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Observer Power

Sunday, October 16th, 2011

Like cars in amusement parks, our direction is often determined through -collisions.” –Yahia Lababidi

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote of my shift away from the assumption we all create our own realities.  Sometimes it’s easy to see a correlation between intention and result; far more often the relationship seems strained or non-existent.  The more I struggled with cause-and-effect at this level, the more I came to believe accidents do happen.

However, while I see no evidence everyone creates their own realities in every situation, I still believe we can create the lives we want.  I believe we do influence our results far more than we realize.  I came to frame this as living On Purpose rather than living By Accident.

The more we choose to live On Purpose, the more we avoid living By Accident.  Today, I’ll focus on becoming the Observer as a first step toward living more fully on purpose.

By Accident or On Purpose

Living By Accident seems to be the general result of operating from Interpreter Mode.   Once I accepted that emotions have power, I had to question the various ways the different emotions exert their power.  Some emotions attract, some create, some reinforce, some block, some prohibit, and some contribute.  The more we understand the power of emotions, the greater our ability to wield that power purposefully.

When we’re in Interpreter Mode, however, we tend to let our emotions take charge.  We may defer to them, succumb to them, or let them rule us.  If we try to fight our emotions, we wage war against ourselves.  Whether we submit to them or defy them, they influence our lives and our choices.

During my training to become a coach, we were given the assignment to develop our own coaching model.  I had been gestating my philosophy of cause-and-effect for many years, so I played around with ways to express it.  I came up with a three step process:

  1. Choose what you want (set an intention)
  2. Align your thoughts, actions and emotions with each other and with your intention
  3. Receive the miracle

The Model in Action

As I’ve used this model in my work with clients, sometimes the process is clear, straight-forward and effective:  Choice + Unification = Miracle.  Occasionally, a client struggles with making a choice; more often the real work comes in unifying thoughts, actions and emotions.  Wherever the struggle arises, the very presence of struggle indicates Interpreter Mode.  So we work together to acknowledge the emotions generated by the struggle and then we probe for the judgment that triggers the emotion.  Then we look to Observer Mode and find an emotion from that level to release the judgment.  As soon as someone moves from Interpreter to Observer, the struggle evaporates.

The same process will work for you:

  1. Become mindful of the struggle.
  2. Acknowledge your emotions.
  3. Probe for the judgment embedded in what you feel.
  4. Use an emotion from Observer Mode to release the judgment.

Stepping into Observer Mode

There is one small snag that can throw this process into chaos – beware the tendency to judge yourself for judging.  Especially be mindful of judging your own emotions.  If you criticize something you feel, what you feel doesn’t go away, it just goes into hiding.

Unfortunately, self-judgment is almost inevitable.  Parents, ministers, teachers, counselors, and others with influence ( including friends and enemies) join together in teaching us the difference between what’s good and what’s bad.  Most of us equate positive emotions with “good” and negative emotions with “bad”.  We don’t want to be bad, we don’t want other people to think we’re bad, so we try not to let “bad” emotions show.

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “I know I shouldn’t feel that way.”?  The fact is, you do feel that way.  The emotions at Interpreter level are human nature.  You’re human.  Naturally you feel that way.  You experience hunger, frustration, sorrow, bitterness, certainty, worry, exasperation, etc. etc. etc.  And if you’re not willing to become mindful of those feelings, acknowledge them, and understand them, they become buried alive inside your heart, your mind and your body.  They exert their influence, silently but effectively, affecting your health, your relationships, your productivity and your results.  It’s not a matter of should or shouldn’t. It’s a matter of cause-and-effect.

You can, however, choose something else anytime you want.  That’s the power of choice.  When you’re in the middle of a struggle, when you’re operating from Interpreter Mode, the easiest way to choose something else is to become neutral about what is.

Being able to Observe what is and relax judgment creates the strongest foundation for any purposeful choice.  (Not just your choice of emotions.)  If you want more money, become neutral about your current income level.  If you want better health, become neutral about your infirmities.  If you want a relationship, become neutral about your loneliness.

Neutrality has power

When I first started exploring the power of neutrality, I used the word acceptance. I would say, “Accept what is.”  And almost always, I’d get an argument.  Most people think to accept meant to accommodate, to acquiesce, to abide, to tolerate.  Most people think it means resigning one’s self, giving in, perhaps giving up.  Whatever is wrong becomes the enemy, and the way to deal with an enemy is to fight, rebel, battle against, dispute.  No acceptance, no negotiation, no quarter.  No one wants to be a quitter or a loser.

Of course not.  You want to conquer, overcome, win, succeed.  Unfortunately, fighting keeps the war going.  Rebellion incites the enemy.   Disputation opens the way for more arguments.  Resistance increases tension, and struggle increases agitation.  I began to see every conflicted situation as a great big mire of quicksand.  Although I have never personally experienced quicksand, I know the folklore.  The more you struggle, the more you sink; to get free, stop struggling and let your body float to the top.  Once you’re floating on top, it takes very little effort to propel yourself to solid ground.

All emotions at interpreter level indicate a struggle against something, and the more you struggle, the more you resist what is, the more the quicksand pulls you in.  To rise to the surface of the quicksand, stop struggling.  Become the Observer.  Let go of whatever you’re struggling with, and it will let go of you.  When you find yourself on solid ground, it feels miraculous.

Open the Door to Possibilities

You can look around and see what’s possible.  You have more time.  You have more energy.   You have access to more resources.  You can recruit allies.  You have options.

Perhaps, when you are struggling in quicksand, you can imagine something else, but the struggle monopolizes you.   The struggle, far more than the situation, holds you captive.  In Observer Mode, you can see possibilities, opportunities, prospects, ways and means.  You can take fresh stock of your resources.  Gratitude becomes your mantle.  Ease replaces effort.

Entering observer mode is like getting out of debt.  No more hidden fees, no more monthly payments, no more collection notices.  Every emotion in Interpreter Mode exacts a toll.  Emotions in Observer Mode cost nothing – and more than that, they bestow blessings.

Costs and Benefits

One of the costs of Interpreter Mode is the interference these emotions interject into your choices.  Whenever you are mired in Interpreter Mode, your view of possibilities will be severely restricted.  How can you see what’s possible when you’re so busy trying not to sink you can’t wipe the mud out of your eyes?  When you view is this obstructed, you cannot be true to yourself.  Observer Mode is like washing the windows or taking off the blinders.  Suddenly you can see more clearly and more truly.  Observer Mode lets your heart speak clearly, lets your mind think clearly, and lets you direct your actions more surely.

One of the blessings of observer Mode is the freedom from struggle.  Find self-acceptance and you relax self-doubt.  Find amusement and you relax impatience.  Relax dread and you find excitement.  Find tolerance and you relax disappointment.  Find hope and you relax melancholy.  Observer Mode blesses you with ease.

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The Gateway to Personal Power

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

This week, I’ll focus entirely on the Interpreter Mode of personal power for the following reasons.

  1. Interpreter is probably the most common mode in human nature.
  2. I believe Victim and Interpreter emotions are the source of all human ills.
  3. Moving out of Interpreter Mode moves you out of the struggle.
  4. When you operate from Observer mode, everything becomes easier.

If some aspect of your life is difficult or unsatisfying, very likely you are approaching the situation or condition from Interpreter Mode.  You resist it, you struggle with it, and you are imposing a judgment on the situation, on other people, or yourself.  When you withdraw judgment, the struggle eases; when you stop resisting, the problem abates.

I’d like to share a little detail I didn’t include in the story of my bicycle accident a couple of weeks ago:  I experienced almost no pain.

My memory of the first days after the accident is hazy, and I seem to recall some soreness where the crossbar smacked into my thigh.  But the road burns on my face didn’t hurt.  I experienced no headaches as a result of the concussion.  My wrenched jaw didn’t hurt.  I hardly noticed the broken teeth.  I felt no after-effects from the surgery to repair my eye socket.  Of my own accord, I took no pain medications of any kind.  (I don’t know what they gave me in the hospital.)

I found this very curious, but then I found the whole thing quite fascinating.  I was more intrigued than dismayed with the assortment of injuries, with the concussion’s effects on my memory, balance and stamina, with having double vision, and by the rates at which different injuries healed.  But why so little pain?  The more I considered that question, the more it puzzled me.  About six years after the accident, I found a probable answer while preparing material for a seminar on happiness.

Observer Power

I did not judge the accident or my injuries.  I didn’t resist.  I didn’t struggle.  I experienced curiosity, relief (that it wasn’t worse), serenity and trust.  I trusted I would heal eventually, and I was willing to let the healing happen at its own pace.  I focused on how I could make the best of the state I was in, and I went patiently on with my life.  Later, as I began to work with my new model of personal power, I began to see I stayed in the modes of Observer and Partner.

My ability to avoid Interpreter Mode didn’t come automatically, or even naturally.  For most of my life I was very adept at such energies as annoyance, irritation, frustration, embarrassment, envy, guilt, hostility, misgiving, defensiveness and pride.  When I finally started to recognize the fruit I harvested by nurturing such a crop, I began to select different seeds.  I didn’t set an intention to have a “painless recovery from a traumatic accident”; I just wanted a happy, peaceful life.

After years of practice, the connections seem clear to me:  judgment equals pain; acceptance equals no pain.  All emotions and states of mind from Victim or Interpreter Mode generate adversity of some kind.

An Uneven Balance

Back when I taught novel writing, I began compiling a list of emotions as a “cheat-sheet” for writers.  Later, I sorted that list into the various modes and came up with my current Emotions List.  So far that list includes at least twice as many Interpreter emotions than any other mode, and 4½ times more than for Creator.  As I mentioned previously, the fight/flight/freeze mechanism characterizes all Victim emotions.  All Interpreter emotions share the element of judgment.  Observer emotions are neutral.  Cooperation marks partner emotions, and oneness is the hallmark of creator.

To access your personal power at the Observer level, you must be willing to leave judgment behind.  When you choose neutrality over judgment, most (if not all) the trials, tribulations and adversities of your life will ease up.

