• “30 is not the new 20,
• Claim your adulthood,
• Get some “identity capital”,
• Use your “weak ties”,
• Pick your family,
• Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do,
• You are deciding your life right now”,

In an incredibly powerful talk Meg Jay succinctly explains why our twenties are and for my peers were – the defining decade of our lives.

The developmental surge from 0-5 when we develop language and attachments is well understood. Sadly, as a culture we trivialize what she describes as “the defining decade of adulthood”.

“Claiming your twenties is one of the simplest most transformative things you can do.”

What does this mean for me at near 60 or you in your 30’s and 40’s?

It explains a lot. It prepares you to understand what choices then have impacted your life now – and what habits, thought processes and even friends you need to jettison.

• Are you ready to claim your life?
• To let go the excuse of “victimhood”?
• To begin living intentionally?

Get in touch!

September groups are forming in Dublin, Belfast & Newry/Dundalk to support your personal change management process.

 “The Defining Decade:Why Your Twenties Matter”, Meg Jay

This blog is a relaunch of one that I started in 2009 in support of an enthusiastic mid-life relocation to Ireland while embarking on the path of a reluctant entrepreneur.

Reluctant because in 2008/09 there were few other choices – and because the gods have a sense of humour. I began training for the work I do now during the great recession of the early eighties when career development work was ‘teaching entrepreneurship’. I’d never expected to be taking my own advice – thirty years later.

You can learn more about my ongoing work, find out about our courses and workshops, and join the conversation at Empowering-Change.com.

Why have a separate blog?

The change I encourage there is an invitation to repair and restore your own sense of self and to bring those lessons and habits into an effort to repair and restore your world.

Globally we’ve seen a post-pandemic shift. There’s less of a call to return to normal than there is a demand for a new normal. One that is focused on the environment, wealth inequality, the millions displaced by climate and conflict – in short the needs of the many over the tyranny of a power elite.

What you’ll read about here are reflections by and about empowered citizens and servant leaders.

My story, other people’s stories, observations about Ireland and Northern Ireland from the lens of this blow-in perpetually frustrated that so many of my neighbours can’t see the possibility and potential of a prosperous future on this island.

More importantly through the lenses of native changemakers who believe that were we to embrace diversity, demand transparency and accountability, and excellence from both taxing authorities things would improve economically, politically and socially.

When we’re less angry about the failures of systems and leadership we can begin to concern ourselves -with a shared future to benefit every citizen rather than fear monger over a need to share an identity or nationhood.

A Culture of Recovery

In a 2012 TEDx talk I related the experience of being shamed by a butcher because my order was not to his liking. Oh, I pushed back, got what I wanted and I do business with his shop this day.

At the time I could often be heard suggesting that what the island needed was its own 12-step program – rooms in which I had learned to unapologetically assert my position and invite further conversation.

The lessons of recovery are developmental and universal.

Well-reared children in all cultures come of age with the skill to live at peace with themselves.

They move from dependent infants to terrible toddlers, to determined and rebellious teens. Through the course of adulthood, they evolve into confident, consensus-seeking adults who negotiate calmly, personally and professionally, to establish their place in the world.

Sadly, most of us don’t experience this ideal and uninterrupted progression. We reach adulthood struggling with dis-ease or discontent.

At best, we wish we were happier at work or at home, at worst we self medicate our dis-ease with substances or behaviours to numb it.

Thankfully if motivated by our discontent, we can all choose change.

Catalysing Conversations & Connections

If you can see it, you can be it.

The first time I heard that it was powerfully uttered by Irish Senator Lynne Ruane.

The occasion was an event convened to honour the memory of a young Irish mother who succumbed to the despair of homelessness – the legacy of an economic recovery that focused on preserving the wealth of a few over the needs of women, children and families.

Notably in direct contravention of the one of the founding principles of the Republic.

Her own story – and book – People Like Me gave voice to the experience of being marginalised – and it gave me hope that a generation of truth tellers was emerging here.

