“Togetherness is a good thing. Separateness is a good thing. We need each in order to have a really great relationship, and they need to be balanced. Even more important is the ability to combine the two at the same time.”
(John & Linda Friel, The 7 Best Things Happy Couples Do)

As a kid, I was fascinated by conjoined (“Siameze”) twins. I read stories in the Guinness record book, and I watched TV specials on the courageous families and doctors facing the challenges of separation surgery. These people faced unbelievable choices, and almost always (regardless of the outcome) came away with some sense of gratitude for the journey.

But none of them ever claimed that being conjoined was an ideal situation.

And yet, that is what is often promoted as the ideal relationship in marriage. Through our love songs, our family legacies, and even our best relationship experts, most of us end up with a vision for marriage that is simply not workable. After marriage, we’re supposed to be one, and always on the same page. Your spouse is supposed to meet your needs and complete you. And us husbands, we’re even supposed to introduce our spouses as our “better halves!” You were an independent single person, but now that you’re married, you’re now simply half of a whole, needier than ever on someone else.

Perhaps, crudely, that’s why I consider my coaching work with couples as a kind of “separation surgery.” Couples need to hear that separation is a good thing. Individuality is a good thing. It’s not just okay-it’s vital to have some separate interests, opinions, positions, circles. That way when you are together with your spouse, it feels like a voluntary connection between two people facing each other, instead of a necessary attachment of two people joined at the hip.

Peace begins with pause,

“When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have an effect.”
(Andy Warhol)

A lot of parents worry about violent movies and video games, afraid their children will become desensitized to the terrible images of carnage.

According to Andy Warhol, we should be. This past weekend, I got to see a Warhol exhibit here in Atlanta, and I was struck by one image in particular. He showed an empty electric chair (the same one used to execute the traitorous Rosenburgs at Sing-Sing prison), but he showed it over and over again. By the time you see the whole thing, you forget you’re looking at a horrific instrument of death.

That was Warhol’s point. By reproducing the image, as TV news was beginning to do with Vietnam images every night, Warhol was exposing the power of media to glorify violence, and desensitize it to all of us.

Forget about your kids…How many gun deaths have you seen in your lifetime? How many stabbings? How many violent acts against women?

Peace begins with pause,

“I used to think the human brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.”
(Emo Philips)

One of the most startling things we’re learning about the brain is how wrong it can be.

Ever see someone continue to hold onto a belief, regardless of the scientific data presented before him? Ever been amazed that two people, standing right next to each other, can see and remember an event remarkably differently?

Turns out our prior beliefs and feelings shape our perceptions in remarkably biased ways. This is why it’s so important to seek feedback from others—each of us needs objective outsiders to give us reality checks:

—Was I too harsh on the kids last night?
—Would you tell me when I’m acting like I know everything?
—I know you and I have some disagreements on politics; what would you recommend I read as the clearest presentation of how you see things?

Peace begins with pause,

“The often-used phrase ‘pay attention’ is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that you can allocate to activities, and if you try to go beyond your budget, you will fail.”
(Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow)

In this age of technology, a lot of attention is being paid to our struggle with attention. Usually, we’re decrying the fact that the lightning speed of our screens and apps is decreasing our ability to keep focused.

That we’re diminishing our attention spans is true, but it may not be the lightning quick changes of our screens doing all the damage.

Turns out, as the brilliant Dr. Kahneman points out, our brains each have an attention budget for the time between sleep. When the average day for the average person was spent on the long hours of farming, this attention budget wouldn’t get used up very quickly, and thus we had attention to spare. Now, with our eyeballs surrounded by screens, and our days crammed with more and more activities, we’re exhausting our budget before breakfast. And then living on attention debt, fueled by caffeine.

Pay attention to your attention-spending today. What are you asking your brain to invest in? And what happens when you overspend during the day, long before you spend the evening with your family?

Peace begins with pause,

“Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck — but, most of all, endurance.”
(James Baldwin)

I have to admit that it’s been fun, as my teenagers start to launch, talking to them about work. Sure, we still converse a lot about school, and relationships, but we also talk about business, and what it takes to make a difference in the world.

While I enjoy discussions about being really talented in one’s occupation, I find myself emphasizing talent less and less. I guess I’m old enough to have seen incredibly talented people flame out, or flake out, too soon to succeed.

What matters more is endurance. Persistence. Staying alive through the valleys of self-doubt and public criticism. Just hanging around, while others don’t, is the least sexy, but most consistent, formula for success.

It’s a good thing we get to model this for our kids, as we endure through all the challenges of doing family. Those of us who persist in parenting, refusing to quit and still striving to learn, are on the right path.