Living Life Now

This does not mean “bad” things will never again happen to you in your whole life.  I’m assuming you have no desire to retreat to a hermit’s cave and seek enlightenment through isolation.  I’m assuming you want to live, love, aspire, experiment, experience, and grow.  I’m assuming you will create new challenges for yourself – and if you don’t, life will no doubt supply you with some.  By thus engaging with your life, you will continue to gain self-knowledge, you will sometimes stumble and sometimes transcend, you will occasionally discover hidden pockets of judgment.  When you stop operating from Interpreter Mode, you will find more blessing than hardship in the events of your life.  Everything in your life will flow more easily.

The Gateway to Personal Power

So, let’s look at ways to become the Observer.  We’ll start by observing what happens in Interpreter Mode.

An event occurs and your brain responds with an emotion.  You experience this emotion somewhere in your body:  your gut, your throat, your heart, your lower back . . . somewhere.

You now have 17 seconds in which to respond to the emotion.  You can internalize it in some way – ignore it, act on it, think about it, bury it, etc.  Or you can dismiss it.  I encourage you to use those 17 seconds to acknowledge it, to become mindful of it.  Notice it and name it.  An emotion you ignore looks exactly like one you dismiss in that they both leave your consciousness.  However, an ignored emotion tends to take up residence in your body and busily generates its result.  (For instance, resentment results in neediness.)   An emotion you acknowledge and dismiss simply goes away.  This level of mindfulness is the very essential first step in accessing the power of your emotions.

However, if you don’t manage to dismiss it, here are two ways to deal with it:

You can deal with the emotion directly.  You’ve named it, now own it.  Say to yourself, “I’m choosing to feel _______.”  When you consciously take responsibility for the emotion, your subconscious mind recognizes your power to choose something else.  You will probably find yourself accepting this power to choose and instinctively choose to feel something else instead.

You can listen to it.  Pay attention to the story the emotion gathers to itself.  In and of themselves, stories help us make sense of a situation, make sense of the emotions we feel and look for options.  Unfortunately, in Interpreter mode the story always contains an element of judgment.

  • The story may be as simple as “That’s bad.” or “That’s good.”  “It’s her fault.” or “It’s all my fault.”
  • The story may assign motives – and the motives assigned will contain judgment:  “He’s stupid.” Or weak, or unconscionable, or a coward, or immoral, or wrong.
  • The story may rationalize behaviors:  “I just took the facts into account.” or “Given the circumstances. . . ” or “I couldn’t just stand there.” or “I wasn’t about to get involved.”
  • The story may deny options:  “I didn’t see.” or “I have to protect myself.” or “She made me.” or “I had no choice.”

Once you can see the judgment in the story, use an emotion from observer mode to retell the story without judgment.  For instance, respect will remove the scale of good/bad, right/wrong; compassion will reassign motives; humility will discourage rationalization; and courage will illuminate options.

You may find yourself in resistance to the emotion.  Perhaps you feel beset by anxiety, loneliness, embarrassment, ambition, doubt, envy, or some other interpreter emotion.  The presence and power of the emotion overwhelm you, and you want to be free.  Keep in mind that by judging it, you hold onto it as firmly as it holds on to you.

Open yourself up to it.  Say to the emotion, “Show me everything you’ve got!”  When you approach the emotion itself from the Observer mode, with curiosity, tolerance, courage, patience or courage, the balance of power shifts from the emotion to you.  As the emotion loses its power and you access more of yours, you discover it to be ephemeral – nothing but air.

Identify an antidote.  While every emotion in Interpreter mode produces an unfavorable result, each one also has an antidote.  I first encountered the concept of emotional antidotes while reading the transcripts of a symposium the Dalai Lama held on destructive emotions. The lama who discussed the idea said an antidote is specific to the emotion.  Not having access to his list, I’ve worked with clients by asking them to imagine which emotion would be the logical antidote to their situation.  We then work with whatever they come up with, and that seems to produce the results we want.  Consider the following examples, then choose your own antidote for your own Interpreter emotion:

Emotion =   Antidote

Doubt   =   Optimism

Frustration  =   Patience

Anxiety   =   Calm

Irritation    =   Niceness

Pride   =   Humor

We all operate across a spectrum of emotions.  Sometimes, in some situations, we’re caught by Victim or Interpreter emotions.  Other times we operate from Observer mode.  On occasion we soar into the realms of Partner or Creator.  When you can see yourself functioning mostly as Observer with shorter and more infrequent dips into Interpreter, you will also notice your fluctuations are elevated.  Sure there will be occasional slips, but as Observer becomes your natural state, Partner emotions will beckon more frequently.

It’s all a journey.  Where you are is where you are.  The choices you can see are your choices.  And your interpretation is your reality – until you choose a different path.

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The Power of Emotions

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

I ended last week’s blog with the statement:  “How is not about action, but about emotion, and therefore the how is as much up to us as the what.  First we have to choose what we want, then we must choose the emotions that will facilitate it.”  This week, I’m going to share my thinking about the relationship between emotion and personal power.

The more I work with clients, the more I see the best results come when I can help them focus on accessing their personal power.  Situations come and go; skills, tools and understanding go on forever.  Knowledge is transferable.  Wisdom and power are the keys of creation.  So I keep thinking about the relationship between wisdom and personal power, and I find emotion central to both.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of being in the presence of someone whose emotions are running high.  The person might be excited, angry, happy, depressed or in love, and radiating the energy of that emotion until it fills the room.  Such strong emotions are often described in energy terms:  light or dark, hot or cold, fast or slow.

Perhaps you’ve been observant about your own emotions, and recognize the energy associated with them.  When you’re happy or loving, you might feel that as light, or warm or fast.  When you’re angry or sad, you might feel that as dark, or cold or slow.

Clearly emotions are energy.  Does this mean emotions are also power?

Emotions of Power

A couple of years ago, a model for different modes of personal power began to take shape in my mind. I’ve been using this model with clients ever since, and I’m finding it an incredibly useful tool.  I call it the Modes of Mastery Diamond, with five levels of personal mastery identified as Victim, Interpreter, Observer, Partner, and Creator.

The lowest mode is Victim, and the emotions of this mode include (but are not limited to) hate, envy, anger, grief and despair.  Someone beset by such strong emotions feels and reacts like a victim.

The strong, intense emotions of this mode tend to overpower the person experiencing them.  The defining characteristic of this range of emotions is powerlessness.  It’s important to note that an individual operating in this mode becomes victim to the emotions as much as to any physical threat.  In effect, the emotions own all the power.  Choice is limited to self-protection:  to fight, to run, or to freeze.

This extremely narrow range of possibilities is what puts Victim at the bottom point of the diamond.  If we were to quantify personal power (which we can’t), we might assign a 1 to Victim power, meaning not much.

Breaking Free of Victim

I see the next mode as the Interpreter Mode because the emotions of this level compel us to make up our stories.  The emotions of this mode include frustration, impatience, apprehension, embarrassment, desire and insecurity.  In this mode we want to know who, what, when, where, why and how.  We assign blame and we take credit.  We rationalize, accuse, explain, judge, and defend.  In Interpreter Mode we want to fix or destroy, reward or punish.  We assign winners and losers.

The defining characteristic of this mode is judgment, and struggle and resistance always accompany judgment.

Whether you are judging yourself, someone else, your situation, or your past choices, when you look at something as bad or good, you are operating in Interpreter Mode.  When whatever you’re dealing with seems hard, takes a great deal of energy, or seems like a battle, you’re operating in Interpreter Mode.

On the up-side, Interpreter Mode is perhaps 100 times more powerful than Victim Mode.  When beset by an Interpreter emotion, the emotion may still have a stronger grip on you than you have on it, but you start looking for options.  You may not like any of the options you see, you may feel it’s a choice between two evils, but you look for alternatives, solutions, and answers.  In this mode you will see more difficulty that possibility, but you can envision, aspire, set a goal.  If a Victim has the power of 1, an Interpreter has the power of 100.

On the down-side, it’s from the Interpreter Mode that we wage wars, seek revenge, hold grudges, demand restitution, want respect, get defensive, etc. etc. etc.

Stepping into Power

When we’re able to stop judging, we take a giant step up in personal power and become the Observer.

In Observer Mode we experience a significant power shift.  We stop letting the emotions drive us.  Emotions in this mode include awareness, flexibility, amusement, curiosity, gentleness, and hope.  In this mode, we leave the judge’s bench and take a seat in the witness chair.  In this mode we’re more likely to say, “That’s interesting,” than “That’s terrible.  We’re more likely to say, “It is what it is,” than “If only _____ would change.”  We let go of our stories.

The primary characteristic of the Observer is neutrality.  There is no good or bad, no winning or losing, no assigning blame, no taking credit, no struggle and no resistance.

The Diamond is wider in Observer Mode than any other because in this mode we see winning as well as losing, success as well as failure, plenty as well as lack, love as well as loneliness.  This huge expansion in possibilities and taking ownership of our emotions is what gives the Observer 100 times more power than the Interpreter.  On our totally arbitrary and unscientific scale, Observer has a power rating of 10,000.

The strongest technique I know for moving from Interpreter to Observer is to become mindful of your emotions.  Notice them.  Name them.  Acknowledge them.  Practice saying, “Ah, I’m choosing to feel frustrated (or angry, or impatient, or sorry for myself, or smug).”  By the very act of observing what you are experiencing – and not judging yourself for feeling it – you step into Observer Mode.

Choosing

I call the next mode Partner because in this mode we move from witness to participant.  We don’t just step into the game, we help write the rules.

The primary characteristic of this mode is cooperation, and includes such emotions as authenticity, cheerfulness, gratitude, affection and fun.  We left re-activity behind in Interpreter Mode, now we become pro-active.  We willingly take the first step, go the second mile, find the point of agreement, negotiate the win-win.  We welcome the cooperation of our tools and equipment, our associates, our adversaries, strangers, other drivers, our bodies, talents, and the universe.

The Diamond narrows in Partner Mode because we have sufficient inner strength to jettison the possibilities we don’t want.  We can discard failure and keep success, we can throw out lack and choose plenty, we can open the door to companionship and shut out loneliness.  We thrust aside what we don’t want in favor of what we do want.  By our choices, we narrow the vast range of possibilities we could see in observer mode into probabilities.  We begin to see that anything we want wants us.  We know choosing is both our opportunity and our responsibility.  We choose willingness over willfulness.

