Posts Tagged ‘Choice’

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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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Posted in Calmness, Creator Mode, Curiosity, Interpreter Mode, Observer Mode, Partner Mode, Victim Mode, personal power | Comments Off

Resilience

Sunday, May 8th, 2011

In her sixties, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She took the necessary medical treatments, then went on with her life. Some years later in the course of a conversation about something else, she mentioned the variety of services extended to her after surgery, including therapy and support groups. She saw no need. Her philosophy was, “This is done, it’s over.”  She couldn’t imagine continuing to think about it, talk about it, or give energy to it in any way. This was very typical of my mother. She took whatever came her way and made the best of it. She was one of the most pragmatic, resilient people I’ve ever known.

These two qualities, pragmatism and resilience, are ways of being the observer, of staying neutral. With them, you let go of all resistance, you bend easily when the hard winds of adversity assail you. Your roots stay strong and hold fast. You bounce back readily when the storm passes. And you thrive when opportunities appear.

While these qualities are simple and straightforward, they rarely come easily. The difficulty comes from holding on to regrets, pride, hurts, resentments, fears, doubts, longing, etc. When you retain the wounds from the past, resist the challenges of the present, or doubt the promises of the future, you experience the full force of the storm. It’s much harder to stay untouched, and recovery can be long and slow.

To access and strengthen your natural resilience, consider the following strategies:

Choose

Emotions are energy. When exerted, energy always produces a result. You know from experience that when you turn on the stove, the exerted energy produces heat. You probably also know from experience that when you turn on humor, the exerted energy produces laughter. Or when you turn on anxiety, the exerted energy increases tension.

When you’re caught up in a strong emotion, it’s often difficult to see you have a choice. An event, a situation or a relationship triggers something inside you, and you feel frustrated, indignant, alone, hurt, guilty, etc., and the emotions you experience seem inevitable in the circumstances. Of course you feel frustrated by your son’s misbehavior. Of course you feel indignant if someone implies you didn’t do your best. Of course you feel hurt because someone you care about isn’t returning your calls. Of course you feel guilty if you don’t exercising every day. Etc. Etc. Etc.

However, these emotions are not merely automatic responses to stimuli. Through your accumulation of life experiences, the way you’ve interpreted those experiences in the past, and the emotions you’ve previously invested, you’ve assembled a personal belief portfolio that resides in your psyche. The emotions that flare up in response to your current events come directly from that belief portfolio. This is why, when faced with the same situation, one person will experience frustration and another person will experience curiosity. Your previous choices of emotion propagate your present emotions. When similar situations arise, you anticipate how you’ll feel, because you always do.

So you’re already primed to react in a certain way, for certain emotions to flare. Then the first flush of emotion hits, naturally. Now what?

Now you’re at a point of choice, even if you’ve never before considered you have options. You can choose to hold onto the emotion and agitate it into a steady stream of the natural energy that emotion produces. Or you can choose to let it slide on by and move into a more neutral energetic state. If you don’t consciously choose resilience, you subconsciously choose vulnerability.

There’s always a story of what happened:  who was at fault, how you were wronged, a catalog of sins, what you did or didn’t do, how you weren’t (or aren’t) up to the task, how someone else behaved. Such stories are rarely based on fact; your imagination supplies most of the details. If you indulge in the story, you enhance the original emotions, often turning a vignette into a grand opera. By your emotional investment, your original niggle of energy can grow into a firestorm. As a twinge, your emotion barely causes a ripple in the progress of your day or your life. The more reinforcing energy you invest, the more disruption and distress you will experience.

When you refrain from judgment, you become pragmatic. Neutral. When you become neutral, you widen your spectrum of possibilities. Possibilities open the door to resilience. The more options you see, the less stressed you will be by events.

For instance:

  • Your son misbehaves. If you have more options than beating him into submission (listening, teaching, redirecting, etc.), you will feel more optimistic. And optimism is very resilient.
  • Someone implies you didn’t do your best. If you have more options than proving them wrong (listening, agreeing, supporting, cooperating, etc.), you will feel more confident. And confidence is very resilient.
  • Someone you care about doesn’t return your calls. If you have more options than crying in your beer (accepting, detaching, reaching out, staying willing, etc), you will feel more compassion and acceptance. And compassion and acceptance are very resilient.
  • You feel guilty for not exercising every day. If you have more options than recounting all your faults (extending compassion to yourself, trying a different program, enjoying what you do instead, etc) you will maintain more self-respect. And self-respect is very resilient.

Pay Attention

Once you’ve decided to let go of judgment and become resilient, become mindful of the people and situations that tug you in a different direction. Chances are, you’ve decided to change the reactive habits of a lifetime. Such long-held habits rarely dissolve easily; they’d rather hang around and nag you.

It’s generally more effective to acknowledge them and then dismiss them than to ignore them or deny them.

For instance, perhaps you work with someone whose personal habits annoy you:  she taps a pen when talking on the phone, she sighs frequently and at odd moments, or she has to recount every conversation and explain her motives to anyone close enough to listen. When you let the annoyance build inside you, you become tense, irritable, easily distracted, less productive, miserable.

So you decide to disengage, to stay calm and neutral. You choose to feel amused instead of annoyed.

You do just fine through the pen-tapping and the sighing. Amusement works so well, you find yourself grinning at every sigh. But you still hate the recounting of conversations. You still dread calls from her. Stop!  As soon as you notice you’re anticipating the interruption of your own peace, pay attention. Pay attention to what’s going on inside of you; recognize you have choices. If you allow the dread to come in, if you give it more than a passing a nod, it will take hold of you and build. The energy of dread will induce anxiety, stress, and unhappiness. If you let it float on by, you build and sustain the calm neutrality you desire.

However, even as you choose resilience instead of tension, the doubts, apprehensions, misgivings, exasperations and annoyances of your old habits will tap on the door of your mind. They’ve been in a co-dependent relationship with you for a long time–maybe for years. How easily they’ll float away will depend on the strength of the positive energy you choose to hold.

Where you give your attention, there your energy follows. Whatever receives your attention will flourish. Give your attention to resilience, and you’ll become resilient.

Be Serene

The opposite of resilience is resistance, and resistance takes many forms, including anger, frustration, despair, control, resignation struggle, and anxiety. Resistance requires force–it’s pushing back, straining to control, refusing to yield, grinding forward. In resistance there’s no flow, no rhythm, no serenity. And no power.

Conversely, if you release resistance, welcome flow, find rhythm and become serene you also move into your own power.

It’s not necessary to probe for the specific resistance you may be experiencing, although you are probably already aware of it. When you choose to become pliant, flexible and resilient, most forms of resistance will simply relax. Sometimes, however, habits persist and it’s necessary to adopt firmer strategies. One such strategy is to simply declare:  “I resist all resistance.”  For me, when I make that statement, either aloud or silently, my body grows softer.

Other strategies for becoming serene include:

  • Extend compassion–to yourself, to the situation, to other people.
  • Stay attuned to your own values and priorities. Recognize “should,” and “ought to” as belonging to someone else.
  • Stop taking responsibility for other people’s emotions. Of course you don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings, but what they choose to feel is not up to you.
  • Detach from the results other people create for themselves through their thoughts, actions and emotions. Allow them to experience the consequences of their choices.
  • Choose tranquility and energetically project it ahead of you into potentially stressful situations.
  • Recognize you have an infinite partner, always at your side, always ready to assist you and make your way easier. When you shed judgment and employ any positive emotional energy, you give your infinite partner freedom to act in your behalf.

When you choose serenity, serenity chooses you. The energy of serenity produces both well-being and resilience. Conversely, resistance tends to produce accidents, misfortunes, and struggle.

Practice

Like any skill worth having, resilience takes practice–especially if you have to give up old habits of intransigence. A regular practice of resilience includes choice, attention and serenity.

