We have certainly experienced a tremendous amount of love and support since Paul’s “heart episode” last month. Most of it has come in the form of e-mails, cards and phone calls. Some of it by local friends chaufferring Paul to various medical appointments.  And some of it even in the form of unexpected material assistance from tequila to checks! (The tequila was actually prescribed by Paul’s surgeon.)

Learning to ask for help has been a life-long process for both of us. We like to think we are better at it now, although there was not as much asking on our part recently as there was simply the spontaneous generosity of giving by people who love and care about us. We learned how much of a gift it can be to others to ALLOW them to give of themselves out of their own areas of abundance.

Below is a piece by Steve Goodier about giving and receiving help that seemed relevent. We hope you enjoy it.

Some people never need help. One man caught his foot in railroad tracks. He tried to pull it out, but his efforts only seemed to make matters worse.

He heard a noise and turned around to see a train coming. In a panic he prayed, “Dear God, please get my foot out of these tracks and I’ll stop my heavy drinking and smoking!”

Nothing happened. He was still stuck, and the train showed no sign of slowing.

So he prayed again, “Oh, Lord, please get my foot out and I’ll stop drinking and smoking and carousing and cussing!”

Still nothing. He tugged and pulled as the train bore down. In sheer desperation, he pled for help a final time. “Lord, please, if you get my foot out of the tracks, I’ll do anything! I’ll … I’ll … I’ll become a minister!

Suddenly his foot shot out of the tracks and he got up and dusted himself off as the train whizzed by. Then he looked toward Heaven and said, “Never, mind, Lord, I got it out myself.”

Some people seemingly never need help from anyone. They rarely call on friends or even family to lend a hand. They seldom, if ever, confide in a good listener. They seem to believe they should be completely self sufficient; that needing assistance is an unwelcome weakness.

But others find great value in occasionally asking for assistance, and in offering it, too. Needing help, even once in a while, reminds them that they were not meant to journey this life alone. It is a group outing, not a private experience.

Those who find help when they need it are fortunate. But those who give help generously are the most fortunate of all. Few experiences can produce a sense of joy and satisfaction like that of truly easing the burden of another human being, with no thought of return. Fact is… when we help someone else, we can hardly help but be happy. At those magical times we may wonder who really helped whom!

Copyright  © Steve Goodier

The Learning Conversation – Taking the Path to Healing

Healing the past with family members is one of the most challenging relationship issues that exist, because there is so much at stake. In our book, Straight From The Heart, we say that truth is love’s doorway. In other words, when we are honest and open about our true thoughts and feelings, it creates a safe environment in which love and affinity can flourish.

One of the things we have found in our work over the years is that very often the things that people cannot or will not talk about end up destroying the affinity and capacity for emotional depth in a relationship. People go through the motions of relating but without any authentic deep connection. They love each other in concept more than in real experience.

It is important not only to be honest in your relationships, but also to be the kind of person with whom it is safe to be honest. If you get angry and upset whenever someone tells you something you don’t like to hear, pretty soon people get the message that it is not safe to be honest with you.

Speaking your truth and listening to the truth of others is not always an easy thing to do. It is not always easy to know how to deal with an unpleasant truth you might hear, or to deal with another’s reaction to a differing truth of yours. For this reason, among others, that so many people decide it is better to hold back and tell people what they think they want to hear. The only problem with that is that it doesn’t allow wither of you to get vital information that could foster trust, intimacy, creativity or healing in the relationship.

Creating a Learning Conversation – In our book, You’re Never Upset for the Reason You Think, we offer this conversation wheel to guide the learning conversation.

As relationship coaches for thirty-five years we have seen that most upsets occur because of misperceptions and miscommunications. Upsets happen because people are using different and conflicting information on which to base their opinions and interpretations.

People usually do the best they can with the knowledge they have. But both people probably have different perceptions, feelings, identity concerns, beliefs, attitudes, and histories that have contributed to the interpretations that generate upsets.

Unless you share this information with one another, you will rarely be able to get on the same page with each other. It will always feel “off” in some way when you try to relate. And over time you simply settle for less closeness than you used to share with them.

In the learning conversation, you sort through the differences and use the information to learn about one another, exploring how you have both participated in a way that produced the upset. You use this information to avoid a similar upset in the future and to build a deeper level of understanding and trust in your relationship. It is crucial for you to be as interested in hearing from them as you are in telling your side of things.

It is always helpful to voice your intention for the dialogue, because your intention greatly determines the quality of your exchange. If your intention is to make them wrong or punish them for what you feel they “did to you,” they are going to feel that, no matter what else you might say. Make sure you truly intend to generate a learning conversation; don’t just pay it lip service.

If you can transform blame into personal responsibility you have a chance to realize the higher purpose in all your relationships, which is to learn, heal the past and evolve into the best version of yourself possible. To do this you need to generate mutual learning conversations rather than just getting stuff off your own chest.