And as we continue our exponential assent into our own personal power, the Partner Mode is 100 times more powerful than the Observer Mode, which equals 1,000,000.  (Remember, these numbers are symbolic, intended to help us get a feel for the rate of expansion in power.)

Creating

I see the final and highest mode of personal power as the Creator, and the key characteristic of being a Creator is harmony.  Emotions of this mode include love, joy, peace, delight and awe.  When fully operating through the emotions of this mode, anything you choose must happen.  You are in a state of oneness with yourself, with other people, with the energies of the universe.  You are attuned to best good and you manifest best good.  By your choices, and through your emotions, you narrow probabilities into inevitabilities.

Again, accessing personal power at multiples of 100, the power mode of Creator is 100,000,000.  A bit mind-boggling, isn’t it?

Most of us move from one mode to another depending on the situation, our confidence in that situation, our wellness at the time, what else is going on it our lives, the strength of our beliefs associated with the situation, any other beliefs that may be in play, and a host of other criteria.  Things happen.  We react, or judge, or respond, or stay neutral, or choose something else.  Sometimes we actually create the outcome we want.  The power of the Creator is within each of us.  As sentient human beings, living in a place and at a time in history when choice has become our mantle, we have the opportunity to access all the power within us.

We process.  We struggle.  We try.  We practice.  We falter.  We feel.  We learn.  We grow.  And, of course, that’s what life is all about.

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From Soul to Heart

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

When the soul communicates through the heart, it uses emotions as the primary language. Of course, the more science learns about the brain the more we understand emotions are brain functions, just like thinking, memories, dreams and physical reactions. But that part of us we call the soul (or personality, or anima/animus, or spirit, or self) doesn’t show up on brain scans, so we can only speculate about it. And when the soul speaks to us through the emotions, we tend to feel it in our hearts.

From experience, most of us know emotions get tangled up with thoughts, can be veiled by other emotions, are often obscured by false beliefs, and become confused when in conflict with expectations, or are overpowered by the urgencies of the body. Because emotions are such strong forces, the messages can be difficult to discern.

When we understand what kinds of messages the soul conveys through emotions, we can more effectively tune into this form of inner communication.

Revealing Truth

I have a client who’s trying to make sense of a relationship. He’s with a woman he loves but they have serious communication problems, and even though they’ve broken up several times, they keep coming back together. He told me when he first started dating this woman he felt as if he’d entered a dark cloud, and he felt sort of panicky for the first few months. When they broke up the first time, he felt as if a load had been lifted off him. Yet he keeps being drawn back to her. He interprets the attraction as an indication they belong together, despite the other emotional indicators.

Emotional messages rarely project into the future. They usually have more to do with what’s happening now and what your soul needs right now. Consider the following progression of emotions:

  • Emotions from Victim mode, which include panic, fear, distress, etc., often say, “This is not a good place. Get out now.”  “Place” is usually a situation rather than a physical location. Among other possibilities, it could be a situation that’s dangerous either physically or emotionally; it could be something that’s not a good fit; it could be a toxic relationship.
  • Emotions from Interpreter mode–those that include some form of judgment–can also feel like “Get out now” messages, but usually the communication is more in the line of “Look at yourself through this lens.”  The emotions can illuminate beliefs, values, expectations, attitudes or structures that are not true for you.

It’s important to acknowledge such emotions. It’s important to recognize the ability of such emotions to leach away your personal power. It’s also important to value what they can teach you about yourself.

For instance, if you experience remorse for some choice you once made, what does your remorse tell you about you?  Do you expe­­­­­ct to be perfect?  Do you take responsibility for other people’s emotions and/or choices?  Do you believe expiation only comes after harsh punishment?

Ask yourself similar questions about any Interpreter emotion, and you may discover barriers that are keeping you stuck.

  • Your soul can speak to you using Observer mode emotions only when you free yourself from judgment. When you experience such emotions as curiosity, amazement, amusement, humility, patience and trust, the communications are filled with possibility–and you are able to see those possibilities. People become more interesting, the world becomes bigger and brighter, and opportunities abound.
  • When you open yourself to Partner mode, your soul will communicate to you through such emotions as appreciation, attention, reverence, serenity, pleasure and gratitude. These emotions are your soul’s way of saying, “Yes.”
  • Soul communications at the Creator level come in the form of such emotions as love, peace, happiness, joy, delight, and enthusiasm. The message in these emotions is always of oneness. You will know the oneness of all things. You will know you are never alone. You will celebrate life in every way.

Expanding Relationships

Through your emotions, the communications of your soul will help you learn from every relationship and expand the enduring relationships to new levels.
The first flash of a Victim mode emotion alerts you immediately to an unhealthy situation. If you’re in a relationship and you feel helpless, your soul is warning you that something is amiss. It might be something within you, in which case your first need might be to heal yourself.

Interpreter emotions are as likely to be messages regarding yourself as another person. Does your exasperation reveal an old challenge?  Does your loneliness expose an inner defense?  Does your meekness arise from unhealed wounds?  Does your disappointment indicate unmet expectations?

You can investigate the past, or you can walk away from it. Sometimes old stuff won’t let go without specific healing work. Often, a simple acknowledgment is enough, and you’re able to can move on.

For persistent emotions between those two extremes, I’ve discovered a delightful and revealing exercise:

Indulge. Identify the emotion, recognize it holds a lot of energy, designate a period of time (10 minutes, an hour, a whole day), and give your full attention to it. Immerse yourself in the identified emotion. Wallow in it. Support it with every story you can think of. Engage with it for the full time allotted. Do not let your attention wander. Truly, let your soul pour out the message of that emotion. Chances are, you will make some interesting discoveries about yourself, your choices, and the nature of the relationship. If, when your time is up, you don’t feel a keen separation from that emotion, schedule another session.
You can only begin to know someone else when you free yourself of judgment and enter Observer mode. Observer emotions allow you to see others for what they are. You become aware of their unique gifts, their talents, their abilities, their attitudes, their joys and sorrows. At the highest levels of observation, you might admire, adore and celebrate them. You will also recognize what they are not, and these aspects of them will not feel like deficiencies. Rather, what they are not will support and reinforce who they are.

You can only form a healthy, lasting relationship with someone when you reach out to them from Partner mode. When your soul speaks through willingness, affection, appreciation, respect, confidence and serenity, and the other person is equally confident and serene, you establish a bond with each other that neither time nor distance can sever.

Oneness comes when you internalize Creator emotions such as love, delight, happiness, peace, and optimism.

These communications apply to any relationship. Your soul says, “Change this,” using Victim emotions. Your soul helps you look at yourself using Interpreter emotions. Your soul presents possibilities using Observer emotions. Your soul says, “Go for it,” using Partner emotions. And your soul merges with the other using Creator emotions.

Strengthening Your Intentions

Your soul is your not-so-silent partner when it comes to your choices and intentions. The truer a choice or intention is for you, the more likely you will be to align with it and manifest it. And when it comes to what’s true for you, your soul is the most knowledgeable and reliable source of wisdom available to you.

  • Recognize Victim emotions as reliable signals of a need for change.
  • Let Interpreter emotions illuminate your barriers, your resistance, your doubts, and your challenges. Listen to them, then exercise your power to move up to the next level of soul communication. Opportunities and possibilities only become evident when in Observer mode. If you’re seeing difficulty, if you’re experiencing struggle, if complications keep coming up, or accidents seem more frequent than normal–you’re still in Interpreter mode. Become conscious and mindful of your emotions. Attune to the message of the emotion (the message is always to stop judging), and move in a different direction.
  • Attuning to Observer emotions will set you on an easier path.
  • The magical alignment of thoughts, actions and emotions occurs in Partner mode. Obstacles cannot exist at this level. You partner with yourself, with your intention, and with the infinite. You welcome teachers, you attract allies, you are alert to opportunities, you stride forward confidently, doors open, you experience some form of cooperation everywhere you turn.
  • At Creator level, you and your intention are one. Your intention simply is, and you simply are.

Embracing Your Purpose

When people say they want to live a more purposeful life, or they want to become clearer about their specific purpose, I suspect something inside them (the soul, perhaps) is urging them to reach out and give more to the world. I also suspect part of the message is to expand their personal power so they have more to give.

From working with many people who have reached this point, I’ve concluded every person’s purpose as two basic parts:  What we came here to learn, and why we came here to give. Sometimes these two aspects of purpose are intertwined; some people have to learn what they came to learn in order to give what they came to give. Sometimes there’s no apparent connection; the gift is apparent in the person’s talents while the lesson is in a completely different aspect of life.

You can know what you came to give by looking at your talents and abilities, and you can understand your ability to share that gift by looking at your emotions. Likewise, you can know what you came to learn by looking at what you find most difficult, and you can understand your willingness to learn whatever the lesson is by looking at your emotions.

  • Victim mode emotions will always be immobilizing.
  • Interpreter mode emotions will illuminate your relationship with either your talents or your challenges.
  • Observer mode emotions will provide you with a calm, solid place from which to practice, learn, interact, understand, and choose.
  • Partner mode emotions will unite you with either the gift or the growth. They will inspire you, deliver opportunities onto your doorstep, energize you, sustain you through tough times, and challenge you.
  • Creator mode emotions will bring you into oneness with your transcendent self.

Listen to your emotions as you listen to your mind and your body. Your soul communicates with you 100% of the time, using every available means to communicate with you.

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From Soul to Mind

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

In Alcoholics Anonymous they call the tendency to think too much “the paralysis of analysis.”  In his book Courage–The Joy of Living Dangerously, Osho says, “You were born as a no-mind. . . . If you were born as a no-mind, then the mind is just a social product. It is nothing natural, it is cultivated.”

I run across this theme all the time. According to many, the mind confuses the issue. The mind gets stuck in the story. The mind believes lies as easily as it believes truths. The mind manipulates the facts. Get out of your mind and into your heart. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Except human beings have this incredible brain. We think, we talk, we tell stories, we reason, we perform proofs, we translate, we write, we create works of art, we build buildings and roads and machines.

Everywhere we look we can see positive evidence of the mind in action. And yet, most of us have gotten stuck on an idea, or a concept, or a story, or a belief, and that sticking point immobilizes us, or points us in the wrong direction, or complicates a simple problem, or fuels a conflict. So, is the mind a liability or an asset?