To practice choice, I recommend a tactic I’ve posed before. Become very mindful of your emotions. Stay attuned to your feelings. Identify them. Name them. And then acknowledge your power to choose. Say, “Ah, embarrassment. I’m choosing to feel embarrassed.”  Or, “Ah, gladness. I’m choosing to feel glad.”  The more you practice this with all emotions, the more conscious you will be of your various reactions and responses. You will also become more aware of the spectrum of choices available to you.

Mindfulness opens the door to choice. Acknowledging your choices expands the possibilities. And the more possibilities you see, the more resilient you become.

To practice attention, extend your mindfulness to the results you want. Focus on the outcome you want to create and deliberately apply the energy required to achieve that outcome. Choose to be resilient, then give your attention to that intention. Release judgment. Apply such neutral energies as amusement, curiosity, fun, hope, humility, patience, tolerance and wonder.

To practice serenity, consciously release resistance, especially in situations you have previously found stressful. Generate such cooperative energies as acceptance, appreciation, courage, eagerness, enthusiasm, gratitude, kindness, respect, trust and willingness.

Enthusiasm

The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek. The prefix en- means “in” and theos means “god,” therefore entheos means “inspired, possessed by a god.”  I heard this some years ago, and have since looked it up. During the 1600s, “enthusiasm” had a derogatory connotation of excessive religious emotion. A century later it began to be used more generally as fervor or zeal. Currently, in religious contexts, it has taken on the meaning of “god within.”

“God within” means two things to me. First is my partnership with the infinite. When I welcome the infinite power of the universe as my cohort, my ally, I know that vast power is there for me; I know my unseen partner will answer the “prayers” of my thoughts and emotions. All my infinite partner requires of me is openness, a willingness to receive.

Second, I see “god within” as my own personal power. I recognize I have infinite (mostly untapped) potential, the capacity for endless expansion, an eternal spiritual nature. My ability to access this power varies, depending on my congruence. It’s up to me to bring my thoughts, actions and emotions into alignment. It’s up to me to choose:  what I want, the path I will take, the way I apply what I learn, the rate of my progress, and my willingness to become partners with the infinite. The more I choose and practice the highest thoughts and emotions, the more I merge with god.

This is enthusiasm. And from this enthusiasm comes resilience of an infinite, eternal nature.

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Own Your Part

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

There are at least two parts to every encounter, sometimes more depending on how many people are involved. Even in partisan situations where the sides are clearly defined, the number of attitudes, biases, preferences, and options is going to be closer to the number of people than the number of sides. And of all the parts involved, the part that matters most is yours.

Yours is the only part you can control, the only part for which you have responsibility, and the fundamental source of your results. Your part has many facets, and none of them works in a vacuum. Your part includes how you relate to people, how you respond to situations, what you create, how your creation affects others, and the energy you bring into the lives of others. Most people, in most situations, get their part tangled up with the parts of others. For you to make clean and intentional choices, it’s important to claim your own part, and only your part, and then be true to it.

Your part will be influenced by several factors, and the more you accept and take responsibility for these factors the more you gain access to your own inner power.

Your beliefs

Your belief system essentially creates the world you live in. When you believe something is true, it becomes true – at least for all practical purposes. It becomes the filter through which you view the events and aspects of your life, and the filter admits only the evidence that corresponds to your beliefs. For instance, if you believed the earth is flat, you would never put it to the test. You would stay within the bounds of your imagination and discount any evidence of a global world presented by others. You would call such people liars or charlatans. Because you would confine your choices to those allowed by a flat world, your world would be flat.

Likewise, if you believed you had no choice in a situation, you wouldn’t look for options. No matted how many possibilities were presented to you, you would produce reasons why not. Therefore, those options would not be available to you – excluded by your own belief.

Similarly, if you believe you are a victim, you see will only the evidence that supports that belief. If you believe things can’t change, you won’t notice changes that occur. If you believe your partner is at fault in every argument, you will be blind to your contribution. If you believe you lost because the other side cheated, you will dismiss any errors made by your team.

On the other hand, when you accept your part, miracles happen. When you believe you have perfect health, you do. When you love your life, your life is wonderful. When you believe opportunities abound, they do. When you are impervious to the ups and downs of the economy, you prosper. When you are true to yourself, the universe supports your choices.

Examine your beliefs. Be alert to how your beliefs contribute to your reality. Look at your reality to discover your beliefs. You will find a direct causal relationship between what you believe and what your have. If you are stretched financially, perhaps you believe in lack. If you are ailing, perhaps you believe in illness. If you are lonely, perhaps you believe in isolation.

The principle works both ways: If you are rich, you believe in wealth. If you are healthy, you believe in health. If you are loved, you believe in love. If your days and ways are marked by miracles, you believe in possibility.

Your emotions

Whenever two people encounter each other, two sets of emotions also meet. Each person’s emotions arise (or remain) from their personal history. Each  person brings hopes, fears, longings, anxieties, wins and losses, confidence and doubt, and varying degrees of happiness and sadness. When these sets of  emotions meet, they interact and they play off each other in ways that may or may not be known to the individuals themselves.

So there you are, in the middle of an encounter with someone, and your  emotions are all behaving logically and properly. Then the other person says or does something one of your emotions doesn’t like. Perhaps your self-doubt surfaces. Suddenly you’re no longer sure of yourself, no longer sure of the other person, no longer sure the encounter is going in a direction you like. You say something in your own defense, and if what you say triggers one of the other person’s emotions, you’re both off and running.

Perhaps logically you both want to stop, to somehow save the day. But both sets of emotions have risen in rebellion and are determined to stick it to the end.

If you could step free of your insecurity and become neutral, you could apologize for your outburst, sympathize with the way the other person’s emotions got loose, shake hands, and continue to explore for a satisfactory resolution. But if your emotions are still edgy, angry, afraid, determined, and self-protective, most of those stirred-up emotions are saying, “Not my fault! His fault!” At this point, you have three basic choices (more if you count the nuances). You will:

  • Blame it all on the other person.
  • Blame it all on yourself.
  • Recognize you both contributed.

If you pick the first option – “Person X is controlling, insensitive, defensive, angry, abusive, etc.” – you are denying you had a part. If you pick the second option – “I disobeyed, was annoyed, mis-interpreted, was selfish, etc.” – you are denying the other person’s part. If you pick the last option, good for you. Very likely you know how to own your part and only your part. Your part is the only part that belongs to you.

Your emotions are the ones you can control or calm. How the other person acts or reacts is not yours to choose.

You can play your part any way you wish. You can choose to be combative, angry, aggressive, unyielding, etc. Or you can choose to be calm, accepting, forthright, loving, etc. Once you choose, accept the consequences. Owning your part also includes taking responsibility for your results.

Your integrity

The root of integrity is integer, from the Latin, which means complete, whole. We’ve been focusing on being the truest person you can be, and looking at factors that contribute to that being-ness, that wholeness. From your wholeness comes your integrity, and because you are a unique human being, your integrity has facets unlike those of any other person.

Consider that your integrity means standing firm in your values system – whatever that system happens to be. And because you change and grow, your values system inevitably changes and grows accordingly. Your integrity today is different from what it may have been when you were a child, different from when you first entered adulthood, perhaps different from last year.

Therefore, you will make different choices from when you where a child, from when you were a young adult, from last year. Someone else could note those differences and proclaim your integrity to be in shreds. Or someone else can look at your values system, note it’s different from theirs and declare you have shaky (or no) integrity.

When you are the truest person you can be and when you stay true to yourself, you are integral. Whole. You don’t have to match someone else’s values, ethics, moral code, or behavior. In fact, you can’t. You can agree with some people and disagree with others, but your integrity is uniquely yours.

Do you choose to act in accordance with what you believe? Do you hold your values system to be your sacred rule book? Do you live according to what is true to you? The degree to which you do or don’t is entirely up to you. And your results will reflect that choice. If you stay in your integrity, your results will be integrated and aligned with your best good. If you waiver, your results will be insubstantial or incomplete.

