The Atlas

As both a Daddy's Girl and the eldest daughter raised by a single father, I am an eternal and somewhat obsessive spectator when it comes to watching father-daughter relationships around me. Over the years, I have noticed that my observations of how father's interact with their children is often a big catalyst for why some of my male friends turn into my favorite people.

Very few of us are naturally great at establishing and maintaining boundaries automatically. It usually requires work -- often after we've learned lessons about why NOT holding boundaries creates a problem. So what does that actually look like? This week, Lawrence and I discuss this messy topic.

The problem with always saying yes, is that eventually your plate is really too full to hold anything more. By always saying yes, I'd feel like I was being taken advantage of, and I'd start to get resentful.

A week into global protesting about unchecked police brutality against people of color, as sparked by the murder of George Floyd, Lawrence and I discuss a core principle that has become a missing element in our social contract that has contributed to our current problem: lack of accountability. But accountability is both a macro and micro issue, and by figuring out how to start holding ourselves and the people in our lives accountable is an important starting point in any social justice effort, particularly as we are seeing in Black Lives Matter.

For me to be at a loss for words is not exactly normal. But that's a bit how I'm feeling right now. And as a rather prototypical extrovert, if there is anything that makes me feel uncomfortable, it's not knowing what to say. My podcasting partner, Lawrence Henderson, always talks about the importance of "getting comfortable with being uncomfortable." I keep reminding myself of that being uncomfortable is part of the point.

In this week's episode Lawrence and I took on a tangled web of big -- and highly intertwined -- topics, starting with leadership in the time of Covid-19, why empathy matters, how that fosters privilege, and ultimately where it all starts: judgement.

What each of us considers normal is a function of our daily lives. This is something that most of us recognize, but we often forget that our version of normal is not the same as other people's. Over time, losing awareness of this divide is where a lot of us-vs-them rhetoric emerges, leading to insular worldviews and privilege we don't even realize we have.

In this week's Coaching Mystery Box, Lawrence asked the question about how to be compassionate -- both to yourself and to others, particularly in this time of difficulty.