On Appreciation

Would it be too much to say that all growth emerges from appre­ci­a­tion? You or I take a class, for exam­ple, in “music appre­ci­a­tion.” We find our­selves becom­ing sen­si­tive in new ways to the aes­thet­ic val­ue of music. Or we rec­og­nize one day what a par­ent or men­tor did for us and we feel appre­cia­tive — grate­ful for their gifts, some­times very unappre­ci­at­ed at the time. I try my hand at cook­ing and soon have a new under­stand­ing of what it takes to learn to cook well, to become more than a cook, but a chef who can bring togeth­er unique and arrest­ing com­bi­na­tions of ingre­di­ents that sur­prise with their pure deli­cious­ness. Per­haps this notion of appre­ci­a­tion answers a ques­tion that all self-reflec­tive peo­ple (and hope­ful­ly all lead­ers) ask them­selves: how do I grow? By what method do I become more of who I am meant to be? As soon as we appre­ci­ate, we take some­thing into our­selves and begin to let it trans­form us, our under­stand­ings and ulti­mate­ly how we behave. In turn this influ­ences the essence of all our relationships.

Hav­ing this aware­ness that growth comes from appre­ci­a­tion, sud­den­ly there is so much to appre­ci­ate: new expe­ri­ences, per­spec­tives, insights, peo­ple, events, his­to­ry. I even notice the art­ful flight of the crow out­side my win­dow. I see the calm­ness of the lake’s waters behind the crow, and beyond that I notice the feat of cre­at­ing the city on the oth­er side of the lake. If I throw open the doors and win­dows of this lit­tle cab­in of being called the self, I am flood­ed by a uni­verse that begs for appre­ci­a­tion. I see into both the day and the night, good times and poor ones, appre­ci­ate what joy brings, and what sad­ness and suf­fer­ing can bring as well. I become attuned to the vibra­tions of my envi­ron­ment: a crowd­ed store, a tense room of exec­u­tives, the sense of relief once a hard­ship is over. Sud­den­ly my eye­sight, my hear­ing are bet­ter, as if I’ve trans­formed to an entire­ly new kind of cat.

And among all the things I might appre­ci­ate, one comes for­ward that holds a spe­cial key, and that is self-appre­ci­a­tion. Not ego­tism or over­ween­ing pride, but sure­ly more than just self-accep­tance, bow­ing to a small por­tion of life, a fate. Self-appre­ci­a­tion is foun­da­tion­al, my fun­da­men­tal belief in and capac­i­ty to trust my own judg­ments, to fol­low the threads that gen­uine­ly and unique­ly belong to me, with­out denials and with­out decep­tions. To appre­ci­ate every­thing I am, all the suc­cess­es and fail­ures, good moments and bad ones, great rela­tion­ships and ones that need work, all those tal­ents and all those oppor­tu­ni­ties, the whole kit and caboo­dle. With such a key you or I might unlock the world!

Chloé

Technorati Tags: , Reflective Leadership. Link to blog posting. Link to Oestreich Associates website.

By Dan Oestreich

I am a consultant, coach, facilitator and trainer supporting the growth and development of leaders and teams. For further information about my work and services, please access my Oestreich Associates website.

9 comments

  1. Dan: I appre­ci­ate this post.

    The very first sen­tence remind­ed me that there are [at least] two sens­es to appre­ci­a­tion: to rec­og­nize val­ue, and to increase val­ue. And the rest of the post prompt­ed me to con­sid­er the way that these two sens­es are inter­re­lat­ed: by rec­og­niz­ing val­ue, I [often] increase value.

    Your last sen­tence reminds me of the Intro­duc­tion to Jon Kabat-Zin­n’s book Full Cat­a­stro­phe Liv­ing in which he describes how a line from the movie, Zor­ba the Greek, pro­vid­ed the inspi­ra­tion for the book’s title. When asked whether he is mar­ried, Zor­ba reples “Am I not a man? And is not a man stu­pid? I’m a man. So I mar­ried. Wife, chil­dren, house, every­thing. The full catastrophe.” 

