It has occurred to me lately that I probably should get paid for all the personal coaching work that I do. Although, I have to admit, I don’t have any official “credentials” as a coach, and quite frankly, if I were getting paid for it, I probably wouldn’t enjoy it nearly as much.

So, from the nonexistent files of my entirely-unofficial coaching practice, here’s an interesting case study.

One of my good friends recently got promoted to a position where she is in a direct supervisory role for the first time. Because my friend is, I suspect, a highly social 3w2 in the enneagram system, and most definitely a Feeling type in the Myers Briggs system, what other people think of her has a profound effect on her sense of well-being.

She asked me how she can handle the stress of her new responsibilities while still maintaining a fun working environment. In other words, I think she’s looking for a way to always look good to her superiors, while having everyone working under her always like her. Not a shocking desire, given her personality type. Also, unfortunately, probably not a possibility.

People who are feeling types (whom I’ve referred to elsewhere as “high maintenance” people) have a rather alarming habit of putting off a stressful, anxious “vibe” that other people pick up on. It doesn’t always come out as a screaming fit or a tantrum.

Sometimes it’s a silence that’s tenser and more uncomfortable to others than a tantrum. In short, we sometimes “download” our stress onto other people. I think many of us have been in a position where a supervisor did this to us, and know that’s NOT a recipe for a fun working environment.

While it’s unlikely my friend will be able to avoid the stress that comes from other people being irritated or unhappy with you, managing her own anxiety so that this “download” onto her subordinates is minimized is probably an achievable goal.

She’s already ahead of the curve in that she recognizes and acknowledges her tendency to do it. Most people who have the tendency do so completely outside of their own awareness.

Another smart thing she’s doing is enlisting trusted, “safe and sane” friends to give her a heads up if she’s starting to let her stress bubble over onto her coworkers.

Lastly, she recognizes that not all friction in a workplace is bad. Some of it will be necessary, when coworkers or subordinates aren’t doing their jobs properly. There’s a difference between consciously applying pressure to an underperforming employee and taking your stress out on someone who hasn’t messed up.

If I were a real coach, I would probably encourage my friend to read up on her personality type, and ask herself the following questions.

• What do I fear will happen if something I’m responsible for gets screwed up? Is it a legitimate, realistic fear?
• If the “worst case scenario” happens, will I ultimately be okay?
• Threes often worry that they’re “all show and no substance.” Can I list some accomplishments I’ve achieved that feel concrete and substantive that helped lead to attaining this position?
• If other people are unhappy with me, can I reassure myself that it’s only temporary, and that feelings change frequently? Can I calm down my own anxiety in the interim?

You know, the best thing to do if you want to be a writer is write. Everyone knows this. Everyone says this. It’s undeniably true. Write longhand. Write on a word processor. Keep a blog. Keep a paper journal. Keep three or four blogs or paper journals. Do your kid’s English Writing Comp homework for him–you get the practice, and you get to stop listening to him whine about it. (Just kidding on that last one. Mostly.)

The second best thing to do if you want to be a writer is to read. A lot. Mostly the kinds of writing that you’d like to write yourself.

But that said, people always ask me what books on writing I recommend. This is a little hard for me, because quite frankly, I don’t read a lot of books on writing. I’d rather just write. Or read books that I wish I’d written.

So anyway, here is a list of books on writing that I think are worth reading during one of those moments when you’re not writing. Or reading good writing. Or hassling your kid about his tendency to use passive tense.

• Anything by Julia Cameron. I like The Right to Write, but I’m told that
  The Artist’s Way is also excellent.
• On Writing by Stephen King.
• Elements of Style by Strunk & White
• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Okay, that’s five books.  Admit it–if you read all five of them in the next six months, it would mean that you weren’t writing enough.  Even so, if you know of a “can’t miss it, must be on the list” book, drop it in the comments.

Now, get back to writing!

It’s the holidays.  In a stunning display of counterintuitive thinking, my husband and I have started a diet and exercise program.

Well, I say “a program,” but the truth is, our respective approaches to fitness and health are rather different.  He’s doing the Power90 fitness video series, and bought “Glycemic Index Dieting for Dummies” (I swear to God I’m not making that up.  Click the link.  It’s for reals.)