“Few voices ring out as clearly as those who have long been oppressed or silenced. In her heartfelt memoir People Like Me, author Lynn Ruane tells the gripping story of her working-class Dublin life, the kind of life that rarely gets a hearing elsewhere and so she does it with the kind of detail those who have been waiting years to speak up bring to a written work.”–Irish Voice

Her story powerfully illustrates that witnessing our personal stories of change is where societal change begins.

I have been privileged to know changemakers on both sides of the Irish border – and there is power in connecting them with constituencies that can amplify their messages.

We don’t know what we don’t know

It’s an invitation to become curious.

However, a post-conflict society requires more than an invitation.

What’s needed is the kind of relationship building that introduces the safe space that gives over to brave space where trust and compassion can overcome the wilful blindness wrought by generations of the wilfully blind leading the wilfully blind.

Empowering Changemakers

I’m convinced that you can’t teach or evangelise about excellent leadership – but you can witness and celebrate it.

If you recognize the dysfunction of our social, economic and political systems rooted in the dis-ease of our leadership, then we must share the stories to inspire and empower each other to challenge that leadership.

That is the call to “servant leadership”.

And please – email eve@eveearley.com to share your stories.

“So let me ask again. Why are you here? Do you want this to be another year that flies by, half-hearted, arid, rootless, barely remembered, dull with dim glimpses of what might have been? Or do you want this to be a year that you savor, for the rest of your surprisingly short time on Planet Earth, as the year you started, finally, irreversibly, uncompromisingly, to explosively unfurl a life that felt fully worth living?

The choice is yours. And it always has been.”

I’m passionate about celebrating the privilege of living in a place so beautiful that C.S. Lewis modelled Narnia on it. Carlingford Lough & the Mournes is where he spent childhood summers with his grandmother.

I’m passionate about working to teach entrepreneurship, creating jobs and bringing investment.

The granddaughter of a reluctant emigrant, I returned a century after he left to find work. The children of this island are leaving again. We are exporting 1000 a week. 54,000 left in a 12-month period between 2010 & 11.

Sadder still is we are now exporting our first generation reared in peace. We must focus on exporting their intellectual property, not our children.

I am passionate that to do this, to create jobs and have our children take their place on the world stage, they must find their voices.

Whatever does that mean?

Tolstoy suggested that everyone wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change themselves.

If we are going to compete in a global economy, we are going to have to sell our location, our gifts, our talents and ourselves.  We just aren’t very good at that.

Reared with generations of conflict our parents and we were taught to “not get above our station”, not “raise our heads above the parapet” and for some of us, to be unfailingly polite. Fitting in, sometimes invisibly, mattered, so from a young age we were silenced.

How? Well, in my Irish American family, with shame and humour. Oh, the “reared in conflict” way of being crossed the pond.

Delighted to be meeting my dad and brother for dinner, I confidently strode in with a new, 1975 permanent – the rage of the day. Was I greeted with: “you look nice”? No. “Hi, love, how are you”? No. A hug? No.

My father, his loving blue eyes, glaring over the rim of his glasses said:

“My, don’t you look like the ass-end of a poodle”.

Every time I saw him for the next six months, I blew that perm out straight. Never wore a perm curly again!

Fifteen years later, while studying counselling, I read that the Irish discipline their children by chastising with shame and humour. Definitely. I skipped to the Italians, my mother’s tribe, they didn’t. Then I read about my husband’s ethnic background. They didn’t chastise at all – they lavished praise and encouragement.

Oops! An “aha” moment: for the better part of two decades, when he’d done something that annoyed me, I made a joke.  He thought I was amused. He continued the behaviour. He never got the “cease and desist” message.

I took the lesson on board in my personal relationships, framed my communications with clients and coworkers more carefully and never gave it a conscious thought again.

Until I moved to Ireland.

I walked into a village butcher shop, asked for brisket and went on to describe it.

“What would you be wantin that for?”
“My children are coming and it’s their favourite meal.”
“Well, your children will just have to learn to eat Irish.”
(momentary stunned silence)
“Well, I will learn to ‘eat Irish’, my guests will learn to ‘eat Irish’, but my children will have what they have always had, I’ll be in tomorrow at 2 to pick it up.”

On leaving I had two reactions. Initially, simply dumbfounded; then shocked by my response. In spite of believing that I no longer defaulted to adaptive responses learned in childhood, I’d been close to changing my order.