    Kabat-Zinn goes on to describe how this applies to his book, whose sub­ti­tle is “Using the Wis­dom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness”:

    It was not meant to be a lament, nor does it mea that being mar­ried or hav­ing chil­dren is a cat­a­stro­phe. Zor­ba’s response embod­ies a supreme appre­ci­a­tion for the rich­ness of life and the inevitabil­i­ty of all its dilem­mas, sor­rows, tragedies and ironies.

  2. Thanks for these thoughts! Yes, I think the ref­er­ence to Zor­ba does get close to it — appre­ci­a­tion can be seiz­ing life and being seized by it in return. Yet, too much of the time it seems that it is dis­tant, apart from us, in the future, a prod­uct of hav­ing some­thing we don’t yet have, mon­ey, time, choice. So, to me, that’s where the turn toward self-appre­cia­tive comes in. It’s the fail­ure to make this turn, I think, that is an under­ly­ing cause of the dis­tance — and the suf­fer­ing. In the post prop­er I men­tioned tak­ing a course in music appre­ci­a­tion. What would it be like to take a course in self-appre­ci­a­tion — study­ing the his­to­ry of chal­lenges, suc­cess­es, fail­ures, growth, expe­ri­ence, styles, rela­tion­ships, capa­bil­i­ties? Would­n’t this course on self-appre­ci­a­tion be a heal­ing event? Yes, I think it would. But there’s also fear here of sink­ing into navel gaz­ing, self-absorp­tion, and self­ish­ness, ego­tism, insen­si­tiv­i­ty to oth­ers, a fail­ure of poten­tials and ulti­mate­ly, injus­tice to oth­ers — instead, as Kabat-Zinn says, of devel­op­ing an appre­ci­a­tion “for the rich­ness of life and the invitabil­i­ty of all its dilem­mas, sor­rows, tragedies and ironies.” To me, this is not a sub­tle thing. True appre­ci­a­tion of self helps us devel­op humil­i­ty and sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Ego­ists, because they are dri­ven to prove their val­ue to them­selves, reflect the suf­fer­ing of those who can­not appre­ci­ate self at all. Ego­tism reflects only the fear and pain of avoid­ance and compensation. 

    When peo­ple as chil­dren are con­di­tioned to pre­tend that they are always good, always per­fect, always strong, always accom­plished, they may adopt ego­tis­ti­cal modes and think­ing and act­ing. This is a “self-enhance­ment strat­e­gy”. These strate­gies are the oppo­site of what I am address­ing here.

    Obvi­ous­ly, I’ve been think­ing about this post a lot and am con­tin­u­ing to learn. So thanks, Joe, as always, for stop­ping by and tak­ing a moment to share your thoughts. 

    And I cer­tain­ly invite you, who­ev­er you are read­ing this far, to add your own thoughts to the pile!

  3. I love the idea of a course in self-appre­ci­a­tion … though I won­der how one would be graded.

    I am fas­ci­nat­ed by the term — and descrip­tion — of self-enhance­ment strate­gies, and would have loved to incor­po­rate notions of the pub­lic and tac­ti­cal dimen­sions of self-enhance­ment, and self-serv­ing attri­bu­tion bias, into the scree blog post on the com­modi­ti­za­tion of Twit­ter fol­low­ers I have been grap­pling with for days and final­ly post­ed a lit­tle while ago … and won­der if my inclu­sion of a link to that post here may qual­i­fy as a self-enhance­ment strategy. 

    Your sug­ges­tion that self-enhance­ment strate­gies are employed [pri­mar­i­ly] to com­pen­sate for self-appre­ci­a­tion deficits offers food for fur­ther thought. Like you, I am con­tin­u­ing to learn.

  4. Joe

    Thanks for writ­ing back — and men­tion­ing your post on com­modi­ti­za­tion. Self-enhance­ment strat­e­gy or not, men­tion­ing it was use­ful to me in know­ing that you’d writ­ten anoth­er post (I like to read your posts) and this one is fas­ci­nat­ing to me because it over­laps our dis­cus­sion here. 

