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Posts Tagged ‘Psychology’

The Big Switcharoo

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on February 10, 2015| 2 Comments »

Right before the Love Bug was born, I whispered to the Groom, “Don’t take your eyes off her.” And by her, I meant the baby. It was going to be a C-section, the baby was breech, and I knew the Bride would be busy on the OR table. He looked at me kinda funny, but I said with fierce determination, “Promise me!” And he stayed with the Love Bug till they rolled her out to us.

Call me crazy, and I’m sure some people do, but I’ve seen too many mistakes happen in hospitals over the years, heard about too many nearly averted catastrophes, plus you know that old superstition, which I highly believe, about medical families. I’ve talked about it before, how people will try and treat you differently in the hospital when they learn you are related to doctor so and so, or nurse what’s his name.

And my mind thinks in a kind of catastrophic way. It’s a wonder I’m not on IV anxiety medicine at all times. Bob is late for our wedding? Wringing my hands I think he must have cold feet; instead, he couldn’t find the rabbi. Maybe it has to do with my Year of Living Dangerously. I’ve always thought I was the least affected by that trauma – the death of my father followed by a devastating car accident that landed me in a foster home. The Flapper was crippled, my sister and nana were in a coma, and my brothers were on their own. I was just a baby, I had no real memories of my first year of life. But there were lasting scars, wounds you’d never see when you grow up between two families.

I didn’t want my grand daughter switched at birth!

I had those feelings when my children were born, but Bob was right there and he knew about my fear, so he kept a close eye on things. After all, we were in his hospital, he knew everybody, and the Bride’s little foot was banded and toe-printed immediately.  Here is a synopsis of the bizarre switched-at-birth story I had heard about before the Bug’s birth on “This American Life.” It happened in Wisconsin in 1951: “One of the mothers realized the mistake but chose to keep quiet. Until the day, more than 40 years later, when she decided to tell both daughters what happened. How the truth changed two families’ lives.” http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/360/switched-at-birth

And just when you think that with technology these things never happen anymore, think again. A court case has just finished up in France awarding two families 2M Euros. Because at the age of ten, one girl felt she didn’t look like her father.

The families of two French girls who were accidentally switched at birth 20 years ago have been awarded nearly €2m (£1.5m) in damages. The clinic involved in the mix-up was ordered to compensate both girls – now women – their parents and siblings.Both babies had been treated in the same incubator and were then given to the wrong parents. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31350550

This must have been a cost-saving effort, putting two babies in the same incubator. Back in Wisconsin, one mother always thought there had been a mistake, her daughter was nothing like the rest of the family. But she never spoke up.

My daughter reassured me they kept close watch when she delivered Baby Boy JH in November, with his father and a doula plus the requisite docs and nurses in the room. I was still driving and worrying but immediately felt relieved when I looked into his eyes. Plus, Grandma Ada says she knows him. I think he looks like one of her sons, or the Groom’s brother. We’re not entirely sure yet.  IMG_5254

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Organizational

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2014| 4 Comments »

We all have a comfort level, a sweet spot between chaos and control where we find we can do our best work. My desk and my kitchen, my workspaces, may not look organized, but somehow I know where everything is, that is unless someone else was helping me with the dishes.

You probably know that the Bride is pretty well organized. As a teen she had all her college applications figured out and filed before I even got a chance to talk with her about the process. The Rocker takes after me, with a little Type A from his Dad just to sweeten the mix. As a teen he could leave a glass of milk next to his bed until it became a culture medium for the latest bacteria, but his desk was always spotless.

And I just assumed that opposites attract; that marriage was a Darwinian reality show. Most of the couples we know would attest to that narrative, she or he is the messy/creative one while the other is the opposite. But in the Bride’s case, she married someone even more organized than she is; and I realized this when I watched the Groom organize their front hall closet.

Coats and hats and scarves went flying into three piles. Those to keep, give away, or store someplace else – like a snowsuit that might be used should they end up skiing again in the South…or maybe they’d take a ski vacation out West? I was impressed, I was wishing he’d come to my house. But alas, his paternity leave came to an end, so he returned to the complicated diagnostic world of internal medicine.

