Posts Tagged ‘emotional mastery’

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Growing Out of Victim Mode

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Say “No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recognize Your Part

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

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

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

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

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

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

Negotiate

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

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

For example, do you perceive:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep the terms of the deal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Empower Your Miracles

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

In the article Clarify Your Intention, I invited you to set an intention and formalize it as a statement. Part of the exercise was to identify those whom your intention would serve and to imagine how it would serve them. I believe when you add service to others, your intentions grow wings. Suddenly what you want is no longer grounded, no longer plodding along. Once in flight, it soars swiftly and easily into the miracle.

Service, at this miracle-level, is given without conditions, carries no judgment, and holds no expectations. You reach out to others, simply to help them along their way, to enrich their experiences, to empower them.

Giving and Receiving

One of the biggest obstacles to such simple service is thinking that what someone else wants conflicts with or obstructs what you want.

Say, for instance, you love the city life you’ve created, and your significant other wants to move into a cabin in the mountains. Or you want your daughter to go to college, and she wants to be a ski bum in the winter and write during the summer. Or you want to implement a new process at work and your boss doesn’t want anything to change. Or your neighbor supports gun control and you want to carry.

When your values, ideals, preferences and desires conflict with those of someone else, where does service come in?  You can’t even understand what they want; let alone support it.

It is, of course, important to stay true to your integrity, which may make such situations seem non-negotiable. Perhaps they are. How can you compromise on the second amendment, or not give your best at work, or let your daughter ruin her life, or uproot and leave friends and family for the sake of some mid-life crisis?

On the other hand – assuming miracle-making service is given without conditions, carries no judgment, and holds no expectations – what would happen if you removed any conditions you’ve imposed, stopped judging, and released your expectations?  What if you stepped outside your own agenda and chose to truly understand the other person’s position?

So, your husband wants to simplify and move to a cabin. You’ll have to set your own preferences aside in order to recognize his underlying motivations. Some of those reasons will be more obvious (and perhaps more acceptable to you) than others. It may be easy to understand the need to simplify, but can you empathize enough to actually feel the urge to live closer to nature, to detach from past paradigms, to go looking for something that’s been missing?

So, your daughter wants to ski and write. If you can set your agenda aside, you’ll have a better chance of recognizing her hunger for freedom, her creativity, her love of adventure, her determination to listen to her heart and find her own way. Where you see a college education as a good way to both knowledge and security, she may see it as a good way to erode her soul.

So, you want to innovate and your boss wants to stagnate. Do you know anything about his obligations?  Are you privy to the pressures from his investors, his board of directors, or his family’s traditions?   Can you appreciate his efforts to do the best he can with what he’s got?

So, you think your neighbor wants to ban all guns, wants stern laws and stiff penalties. Have you ever asked him what gun control means to him?  Have you ever listened to the reasons supporting his concerns?

Becoming neutral – exercising acceptance, empathy and compassion – is the first step toward service at the Creator level. (See The Power of Emotion.)

Mastering Your Emotions

The second step is to become the master of your own emotions

When you’re in conflict with someone else, you see your reasoning as logical and your arguments as valid. You are steadied by your facts and supported by your common sense. Naturally, you’re passionate about what’s right.

But what if your passion – and that of the other person – creates and maintains the conflict?  What if the factors of the situation are actually secondary?

When you deem your position to be right (or even just mostly right) and the other person’s position to be wrong, you are in Interpreter mode.

Consider again the above examples.

Perhaps you resist the idea of moving to the mountains because: the whole idea is scary and overwhelming, you resent that your feelings don’t get more consideration, you deplore the prospect of roughing it, you want to protect what you’ve already built, you believe your spouse is immersed in a temporary and unrealistic fantasy.

Perhaps you resist your daughter’s plan for her life because you’re anxious for her, you’re disappointed in her choices, you’re certain a college education is necessary. Maybe deep down you envy and resent her free-wheeling ways.

Perhaps you resist your boss’s inertia because you’re certain you know a better way, you’re frustrated your suggestions aren’t given more consideration, you’re irritated by his attitudes and fears, you long for more responsibility and recognition, you’re afraid at this rate you’ll soon be out of a job.

Perhaps your differences with your neighbor are only partly about guns. Sure you believe in the right to carry, and you think he’s naïve, his dog barks half the night and poops on your lawn, and half of his front yard is an unsightly, poorly-tended vegetable garden.

Such underlying emotions are all from Interpreter mode, and Interpreter emotions always produce struggle. And the more you struggle, the stronger the conflict grows.

If you’ve already dropped your conditions and released your expectation, if you’ve already chosen neutrality, you’re halfway there. From that place of calm it’s fairly easy to release any remaining Interpreter emotions. And when you refuse to indulge in interpreter mode habits, you access more of your own power.

You also ease others away from their Interpreter tendencies by not adding the fuel of your so-called “passion” to their fires.

Mastery comes as you practice consciously choosing Partner mode emotions instead. When you operate from Partner mode, you create cooperation instead of conflict. For instance:

Imagine how discussions of whether or not to move to the mountains would be different if you replaced fear with trust, resentment with affection, aversion with tranquility, frustration with harmony, and suspicion with respect.

Imagine how your relationship with your daughter would improve if you replaced anxiety with confidence, disappointment with admiration, certainty with respect, envy with contentment, and impatience with gratitude.

Imagine how your dissatisfactions at work would abate if you replaced frustration with eagerness, ambition with willingness, longing with tenacity, and fear with confidence.

Imagine how the tension between you and your neighbor would ease up if you replaced arrogance with friendliness, helplessness with amusement, hostility with patience, and vexation with recognition.

The higher you move on the scale of emotions, the more personal power you access and the more you become the master of your emotions. The more you master your emotions, the more wisdom and empowerment you bring to the situations of your life.

Whenever you bring wisdom and empowerment into any situation, you serve others as well as yourself. You serve by releasing tension, by shedding fresh and clear light on situations, by making some of your enlightenment available to others.

When you empower others through your understanding, acceptance, encouragement, cooperation, and love, you expand your influence, gain credibility, form alliances, broaden your base, and roll out the welcome mat. What you give to others comes back to you.

Partner emotions always result in cooperation. When you free yourself from conditions, judgments and expectation, you open the door to a far wider range of possibilities than exist in Interpreter mode. When you are in full mastery of Partner emotions, best good becomes probable. You become an agent in bringing about the best good of others. You provide extraordinary service when you take yourself out of someone else’s picture.

The Universal Whole

This expansive energy you now experience and generate also strengthens your connection, partnership and oneness with the universe. In Partner mode, it’s easy to trust the universe will support you and others at the same time. Conflicts dissolve in best good because almost always the best good of others is also your best good.

Consider these ways in which the universe partners with you:

1.    The universe never judges. Your outcomes result directly and inevitably from the energies you generate – your thoughts, your actions and your emotions. There is no score-keeper-in-the-sky recording on a tally sheet whether you’re good or bad, marking you down for “bad” choices and rewarding you for “good” ones.

2.    On the universal level there are no arbitrary or unstated conditions. The rulebook never changes. You get out according to what you put in, and that’s that.

3.    The universe is never disappointed in you, because the universe holds no expectations. You do what you do, and you experience the results of your choices. If the universe has any desires for you, they are for your growth, your joy, your well-being and your best good. There may be hope that you will receive these miracles, and there may be rejoicing when you do; nevertheless, there will always be love and encouragement when you don’t.

Does this partnership with the universe support you, empower you, serve you?

What if you supported, empowered, and served others, following this model?

When you extend to others what the universe extends to you, you help strengthen the universal whole. The more you serve in this way, the stronger you become. The more you expand your Partner and Creator influence, the more others will move to higher levels of calm, cooperation and oneness.

Service and The Modes of Power

As a quick review, consider that the way you serve reveals your mode of power.