Your experiences

When did you first realize you have a voice in your experiences? Probably not as an infant, able to influence those around you only by crying or smiling. Perhaps not as a child, when your parents made all the decisions. Maybe not in school, when teachers, principals, ministers, cops, bullies, and cool kids all created situations in which the best  you could do was hold your own. Possibly not even as you were moving into adulthood, when someone could agree to date you or not, when a university could choose to admit you or not, when a company could choose to hire you or not. All your life there have been situations over which you have no control: your family moved around, your parents divorced (or stayed together), people died, you had illnesses or accidents, cars fell apart, expectations didn’t materialize, friends betrayed you.

So when did you realize you played a role in your life? Actually, subconsciously, you began to learn it as a baby. If smiling brought people cooing around you, you learned to smile and collect attention. If only crying brought attention, you learned to cry – maybe to throw tantrums.

Most people, by nature, are pleasers or loners or rebels. If as a child you were a pleaser, you always tried to cooperate, possibly even if that meant ceding something important to you. If you were a loner, you stood apart as much as you could, and perhaps your aloofness influenced people to coax and plead and attend to you. If you were a rebel, you objected to power wielded by others, perhaps to your own detriment. In your interpersonal relationships, you have always had a voice.

Your role in impersonal situations may be harder to find. To find your part requires looking into your own soul. For instance:

  • Emotions work as attractors; whatever you emit draws something to it: fear attracts danger, gratitude attracts bounty, anger attracts conflict, joy attracts serenity, dissatisfaction attracts disappointment, optimism attracts good results, resistance attracts pain, etc.
  • Illness often results from conflicted and buried emotions: Anger makes you vulnerable to cancer, resistance to growth leads to arthritis, disassociation from purpose generates allergies, unhappiness promotes pneumonia, impatience raises your cholesterol level, etc. (See such authors as Louise Hay and Karol Truman.)
  • An unwillingness or inability to step out and grasp something your want (health, freedom, abundance, etc), expands the situation you want to leave. If you can’t receive freedom, you will become more imprisoned; if you can’t receive plenty, you will experience more lack; if you can’t receive health, you will stay sick.

Certainly, you will find yourself in situations that make no rational sense, even when you accept the above principles. In such situations and at such times, your part may be to make the best of it you possible can, to step back and become the observer. Know that when you can accept difficult situations with curiosity and without judgment, you will experience less pain.

Your choices

In every situation, in every encounter with another person, you have at least two choices. You can come or go, speak or be silent, respond or react, agree or argue, resist or accept, fight or make peace. You always have a choice, even when you believe you have no options. When you feel helpless, you are choosing to not look for alternatives. When you reconcile to something you don’t like, you are choosing to give up your power. When you accommodate to a situation, you may be choosing to obey, to acquiesce, to honor, to approve or to submit.

You may see this more easily in your relationships with other people than in the impersonal situation in your life. With people, their choices usually contrast with yours or mirror them, and either way can illuminate your choice. With impersonal choices the part the other plays is often invisible. For instance, you have  relationships with money, with sleep, with your car, with your job (not just the people at work), with your body, with technology, with traffic, with books, with food, etc. The part of the other comes in response to your emotions. The energy of your emotions affects the energy of the other, creating a closed loop.

For instance, if you have insomnia, your energy will include the tensions of the day you bring to bed with you and also your memories of previous sleepless nights, constant reminders that sleep is important to health, your frustration over any strategies you’ve tried to no avail, etc. Your mind and body are so engaged in not-sleeping, sleep can’t help but stay away. No matter how much you want sleep to be your friend, it has become the adversary.

What choices do you make in impersonal relationships? Do you operate as the truest person you can be? Do you honor your values system? Do you choose positive-energy emotions? Your choices produce your outcomes. By the same token, your outcomes reveal your choices. To know your past choices, examine your outcomes, and ask yourself objectively, “If this is what I’ve got, what part did I play in bringing it into my life?”

Explore your emotions and thoughts as much as your actions. If you have lack, you may not be making enough money or you may have poor money habits, but you also may believe in scarcity and dread poverty. If you can’t preserve a relationship, you may be too defensive or act in inconsiderate ways, but you may also believe you are not worthy of love and resist intrusions into your privacy.

Energize Your Part

If you want to improve your relationships (any of your relationships), stay true to yourself. Stay true to the person you want to be as well as the person you are. Believe in your best good, and choose in favor of your wholeness. Energize the situation with your highest emotions. Avoid criticism, doubt and fear.

When you recognize, without judgment, your contribution to the events and situations of your life, you enter OBSERVER mode. You will experience calm within, and external conflicts will abate. When you choose to bring PARTNER mode emotions into the situation, you will notice a difference in your results almost immediately.

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Resistance

Sunday, April 10th, 2011

My model for both coaching and manifestation has three basic parts:  choose, align, receive.  Choose, bring your thoughts, emotions and actions into congruence, and that choice will become manifest.

Conversely, if what you’ve chosen does not become reality, you are either in conflict with your choice or your thoughts, actions and emotions are not congruent with each other.

This can be a hard conclusion to accept.  When we don’t get what we’re trying to manifest, it’s often more comforting to look outward for an explanation:  the economy, the weather, other people, traffic, lack of exercise or poor diet, birth order, astrological indicators, politics, personality type, parents, kids, etc.  And there will always be more than sufficient external reasons why the struggle continues.

Yet no matter how much energy we apply to resolving, or coping with, or conquering the external, the miracle will manifest only when we achieve internal congruence.  The primary challenge will always be dissolving the barriers and obstacles we generate for ourselves.

Of course, we do rarely create obstacles consciously.  You’ve probably never woken up in the morning wondering, “Okay, how can I impede my best good today?”  You’ve probably never gone to bed thinking, “Ah, how satisfying it’s been to keep myself stuck for yet another day.”

Consider that any emotion laden with negative or destructive energy is a form of resistance.  (Refer to Victim or Interpreter emotions on the Emotions List.)  Victim emotions are the most immobilizing.  They are never ambiguous; when in their thrall, you feel powerless.  Interpreter emotions are more elusive.  Sometimes they might nag and chafe and spur you to positive action; other times they lie buried deep within, strangling good intentions with silent tentacles.

Your results are always the best indicator such resistance persists–and there will always be an emotional component.  In the areas of your life where you feel contented and successful, your positive and creative emotions flourish and bear fruit.  But in the areas of your life where struggle persists, so do forms of buried resistance such as ambivalence, confusion, fears, false beliefs, past injuries, etc.

Always assess your results.  If you’re not manifesting what you want, look for the block within.  Perhaps you’re willing to recognize it and release it, yet have no idea where to start.  So let’s consider what you may be dealing with.

Beliefs: Beliefs about the way the world works begin in infancy.  To a baby, everything is fresh and unknown.  As the receptive new brain starts putting the pieces together, it draws conclusions simultaneously with gathering data.

One of the primary goals of a human being, even as a newborn, seems to be resolving the unknown.  We want to know what we don’t know, and we can create answers with very little information.  Once we decide the answer, we tend to adapt further data to comply with the model we’ve adopted.  We take the pieces that fit and say, “Ah, yes, I thought so.”  If a piece doesn’t fit, we’re likely to toss is out.  When we are comfortable with an answer, even if the answer doesn’t serve us, holding on to it is easier than challenging it.

Fears: Where beliefs arise from our efforts to resolve the unknown, fears tend to arise when we can’t.  When looking into the unknown, it’s much easier for most people to imagine the worst than to imagine the best.  Anything you can imagine has creative power.  Imagining the best comes from and/or evokes positive emotions; imagining the worst comes from and/or evokes negative emotions.  It’s always difficult to determine which comes first, the thought or the emotion, but since they become inextricable entwined it doesn’t really matter.  When the unknown looms, dread often follows.  Fear can’t settle in without our permission, except many of the fears that inhibit manifestations took root during the formative years when we didn’t know enough to be discerning.