In our view, the four most important pieces in a learning conversation are personal responsibility, individual perceptions, feelings and identity concerns.

The Personal Responsibility Conversation is extremely important in transmuting the fear of being blamed into safety and understanding. Until people truly see how they are responsible for a part of the upset, the best they can hope for is just paying lip service to a misguided concept of personal responsibility.

Too often people preface a blaming conversation with the words, “I know I have responsibility in this but…” and then they insert all the blame they still feel they have a right to. Most of the time they don’t even realize they are blaming the other. They think they are just telling the truth about their feelings. Personal responsibility is more than a concept it is a skill set. A set of skills most people haven’t learned.

The Perception Conversation has to do with sorting through one another’s different views on the same issue. It is important to avoid arguing about whose truth is more valid than the other. Let it be okay that you remember things differently. Simply be curious about how they see it without playing a right/wrong game. Try being a loving witness to their experience rather than comparing their truth to your own. Allow theirs to be different from yours. And don’t argue about the different versions. Endeavor to understand that there are different versions that lead to different interpretations of the same event.

The Feelings Conversation is delicate and potentially volatile. If someone’s deep feelings haven’t been dealt with internally, they tend to leak out into the learning conversation in a variety of ways, sarcasm, guilt tripping, defensiveness, judgments, shutting down, withdrawing and misperceptions and even an escalation into argument. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of dealing with feelings openly in safe and appropriate ways, where everyone has some competence in the skill of personal responsibility.

Creating a safe climate for all parties to engage in the feelings conversation is an art well worth learning. There are specific dos and don’ts that make this emotional minefield much easier to navigate.

The Identity Conversation highlights how the issue and the way it is being dealt with impacts the self concept of each participant. The question, “What does this mean about me?” is lurking just below the conscious level of awareness, and both your minds are tending to leap to all kinds of conclusions. Often, both parties are concerned that their sense of self will be painfully impacted. Try to be sensitive to how the upset may be affecting others sense of self in ways they may be unaware of.

During the healing dialogue, both your interpretations will probably change as your understanding of the other deepens. It is ideal if you can both interpret the upset as an opportunity to grow, seeing that now you understand each other better and will probably have a better relationship because of it.

Breaking Up, Separation, and Divorce Can Be Devastating – But May Also Provide the Opportunity for Self-Examination and a New Beginning

There is nothing easy about ending a love relationship. Breaking up is seldom the ideal resolution to problems within relationships, but all too often is the outcome, despite our best efforts to prevent it. Over the past two or three decades, about half of all marriages have ended in divorce, and the statistics for cohabitation (or living together) are higher than this.

The person who was once your best friend and your companion for life, the one who knew you better than anyone else, has now in some ways become your enemy. You cannot believe that this has happened. How could that love have been destroyed? The breakup of a relationship is one of life’s most emotionally painful experiences. The depth of pain depends on many factors – how sensitive you are to the meaning of your life experiences, how much you have idealized the relationship, and how much you depended on your partner to make your life worthwhile.

A broken relationship shatters much that we have known and dreamed about. Our relationships, especially intimate relationships, help us define who we are. Our values, our views of the world, and how we define our most intimate feelings are all embodied within our love relationships. When our relationship comes to an end, our lives enter a chaotic period for which we may be unprepared. We suddenly find ourselves dealing with a host of emotions and thoughts – grieving, despair, anger, revenge and retaliation, hoping for a miracle, negotiating, feeling out of control, hoping for happiness again and not knowing how to get there, fear, and loneliness – and little of it seems to make sense. (And where is your partner when you need him or her the most?)

Most of us have never acquired the tools to deal with a loss of this magnitude. When we entered the relationship, we put our energies into building a life with our partner. We put little effort into learning to be alone again. A breakup forces us to jump into an overwhelming, and often dreaded, world of new experiences.

It is comforting to learn that this time of craziness will come to a close. The sun will shine again. The pain of a breakup, if it is approached constructively, can propel people to confront personal issues and to discover who they are at this stage of life. Many people look back on the time following their breakup as the best time in their lives. It may be painful, but it is also a time when a person can feel fully alive and impelled to look within to determine their strengths, abilities, and challenges.

The ending of a love relationship follows a predictable set of experiences. It is helpful to recognize the feelings associated with each stage of a breakup and to know that these feelings are normal and expected. If you have difficulty in handling the negative feelings that accompany the phases of the process, it will probably be a challenge to cope effectively as you move toward the completion of the breakup. If you accept your painful feelings and explore why things are difficult, you become better able, as a more integrated person, to see your way to a happier resolution.

Let’s look at a few of the predictable stages commonly experienced by those in the process of a breakup.