I remember the first time I couldn’t find a toy when my kiddos were little. After some hemming and hawing, Bob finally admitted that when I took the children on a trip to visit Grandma Ada, he would “clean up.” Which meant he’d enter the family room and throw toys away! Imagine. He actually jettisoned a vintage Barbie doll with clothes in a its original case from Aunt Becky! http://www.vintagebarbies.net/vintagebarbievalues.htm I was incensed, I was mortified.

Today, he tackles the pantry on my trips to Nashville, with my full approval. It’s fine since stink bugs tend to love open boxes of pasta.

Still, the last time I left my Nashville family of four I gave them a piece of my mind/advice…and believe me, I don’t like to give advice unless I’m directly asked for it. “You have TWO children now,” I said, “keeping the house organized need not be a priority!” They smiled, I think they listened. Then I told them what Grandma Ada told me a long time ago,

“Cleaning up with a toddler in the house is like shoveling snow during a snowstorm.”

January’s Real Simple magazine has a good story on this very dilemma; “Dear Real Simple I’m a Control Freak Please Help!” by Virginia Sole-Smith. It’s not online yet but here is the writer’s website http://virginiasolesmith.com/portfolio/ – it’s a great take on how to live with your opposite type, not for the Bride and Groom I’m afraid – perfectionist meet the opposite of an organizational addict.

Meanwhile, I think I’ll peruse Pinterest and gaze longingly at their organizational sites. Now why didn’t I think of this? Hang your shelves upside down! enhanced-buzz-2561-1380825861-20

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Vim and Vigor

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on December 10, 2014| 2 Comments »

The conference call converged via my iPhone this weekend. Three siblings in three different states all talking at once or in turn, about their lives, their loves, and even their memories. Because I happened to grow up an “only child,” I treasure these calls.

Dr Jim, my psychologist brother, told me to look up a fellow Minnesotan on a TED talk, and so I did. Kay had been reading a book about dying and the health industry’s push to prolong life even when tethered to tubes and machines. And Bob had been reading, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, about crematoriums. Jim thought we needed some positive messages about aging.

Enter Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones. Here is a guy from MN who decided to study the pockets around the world where people just happen to live to a vital old age of 100+. He calls this topography, which happens to be almost exclusively on mountainsides (remember this when he talks about not exercising), Blue Zones.

Sardinia, Italy, that has 20 times as many 100-year-olds as the U.S. does, proportionally. In Okinawa, Japan, we found people with the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world. In the Blue Zones (Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, Calif.; and the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica), people live 10 years longer, experience a sixth the rate of cardiovascular disease and a fifth the rate of major cancers.

So not only are people living longer, they are living to a healthier old age. And what do they have in common? Well you’ll have to view his TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100?language=en
or read this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-buettner/how-to-live-to-100—nine_b_94972.html but here is my take away.

We have become less connected to family and friends than any other generation. We may think we stay plugged in only because of texts, email, social media and blog posts. But that’s not the same as actually being connected. The communities Buettner studied are semi-isolated, the centenarians have friends they have kept since they were toddlers. They belong to the same tribe. And they all have a reason to get up in the morning.

I could relate to a Great Great Great Grandmother, who said her reason is holding her latest Great Great Great Grand Daughter, that it’s like “Leaping into Heaven!” Now this is my kind of old age, staying vital and leading a meaningful life. Not being medicated into oblivion in an old folk’s home.

It will be interesting to see if our generation takes a different tack as we age. Will we age in the same way our parents did before us, become snow birds? Will we line up to enter the latest continuing care community? Or will we drink red wine and walk everywhere while still fishing for our family?

A friend of mine is taking a giant leap and moving across country to San Diego so she can walk one block to the ocean and sail a boat. She’s living each day as if it were her last. We helped kickstart a cultural revolution when we were young, maybe it’s time we started another.

