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Samantha De Tillio's avatar

This really spoke to me. I've been having so many Burnt Chicken situations and not always able to get ahead of them. The hard part is asking for help. Especially if when you do it's not met with the sort you hope for. Also realizing my communication is not coming off how I mean it most times. Thinking of reading Non-Violent Communication A Language for Life by Marshall Rosenberg. Have you read it? I'm glad Uncle Luke can provide a space for listening without fixing. That's such a hard thing for so many of us to do and yet incredibly valuable.

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Ed Bonapartian's avatar

Your article reminded me of how strongly the weight of our expectations can drive us. My own codeword when struggling is “values”, a reminder that although I may have not met my expectations, my values as a human being have not changed. Some years ago, I had the difficult task of terminating a stellar employee after the sudden death of their young child caused them to hit rock bottom. What was so heartbreaking to me during this conversation, was the employee trying to apologize for not meeting both the company’s and their own expectations. I handed the employee a pencil and asked them why pencils have erasers on them. The employee replied it was because we make mistakes. “Yes” I replied. “We are human; we make mistakes. Sometimes the best we can do is to simply acknowledge to ourselves that we are doing the best we can for

where we are at in the moment. Nobody, including ourselves can ask for more than that.”

I asked the employee to keep the pencil as a reminder, or in this case a codeword that at our core we are all

human, regardless of the weight of our expectations.

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