Had it been for myself or for a guest, I likely would have. But no, only because it was for my children!

 They have been the motivation for the most significant life changes I have made.

In my office in Newry, I observed someone a bit younger than I tense up. Stiff shoulders, straight back – but why.  Weeks later I observed it again.  A bit after that I asked what was happening?

 “Didn’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The helicopter”

No, these American reared ears don’t hear – or listen for helicopters. It means only a traffic report, an air ambulance, a visiting dignitary ferried from an airport.

Not so for my border colleagues and neighbours. The sound of a helicopter catapults them back in time. They know in their bones this sound means danger.

My American childhood, unencumbered by conflict, allows me to meet and greet a police officer – feeling secure and safe. No so for my border and Northern Ireland reared neighbours. They are reactive, still carrying the fear and/or the rage of past encounters.

These adaptive responses – survival skills – served them well during the troubles. They no longer do. Now it is problematic; as our reactive responses do not serve our children well.

Do I want them to “get over it”? Absolutely not!

The pain and trauma of generations of conflict needs to be honoured. It needs to be talked about. Not having had an unencumbered childhood is a loss. We must individually and collectively grieve it.

For our children, though, we can change our behaviours. Why?

Because, in our automatic, adaptive responses we transmit to our children our fear and our anger.

Because in our effort to care for them we rear them as we were reared.

“Don’t put your head above the parapet” (Don’t take chances)
“Don’t be getting above your station” (Quiet that ambition)
“You won’t be bringing shame on this house” (Don’t tell the truth)

To take their place on the world stage our children need to “put their heads above the parapet”; To lead in a global economy they need to “get above their station” and to model to the world how a post-conflict society comes to thrive – they need to tell the world the truth:

That it was hard; their parents, grandparents and great, great grandparents were wounded and scarred. Some neither forgave nor forgot – but in service to the future, they made peace, spoke civilly and kindly to each other so that in the space between peace and prosperity our children could throw off our survival skills and adopt their own ‘thrival’ skills.

Will it work?

Back to the butcher. I’d related the story in a group I was running – as an example of assertion vs. cheekiness. I ran into a woman 6 months after it ended.

“I have a ‘butcher’ story for you”

“You, do?”

“I remembered that you said speaking up, asking for something you don’t see or sending something back presented an opportunity for a shopkeeper to serve.

So I asked: Do you have any rhubarb?

“No, and I don’t know why. John up the road has a field of it. Leave it with me and come back tomorrow.”

A few hours later there was a knock on her door. The lad from the butcher’s, holding a bunch of rhubarb.
“He said to give you this.”

We can throw off the adaptive behaviours, and model new and assertive ones better suited to the 21st century.

One day, one transaction, one kind and civil conversation at a time. For our children.

I know it will take time, but I come from a tradition that says restoring the earth and repairing the world is our obligation – “Ours is not to complete the task, but neither may we desist from the labour”. (Ethics of the Fathers)

I am proud to live among the people who made the peace. I am reminded too of an Irish expression I didn’t understand when I arrived in a hurry to do everything. I appreciate it better now:

“We’ll get there.”

Thank you to Frank Kernohan from Corporate Image for a video of the talk.

Kevin Kling came into his own as a storyteller when while in college he realised, “Saturday night was only as good as the story you could tell about it on Sunday”.

Stories are the way in which we share the full measure of our experience.

The onus is on the listener to ‘take what you like and leave the rest’. Carefully chosen words unconsciously deliver a multilayered, and full message.

Just how full becomes apparent not only in the first telling but when compared to subsequent retellings.

We in the West let go of the gift of storytelling in the last half of the twentieth century. Arguably, in large part, because we devoted ourselves to science. Science, we believed, would reveal explanations for everything “unexplainable”. We no longer needed to spin yarns for children about things like what the noise of thunder was or where the rain comes from.

Thankfully, filmmakers, songwriters, and poets never lost sight of the value of a good story. Interestingly, and notably in the case of popular films, consciously or not, they kept retelling the old stories.