My plan is to DVR episodes of “Shimmy” on Fit TV, and try to eat fewer deep fried tortilla chips at Los Aztecas.  And El Nopal.  And Tumbleweed…

So you may be asking yourself “What does this have to do with online community?”  (Possibly.  Or you may be asking yourself “Why is she not several hundred pounds after eating that many deep fried tortilla chips?”  The answer to the latter is “Fast metabolism - I haz it.”)

The secret sauce in hubby’s weight loss plan?  He’s started up a “Biggest Loser” competition at his workplace, and he’s going to be using the online forums associated with his workout videos.  In other words, he’s enlisting the Peer Pressure of two communities; one that exists in “real life” and the other of which exists online.

My boss has gotten a lot of attention (from Quaker Oats, no less) for coming up with a fairly simple idea: letting people on Twitter encourage each other by using a “hash tag” to keep track of little choices they make during the day to live healthier.   Twit2Fit has expanded to a Ning community of over 200 members, but it’s still based on the same simple idea.  You’re more likely to stick to a fitter lifestyle if other people are encouraging you (or shaming you, if you FAIL.)

Another coworker has been chronicling his journey to fitness on his blog.  His readers and commentors provide a community of support to keep him going, and he provides an inspiring success story to them.  It’s win-win.

Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong.com took over my favorite online diet and fitness community site, TheDailyPlate.com, and integrated the entire community into the Livestrong.com site.

It was a pretty good example of how a site that is mostly user-generated content (The Daily Plate and it’s associated forums and journals) can complement and be enhanced by professionally-crafted content.   Livestrong.com and TheDailyPlate are a more powerful resource for healthy living together than either one was apart.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go master something called a “Cabaret Shimmy.”  I’ll be darned if I let those nachos beat me.

A while back I wrote a post on being “high maintenance,”  in which I promised two things: first, that I was going to work on getting back into proper habits for self-care, and second, that I was going to blog about it weekly.

Well, I have at least followed through on the first, if not the second.  It wasn’t very long at all after I wrote that post that I got the ultimate People Pleaser Self Care Test.  My lovely husband’s parents came by for a visit.  A three month visit, which is still ongoing.

You see, the real problem with being a people-pleasing high maintenance person is not the amount of “maintenance” that you require to function properly.  It’s that we have a nasty tendency to expect the people around us to provide that maintenance, usually without being asked.

We expect the people around us to naturally know that we can’t function properly if we have to go weeks without a certain amount of private “down time” sans social interaction.   We expect them to know that having four people talk to us simultaneously, all of whom are apparently blissfully unaware that three other people are talking at us about something entirely different, at full volume, makes us want to run out of the room and hide in the nearest chifferobe. (Assuming we have a chifferobe.  I suppose a wardrobe or a broom closet would also work.)  We assume that our spouse, surely, would at least understand the conjugal implications of not having any privacy for three months.

Unfortunately, even the people who genuinely love us, do not automatically know these things.

Which brings me to the thrust of this post.  Part of good self-care for sensitive people is educating those around us about what we need from them to be healthy.

For many sensitive, high maintenance folks, step one is learning to not depend on other people to calm our anxiety.  I just picked up Hal Runkel’s excellent book, ScreamFree Parenting.  His primary assertion is that the most important thing you can do for your kids is to learn to calm yourself down. Runkel writes that we need to “grow ourselves up” and learn to calm our own anxieties, rather than insist that our kids calm them by doing exactly what we say.  I’m vastly oversimplifying the content of the book, but the concept applies in adult relationships as well.

As long as we both expect others to manage our anxiety for us by automatically behaving in a way that doesn’t trigger our sensitivity, and fail to communicate clearly what they could do that would help us, we’re stuck.

We’re expecting others to not only be mindreaders, taking responsibility for something that’s really ours to manage; but also often assuming that if we told them what would help us, they wouldn’t do it.

Let’s use my houseguests situation as an example.  I did the wrong thing initially.  I didn’t develop a realistic plan for a situation I knew beforehand was coming. This is fairly typical behavior for many sensitive folks: we hunker down and sort of become human armadillos, rather than reacting proactively to stressful situations.

Fortunately, my life and my job won’t allow for me to curl up into a metaphorical ball for three months.