Clearly, it’s both.

Sure, the mind gets confused, gets fixated, gets distracted, has obsessions, has blind spots, and can be unduly influenced by misinformation and misconceptions. The mind is also one of the primary means by which the soul communicates with the conscious self.  The ability of the mind to hear the messages of the soul seems directly related to personal power. The more attuned you are to your power, the more clearly the soul can communicate. Consider the following:

The Ability to Listen

The Victim mode of personal power is characterized by helplessness. The emotions that keep a person in Victim mode include fear, anger, hate, resentment and anxiety. These emotions are so strong they wrest power from those experiencing them. They create so much internal noise they overwhelm communications from the soul, making the message inaudible.

The Interpreter mode of personal power is characterized by struggle and difficulty. Emotions of this mode include frustration, irritation, envy, certainty, defensiveness and self-doubt. These emotions leach power from those experiencing them.  While not so blaringly invasive as Victim emotions, they still obscure communications from the soul, making the message almost inaudible.

Observer mode is the gateway to personal power. Characterized by neutrality, the emotions of this mode include a wide range of non-judgment–from indifference through amusement, curiosity and flexibility to gentleness and tolerance. When you’re in Observer mode the messages of your soul become fully audible, although you may not fully recognize them.

Partner mode is characterized by cooperation and includes such emotions as acceptance, respect, empathy, excitement, gratitude and cheerfulness. At this level the messages from your soul become meaningful.

The Creator level of personal power is characterized by oneness. The emotions of this mode include love, happiness, peace, delight, and joy. When experiencing such emotions, the messages of your soul become resonant.

On a continuum of sound, Victim Mode would be Inaudible, Interpreter Mode would be Barely Audible, Observer Mode would be Audible, Partner Mode would be Meaningful, Creator Mode would be Resonant

It’s important to remember that the various modes are not static. You can be in Creator mode at work, in Interpreter mode with your spouse, in Victim mode during a conflict with your neighbor, and in Partner mode when you cook. History is full of stories of tortured artists who experienced amazingly high levels of personal power in their creative endeavors but could barely function in “real life.”

If you want to gain insight into your personal ability to hear messages from within, you can graph your personal power with the following exercise:

  • List the various areas of your life or the different activities you perform daily. (Areas:  career, health, family, creativity, service, adventure, money, etc. Activities:  commuting, working, cooking, exercising, volunteering, caring for others, practicing.)
  • Consider the emotions you experience while immersed in the different areas or while performing the activities on your list. (Working–frustration, isolation, endurance. Health–resilience, appreciation.  Family–love, peace.
  • Find those emotions on the emotions list to discover your mode of power while in that activity.

The communications of the soul never cease or let up. They are always active, and when they are ignored, they become more and more imperative. Generally, the purpose of such messages is to help you move from wherever you are into your creator power. The more aware you are of the ways the soul communicates, the more open you will be to hearing those messages.

As we saw last week, communications through the body often take the form of ailments. Communications through the mind usually come in the form of ideas.

Two-track Communication

Most of us are aware the mind operates on both a conscious and a subconscious level. The soul uses each of these aspects of the mind as vehicles for communication, but in entirely different ways. Consciously, the soul uses ideas; subconsciously, messages come mostly through dreams.

Since I am not a dream scholar (and I rarely have dreams that survive waking), I’m going to skim over this one pretty quickly. Carl Jung was the first psychologist to see the correlation between dream images and myths. Because dreams seem to correspond with myths and legends, regardless of a person’s knowledge of the stories, Jung originated the phrase “collective unconscious.”  I suspect that when the soul communicates through dreams, it uses a language common to all souls. If you have vivid dreams, there are dozens of books available to help you interpret this language.

I am much more familiar with the messages that come through the conscious mind, using the language of ideas.

The active human mind generates thoughts, stories, and explanations almost constantly. The quality of this activity depends rather heavily on your emotional state. Emotions from Victim or Interpreter modes keep the focus on why me or how come, and these circular, self-absorbed questions block out soul-level communications. When in those modes, there is a tendency to look for salvation from without and reject the possibility of achieving it from within.

When you become the Observer, your perspective broadens and you see beyond previous limitations. The ideas generated by your mind are informed by the infinite nature of your soul. As you adopt and experience more emotions from partner mode and hold them for longer periods, you begin to recognize your ideas as true messages from your inner being-ness.

Let’s look at some of the forms these messages take,

Open Doors

Victim and Interpreter emotions impose limitations. When in the throes of such emotions, you may feel walled in, shrouded in darkness, beset from every side, tied down, chained, etc. The doors of possibility are always open, but they become invisible to you. As you access more and more of your own power, the barriers fall away, the sun comes out, obstacles dissolve, and you enjoy more freedom of movement. Your ideas start to feel like porch lights illuminating those doors of possibility. And you’re free to walk through any door you choose.

The walls of limitation consist of old events, old interpretations of those events, old reactions, old beliefs, old habits, and the burden of expectations–both your own and those of other people. New possibilities appear when you realize the old events don’t bind you any more, when you stop judging past experiences, when you choose new responses, when you revise your beliefs, when you adopt new habits, and when you release expectations.

Your soul wants to help you in these new endeavors. The more you listen, the more opportunities will present themselves. You can find the message of the soul using the reasoning power of the conscious mind.

Here’s a strategy you might try:

  • Consciously identify an area of limitation. (Money is scarce; health is elusive, you’re in a train-wreck relationship, etc.)
  • Describe the limitation and your experiences with it. As your tell your story, record it in some way. You might share it orally with another person, make a recording of it or write it out.
  • Find the emotions, the judgments and your behaviors embedded in your story. If you choose to share it with someone else, have your listener look for these aspects of it and take notes.
  • Review these emotions, judgments and behaviors and recognize them as indicators of limitation. Imagine them as the sides of a box that hold you in.
  • Think through them and find one or more you’re willing and ready to change. Choose what you want instead. Your new choice becomes an opening in the box you can step through any time you want.

Creative Bursts

Your soul is your primary creative partner. All your talents, abilities, skills, and instincts are well and strong within your soul–and they want to come out and play. Just as you can direct your mind to notice possibilities and take advantage of opportunities, you can open your mind to creative ideas.

Some people receive ideas as naturally as breathing. Some of us have to consciously stop staying, “I can’t.”

As a society, we tend to associate creativity with the arts and culture:  music, painting, poetry, dance, sculpture, photography, fiction, etc. Sometimes we hear of it in terms of creative problem solving, invention or entrepreneurship. I challenge you to consider that your soul communicates with you via creative bursts all day, every day. For instance.

  • You have something to say to someone, and the words come out of your mouth just right.
  • You’re seasoning a soup, and you reach for the basil instead of the dill.
  • You wear a blue shirt instead of a green one.
  • You rearrange your suitcase to make room for an extra pair of shoes.

At a deeper, more intuitive level:

  • You call a friend, and your friend says, “I was just thinking about you.”
  • You’re writing an article or a business paper and you sense what to add or delete.
  • You can tell whether your child needs to be challenged or reassured.
  • You know it’s time to leave a job, even though the financial data suggest holding on three more years.

You may read these last items and think, “That stuff doesn’t come from my mind, it comes from my gut.”  You may be right; it might come from your gut. Recent research is revealing neurotransmitters originate in the intestine. Some scientists are calling the gut the “second brain.”  Whether they come from your gut or your soul, they work through the mind when you are operating in the higher levels of personal power.

The Call to Serve

By way of the mind, the soul inspires us to serve. As the mind observes suffering and need, the soul triggers the ideas. We experience creative bursts of how to ease suffering and resolve problems. Even people deeply immersed in their own helplessness and struggle occasionally receive the nudge to serve–to rescue a hurt animal or soothe a crying baby.

As with all communications from the soul, your ability to hear increases as you access greater levels of your own power. In the areas of your life where you are strongest, your desire to serve will be strongest. In the areas where you experience the most difficulty, your soul will be more focused on helping you grow past your barriers and limitations.

However, because service always furthers growth, your personal growth and the call to serve can be closely intertwined. If some area of your life feels limited or stifled or stagnant, open your mind to the possibility of service, listen, and welcome the ideas that come to you. The communication channel is always open–like a 24-hour radio station. All you have to do is tune in.

These three ways the soul communicates through the mind tend to blend together. As soon as you become receptive to opportunities and possibilities, every open door seems to open fresh veins of creativity, and you gain a deeper desire to apply those ideas in ways that make the world a better place.

Welcome the workings of your mind. Your mind is an essential part of your infinite whole. Celebrate your ability to think, to reason, to solve, or be logical. By the same token, never be afraid of flights of fancy, of dreams, of strange thoughts, or of coming up with answers that don’t follow a clear logic trail. The soul communicates through both inspiration and reason.

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Incremental Steps

Sunday, July 10th, 2011

Last week I referred to the process I call “revolution to revelation,” going round and round – the same issue, the same kinds of experiences, the same challenges – until something you’ve seen or heard or experienced suddenly makes sense and transports you into new understanding.  Today, I’ll explore ways to make this process purposeful instead of accidental.

I think this kind of progress is important in accessing personal power and in manifesting what you want.  The art of manifestation corresponds directly to your relationship with your power. The ability to access the infinite power you already possess seems essential to your ability to manifest.

Accessing Power

When I first started coaching, I’d encourage clients to simply replace a disempowering emotion with an empowering one.  For instance, if someone was mired in resentment, I’d ask, “What do you want to feel instead?”  This seemed easy enough to me, except we weren’t achieving the desired results.

As I continued to study emotions, I began to see they fell into natural groups according to the results they produced.  These groups became the Modes of Mastery  diamond, and when I used that model, we started to see lasting change.  I realized real progress comes by moving systematically from one mode to the next.  Of course, you can experience a big leap and enjoy the resulting burst of exalted emotion, but permanent access to Partner or Creator power requires consciously mastering each mode along the way.  Since using a more incremental approach, I’ve been more effective as a coach, and my clients have experienced longer-lasting results.

Following is a quickie review of each mode:

Victim mode includes those strong, imperative emotions that result in a sense of helplessness.  You may be in a situation that initiates or contributes to a reality of helplessness, or you may be immobilized only from within.  Either way, such emotions as fear, hate, anger and resentment close off possibilities until it looks as if there is no way out.