• If I said that StarWars was the Jesus story redux, a few might agree, some would deem me blasphemous, others just dismiss me.
• If I argued that the Matrix was like the Abraham story, perhaps the same result.
• And that some archetypal story in J.K. Rowling’s hands got a generation reading again!  Harry Potter’s adventures don’t require interpretation, but it too is a “hero’s journey”.

Monomyth is a term academics use to describe one story common to the mythology of cultures across the globe– the Hero’s Journey. The visual says it all:

Our task is to further explore how this universal story can inform our own. How we can grasp the significance of it in order to recognize a call to action in our own lives. There are heroes among us.  You are invited to explore your own story.

We live in challenging times. We can choose to despair, or allow our stories to be transformative. We can choose the journey. It begins with us.

If you are intrigued, these links may be of further interest:

The developer of the Matrix, Christopher Vogler, describes it in his words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AG4rlGkCRU

A lovely comparison of the myths of different cultures and life stages can be found at: http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00212/monomyth.html

Our own history on this island was well preserved by the efforts of the Irish Folklore Commission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Folklore_Commission

Those archives are available to the public, and many on-line thanks to University College Dublin: http://www.ucd.ie/folklore/en/

A Belfast filmmaker recently described the experience of growing up next door to a police station. Awakened frequently, the family regularly evacuated often returning to blown-out windows, collateral damage in Northern Ireland’s decades-long Troubles.

Did he realize that 25 years later the irony we’d be struck by in his remembered reference that building next door as “the playstation”?

My work centers on helping folks get “unstuck”. I support the journey through career changes and business start-ups.

The method is grounded in their stories.

We come to appreciate that one is not “Sean the accountant” or “Susan the mother of 4”. In their telling and retelling I come to know them as they begin to understand themselves. They describe where they came from, I reflect their stories back. They see themselves in a different light – and often start moving in a new direction.

Not one I choose for them, but one illuminated by the light of their own story-telling process.

Simply put storytelling is the way in which we share the full measure of our experiences.

Stories are delivered not entirely in the words.

And therein lies the magic.

An adolescent’s yarns spun about where they were and what they did reveals important truths, if only in what was left unsaid.

Believe them or not – the onus is on the listener to ‘take what you like and leave the rest’. Even carefully chosen words unconsciously deliver a message at that moment, and a richer one later when compared to other tellings.

Sometimes hard truths and experiences are so painful that while we initially take in the whole story, we describe only part of it to ourselves and others; it is how we are able to live with the pain.

Later, over many years in the retelling, we process the experience in safer times and places. Ultimately, we come to terms with the whole truth, by observing the edits and enhancements over time. The fear we experienced at the moment begins to dissipate.

Remaining silent keeps the experience as raw and the fear alive.

When we devalue storytelling we lose a way to communicate, even with ourselves. And to heal.

How many of us have told the story of a difficult experience many times?

In each retelling, we let go of a piece of shock, pain, or horror and come to terms with it. The episode remains planted in the past, but we continue to grow and learn new ways to cope. In retelling or reframing an experience, we apply new coping skills to the remembered event.

That Belfast filmmaker now tells stories for a living; more importantly, he has come to understand the grievous long term impact of having believed a life of midnight evacuations and shattered windows was “normal”.

He now knows it was not. It was traumatic.

The message to us that day – and the ‘why’ of telling his story, was to remind us that:

Fear is the Enemy of Creativity; Fear is the Thief of Dreams

“First, creating a legacy requires a fundamental shift in the way we think about ourselves in relation to success.  This is not about being the fastest rat in the race or the one who knows how to play “the game” better than anyone else. This is about acknowledging and honoring who you really are and aligning your goals with the opportunity to feel satisfied with your daily contributions. When you operate from this platform of strength, not only will you improve your chances of success, but you also will greatly enhance the happiness you experience along the way. 

Second, all the success you achieve will mean very little if your brand (your authentic self) and values are not aligning with the other.  Eventually and sometimes tragically, this disconnect between the two will come to the surface and when it does,  you will be faced with a legacy that no matter how great your prior accomplishments, they will pale beside the revealing light that will show you were not true to yourself.”