For instance, a child who overhears parents arguing about money may inhale the fear of disaster radiated by the adults.  With no way to evaluate the validity of the parents’ feelings, and trusting them to know the way the world works, the child associates the emotions with the subject. The parent’s fear of the unknown influences the child’s belief about money.

The fears acquired by way of personal experience can be easier to identify because we often adopt them consciously.  We don’t know what the future will bring–the unknown emerges ahead of us like a great dark cavern – yet we want to be prepared for it.  If we knew the darkness was temporary and on the other side was a beautiful sun-lit garden, we would stride forward confidently.  But we don’t know.  Therefore, we assume it’s just good sense to be ready for any eventuality.  So we prepare for the worst.  If we could stay detached and focus on preparation, all would be fine.  If dread sets in, however, we tend to cringe away.

Injuries: No one gets through life unscathed–from bumps and bruises to dismemberment; from wounded pride to deep emotional betrayal, from minor colds to life-threatening illnesses, we are fragile creatures.  For most of us, the will to survive compels us to heal, to keep going, to transcend, and to prevent such assaults (even minor ones) from happening again.

We bring the past into the present by identifying the circumstances, analyzing relationships, looking for cause and effect, etc.  Once we think we have a clear picture, we put safeguards in place, and then we project the past into the future.  In the past, when A happened, B followed.  Since we don’t want B in the future, we will avoid A at all costs.

Conflicting inputs: If three people witness an event, chances are high they’ll provide three different versions of what happened.  However, when the three people are all in a group and discussing the event, they tend to influence each other to bring their details or observations into accord.  If you are one of the people involved, you may find yourself adapting your version to correspond more closely with the others.  And this may cause you to doubt your own experience.  Did you see what you thought you saw?

This happens all the time, with ideas as well as observations.  When you listen to others more than yourself, you will likely learn to mistrust your own intuition.  This tends to cause confusion,  ambivalence and insecurity.

Erroneous inputs: Information comes in all shades of accurate or false, especially in this era of the Internet.  Lies, assumptions and propaganda are often presented with the assurance of truth.  Closer to home, sometimes people we know and trust mislead us – perhaps casually, perhaps purposefully.  When wrong thinking is represented as truth it causes victimization and injury.  If loyalty to the other person is allowed to further confuse the facts, the injury of the lie deepens, and bitterness, insecurity, dejection, misery, etc. take root.

While understanding the above conditions can be a good way to dismantle them, it’s fully possible to simply dissolve the barriers they create.  Consider the following strategy.

Become the Observer: Getting out of your own story can be very challenging, but if the story itself is keeping you stuck, it’s essential to trade the old story for a new one.  Here are some suggestions:

  • Detach: Take three paces away from your life and watch it from a distance.  See yourself and the other people in your life as characters in a movie.  What do you see when on the outside looking in? Are the behaviors well-motivated and consistent?  Is the dialogue interesting or banal?  Do you want to cheer for yourself?  Can you see the emotions fueling your choices?  What would you advise yourself to do differently?
  • Dismiss judgment:  Everyone in your life is doing the best they can with what they’ve got.  We all operate with some combination of insufficient information, strong beliefs, doubts and fears, past hurts, mis-information, exhortations from others, and ambivalence.  To balance the scale, we all have talents, intelligence, inner strengths, proven abilities, and past successes.  Accept your assets without pride, your weaknesses without judgment, and other people with compassion.
  • Laugh at your resistance:  All forms of resistance gain in strength and tenacity when we take them seriously.  Certainly, you came by them naturally and honestly and you’ve probably done an excellent job learning to accommodate them.  You can still relax and laugh them away.
  • Ignore them:  The less attention you give to impeding beliefs, habitual fears, past injuries, or conflicting inputs the less strength they have.  Refuse to give them a presence in your thoughts.  The more you think about them, the more your emotional attachment swells in response; your emotions give them energy, and when you give them energy, you give them power.  Take away the energy by choosing different thoughts.  Your emotions will follow, and different emotions will create different results.

Choose what you do want: As the observer, you gain an ability to choose, an ability unavailable to you while in judgment.  Think of judgment as a mud hole, keeping you stuck.  When you become the observer, you gain solid ground.  With a solid base under your feel, you can explore possibilities, and you can launch yourself in any direction you choose.

Choosing is an amazingly powerful tool.  If you don’t want illness, choose health.  If you don’t want poverty, choose prosperity.  If you don’t want conflict, choose peace.  If you don’t want confusion, choose wisdom.  Once you have chosen, decide the type of energy that will help bring it into your life, and embrace that energy.  Adopt it.  Make it yours.  Evoke it and live it.

Refuse what you don’t want: Remove what you don’t want from your slate of possibilities.  This isn’t about denying the current situation, or ignoring indisputable facts, or punishing the messenger.  Acknowledge what is, because today it is.

Tomorrow, however, can be different.  What if you decided the old belief could stay in the past?  What if you decided to not let fear create the future?  What if you ignored everyone else’s agitation?  What if you could believe that what you want wants you?  What if what you don’t want simply drops off your radar screen?  Change your mind; change your heart; change your reality.

Sometimes the barrier to what you want can be as simple as an unwillingness to receive.  Of course, this takes us back to the beginning, to the original intention.  If you retain an unwillingness to receive, it’s not a true intention.  Perhaps it’s not true for you, perhaps you believe you should want it, perhaps you’re not willing to release your resistance.  Whatever the reasons, you won’t get what you’re not ready to receive.

If you are willing, open your heart, your mind and your life and invite what you want to come on in.  (If what you want doesn’t accept the invitation readily, you’ve probably got some lingering resistance.  Look for any embedded Victim or Interpreter emotion, and continue working with the above strategies.)

Use a powerful welcoming emotion such as enthusiasm, eagerness or compassion.  Let the emotion you choose well up within you until you can feel the energy humming.  Using that emotion¸ bring what you want into you life with your imagination, and make a place for it.

For instance, if you want peace, and you’ve decided to create it with compassion, infuse compassion into your daily activities and overlay each activity with peace.  View all the people in your life with compassion and imagine them smiling and laughing instead of growling and complaining.  Apply compassion to yourself and imagine harmony with yourself, your tools, your efforts.  Extend compassion to your challenges and let peace reign over the situation.  Project compassion into the future and acknowledge the benefits that will spread out from you to others as a result of receiving peace into your own life.

And finally, be grateful in advance.  Give thanks for what you want as if it were already here, already yours.  Count the blessing that make it possible:  your talents, your intentions, your willingness, the partners and helpers who will appear and ease your way, etc.

And one last, final thing.  Use this phrase often:  “I release all resistance.”  Say it out loud and feel what happens to your body.  Review it regularly and see what happens with your manifestation.

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From Boredom to Bliss

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011

Years ago, when I was writing a daily message called Making Magic, I wove a short essays around the concept of bliss as expressed by Joseph Campbell. One of my subscribers wrote back that bliss just sounded boring. More recently, I was working with a client on releasing anger and resentment, and he said (half-joking), “But where’s the fun in that?”  A few months ago, one of my students admitted to being “addicted to the drama.”  And one of my friends has suggested I lack passion because I rarely react in some heightened way.

So, is bliss boring?  Is life more fun when it’s difficult?  Is the payoff for drama excitement?  Does passion mean heated?

I have never worked with anyone who wants to stay very long in misery, struggle, difficulty, or suffering. When I ask clients what they want instead, most of them answer with some variation of, “Peace.”  On the other hand, most people tend to fear boredom. Given the choice between difficult and boring, difficult often seems the lesser of two evils. Difficult might hurt, but at least it offers challenge, involvement, and the chance to come out ahead. Boring looks dull, dreary, mindless, and likely to erode one’s creativity. Generally, only as the scale moves from difficulty down through struggle and into suffering does boring become more appealing. Perhaps boring wins out over misery – but for some people it might be a close call.

But that brings us back to the question. Is bliss boring?

What does it seem like to you?  Quiet and uneventful?  The Garden of Eden without the snake?  Unchallenging?  Like reaching the top of the mountain with nowhere left to go?

