dare to dream

Learning to ride a bike

I'm not quite sure how this happened, but my nine year-old daughter hadn't learn to ride a bike.

One could argue this isn't an essential life skill; it still felt important. Perhaps because I remember many an elementary school afternoon whizzing down my street (sometimes with no hands), exhilarated by the speed, the wind in my face, my growing independence. I wanted my daughter to have this experience. 

But at nine, nearly ten, rather than being eager to learn, she was afraid. Which is why -- when my family asked what I wanted for my birthday, in addition to asking for tacos and ice cream pie (a favorite childhood meal), I asked Miranda if she would practice learning how to ride.  

She graciously agreed, but it was shaky.  She wasn't comfortable getting on, getting off, turning--or riding, and needed my husband to spot her non-stop.   So taxing was the first outing that my husband came home, and wryly said "Happy Birthday!"  Teaching someone when they are frightened is no easy task; being the man that he is, he persisted.

Yesterday, we hit pay dirt.

Miranda had just finished a practice session.  She was so excited about her progress, when I arrived home from my errands, she was ready to head back out so that I could see what she could do:  get on the bike, speed up, slow down, trace an elaborate serpentine pattern, hop off like she'd been riding for weeks, if not months -- with absolutely no help from dad.

We were proud of her; there were high fives all around.

Source:  istockphoto 

Most importantly, she was proud of herself, her demeanor bright.  She'd taken on something hard, including her fear, and conquered it.

A few hours later, she was back on the bike.  This time in our neighborhood.  She picked up a few scuffs and scrapes in the process, but it was clear she wore these not as signs of defeat, but badges of honor.  

***

Do you remember when you learned to ride a bike?  How did you feel?

Do you have an inkling of something that one of your loved ones needs to do in order to cultivate their sense of self?  How can you gently nudge them?

Is there something you need to try, because you'll regret it if you don't, but you've been scared?  What is that thing?

Who is there that can help you as you ride through your fear?

How many scrapes (read:  badges of honor) can you accumulate in the process of trying?

Elizabeth Harmer Dionne: The Semmelweis Reflex

Elizabeth Harmer Dionne, a retired attorney and mother of four, is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in political science at Boston College.  You can read her previous post The Economics of Motherhood here. 

In 1847, Dr. Ignac P. Semmelweis instructed his Viennese medical students to wash their hands after assisting in childbirth.  His advice preceded Pasteur’s germ theory of disease, but Semmelweis had a hunch that this simple procedure would prevent the spread of puerperal fever, which killed up to 35% of women who delivered their babies in hospitals.

Semmelweis saved thousands of women’s lives, simply by washing his hands, but his colleagues mocked him and ignored his results.  He died prematurely in an insane asylum, a victim of the depression that followed the rejection of his life-saving idea and his despair over the needless deaths of countless women.  The so-called “Semmelweis Reflex”—a tendency to reject new information that challenges established paradigms—is named after him, a dubious honor.

Dr. Semmelweis’s history haunts me, because of its horrible irony.  Semmelweis’s dream was to save women in hospital maternity wards.  Because his colleagues killed his dream, women died.  (One of the most famous victims of puerperal fever is Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, who died from the disease in 1797.)

Few of us will have the life-saving insights of Semmelweis, and few of us will face similar hostility to our dreams.  However, each of us may face the death of small dreams.  Over a lifetime, these little deaths can accumulate, becoming a poignant whole—a life spent observing elusive rainbows rather than finding (or creating) our own small pot of gold.

Source: istockphoto

Dream killers come in many forms.  Mockery can be a dream killer.  A high school senior once asked me, the lone sophomore in an AP music theory class, where I wanted to attend college.  “Harvard!” I blurted out.  She snorted and replied, “Nobody goes there!”  Well, obviously some people did, and I wanted to be one of them.  I ignored her derision and forged ahead.

Limited vision is another dream killer.  My high school guidance counselor’s observation was even less helpful:  “Why go out-of-state for school?  We have good schools here!”  I ultimately concluded that Harvard wasn’t for me, but the dream of attending a prestigious school fueled the hard work and determination that secured my admission to Wellesley College, a platform for other dreams.

My teen-aged daughter wants to be a pediatric surgeon, a dream she has nurtured through multiple summers of dissection camp.  (Surgery is her dream, definitely not mine—I merely write the checks!)  She still vividly remembers the orthopedists at Children’s Hospital Boston who set her broken arm when she was two.  That experience gave birth to a dream that she could help children in the same way.

