Play Another Card

This week, at a business event, a woman—who was a complete stranger to me--said, “I’m a two-time breast cancer survivor.”

All day I thought about what she said, so out of the blue, and I wondered at her need to introduce herself that way. I don’t know if she’s married, a mom, has cats, belongs to the Libertarian party, hates the sound of chalk on a blackboard, or loves raspberries, but I know about her breasts and her health.

What I also know is that the experience of cancer has so colored her life that it has become her primary identity. That seems as great a tragedy as the surgeries and treatments she has been through. I know this happens not just with cancer but with other illnesses, divorces, losses even—and sometimes with our recovery too.

How are we defining ourselves and how are we allowing others or things that happen to us to define us.

Many years ago Mary Fetting, a wonderful therapist in Baltimore, helped me to make some big changes in my life. She saw how my thoughts were keeping me stuck, and she would say to me, “Play another card.”

She explained that we are each dealt a hand of cards—we get maybe seven to 10 cards each—both good stuff and bad stuff. “But, she would say, “Some people just play the same card over and over.”  “Look at your hand,” she would say, “and play another card.” 

I wanted to say that to the woman—whose name I never learned --but who believes that the most important thing about her is cancer, “Please, for the sake of your life, play another card.”

Don't Be a Victim

Here is a writing exercise that I use in my writing and caregiving classes. It’s a great daily practice and it works well when I feel self-pity coming on, or whenever I want to blame someone else for my feelings. It is called “Don’t Be a Victim” and it goes like this:

First, you complete each sentence below on a piece of paper or in your journal. Fill in each blank with the first thought that comes to mind.

I HAVE TO____________________________

I CAN’T_______________________________

After you have completed those sentences do this:

Go back and cross out the word “Have” in the first sentence and replace it with “Choose”, and then:

Go back and cross out the word “Can’t” in the second sentence and replace it with “Don’t want to. ”

You might be shocked and you might even debate those new sentences, but give it some thought. These really are your choices. For example you might have first written, “I have to be at work by 8.” But you change that to say; “I choose to be at work by 8.” And you argue that, but I have to or I’ll be in trouble. But that IS your choice. You don’t want trouble or a reprimand and so you CHOOSE to get there by 8. It's your choice. 

It is always your choice.

The point:

If you don’t like your life fix it.

Don’t feel sorry for yourself; it will destroy you.

Accept responsibility for your own life.

Stop lying to yourself.

Teach yourself not to be a victim.

Bonus points: Do this exercise with kids. Teach them young.

The Poem You Need Before Valentine's Day

Love After Love

The time will come 

Peter Paul Rubens

when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life. 

---Derek Walcott

Bosses Day

Today is National Bosses Day. This week we’ll see articles on “The Worst Bosses” and radio shows will invite callers to tell tales about their bad bosses.


I’ve been working since I was 15 so I’ve had a boss every day for 43 years. For most of my career I’ve been blessed with amazing bosses who showed me how to be a good leader. They forgave me, gave me second and third chances, and offered me opportunities to try things I was not qualified to do but that I grew to learn and love.

For the last 30 years I’ve been a boss and I borrow from those good bosses. Along the way though, I’ve had some bad ones--men and women who made the workplace scary and uncomfortable-- but they taught me too. They are my “Don’t” examples.

There was one who didn’t speak to anyone before noon; one who said, “You’re stupid” to anyone in front of everyone, and one who put on her make-up in staff meetings. On my best days I aspire to be like “M” who taught me to, “Remove fear from the workplace” and on my not so good days I try not to be like “D” who drove around the building at the end of the day to make sure that all of the window shades were within a quarter inch of the sill.

But while we’ll laugh about the “Can you believe it?” bad bosses on Bosses Day, what we are quiet about is being a bad boss. You rarely see the articles in which bosses tell about the times that they blew it. And anyone who’s ever been a boss has blown it more than once. The truth is that if you’ve been a boss (committee chair, troop leader, coach, supervisor,) you did some things that were not so great or you did something that you later realized was bad boss behavior.

At some point in our lives each of us occupies a leadership role and when we blow it our mistakes are only magnified by our level of authority. I say “when” and not “if” because it turns out that we are painfully, excruciatingly human. Leadership is too complex for perfection. The best you can pray for is feedback, self-awareness and willingness to change.

Over the years I got a lot of mileage out of the story about the boss who was obsessed with window shades, but recently when I saw myself rearranging another person’s work, I thought, “There it is, my version of window shades”; it was the same naked impulse to control.

Leadership is about courage so here’s a challenge for Bosses Day: don’t talk about the worst boss you ever had, instead talk about your worst day as a boss. No one is exempt. Even Steve Jobs was bad. The recent stories about him tell how he screamed expletives at employees and humiliated subordinates. Yeah, it’s APPLE, but that’s still bad boss behavior.

It is about finding a middle ground. I cringe about the times that I cared too much about someone’s personal life and about the times when I didn’t care enough. Our best learning doesn’t come from what someone else does, but rather from what we do—even if we’re not yet able to change it.

So now, on most days, I say to myself, “Life is too short and karma too real; just don’t be the crazy boss.”