Wendy Keller Blog

February 27, 2010

Problem Solving with Redwoods

Filed under: Dr. Phil Show — Tags: , , , , , , , , — admin @ 12:22 am

Went for a 9 mile hike in the Muir Woods last week. That’s the stand of redwoods near San Francisco that makes tourists from all over the world crane their necks and pull out their cameras.  It’s like the Tower of Babel with so many languages going on all at once. Since it has been raining a lot, the creeks are gushing and rivulets of water leak from the soil where the hiking trails have been cut into the hillsides. Once I got to the straight uphill part, I got past the tourists and the strolling lovers. Then it became altogether glorious.

I go there when I need to escape, when I need to think, when I need to “talk” to the trees.  I have a secret spot and after communing with nature for a half hour, I started to reflect on  how my life is changing when my daughter leaves for college in August. Nothing has turned out as I planned when I was a starry-eyed girl.  In many ways, it’s been better.  But in no way is it similar to my “Goals List”, not even the one I wrote out when I got divorced in 1995.  Having a house burn down is in some ways a wonderful opportunity to take stock of what’s really important – and what isn’t.  Objects lose their value for the most part, because nothing has history anymore.  For a while, since 53 houses burned down along with mine in the Malibu wildfire, the neighbors would joke with one another, “Hey, I love your shirt.  Is that new?”  Of course it was.  Everything was new. 

I look at the little tiny sprouting redwoods and wonder who, if anyone, in 200 years will be sitting in this same spot looking at them.

The Ripple Effect of Rudeness

Filed under: Dr. Phil Show — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 12:19 am

I suddenly have to go to Argentina in the next few weeks. I’ve never been to South America, don’t speak more than LA street Spanish and don’t have time for this trip. I really don’t want to go.

I’m going anyway.   

My biological father and dear stepmother moved to Panama eight years ago, driven off their Missouri farm by the rising cost of healthcare.  I met them for the first time when I was 28, and we’d had about six years of family time before they left.  The house they bought once belonged to Noriega’s security chief. My stepmom says that even the bathroom ceiling is encased in marble!  

Last year, they purchased a large vineyard in Mendoza, Argentina.  I’ve seen pictures of a LOT of grapes. They put a local farm manager in charge and returned to Panama, planning to sell their home and retire as vintners…except the real estate market bottomed out and the farm manager almost ran the place into ruin.  He cashed the checks but didn’t water the grapes.  When my tall, tough Chicagoland father found out, he fired the guy – probably not in any uncertain terms. 

Now the farm manager is causing trouble.  Big trouble. So much trouble that even though it’s been five months since I got a call, two nights ago my stepmother left a frantic phone message. “You have to come to Argentina!”  Of course, I feared the worst.

Turns out Argentine law says that if you have your property in a trust, you can be sued (by your errant farm manager) but the property cannot be confiscated.  Did I mention I don’t want to go to Argentina? The literary agency I run is booming.  I’m moving at the end of April. My precious daughter is going to college in August and I don’t want to lose one day with her as she hurtles toward adulthood.  The flight is 19 hours just to get to Chile, then an 11 hour layover to board a 45 minute flight to take a 2 hour truck ride to the little village they love so much.  I’m returning two days after we visit their abogado to sign the papers.  No, the papers apparently can’t be sent via DHL, to my great chagrin.

This whole drama makes me philosophical. Amazing how one man’s mismanagement of some grapes in a country I’ve never seen is causing me enormous strife and inconvenience and unbelievable stress for my “parents”.  Makes me think about the ripple effect of my own negative behaviors.  How many times have I caused some unknown person enormous trouble? How many times have I been unaware or unkind and the ripple has moved through others’ lives? 

What about that time I furiously passed some slow poke on the freeway?  Yeah, there should be a law against going so slowly, but maybe the driver had something dreadful happen that day – their mother died or they lost their job or they had a fight with someone and just couldn’t focus.

How about when the elevator door was closing, my arms were too full and it shut as someone was running for it? Were they late to an important meeting and thus perhaps didn’t get the job or the deal. Had it cost them their livelihood?

What about the times I thought to do something for someone but couldn’t, or just didn’t? This Argentine experience is making me reflect on all the ways I could be a better member of society, unlike the lazy farm manager.  What long reaching effect will my behaviors today have on others tomorrow?

February 18, 2010

Heart Karma

Filed under: Dr. Phil Show — admin @ 6:51 pm

A friend called today and told me how sad he’s been feeling.  It’s been two weeks since we’ve spoken.  It used to be we talked and texted on and off all day, but when I realized our friendship was morphing into a Grand Romance in his head, I gently disconnected.  Problem is, although he’s a good friend to me, he’s a husband to someone else.

It’s not that I’m so noble or ethical or praiseworthy.  It’s that I’ve been bitten by that karma bug when I was the one besotted by someone unavailable. There’s no upside.  I’ve learned that the momentary joy of making a real, deep, sincere connection with another human being isn’t worth it if that other person is supposed to have a real, deep, sincere connection with their marriage partner and doesn’t.  Part of me thinks it’s sad that it has to be this way.  Why can’t people just be great friends? Why does that Other Element have to come in and confuse matters when it’s a man and a woman who are friends?  I’ve been single again since the invention of clouds, and I have lots of fantastic, wonderful single male friends who are only male friends.  I listen to their dating tales and they listen to mine.  I dance at their weddings. I think of them all as once-removed from my dear, precious brothers.  I would never in a trillion years want to date one of these guys – shudder!  I know their foibles too well and they know mine.

So why when one party is married is it suddenly fraught with all sorts of weirdness?  Why can’t I just be friends with my married guy friend without it seeming furtive and like I’m plotting to wreck his homelife and destroy his children’s lives?  (He knows I’m not, I know I’m not, but if I was his wife, I wouldn’t want my husband’s closest friend to be a single woman, either.)