Interpreter mode is recognized by judgment and results in struggle.  This includes any emotion that results in such judgments as comparison, blame, measurement, fault-finding, complaint and envy.  In this mode you have sufficient personal power to see possible solutions, but since the emotions produce struggle, the alternatives may seem to have more cost than benefit.

Observer mode is neutral.  The more judgment you can release, the calmer you feel.  As the observer you can see a vast spectrum of possibilities, and you are able to make more reasoned choices.

Partner mode emotions include any that connect and form cooperative relationships.  The range of possibilities begins to narrow again because you have the personal power to eliminate the options you don’t want.  The possible becomes probable.

Creator mode emotions bring you into a oneness with yourself, other people, the world, and the infinite.  When you live such emotions as love, peace, and happiness, the probable becomes inevitable.

When I assembled the list of emotions (included again this week), I put them in alphabetical order.  The emotions of each mode share characteristics, but they do not all have equal power.  I made no effort to prioritize them by strength because the words that describe emotion tend to mean different things to different people.  For instance, I might consider disappointment a deeply weakening emotion; for you it might be a temporary state.  I also included synonyms to assist in finding the word that best describes how you feel.  Trepidation and consternation may mean essentially the same thing, but you know if you’re feeling one or the other.

I’ve encouraged you often to identify the emotion you’re feeling, look to the next mode for an emotion that would be a logical step into a higher level of power.  Sometimes, however, your next “revolution” might take you to an emotion within the same mode, but one with less (or more) energy.

For example, this week, a friend of mine said she was feeling angry.  She’d asked a roommate to move out of her house, and feelings were running a high.  My friend already knew that by feeling angry she was giving away her anger to the other person.  She also knew she’d prefer to feel compassion, but that seemed pretty remote.  So I suggested an incremental approach, and this is how it went:

From Anger to Irritation to Disappointment to Sadness to Calm to Compassion

I suggested some of the steps; she suggested others.  At each transition, she felt her heart easing and her body relaxing.  The entire process took less than five minutes.

It often doesn’t work that fast.  If your anger, like my friend’s, is recent and not especially deep, you can probably shift out of it quickly – as she did.  If you’ve been holding it most of your life, you may have to take many tiny, incremental steps, then practice each step for days or weeks before you’re able to move onto the next one.

Wherever you are, identify an emotion you can move to fairly easily.

The diagram below illustrates the journey from fear to joy.  Because fear allows the least amount of personal power, it’s in the middle; joy, with the most expansive personal power, is outermost.  The progress each revolution makes is very incremental – and the time it takes to make one revolution will be very individual.

In actual practice, your starting place might be anywhere along the way.  Your path may not require as many steps as I’ve included.  You might identify your progressive steps with an entirely different set of emotions.  You may transition through some emotions so quickly you hardly notice; others might take a few revolutions.

Recognize the progression as a journey.  Also recognize each transition from one mode to another will impact every area of your life.  For instance, you may be anxious over something that’s going on at work yet staying in observer mode everywhere else.  Emotions, however, are as contagious within an individual as they are from one person to another.  If you don’t deal with the anxiety at work, it can contaminate the more satisfying areas of your life. When you address the anxiety and work your way out of it, the improved energy will also increase your power everywhere else.

Movement Strategies

The strategies for moving from one mode to another follow a basic do-have-be pattern.   Even though I’ve maintained this do-have-be cycle can begin anywhere, it actually correlates pretty will with the modes of power.

From Victim to Interpreter:

Because the primary characteristic of Victim mode is helplessness, the first step is to grasp the strands of non-helplessness that are within your reach.  Regardless of your circumstances, your emotions are nearest at hand.

Start by recognizing and acknowledging what you feel.  The more precisely you identify your emotions, the better.  Do you feel anger or fury?  Loneliness or contempt?  Hate or resentment?  Outrage or revulsion?

Once you’ve named the emotion, own it.  Your circumstances or the actions of others may reinforce a belief in your own helplessness, but no one besides yourself has any power whatsoever over your feelings.  Be willing to say, right out loud, I’m choosing to feel _____.”

These two things – naming the emotion then owning it – are powerful things you can do. The more you do them, the more you’ll empower yourself to choose something else.

If, however, the emotion feels too good to let go, be okay with that.  Maybe it feels right to be angry, or resentful, or guilty, or jealous.  If so, give yourself permission to indulge in it.  In fact, set aside a time to rant and wallow.  Mark 30 minutes (or 10, or 60, or a week) off on your calendar and make an appointment with yourself to really dig in and explore and expand and put your heart into it.  Then go for it.  For the full 30 minutes (or 10, or 60, or the whole week) focus on making the most of the emotion.  See if you can actually hold the emotion, on purpose and with intention, for the entire time you’ve set aside.

When you’re ready to move out of the disempowering emotion, choose your next step.  Keep it small and easy.  Big steps are intimidating and can set you up for failure before you even begin.  If moving from wrath to tolerance feels impossible, identify some interim steps, for instance

From wrath to anger to bitterness to indignation to irrication to exasperation to disappointment to sadness.

Once you reach Observer mode, you may be able to identify a pathway that could take you clear to Creator mode:

From sadness to tolerance to indifference to curiosity to amusement to acceptance  to sympathy to gratitude to respect to delight to love.

From Interpreter to Observer:

In Interpreter mode, doing is natural and necessary.  You want to fix, change, repair, improve, mend, control, construct, systematize, etc.  Unfortunately, the emotions of Interpreter mode are those that judge, blame, complicate, interfere, confuse, deconstruct, challenge, deplete, etc., and that makes everything more difficult.

To leave Interpreter mode, you must leave the impeding emotions behind so you can adopt the ones that will support, encourage, cooperate, and empower.  The intermediate resting place between judgment and cooperation is the calm of Observer mode.  The calming exercises I’ve presented before are very effective.  Here’s a quick recap:

To calm your body:

  • Breathe deeply.
  • Open your senses.
  • Be in nature
  • Expand your body from within.

To calm your mind:

  • Count your blessings.
  • Laugh out loud.
  • See truth.
  • Be present.

To calm your emotions:

  • Smile.
  • See beauty.
  • Be silly.
  • Evoke a neutral emotion.

(For more explanation, see “Calm and Curious.”)

Another strategy is to focus on the qualities of Observer mode emotions and implement them into your life – again in small ways.  Such emotions as amazement, curiosity, excitement, humility, awareness, resilience, etc. are also qualities you can practice.  When you let these qualities guide your actions, their energy becomes more accessible to you.

Consider such incremental doing steps as:

  • To gain amazement, try to be amazed at something every day.
  • To gain resilience, identify one thing you find threatening and find little ways to become more familiar with it.
  • To gain simplicity, analyze one of your normal routines and find one little step you can eliminate.  Or take one rarely used item off a crowded shelf and get rid of it.
  • To gain flexibility, observe your body and notice when it stiffens up.  Then review the situation and look for one little way you can bend.

From Observer to Partner:

Taking actions steps is a very strong way to move from Interpreter into Observer.  To transition from the neutrality of Observer to the synergy of Partner, it’s necessary to transition from doing to having.  Look at the list again and insert a have in front of each attribute.  For example:

have acceptance
have affection
have appreciation
have cheerfulness
have kindness
have modesty
have openness
have gratitude
have concern
have willingness

These qualities are yours for the having if you’re willing to accept them, receive them, access them, open up to them, let them come forth.  Of course, you can ask, “What can I do to show more appreciation?”  If you give that question your full attention, you’ll soon notice that when you have appreciation, doing it comes easily and automatically.

From Partner to Creator:

Creator mode is a state of being. You don’t have to act, try, work at, practice or perform.  You just are.

To reach this mode, follow the same process as moving from observer to partner.  Recognize the emotion you want to access and be the qualities of that emotion.

be cheerfulness
be enthusiasm
be serenity
be authenticity
be love
be joy
be peace
be delight

Remember, when it comes to personal power, nothing’s consistent or immobile.  We each have a personal range that generally spans three modes.  Someone habitually in Victim mode can swing into Observer mode, just as someone habitually in Creator mode will also swing into Observer mode.  Have confidence in the incremental steps of your own journey, and you will continue to move your personal range inch by inch up the scale.

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Circles and Continuums

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

No one’s journey through life follows a straight line.  Every path wends through a metaphorical topography of mountains, valleys, cliffs, rivers, buttes, streams, box canyons, oceans, and the occasional Eden.  Sometimes an aspect of landscape leads around in a circle until it feels more like a carousel than a trail ride.  Sometimes the path zigzags abruptly and continuously until you want nothing more than to cut a few corners.

Circles

In this issue, I’m going to focus on these two attributes of the life journey. Let’s look at circles and continuums as important aspects of the landscape.

By definition, a circle has no end point.  If you are moving around in a circle, you will pass the same series of points again and again and again.

In empowerment work, many cause-and effect relationships form a circle:  energy produces results produces energy produces results, etc.  Last week, I addressed this in the way beliefs and emotions coexist and co-create.  In any circle, it doesn’t matter where you start, once you’re in the circle, you’re in.  There’s no definable beginning, and there’s no definable end.  Round and round and round.  If you act in habitual ways, you will get habitual results.

Any circle, however, is not immune to influence, and influencing factors can come from others–in today’s world we are continuously exposed to the attitudes, beliefs, emotions and actions of others.  We also influence our belief-emotion cycles from within as we observe, process, internalize outside factor, and when we listen to our own intuition.

In my article titled Mindfulness, I explored the relationship between being, having and doing.  In this important circle, the three aspects lead from one to another and inform each other, and it doesn’t much matter where you start.  I can make a pretty good case for starting with being, but through doing we have and become, through having we be and do, by being we do and have.

And yet, it’s not a never-ending loop.  The journey is more like circling a screw with a tight thread.  We go around, and at any given point we can look out on a landscape we’ve seen before, but even though the upward progress may be negligible, each revolution takes us incrementally higher.  With each revolution, we take in slightly different information.  With each revolution, we process the information in a slightly different way.  At any time, the information and the processing might bring us to an exit point.  Quite suddenly we reach a new perspective; the landscape changes, we get a new view of the world, and we can step off the spiral path and move in a different direction.

