Dr. John Townsend

How to Handle An Identity Crisis With Grace

September 10, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

It’s very easy to confuse what we do with who we are. As one sociologist said, “Most people define themselves by their job. When they retire, they need a narrative about who they are now.”

Any change in what we do can easily trigger a crisis of identity. What is the story we are to tell others about ourselves when experiencing a change? How do we get comfortable with our new identity when it still doesn’t seem to fit right?

Weathering The Identity Shift

When your work is your identity, change can shake that sense of identity. Comparison to others can also drive you to maximize your identity. We all feel it: it is a longing for significance, to be known and recognized, to be validated for our labors and achievements.

This is nothing new. Even the author of Ecclesiastes saw this:

“Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 4:4)”

The New Testament version of that insight comes from 1 Timothy 6:6–7:

“But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.”

Focusing on Jesus Shifts Our Perspective

When the transition of being career-focused to being parenting-focused is happening, this new season of life should not be taken lightly. At times, it might seem very challenging. In these moments, remember to have grace on yourself.

You will feel and experience many changes. Changes in your schedule, relationships, daily routine, and more! This is normal. Embrace it and see what you can learn!

Today the ability to have a career and be a good parent is possible, so long as your most important focus is your children. You can read more about finding balance when you’re a career-oriented parent here.

Putting your kids before your career may be a hard transition for the strong career man or woman. That’s okay! Growth isn’t easy! This transition can sometimes feel like you are giving a part of yourself away or “up” for the benefit of your children. I offer the following insight on seasons and timing from The Bible for your consideration.

Our affirmation does not come from the kind of labor we do.

As Christians, we are to be grounded in Christ’s identity, even as we add other roles and ways to express that identity in relationship to others. We might have an interesting job for a season. We might be married for a season. We might have children at home for a season. But those things can be taken away from us — or never given to us at all. They are gifts for this life only.

Jesus has promised that if we choose to sit at his feet, we have made the best choice of all. We will inherit the better portion, that which will never be taken away: a relationship with God, his word, and the promise of eternal rewards and life with Him in heaven.

Simply put, Jesus shifts our earthbound perspective, taking us high above our daily lives to see the importance of being his disciple. That perspective shift is all we need to settle a crisis of identity.

How to Prioritize When Everything Seems Important

September 7, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Let’s say it’s close to the end of your work day and you review your to-do list for what was supposed to happen. Have you ever said to yourself, the right stuff didn’t get done? Join the club, we all have that experience. Setting and sticking to priorities can be challenging!

In a busy life, establishing the right priorities are a valuable tool, and can help you feel a bit better when you next review that list. Here are some tips.

4 Tips for Establishing the Right Priorities

#1: Get an app. Unless you just don’t like the digital world, go online and get a simple to-do app for your smartphone. Task apps these days are geared to help people stay prioritized. Make sure to download an app that syncs easily between all of your devices: phone, laptop, tablet, and desktop. Ask a tech friend or look at online reviews for some suggestions. In fact, I recommend that you try out several different apps, as organization is a very personal preference.

#2: Use Covey’s Time Management Matrix. I haven’t found anything clearer or more helpful than Stephen Covey’s diagram from his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” Below is a listing of each quadrant of this matrix, plus I have added an example.

1: Urgent and important: Receiving a call from a major client who is upset with your company

2: Not urgent, important: Planning your monthly calendar based on your goals

3: Urgent, not important: Receiving a call from a friend who is always in crisis, but doesn’t take your advice

4: Neither urgent nor important: Organizing desk drawers

The most important point to remember is to never let #3 become #2. It is so easy to do the urgent and not-all-that-important, while you neglect the non-urgent but very important! Don’t fall into this prioritization trap!

#3: Learn to accept losses. The psychology underneath the software issue is that lots of us have pretty good priorities, but we don’t budget for losses. We are optimistic, positive, energized and full of hope – and that’s a great thing. But the real winners at some point will also say, “To succeed at what’s really important to me, I need to accept that there are lots of things I won’t have time to do.” I know so many people who are full of potential, and as they age, they repeat the same startup projects year after year, because they can’t let go of the “good” for the “best.”