There is something about reaching a difficult goal and sitting there with the treasure in your hands and saying, “Okay, so what?  Now what?”

The Easy Life

In Eric Weiner’s book The Geography of Bliss, the chapter on Qatar immediately follows the chapter on Bhutan. In Bhutan people still live much like they have for thousands of years, with few amenities, and dealing with the natural environment on a daily basis. In Bhutan, life is far too challenging to be boring. In Qatar, oil and gas reserves provided sudden and immense wealth almost overnight, and the natives now live encased in air-conditioned skyscrapers with servants to fulfill their every whim, and the government giving them money. Ease is a way of life.

As I consider my own life, I find myself living closer to the Qatari way of life than the Bhutanese–without the servants, of course. My home is tight, weather-resistant, climate controlled. I have hot or cold running water at the flip of my wrist. The surfaces of my house are all easy to clean, and I have an amazing assortment of tools and equipment readily at hand. Everything or anything I could possibly want is easily attainable. If I can’t find something in the town where I live, I can drive my personal automobile to a nearby city, or I can order it on the Internet and have it delivered to my door. I can indulge in exotic goods from all over the globe. Yet this lifestyle, by itself, does not produce bliss.

Perhaps the error is in thinking bliss equals ease. What if bliss really equals challenge–just an entirely different kind of challenge from that derived from struggle?  What if mistaking bliss for boredom, and then resisting boredom, is one of the factors that keeps us locked in struggle?  What would it take to move from struggle to bliss and transcend boredom?

Choosing Neutrality

The first step out of struggle is neutrality, and neutrality is the calmest of all emotional states. (Not bliss. Bliss is an energetic state.) Judgmental activities such as fretting about who’s right and who’s wrong, reliving past injuries, searching for personal superiority, flailing yourself for past failures, and agonizing over the future, consume (rather than enhance) personal energy. They demand your time, your attention, and your emotion, and they can complicate more productive activities. When you are free of them, you may not know what to do with yourself.

Boredom sometimes arises out of neutrality. All that calmness may stretch out in front of you like a flat, arid plain. Where’s the action?  Where’s the excitement?  Where’s the drama?

Most people are not bored with neutrality. Calmness comes as a huge relief, where they are content to settle in and make themselves at home. Without misery and struggle to trouble them, they lead comfortable lives.

This state of neutrality seems to be a sort of transfer station, where at least four significant transitions can take place:

  • Releasing of judgment. (Judgment in this sense is measuring, comparing, labeling and condemning. Please retain judgment as it pertains to reason and clear thinking.)
  • Letting go of resistance. Resistance takes many forms, including denial, control, obsession and resignation. Most interpreter emotions can be forms of resistance.
  • Opening up to infinite possibilities. From this transfer station, you can take a train to anywhere!
  • Moving from living by accident to living on purpose.

This forth transition is most essential if you want to push into the unknown, explore, discover, and create.

Choosing Purpose

Living by accident is reactionary. People who live by accident are subject to myriad external factors:  the weather, the economy, what’s in style, if they went to the right school, whether the flu’s going around, if the home team wins, the moods and impulses of other people, their car’s reliability, who won the election, etc. The best they can hope for is to respond well to circumstances beyond their control.

Living on purpose has two significant aspects. The first is taking full responsibility for every aspect of your life.

In New Thought circles, a popular response to serendipity is, “There are no accidents.”  I’ve most often heard this purposefulness attributed to the hand of the universe–as if we were all players on the game board of life, and some chess master in the sky is coordinating the moves.

I don’t think it works that way. I think the “winds of chance”–especially in connection with our own lives–are controlled by the energy generated by our emotions. Turbulent emotions generate turbulent energies, producing turbulent results. Fearful emotions will attract danger. Hateful emotions will produce malignancies. Resentment will produce blockages. Etc. Likewise, when we master our emotions, we master our energies. Love results in healing. Gratitude attracts in abundance. Appreciation draws beauty. Etc.

Choosing Mastery

Personal responsibility becomes the first step toward mastery. Many people long for the ability to manifest good in their lives, yet they resist accepting responsibility for their struggles. You can’t have it both ways.

Certainly, you don’t bring about the messes in your life all by yourself. You have lots of co-conspirators. No good comes from assuming responsibility for the parts others have played. Do, however, own your own contribution. Observe the emotions you supply, recognize them, acknowledge them. Take responsibility for them. Only then do you access the power to choose something else.

Creating

The second important aspect to living on purpose is Choice.

People who live on purpose not only value choice, they insist upon it. They are never stopped by indicators of “No.”  If they are presented with a stop-go situation, they will pursue multiple choices. They don’t believe in the no-win scenario. They will either find a way to make the current situation suit them, or they will go looking for more possibilities.

Choice is an absolute human prerogative. Almost every religion teaches free agency (although some of them put significant barriers around it). Free choice is essential to growth, to learning, to development, to mastery, and especially to creation.

More importantly, choosing is the one thing The Source (or whatever name you give the infinite) can’t do. This may be a difficult concept to take in, because if The Source is infinite there can be no limits on it, and so there must be no limits on choice.

Don’t confuse power with choice. Gasoline has power, but it can’t choose where to drive the car. Electricity has power, but it can’t choose which switch to turn on. The Source has power, but it can’t choose your path.

The Source doesn’t pick which team will win the game. The Source doesn’t decide which cancer patient will experience a miraculous cure and which will die. The Source doesn’t decide which country will be beset by wars and famines and which will live in peace. The Source doesn’t decide which job you should apply for, which route you should take, where you should go on vacation, or who you should marry – any more than it decides which color of socks you should wear today.

When you choose, and when you align your personal energy fully with that choice, you flip the switch and tap into the infinite power source of the universe. The more sure your choice, and the more purposefully you align your emotions with that choice, the more fully that choice will be realized.

So, what does this have to do with boredom?

Creating

Imagine you’re sitting in the sandbox of possibilities and you decide to build an extraordinary sand castle. Here are your some of your options:

  • You can ignore any tools at hand and push sand around and watch it slide off into shapeless mounds (and cry in frustration).
  • You can decide you like the sand just the way it is, and sit contentedly sifting it through your fingers.
  • You can affirm to yourself you want to create the castle you envision.

There’s nothing wrong with the first two options, but you choose the third. So you assess your available tools, you learn the ways sand and water work together, you bring water into the sandbox, and you go to work. Eagerly. As the sand takes shape, you get more excited. Your vision becomes clearer. You admire, appreciate and enjoy the sand. The sand seems to cooperate with you. There may be moments of frustration, but as your castle takes shape, you realize you are truly enjoying yourself. This is fun!

You are busy, you are engaged, you are solving problems, you are overcoming obstacles. You are creating.

Are you bored?  Or are you in bliss?

Using Eagerness

At the transfer station of neutrality, the signpost pointing toward struggle and misery always says Resistance. The signpost pointing toward happiness always says Eagerness. As emotions, resistance and eagerness are pretty equal in energy. It takes energy to put on the brakes, to withhold opportunity, to not move, to say “no.”  At the transfer station of neutrality, you can switch that energy to eagerness and step on the gas, let the doors open, move forward, say “yes.”

Bliss can’t be boring. Energetically, bliss is strong, positive, vital, infinite. When you experience bliss you experience oneness with yourself, with your talents, with your ideas, and with the universe.

With bliss, comes both the desire and the ability to create. Creation is never dull or idle.

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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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Recognize Your Truth

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

A while ago, I wrote an article called “What’s true for you?” Today I’d like to expand on that topic by exploring some of the aspects that comprise personal truth.

Your Life

Quite a number of facets comprise your physical life experience. You have biographical data:  name, age. parents’ names, place of birth, place of residence, etc. You have biological data:  height, weight, hair color, and all the other factors governed by your DNA. You have educational experience with accumulated academic knowledge, and you have a job history with acquired professional knowledge.

