Moving Trauma, Denial and Friends
Tired, Humbled and Thankful!
On March 1, 2022, my husband Rod and I relocated our home to Charleston, South Carolina, in a beautiful beach community called Seabrook Island. See the backstory here.
It’s been a blur the last three months in fun, dizzying, and chaotic ways!
There have been some surprises, like how long it really takes to unpack and organize a new home — I somehow envisioned a good three days, maybe a week at most!
As a long-time coach and facilitator of other people’s growth, I am well aware of the concept of low self-awareness and outright denial. As uncomfortable as it is, it’s the people closest to us that point out our delusional thinking — if you are lucky enough to have courageous people around you, that is! Most people would rather not risk it. We have a choice, in those painful truth moments, to defend or to say, “Tell me more.”
Patti, a fellow New Yorker, was my college roommate at State University of New York at Stony Brook. She started dishing out candid remarks from the beginning. As I recall “ditch the boyfriend,” as one of our first conversations. Unfortunately, I didn’t listen right away. I wish I had.
So, when we talked about our move to South Carolina and our plans to drive our cars to Charleston, she pounced.
“Elaine, you hate road trips, you are not an especially good driver, and you will drive Rod crazy. Mark and I talked and we decided [they decided?] he is flying to Dallas to help Rod drive your cars. You will get on a plane to Atlanta, and we will enjoy the weekend together. When the boys get here, you and Rod can drive the cars the rest of the way to Charleston.”
As you may pick up, Patti is a bit on the bossy side, but as my other friends would likely agree, I sometimes need a strong dose to get my attention.
Getting Feedback As a Leader
If you are a leader and lean toward being independent and strong-willed, make sure you have some equally robust people around you. You may not realize how scary it is to give you feedback.
The Bible tells us, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses” (Proverbs 27:6). And scientific wisdom comes from emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman in his ground-breaking book Primal Leadership. He coined the term “CEO disease” as the phenomenon that isolates top leaders from hearing the truth, simply because of fear. People are afraid to speak up to those above them for security reasons, and often because they’ve seen how closed off their leader is to feedback. So why bother? As a coach, I often use an EQ 360 to give a leader a chance to hear some unvarnished truth in a safe setting.
For a new perspective on this topic, check out a great book called Thanks for the Feedback! The Art and Science of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. You can also watch a Google talk on the topic with the authors.
Getting Help As a Leader
So, in the end I accepted my friend’s input. Our friends’ help did not end there though. Mark apparently reported to Patti how many boxes were loaded on the “largest moving truck he’d ever seen,” and they decided they were driving to our new home to help us out. Oh thank you, Jesus… I could not believe they knew before we did that we couldn’t handle this ourselves. Well, we could, but it would have been ugly. The moving truck arrived March 2, and I had a TLP client group arriving March 25 and a second group on March 29. I thought that was plenty of time to have the house all unpacked and organized. It should be, right?
When the moving truck arrived, Patti and Mark shook their heads and saw the disaster ahead. We had contracted “unpacking” services, so I figured it’d be no problem. By the end of the day, however, the mover and his team announced they did not have time to unpack us. “Lady, we didn’t realize you had over 200 boxes. And besides, if we did unpack them, where would we put everything?” Yikes!
My dreams of being all organized within three days were shattered. How could I not realize this would happen? Why didn’t the mover advise me on a post-delivery team of unpackers? Why didn’t I listen to a friend who had strongly urged me to hire an organizer she used, who specializes in unpacking a large house and spends a week or more getting it all set up?
Boxes were piled high everywhere, in every room. A week later we were functioning somewhat normally, and twenty days later we were ready to host the TLP launch parties.
So, the moral of the story is … actually there’s a few here!
Bette Midler sang “You Got to Have Friends” back in 1972. Not only will friends help you out in times of overwhelming pressures, but they will give you perspective about yourself that can help avoid unnecessary pain. Best of all, they will forgive you when you don’t listen, won’t tell you “I told you so,” and even if they do, they will laugh and drink wine with you and help you recover.