the Corona mess. But I won’t talk about that any more.

I want to tell you what my 14 year old had to say about being “on hold” and not being sure how to move forward. With the innocence of a child and the natural creativity that goes with it, I think she made a great point : It’s scary to do the things we aren’t used to. And since the older we get, the more get used to, it’s only going to get harder unless something changes. It is time to face up to the fear and dare to do something different. And a change in point-of-view might help …

 

 

It all started with cancelled training: Since no-one is in the office, a trainer like me can’t go in and teach about how to pitch an idea, or how to negotiate a deal, or how to manage people. My daughter asked me “Why don’t you do ‘tele-travail’ (working at distance) like everyone else?”

I had a whole load of answers from “Its not the same thing” and “My clients prefer ….” to “I need to be careful with my brand” and “I like to be WITH the people” and, importantly “I’m not sure I want to do that”.

Next daughter question (where does she get this stuff from??) : “Give me one idea of what you DO want to do today” to which I replied that I planned to work on fitness and fix a few things in the house. And then came the magic.. she said “Thats because you know how to do those things and you know what you will get” (!!)

Now, I’m not the guy who tends to, or likes to, think “It’ll never work” but this did strike a chord with me : If I’m truly honest, I have no idea what the future will bring and yes, like many a 42-year old, I may well be getting stuck in my ways. Underneath my “wait and see when this all stops” attitude, there has also been quite a bit of “… and I can’t do anything about it”. I felt silly. I know too much to act like that. (Or maybe I act like that BECAUSE I know too much!)

 

At this point in the story, I was already feeling inspired to get out there and make things happen. “Focus on what you CAN control” and all that. But I didn’t have a chance before she doubled-down and threw her next point into the mix. She said :

“Imagine you were a 25 year old just starting out and you wanted to help people get better at the things you teach. You’d be in THIS reality from the start and you’d be asking yourself ‘How can I set this up?’… So, ask yourself that: ‘How can I set this up?’ ”

What did I get out of all this? What do I really want to say? What is the lesson to be learned ?

 

Our experience and knowledge and “the way things are” puts us in the box. And when the box starts to change form or get broken, it CAN be scary. Looking outside IS hard. Being fresh IS hard. Not KNOWING how things are going to go means trying something new, taking risks, and the possibility of failure. And so its easier to just stick to what you know and hope for the best.

But if you can admit that MAYBE you don’t know everything and MAYBE you have a few assumptions, then MAYBE you can entertain a new point of view, even if only for a moment. It might be scary and it might not work, but there might be a chance for some new results.

 

“I can’t” and the amazing truth about us all

We say “I can’t” all the time: 

“I can’t come to dinner, because it’s my wife’s birthday.”

“I can’t stop smoking. Its too hard.”

“I can’t figure out why I’m so tired. I’m just tired.”

 

But its never true. Every “I can’t” is always an “I don’t want to”: 

“I don’t want to come to dinner because I prioritise my wife’s birthday.”

“I don’t want to have to deal with “too hard” while I quit smoking.”

“I don’t want to figure out why I’m so tired. I’m satisfied with ‘so tired’.”

 

If we can realise that “I can’t” is never an expression of ability, we will be more truthful about what it really expresses: Willingness.

If we can replace “I can’t” with “I don’t want to”, we will be more honest with ourselves and everyone else.

It will be hard, but we will be willing to do “hard”.

 

“Of course,” you will say, “there are limits to this denial of can’t.”

“OK, maybe I don’t want to go to dinner with you, but I can’t play anything on a violin! ”

 

But it’s not true. There are no limits.

If I want to play a violin, I will play a violin. It’s as simple as that. We are all amazing. We are all limitless. And we are all able.

If we want to be.

 

“No, no, that’s enough,” you will say, grasping at straws. “There are still some things I can’t do :

I can’t jump over a tall building without any aid from technology.”

And you will wait for me to say that you could try if you wanted to.