Roz Usheroff

This is not from some self-help book. The author is a highly respected corporate trainer and the entire blog post on Branding  can be found at: http://goo.gl/h5or8

 It is not my habit to direct folks away from my site, but this is important. We are inundated every day with Klout scores, Facebook likes and LinkedIn requests to connect. What does it all mean and what is it in service of?

You are your brand.  When you are in the marketplace can folks accept you at your word? Are you working to live, or living to work? What do you want your legacy to be?

Start reading obituarys! Ask yourself what you want to be remembered for. If your work life and your personal values are in conflict, ask yourself how to align them.

Start by becoming a story teller. Tell yourself, or a trusted friend, your story.  Say who you are. Is it who you wanted to become? If not, explore what you think the obstacles to becoming that person were and are now.

At Empowering Change in Emerald Valley, we offer programming – in a group or an individual setting to help you begin to align your human “doing” with your human “being”.

This is not a dress rehearsal, choose an authentic life!

Recently there was an “ah ha” moment in the shower; have you ever noticed that the last half of the shampoo (and toothpaste) last longer than the first? We mete it out more carefully when we are approaching the end – whether or not there is a “back up” under the sink.

That certainly explains a lot about my impatience in this “third half” of my life.

Irritability with folks “slowing me down” has crept up; oh I’ve always been the impatient sort, but the idea that folks are “stealing” what little time I have left on the planet is accompanied by a rage that is shocking, even to me.

I don’t know what’s worse: that I‘ve been downright uncivil with Sky, Talk Talk and BT while waiting over 4 months for proper phone, cable and broadband, or that I’m not embarrassed by or inclined to apologise for my incivility when I reach a call centre powerless to resolve my complaint.

Then there are the adaptive accommodations to aging I didn’t even know I was making.

My arthritis had been advancing markedly for years but when I moved my household from two years of storage, I was unable to use kitchen tools like the peeler and the paring knife that I had just unpacked, I was astounded. Unconsciously, when I’d only moved a few favourite kitchen things, I’d chosen the handiest and most comfortable. They were all the newer – with fatter, softer grips. Unconsciously, adapting all along, I hadn’t noticed just how disabled I’d become.

Joan Walsh Anglund is the poet, this is an excerpt:

I shall be older than this one day.
I shall think myself young when I remember.
Nothing can stop the slow change of masks my face must wear, one following one.
These gloves my hands have put on, the pleated skin, patterned by the pale tracings of my days.
These are not my hands! And yet, these gloves do not come off!
I shall wear older ones tomorrow, til glove after glove, and mask after mask, I am buried beneath the baggage of old women….

I was enamoured of her sweet, simple rhymes illustrated with charming drawings. This is the only one I remember; I was haunted by it. At fifteen I knew I was seeing my future.

If you have been in the way of my impatience lately – or experience it in the future, I apologise. I’d just like you to frame it with the knowledge that there is much to do and I’m trying to squeeze twice as much production out of the last third of my days.

All this is punctuated by crankiness over the fact that now that my head is screwed on right, my body is failing me… and customer service at BT needs a heads up, I’m calling tomorrow for a new line.

George loved life and inspired all of us through this difficult time. He was most appreciative of all the support, love and encouragement that all of you showed him. He was a wonderful man.

Yesterday’s news from his wife. This “wonderful man” lived and died valiantly. His gift was two years of living life fully, making memories and reminding me that it is possible to “accept the things we cannot change” – even the worst of it.

We met 17 years ago, and disliked each other immediately. He and his young wife moved to the adjacent house, we shared a back yard. They were expecting their first child and my girls were 12, 8 & 5. When the baby arrived, one of mine announced: “she’ll be going to kindergarten the year Jennie goes to college”. I vividly remember thinking: “that’s ages away”. It wasn’t.

George and I politely warmed to each other over the years. It would have taken less time had we realised we disliked only the reflection of ourselves in each other. Then life happened. Another daughter was born, his girls grew, my girls babysat; the families grew closer and we shared the wisdom gleaned from parenting. Mindfully we were trying to give better than we got as children.