Peace begins with pause,

“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it, and thought of other things if you did.”
(James Baldwin)

After meeting their basic needs in a decent way, people don’t really want more money…they want the feelings they think they’ll have once they get that money.
(success, validation, victory, peace of mind, security)

In a similar way, people don’t really want their ultimate sex fantasy to come true…they want the feelings they think they’ll have once they experienced it.
(validation, freedom, adoration, pleasure to eclipse their pain)

What we want most, it turns out, is to feel better than we feel right now. And we’ll risk almost everything to chase after those better feelings.

Peace begins with pause,

“All men are created equal.”
(Thomas Jefferson)

For those of us in these United States, Happy 4th of July. We call this Independence Day, for it celebrates the courageous signing of that fateful document, the Declaration of Independence. I admire that document so much I actually have a framed parchment copy in both my office and my home.

It is a bit misnamed, however.

The reality is that soon after the Revolutionary War with Britain, we were trading with them, and many other countries, for some much needed supplies and resources. In such partnerships, we allowed ourselves to depend on other countries to provide us with goods for an agreed-upon price. Life is not possible without this kind of dependence on others.

Perhaps we should have called it was the Declaration of Individuality. That’s actually what the founding fathers were saying—we are a separate entity, capable of governing ourselves. As such, we can agree to trade as equals, without ever sacrificing our status as an individual nation (of states).

This, BTW, is the best way to consider launching our children into the world. They are not ending all dependence on us; they are simply declaring themselves as individuals, capable of governing themselves. (Except, unlike Britain, we should be encouraging this declaration).

Peace begins with pause,

There are many kinds of leaders. Too often we confuse a forceful personality with leadership. This is a mistake.
(Henry H. Neff)

Some people, and indeed some cultures, equate leadership with force, the ability to make others do anything. These people admire the strong personality of someone who dictates the terms of every agreement, intimidates those around her, and won’t take crap from anybody without giving it right back and then some. The portraits of these types of leaders are stern eyes, with a penetrating gaze, communicating nothing but uber-seriousness.

This is not human leadership, however. It is mammalian, but not human.

See, trying to lead people like the King of the Jungle may get some things accomplished, but it never lasts; this kind of brute force always, eventually, runs into a stronger force. We see this all the time in autocratic dictatorships.

Influencing people to work together, seeking to match others’ self- interests with the group’s main interests…that’s a job for an evolved, adult human.

If you find yourself as a parent, or coach, or boss, repeatedly reminding people of your position of authority, you are guilty of trying to force people to behave. And that’s the opposite of influence. You might as well start roaring.

Peace begins with pause,

“By the age of 7, a child born in 2012 will have spent the equivalent of one full year in front of a screen.”
(Dr. Aric Sigman)

Here in the northern hemisphere, we’re entering the dog days of summer. That means, whenever it’s too hot or too rainy, bored kids will gravitate even more toward screens to fill their time. And their brains.

While this can feel like a godsend to overstressed parents, giving them an easy solution to their kids’ whining, the research data are showing that this godsend may cause some hellish problems.

All this week, The Daily Pause is going to focus on the power of screens over our lives. Yes, we’ll talk about what it’s doing to our kids, and what we can do about it. We’re also, however, going to address our own growing screen addictions and the ways engineers are actually programming our minds (yes, it’s true).

For today, just consider this: What would happen if you outlawed screens in your home tomorrow, for just one day? Who would suffer the most? Whine the most?

What app or service would you miss the most?

Peace begins with pause,

“Parents who jump to screen time in a bid to give their kids an educational edge may actually be doing significantly more harm than good—and they need to dole out future screen time in an age-appropriate matter.”
(Liraz Margalit, Ph.D.)

All week we’ve looked at the power of screens in our lives; here are some guidelines. You’ll see more of these in the 10th Anniversary Revised Edition of ScreamFree Parenting (due out in October), but here are some quick guidelines:

* No mobile screens of any kind until age two (and limited TV exposure)
* One hour of mobile screen time per day for toddlers, or two hours of TV
* One to two hours of non-school-related screen time per day for school-age kids
* No smartphone till age twelve or thirteen
* Two hours of non-school-related screen time per day for teenagers (this includes TV)

Now, how about for you and me? Obviously, we’re grownups completely in charge of our own lives. But that’s actually not true if we’re increasingly addicted to screens, and the advertisers that own our eyeballs and thus, program our brains. While I could write a whole book on this (and I may be doing so), here’s a challenge for now: Set a bedtime for your phone sooner than your own bedtime. If you currently do it an hour before bed, set your phone down 90 minutes before bedtime. Let’s just you and me try it for awhile, and see what happens.

Peace begins with pause,