Great Gma Ada and the Love Bug

Great Gma Ada and the Love Bug

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Abnormally Normal

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2014| 4 Comments »

Did you feel normal growing up? The Rocker’s friend back in Jersey, a guy from his early high school heavy metal band years, asked me this question the other day. He was writing a paper for his college upper-level Psych course and had to interview someone from another generation. By that I think he meant a “senior!” Why he picked the mom who served bagel dogs and root beer after school is beyond me. Needless to say, I was flattered.

“When you were growing up, did you ever think you were abnormal in any way?”

Doesn’t everybody? But that’s not what I said. I said “Yes,” and went on to try and explain how this could be a good thing. I knew I was abnormal because my name didn’t match my foster parents. First of all, I was the only kid I knew with foster parents. My last name belonged to a father who had died in Scranton and a mother who had been crippled in a head-on car crash. Having two moms in two different states wasn’t normal then. No matter how hard I tried, I could never really be their child.

I said that I also felt different because I had strawberry blond hair. But that’s not the same as saying that my signature mane turned almost white in the summer and got redder as the winter sun faded. That I felt like a too tall, skinny, scrawny kid. That my real (biologic) mom, the Flapper, said she could always find me in a crowd. That I made myself a bowl of spaghetti at night before bed to put on some weight. That I dreamed of having jet black hair just so I could fit in and not stand out. Later I would thank my Nana’s mahogany red hair and the Flapper’s platinum blond bob for bestowing their unique recessive genes on me; but as a kid, I was mortified.

“How have your own attitudes toward what’s normal and what’s abnormal changed over the course of your lifetime?”

Now that is a loaded question. First of all, what constitutes a “family” is very different. My hodge-podge of half/step/foster and biologic siblings is pretty tame, or normal today. Marriage equality has leveled the playing field. Growing up with a Jewish step-father in my teen years, with college educated brothers, I stepped out of the cocoon my foster parents had made for me. That little Catholic school girl became a child of the universe, with a rather striking liberal, progressive bent. Except for one thing, I’m pretty much in agreement with most of my current family’s attitudes.

That one thing is the death penalty. My step-father, who was a town judge, must have had some effect on me since even the Flapper was against the death penalty. For years I differed with the rest of my loved ones, like a lone wolf cast adrift whenever the subject came up. My reasoning was subjective; if somebody ever killed one of mine, I’d be the first to retaliate. There were, in my mind, circumstances that should relieve the taxpayer from paying for a monster’s life in prison…like killing a child, a police officer, or planning to ram planes into tall buildings etc.

But my philosophy about government-induced-death has been slowly changing. After reading about “false confessions” and mistaken convictions once DNA evidence was introduced. And knowing how the justice system is rigged toward the wealthy. After seeing how most of the civilized world has stopped killing its prisoners – so much so that the needed chemicals are hard to come by for a lethal injection. And this week, after hearing about the botched execution in Oklahoma, it became harder for me to justify my pro-death penalty stance. I could rant about pro-lifers not caring about the children born into poverty, and yet I found myself in their camp, a double paradox, when it came to the death sentence.

Then I read why those two prisoners were on death row. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/04/30/why-were-the-two-inmates-in-oklahoma-on-death-row-in-the-first-place/?tid=pm_national_pop And now I wonder why the gun lobby doesn’t try to bring back the firing squad. And I’m only half kidding.

The lone Conservative, surrounded by his Liberal sisters

The lone Conservative, surrounded by his Liberal sisters

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Carbon Bootprint

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on April 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Happy Earth Day everyone. I was reminded of my favorite psychologist, Abraham Maslow’s, saying this morning, “At any given moment we have two options; to step forward into growth, or to step back into safety.”  I loved his theories when I was an undergrad Psych major – only I’d add another option. We could also choose to stand still and do nothing.

Doing nothing is a choice. We all know these people. They are the ones who say, “Oh we tried that before and it didn’t work.” They are the self-involved, solipsistic loners. If they are not talking about themselves, well then what’s the point? Which is why a film about a young environmentalist falling for the middle-aged mom of a prescription-drug addicted daughter caught my attention.

“Bottled Up” explores the life of an enabler. Melissa Leo plays the quirky, lovable mother who flirts with denial like a pro – because for any addicted child to continue to live at home in their childhood bedroom, they would need the full cooperation of someone, right? Getting this reclusive mom to stop doing what she’s always done, and open her heart to a little, light Indie film romance gives this timely, weighty topic a humorous edge.