I call this the “revolution to revelation.”  We hear the same thing over and over and over, and eventually we hear it as if for the first time.  Suddenly, we have the ah ha moment, and nothing looks the same.  Understanding hits us between the eyes.  A new light illuminates an old experience.  Insight skewers us.  We gain wisdom.  But we could not have gotten to this transformational place without all those revolutions, that hammering of experience into our awareness.

Also, some circles, such as the one for being, doing, and having, have lots of cross-movement.

Sometimes we focus on one aspect, and that aspect then informs the others.  Sometimes we neglect one aspect, and that diminishes the others.  This, then, brings us back to the circle:  all three aspects are necessary to keep the whole healthy, to keep us progressing well on life’s journey.

Continuums

So, let’s take a closer look at the zig-zag effect.

On a mountain trail, it’s called switch-backing, and it’s the easiest, most efficient way to get up a steep slope.

On life’s journey, you often don’t realize the long stretch you’re on is actually moving you further along.  And when you swing back, apparently in the opposite direction, it’s often difficult to tell you’re gaining elevation.  You might think you’re in a rut, or swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to another.  In a way, the pendulum is a better metaphor since it seems there’s always a range of conditions along the way.

Even better is that of a continuum.  So let’s explore that for a bit, then put it in the context of a switchback.

A continuum is an idea or concept that stretches out between two extremes.  A life continuum, for example,  stretches between birth and death, and in between you have days, years and significant events.  The moral continuum stretches between good and evil.  A temperature continuum stretches from cold to hot.  Etc.

The more I explore personal power, the more I see a number of important continuums, starting with the Modes of Power model.  I presented the model as a hierarchical diamond, but for this discussion it works better as a horizontal line with Victim on one end and Creator on the other.

Since this model provides a way to think about emotions, you might find yourself at three or four or eight different places along the continuum on any given day, depending on what you’re doing, who you’re with, how challenged you feel, how rested you are.  For instance, if you’re look at your bank balance and considering the bills you owe, you might be feeling apprehensive.  Apprehension is an Interpreter emotion, so you’d be somewhere in the Interpreter section of the scale.  Twenty minutes later you might be sharing a joke with a good friend and enjoying a moment of hilarity, which puts you firmly in Partner mode.

For any specific area of your life, however, you might stay pretty level:  work might be fun or dreary; money might be steady or rare; your health might be challenging or easy.

In the areas of your life you find challenging, what you learn about yourself turns each monotonous “not again” leg of the journey into a switchbacks that moves you steadily along.

When you master your emotions, you also access your power, determine your direction and regulate your momentum.

Power:

Victim mode emotions have great force, but they tend to consume all available power.  Generally this motivates in one of two ways.  The individual becomes self-destructive, or becomes extra aggressive.  The first hurts you, the second hurts others.  Either way, the emotion wins and you lose.

Interpreter emotions won’t strip you of all power, but they are very wasteful.  They create difficulties, they exaggerate the need to struggle, and they keep the breaks on.  No matter how much gas you give the engine, it can’t perform well against so much resistance.

Observer emotions are neutral.  The engine’s on, but neither the transmission nor the brake is engaged.  Whenever you’re ready, just shift into gear and head in any direction.

Partner emotions are like putting a tiger in your tank.  They empower you.  They help you transcend any constraints that might otherwise slow you down, such as fatigue, time, finances, uncertainty and other people’s fears.

At the Creator level, you exchange your car for a jet pack.  Creator emotions put you in alliance with the unlimited energy sources of the universe.

Direction:

We know the sun is the original source of all energy, yet we make distinctions between the types of energy, such as hydro, atomic, fossil fuel, wind, etc.  When we think of emotions as energy, we may know the original source is within ourselves, but we tend to associate our emotions with whatever triggers them.  For instance, I might be walking along, minding my own business, when someone slaps my face.  The assault triggers a reaction and is therefore the source of my emotion.  Or I’m walking along  and someone hands me $1000.  Again, the gift triggers a reaction and is therefore the source of my emotion.

Except my responses depend far more on my level of personal power than on the outside events.

A person in Victim mode is totally susceptible to outside events.  The helplessness that results from these emotions provides no protection from outer influences and has no inner strength with which to push back.  Certainly, those in Victim mode can–and often do–attack and retaliate, but the motivational force of emotional energy is always from the outside in.  They made me do it. They deserve everything they get. I’m just playing by their rules. If I don’t reign, they will conquer.

In Interpreter mode, outside influences still motivate your responses.  The emotions of this mode are judgment-based, and the measuring stick is always a comparison of some kind:  good vs. bad; beautiful vs. ugly; rich vs. poor; productive vs. lazy, etc.  When you internalize energy from an outside source and direct it outward again, you become judgmental of others.  The energy can keep you aloof, bored, suspicious, hostile, etc.  When you direct an outward source inward, you judge yourself.  This may keep you immobilized, or it may be self-motivating.  Self-judgment may keep you in an unproductive spin of what’s wrong, why you can’t, or how many roadblocks you face.  Or it can drive you to gain knowledge, skill, proficiency, efficiency.  However, if you remain in an energy such as ambition, envy, greed, pride or certainty, what you gain intellectually, physically or professionally will not offset the burdens and barriers imposed by those emotions.

When you move into Observer mode and achieve neutrality, it’s like picking up a “Get out of jail free” card.  You release judgment and gain perspective.  You see yourself as yourself rather than as a reflection of what you see in others.  Your energy not longer pushes you in a direction you didn’t choose.

In Partner mode, you find yourself more in tune with the inner source of your power.  Your energy is like a robust, rambunctious teenager–strong, and thriving on good nutrition.  You welcome the nourishment you receive through the exchange of positive energies with others.  Your relationships with others become cooperative rather than competitive.

When you enter Creator mode, you become like the sun, the source.  You radiate out.  Your energy enriches and empowers others.

Momentum:

The emotions of Victim mode are not slow.  They are voracious consumers and the energy they consumer is yours.  They drain power from you, making you feel more and more helpless.  They take you in the direction of poverty, illness, war, famine, and other catastrophes.  (In other modes, you may experience catastrophes but you will never be made helpless by them.)

Interpreter mode emotions won’t hurtle you into an abyss, but they keep you stuck.  They congest, they complicate, they mess with your mind, they generate accidents, they put up roadblocks.  Some momentum words that often illuminate this mode are: trying, fighting, confronting, struggling, worrying, controlling, insisting, and obeying.

When you move into Observer mode, you become neutral.  You’re quiet, ready, willing; your motor is humming.  You’re in Idle.  Some people are perfectly content to remain in idle.  Some people use the idle state to prepare, establish traction, gather their thoughts and center their emotions.  As a rule, idle causes no harm.

When you move into Partner mode, you know where you’re going (even if you’ve simply articulated it as toward your best good), and you pick up speed.  The energy your emotions generate open the throttle and hurry you toward your destination.

In Creator mode, you transcend speed.  At this end of the continuum, what is already is.  Sure, you  may still have to compose your music (master the triple toe loop-double axel combination, absorb Grey’s Anatomy), but the journey becomes the destination.

Welcome the Switch-backs

If Creator mode is the ideal, if those are the emotions you want to exercise, employ and master, it helps good to recognize that everything you experience is an opportunity to practice.  When you’re moving steadily toward Creator mode, you become more finely tuned, you polish off the rough edges, you share with others more easily.  When you hit some snag that sends you tumbling back toward Interpreter or Victim, you can learn where you’re vulnerable, you can recognize parts you didn’t see before, you can ask for help, you can allow others to share with us.

The trail up the mountain (to enlightenment? to personal power?) is never straight uphill.  You must switchback occasionally, apparently heading in the wrong direction, to gather the skills, knowledge and wisdom that make life satisfying–and fun.

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Growing Out of Victim Mode

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

As you may have noticed from previous articles, I don’t invest much energy trying to figure out why past events somehow ended up as present circumstances, why someone persists in self-destructive behavior, why a belief or fear took such a strong hold on someone, why someone is so resistant to change, etc.

Trying to answer such elusive why questions is much like a dog chasing its tail. You circle round and round and round and may never quite find the answers. On the other hand, when you forego circular thinking and focus on where you want to go instead, insights into why often appear.

Sidestepping such self-scrutiny, there can be considerable value in understanding some of the general aspects of human nature that may be keeping you stuck in less-than-desirable behaviors.

Generally speaking, most people operate from Victim and/or Interpreter modes most of the time. The energetic results of these emotions tend to be negative and destructive, leading to most human ills. Yet these energies are an undeniable aspect of human nature. We come by them naturally. To choose something else takes mindfulness and conscious effort. Today I’m going to focus specifically on Victim mode emotions, to see what it takes to evolve from them, to move through them, and to transcend them.

To see a list of emotions I’ve identified so far as Victim mode click here.

(I don’t claim this list is inclusive, and I recognize your definitions of these emotions may differ from mine. Also, I’ve arranged this list alphabetically, not in terms of relative strength.)

In 1915, Walter Cannon, a physiologist, described an animal’s response to threats as the fight-or-flight reflex. Since then neurologists have isolated the areas of the brain involved in this reflex. It seems to be very a helpful defense mechanism. Through most of human evolution, survival probably depended on it.

Many Victim mode emotions can be traced to this reflex, but if you examine the list, you will discover far more complexity than simple fight-flight reactions. Also included are the emotions that deal with the after-effects. If you fight and don’t win, you might experience agony, hate, loneliness, or woe. If you run away yet don’t escape, you might experience terror, revulsion, distress, or fury. If you do win but see your position as tenuous, you might experience malice, fanaticism, hate, or contempt.

Whatever the actual outcome, if you remain in any Victim emotion, you personally have little or no power. The emotion has it all. Your relationship to your “enemy” becomes irrelevant. The energy of these emotions is so strong, so encompassing, you must feel them. You can’t help it; they overtake you. The best you can do is submit.

Except for one thing. The emotions are yours. They belong to you. And because they are yours, you can still grab the reins. Bringing such strong emotions into submission may seem as difficult as riding a tiger. However, the only way to avoid being eaten by them is to tame them.