You have a personal history that includes the places you’ve lived, the people you’ve loved, the illnesses you’ve endured, the accidents you’ve survived, etc. And you also have a personal history that didn’t happen, such as the places you haven’t lived, the schools you didn’t attend, the people you didn’t love, the jobs you didn’t take.

So how many of these facts, figures, choices and experiences are true for you?  How many of them may not necessarily have been true for you, but helped illuminate what is true for you?

Perhaps you’ve worked jobs you weren’t suited for. They helped you learn how important it is to employ your skills, talents and preferences in your work.

Perhaps you’ve loved people who weren’t a good match for you, whether it was the boy in third grade who chased you around the playground every recess, or the cheerleader girlfriend who liked you because you were on the football team, or an emotionally unavailable spouse. They helped you understand yourself, recognize your vulnerable areas, realize what matters to you in a relationship.

You may or may not have grown up in a home that recognized your worth. Either way, what did you learn from the experience?

You may or may not have been given a name that fits you. Have you learned to like it?  Have you changed it?  Either way, what have you learned about self-labeling?

You may or may not be living in an environment that nurtures you. What inner power are you finding in that environment?   What would you like instead?  Why?

There’s an old adage that advises you to bloom where you’re planted.  The wisdom of this advice lies in the opportunities for personal growth provided by the circumstances of your life. Regardless of location, you can make the most of any situation. When you’ve gained all there is to gain, or when you feel the call of another place, you can choose to transplant yourself.

If, however, you uproot yourself before you’ve learned what that situation has to teach, you’ll just take yourself with you. Pretty soon the new situation will provide the same frustrations, challenges, disappointments and pain as the old one.

An exploration of the situations of your life can help you discover ever-deeper levels of who you are. You become clearer about what you want and why you want it. You gain understanding about yourself within relationships.  And you understand the service you can offer to the world.

When your life is true for you, you resonate with it. You experience more peace, better health, greater abundance, and deep inner joy. Choose a life that is true for you, and be true to the life you have chosen.

Your Value System

Many religious apologists claim moral and ethical behaviors derive from a belief in a deity. Atheists who choose the high road believe morality motivates simply because it produces better results than immorality.

Whether you acquired your moral sense from the teachings of your church or from an observance of natural consequences, the results are the same. Some behaviors and qualities of character work better in society and inspire you to better choices, some create conflict in society and lead to personal chaos.

There have been many teachers throughout history, some religious, some not, who have offered advice about which behaviors and character traits produce the best results. A search on the Internet will produce myriad lists, systems, discussion boards, and advice columns.

These lists of values, virtues, ethics, and qualities are more likely to illuminate what’s out there, what’s possible and what others believe than expand your own self-understanding.

The virtues and qualities that are true for you will pass your own personal tests. Consider the following challenges:

  • You understand what the virtue or quality means to you. For instance, what does honesty mean, or compassion, or temperance, or humility?
  • You observe the value it adds. In what situations does it add value?  Are there situations when it might confuse rather than enlighten?  Is it ever neutral?
  • You decide if it’s worth the effort. To what extent does it come easily to you?  Are you already living it?  Is it difficult for you?  Is some aspect of it is not true for you?
  • You recognize its value to you. Does it strengthen you?   Or do you feel disempowered by it.

No one is born with a fully developed values system – not even the saints; we all have to develop our own. Your personal value system does not include every trait or quality someone at some time has considered a virtue. Very likely it does not even include every quality you’ve been taught to believe is a virtue.

You have a values system, whether you have been conscious of it or not. However, if you’ve adopted one that is not true for you, you will experience confusion and self-doubt. If it is true for you, it will enhance and empower your life.

Your Intuition

You have an inner voice that speaks truth to you. It’s been called many names at various times including:  your conscience, the holy spirit, your spirit guides, an angel, your spirit animal, the ancestors, etc.

This voice obeys several rules in its communication with you, including:

  • It responds to and with whatever emotional energy you’re emitting.
  • It speaks in the languages you are most familiar with – your spoken languages, of course, but also the languages of your thoughts. It arises from your frame(s) of reference and uses your metaphors, your analogies, your symbolism, etc.
  • It works from within your worldview. If your worldview is narrow and specific, so is your inner voice. If your worldview is curious and expansive, so is your inner voice.
  • It is limited or not-limited by your sense of your own self. The truer you are to yourself, the truer the messages you receive from your inner voice. If you are confused, conflicted, or specifically focused, your inner voice must speak from wherever you are at a given moment.

Let’s consider each of these rules.

Your energy. When your emotions are positive, you open a clear channel and the messages come through without interference. Negative energy acts like static, interrupting and distorting the messages of your soul, sometimes making it difficult for you to discern them, sometimes obscuring them completely.

Your language. Sometimes you may hear your inner voice as an actual voice speaking verbal words. More often, you will get an idea, or feel the need for caution, or know it’s time to act, or just know one choice is better than another. Sometimes your inner voice uses something you’ve already focused your attention upon to give you a message to yourself. Your work or your avocation may be the metaphorical structure for the lessons of your life. For instance, a doctor who explores caves will think in different images and use different metaphors than a landscaper who knits.

Your worldview. If you think the world is flat, your inner voice will work within that framework in providing you with truth. If you believe people are out to get you, your inner voice must work within that context. If you see the universe as your partner, you inner voice will be able to speak to you with the wisdom of the ages.

Your self. You intuition can communicate only within the scope of how well you know yourself and how much you trust yourself. The truer you are to yourself, the better you know yourself, and the more open you are to knowledge and growth, the more straightforwardly your inner voice will be able to speak to you.

Your Desires

We live in a time and a society where more choices are more available than ever in the history of mankind. From almost every angle, we are encouraged to imagine, to dream big, to acquire. While this kind of encouragement helps us explore what’s possible, it rarely includes the disclaimer:  “You can achieve anything you want, as long as what you want is true for you.”

Not everything you might put on a Dream List would necessarily be something you truly want, or would work for, or would pay the price for. Your true desires, however, are not only within your reach; they want you as much as you want them.

Here are some of the ways you can differentiate a true desire from one that is not:

  • A true desire will not have a “should” attached to it.
  • A true desire comes from your heart.
  • You already have the talents (if not the skills) to achieve a true desire.
  • A true desire will fit within your value system.
  • Your intuition will always inform a true desire.
  • The universe is always your eager partner when you pursue a true desire.

One of the ways you can recognize a less-than-true desire is to examine why you want it.

Reasons that often indicate a need for re-alignment with a desire include:

  • If someone else thinks it’s a good thing for you to want.
  • Only to make money or to acquire fame or power.
  • Because it’s tradition.

Such reasons are not stop signs, more like yellow flags. If your desire meets the go qualifications listed above, and you can make someone else happy, or make money, or get famous, or conform to tradition, terrific. Such motivations can easily be within your value system and be true desires of your heart. The important thing is this:  Make sure what you want is true for you, and make sure you can be true to it.

A true desire is not necessarily easy. It might be damn challenging. Pursuing a true desire with your whole heart will always bring rewards greater than you imagined when you began. You might not get exactly what you thought you wanted, but whatever you achieve will exceed your wildest imagination.

Your Service

You serve your world, your community, your fellow human beings, and yourself in many ways. You serve with your attitudes, with your energy, with your talents, with your efforts, and with your intentions. Sometimes you give your time, sometimes your money, sometimes your emotional support.

However, not all of the kinds of service the world needs will be true for you. The world needs doctors, and you might be a musician. The world needs musicians, and you might be tone deaf. The world needs both warriors and peacemakers. Humankind needs both scientists and mystics. Communities need adventurers as well as homebodies. Families need nurturers and breadwinners. You need to give the service that is true for you.