#4: Review your priorities with the right people. Priorities in our heads don’t stand a great chance of succeeding. Priorities reviewed weekly or monthly with people who are on your life team will keep you encouraged and focused. Sharing priorities with other people also helps keep you accountable to them.

It can be very difficult to know how to prioritize when everything seems important. Remember the four tips I’ve shared above to help you establish the right priorities. Keep in mind, too, that being flexible and adaptable is key to success in this area as you learn to accept time losses.

Finding Balance When You’re a Career-Oriented Parent

August 31, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

We were all designed to do two basic passions in life: have great relationships and engage in a meaningful job. Parenting is an example of the first, and career, an example of the second. However, most of us doing both find that there are lots of conflicts involved.

Kids don’t say, “Mom, I’ll do my homework and cook dinner tonight so you can work later.” And work doesn’t say, “Look, take off early and go to the soccer game, the partners meeting isn’t that big of a deal.” So we end up feeling somewhat frazzled and frustrated, with the sense that we might not be doing either of these all that well.

Here are some tips that can help.

4 Tips for Finding Balance When You’re a Career-Oriented Parent

Tip #1: Parenting trumps work. This is just a core value. There is no way around this if you understand the developmental needs of children. A child’s neurological design is to have two parents who love them, help them trust, feel safe, provide structure for them and help them develop their identities and interests. They are more vulnerable than the companies that we work for. They need parents. They didn’t choose to exist, we made choices to raise them. This isn’t about any sort of guilt message at all, but at the end of the day, a secure and well-functioning child is a lot more important than a career.

Tip #2: Age makes a difference. Having said that, I have seen many people actually do it all, and do it all well. They are great parents, and they have meaningful careers. One of the things to remember here is that in general, the older the child, the less time needed to parent. As any parent knows, there is a big difference in the time involved to do the right job with a 2-year-old who is home all day, as opposed to a 12-year-old, who has school and sports afterward. So it does get easier to spend more time on a career, as time moves on.

Tip #3: Do what only you can do. Make sure you are putting the highest quality “parent time” in with your child. There are functions that simply just belong to you alone, and functions that you can share or outsource with others. Here is the principle: relational time is more important than functional time. Relational time has to do with having the child talk about their day, activities, friends, wins and losses. It is about affection, wrestling, coloring and playing with toys. Functional time has to do with the task aspects of parenting: rides to school, doing laundry and chores. Functional is necessary, but it is not as necessary that the parent do it. So share those tasks with friends, neighbors and other family members, as much as possible. You are the only eyeball-to-eyeball parents your child has.

Tip #4: Share parenting with the other parent. Great parents pitch in with each other. Share bedtime, homework, play time, etc. Make it equitable. Dads need to cook and clean up. Moms need to be engaged in sports. Everyone should do everything. You’ll need a calendar in the kitchen to stay organized, but this works! If you need some additional support in this area, please read my post that includes a few tips for healthy parenting.

You can have it all, as long as you understand that you can’t have it all as much as you may have originally thought. Live in reality, budget your time, be disciplined and put the child first. Best to you!

4 Tips To Avoid Drama

August 24, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Human beings are prone to drama. Unfortunate, but true. It’s just in our nature.

You need to know how to work through drama when you encounter it. Otherwise, you’re headed toward a vicious cycle that will only drain you emotionally.

How Does Drama Start?

What is drama? Drama is when a person has an emotional meltdown in your presence. If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone and things begin to escalate with no good resolutions, you understand how drama can evolve quickly.

Difficult conversations are often a result of trying to diffuse drama. Read my thoughts on how to approach a difficult conversation with grace and truth here.

4 Tips for Avoiding Drama

Here are four tips to help you avoid these unproductive and useless conversations.