Before we move into some taming strategies, it’s important to note that no one is ever 100% a victim. When you look at your life as a whole, you will find instances of Creator mode, areas of Partner mode, occasions of Observer mode, and probably a lot of Interpreter mode. Sometimes you may Partner with someone or something most of the time, and only drop into Victim with a single aspect of that relationship. (I have often been both Creator and Victim where money’s concerned.)  Emotions fluctuate, and with them so does your energy and your power.

For those times when Victim mode emotions assail you, tame them.

Say “No.”

Imagine you’re caught in a violent storm. The gale’s so ferocious you can hardly stand up. You’re blinded by wind and rain. You’re totally disoriented. Loose objects come flying by. There might be a safety rail within reach, but how would you know?

Being caught up in the emotions of Victim mode is like that; their energy is as strong, as severe and as destructive as any hurricane.

But they don’t have all the power. You always have the power to say, “No more of this!”

You may not be able to calm the storm, but you can reach for that handrail. When you say, “No more,” you find the power to grasp it. You can then move into relative shelter.

Choosing to leave the storm requires conscious thought–and there will be tradeoffs. Are you ready to not be a victim?  Are you ready to assume responsibility for your results?  Are you willing to give up any payoffs you gain from your helplessness?  Are you ready to master your emotions?

Once logic says, “Yes,” invite your heart to join in. Can you acknowledge the part you play in your results?  Can you feel a willingness to be out of the storm?  Can you imagine stepping into calm?

When your head and your heart are aligned, it’s time to act. If you are besieged by anger, stop fighting. If you are beset by loneliness, reach out to someone in need. If you have been cringing in fear, stand up straight. If you are burdened with resentment, jettison the cargo. By your actions, declare you are finished with any emotions that have imprisoned you.

Recognize Your Part

Your contribution to any situation is primarily energetic. Do you let your emotions run amok, or do you master them?  Your emotions are the keys to your personal power. If you cede your power to a Victim emotion, you become helpless; you have little ability to withstand the trials and tribulations of life. Conversely, when you master a destructive emotion, you gain access to the energy of more creative emotions, and you can direct that energy any way you wish.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand describes a condition she calls “the sanction of the victim.”  She claims no one can victimize someone else without their permission. I believe this to be true. Your personal power is yours alone. Only you can hold it and wield it. Only you can throw it away.

The first step in owning your contribution to the results of your life is to acknowledge your emotions. You are not unaware there’s a problem–no matter how deeply you may have buried the emotions, the results are impossible to miss.

Can you name what you feel?  Can you identify the various components?  Anger, for instance, can morph into resentment, contempt, jealousy or hate–or some combination. Hatred may be comprised of despair, outrage, woe and mortification. Submission might be driven by distress and terror. When you know the components of the emotions that oppress you, you come to greater awareness of how and where you are leaking power.

Once you recognize what you are feeling, acknowledge your choice in the matter. Be willing to say, “I am choosing to feel _____.”

This may be absolutely the most difficult challenge in seeking shelter from the storm of your emotions. You wouldn’t want to be held responsible for a hurricane or tornado that flattens a town. Why would you want to take responsibility for an emotional storm laying waste to your life?  Nevertheless, the emotions are raging within you. To calm them, you must acknowledge them as yours. As soon as you concede you have chosen what you currently feel, you gain the ability to choose something else instead.

Negotiate

As you recognize and name your emotions, gather them into your hand. Imagine yourself in some kind of high-stakes game – poker, perhaps, or the stock market. Imagine your emotions are the cards. Since we’re discussing victim mode, let’s assume you’ve got a handful of stuff you don’t want – anger, resentment, woe, distress, outrage, for instance – and you’re ready to start negotiating (with yourself) for greater power.

Often, mindfulness produces insight. As you recognize and acknowledge your emotions, you will probably gain understanding of any value you’ve derived. It’s likely your feelings have been serving you well.

For example, do you perceive:

  • Your anger protects you from intimacy?
  • Your avarice saves you from poverty?
  • Your jealousy protects you from hurt?
  • Your resentment saves you from responsibility?

Every emotion provides a payoff. While it’s fairly easy to see the payoffs for emotions from Partner or Creator mode, the benefits of Victim mode are more difficult to spot. Yet there’s always a perceived advantage. You may not be able to identify yours, but you can guess, and a guess can get you close enough. Once you catch a glimpse of the benefits to you, you have an enhanced idea about how to play the cards in your hand.

  • Consider whether the “advantage” actually provides benefit. What, exactly, do you gain from non-intimacy?   Solitude?  Only if you like being alone. No demands?  Only if you hate helping others. No arguments?  Okay, but you may miss a lot of good conversation.
  • Imagine if you could achieve the benefit in some other way. Of course, you don’t want poverty; could you have abundance without being stingy and greedy?
  • Recognize the cost to you. Perhaps jealousy is  also costing you the one you love. Perhaps the fires of fanaticism are burning you up inside. Perhaps your anger has become malignant.
  • Believe it’s not too late. At any time (such as right now), you can choose to stop leaking personal power. You will immediately start to get a different result.

So, now you know the worth of the cards you hold. Since this is a one-person game, any deals you make will be with yourself.

Generally speaking, movement up the Modes Of Mastery Diamond is a growth process. A seed becomes a sprout, then a stem, then grows leaves, then blooms. The journey to calculus starts with arithmetic. High wire acrobats begin on a beam a few inches from the ground. Emotional development moves from wherever you are to the next step up the scale. If you are starting at Victim mode, the next step up is Interpreter mode.

I’ve been using the Victim cards of anger, resentment, woe, distress, and outrage as an example. What cards are you holding?  Are you ready to negotiate for something better?

Refer to the Emotions List and look at the options available to you in Interpreter mode.

Say you’re holding malice and you’ve acknowledged it. Now trade up. How about exchanging it for some annoyance, or bitterness, or even some animosity?

If you’re holding despair, moving to grief or dejection will be a step up.

If you’re holding outrage, when you let it go you might pick up indignation instead.

These are little steps, not big leaps. Moving from Victim mode to Interpreter mode is do-able. And by moving to Interpreter mode you access 100 times more personal power. You have 100 times the capacity to choose, to maneuver, to negotiate, to decide.

Keep the terms of the deal

Okay, you’ve tossed out what you didn’t want any more. You’ve replaced those old Victim emotions with annoyance, scorn and dejection. Now what?

Revel in your new choices. See how good they feel by comparison. Feel the difference in your relationship with your own power.

All Victim mode emotions produce helplessness. They make anything else seem impossible. They rob you of yourself. They own you.

Taking that tiny little step from Victim to Interpreter gives you options. You can take action. You can do more than hide or fight. You have a little more room to both plan and execute.

Of course, things will still look difficult. Interpreter mode emotions do result in struggle. So what!  You’re not the Victim anymore.

And once in Interpreter mode, you may find it easy and automatic to move on up to Observer mode

So stay the course. Grow into a new mode of being.

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Posted in Choice, Creator Mode, Interpreter Mode, Observer Mode, Personal Growth, Victim Mode | Comments Off

The Give and Take of Energy

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

A few days ago, a friend of mine sprained her ankle.  Since we both like to explore metaphysical connections, we ended up discussing pain – specifically in terms of her ankle, and generally in terms of personal power.

She sprained her ankle, and her body experienced pain.  This is the body’s natural, biological response, and it’s important in a survival sense.  Through pain, the body says, “I’m injured.  Attend to the injury.  Don’t ignore it or make it worse.” My friend rubbed a medicinal salve into the injured joint, wrapped it, applied ice and elevated it.

After we spent half an hour speculating about what’s going on in her life that might have attracted the injury in the first place and what lesson there might be for her in the experience, we focused on the energy of pain and its relationship to personal power.  Both of us found my model – the Diamond of Mastery – very useful as a vocabulary for deeper understanding.

Every situation – especially painful ones – provide an opportunity to lose personal power or access it, to extract energy or supply it.  My friend was laying there with her injured foot propped up.  In very simple terms, she had three choices:  be miserable, be neutral, be healed.  We explored the ramifications of each option from a power perspective.

Depleting Power

The most powerless state of being is, of course, Victim Mode.  Those who function at this level believe they have no power and believe there’s no help to found.  Their thoughts, actions and/or emotions reinforce this position.

Being a victim always infers helplessness.  As soon as someone believes they are helpless, that belief becomes their truth, and they become helpless.  They let go of personal power as if it were water and they have no way of holding onto it.  Emotions that reflect helplessness include despair, anxiety, distress, and woe.  Those emotions reinforce thoughts of helplessness such as:  I can’t.  There’s no way out.  This is too hard (or painful, or terrifying) for me to bear. Such thoughts drive them to actions of withdrawal or suffering, such as complaint, blame, anxiety, addiction, isolation, etc.

Being a victim also often presumes innocence – especially from the victim’s point of view.  However, as soon as someone believes themselves free of accountability or complicity they become co-conspirators with their plight.  Thoughts such as I didn’t, I’m in the right, or That’s wrong generate emotions that reinforce strife – contempt, outrage, resentment, blame, guilt, fanaticism, etc.  Resulting actions include retaliation, destruction, oppression, and vengeance.

Misery can take any of these forms.  Misery is like opening a vein and letting your personal power simply drain out of you.

Searching for Power

Until this conversation with my friend, I had never seen Interpreter Mode as a state of searching.  I’ve included such emotions as ambition, desire, yearning, possessiveness and envy in that category, but I hadn’t thought about them in terms of searching for one’s own personal power.  As we were talking about the energy of pain, I could see how moaning, impatience, and unhappiness were not only forms of resistance, but the longing for personal power.  In a way, these emotions say to the injury (or the source of the injury), “You’ve taken away my power and I want you to give it back to me.”

This can apply to any painful situation – lack of money, trouble in a relationship, frustration on the job, an illness.  And although something that’s not whole may have the power to fix itself, it doesn’t have the power to fix you.  Behaviors that reject or resist the situation may actually be efforts on your part to find strength or personal power.  But pulling energy away from something that’s broken will never strengthen you.  Whining, swearing, protesting, lamenting, fuming, moaning or disagreeing may be your cries for help, but they drain away healing energy.  They weaken the injury itself.  You and the situation both lose.