Some forms of service are particularly well marked as “service,” such as volunteer work, donations to charities, ministering to the poor, and anything identified as charity. Other kinds of service are much less noted, but of equal value:  spreading good cheer through a smile or a touch, laughing together, staying connected, showing respect and appreciation, receiving gracefully, extending unconditional acceptance, etc. By such actions and attitudes, you raise the energy level of wherever you are, of whatever you are doing. When you lift someone’s spirits, their energy expands, and together you send more goodness into the world than either one of you could alone. This expansion of good energy becomes exponential, as each person carries it from the starting place to the next person, the next activity.

In this way, being the truest person you can be becomes the greatest service you can give. Being true to yourself expands you energetically, and as your energy expands, your goodness reaches more people, and goodness embraces people in love, which frees their good energy. Good energy always has more power than negative energy, so in this way you expand peace and love in the world. In this way, you serve yourself, your neighbors, your community, your country, and the world itself.

Choose Congruence

Each of these factors – your life, your value system, your intuition, your desires and your service – can reveal the truth of you to you.

Observe them. Become mindful of yourself. Recognize your emotions, and acknowledge the results those emotions bring into your life. Do some emotions bring your closer to your truth?  Do some put distance between you and who you have the capacity to be?

Quite likely, if you are in misery or struggle, you are not aligned with what’s true for you. Conversely, the emotions that produce calm, cooperation and/or oneness, increase your congruence with your own truth.

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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 »

Willingness

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

Last week I explored some principles about operating from Observer mode and calmness.  (See Calm and Curious.) It seems calmness both precedes and results from neutrality, and neutrality is the essential state of Observer mode.  Only then do positive possibilities become evident.  (See Emotions List.)

Today I’m taking the same principle to the next level with an exploration of the relationship between partner mode and  willingness.  Willingness both precedes and results from cooperation, and cooperation is the essential state of Partner mode.

To get a feel for this relationship between willingness and cooperation, compare two situations in your own life.  First, identify a satisfying relationship, one that comes easily, that you enjoy, with a fair exchange of energy between you and the other member of the partnership.  (This “other” might be a person, or it might be some aspect of your life such as your health, your garden, your job, etc.)   Take a moment to think about the relationship and savor it.  Notice the energy that hums through your body.  See if you can name what you feel.

Now identify a challenging relationship in your life, one fraught with conflict, disappointment, struggle, or frustration.  (Again, this relationship might be with a non-person: your job, your finances, the neighbor’s dog, etc.)  As you think about this relationship, notice the changes that take place in your body, any differences in tension.  Again, see if you can name what you feel.

Look at the Patterns

In the first instance, you probably trust the relationship, have confidence in both yourself and “the other,” a belief things will work out, and a subconscious expectation that what’s true now will continue to be true in the future.  You experience the energy of wellness, eagerness, pleasure.  You may feel light, happy, peaceful.

In the second instance, it’s likely your trust and confidence run in the other direction, and you probably have a subconscious expectation that if anything changes it will go from bad to worse.  You experience stress, tension, doubt, perhaps anxiety.

All emotions of Partner mode have an element of willingness embedded within them.  Therefore, from Partner mode, you bring acceptance, confidence, empathy, trust, appreciation to the situation.

It’s essential to remember, however, that willingness arises from calmness.  You must become neutral first.  (Calm and Curious) When you are calm, you can be curious.  From curiosity, it’s fairly easy to step into willingness.

Consider willingness as the opposite of willfulness.  Willfulness wants to control, to know all the steps between Point A and Point B.  Willfulness doesn’t realize that control is a form of resistance, so all that energy you invest in making something happen becomes the restraining force that obstructs your intention.

Willingness, on the other hand, holds the energy of the end result, and you can use that energy to create a space for an intention to unfold.

Following are some techniques for practicing willingness and creating the partnerships you want in your life.  Some of them will work better for you than others.  Experiment with them to discover which ones produce the greatest state of willingness within you.

Practicing Willingness

When you think about partnership, consider first who or what you want to partner with, such as another person or an outcome such as wellness or prosperity.  Yet the first partnership must always be with yourself.  (Just as calmness is a way of being, so is willingness.)  You must be willing to just be.

And you must be calm.  To become calm, use one or more of the techniques from Calm and Curious. Then you’ll be ready for this next level of practice.

Adopt Willingness

  • Accept the consequences of your choices.  Where you are today and what you have today are the results of your past choices.  Acknowledge those choices without judgment, without second guessing them or trying to psychoanalyze them.  Take full responsibility for them, then recognize them and let them be.  Release any resistance you have toward them or any discomfort they produce within you.  Only by owning them can you release the hold they have on you.  Willingness requires your full realization of your power of choice.
  • Imagine the best possible outcome.  Partnerships are synergistic, producing far better results than either partner could produce alone.  Imagine yourself bringing your highest ability and energy, and imagine your partner also operating at the highest level of power.  What can you imagine will come from this extraordinary combination?  Once you have an idea of what’s possible, see if you can double that result.  Imagine an amazing miracle.  Embed the possibility of such a miracle in your consciousness.
  • Recognize physical tension and discomfort as signals of resistance.  It’s not necessary to identify what you’re resisting; simply working with the knot (or pain or strain or block) will release resistance and welcome willingness.  In our culture, we tend to attribute such knots to stress, lack of sleep, poor posture, not enough exercise, a strain, or some other outer source.  When you rename it resistance, you acknowledge an inner source, and this empowers you to be pro-active instead of reactive.  Begin by letting your body go soft, as soft as you can.  Now, focus your attention on the discomfort and let your mind unwind the tension.  You might imagine a spring uncoiling, or a tangle of yarn relaxing into a smooth strand, or boiling water cooling to calmness.  Use whatever image your mind comes up with and consciously turn resistance into willingness.
  • Remove urgency.  Separate time from a task, goal or intention by investing your energy in the end result rather than a schedule.  Pressure, importance, immediacy, and deadlines are all forms of resistance.  Willingness relies on acceptance, confidence, pleasure, respect, fun and attention.  Give your attention to the end result rather than the clock.  And have fun.

Enact Willingness

  • Lower your voice.  For most people, voice volume reflects negative emotional energy.  Turning down the volume often relaxes the driving forces of Interpreter mode emotions.
  • Simplify your actions.  Since effective partnerships are those in which both parties join efforts, be willing to let your partner contribute.  Identify your partner.  Recognize the assets and energy your partner brings into the equation.  Release any need you have to take on your partner’s share of the energy.  (The Infinite is always immediately available to partner with you.)
  • Whatever the intention of your partnership, put some element of the desired result into flow.  Perhaps you want a better job – identify what that better job would require from you (more ingenuity, more responsibility, a closer working relationship with your coworkers) and direct some of that energy to your present job.  Perhaps you want to increase your money stream – give some money away.  Perhaps you want to strengthen a relationship – identify a strengthening quality and give it freely to the other person.
  • Aid someone else.  Helping others provides many benefits.  Specific to willingness, you put generous energy into flow.  The more willingly you give, the more willingly you receive.

Energize Willingness

  • Find what you trust.  To enjoin in partnership with something or someone at an energetic level, you’re already adept at neutrality.  Without judgment, identify one or more aspects of the partnership you truly trust, and invest your emotional energy in what you know to be true.
  • Appreciate both your own contribution and that of your partner.  Right now, you may see your contribution as greater or lesser than that of your partner.  Stop comparing.  Acknowledge the energy you’re investing.  Acknowledge the benefits you gain by accepting the help of any partners, friends, allies, mentors, challengers, even adversaries.  When you’re aligned with something, the precise help you require may come from any quarter.
  • Celebrate being alive. You are a living, breathing, acting, energized human being.  Rejoice!
  • Adopt a daily spiritual practice.  Taking time each day to become quiet and mindful will bring you into greater harmony and partnership with yourself, and that sense of wholeness will translate naturally into a general state of willingness.

Some of the above techniques will work better for you than others.  I encourage you to play with them, experiment, try different ones in different situations.  Be a willing participant in your life, your endeavors, your desires and your experiences.