But I won’t. Because that’s not the point and not the truth that gives rise to the point.

 

Yes. There are some limits in physical ability.

I could not go out today and complete an Iron Man faster than anyone ever did.

I can’t jump over a tall building.

 

But that is not a reductio ad absurdum to the real point.

Because the point is not about physical limits and you damn well know it.

When did you ever say “I can’t jump over a tall building” until today ?

You are just looking to argue your way out of hearing the truth about how we all speak all the time.

And the truth about who we really are.

 

The point is about being a lion, not a victim. 

We all have amazing ability.

We all have dreams.

We all have a “real me” hidden behind the bullshitting victim that other “me” is trying so hard to cling on to.

We can all be decisive and take ownership for whatever action we choose to go out and get.

We can all dare to announce to the world the limits we choose to place on ourselves.

And we can all believe in and be willing to be who we really are and do what we really want.

 

Sometimes I don’t want to.

And that’s OK.

 

But I always can.

And that’s the amazing truth about us all.

 

 

The depressed inventor

The depressed inventor hadn’t always been depressed.

For most of his life he had been really happy.

As a little boy, he loved to invent clever ways to fix problems. Once he invented a cat flap to feed the family cat when she came home in the morning. And to get to school more quickly, he invented a really big catapult to throw him from his house to the school yard (although Mummy said “No” to that one).

 

For every problem, he invented a solution.

And that pleased him very much for many years.

 

Until the day he ran out of problems to solve.

At first, he thought it would be a good moment to take a holiday. Surely when he came back, he would find lots of new things to invent?

But when he got home, he still couldn’t find anything to work on.

Until he had an idea: He would invent a problem!

For days and days, he worked very hard at inventing his problem.

No time to eat, no time to sleep. So much work to be done!

 

Finally, he was satisfied: He had a problem to solve!

So he set to work to invent a solution.

No time to eat, no time to sleep. So much work to be done!

He read lots of books and talked to lots of people. He made lots of notes and did lots of sums.

 

But after lots of time, he still hadn’t invented a solution.

And so he started to get sad. And sadder still. And sadder still, under he was completely depressed.

For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what to do.

So he went to bed and slept. And slept. And slept some more.

 

After a few weeks, the doorbell rang.

The depressed inventor dragged himself downstairs.

At the door stood Benny the Baker, who wanted to know why he hadn’t come to buy any bread for so long. And his little girl Jenny, who asked “Why do you look so sad?”

So the depressed inventor explained. He told Jenny how he loved to invent things to fix problems and how he had always worked hard to make everything work just so. When he told her how he had run out of problems, little Jenny started to smile.

As he started to explain how he had invented a problem, little Jenny started to giggle.

And when he said he was sad because he couldn’t invent anything to fix his problem, she just burst into laughter!

The depressed inventor looked at Jenny all seriously and asked: “What’s so funny?”

 

And so little Jenny told him:

“It’s so silly. You can’t fix your problem because you just made it up! And the more you work on it, the worse it gets. But it doesn’t even exist, because you just made it up! Your problem is that you had no problems and made up a problem so now you have a real problem because you can’t solve your problem. But there’s still no problem. It’s so silly!”

 

All at once, the depressed inventor understood.

Little Jenny was right.

And he started to smile again as he remembered he had made up his own problem.

And that’s not really a problem at all !

 

THE END

Self-employed? Don’t feel guilty about being lazy

As a self-employed person, I have a tendency to work, work, work. But right now, it’s 9.15am and I still haven’t “done anything”. Is this bad?

Well, first of all: It is not true. Having gotten up at 6.30, I packed my kids off to school, spent 45 minutes exercising and have since been reading “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel whilst eating a healthy breakfast that I enjoyed taking the time to prepare. So I have done something.

But let’s pretend that I had just rolled over in bed, left the family to it and done nothing but sleep. Yesterday, I only did a 2-hour coaching session and I just spent all of July and August on holiday. That doesn’t sound like doing much. Is that OK? Is that what self-employed people do?