More times than I can count, I’ve heard unhappily married men say, “My wife just doesn’t understand me!”  Maybe she doesn’t, but shouldn’t that get fixed first, and if unfixable, actions taken, before one seeks solace elsewhere?   I’ve heard men brag that they have open marriages or are getting back at her for cheating on them in the 80s; I’ve heard “we have a special arrangement – I go my way and she goes hers” and all that.  Well, it just doesn’t fly with me.

My friend, the sad one, didn’t tell me all those things.  He wasn’t trying to get me to do something untoward.  We just had an instant bond of friendship, compassion and concern for one another from the minute we met.  Why the heck did it have to start feeling like a thwarted romance?  If he were single today, I would definitely be his friend, but not his girlfriend. Why does human love have to come with complications?  Why does it have to hurt anyone?

Like Rodney King said during the LA riots, “Can’t we just all get along?”

February 8, 2010

The Widow’s Mite

Filed under: Dr. Phil Show — admin @ 7:43 pm

My daughter’s father isn’t a bad guy, he’s just made a lot of unfortunate choices, before and since our divorce when Sophie was barely two.  During the best of times and the worst of times, he’s chosen not to pay the court-ordered child support.  Enforcing the law costs more than the paltry sum he owes, so pretty much I’ve been Sophie’s sole support. 

Although she has a half dozen pairs of designer boots, she recently fell in love with yet another pair.  I decided to take this opportunity to underscore the value of money so I refused to buy them.  Her new part time job starts tomorrow. In a recent call, she told her dad that I wasn’t buying the much-desired boots because I was trying to teach her the value of money.  She wasn’t asking him.  You can’t get blood from a turnip. 

He told me later that he’d recently come into a bit of cash, so he’d be sending her money for the boots.  I picked up the mail today.  I handed her the envelope, a huge smile on my face.  She opened it up and out fell the money.  She picked it up incredulous. Then…she burst into tears!  

When she recovered, she said, “In my whole life, he’s never given me money before!”  She’s on the phone with him right now as I write this.  We never know when one little thing we do for someone will be the gift that melts their heart and transforms the relationship.

Blue Collar Blues

Filed under: Overcoming Adversity — admin @ 10:56 am

An article in More magazine  is haunting me.  A would-be author wrote about how her blue collar parents responded to her desire to go to college to study writing.  Short answer: not good.  They wanted her to get a “real” job. 

Her Dad was a steel worker, mom stayed home.  They understand this life equation:  Work for X hours, get paid X dollars. Repeat. The writer was the first one in her family to go to college. Me, too. I come from generations of union electricians. I value blue collar workers, I just didn’t want to be one.

I went to college at sixteen, burning with my desire to be a journalist.  I worked four jobs and sometimes starved myself to pay for it. Maybe it sounds like a glorious accomplishment to work so hard to achieve a goal. It isn’t. I had my nose against the grindstone so hard, I never looked around to strategize or network into better opportunities. I learned that I could fight for what I want and get it, but it left me believing that achieving anything has to be a struggle.  That’s not always true.  I know there are people out there who view work and life differently than I do and who therefore create different results. They think at a whole other level.   

I reflect on my friend Mark Victor Hansen, author of many books including the Chicken Soup for the Soul books (co-authored with my client, Jack Canfield).  Mark’s father was a baker, up at 4 AM to toil. Mark has overcome his blue collar childhood and created a vast fortune. We’ve talked about it, and sometimes I can catch a glimpse of how he’s trained his mind to think, but it always dissipates when we hang up the phone.   

Of course, it’s not all about money. I am grateful for every blue collar person who makes the world around me work so beautifully.  But how do any of us throw off the limiting mindsets of our childhood? How does anyone move past the mentality of struggle?  How do we stop excusing the fact that we are not living our dreams?

The article writer eventually gave up her job as a college writing professor to work in a grocery store, because it gives her more time to do her own writing. Did she finally get a “real” job?  Does the answer depend on whether she ever gets her book published?  Or perhaps, is it all about having and pursuing a dream – the journey, and not the destination? What do YOU think?

February 6, 2010

Blinded by the light

Filed under: Overcoming Adversity — admin @ 1:35 pm

My friend John texted me today. He wrote, “I seriously just don’t know if I’m strong enough to go blind.” He’s a PhD candidate at a prestigious university, in his late 20s. His disease is genetic and aggressive and heart breaking.

I texted him back “I can’t begin to fathom what you are feeling. But I do know that if someone had asked me the day before my children were killed, I would have said I couldn’t survive it. That was 1991.”

Amazing the variety of traumas humans survive. I’ve noticed that it comes down to a choice: deal with it and make the best of it, or give up on life. People have been going through whatever we’re going through for millennia. It’s sad. It hurts. It’s not fair. It’s an outrage. There is no huge payoff for surviving tragedy that I can see. I would much prefer my children back than to be told I’m a “better person” now. But that’s not the hand I was dealt, so like John, I have to decide how I’ll deal with my life’s challenges. So do you.

November 11, 2009

Dr. Phil Show! Comments? Questions?

Filed under: Dr. Phil Show — admin @ 12:35 am

Taping the Dr Phil show was an amazing experience. Not only is his staff absolutely top notch, but the guy emanates real care and concern for people when he’s talking to them. You can tell you have his full attention, and it’s not like he doesn’t have anything else to do in a day.

I’d love your feedback on the show. Was there anything covered – by me or by him – that you wish we’d taken into more depth? Any negotiation problems in your life that you’d love to get a little help with? What do you wish we’d covered that we didn’t?

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