Hoarding Power

Since my friend’s not the type to fret or moan, the discussion to this point was mostly academic.  With the injury so fresh, she was perfectly content to indulge in an afternoon of no expectations.  But she has a job and a home and responsibilities, and it’s easy to think in terms of what’s wrong, of what’s in the way.  We pursued the question of limitations.

How much does any external circumstance limit personal power?  We were able to create a long list of resources we had seen as limited and/or limiting at one time or another.  We agreed time, money, education, health, and energy were the most common, and we realized that when someone feels limited, the most likely reaction is to conserve.  People want to not waste time, save money, preserve their health, budget their energy.  The same applies to personal power – when we feel our power is limited, we try to conserve, to save, to preserve.  To hoard.

But what if there were no limitations?  What if by not hoarding personal power, we not only expanded it but everything else as well?  The more my friend and I played with this idea, the more we realized it actually works the other way around.  Controlling time, saving money, preserving health and budgeting physical energy drain away huge amounts of personal power.  If we could see time and money and health and physical energy as free and flowing and abundant, we’d also have a more abundant supply of personal power.

Observing Power

In the trade-offs between gaining and losing, there’s a mid point of neutrality that’s actually quite powerful.  This is when you remove all resistance and simply be with what is.  I’ve had quite a lot of experience with holding neutrality in times of stress and physical adversity, so my friend agreed to let me coach her a bit around the pain in her ankle.  First we did some calming exercises (Calm and Curious), then I encouraged her to relax any resistance, to ease away from the hurt, to think about the area around the injury that didn’t hurt and let the area of injury simply become empty space.

If resistance drains positive power away from an injury, then non-resistance lets the components of the injury get on with a natural healing process.  When you can simply observe what is rather than label it, deny it, argue with it, or try to control it in some other way, you stop being an energy drag.  Without drag or depletion, every injury heals more quickly.

Directing Power

“So now what?” my friend asked.  “I have to admit my ankle hurts less, but I don’t feel like dancing.”

I imagined a conduit between her and her injured ankle, flowing with energy.  If frustration and complaint draw energy away from the injury, and neutrality stops the flow of energy so the ankle can preserve whatever wasn’t lost when the injury occurred, what would make energy flow back into the ankle and accelerate healing?

Well, probably Partner Power.  So we looked at the list again, and my friend identified three emotions she thought would be most helpful to her:  cheerfulness, appreciation and trust.  She could be cheerful even if she hurt, she certainly appreciated her ankle and how well it had supported her all her life, and she trusted all would soon be well.  I suggested she call up those emotions and direct them toward her ankle.  She agreed that sounded like a lot more fun than worrying about how long it would take to heal.  Every time she thought about her ankle in some limiting way, she would turn off that draining energy and send cheerful, restorative energy toward it.

Reinforcing Power

I suspect that everyone is born with the potential for unlimited access to infinite power.  I also suspect that almost from the moment we’re born we start perceiving limitations.  Few of us are taught to use our thoughts, our actions, our emotions, and our instincts in ways that energize us and expand our potential.

Where you perceive you can, then you can.  And where you perceive you can’t, then you can’t.  Explore the areas of can to discover the components of your facility.  What you find then becomes your guidebook for how to turn any can’t into a can.  And then, the more willing you are to transfer your proven strengths, the more you apply correct principles, the more you practice, the more you will notice change and growth.  Reinforce what works, and what works will work better for you.

Think in terms of giving energy rather than taking it.  The more you give, the more you gain.  The more you take, the more you lose.  This choice exists in every situation – and it’s always yours to make.

For personal help in identifying your strengths and Personal Power, and then translating those strengths into results, please contact me directly.  Email:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com

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Posted in Acceptance, Beliefs, Calmness, Cooperation, Healing, Interpreter Mode, Mind Power, Observer Mode, Partner Mode, Trust, Willingness, personal power | 40 Comments »

Look Differently, See Differently

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

It’s been said in Utah that everyone’s a Mormon – a Mormon, a non-Mormon, or an ex-Mormon.  Recently I heard a terrific reply – “Yeah, and everyone’s a chicken, a Chicken, or a non-Chicken, or an ex-Chicken.”

Clearly, it’s a matter of perspective.  If you happen to be a chicken, you probably see everything from the perspective of chicken or not-chicken.  (Do you suppose they have any concept of ex-chicken?)  As a person, you have probably never considered yourself to be a non-chicken.

No, you’re not a chicken, you’re a human being.  And human beings have a strong tendency to think in dichotomous terms – even when we can see the shades of gray.  Everywhere you turn there’s some way of looking at yourself that’s either/or:  Conservative/Liberal, Artistic/Scientific, City/Rural, Rich/Poor, Introvert/Extrovert, Nerd/Jock.  More sophisticated systems, such as Meyers-Briggs or the Ennead, bring other facets into the mix, expanding the number of possible factors.  Up to a point, such systems can expand our awareness; they can also become just another set of labels.  And labels, by nature, are always constraining.

Today, I want to explore some different ways of looking at yourself and your choices.

Character Traits

As a self-aware person you probably try to be mindful of both what you’ve got going for you and your challenges.  From a dichotomous perspective, you could sort the various aspects of your character into two columns – strengths and weaknesses.  But just naming them doesn’t tell you much about either.

Instead, consider the ways your “weaknesses” contribute to your “strengths.”  What if you’ve acquired your strengths because of something you consider a weakness?  What if a perceived weakness actually intensifies your strengths?  For instance:

  • Perhaps you’re always late.  Others (and maybe yourself) consider this a flaw – an insensitivity to other people’s time, a lack of self-discipline, carelessness, an insult, etc.  Perhaps you’re also highly creative, unrestricted, more in-the-clouds than on-solid-ground.  What if you’re creative because you’re unrestricted?  Or what if you can’t keep track of time because you give your creativity full rein?
  • Perhaps you have a poor memory.  You’re fully aware of this lack, and it’s always been a challenge.  Perhaps you’re also an expert in your field (maybe several different fields).  What if you delve more deeply into subjects because achieving understanding is your way to work around not being able to remember?  Or what if because you prefer to explore, you never committed any energy to cultivating your memory?
  • Perhaps you are extremely introverted, shy, unwilling to call attention to yourself. You often feel left out, even invisible.  Perhaps you’re a natural, instinctive observer and you’ve gained great wisdom through paying close attention to what goes on around you.  What if you pay attention to details others miss because you are quiet and reserved?  Or what if you think you’re shy only because you can’t observe as well when you’re caught up in the noise and drama of the crowd?

In one sense, the greatest strength and the greatest weakness are often opposite extremes of the same trait.  Even when you can’t see a continuum between something you consider a strength and something you consider a weakness, it’s entirely possible they expand each other.  In many instances, a strength contributes to a weakness, and a weakness contributes to a strength.

Features

When you’re shopping for a car, you decide the features you’re looking for – sun roof, heated seats, all-wheel drive, trunk space, etc.  When you’re looking for a job, you have a list of features you want – local, good hours, challenging but not stressful, benefits, etc.  When you’re looking for a romantic relationship, you have a list of desirable qualities – honest, good humor, age range, education level, shared values, etc.

If you find a car you like (or a job or a potential partner), but it doesn’t have everything on your list, you have to decide whether what is there matters more than what’s not there.

What if you fall in love with a car for a reason not on your list?  Say it’s a beautifully elegant hybrid, and when you sit at the wheel it feels as if it was crafted just for you, but it doesn’t have a sun roof or all-wheel drive.  You decide you can live without those features and you buy it.  So now it’s yours.  When you’re driving it around, do you care about what it doesn’t have?  Or do you appreciate what it does have?  To achieve the highest level of enjoyment with your car, find value in both what it has and what it doesn’t have.

Jobs and relationships are, of course, more complicated than cars simply because people are more complicated than machinery.  However, the same general rules apply.  When you’re giving your attention to what is not, you’re not giving your attention to what is.

Also, what is not might be contributing to what is. The remote, over-committed boss you complain about because you don’t get enough supervision might be the very reason you have a huge amount of autonomy and responsibility.  Your achievements at work might be possible because you have to self-manage and make up your job as you go.

It’s almost impossible to sort through the elements of a situation or a relationship and come out with an accurate picture of the ways the various factors influence each other.  It’s easier to appreciate what is and what is not, to honor what is and what is not, to celebrate what is and what is not.

Perceptions

Artists talk about negative space – the spaces between.  The trick is to look at the empty spaces and see what’s there.  This is a counter-intuitive approach.  We tend to look for what is there, to recognize the shape and color of what we can see.  When you look at a tree, you are more likely to look at the limbs and the leaves than at the shape of the sky between branches.

This tendency to look at what is applies to all aspects of our lives.  We tend to consider what we see as true and what we don’t see as not true.  Unfortunately, what we see is heavily influenced by such factors as upbringing, beliefs, experience, education, even personality.  When we believe something, we tend to look for supporting evidence – and what we look for we tend to see.  We’re also likely to reinterpret what we see to support a belief we already hold.

For example, do you believe other drivers are rude or considerate?  Either way, you can probably cite myriad instances to support your opinion.  As an experiment, I challenge you to start looking for evidence supporting the opposite of what you believe.  If you believe all drivers are rude, start noticing acts of consideration.  If you believe all drivers are considerate, start looking for rudeness.  Either way, you will find what you start looking for.

In Practice

Here are some examples of areas where a shift in perception can help you produce different results:

  • If you think your child is a brat, start looking for evidence of gentleness, consideration, good humor, or resilience.
  • If you think money is hard, start looking for evidence of ease, good fortune, plenty, or comfort.
  • If you think you have a terrible job, start looking for evidence of kindness, cooperation, appreciation, efficiency, or good results.
  • If you think your body is falling apart, start looking for what works well, where you don’t hurt, and notice when you feel good.

To take it one step further, act as if . . .

  • Your child is a delightful, enjoyable person.
  • Money comes easily and shows up unexpectedly.
  • The people you work with are kind, cooperative, appreciative and produce good results.
  • Your body is strong and healthy and wants to help you enjoy life.

When you look for something, you will probably find it.  When you bring your own positive, willing, eager energy to something, it will begin to respond in kind.

If you want to create different results in any area of your life, I invite you to contact me and investigate personal life coaching.

For a free exploratory session, write me at:   kathy@kathyjacobson.com

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