If you subjugate yourself, you are in Victim mode. This subjugation can occur in two ways. You can cede your power to someone else. Or you can submit to the emotions themselves. Whether you let others control you or you let your emotions dominate you, you relinquish your self.

If you serve reluctantly, you are in Interpreter mode. Almost all emotions in this mode have a sub-context of reluctance. You give because you must, or should, or have ulterior motives. Sometimes you want to avoid pain; sometimes you strive to come out ahead through  manipulation. Often, if you could see another option, you’d take it.

If you detach your emotions from your service you are in Observer mode. Neutral service takes little energy on your part, feels optional, and promises no particular benefit – and not offering it carries no penalty. Such gentle service can be as simple as offering a smile to a stranger, making a joke to ease tension, or holding the door for someone.

If you cooperate, you are in Partner mode. Overt generosity requires an emotional investment. You consciously and mindfully open your heart and help the other person in a pro-active way. Your service might be physical, but it can as easily be thoughtful or emotional. You want the other person’s success, the other person’s growth, the other person’s happiness and wellness, without putting it in the context of your own success or happiness.

If you bless, empower and trust, you are in Creator mode. At this level you become one with the other person – even if you remain in disagreement. You become one with the universe in sustaining and facilitating. You easily and effortlessly invest peace, love and joy in their efforts. You trust the other person’s best good as you trust your own.

Serve and Soar

Every worthy intention benefits someone else. As you align yourself with the miracle you have chosen to manifest, incorporate service into your efforts and watch those efforts take flight.

Service always imbues intention with greater power and swifter attainment.

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Posted in Clarity, Making Miracles, intentions, personal power | Comments Off

The Give and Take of Energy

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

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

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

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

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

Depleting Power

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

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

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

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

Searching for Power

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

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

Hoarding Power

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

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

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

Observing Power

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

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

Directing Power

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

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

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

Reinforcing Power

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

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

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

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

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

(N)Ever Surrender

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

I first encountered the concept of surrender in a manifestation class many years ago, and it made no sense to me.  Even though I understood the idea, (intellectually, at least) of surrendering one’s struggles to God, this was a manifestation class.  We were talking about choosing and creating and attracting, and I didn’t see what I was supposed to surrender.  I could see quite clearly various aspects and behaviors I could adopt – but surrender?

Well, during the years since then, I’ve come to realize surrendering is relative.  There are things to ever surrender, and there are things to never surrender.  Today I’m going to put some of them into context with each other.

Personal Power and Guarantee

In life, there can be no guarantees, and yet our culture seems to demand them.  Wherever we see danger, we look for protection.  Everywhere we look we see rules, regulations, safety features, alarm systems, guard rails, insurance policies, fences and armies, all devised to save us from harm.  But if you demand security from others – from the government, from parents, from the legal system, from social custom, from an employer – you are basically saying, “My well-being is your responsibility, not mine.”

Of course, it can be very comforting to place that responsibility in someone else’s lap.  Then, if anything goes wrong, you have someone else to blame, maybe someone to turn to for compensation.  However, when you cede responsibility, you also cede personal power.

To avoid surrendering your personal power, surrender your need for a guarantee.  Or, conversely, when you retain and strengthen your personal power, you release your need for a guarantee.

Every human being has within them the potential for unlimited personal power, the potential to become the creators of their own lives.  (Although, we’re not all born into equally conducive environments.  You, for instance, have more freedom to access your power than a starving mother in the Sudan.)   You have within you the powers of peace, love, joy, awe, delight, optimism and authenticity.  When you cultivate these aspects of your personal power, when you trust them and use them to create your life, you create your own well-being and your own security.  Never surrender your personal power; always surrender the need for a guarantee.

Discernment and Judgment

In our lexicon, judgment has two meanings.  In one sense, it has an objective meaning with clear distinctions – something is right or wrong, legal or illegal, pure or sinful.  In another sense, it’s subjective and relies on perception, encompassing the full range of from bad to good.  Perception, of course, is relative to present circumstances, past experiences, embedded beliefs, future expectations, etc.  For instance, snowy weather might be “terrible” to a commuter and “terrific” to a skier.  A beautiful chocolate torte might be “fabulous” to a connoisseur and “obscene” to an ascetic.

In both the objective and the subjective sense, judgment generates struggle.  Once you judge something “good” or “bad”, you impose limitations, and limitations induce conflict.  Let’s look at some every-day situations to see how this unfolds.

  • You have a co-worker who dominates meetings with rambling monologs.  You judge this associate to be annoying, or stupid, or a pain-in-the-neck.  As soon as she starts talking, your resentment kicks in and you tune out.  When you stop caring about what she has to say, you also stop seeing than anything good can come out of the meeting.
  • You and your brother are on opposite sides of the political spectrum.  You’re “right” and he’s wr—oops, “left.”   You wish he’d open his eyes to the facts, and he acts like you’re the one who’s stupid.  You can’t even talk to each other any more without calling each other names.
  • You’ve been a procrastinator all your life.  At various times you’ve judged this as “lazy,” “free-spirited,” “rebellious,” or “insecure.”  By now, you’ve given up trying to understand it, you just know it’s an insufficiency.  You hate it in yourself, it causes you stress, but you’ve pretty much concluded there’s nothing you can do about it.

Judgment increases stress and decreases possibilities.  So, what if you surrendered judgment?  What if you simply let go of any need to see things as right/wrong, good/bad/ full/empty, in/out?  What would you have left?  Discernment.

When you surrender judgment, you surrender limitation and conflict.  When you lay claim to discernment, you open yourself to possibilities and cooperation.  Let’s look at the above situations and see the difference.

  • Where judgment translates into annoyance at the rambling co-worker, discernment stays focused on the purpose of the meeting.  Discernment can separate contribution from distraction and look for the win-win.  Discernment can tease out what’s going on beneath the surface and bring benefit into the open.
  • Where judgment erects fences, discernment finds common ground.  Discernment asks questions instead of labeling and dividing.
  • A personal strength is often the other end of a continuum of a trait that’s been labeled a flaw or weakness.  “Procrastinators” may be at their most creative while they’re delaying.  A “bad memory” may be the gateway to greater depths of understanding.  Being “too cautious” may be an assessment process, the weighing of options to find a wiser approach.

Never surrender your discernment; always surrender the need to impose judgment.

Choice and Victim-ness

Victims don’t have options.  Or at least they believe they don’t.  If you believe you have no choice in some area of your life, in that area you have surrendered your free will.  The moment you surrender free will, you become a victim.

Choice exists in every situation, in every realm, under every circumstance.  Sometimes the circumstances may seem impossible, such as a genetic condition, or the situation of your birth, or the state of the economy, or an earlier choice than now feels binding and irredeemable.  Every day, either consciously or subconsciously, you say “yes” or “no” to that situation.  If you say “yes,” you agree to be a victim and surrender the pursuit of other possibilities.  If you say, “no,” you start looking for further options, hidden opportunities, unrecognized solutions.

Never surrender your freedom of choice; always relinquish the ties that bind you to victim-ness.

Enjoyment and Attachment

Attachment is a binding.  You become bound up with something, glued to it, and now you carry it around with you wherever you go.  You might be attached to another person, a principle, a belief, a goal, your houses, an animals, a cause, your friends, your enemies, a car, a habit, a perception, an outcome, etc.  Any separation from the object (or effort to separate) causes you anxiety and/or pain.

Enjoyment, by comparison, has no strings.  With enjoyment, you’re free to stay or leave – and so is whatever you’ve become attached to.

Emotions are key components of both attachment and enjoyment.  The difference is in the kind of emotion you’re applying, and what you expect as a result.  The emotions of attachment always include an element of desperation – as if without the object of your attachment you will be less in some way.  Such emotions include fear, desire, hatred, anxiety, concern, insecurity, rigidity, guilt, grief, certainty, etc.  The emotions of enjoyment are always expansive:  affection, openness, contentment, delight, trust, fun, confidence, etc.