    One of the things I’ve been think­ing about late­ly is the dif­fer­ence between self-esteem and self-appre­ci­a­tion. Is there a dif­fer­ence, real­ly? Well, I have a lot more think­ing to do, but what I like most about the notion of self-appre­ci­a­tion is that it is a process not a quan­ti­ty. We tend to think of esteem as if it were a bank, which leads to images of wealth and pover­ty. As a process, self-appre­ci­a­tion — if it relates to “quan­ti­ties” at all — seems to be a “just enough” kind of expe­ri­ence. Just enough “for this per­son” or “for this cir­cum­stance,” caus­ing a relax­ation into life. Lots more for me to think about here.

    Get­ting back to your inter­est in self-enhance­ment strate­gies, I just found that great thread through danah boyd ref­er­enc­ing Clay Shirky’s “A Rant About Women,” and Tom Coates’ com­men­tary, “Should we encour­age self-pro­mo­tion and lies?” It’s a great dis­cus­sion about cul­ture and gen­der con­di­tion­ing and has every­thing to do with the self-rein­forc­ing expec­ta­tions that keep bad pat­terns going. 

    This thread espe­cial­ly remind­ed me of a men­tor­ing class I offered to a large gov­ern­ment agency. As part of the class we cov­ered some inclu­sion issues which prompt­ed one of the par­tic­i­pants to share a sto­ry about apply­ing for a pro­mo­tion in the agency. Her then boss, help­ing her by review­ing her draft appli­ca­tion, told her he thought she had­n’t suf­fi­cient­ly accen­tu­at­ed her accom­plish­ments. When she replied she had cre­at­ed a truth­ful pic­ture, he said, “Well then you’ve got to lie!” What was inter­est­ing was the reac­tion of oth­er par­tic­i­pants. Imme­di­ate­ly oth­er women chimed in, often with a tone of frus­tra­tion or dis­gust, to share sim­i­lar sto­ries of being told to pre­var­i­cate or exag­ger­ate, essen­tial­ly to assert their self-enhance­ment strat­e­gy in order to get a job or oth­er­wise be suc­cess­ful. What was fas­ci­nat­ing was the reac­tion of men in the class who agreed that such dis­sem­bling was essen­tial and that peo­ple (women) who did­n’t do it were fool­ing them­selves about the nature of the work­place and pro­mo­tion­al process. Kind of an “every­body does it” response. But the con­ver­sa­tion had not yet real­ly even begun. It began at the point the HR Direc­tor for a branch of the agency turned to the orig­i­nal speak­er and told her that her boss “nev­er said that.” “Nev­er said what?” she asked. “Nev­er said to lie on your appli­ca­tion.” “Well, yes he did!” she said. “I was there. That’s what he said!” “I’m sure you mis­un­der­stood,” he went on. By then, the class has firm­ly divid­ed between men and women tak­ing part in a high­ly emo­tion­al argu­ment about whether or not to dis­miss the expe­ri­ence of the woman who had told her sto­ry — quite hon­est­ly it seemed to me. 

    This is almost to me a para­ble of how and why self-enhance­ment strate­gies are so fre­quent and pow­er­ful — along with the more psy­cho­log­i­cal expla­na­tion that I offered ear­li­er. In male dom­i­nat­ed envi­ron­ments the asser­tion that self-pro­mo­tion is a nec­es­sary lie for gain was sup­port­ed by men as if a) noth­ing is wrong here and b) it nev­er hap­pened in the first place. Such are the social con­trol mech­a­nisms by which bad behav­ior becomes a wide­spread norm.

  5. I real­ly like your char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the dif­fer­ence between self-esteem and self-appre­ci­a­tion as the dif­fer­ence between quan­ti­ty and process — your elab­o­ra­tion on self-esteem as a quan­ti­ty reminds me of Stephen Cov­ey’s notion of an emo­tion­al bank account and Tom Rath and Don­ald Clifton’s notion of a buck­et and a dip­per. I wrote a blog post about fill­ing buck­ets, online and offline almost four years ago, after read­ing Rath & Clifton’s book “How Full is Your Buck­et”, but I had­n’t thought about how I can fill my own buck­et (through self-appre­ci­a­tion) … until read­ing your comment.

    I, too, enjoyed danah’s response to Clay’s provo­ca­tion … and would also high­ly rec­om­mend Venes­sa Miemis’ response, How To Be a Woman in a Man’s World.