Source:  istockphoto

An insidious dream-killer is to impose your dream on someone else.  My daughter’s dream-killer was a “teacher” who suggested that she would not complete medical school if she had a baby.  (I am deliberately not identifying this woman’s place within the so-called “mommy wars,” as either extreme can kill a dream.)  I reminded my worried daughter about my own experience:  Pursuing both motherhood and a profession is difficult but also tremendously rewarding.  I have confidence in her dreams and her ability to achieve them.

There is no check-list for a worthwhile dream.  On the contrary, I am arguing that no one can establish the content of another’s dream.  Each woman (or man) must do the hard work of understanding where talent, vision, desire, values, determination, and circumstance intersect in her particular life.  There she will find her dream.

One of my most important tasks as a parent is to nurture my children’s dreams (and to restrain my impulse to turn them into versions of “mini me”).  My son probably will not become both a major league pitcher and switch-hitter, but life will teach him that, soon enough.  So my husband enthusiastically practices with him during evenings and weekends, and I dutifully shuttle him around to practices and games.  Because of his dream, he is learning lessons about determination, discipline, and hard work, and he is having a splendid time in the process.  Pursuing dreams with joyous abandon can be fun.

Source:  istockphoto

My conclusion from all of this?  Avoid the Semmelweis Reflex.  Don’t apply it to yourself or others.  Don’t allow others to apply it to you.  Life will tell you soon enough whether or not your dream is fool’s gold.  In the meantime, the journey of following your rainbow can be the ultimate affirmation of your life.

***

Had you ever heard of the Semmelweise reflex before reading this post?  I hadn't.  Has there been a time when someone suggested that you pursue a dream -- but because this suggestion "challenged your your (negative) paradigm about yourself", you rejected their suggestion?

Have you ever had an idea that you knew was right -- that challenged consensus thinking -- but was rejected, and you consequently found yourself despondent?  Consider again Brooksley Born's experience.

Knowing about the Semmelweis reflex, what can we do to give life to the dreams of our loved ones, and to ourselves?

Becoming an Older, and Wiser, Woman

D-day, the day I've been dreading is finally here.

It wasn't always a Dread-day. There was a time when I gleefully anticipated my B-day; it couldn't come fast enough.

But now that my birthday is increasingly a reminder that my youth is fading, and my faced is etched with ever more wrinkles, like rings on a tree, my d-day, b-day can't come and go fast enough.  And, no matter how many candles I blow out on my birthday cake, being younger is a wish that won't come true.  So, I'm grieving, and given that there is a loss, grief is appropriate.

But how long shall I grieve?  If my grief is protracted, will I be diminishing, even dismissing, the life I've lived, the experiences I've had up to this point? More importantly, will I be saying that I would trade what I hope is becoming inner beauty for outer youth?  I don't like how I'm starting to look, but I do like who I am becoming.  In fact, I like myself far more than I did two decades ago when in my youthful prime.  My friend  Macy said it well, "the price of wisdom is youth."

Truly, truly -- I don't know how to do this getting older thing; it's so unknown.  While I'm figuring it out, I will undoubtedly have days during which I'm immobilized, giving into my fear, staring longingly into the Mirror of Erised.  My plan, however, is to take my age on, one birthday at a time.

I'm going to get older no matter what; I'd like to become wise too.  

***

Thoughts?

For more on this topic, re-read Lisa Poulson's terrific post Bette Davis (and Epictetus) were right.  You may also want to read On the Eve of Hope... Loss.  For a male counterpoint, take a look at Some Thoughts on Aging by Fred Wilson, a prominent VC blogger, whose birthday was earlier this week.

Configuring a space for our dreams

We just moved closer to Boston last week -- only 30 miles east, but a seismic shift in many ways.  So I'm thinking a lot about management consultant Tom Peters' thoughts on space configuration.

Here's a quick snippet from the 2-minute YouTube video clip, which you can watch as well.

“If I live within 100 feet of you, in the course of a week, you and I will cross paths or go to the bathroom or whatever, and we’ll talk with each other seven times, let’s say. If you’re more than 100 feet, I won’t see you or I won’t talk to you more than once a month.”

To me, Tom Peters' ideas have profound implications for our dreaming.  For example: 

If one of your dreams is to have a closer relationship with loved ones, whether family or friends, but you don't live near one another, what are you doing to achieve proximity despite the distance? 