Never surrender your enjoyment (of life, of others, of today, or the hidden treasures in challenging situations); always surrender your attachment to the things and circumstances of your life that are not yours to control.

Self and Ego

By definition, ego is simply another name for self.  By connotation, however, it carries all kinds of burden.  It’s used as a stand-in for pride, self-importance, conceit, vanity, arrogance, etc.  In that guise, it becomes the enemy of the self, almost the anti-self.

The best description of ego in this sense came from a little book on Hindu philosophy I read a decade or so ago.  Ego is when you believe something about yourself and it becomes important to you that others see you the same way.  Any trait or feature of yourself applies here – beauty, intelligence, extroversion, spirituality, productivity; irresponsibility, brashness, rebellion, superiority.

To surrender ego without surrendering yourself, recognize all the true and precious aspects of you.  Let go of any need for others to see you in any certain way.

Strength and Guilt

Guilt drains away strength.  Guilt appears when you perceive you acted wrongly.  Perhaps you said the wrong thing, or lost an opportunity, or hurt someone, or make a bad choice, or over-reacted, or committed a sin, or didn’t exercise, or broke your diet, or spent too much money, etc., etc., etc.  You believe yourself in error (or worse).  In a case against yourself, you decide the verdict first and then you act as the prosecutor, the judge and the jury.  You refuse to call any witnesses in your own behalf.  And then you sentence yourself, and you surrender to some self-imposed punishment.  You abandon any good feelings toward yourself, such as kindness, or compassion, or trust, or gentleness, or joy, or any other indicator of inner strength – because you don’t deserve them.

And when you surrender your strength, you also relinquish any power you have to make amends, to change, to learn, to improve, to recoup, to compensate, to rebuild.

Never surrender your strength.  See it as the way to identify your contribution to the events and circumstances of your life.  See it as a form of divine guidance, steering you through the shoals of challenge.  Instead, surrender  all pangs of guilt that eat at you from the inside, gnawing at both your mind and your heart.

Neutrality and Defensiveness

I’m not sure whether the old saying, “The best defense is a good offense,” was first applied to football or to war.  Not being a fan of either, I’m also not sure how well it works in either case.  I do know it’s often applied in interpersonal relationships, and in those situations it’s never effective.

In relationships, defensiveness is deadly.  It will eventually destroy all companionship, respect, love, trust, ease, enjoyment, and peace.  All the attitudes I’ve suggested in this article for surrender (and many others) usually result in defensiveness.  You will become defensive if you expect a guarantee, if you judge yourself or the other person, if you’re prone to victim-ness, if you’re attached to something that matters more than the relationship, if you have an ego need, if you feel guilty.

The best cure for defensiveness is to surrender it.  To become neutral.

When you are neutral, you can see the other person’s point of view, you can look for more options, more possibilities become visible, you plug up the holes from which you leak personal power, and you can discover your strengths.

One thing that is true:  when you stop being defensive, you also stop being offensive.

The What and The How

A true statement of surrender is, “Let go, and let God.”  Stop trying to control all the little details, and trust The Infinite.

But what is God’s job, and what is your job?  Choice is always your job.  God cannot choose for you.  Free will is more than a right, it’s an obligation.  A responsibility.  When you surrender choice, you surrender will, and without will all that remains is chaos.

What you want is up to you.  Never surrender your intention, your ability to choose.  Never surrender your ability to see options, to imagine the possible.  Never surrender your confidence that you can create the life you want.

Always surrender the how. You don’t have to be able to see every step of the way between where you are now and where you want to go.  How is not up to you.  Trying to control how, constricts possible solutions and limits potential miracles.

Good personal life coaching helps you explore possibilities and gain more effective tools.  For a free introductory coaching session, write me at:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com

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Posted in Beliefs, Calmness, Free will, Making Miracles, Possibilities, The Law of Attraction, manifestation | 1 Comment »

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 »

Calm and Curious

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

I am visiting my grandson (and his parents).  Not that I’m prejudiced or anything, but little Asher has to be one of the cutest babies of all time.  He’s also the calmest child I’ve ever spent much time with – and the most curious.

These qualities of calmness and curiosity were evident when he was only a few weeks old; now at fifteen months they seem to shine out of his eyes.  He fusses only when he reaches the extremes of discomfort.  The rest of the time, he observes.  He’s friendly with everyone, and he grins with delight at just about anything that catches his attention. I’m captivated by his emerging personality. I’m also intrigued by the apparent relationship between calmness and curiosity.

A couple of years ago, when I first started thinking about observer emotions, I realized curiosity was a mental state that promotes calmness.  Watching Asher, I’ve been wondering which comes first.  Is calmness a prerequisite for curiosity?  Does curiosity promote calmness?  Or is this one of those cyclical relationships where you can’t have one without the other?  Together they are an extraordinary combination.

The Interrelationship

Calmness is free of judgment.  All emotions that contain judgment (irritation, frustration, greed, boredom, guilt, pity, doubt, etc) produce tension and/or stress.

To see this at work in your own life, identify a stress-laden emotion you have experienced recently, such as disappointment or impatience or embarrassment.  Revisit the situation in which you experienced it, and notice what happens within your body.  Do your shoulders tighten up?  Does your stomach clench?  Does your throat close?  Do your hands tremble?

Now pay attention to your thoughts.  See if you can identify the judgments underlying the emotion.  They may focus on blaming yourself:  It’s all my fault.  What’s wrong with me?   Why can’t I get my act together?  If only I had said something else (or known better, or planned ahead, or read between the lines).  What if I were different  (thinner, or more coordinated, or smarter, or richer, or had more time)?

Or perhaps your thoughts focus on blaming others:  It’s all their fault.  How can other people be so stupid (or cruel, or thoughtless, or impossible)?   If they would only listen. Why does s/he always have to act so smug (or indifferent, or have the last word)?

Or you may lay the blame on circumstances:  It’s the lousy economy.  My family was dirt poor.  Society doesn’t accept people like me.  This is because I was horribly injured by an accident (or a birth defect, or starvation, or a sadistic teacher).

Less Judgment = More calm

Now see if you can remove the judgment.  Perhaps one of the following techniques will help you stop playing the blame game:

  • Recognize everyone always does the best they can, given what they know and the skills they have.  You certainly do.  You never get up in the morning and think, “I wonder how many people I can obstruct today, or insult, or embarrass, or ignore.”  Nor do you read minds.  You get absorbed, you have goals and deadlines, and things come up.  Given your strengths and weaknesses, you do your best.  And so does everyone else.
  • Don’t take things personally.  Grow a couple of layers of thicker skin.  (Or become a duck and shed other people’s stuff the way a duck sheds water.)
  • Choose a neutral emotion – such as curiosity.

Curiosity calms both the mind and the emotions.  If the questions churning in your mind are any variation of the themes Why me? or How come? you will experience stress and tension.  When you change the question to What if . . .? your tension level immediately starts dropping.

Less Certainly = More Possibilities

Curiosity brushes aside certainly and opens the door to other possibilities:  What if the coworker who just snubbed you is preoccupied or overwhelmed?  What if everyone you encounter on the street isn’t looking at you with scorn?  What if your frustrating personal weaknesses are actually assets?  What if the most stress-producing person in your life is actually your greatest teacher?  What if it’s not your anxiety that keeps the plane in the air?  What if just because everyone else is passing around an infection, you don’t have to catch it?  What if money was easy?  What if you aren’t too old?

However, if tension has been your norm, your mind is probably more adept at putting up roadblocks than taking them down.  Most likely, an objection immediately follow your initial what if question.  For instance, you might ask, What if I could have a pleasant relationship with my child? and the buts come flowing in.  But she’s such a brat, but she’s always on the go, but she’s got that nose ring, but she misinterprets everything I say, but I get so sarcastic.