Denial

Denying the truth of the breakup actually helps us to postpone the pain, so denial certainly has a place in the process, at least initially. A problem occurs when we experience so much denial that we are unable to come to terms with the reality of the task before us. There comes a day when “this is not happening to me” is no longer an effective way of coping. Ending the denial stage involves a major shift in our thinking about ourselves, what our partner means to us, and where we must go from here.

Fear

Most people experiencing a breakup are forced to come to terms with a number of fears. What will people say? Whom can I trust to talk to? How can I handle my partner’s anger toward me? How do I deal with my own anger? Am I a complete failure? How can I be a single parent? What about money? Can I do the banking and buy groceries and pay bills and fix the car? Can I handle my loneliness? Am I completely unlovable? Will I ever love anyone else again? Do I have the energy for this much change? When we are dominated by our fears and feel unable to do anything about them, we increase the likelihood that these will be the very areas where we experience trouble. The best way to handle fear is to confront it head on, with awareness, planning, and support – and this takes courage.

Loneliness

The loneliness a person experiences at the time of a breakup may feel overwhelming. The finality of ending the relationship, uncertainty about the future, as well as the knowledge that your partner will no longer be there to comfort you or to spend time with you, all contribute to an empty feeling that seems as if it will not go away. While you were in the relationship, you defined yourself as being partnered and you felt that you always had someone there to share your experiences. And now you don’t. The clue to dealing with this is to change loneliness to aloneness. Loneliness suggests a longing to be with another person. Aloneness can be a time to see who you are – you have the opportunity to explore your independence and challenge yourself to do things on your own. It can be a valuable time of self-exploration and self-enhancement. Aloneness might not last long, or at least not long enough, so it can be seen as a valuable opportunity.

Friendship

The breakup is a true test of just who your real friends are. It is important to draw on the emotional support of friends during this time. Unfortunately, many of your friends were those who knew you as a couple and they may have to choose between you. Those who try to stay neutral may find it difficult. Some may feel that your breakup somehow threatens their own relationships, and some friends may now find it difficult to relate to you as a single person. Not only that, but you may find it difficult to trust others during a breakup. Getting out, feeling free, trusting wisely, and opening up to others becomes a major goal of healthy adjustment.

Grieving

It is normal, and indeed necessary, to experience a period of grieving over the end of the relationship. You may feel depressed for some time and experience changes in your energy levels, as well as your sleeping and appetite patterns. You may dwell on negative thoughts for a period of time and find it difficult to find pleasure in everyday events. If your negative thinking turns into self-destructive thoughts, you should find a professional therapist who can help you. As unpleasant as this period of grieving may feel, comfort yourself with the knowledge that this is most likely a temporary phase and it is how you are saying goodbye so that you can move on to a healthier and happier future.

Anger

People ending their relationships usually say that they never knew they could have so much anger. The rage seems overwhelming at times. Think about it – you have just lost one of the most important things in your life and your partner may seem like your enemy. You have a lot to be angry about. Use this opportunity to look within – explore your anger and find out how it helps and hurts you. One rule: don’t engage in any behavior you will feel sorry about later on! Because it may be difficult to contain your anger at this time, your partner is not the appropriate target for your anger. Instead, process your anger by talking about it with a trusted friend or therapist. Anger is helpful in the sense that it helps us end the loyalty and trust we used to feel for our partner, and this allows us to move on.

Think of the ending of your relationship as a journey, which you take one step at a time. Some of these steps are challenging. Not only do we have to confront all of the stages listed above, but we must also deal with making the final break emotionally, understand what really went wrong, learn to feel comfortable with ourselves again, see ourselves as single people, make new friends, forge new purposes and goals, and learn again about trust and love. As painful as this journey may seem at first, it can lead to a life which is better – and it can be much better.

 
How Long Do I Wait Until I Get Into Another Relationship?

Expect that it will take at least a year before things begin to feel at all normal again. For most of us, depending on the length and the nature of our previous relationship, it will take two or three years. This may seem like an eternity, but in reality this is a wonderful and precious opportunity to find out who you are as an unattached individual. A word of warning is in order – don’t expect to involve yourself with someone else immediately! You are on the rebound. To attach yourself prematurely in a love relationship is unfair to you and to the other person. You must deal with important personal issues when your previous love relationship comes to an end. Living through the transition and exploring these issues can be painful – and falling in love again may seem like the perfect way to end the pain. But if you attach yourself again too quickly, before you have a chance to explore the issues which led to your breakup and to start to feel comfortable again as a single and independent individual, the other person becomes a replacement object, and that is not what a healthy relationship is about. You will probably carry into this replacement relationship the same issues that helped to lead to the demise of your former relationship – and similar events may very well happen again.

Your real goal is to discover who you are and to explore what happened. When you are at the point of being able to have a happy and fulfilled life as a single person, then you can choose when, or even if, you should involve yourself in another love relationship. When you know that you have that choice, you may be ready.

