life skills

Shields and boundaries

I consider shielding a vital, basic energy management skill along with centering and grounding. In April we did an overview of basic practices to protect us from being unduly influenced from outside energy.

WALLS / SHIELDS

First we experienced what the energy of walls were like. We all know people who are “guarded” or “walled off,” and perhaps we are, too, in certain contexts or in the company of certain individuals. I once knew someone who had walls that felt like a stone fortress, but behind that barrier I also senses a tender, beating heart. Of course, it makes sense. We only protect that which we are afraid will get hurt.

So to begin our exploration into shielding and boundaries we can practice consciously throwing up a wall or a shield. Go with whatever feels instinctive to you. Everyone has done this at once point or another, so don’t worry about how to do it or if you’ll get it wrong, because you can’t. If it helps, imagine that you are walking down a quiet street and you suddenly see someone walking toward you. This person is someone you would rather not interact with. How do you prepare for the encounter?

What does your wall / shield feel like? What is it made of? How big is it? What does it feel like to walk around with this kind of protection? How do other people react to you when you have your defenses up?

Some shields are heavy, some are icy (or simply cool), some are prickly. Anger is an entirely different kind of shield. Have you ever seen someone radiate such hot anger that people literally back away from him? It can be really interesting and fun to sense and observe the different ways we protect ourselves and how it affects those around us.

When I first did this exercise I found that I threw up a brick wall that was rather difficult to walk around with. Even though it didn’t look that big, it was cumbersome and heavy. When I shared this with my meditation teacher, he warned me that people can sense our defenses, and walls sometimes incite the desire to breach them. Not shortly after that conversation, something happened that convinced me to drop my practice of walling myself off. I was in a restaurant and raised a wall during a meal, and the person I was trying to keep at an energetic distance physically stood up, walked around the table to where I was seated, and got in my face!

It was time to use other tools for shielding, and I am glad to share some of those below with you.

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By Ysette, ago

When is suffering productive?

[This is for Hank Norman.] One of my favorite tweeters recently sent out a provocative little about knowing the difference between harmful suffering and that which is part of the growth process. What’s his secret? I don’t know. He’s being awfully tight-lipped about it </joke>, but I have my own answer! I have so Read more…

By Ysette, ago

Happy birthday, #emergingleader Jermaine!

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(Jermaine will be very pleased to see that I’m not reposting the same old photo I kept using of him from last year’s YAB retreat.)

Jermaine and I first met in September 2012, when New Yorkers For Children engaged me to work with their Youth Advisory Board. This past September he and I began working more closely through Emerging Leaders and together we determined that he would work on three areas for the 2013-2014 school year. Specifically, Jermaine would make an effort to:

  1. participate more actively in discussions;
  2. figure out a way of weaving his diverse interests into a plan for purposeful work; and
  3. reach out for help as needed.

Believe it or not, he hit it out of the park with all three by the end of February. This year he has been a strong and consistent voice in Emerging Leaders (you can read about that here), and he also brings that same presence to his work at YAB.

Jermaine has also put a lot of effort into bringing together his great respect for the creativity of young people (including his own interest in music) with his commitment to finding meaningful work and gainful employment not only for himself but for others. He has honed his vision for a program that will help launch young people into creative careers. He also took full advantage of the connection I facilitated to a youth development organization called Building Beats. The folks who run it couldn’t be more thrilled with the operations work he is now doing for them.

Let’s talk about goal number three, though, because learning to ask for help is no small feat. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

My #emergingleaders inspire me

Most people who work outside the field of child welfare tend to assume that my work is dispiriting. They hear the words “foster care” and immediately think “at-risk youth,” a loaded term that conjures only negative images. They imagine that I am out every day fighting the good fight, doing Read more…

By Ysette, ago

Taking the measure of a year

I’ve been in transition for so long now that uncertainty and discomfort had become my life’s norms. How strange to be able to look back on a year and notice the extent of my transformation. Where once was a void, there now is a path. No doubt, I am still trailblazing (can I say trailblazing even though it still feels like bushwhacking?), but now I can clear the way for longer stretches at a time. If I had to distill 2013’s biggest lessons into pat formulas, I would say they were:

1. When facing your fears, the immediate objective is not to become “good” at something, but to become better at being a beginner.  (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Decision-making with an #emergingleader

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Emerging Leader Maurice came into office hours last week wearing his red power tie. Our initial plan was to unpack his “hustle” from the Work On Purpose workshop we did in our last Emerging Leaders meeting, but he announced that he wanted to share some “good news” and a “dilemma,” which were in fact related. It turned out that Maurice needed to choose between two very different housing options that each appealed to conflicting values, and the decision was overwhelming him. With his permission, I’m sharing some of the details of our meeting because it contains an exercise that might prove useful to the young people you work with (or to you yourself, if you’re in the market for a decision-making tool).