Push past the obstacles with more what if questions.  Stay curious.  What if I could I could truly ignore the nose ring?  What if I could adopt a different tone of voice?  What if I concentrated on what I love about her?  What if I could induce her to bring her friends here to hang out?  What if I weren’t quite so reactive?  What if I let her have the consequences of her actions?  What if she loves me as much as I love her?  What if I could always stay calm with her?

Calmness allows thoughts to flow without distortion.  The emotions that cause tension (because they include judgment) almost always impede clear thinking.  For example, frustration often sends the mind into stories of what’s wrong; ambition reduces the worth of both other people and current circumstances; remorse tends to grab and expand blame; envy gives significance to what others have while discounting what you have.  Such stories make assumptions, twist facts, draw false conclusions, and reinforce the underlying emotions.

More Calm = More Flexibility

Calmness, on the other hand, frees the mind of such congestion.  When you can step away from a stress-generating emotion and into calmness, your mind will become clearer.  You are able to challenge your assumptions, cull out the actualities, look for additional possibilities, and gain the flexibility of curiosity.

Consider for a moment the difference between flexibility and rigidity.  Few things in nature are rigid, and those that are “suffer” most when assailed by strong forces.  Trees sway in the wind, ground shifts, ice flexes; that which is most supple and flexible seems to survive best.  On the other hand, as the red rock canyon country of Utah illustrates, even solid rock doesn’t withstand the assaults of water and wind.

The human body has greater strength and longevity when it’s kept flexible through exercise and use.  The human mind has greater creativity and accumulates more knowledge when it’s kept flexible through curiosity.  Curiosity is a lot like water, always looking for a way out or through or over or under, preferring flow to stagnation, able to wash away impurities, essential to life.  Curiosity allows thoughts to stay elastic and helps emotions to become calm.

More Curiosity = More Elasticity

Curiosity also dismisses expectations.  There’s an old saying that expectations are pre-formed disappointments.  Actually the life-cycle of a disappointment begins with some kind of judgment.  Imagine, for example, you just had your annual review at work, and on a scale of 1 – 10, you were given a rating of 5.  Average.  You know you’re excellent at your job.  You work hard, you solve problems, you have the esteem of your co-workers, your boss includes you in high-level planning.  What’s with the 5?  You’ve never gotten less than an 8!

Pride depends on measuring, comparing and rating; it thrives on reassurance, outside validation, and recognition.  So your pride has been wounded, and you spin a story:  They don’t value me.  Their priorities are all mixed up.  Their policies are stupid.  They don’t deserve me. The more the story churns around, the more wounded and disappointed you feel.  What if you could set your pride aside and let your curiosity explore other possibilities, see the situation from other angles?

Perhaps the company just changed the rating system.  Perhaps your manager has been told he must use a bell curve.  Perhaps you’re already slightly over paid and someone else doing the same job way underpaid.  Perhaps the company’s expectations of you are already so high, you’d have to pull rabbits out of hats to exceed how highly they think of you.  Perhaps you can emotionally detach from any external rating scale.  You can certainly explore your options:  you can challenge your review, you can set new goals for yourself, you can find a mentor, you can quit.

Being calm and being curious play off each other.  When you are calm, you can be curious; when you are curious, calm follows.  Together, they infuse your thinking with creativity and they ease your emotions out of stress and into serenity.  Because they are so closely tied together, you can start with either one and find the other.

Mastering Curiosity

To become curious, ask such questions as:

  • What if what I think isn’t true?
  • What other factors than I can see might be in play?
  • What if my premises are wrong?
  • What if my emotions are getting in the way?
  • What other possibilities exist?
  • What can I do differently?
  • What expectations have I been holding?

Mastering Calm

To become calm, you can focus on calming your mind, calming your body or calming your emotions.  As soon as one you soothe one aspect of your being, the other aspects will follow.  Try one or more of the following techniques.  (Their effectiveness for you may vary by situation.)

To calm your body:

  • Breathe deeply.  Inhale slowly into your diaphragm, paying attention to the air all the way in and all the way out.  Be with your body.  Repeat 4-6 times.  The body relaxes with such regulated and increased oxygenation.
  • Open your senses.  Pay attention to what you can hear, what you can see, what you can smell, what you can taste, and/or what you can feel.  Your senses are your access to the world, and compared to your own stress, the world is very stable.
  • Be in nature.  Go outside and be open to temperature, weather, plants, animals, and your body’s responses.  Nature is generous, inspiring, settling and calming.
  • Expand your body from within.  Become tall, lengthen your neck, broaden your shoulders, expand your rib cage, lengthen your arms and legs, stretch your skin.  When your body is tight, it hoards tense emotions; when your body is expanded, it welcomes generous emotions.

To calm your mind:

  • Count your blessings.  Think of five things you’re thankful for and savor them.  Especially be mindful to the blessings and advantages you enjoy that you didn’t earn.  Appreciation of what’s good switches the mind off something you might be judging negatively.
  • Laugh out loud.  Chuckle, giggle, tee-hee.  Generate it from your belly, your chest, your throat, your nose, your toes.  Just find some form of laughter inside of you and let it come out your mouth.  Laughter is a very effective medicine.
  • See truth.  Think of something you know to be true.  Even small truths work well here:  The sun is shining (or it’s raining); I love my dog (or my child, or my spouse), I am well-fed (or hungry), I like ice cream (or swimming, or a good book, or martinis).  Truth will help you stop any story your mind might be spinning.
  • Be present.  Take note of whatever you are doing.  If you are eating, savor every bite; if you are working, focus on the task; if you are walking, observe the roll of your feet, the resilience of the ground, the sounds and textures of the environment.  Focus your mind on what is, and you will find ease from whatever story your brain is making up.

To calm your emotions:

  • Smile.  Researchers have discovered, using MRI, that turning up the corners of the mouth changes the way the synapses in the brain fire.  Just by smiling, you move your brain activity to a happier location of the brain.
  • See beauty.  Notice something you believe to be beautiful and savor it.  Seeing beauty is like seeing truth, except on the emotional level.  Enjoying the beautiful will ease your heart away from any agitation and cool heated emotions.
  • Be silly.  Stick out your tongue, wiggle your butt, dance a jig, cross your eyes – let down your defenses.  To be silly for even a few moments will helps you transcend any tension-causing rules that bind you to beliefs and behaviors that may not be true for you.
  • Evoke a neutral emotion.  Basically, this is letting go of judgment and becoming the observer.  That transition moves you from stress to serenity.

When you become calm, you can be curious.  When you allow yourself to be curious, you become calm.  Either way you come at it, when you are calm and curious, life is more interesting and more fun.


One of the services I provide for my clients is to help them develop strategies for mastering such aspects of their lives as calmness and curiosity.  If you could benefit from such help, please write to me:  kathy@kathyjacobson.com

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Posted in Beliefs, Calmness, Cause and Effect, Curiosity, Neutrality, Possibilities | 6 Comments »

Free Will and Limitation

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

It seems to me one of the most important characteristics of sentience is free will.  As human beings, we all have the ability to choose.

Or do we?

We seem to find restraints everywhere we look.  We are bound by laws, restrictions, obligations, duties, policies, responsibilities, handicaps, social mores, habits, rules, genetics, etc.  How much free will do we actually have when we’re surrounded by limitations?

Do we, as human beings, have unlimited choice, in all things, in all areas of our lives?  What about those times or those situations where there seems to be no choice, or the choices are extremely limited, or the best choice seems to be the lesser of two evils?  Where’s the free will then?

History is full of examples of real people who have transcended their lot – people who overcame the constraints of race, sex, poverty, lack of formal education, politics, religious restrictions, caste, or physical limitations.  What about them?  Did they choose or were they destined to have those limitations in the first place?  Did they choose or were they destined to overcome them?