This Earth Day, instead of committing to changing your light bulbs, or remembering your grocery totes, why not think about what parts of your psyche may need an overhaul. Throw out the cobwebs in your head that keep you stuck in a “monkey mind,” adrift in a sea of indecision and inertia.

Instead of worrying about your carbon footprint, today let’s pull on our work boots. Get out in the yard, make the choice to start living a more healthy life. To make a few small, incremental changes toward growth, thank you Dr Maslow! After all, if we heal ourselves, maybe the planet will have a chance? Our hydrangeas need pruning and food! I’ll  eat more oranges, walk more and complain less. Maybe try to avoid sick/germ carrying people – unless it’s my Love Bug, then all bets are off. I’ve been wondering if all the Puffs tissues I’ve been going through with my latest virus are biodegradable?!

Speaking of my little Easter bunny. This is what you get when your adult children have to work on Easter Sunday. The Bride, my Jewish ER doctor/daughter and her husband the Christian Groom, who was on call in the MICU, sent the Bug off to a day filled with chocolate and jelly beans courtesy of their wonderful Nanny Kristy and her son Caiden. And for this moment, I am eternally grateful.        10271536_10203190002052914_8222434554150655467_n

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A Daughter by Choice

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2013| 2 Comments »

Happy Mother’s Day! Mothers everywhere are waking up to breakfast in bed, or so we’re supposed to believe. I made myself some coffee in my new tiny, one cup Keurig since Bob left before dawn for the hospital. And the new mom, our daughter the Bride, is working at her hospital today too. But her Groom, “God bless him” as my Mother-inLaw Ada would say, did remember to send her flowers.

photo copy 4

Ada has been my MIL now longer than Nell Mahon was my foster mother. In fact, she went to Nell’s funeral with me. I can’t think of how many funerals we’ve been to together, and there’s nobody better to take to a funeral, or a wedding for that matter. I met Ada when Bob and I started dating in high school, and she was the one who found me in the hospital while I was visiting my foster father much later. Daddy Jim was dying then, just when Ada ushered me into Bob’s room to rekindle our friendship. Bob went into the hospital for a little minor surgery, and walked out with his future wife…thanks in large part to Ada.

Oh and one more funereal thought – Ada bought me my very own burial plot right after we married. To this day, we both think that was pretty funny! But she did purchase a whole space in the local cemetery for her family, her three sons, and their wives…

She always said she was on my side. That if Bob and I ever broke up, she’d take my side, “All the way baby!” You see, Ada was from Brooklyn. There was no pretense, no argument, what she said always happened. She had gone back to school while we were in high school, to get her degree in Marriage and Family Counseling, and in the late 60s until now, has always practiced in her home. She was going through her own divorce when Bob and I met up again near Daddy Jim’s hospital bed.

The youngest of three sisters, Ada had led a privileged life. Like many Jewish immigrants, her father was a tailor who came from Russia with nothing, and eventually owned a coat company in NY. She had a private car that would take her to school. She was expected to live at home until she married, this was before Betty Friedan. And she married a physician, like one of her older sisters. Unlike her sisters, she promptly moved out to the country, to the wilds of NJ, and had three boys.

Four Bridges was the bungalow colony her father started near their home in Chester, NJ. It was his retirement project, but also a way to keep the sisters coming back together every summer with their cousins and friends. I once gave Ada a painting, it was a picture of a house that had her name on it as a B&B, because she never met a stranger. Every time I would visit her, with the baby Rocker and young Bride in tow, she would have a house full of people, coming and going.

Ada is like Dolly Levi and Ruth Westheimer combined!

Well actually, she doesn’t have that Russian accent, it’s more Bedford Sty. She did get a doctoral degree and a certificate in sex therapy. I can imagine that went a long way when my teenagers told their friends their grandmother was a Sex Therapist. Here she is with the Bride at the Bug’s baby shower.