Avoid the toxic triangle and communicate. A toxic triangle is when one person hears something about another person through a third party. You probably know it better as “gossip.” For example, you don’t want to hear that your boss thinks you have a poor attitude from a coworker. Instead, you need to have a healthy and open conversation with your manager where you both are vulnerable. Direct communication always wins out over triangulation.
Nip it in the bud. Misunderstandings between people almost always fester over time if we ignore them. Let’s say you had a conflict with a friend. Don’t let the issue linger. It’ll create an awkward and unhealthy environment when you’re spending time with mutual friends who will know the conflict hasn’t been resolved. That creates drama. Take the initiative and act.
Listen before you express your point of view. When you can see that the other person is upset, don’t try to explain yourself immediately. They are not experiencing you from their rational, prefrontal cortex part of the brain. They are lodged in the amygdala, where they feel fight, flight, freeze or fold feelings. Instead, show concern for what they feel, and authentically make statements such as, “That must be difficult”, “Tell me more,” and “It sounds overwhelming.” Don’t assume this has worked because you said it. Ask if you understand. This calms down a great deal of drama so that people can get to be friends again.
Set ground rules. Unfortunately, there are people who are just walking dramas. They blow up, interrupt, yell and make life miserable for everyone. Also, they tend to never solve their problems! When you are with this type of person, before you have the talk, set these three ground rules:
- We can finish sentences without the other person interrupting.
- We can be upset, but not yelling or disrespectful.
- We will seek to understand what each other is saying.

Most people will agree to these fairly simple boundaries. However, keep in mind that, when the conversation begins, they will lose their perspective and start violating the ground rules. That’s okay. Just gently remind the other person of the boundary: “Remember the interrupting ground rule? I need to finish my sentence first.” Most people will remember and agree to continue in the right way. If they continue to violate your set boundaries, simply halt the conversation and say you will need to resume it at another time when the other party can abide by the rules in a calm manner.

Open communication and boundaries are the keys to negating drama before it gets out of control. Follow these four suggestions and you’ll be on the road to a drama-free life!

Feeling Insecure? Here Are 3 Healthy Ways to Deal

August 20, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Feeling insecure from time to time is completely normal, especially when you are actively trying to grow and challenge yourself to be your best. From a young age, we learn to compare ourselves to others. While this comparison in small doses is natural, it also sets us up to feel negative things sometimes, including insecurity.

Social media makes this human tendency of comparison a little too easy sometimes because it creates a space to feel insecure. Have you ever found yourself seeing a social media update from a friend or family member that made you lose confidence in yourself? That uncertainty, that anxiousness about yourself, that’s insecurity!

Insecurity can be a big problem if it isn’t addressed because it will slow you down and keep you from accomplishing your goals.

Deep down, we know we have enough resources, talent, and motivation to accomplish our goals. But, when we’re insecure, we’re not confident. That lack of confidence can hinder us from taking that next step toward the finish line! Don’t let your self-doubt hinder you!

The 3 Ps: Negative Approaches to Handling Insecurity

When insecurity comes into play, it can be hard to immediately know how to handle this negative feeling. I’m going to talk about a few of the negative ways people try to deal with insecurity, what I call the Three Ps.

Being Passive. The first P is being passive. Insecure people tend to want to stay in their comfort zones. For example, sitting around on a Friday night, waiting for someone to invite you somewhere instead of proactively asking someone to try out a new restaurant. Sorry, wishful thinking doesn’t actually work my friends! Over time, being passive about your life (instead of actively trying to improve and grow) causes you to become a very insecure person, and you isolate yourself more and more as you wait for something to change.
Pretending. The second approach to handling insecurity involves pretending you’re confident. Just saying “fake it ‘til you make it” during public speaking or engaging in polite conversation will only get you so far. It’s not a true fix. It will just get you in the ballpark, but you’ve got to be honest about your insecurity to get off the bench.
People-Pleasing. The third approach has to do with people-pleasing. Insecure people tend to give enormous power to other people, instead of using their own power. You say “yes” to attending events or doing favors even when, deep down, you should focus on yourself and re-energize.

If you have some insecurities in your life, don’t be discouraged. You can change the tone of your inner voice to be positive and healthy! A good first step is to put an end to self-judgment. You can read more about that here.