In addition to physical distance, there's emotional distance -- as teenagers individuate, for instance.   Are we making time to be beside them while they are doing whatever they want to be doing, just to be with them?  Making the effort to be a part of their space, on their terms? 

What about dreams for you?  If you want to write or run or be alone (so you can figure out what your dream is), is there a place for you?  A time allotted?

Thoughts?

P.S.  Here's a piece I wrote when we first started the hedge fund about space. 

Janna Taylor: The Middle

Janna Taylor currently owns and operates Mind Full Tutors located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She holds a Masters of Education in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University and has over ten years of experience tutoring students in some of the nation’s most prestigious schools. In 2008, Janna served as a judge for Harvard University's Education Enterprise Competition.  She talked about the beginning of her dream in the post If You Get Defensive, You're Getting Close

Heartbreak Hill is a roughly half mile stretch of low-grade incline between miles 20 and 21 of the Boston Marathon. Anyone who is familiar with this race knows Heartbreak Hill. Runners dread it. Spectators thickly line the streets to cheer on the brave athletes who dare tread its path.  What some might not know is that Heartbreak Hill is actually the last of a series of four hills that begin at mile 16, which makes reaching that final hill even more challenging because the hills begin at a point when a runner’s energy is quickly running out.  In other words, the middle is the hardest.

Like the exhilaration of the first mile of a marathon, when we begin an endeavor, the momentum and power of our dreams and the support of others’ well wishes drives us on. Over time, this energy may die down, not because our dream has lost value or that people no longer care. Rather, because the dream appears to move along at a steady pace. All looks well.

Source: istockphoto

You might think that once you’ve reached the middle, you’ve hit your stride. You get into your groove. Easy, right?

Nope. At least not for me.

Right now, I’m in the middle of my dream and it is hard. Even though I’ve come a long way, I have farther to go. How do I keep going when I am energy-depleted and in the middle of my Heartbreak Hill?

Here a few things that are helping me through the middle:

Recommitting myself to the vision. My business approached a critical moment this past spring in which I had to decide whether to maintain my business at its current volume or expand.  The initial vision was to expand, but frankly, it was tempting to stay at my current level. I was happy and satisfied with the level of income, number of work hours, and simplicity of managing a small cadre of tutors.  What I had to face, however, is that I didn’t sign up for a 5K run/walk. I had signed up for a marathon. To accomplish what I set out to do, I needed to recommit to the original vision of helping as many students as possible by expanding the tutoring center and hiring more tutors. To signify this my redoubled commitment, I hired three more tutors for the fall and negotiated a space expansion with my landlord. Had I decided to maintain my business’ success rather than increase it, I would not have been true to my dream or my capability.

Trying to view the middle as the beginning. Honestly, even though I am in the middle, every month feels like a start up month.  I am constantly learning major lessons or skills simply because I have to in order for the business to grow. I try viewing these learning opportunities as beginning down a new path that will make things easier and more productive rather than pesky things getting in my way. One proactive way that I keep this perspective is to audit my approach (policies, procedures, etc.) when something starts to lag or goes awry.

Source: istockphoto

Asking for help to see myself. Since beginning my business, several friends have had to talk me down from my proverbial ledge. Even in the midst of the exhilaration of living a dream, my self-doubt has momentarily stopped me in my tracks. During these times, I’ve called up friends and asked, “I need you to help me see me.” They always excitedly and graciously share their perspective that “Yes, you can do it and here’s why.” Sometimes when we are in the middle, we forget who we are because we are snowblinded by the difficulty of carrying out our dreams. Friends and family who know us and love us are often more than up to the task of helping us reconnect with our greatness.

Now that all the helpful advice is out of the way, I do need to mention one critical factor playing out smack dab in the middle of my very own Heartbreak Hill – bone weariness. I am tired. Really tired. I’m tired from doing something I love, but I’m tired, nonetheless. While I'm inspired, even comforted, by Warren Brown (Cake Love) who talks here about being "Physically Tired, Spiritually Amped," I still haven’t worked out what to do about my weariness.  My week vacation doing nothing but lay on the beach didn’t fully replenish me, which should be a red flag regarding my depletion levels. I do not know how to keep the physical and emotional energy at a critical mass.  Any thoughts or suggestions?

What are you in the middle of?

Most of fulfilling a dream is the “middle.” How are you sustaining yourself throughout this time?