Free Will and Personal Power

Consider the strong correlation between free will and personal power.  The more powerless you feel, the fewer options you recognize.  Conversely, the greater you grow in your personal power, the more options appear before you.   My model – The Diamond of Mastery – illustrates the relationship between personal power and possibilities.  At the lowest point of the diamond, power is at its lowest and nothing seems possible.  At the highest point, power is at its highest, yet it’s as narrow in scope as the bottom segment of the diamond.

Does this mean the range of possibilities is no wider at the top than at the bottom?  Well, yes.

Does this also mean free will also narrows?  Yes, but for very different reasons.

Maximum Free Will

Consider the nature of observer mode, which cuts a wide swath across the middle of the diamond.  observer mode is neutral – without judgment, without criticism, without censure, without approval or disapproval, free of either condemnation or praise.  From a neutral perspective, everything is equal:  the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the hard and the easy, the true and the false, the tall and the short, the thick and the thin – plus everything in between.   The best brainstorming, the best questions, the best critical thinking, and the widest range of possibilities come from this place of neutrality.  The more neutral you are the better you can weigh the pros and cons.  Neutrality give you that broadest, highest, deepest, clearest view of any situation.  You can see what you do want; you can see what you don’t want, and you will have a pretty strong idea of why, of all possible options, what you choose will be true for you.  From this fish-eye, wide-angle 360-degree vantage point, you have the absolute highest level of free will.

Narrowing the Scope

From this center band of neutrality, the diamond narrows in both directions.  Going down into interpreter mode, you have fewer options because you distance yourself from your personal power.  In a sense, you forfeit power – which is a choice in itself.  Going up into partner mode, you have fewer possibilities because you eliminate the ones you don’t want and concentrate your personal power on the options you’re still willing to consider.

Let’s take a closer look at this idea of forfeiting power or concentrating it.

Picture this.  Your town (or city) has a municipal water supply, stored in tanks in anticipation of need.  When you want a glass of water, you turn a tap, and water comes to you from the supply.  If a pipe breaks somewhere between the tank and your house (or a drip in your house) water leaks (or flows) out and ends up as wastewater without having been put to any good use.  Perhaps all available personal power is stored in a big cosmic tank somewhere.  Certainly, all you could ever want is available to you as easily as turning on a water tap.

interpreter mode is like living with a leaky tap.  Drip, drip, drip.  Through your thoughts, emotion, or actions, you let your power leak away.  Except it doesn’t end up in some civilized “wastewater removal system.”  It puddles around you, muddying the ground you stand on, creating a mire of difficulty.  If left unattended long enough, you end up struggling in a quicksand of limited possibilities.  Your free will gets stuck in the mud.

Conversely, partner mode is like having access to a power hose.  One flick of the tap and power gushes out in a steady stream.  You point that power at something you want, and it concentrates from possible to probable.  Your free will becomes more narrowly focused.

Losing and Gaining

Toward the tips of the diamond – in either direction – your possibilities narrow even more.

Going down, you hit victim mode, where it feels as if you have little or no choice.  Because you have assumed the role of Victim (in the story of your life), it’s extremely difficult to acknowledge the past choices that brought you to this point.  But all along the way you have been forfeiting power, relinquishing responsibility, choosing by refusing to choose, and perhaps finding advantage as well as pain in your helplessness.

At the upper tip of the diamond, you access your personal power at astonishing levels and create with seemingly little effort.  However, your free will has concentrated by  previous choices into a laser-like point.  The range of choices available in creator mode may be as narrow as in victim mode, but that’s the only similarity between self-mastery and self-deprivation.

Somewhere in observer mode, you chose to go in a particular direction.  Perhaps you decided to become a writer, or major in science, or go to law school, or move to Ghana, or join a nudist colony.  In making that one choice, you discarded a whole slew of other choices.  You became discerning, shifted out of neutral, sharpened your focus – and “limited” the extend of your free will.  Of course, you retain the power to go back to neutral at any time.

Mastering Free Will

Free will is one of the most important aspects of growth.  It’s the well-spring of purpose, it expands personal power, it sharpens the energies of manifestation, it channels self-mastery.  Free will is a gift.

Free will is also one of the most important obligations of sentience, because only through thinking and choosing, only through free will, can we live in love and joy and peace.

Whatever Mode of Mastery we operate from on any given day, we always have the choice to live today to the best of our ability.  Today we can choose frustration over anger, choose flexibility over frustration, choose cooperation over flexibility, choose enthusiasm over cooperation.  (Choose any progression that describes your own situation.)

Today is the only point of choice available to us.  The gift of yesterday’s choices brought us to today’s choices.  What gift do you want today’s choices to present to you tomorrow?  If you feel constrained, bound, limited, or struggling – move into observer mode energy and give yourself expansion, assurance, or calm tomorrow.

observer mode is amazingly freeing, wonderfully open, restfully secure.  But after a while it may begin to feel unfocused, detached, uncommitted, too loose, too free.  Clearly, you’re ready to master partner mode.

Just as partner mode is an expansion of personal power, it’s also a concentration of possibility.  Narrow your options.  Choose what you do want, and form your partnerships with those possibilities.  Toss the options you don’t want out of your basket of possibilities.

Yes, by concentrating your free will you constrain it, but you’ve step into a realm of greater personal power.

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What’s True for You

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

As I’ve worked with intentions, my own and those of others, I’ve found the following to be a good rule of thumb:

Choose what’s true for you, and be willing to be true to it.

Of course, this may raise the challenging question: “How do I know what’s true for me?”

For the following discussion, I’ll be referring often to my Modes of Mastery Model and the Emotions list

It’s important to note that someone in VICTIM mode can’t even ask that question. People in VICTIM mode are more likely to want safety than Best Good.

INTERPRETER mode also thwarts this question. If you’re focused on validation, keeping score, weighing the odds, what’s not right, making your point, reasons why not, blame, or any other form of struggle, you will have no energy left to look within. The stories you’ve generated to justify, explain, reclaim, rationalize or validate will distort your perspectives of the world, of your relationships with others, and of especially yourself. You can ask, “What’s true for me?” but you will not be able to discern the answer.

Allowing What’s True for You

When you move from INTERPRETER mode to OBSERVER mode, everything changes. When you achieve neutrality, your view of what’s possible suddenly expands and moves from black-and-white to full-spectrum color. Now when you ask what’s true for you, you can attune to the indicators.

People are most likely to choose something that’s not true for them when operating from VICTIM or INTERPRETER mode. It’s all about possibilities – or lack of them.

In VICTIM mode, things range from the total darkness of no hope to the dark gray of no more. The emotions of INTERPRETER mode range from grim dark gray to the light gray of merely frustrating. The darker emotions (violence, hostility, anxiety, grief) create the most struggle and keep the possibilities most restricted. The lighter INTERPRETER emotions (pride, devotion, relief, desire) allow enough illumination to move from not possible to difficult. The world is still restricted to black and white, however, while you are a full-color person.

In OBSERVER mode, your options become much brighter. Any neutral choice will be more true for you than those struggling for air from the muck of disappointment, embarrassment, smugness, shame – or any other emotion derived solely from your interpretation of past experiences.

Because OBSERVER mode emotions have the power of neutrality, any intention set from this mode will be true for you in a calm, neutral way. Deriving contentment and comfort from your choices now becomes possible.

When you operate from PARTNER mode, you enter the world of color, and every intention you set will take you more and more strongly toward your deepest truth. This is a realm of more risk, more challenge and more growth. The path is tougher, the gains greater, the service fuller, and the results more exhilarating. You may, on occasion, experience emotions from INTERPRETER mode. Observe them, identify them, acknowledge your investment in them, and replace them with emotions from PARTNER mode.

Creating What’s True for You

CREATOR mode is full spectrum, full density, living color. When you are attuned to CREATOR emotions, every intention you set, every choice you make will be true for you.

Most people rarely connect with what is true for them. Most people operate from VICTIM or INTERPRETER modes most of the time. VICTIM mode produces pain and suffering. Any intentions set or any choices made from VICTIM mode will also produce pain and suffering, and you can be sure those intentions and choices are not true for you. INTERPRETER mode produces struggle. Any intentions set or any choices made from INTERPRETER mode will also produce struggle, and you can be sure those intentions and choices are not true for you.