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By Ysette, ago

Helping Nahjee learn to cook

The best part of work is figuring out how I am able to serve the individual needs of my young people. Today Nahjee asked me for some cooking tips (e.g., the different ways of thickening soup) and sources for good recipes (not from any packaged food website). She’s talked about being pescatarian and how she prefers simple food such as pizza and fries to fancy meals, but this afternoon I learned that her favorite cuisines are Indian and Thai. She also loves thick soups, bean chilis, and lentils. She would like to be able to make a soup that has lots of veggies in it, such as corn, carrots, and broccoli. Nahjee also likes spice. I figured that finding a mulligatawny recipe might be a good place to start, since it would satisfy many of her cravings.

The plan is to take a Friday afternoon to head to Curry Hill, enjoy a veggie lunch buffet at Chennai Garden or maybe a mujadara sandwich from Kalustyan’s (I like mine specially topped with pickles or spicy olives and their awesome hot sauce), and then go shopping for some basic spices and a variety of pulses for her pantry.

Looking up different mulligatawny recipes reminded me of a cookbook that my sister helped me start. During one of the many summers I spent with her in high school and college, she gave me a hardcover journal and I started writing in the simple, reliable recipes that she herself used for her family. After awhile I started collecting recipes on my own from magazines, cookbooks, and friends. But my favorite recipes in the book are family recipes—not just old Filipino standbys, but also special family dishes that bring back good memories.

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By Ysette, ago

YAB Project Management Boot Camp

YAB bootcamp

   Credit: Lindsay Adamski

If you want an inside look on how I develop my material and roll out new workshops, here is a case study. Last Sunday several members of NYFC YAB, accompanied by Lindsay Adamski (a.k.a., ladamski), joined me at AlleyNYC for a four-hour project management bootcamp. (Yes, you read that right: four hours on a Sunday. It was their suggestion. They are intense, these folks.) The aim was to finish the work that we started at the retreat back in August on the YAB Project Management Manual, which like their constitution, is co-authored by YAB and me. My model for this was the OCFS Handbook for Youth in Foster Care, which incorporates the voices of young people in care in every chapter. I especially liked how the handbook defines terms using the words of youth in foster care.

YAB does a terrific job of referring to a printed copy of their constitution during their meetings, and the manual is definitely supposed to act as a guide for every step of the project management process: brainstorming, project selection, planning, execution, and ending (termination, completion, and administration). Each section has handy tools and tips for success. We’re also making it available in digital format, however, because the manual is intended as a living document that they can edit over the years by modifying, clarifying, and elaborating on the existing material (e.g., working out their own ground rules and processes for each of these stages). There are exercises sprinkled throughout, so it also served as a workbook at the retreat and at the Alley bootcamp.

Full disclosure: the first project management workshop was a little rough. In a strict sense I wasn’t disappointed, though, because as with any new workshop, I was prepared for some kinks. (It’s always tough to time new activities.) Furthermore, it was the last workshop on the final day of the retreat, the youth were kind of restless and burnt out from all the work and running around we’d already done, and the creepy cabin we used as a classroom (the “dead animal room”) was not conducive to thoughtful dialogue. I’d assumed that we would finish the chapter on brainstorming rather quickly, but it took us an hour to get through the material. Nothing was too trivial for debate, and in my effort to write down everyone’s opinions, we lagged behind schedule.

It was clear that I had to recalibrate my approach (in business parlance, “pivoting” after “failure”!) for the follow-up session. This was a team effort. Lindsay got feedback from YAB about what they thought could be improved for next time, and the two of us met to discuss some tactics. Here are the ideas we all came up with: (more…)

By Ysette, ago

A three-strand theory of love and attraction

“You can be in love and still have a life, you know? You can build something.”

—Jennifer Egan, The Invisible Circus

One of the really brilliant aspects of Egan’s treatment of her protagonist’s coming of age is its depiction of teenage watchfulness. At 18, Phoebe reads the world and the people around her for clues on how to build a life and make connections. Unsurprisingly, romantic relationships are a particular point of fascination for her. Here is Phoebe, spying on her sister’s former high school sweetheart and his fiancée as they hunt through apartment listings in the paper:

Carla exclaimed at something she’d found, set down her cigarette and circled the item with a stubby pencil, her other hand groping for Wolf as if for a pair of glasses or a cigarette pack, finding his wrist without lifting her eyes from the paper. The gesture transfixed Phoebe—the inadvertence of it, the thoughtlessness. Wolf rose from his chair and leaned over her, his chest to Carla’s back. He kissed her temple, breathing in her smell while his eyes perused whatever it was she’d found in the paper. The sheer ordinariness of it all confounded Phoebe, as if any one of these things might happen several times a day, with no one watching. They belong to each other, she thought, and found herself awed by the notion—knowing someone was there, just there, reaching for that person without a thought.

Phoebe, trying to wrap her head around the difference between this calm vision of domestic partnership and the wild, youthful romance she saw Wolf share with her sister, asks him how those two relationships compare. He answers, You can be in love and still have a life, you know?

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By Ysette, ago