484544_10100552698045496_1877514379_n

This is the kind of joy she inflicts on everyone everywhere she goes! She is still living and working in the same house with my wonderful Father-in-Law, Baptist preacher turned therapist, turned woodcarver Hudson, who was the Officiant at the wedding. You know, that wedding in 2010 that started me blogging. Between them both, they now have 7 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. At 88, she is still as effervescent and full of life as ever. They just got back from a cruise to Spain. An amazing woman, I am so proud to call her Mother.

I’ve always said I married Bob to get this woman as my Mother-inLaw. Thank you Ada, for always being on my side. And I’ll always have your back too. Now if only someone could fix our knees.

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What if…

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on April 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

One of the most insightful questions we might ask ourselves, when confronted with a big decision, is how would one feel afterwards. A year from now, ten years from now, would we regret that decision or be happy we made it, no matter the outcome?

It was simply serendipitous that I signed up for twitter this past week. And I had to stop looking at one point, because the things people say in the aftermath of a tragedy like the Boston bombings left me numb. And I wanted to feel for myself, think for myself, not be bombarded with everyone else’s thoughts, in real time. Plus, instead of spurting out the first thing that comes to mind, I’ve discovered, with age, that I need some time to reflect, to analyze my thoughts before putting pen to paper, or tongue to teeth…or fingers to keyboard for that matter. I realize that once dementia sets in, all bets will be off.

Only one tweet rang true to me. It had to do with our failure in the Senate to pass a meaningful background check bill that would help stem the tide of gun violence in our country, compared to locking down a city like Boston to look for a nineteen year old terrorist. Bob tells me that approximately 80 people a day die on our streets and in our homes because they could easily pick up a gun; about 2/3 of these people are suicides. On Monday 3 people died in Boston. I know, it was a cynical calculation, a malevolent ratio 80:3 – with a whiff of truth. I wondered how Americans would feel ten years from now. Sometimes it takes someone outside of our culture, to articulate a different point of view.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/boston-marathon-bombs-us-gun-law?CMP=twt_gu

“After all, it’s not as if this is the first time that homicidal killers have been on the loose in a major American city. In 2002, Washington DC was terrorised by two roving snipers, who randomly shot and killed 10 people. In February, a disgruntled police officer, Christopher Dorner, murdered four people over several days in Los Angeles. In neither case was LA or DC put on lockdown mode, perhaps because neither of these sprees was branded with that magically evocative and seemingly terrifying word for Americans, terrorism.”

This week the lilacs bloomed in memory of my foster mother, Nell. There were lilacs outside my bedroom window in Victory Gardens. I always had to kiss her goodbye whenever I left the house, because she said we never knew if we’d ever return. Certainly I knew accidents could happen, I was living proof, because a drunk driver had hit the Flapper’s car a few months after my father died. At the age of 10 months, about the Love Bug’s age, I left my PA home and became a Jersey girl.

But I never thought terror could happen here, until I heard about my Jersey neighbor’s husband. He left one morning to go to his office at Cantor Fitzgerald. She didn’t wake up before dawn to say goodbye to him on that beautiful morning in September for some ridiculous reason. At another wake without a body, I saw “what ifs” playing out again and again. Someone had dropped their child at school first and was running late, another friend was on a ferry that docked at Wall Street and picked up its fill of ash-covered commuters before returning to Highlands. And I knew that asking “what if” was a futile exercise in blame.
photo copy

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Resolved

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 1, 2013| 9 Comments »

1) To get serious about yoga

2) To cook more tofu

3) To walk more, even if it’s cold

4) To do something that scares me (Karaoke?)

5) To laugh loudly and often

I’ve never been a New Year’s resolution type. I used to attend the Borough Hall Annual Reorganization Meeting at noon on New Year’s Day and take copious notes through a hangover haze for the newspaper. “Each year at the Reorganization Meeting, the Council adopts a resolution setting the order of business for each Council meeting.” It takes forever, so and so police officer was awarded something; the zoning plans have changed to reflect such and such.

But now I’m only required to attend a hospital gala on New Year’s Eve, to dress to the nines and make merry at a local winery. I can sleep in without children at home or a care in the world…well, maybe a few.