Likewise, since OBSERVER emotions produce calm, any intentions you set or choices you make from neutrality will produce calm, and that calm indicates increasing alignment with what’s true for you.

PARTNER emotions produce opportunity

(A word of caution here: “opportunity” can mean different things in different circumstances. Bernard Madoff lured people into his Ponzi scheme with an “opportunity,” but the emotions that motivated his victims were probably those of INTERPRETER mode. They may have been motivated by acquisition emotions: greed, ambition, desire, envy, gloating, yearning, lust. Or they might have been motivated by anxiety emotions, particularly concerning lack: defensiveness, dread, frustration, impatience, insecurity.)

When we look at opportunity from the PARTNER perspective, consider the expansion value of attraction, confidence, gratitude, harmony, willingness and tenacity. Practitioners of PARTNER mode know their part includes effort, focus, attention, respect for both the challenge and the other participants.

Your Best Good is Always True for You

CREATOR mode produces Best Good, and your best good always connects most strongly to your truest truth.

People persist in situations that are not true for them for many reasons, including:

· One or more of their values keeps them where they are.
· The unknown is too frightening.
· They lack confidence in their abilities.
· They defer to the values and expectations of others.
· They believe they’ll win out if they just try harder.
· They can’t see any other possibilities.
· They doubt their abilities.

Since I have experienced most of the above reasons, I can personally testify that choosing or persisting in any situation that is not true for you, for whatever reason, costs more than it’s worth.

By observing your emotions, you can recognize the extent to which you are connected to what’s true for you. By observing and acknowledging your results, you can recognize the extent to which a past choice was aligned with your truth. By observing current results, you will receive early-warning signals when a choice is not true for you.

Early warning signals can include physical ailments, losing things, forgetting things, accidents, persistent troublesome situations, conflicts with others. The first signal may be mild: a simple cold, a stubbed toe, spilled milk, feelings of annoyance. If you ignore the first signal, the second will be stronger: a sore throat, a sprained ankle, a clogged drain, increasingly frequent arguments. The more you ignore the signals, the harder your soul will work to get your attention. The ultimate penalty for persisting along a false course is death.

Please, please, please do not assume that all normal frustrations and set-backs of life indicate soul-level mis-alignment. Please do not judge yourself or others by a cold or a sprained ankle or a clogged drain. Accidents happen. I do, however, urge you to be willing to observe your own life; be willing to listen for the ways your soul speaks to you.

So now let’s look at ways to recognize whether the intention you want to set is true for you.

· True choices draw you to them; you do not have to push into them.
· True choices help you connect to PARTNER and CREATOR emotions.
· True choices supply you with the courage to face your fears and doubts.
· True choices resonate with your soul.
· True choices serve others.

Finally, I’d like to touch on the second half of my opening statement: be willing to be true to the choices you make.

Personal growth is an extremely uneven process. Sometimes it feels like a long slow slog, sometimes the learning curve rises in a breath-taking sweep. Sometimes periods of steady growth can be marked by obvious gains. Sometimes there are fallow periods of absorbing, nurturing and rejuvenation. Because of this variance in your own personal growth patterns, you may sometimes feel impatient or frustrated.

Stay True During Fallow Season

During a slow slog or times when your momentum feel stalled, you may set an aggressive intention in an effort to “get the show on the road.” You may not be mentally ready, emotionally connected or sufficiently prepared to be true to such an intention. At such times it’s possible to set out in a true direction yet make an un-true choice. I have lots of experience with this one.

For instance, when I chose to become a writer, that was true for me. When I chose to write romance novels, I chose quickly and from self-doubt (I thought it would be easy), and my choice was not true for me. I continued along that path for fifteen years, and it was all struggle.

On the other hand, during that struggle, when I began teaching writing, that was true for me. I grew, I served, I had fun, and happiness was my way. Many of my students have become successful authors, and I observed that those writers who succeeded were those for whom the intention was true for them, and they were true to it.

To be true to an intention requires you to make a couple of important decisions first.

· Be willing to know yourself.
· Be willing to release any fears, doubts and false beliefs.
· Make sure your value system is yours and not someone else’s.
· Be willing to listen to your heart.

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Love Heals

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

Imagine someone with a broken leg.  That person goes to the doctor who x-rays, sets the bone, immobilizes it, provides instructions for how best to assist recovery, and sends the person home to heal.

Imagine a married couple who fight repeatedly about the same issue (kids, money, personal habits, politics, food).  They go to a relationship counselor who listens, gives feedback, introduces them to better communication skills, and sends them home to heal.

Both situations have an equal potential for full recovery.

Of course, it depends on whether the “patients” involved actually follow the advice of the “healers.”  If the person with the broken leg discards the brace or puts too much weight on the injury too soon, recovery will be compromised.  If the couple with conflict continue to blame each other, or hold grudges or insist on having the last word, they will stay mired in unhappiness.  It’s pretty easy to see that action matters.  Healing is seriously compromised if the “patient” doesn’t obey the principles of recovery,

Action, however is only one kind of energy involved in healing, regardless of the nature of the wound.  The patient must also invest thought energy.  Generally thought energy takes the form of believing healing is possible.

In the case of the broken leg, our entire culture recognizes bones heal, so accepting that a particular break will mend seems a no-brainer.  However, there are always exceptions to the rule.  Some people believe they don’t heal naturally.  A physical condition, such as a calcium deficiency, might provide a basis for that belief; often such beliefs grow from emotions.  Emotion-based beliefs can retard or obstruct healing the way a placebo can aid it.

The couple who argues have a more complex problem.  Their issue of contention may be a way of ignoring or evading the true wound.  For instance, they might argue over money without realizing the deeper rift is that they don’t respect each other.  They might believe – at least in principle – they can learn to communicate and compromise about money.  That belief will go a long way to supporting any new actions they adopt.  But if they don’t believe the other person is worthy of respect, their efforts with money will not heal the relationship.

Ultimately, the most important energy governing any healing is emotion.  Emotion will support and govern beliefs, or it will limit them.  Emotion will support and sustain actions, or it will impair them.  Even in something as straight-forward and well-treated as a broken leg, emotion can speed the healing process or retard it.

The key to understanding the power of emotions in healing is simple:

Healing requires energy.

Emotions are energy.

Energy is emotion.

I believe love has the strongest healing power of all emotions.  I believe any wound can be healed by love.

Healing can occur in a number of different ways, depending on the ailment or affliction.  For instance, the healing of a misunderstanding might come from finding common ground; the healing of cancer might come by reducing the tumor; the healing of poverty might come from getting a new job, the healing of loneliness might come from giving companionship to someone else.

Sometimes love is an obvious force in such healings; more often its energy is overlooked.

Consider these three ways healing can occur:

  • Recovery.  The situation returns to its original form.
  • Reconciliation.   Negative energy is released from an adversity.
  • Transcendence.  A new reality emerges.

Let’s look at each one and note the influence of emotional energy.

Recovery

This might be the way of healing we’re most familiar with.  Something is injured, the injury mends.  We tend to let our bodies take care of a common cold, a cut finger, a stubbed toe.  We tend to let time take care of a minor rift or a hurt feeling.  We tend to spread major expenses out over time as a means of healing a lack of funds.  We tend to let time and/or nature heal the discomforts caused by weather – the rained-out party or the August heat wave.  Sometimes we apply some external assistance – the cold remedy, the band-aid, the credit card, the snow shovel, the shared meal.  Eventually the situation returns to normal.

Because such minor woes are so easily mended, it’s easy to overlook the impact of emotional energy on the recovery.

Have you ever had a common cold that lingered despite your dedicated application of cold remedies?  Have you ever disagreed with someone you normally get along with, but that particular disagreement seemed to resist resolution?  Have you ever been surrounded by friends and family and still ached with loneliness?  Have you incurred a debt, made regular payments, and made little headway in paying it off?