That said, I did have a plan for the situation; it just didn’t go far enough.  I had planned periodic “retreats” for myself each week to recharge and decompress.  I had stocked up on healthy comforts for myself (aromatherapy products, particular magazines, teas, and snacks).  I stocked the fridge with some healthy foods that I know help me maintain my energy levels under normal conditions.

The problem was, I wasn’t under “normal conditions.”  I was depleting my energy and becoming stressed much faster than I had expected.

The parts of my self-care plan that I could do entirely on my own were not enough.  So I called in reinforcements–I let my husband know that I needed a dedicated private space in the house.  We sat down and brainstormed, and came up with a plan just before a business trip took me out of town.

This is when I re-learned an important lesson:  Your needs as a sensitive person are not someone else’s priority, or responsibility.

When I got back from my trip, the plan was still just that–a plan, with no action taken on it.  I had to enlist help again to actually get the plan executed.

I also had to set (and enforce) some limits to the social activities and invitations I accepted.  Even though you tell people that you need to cut back your socializing to stay healthy and in balance, you will find that everyone assumes you’ll be cutting back on someone ELSE’s event, and will be totally free to attend theirs.

With a re-tooled, more realistic plan in place and working, I was back to my usual energy level in time to go to a conference in Las Vegas, and deal with both business networking and the sensory-stimulation-fest that is Vegas itself, without getting completely wiped out.  Even so, I paced myself at the conference, and when I was feeling drained, I begged off for the night.

So the key ideas I leave you with are:

• If you know in advance that you have a situation coming up that is going to tax your reserves of energy, have a plan in place to take care of yourself.
• If you find that the plan isn’t working, enlist help to brainstorm an improved plan.
• Don’t count on others to know your needs.
• Take responsibility for executing your plan, even when you’ve enlisted help.  Your needs are not their priority or responsibility.
• Set and enforce limits on activities that will knock you out of balance, even when doing so makes others unhappy.  They’d be less happy to have you break down crying at their party–it’s a buzzkill.

Yes, that’s right.  It’s my birthday.  

All in all, it’s been a better birthday than I typically get.  I’ll be flying out to Las Vegas today to attend Pubcon 2008, the conference for webmasters.  

You know, a lot of people hate the term “webmaster.”  I’ve always been kind of fond of it.  It sounds vaguely mystical.  As if I might be waiting outside someone’s cubicle in a kimono, samurai sword slung over my back, saying “When you can take the thumb drive from my hand, Grasshopper, you too, will have mastered the web…”    

We usually have a shared birthday party for my dad and me, as his birthday is two days before mine.  This year was no exception.  

So anyway, I was sitting next to Dad watching Soul Plane (don’t ask), and I caught the latest Ask.com commercial.  

I’ve always liked Ask, in sort of the same way some folks always vote for Ralph Nader.  Sure, he’s got no shot of beating any of the other competitors, but you have to admire the chutzpah it takes to keep trying anyway.  Anyway, their new television and radio spots are focusing on the idea of answering whatever nagging questions you might have.  

So anyway, I perk up to catch the search engine commercial, and it gets to the part where a young man in a pet shop asks “Do monkeys make good pets?”

My dad responded, emphatically, out loud, “No, they do not!” in a tone of voice that says unmistakeably this is the voice of experience speaking.

Every head in the room turned to Dad, and every face in the room wore an identical “WTH?” expression.  

Of all the people I know, the last one I would have expected to be able to answer the burning “Do monkeys make good pets?” question from personal experience would be my dad.  He grew up in a town of less than 175 in central Kentucky, and worked for decades as a union sheet metal worker after getting his GED in the Army.   He can, in the words of a former coworker “weld anything but the crack of dawn or a broken heart.”  He’s created some really amazing street rods in his lifetime.  He’s a very good bass angler.   

And apparently, an experienced monkey wrangler.  

When pressed for an explanation, he told us that he and his buddies in Vietnam had a pet monkey, and that a guy he’d known well in Monterey had one when he was a kid.  

“Monkeys are not good pets,” he said, shaking his head, and that was the end of the conversation.  

I’m sure there are some valuable life lessons in all this.  About how sometimes it’s the people we think we know best who surprise us the most.  Or how sometimes the answers to the most obscure questions in life are closer than we think.  

But mostly I think I just need to set Dad up with a ChaCha account.  Who knows what other hard-earned wisdom he’s been hiding all these years?