I have a cold. It’s not the flu, got the shot, but some bugs got through to make my nose run and my throat scratchy. Bob is working, so I’m on my own to push fluids and make my own chicken soup. I managed to try my second martini in 40-something years last night, and decided it still tastes like gasoline. I thought it might help my throat, and the 2 sips I took did seem to numb my tonsils.

My order of business for 2013 is staying true to my philosophy of small steps. In order to grow, we must change and challenge ourselves, to do something scary. Notice I didn’t resolve to go to the gym and lose 20 pounds – just to walk… even in the cold and cook tofu. To quiet my mind with yoga and lighten my heart with laughter. The Love Bug is learning to laugh, and just being with her brings me great joy.

I wish you all a peaceful and joyous New Year! We may not be able to influence those in Congress today who are playing games with our country’s reputation in the world, but we can vote them out tomorrow. And we can start the New Year introspectively, as the Dalai Lama says, “The inner peace of an alert and calm mind are the source of real happiness and good health. Our human intelligence tells us which of our emotions are positive and helpful and which are damaging and to be restrained or avoided.”
photo

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Happy Work

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on December 20, 2012| 5 Comments »

Here I am, inbetween the Love Bug’s morning nap and her Mama coming home from a night shift at the hospital. It’s raining so I guess there will be no trip in the Big Bob stroller to the bagel store for lunch. The diapers were all washed (yes, she wears real cloth diapers) and put away with care, in hopes that St Nick will visit the Music City and find this new, wee one. It’s stranger still that I wrote about holiday stress right before the unthinkable shooting in CT, and now it feels like happiness may be harder to come by this holiday season for the whole country. Why did I turn on CNN this morning to hear that some savvy business is selling bullet-proof backpacks? And others are talking about teaching teachers to handle a gun. So along with learning how to administer an EpiPen shot for the occasional peanut allergy, who thinks we should require teachers to attend a shooting range?

Let’s give ourselves a break – a news break and a happiness boost. This is a short and sweet article about the 5 things you can do to increase your happiness. Or rather, the five mistakes people make; the lies we tell ourselves in order to achieve some sort peace. So by inverse reasoning, you should be able to just stop doing these things and smile. I was intrigued to find there is just one lie I tell myself:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/how-to-be-happy-in-life-happiness_n_2287903.html?1355931524&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009#slide=1875204

#3 “It shouldn’t be work!”

I’m not happy because it’s just too darn hard to be happy. The author, Amy Shearn talks about her friend who is very Eeyore-like, “…terrible things befall her constantly, confirming her belief that the world is a grim place. Her Eeyore-ish, “Oh bother”-ness is so much a part of her that she seems to think happiness is simply not for her, as if some people were just Eeyores and some were just Pooh Bears (happy, simple, kind of dumb).”
121912dog5
So it’s good to remember that happiness actually takes some work, keeping up with our friends – and not just texting them. Taking time to help those in need – like the therapy dogs that walked into Newton and stole their hearts. Just getting out of our own heads for a time will improve any old rainy day!

The Bride has returned and when I told her I was writing about happiness, she smiled at me and said, “Like being a Grandmother?” So true baby girl!! photo

Here are the other 4 lies:
1) Happiness will come after my big success
2) My happiness comes in a box from Amazon
3) Happy people never quit
4) There’s no point in asking the universe for what I want

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Re-Blog from Dr Jim Lynn

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on July 24, 2012| 3 Comments »

Because a life cannot be summed up by two business deals. Reblogged from: http://lynn-and-associates.com/blog-1/

Mike Lynn was my older brother. He passed away this past Saturday, July 21st in Oxford, MS. The cause was complications from a long illness. For the past two days, sports columnists have been writing about his 15 years as the General Manager of the Minnesota Vikings, his lopsided Herschel Walker trade with the Dallas Cowboys, and the remarkable deal he negotiated to get 10% of the Metrodome Suite Revenues for 99 years in perpetuity.

I have started this blog to let interested people know about the consulting and training programs I am developing for on-line webinars, however, I am going to depart this one time to reminisce about my big brother, and show a different perspective of the ‘Purple Prince’ I knew.