Chances are, you were immersed in one of the INTERPRETER Mode emotions:  worry, frustration, guilt, boredom, disappointment, etc.  (Check the Emotions List for the full range of possible culprits)  These emotions create struggle, increase difficulty, burden the body, resist healing.  Perhaps you’re in one of these situations right now.

You can expedite recovery by a simple four-step process:

  1. Recognize and name the impeding emotion.
  2. Acknowledge you have a choice when it comes to holding onto that emotion or letting go of it.
  3. Choose to let it go.
  4. Move to the next Mode of Mastery.  Since you are probably in INTERPRETER mode, move to OBSERVER mode.

OBSERVER mode emotions are neutral, free of negative energy and judgment.  When you abide in the energy of hope, humor, patience, warmth, wonder, or flexibility, you move from the difficult to the possible.  Your thoughts change from misdirected to open; you feel capable instead of burdened.

Reconciliation

In contrast to the normal, every-day kinds of ailments referred to above, some situations appear permanent.  Birth defects, the destruction caused by a natural disaster, the loss of a job, cultural hatreds, death, etc.

Occasionally we can envision a means for mediating the situation – breakthroughs in medicine, community or national cooperation in restoration, retraining or a career change, peace summits, grief counseling, etc.

The degree to which any of these situations becomes reconcilable depends on the emotional energy applied to them, and PARTNER energy is key.

When you evoke and employ such PARTNER emotions as cheerfulness, courage, gratitude, openness or confidence, the situation ceases to be an adversity.  The physical reality may not have changed, but you experience new willingness, eagerness, and power.  You can trust your intuition as an inner guide.  You welcome the opportunities for growth, for experience, for greater knowledge, and for service.

Transcendence

Transcendence is the highest degree of healing, the realm in which miracles occur.  It’s important to remember miracles always obey natural law, that everything in the universe conforms to the laws of the universe.

Consider a conflict between two factions that has raged for years (or centuries).  It’s not hard to see that love might be the only mechanism by which the two sides could transcend their differences.  The process of applying love would not be mysterious.  First they would have to set aside feelings of hatred, resentment, and anger.  They would have to release any attachment to the old stories, to the long-held myths, to their convictions of the sins of their enemies and of their own rightness.  They would have to release judgment and blame and move to neutrality.  Once they achieved calm, they could discover commonalities and ways to partner with each other.  (Anthropologists have observed that trade and intermarriage work wonders.)  Understanding often leads to respect, and from respect it’s an easy step to love.

The growth process from helplessness to power always follows the same path: from suffering to struggle to calm to opportunity to best good.  A few examples of these emotional transitions:

  • From fear to apprehension to hope to trust to love.
  • From loneliness to yearning to patience to anticipation to love.
  • From resentment to bitterness to humility to recognition to love.
  • From woe to grief to sadness to empathy to love.

(Of course, other emotions besides love put you in CREATOR mode, but today I’m specifically talking about the power of love.  Also, sometimes it takes more than one step to progress through interpreter mode.  For example, you may have to go from fear to hostility to apprehension to irritation before you can reach hope.)

Love heals.  When it heals through transcendence, a new reality emerges.

Consider the story of someone who recovers from cancer.  Perhaps for months the doctors do their best with little success, then one day the tumor is “miraculously” gone.  They may speculate on how healing occurred, but there is no testable scientific explanation – just here today, gone tomorrow.

The energy central to such a “miracle” will be love.  It might result from love of self, love of the body, love of life, love of god.  It might result from reconciling a conflict with someone or something.  It might be the progression from anger to regret to awareness to acceptance to love.

The new reality will expand far beyond renewed health.  It will always include a new version of an old story, new attitudes towards other people, and/or approaching familiar situations in new ways.  When you transcend through the healing power of love, you are freed from old beliefs, old paradigms, old restriction.  You feel like a new person.

Can you use love to heal someone else?  Of course.  The power of love is unlimited.  But healing cannot occur without the other person’s permission and their willingness to be healed.

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51. Mastery

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

Mastery

April 11, 2010

WHEN THE SUBJECT OF personal power comes up, what do you think of?

Some people consider personal power in terms of control, especially their control over the various situations or activities of their lives – time, schedules, priorities, action plans, interactions with others, to name a few.

Some people consider it in terms of results – implementing action plans, achieving goals, reaching milestones, creating outcomes, etc.

Some people consider it in terms of manipulating others, their ability to get others to do their bidding or respond in a certain way.

I want to suggest true personal power comes from self-mastery, from being true to yourself, from living authentically, and especially from mastering your emotions. Mastery is not control – especially in reference to emotions. Control has nothing to do with it. For most people controlling their emotions means not feeling them, not acknowledging them, not experiencing them, not showing them, and not learning from them. Denial, distancing, burying, ignoring, or resisting emotions is not mastery.

To master your emotions, you have to become fully mindful of them. You must respond to them and with them in ways that support you and empower you.

Today I’m going to review theModes of Power in terms of emotional mastery. The graphic model (included again with this issue) illustrates the hierarchical nature of different emotions in terms of empowerment. The mastery of emotions corresponds to the movement from minimal access of the power within (VICTIM mode) to maximum access (CREATOR mode). Keep in mind that except in extreme circumstances few people experiences VICTIM emotions 100% the time. You might experience these emotions only on rare occasions or only in one area of your life. Or you might experience them pretty consistently in one area of your life while staying in OBSERVER or PARTNER mode anywhere else. Those times when you do experience the lower-mode emotions can be wonderful opportunities to master them.

Victim Mode

VICTIM mode emotions, such as anger, fear, jealousy, woe, resentment, avarice and contempt, are so powerful in themselves, they act as a barrier, a sort of force field, between you and your power. Even though your personal power resides within you in its entirety and fullness, VICTIM emotions inhibit your access. When these barrier emotions are activated, they keep parts of you hidden, even from yourself, and restrict your access to your own power.

Yes, the emotions are real. Yes, they are strong. Yes, they like for you to give them plenty of room to play havoc with your psyche. No, they don’t want to go away, or be dismissed, or to let go of you. They do not want you to master them.

Mastery, however, is both desirable and possible. But it cannot be achieved by going into battle with the emotions. You can’t do it by fighting them or trying to control them. Master the following techniques, and you master VICTIM emotions:

  • Stop. Stop fighting. Stop resisting. Stop yelling. Stop hammering. Stop raging. Stop crying. Stop retreating. Stop hiding. Feel your emotions, but stop reacting according to them. When you let VICTIM emotions propel you into extreme actions, it’s like throwing yourself into a tidal wave. You become a triple victim. First, you’re victim to the situation, then you’re victim to your emotions, and finally you’re victim to your own actions. So, just stop and take stock of where you are, what you’re feeling, and what you’re doing.
  • Declare, “No more.” This declaration requires no analysis, no negotiation, no compromise, and no premeditation about what might happen next, what you will do instead or what consequences might ensue. You don’t have to have a goal or an action plan. You simply have to say, “I’ve had enough. I don’t want to live in fear (or anger, or woe, or loneliness) any more.”
  • Take a step away. Just one. It doesn’t matter how big the step is or whether it’s a “step in the right direction.” Just back away from the emotion in some way. These suggestions can help you do this:   – Refer to the list of emotions and pick something from INTERPRETER mode that seems accessible. For instance, from anger, move to bitterness or disgust or pique. From fright, move to suspicion or defensiveness or alarm. While the INERPRETER emotion you choose when moving away from a VICTIM emotion might not be one you find particularly appealing, it’s going to give you 100 times the access to your own personal power.  – Ask, “Is there any way I am being served by these feelings?” Anger might be a form of rebellion, which can provide a façade of power to cover a sense of helplessness. Hate, fanaticism, contempt and various extremes of anger can provide a veneer of righteousness. Distress and woe can elicit pity. Submission and loneliness can reinforce beliefs of unworthiness. Etc. When you can identify some way you subconsciously benefit from VICTIM emotions, you gain an edge over them. You begin to see they might support you rather than simply control you.