    Your sto­ry about the silence and denial of men regard­ing the appro­pri­ate­ness and preva­lence of pre­var­i­cat­ing pro­mo­tion­al prac­tices reminds me of a num­ber of Mar­tin Luther King quotes. I’ll include one below:

    His­to­ry will have to record that the great­est tragedy of this peri­od of social tran­si­tion was not the stri­dent clam­or of the bad peo­ple, but the appalling silence of the good people.

    [And in my search for appro­pri­ate allit­er­a­tive terms, I dis­cov­ered that the root of pre­var­i­cate is “to act in col­lu­sion” … mak­ing it even more appro­pri­ate in this con­text than I’d ini­tial­ly intended.]

  6. That dis­cus­sion with the gov agency and HR guy is hor­ri­fy­ing Dan!

    The abil­i­ty to appre­ci­ate is a gift. I love the light that you shed on the path­way from appre­ci­a­tion to growth. This gives me more road­way to uti­lize intent.

  7. Appre­ci­a­tion is one of my favorite fil­ter in the way I see and feel my life.

    My epiphany: a few years ago, I decide to appraise myself: I played a kind of game in imag­in­ing that I would meet a woman that was my clone. Would I like her ? Would I appre­ci­ate her ? Would I want to be her friend ?

    And there it was: YES I want to be her friend. I do not judge my friend, I appre­ci­ate their con­tri­bu­tion into my life, I do not mea­sure their worth by their job, mon­ey, sta­tus, abil­i­ty to choose the right wine, their appear­ance, age, etc. So why would I under appre­ci­ate me ? I am my best friend, now, and I don’t have to lie about my tal­ents, val­ues, career path. 

    The oth­er thing that result­ed from that epiphany, is that I can now appre­ci­ate every­thing that come into my life. I am serene inside even when there is tur­bu­lence. I see myself as a friend play­ing in a game with all her pas­sion, courage, tal­ents and good will. And I cheer for her !

    I have now time to appre­ci­ate peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent than me almost as much as peo­ple that share val­ues, expe­ri­ences, taste in choco­late cake. They are dif­fer­ent yes, but they con­tribute to the game and I love to play.

    There is a rich­ness in my life since I put my focus on what works, what embell­ish life, what increase my ener­gy, the kind­ness of oth­ers. More often than not, it does not require mon­ey, or maybe just a little.

    Being grate­ful seem to bring more nice expe­ri­ences into my life. And I am please to say that peo­ple find me more fun to be around.

    I won­der why it is not more preva­lent in our soci­ety? Could it be that it does not pro­mote “spend­ing to be hap­py” ? And that our econ­o­my need a lot of buy­ers, not hap­py persons?

    We play a lot of mind games. The trick is to choose the one that will put us in a state of joy. Appre­ci­a­tion is a way to acknowl­edge all that bring that joy in our life, to remem­ber that we are happy.

    Dis­donc
    P.S. I love your Chloé!

  8. dave

    That whole thing about appre­ci­a­tion and growth has been a won­der­ful dis­cov­ery to me and I’m glad you sense it, too! Thanks very much for drop­ping by and for commenting.

  9. Diane

    Such a love­ly epiphany about being one’s own best friend! Thank you for shar­ing that with every­one who reads this thread. 

    You ask an impor­tant ques­tion about why more peo­ple do not fol­low a sim­i­lar path, why appre­ci­a­tion itself seems to be under appre­ci­at­ed. I think it is one of those issues where even if you try to say it and explain it, it sim­ply may not be heard. The act of appre­ci­a­tion, the act of grat­i­tude does begin with an inner open­ness, I believe. But can that come before you are I are ready? Our sto­ries, at their best, often resolve when the main char­ac­ter at last comes to some moment of appre­ci­a­tion and insight — what could be more nat­ur­al? — yet it is an “at last.” It can take awhile to come through the fire. For many, as you have noticed, our cul­ture seems to thrive on dis­trac­tion from the indi­vid­u­al’s inner path and jour­ney, sug­gest­ing that hap­pi­ness is found in accu­mu­la­tion. But, of course, that just delays the moment of arrival. 

    Thank you again for com­ing here and shar­ing your own path of discovery.

    And, ah yes, my lit­tle cat, she is a gem!

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