(If you would like to explore the ideas and strategies in this article, or if you like help applying them in your own life, I would like to work with you.  The first coaching session with me is always at no cost.  Send an email to: kathy@kathyjacobson.com )

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Posted in Acceptance, Calmness, Cause and Effect, Cooperation, Neutrality, Observer Mode, Partner Mode, Trust, Uncategorized, Willingness | 3 Comments »

Surety

Sunday, September 26th, 2010

Last week I emphasized the importance of conceptualizing what you want (instead of what you have) and then believing the result you imagine is possible.

When you believe something is possible, that belief establishes a surety around that possibility, increases its likelihood.  When you believe something is impossible, that belief establishes a surely which decreases the possibility.

The possibility, in and of itself, is neutral, neither likely nor unlikely, poised in the middle of a scale, yet having no power to tip the scale either way.  The force that tips the scale one direction or the other is belief.  Imagine the scale looks like this:

Impossible < Improbable < Possible > Probable > Inevitable

If you are neutral about a possibility, you sit in the middle of the scale.  More likely, you have a belief and the scale is already tipped in the direction of your belief.

Sometimes when you want something, you start at that middle point where everything is possible.  Perhaps what you want exceeds your knowledge of how to achieve it, but you know other people have reached a similar objective, which means it must be within reach.  Other people stay out of debt, other people weigh the right amount for their height, other people have jobs they love, other people have happy relationships.  Therefore, perhaps you can, too.  In this neutral state, you are calm, steady, interested, mindful.  Your sense of your own abilities allows for the likelihood of success as much as the likelihood of failure.

Sometimes, failure looms larger than success.  Maybe you doubt your abilities, your opportunities, or your luck; maybe you see obstacles or limitations in the way; maybe your experiences have taught you to keep your expectations in check.  Other people may have achieved what you want, but the path ahead seems overgrown with struggle and difficulty and attainment seems improbable.  Just thinking about it makes you tired.

Sometimes the desired result seems impossible, more fantasy than reality.  You’ve never actually seen anyone else achieve that “pie-in-the-sky” outcome, so you doubt the success stories.  Yeah, sure, John and Mary fell in love and lived happily-every-after, just like Prince Charming really saved Cinderella from a life of drudgery.  The sheer impossibility of the dream immobilizes you.

Other times, the scale tips toward attainment.  When you envision what you want, the way ahead looks clear.  You know what to do, you are willing to do it, and you feel confident.  With a good plan, a little luck, perhaps some help along the way, the possible becomes probable.  You proceed willingly and full of hope.

And sometime what you want shines ahead of you like a beacon, strong and bright.  You know you’re aligned with yourself and the universe.  Without conscious effort, your stride forward eagerly; all you have to do is head for it and it’s yours.  Inevitably.

So which comes first?  Your level of belief?  The energy you project?  Your degree of confidence?  The outcome you envision?

Actually, each of these elements contributes to the others.  You can shift your energy, you can reinforce your confidence, you can more clearly envision, or you can relax your doubt and expand your belief.

Belief Produces Results

Some things happen with such regularity and consistency, you know they’re true:  breathing, gravity, magnetism, the phases of the moon, trees lose their leaves in the fall, etc.  No belief is necessary.

Some things you have come to believe over the course of your lifetime and they also feel true.  Of course these things vary from person to person, but consider what you know vs. what you believe about such things as whether your parents love you, how smart (or athletic, or artistic) you are, whether the world is hostile or friendly, etc.

Then there are the things you hope to be true, such as that you will advance in your company, that you will find your soul mate, that your back will stop hurting, that you will get out of debt, etc.  Generally speaking, hope is the factor that sustains desires you’re not quite sure of.

And finally are the things you believe are not true.  This might include practices that make no sense to you, such as astrology, or alternate medicine, or prayer, or self-flagellation.  It might include things about yourself, including what you believe you are not talented in, or capable of, or have the resources for.

There’s an old adage that says, “Whether you believe you can or your believe you can’t, you’re right.”  If you’re willing to review your beliefs, you will find a strong positive correlation between what you believe and your results.

Clearly, if you change what you believe you will change your results.

Belief = Surety

The certainly of your belief about a given possibility, however, is only one of the sureties influencing your results.  There is also the surety of your own personal power.  Just as no two people access their own power in exactly the same way, not everyone comes to trust their personal power in the same way.  I’ve identified four important starting points for believing in your own inner strength.

A starting point means exactly that.  The point at which it’s easiest for you to become calm, recognize the possibilities, and proceed more confidently toward what you want.

As I describe these four starting points, consider your own approach and see which one resonates most with you.

Trust Yourself

You believe in your strengths.  You sense (or know) you have talents, abilities, knowledge, experience, and you know your strengths can (or have the potential to) serve you well.

The more you trust yourself, the more you grow in confidence.  As your confidence grows, you recognize you are competent, smart, inventive, brave.  You realize you can easily transfer a competence (or aspects of that competence) from one situation to another.  As a problem solver, you trust your ability to see the scope, identify the steps, and learn the details as you go.  So there’s no limit to the types of problems you can take on.

You know your strengths – and you maximize them.  You minimize your weaknesses.  You don’t claim to be something you’re not, but neither do you let insufficiencies get in your way.  If there’s something you can’t do, you know someone who can and you’re not afraid to ask.

Trust Your Choices

You believe in growth.  You sense (or know) there are no mistakes.  You rely on the laws of cause-and-effect, knowing every choice simply produces an outcome.  The outcome then produces knowledge, and knowledge produces growth.

As you learn from experience, you gain confidence in your ability to make informed decisions, to take the known variables into consideration, and to do the necessary research.  This empowers you to choose again, proceed into the unknown, and continue to accumulate new knowledge.

Because you look for growth, you take difficulties, obstacles, or mishaps in stride.  Sometimes you may feel as excited about what you’re learning as you are about reaching your objective.  For you, every choice opens the door to adventure, and learning what not to do is as satisfying as learning what to do.

Trust The Infinite

You believe in a higher power (call it God, Cosmic Consciousness, The Field, The Universe, The Source, The Higher Self), and you are willing to (or already do) cultivate a personal relationship with it.

You sense (or know) you are not alone.  The more you trust the influence of The Infinite in your life, the more you look for and practice communicating with it.  You recognize guidance is always available, you stay receptive, and you trust that guidance to ease your way.

In addition to guidance, your connection with The Infinite provides both serenity and protection.  It accompanies you when you take risks, it encourages curiosity and amusement, it provides comfort in times of trial and courage in times of difficulty.  The more you rely on The Infinite, the more you understand your life.

Trust Your Intuition

You believe in your “sixth sense.”  You sense (or know) you gather information not limited to your five physical senses, and you incorporate it (or would like to) into the way you go through life.

You may see this information as coming from somewhere outside yourself, or it feel like a “gut” instinct.  It helps you make connections between disparate things, find unique solutions to problems, understand yourself at a deeper level, and recognize unusual possibilities.

As you gain experience with your intuition, you recognize the importance of neutrality, since prejudices of any kind will skew your insight.  The more you clear away intrusive thoughts, unruly emotions or impetuous behaviors, the more trustworthy your intuition becomes.  Ultimately, your intuition will guide you to the truest intentions, the most rewarding partnerships, and sustainable achievements.

Acquire Surety Through Mindfulness

So, you’ve found your starting place.  You’ve identified the one that resonates with you, and you want to expand your trust level.  Begin by mastering neutrality and stay mindful.  Just as each of these styles of surety can help you access and master your own personal power, they all present challenges along the way.

Beware of pride, ambition, fanaticism, arrogance, or a need for validation.  Be wary of any inner narratives that compare, measure or dispense judgment in any way.  Cultivate neutrality, awareness, generosity and compassion.  Pay attention to your thoughts, acknowledge your emotions, recognize the connection between the energies you generate and your results.  And be willing to take baby steps.  Progress of a slow but sure nature will bring you to the greatest levels of sureness and mastery.

If you would like person help creating the life you want, or mastering your personal power, please contact me.  As I life coach, I help people “move to the next level,” whatever that means to you.  Write me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com

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