Last week, I read an article about the morning rituals of awesome entrepreneurs like Jack Dorsey or Mr Branson. Up at 5.30. Sport. Meditation. Family etc.. Inspired by that this morning, I thought I should probably now sit down and seriously meditate on my top 3 priority business objectives for the day, week and year to come. I should make plans for new services or products, improved efficiency and more profit. That’s what successful business types do in the morning, right?

But quite frankly, I can’t be bothered. I don’t need to do anything. Tomorrow and Friday I’ll be delivering training all day, my revenue-winning calendar is as fully-booked as I’d like it to be and I don’t have anything hanging over my head. Except the “self-employed-lazy-guilt”, that is.

And then the phone rings. Is it a new client calling to ask me if I’m available for training next Wednesday? What will I say? Strictly speaking, I’ll only be lazing around doing nothing but fuelling my own pleasure. Will I be able to say “No”? Can I tell the truth? Or should I say I’m fully-booked? What if he takes a day off himself and sees me at the cinema at 11am? Or running in the park? Where will I hide?

Or maybe it’s my mother, calling to tell me I’m a lazy freelancer and I can’t possibly expect to be successful if I just hang-around doing nothing when work could be done.  “Everybody has to work”. “You can’t expect to just take random days off in the week. Your father could never do that.” Or even worse: “Don’t say ‘No’ to work now. You never know if you’ll still have more next year. You’re lucky people ask you. You should say ‘Yes’.”

Fortunately, it’s an unknown number. The stuff of voicemail. I don’t answer it. Today, I am calling all the shots. As I was promised when I read “Freelancing for Dummies” all those years ago, it would be great if I could do whatever I want whenever I want. If I chose to work for myself, it’s because I thought I could be a better boss to myself than anyone else. Well, I want a boss who loves my happiness more than the cash, productive hours or time-filling. Who is happy with achieving targets and going home early. Correction: Who doesn’t even call it “early” because that implies some form of 9-to-5 ritual just for the sake of it. 

For the new season ahead, my boss is going to tell me take it as easy as possible. “The clients are satisfied and so should you be. And even if they aren’t, you can’t please everyone all the time.” Relax. It’s not lazy. It’s awesomely efficient, minimum effective dose. It’s long-term sustainable, more rounded and balanced. You deserve it. Not because you worked so hard before, but just because you deserve it. Full stop.

So go lay on the grass for a while.. 

Jim Smith on letting go of your fearful boxes

ATD2015. Session SU304 is underway. Jim Smith says it’s not good enough to think out of the box. We need to get out of the box and act out of the box. 

To do that, you need to keep your personal power. You need to be able to be vulnerable enough to be yourself and not cater to the opinion of others.

But it’s not easy: There are many ways that we lose our personal power, from having fear of failure, to wanting to be liked, being overly-critical of ourselves or being perfectionists…

 

  

 

If you (like me) recognise any of these things, what can you do about it?

In short: Let it go. (I knew that was the theme song for ATD2015)

Really, that’s the whole message: Dare to live in the moment, stop worrying and believe in your personal power.

 

Want to see it in action (that sounds arrogant!) ? Here is my improvised mini-presentation from Jim’s session…

 

As I said to Jim later on, I think the key message here is far important than this post gives credit. Probably, I am not the only person with “self-esteem issues”. Lucky is the man who can say he is really in the moment, not caught up in what is “good” or “bad”, what has always worked in the past, or what “should” be done into future. Many of us worry (Are we doing OK? Will it work? Will people approve?). And caught up in the worry (box) we try desperately to keep doing the same things we always did in the hopes of getting the same satisfactory result.

But is “satisfaction” what we want out of life? Or do we want more? Do we want joy and awesomeness? If the answer if “yes” then it can’t be about staying in our boxes and conforming (to our own self-image or that of other side). “Awesomeness” is not a thing you can put in a box, measure, write and run a process for. It’s a “way” and a “being” that has to be felt. You have to trust in it. And that requires a little faith.