The 3 Rs: Three Healthy Ways to Deal with Insecurity

So far, I’ve shared my three Ps for handling insecurity in a negative way. Now, I’m going to go through three healthy ways to deal with insecurity that really work, what I like to call the three R’s.

Relationships. The first healthy way to deal with insecurity is through relationships. In your life, you must have a few healthy relationships with safe people that see you, see through you, and say, “You know, there’s a lot of good in you and I know you’ve had bad experiences before, maybe you’ve made mistakes, but I see a good person there. And I like you and I will help you.” The key is to focus on those relationships that don’t control you and grows you in the right direction.
Risk. The second way to handle insecurity relates to how you view risk. If you’re an insecure person, you become risk-averse by not putting yourself out there to try and engage in new relationships or hobbies. Learn to live with risk, move past your anxiousness and try new things. To clarify, when I talk about “risky” behavior here, I am not referring to anything that could be harmful to yourself or someone else. This risk is more along the lines of taking a chance or trying something for the first time. It’s not easy, but it’ll be worth it.
Resetting. Finally, dealing with insecurity sometimes means resetting. You’ve got to hit the reset button on how you feel about yourself, especially when you engage in (positive) risky behavior designed to push your boundaries. You begin to reset how you feel about yourself because of putting yourself out there, and you are also changing the way you react to new, risky situations.

Insecurity happens. No matter how confident you are, you will have insecure moments. The key to handling insecurity in a healthy way is in how you manage it. Remember the three R’s (relationships, risk, and resetting) if you get stuck. Get out of your comfort zone and get beyond insecurity!

What are the Positives and Negatives of Isolation?

August 17, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

One of the most important aspects of our lives is the need for connection and great relationships. When we don’t have that connection, we can find ourselves in isolation. While it can be healthy in limited doses, isolation can be harmful to your wellbeing when it turns into an extended period of time.

Isolation Is Not Always Bad

First, let’s talk about small periods of “alone time.” Isolation in small doses is a good thing.

All of us, even the extroverts among us, need “me time” to rest, recharge, and get our heads back in the game of life. This “me time” possibly includes being alone in one’s home or office, reading, listening to music or taking a walk.

Our brains crave a space during the day. In this space, there is no external stimulation coming in which we need to deal with, such as someone’s questions, or story or simply talking about their experiences. Alone is a good thing in this context. It’s not permanent. It’s just a “time out,” if you will.

Loneliness is often a symptom of isolation. I share four tips to help you move away from loneliness and into healthy relationships here.

The 3 Types of Negative Isolation

A little isolation is okay. But, if you are not careful, it can turn into prolonged periods where we don’t connect with anyone. Isolation can sort-of take control of your life.

I want to outline the three types of isolation which aren’t helpful for us and how we can address them.

Continual interpersonal isolation. This is where there’s “too much” aloneness. It may be that you are very busy at work, or don’t regularly reach out to friends or family. Regardless, research indicates that we need some sort of meaningful, supportive contact with people every week of our lives. So, if life has you in a busy-and-isolated season, that’s fine. That’s normal. But, don’t make it a lifestyle. Have lunch or a good phone call with supportive, safe people a minimum of three times a week.
The isolation of exposure to chronic relationships. You may not be technically alone, but if you spend significant amounts of time on people who drain you or are toxic, you are not experiencing the transfer of relational nutrients that you need. You may be isolating yourself without even knowing it if you are not with someone who listens, is emphatic, and wants the best for you. If this is your situation, prune back the chronic relationship and increase the supportive connections.
The isolation in our minds. Some people can be around supportive, warm relationships all day and STILL don’t feel connected. This is because their mental isolation is so pervasive that, try as they might, they can’t let others in. So, they always feel they are “on the outside looking in” on life and not a part of rich relationships. This is a problem called detachment, which is the inability to make vulnerable connections. If this is the issue, you can get help, in the form of a coach or therapist who specializes in detachment.

There is a great deal of information and research on isolation. It can be overwhelming, but not insurmountable by any means. Live in a relationship, even if it’s just a platonic friendship. Don’t let isolation rule over a life of connection, love, meaning, and energy.