One of the things I help clients do is ‘profile’ key positions … identify the core competencies that are needed for a position. Then you can advertise looking for those skills, and create a custom behavioral interview to look for candidates who have demonstrated those skills. So here is my take on Mike Lynn’s core competencies, with some behavioral examples to support them.

Composure – mood regulation and self-control. For as long as I have known my brother, (some six decades), he has been a cool customer. He was introverted and didn’t show his emotions very often. He was hard to read, tough under pressure. In high school, his friends called him “Duke” a nick name also given to John Wayne …another tough guy. Sometimes I would come to his Viking office to visit and watch as people would come and go with all kinds of problems … drama. Mike avoided the drama. He would listen … light up a cigarette, take his time, think about what he was going to say before saying it, and then tell them what needed to be done. He had great ‘street smarts’, emotional intelligence. He was self-aware and in control of how he expressed his own emotions.

Results – Mike was a bottom line kind of guy. He was very persistent at getting what he wanted. When he got out of the Army, he went to Pace College in Manhattan for two days…that’s right two whole days. Six years older than me, he came home and threw his General Introduction to Psychology textbook on my bed and said to me …”Here you read this crap …I’m going to work and make some money.” I read the text, loved it, and became a psychologist, and he did indeed go out and make some money.

I’ll never forget the first time he told me his business was basically to “get asses in the seats”. He was (he told me anyway) at 18, the youngest theatre general manager in the Walter Reade Chain. He was a young regional manager for Dixie Mart and a regional manager for a chain of theatres in Memphis …sometimes letting Elvis book a private mid-night party at one of his theatres. From the very start, Mike had management jobs… line jobs where he was accountable for business results. My brother never had a support or staff job. Even after retiring from the Vikings he started a private supper club in Oxford Mississippi, not too far from his antebellum home in Holly Springs. Up until the end, on my last visit to see him, he was on the phone giving orders to his club’s general manger. And the psychologist in me couldn’t help but notice how his affect perked up, his energy increased, breathing steadied, and he seemed and acted at his best during those few minutes – ’running his club’ – as I observed him – in a state of flow – issuing orders. I sensed he was happy, he had a purpose.

Negotiating – He would often start out by telling some young rookie football player …”You may have been a big deal in high school, or college …but this is the NFL …and you are a rookie … you’re only worth ….” . His previously mentioned skills tie right in here ..being composed and difficult to read, he could put players and their agents on edge. He had good timing, he knew when to speak up, and more importantly, when to just sit quietly and wait. He was very good at reading people, understanding their hopes, fears, and motivations. In many ways my older brother was the applied psychologist in the family.

As the GM for the Vikings, Mike did the player negotiations and he brought in some great players in those days. He was able to both keep his composure and handle the heat. His negotiating strategy with me on the golf course was different. I was a better golfer than him, so he would just keep doubling down on our bets until he won and we were even. It was like a game, although I think it might have been a little more than a game to him!

Compassion – There was a soft and tender side to my brother that he only showed to a few people, which is why this one would surprise many, and have them question my credentials. The fact is, my brother reached out and helped a lot of people during his life, including mine on more than one occasion when I needed support. He was the steady rock, the person in the family who could be depended upon to come through and help when needed. And I think this is a skill he developed and nurtured as he aged. Sure he was a tough guy – he thought he had to be.

In charge, in control, but underneath it all was a poor kid who grew up in Scranton Pennsylvania, lost his father when he was 13, and saw his family hospitalized with a head on car crash three months later. We were hit by a drunk driver who never even got a ticket …it was 1949. I was only seven and I’m not sure how we survived as a family, but I do know that when someone in the family suggested we go on welfare, by brother was adamant …”no welfare …I’ll work …we’ll get by.” And we did. My sisters married doctors, I became a psychologist, he ran the Vikings and we all turned out okay. I hope you feel you can finally rest now big brother … rest in peace. When you were alive, sitting behind your desk, staring into my eyes … it was not easy telling you, ‘I love you’, but I do.

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