Imagine you’re in a runaway car and VICTIM emotions are dangerous cliffs. Every time you tap the brakes on a VICTIM emotion, you begin to realize you may actually be in the driver’s seat. Saying, “No more,” is like taking control of the transmission and switching gears. You take the steering wheel when you decide to veer away from the emotion.

And when you can do those three things, consciously and purposefully, you’ve gained mastery over VICTIM mode emotions. This mastery allows you to see yourself as an entity separate from both your circumstances and your emotions. You begin to catch glimpses of the untapped power you have within you.

Interpreter Mode

Mastery of VICTIM mode emotions often feels like a jailbreak. You were the captive of those fierce and debilitating emotions, and now you’re free. Whatever had you in its thrall is no longer the boss of you. You are no longer isolated by loneliness, or burning at the stake of anger, or immobilized by resentment.

Suddenly, instead of helpless, you feel more active, more alive, more motivated, more productive, more alert, more in the game. With the chains off, you don’t care about struggle or difficulty. You like the urgency, the competition and the freedom to aspire.

Sooner or later, however, you realize you’re churning with melancholy, or stewing in chagrin, or captivated by greed, or driven by lust. INTERPRETER mode emotions may not be incarcerating, but they withhold resources. You picked up the Get-out-of-jail-free card, but the Pass-go-and-collect-$200 card didn’t come with it.

Mastery of INTERPRETER mode emotions requires the practice of non-resistance. The only thing required for mastery at this level is the ability to let go of such emotions and their attendant behaviors. Most people find this very challenging. Most of us find ourselves attached to the “benefits” of INTERPRETER mode. INTERPRETER emotions give us a sense of being more active, more alive, more motivated, more productive, more alert, more in the game.

Yet the game’s hard. Damn hard. We struggle, we contend, we take wrong turns, we stumble. Obstacles loom at every turn. We meet enemies, adversaries, opponents, resisters, saboteurs, insurgents – sometimes even our family and friends make things more difficult. Why? Because the energy produced by INTERPRETER mode emotions invites struggle. Thus, mastering these emotions releases struggle. Here are three essential aspects of such mastery:

  • Recognize what you’re feeling. Become mindful enough to name it. If it helps, refer to the Emotions List so you can identify the emotions as accurately as possible.
  • Acknowledge the effect of the emotion. Acknowledge the strength of it; i.e. are you consumed with greed or merely wanting more? Is the emotion pervasive, or does some specific situation trigger it?
  • Take ownership of the emotion. Claim it. Say, I am choosing to feel ______.” At this point, whether you actually believe you chose the emotion is irrelevant. This is a communication to your subconscious. You establish choice as a possibility. When your subconscious accepts that what you currently feel is a choice, it automatically accepts the possibility of choosing something else.

The first two steps are exercises in mindfulness. By paying attention to what you feel, by becoming aware of your reactions and responses, by identifying your emotions and by acknowledging those feelings, you connect with the inner workings of your heart and mind in a new and more powerful way.   They open the way for Step #3.

Mastery of INTERPRETER emotions has two parts. First, you master non-resistance: You stop fighting your own emotions and acknowledge whatever you feel, and you stop resisting the events and circumstances of your life. (This is not to say you start agreeing with those events and circumstances; rather, you open yourself to other options besides struggle.) Second, you acquire a mastery within yourself regarding your emotions. You gain the ability to choose what you feel.

Observer Mode

When you master INTERPRETER emotions, the range of possibilities expands exponentially. Paying specific attention to a challenging area (or areas) of your life, notice what happens when you remove the struggle away, when you accept emotions as a choice. If you stop expecting something to be hard, you start seeing ways it might be easy. If you stop entering into battle with something, you start seeing ways to go around, to defuse, to buy time, to stay friends. To continue the earlier metaphor, you’ve gotten out of jail and you’ve collected $200 dollars. Imagine the dollar amount represents possibilities, and you now have 200 options.

That much choice, however, can be intimidating. Mastering OBSERVER mode is, in effect, mastering the multiplicity of choice. So here are three aspects to becoming more at ease with choice and then honing the ability to choose.

  • Detach. (See Issue 41: Detachment) I am not suggesting emotional detachment – emotions are key to personal power. (Of course, since you’ve already mastered INTERPRETER mode emotions, you will not be tempted to ignore or bury your emotions.) I am suggesting detachment from external circumstances such as:   – Other people’s emotions and behaviors. Let others experience what they experience, choose what they choose, react how they react. Because you’ve accepted ownership of your own emotions, you can more easily allow other people the ownership of their emotions. You cannot make someone feel something, anymore than someone else can make you feel something.   – Outcomes. As the observer you can watch, listen, allow. You can exercise patience and tolerance. You can choose curiosity over certainty, amusement over annoyance and courage over dread.
  • Practice neutrality. Recognize the full range of visible possibilities before you begin to sort, evaluate or judge. Honor the differences in those possibilities. Allow for variations of both opinions and priorities. Listen without bias to what others have to say. Look for opportunity in unexpected places. When you become the observer, you start to notice doors that were hidden or invisible before. Judgment kept those doors tightly shut, now your neutrality will burst them open.
  • Be calm. (See Issue 42: Calm and Curious) Calm is both the means and the end of OBSERVER mode. You can become the observer by becoming calm, and when you practice being the observer, you become calm. It doesn’t matter where you enter the circle.

Calm is the ultimate mastery of OBSERVER mode. From calm, and with neutrality and detachment, you can observe the range of possibilities and choose from them with wisdom and authenticity. With the mastery of OBSERVER mode comes one of the most amazing results – freedom from pain.

Partner Mode

With the new year (2010), I decided to master PARTNER Mode emotions. I’ve been practicing OBSERVER mode since the mid nineties (way before I came up with this model for looking at personal power), and during past fifteen years I’ve enjoyed frequent swings into PARTNER and OBSERVER modes. But there are a couple of significant areas of my life where the results I want have remained elusive: my relationship with money, and my concept of the value of my work.

In practicing PARTNER emotions, with an eye to mastery, I’ve been employing the following techniques:

  • Engagement. I have consciously and purposefully engaged with my emotions in these two areas. Every time I’ve explored either of these issues, I’ve gained insight, understanding of myself, and experienced “breakthroughs,” yet my basic relationship remained the same. So in January I engaged yet again. I set clear intentions, I worked with my intention statements until they resonated with truth, and I continue to probe for hidden pockets of INTEPRETER emotion.
  • Evocation. I have mindfully chosen the PARTNER emotions I want to use to achieve synergy with my work (gratitude and humility), and with money (confidence and exuberance). And I consciously evoke these emotions often. I take a few minutes to call up those emotions and let them expand through my body until I feel them vibrate. I recall them often. I relish them and I use them to connect with the results I want.
  • Choice. When I have a choice to make (not limited to choices about money or work), I evoke those PARTNER emotions first. I wait until I feel the emotions humming through my body, and then I choose.

After just 3½ months, so far it’s been an amazing journey, with some terrific results: My coaching practice has tripled since the first of the year, and this has, of course, increased my income. I decided to run for the Board of Trustees in my little town of Lyons, Colorado – to which I was elected this week. I’m experiencing an overall increase of eagerness and happiness. I feel a richer connection with my clients. And I hope, as a result, my clients are realizing more satisfying results.

Creator Mode

What I know of CREATOR mode comes from my occasional swings into that level of power and from my intuition. I believe mastery of the energies of this mode result in wholeness and wholeness is achieved through

  • Peace
  • Joy
  • Love

Some time in the future I may have more to say about these exalted states. For now, I encourage you to savor them and exult in them whenever you experience them.

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