 

Let it go.

 

Read more:

• “Obligations don’t exist”
• “I think therefore I am. Not.”

There’s no respect in tolerance

Tolerance is supposed to be a good thing. The British stiff upper lip demands that we take a deep breath and don’t aggress those who don’t fit our standards. But this is not the same as true respect.

Today in training, we have discussed the different things that annoy us and how we deal with them. Participants have shared several examples of how people do unacceptable things, but they tolerate them. As if that’s a good thing.

But I only need to tolerate something I can’t tolerate! When someone is disrespectful, I can “teach him a lesson” or I can tolerate it. When someone exceeds the limits of what is acceptable, I can “put him in his place” or I can show tolerance.

But respect is different. Respect is true acceptance of the idea that I have my vision of things and you have yours. I have my beliefs and you have yours. I have my way of doing things and you have yours. None of them are “correct”, “better” or more “valuable”.

When I have respect for the vision, beliefs and behaviour of others, I have nothing to tolerate. I accept that everyone has the right to his own vision, beliefs and behaviour. Everything is “OK” and we can all agree to disagree. 

Tolerance is SO last year.,,

Obligations don’t exist

We all feel obliged from time to to me. But obligation is not a “thing”. Not like a tree is a thing. Or an arm. So, what is it? If we can answer this question, we may find the key to some kind of personal liberation. And maybe even real happiness.

When I first met my wife 13 years ago, I started to learn French. Following the first childish phase of her pointing at objects and giving me their names, we moved on to basic grammar and sentence structure. Pretty soon, I heard the phrase “Il fait beau” (It’s nice weather today). I was expecting that French speakers would say “C’est beau” (It is nice) but was instead confused by this “il”, which had thus-far been restricted to meaning “he”. I wondered: “Who makes it nice today?” (And suspected the answer might be “God” or “the sun.”)

As my learning went on, I heard more and more of these strange third-person phrases, but didn’t give them much thought until I noticed that my wife would regularly say “Il faut…”

• Il faut qu’on parte
• Il faut manger maintenant
• Il ne faut pas dire ca

In all of these expressions, the meaning is the same: “It must be the case that…” But grammatically, this strange “he” appeared again, as if someone else was obliging her.

Having at first wondered if French speakers were controlled by some invisible third-person, I decided it must be a cultural thing. Maybe they do feel more obliged by something external. But then I realised that although the grammar is not the same, my own language is full of these same obligations:

• I must go now
• I have to eat
• You shouldn’t say that

Whatever the language spoken, my reaction to such phrases varies based on my mood: Sometimes I ask “Says who?” Feeling friendly, I might say : “If you like.” And to expose what I sometimes see as indirect manipulation in these phrases, I might ask “But what do YOU think?”

But whatever I feel about such phrases it is important to restate that obligations don’t exist. Not like trees and arms. The answer to “Says who?” is always “me”. Even when I first think it is someone else. I accept that for my wife (and everyone else) her education, belief system and habits lead her quite naturally to feel that some things simply “are the case”, or that there are some rules to which we must abide. But we always choose to subscribe to these rules (or not), consciously or not.

If I want to be a law-abiding citizen, then I have to follow the rules of the country in which I find myself. If I want to understand people, then I have to listen to them. And so on and so forth… But if I don’t want to, I don’t have to.

So the first question is always therefore: What do I want? And to answer this, I have to know who I am. If I know who I am, where I come from, what works for me, what I like and don’t like etc.. I start to get a better picture of why I say things like “We have to…”, “I have to..” and all these other seeming obligations. I get a better understanding of why I announce these things as if they were true, rather than simply my own opinion.

The more I realise this, the more I can decide: Who do I want to be? Which obligations do I want to subject myself to? Who is responsible for my life and my behaviours? And every time, whatever I decide, I realise it’s just me who decided. And me who obliged myself.

Obligations are not a thing in the world, but a thing in me.