And we shared Joy; no accident her name. Joy blossomed into the kind of mother George knew she’d be when he’d decided to wait the years it took for her to agree marriage. She is a formidable woman, a well-loved child of parents who modeled patient, disciplined, and unmitigated love. She mothered her children and mine. I learned from her and George softened toward me.

They co-parented my children across the yard, through adolescent parties, romances and disappointments the likes of which you don’t share with your own parents. They delivered friendship, qualified by parental concern. They were the safety net that was once natural in extended families a century ago.

They are what I refer to as “family of choice”. Part of my personally appointed extended family. “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family”. Wrong! You can create healthy and supportive families – and while George and I didn’t know it in our prickly phase, we shared a common mission: Healthy and happy daughters, well-armed for anything life throws their way.

It took until 2008 – for us to become friends. When I left for Ireland we shared talks about what was important. He spoke of how he loved my girls and he loved that his girls were loved by them. I admitted how hard it was for me to leave my daughters. How important it was for me to compose a life before going to my grave resentful. I wanted a life not characterised by my roles as daughter, wife and mother. He’d already pursued his PhD in History, remodeling his career and composing a life that allowed him to teach, and to have more time just being a husband and father. We talked about death and dying before it was relevant.

Perhaps it is only the Jews and the Irish who are comfortable in this melancholy place, but we were. The dying talk went from “what if” to “when” as I returned home to the heartbreaking news of his diagnosis.

Thank you George, for the honesty and the process you shared in this long goodbye. I am sorry it wasn’t longer. Thank you for arming your daughters and mine for the worst life has to offer. Thank you for giving our friendship a chance.

Thank you, especially, for the gift of Joy in all our lives.

Brigid is the Celtic goddess of abundance traditionally honored on the Celtic cross-quarter feast of Imbolc  between Winter Solstice & Spring Equinox; now on February 1st.

A floodgate is the metaphor I used for years when describing a fear of being paralyzed if I unearthed a long-buried childhood trauma.

Rage, even the expression of mild anger, was forbidden in the household and schools in which I was reared.

The message was uncompromising:

• Portray life as it “should” appear
• Make everything look perfect
• Don’t tell the truth about what’s really happening
• Never let your feelings show

In spite of that, I’ve learned to trust that life is to be lived and not controlled.

Last week, I fully experienced the memory of a trauma that sent me into a rage. After half a century the floodgates were opened. A gift from my unconscious. I was blind to a toxic relationship – and the wounded little girl inside recognized what I did not. So she grabbed my attention- the memory was her SOS to me.

Pretending life was “normal” became impossible.

In that rage though, I reclaimed myself from the polite peace I was maintaining to make things comfortable and normal for the folks around me.

Apparently, I’d wasted half a century fearing I would drown in a flood.

Oh, the liquid metaphor was correct, but it turns out that I was dying of thirst. A thirst for the truth I couldn’t see if I didn’t allow for keeping up perfect appearances and letting my head overrule my gut.

I was reminded that the most important lesson distilled in the “Artist’s Way”, is that to recover an authentic, creative self, one needs to embrace anger; it is a friend. Not a kind or gentle one, but a loyal one.  It is truthful.

Another message is that the way in which we recover our authentic selves is one day, one step at a time. Our unconscious minds are to be trusted. That memory I’d feared and suppressed did not return until I was able to handle it.  It is for that I am most grateful.

If you are interested in taking steps to reclaim your creative self, decide to.

When we adopt a discipline of listening to our body and becoming mindful of our real feelings we’re no longer guarded. Being guarded saps the energy which would otherwise fuel creativity .

We are first and foremost human beings, not a human doings. When we “do” polite, living life to please others, it’s a lot of work with little room for play – rethink it.

Take a walk, a yoga class, have a massage. Feel.

I am often reminded of a catechism lesson of my childhood: “Who made you? God made me, I was made in the image and likeness of God”.

Let’s embrace the divine within us. And consider that the gods of our ancestors raged. One even sent a flood.

Yesterday was Brigid’s day, I’m particularly grateful that the gods and goddesses described by Christians, Jews and Pagans are consistent in their message.

I needed to be reminded that even an abundant flood of anger is empowering.

And it is a blessing that I have been sustained to reach this understanding.

An earlier version of this post appeared in February 2012