The Other Partner Colludes

OK, what happens when one person is projecting onto their partner and their partner buys into it, even though it isn’t their “stuff”? Well, that’s part of the dance of projection and is just as automatic and unconscious as projecting.

For example, Mary’s father deserted her and her mother when she was eight years old and Mary still has unresolved hurt and anger about being abandoned. She decided at a very deep level that men are not trustworthy.

She is in a relationship with Jerry who has unresolved guilty feelings about hurting the women he loves because his mother used to blame him and his father for her unhappiness.

When Jerry wants to spend a weekend away from Mary with some of his friends, her abandonment feelings get triggered. Unconsciously, she projects them onto Jerry, accusing him of being untrustworthy because he wants to do something without her. Her interpretation, from her unresolved pain, is that Jerry doesn’t love her and is about to leave her.

Jerry’s collusion with her projection occurs when his guilt gets triggered. He doubts himself and believes he is responsible for Mary’s pain. He is unable to see that she is projecting and that he is colluding by “dancing” with her to this tune.

The important thing to understand here is that this is all going on unconsciously. Neither Mary nor Jerry knows what is really going on. To them, all these feelings appear to be occurring in present time, when in fact, what they are feeling are old feelings grounded in decisions they made a very long time ago. They are just being played out again in new circumstances in which they seem new.

The Tendency of Denial

The unresolved issues within you that you cannot confront tend to rob you of the ability to see yourself clearly. If Jerry did not feel guilty and believe that he was responsible for Mary’s (his mother’s or any woman’s) happiness, he would be able to confidently and lovingly reassure Mary that his spending the weekend with his friends did not mean he did not love her or that he was about to leave her. He could act guiltlessly and lovingly, rather than react out of his own unresolved guilt and pain.

Everyone projects to a greater or lesser degree. You will interpret other peoples’ behavior to be that to which you are accustomed, whether it is or not. Your beliefs and expectations determine your perception. You will think others are judging you for what you judge yourself for. You believe it, then you see it – not the other way around.

In order to have successful, enlightened partnerships it is very important to recognize when you are projecting. The easiest way to know if you are projecting is if you are judging! Judgment is thinking that someone is “bad” or undeserving of love or caring. Judgment is perception without compassion. The thing about judging others is that it protects you from your judgments about yourself. So, you will think others are unloving if you feel unlovable – or – you will think others are untrustworthy if you don’t trust yourself.

The more your past is unresolved the more you tend to project. Your unresolved past will cause you to act in defensive ways. And defense is perceived as attack by others! If you are judging another you are only trying to protect yourself from you own guilt or limiting thoughts. Judgment is a form of attack. Whenever you judge or attack another, the result will be a feeling of guilt whether you are aware of it or not.

Judgment reinforces personal guilt, which calls for more projection in the form of judgment, which calls for more guilt – and round and round you go!

The Power of Forgiveness

There are three ways to release yourself from this vicious cycle of guilt, projection, judgment and attack. 1. Forgive yourself 2. Forgive others 3. Neutralize your judgments.

Forgiveness is the fastest and most effective way of experiencing your “essential self” and that of others. Forgiveness is the natural result of healing unresolved hurts. When the hurt is healed, forgiveness happens spontaneously, revealing the unconditional love of your “essential self”. Forgiveness is giving up the claim to punishment.

Another important and usually overlooked step in forgiveness is to neutralize your judgments. So, what does that mean and how do you do it? You neutralize your judgments by realizing they don’t mean anything! Acknowledging that your judgments don’t mean anything helps to release you from the vicious circle of judgment. Rather than judge yourself for having judgments, you simply notice – “Oh, there goes another meaningless judgment!” Watch the judgment pass across the horizon of your awareness and let it go.

Sometimes we want to hold onto our judgments because the “conditioned mind” or “local self” or negative ego thinks it is only through judgment that you can be safe. After all, you have to be able to tell the good guys from the bad guys, right? Be sure not to confuse discernment with judgment. The truth is that some people are not trustworthy; they do lie and can be generally unpleasant to deal with. Judgment happens when you are in denial of a part of you that causes your perception to be distorted.

How to Tell If You Are in Denial

1. You will interpret other’s behavior to be that to which you are accustomed, whether it is or not.
2. Having a superior attitude.
3. Having judgments of others.
4. Seeing a need for punishment – feeling justified and even righteous in inflicting harm (psychologically, emotionally, verbally, physically) against another.
5. Defensiveness when someone reflects that you may be in denial (reaction rather than curiosity).
6. Your unresolved fears from the past appear to be happening again, even when they aren’t. Others can usually see this better than you can.
7. You never experience being willing to look at parts of yourself that are difficult to look at.

Enlightened partnerships recognize that projection is a part of human psychology at this point in our evolution. We all do it and we are likely to keep doing it for the foreseeable future. So, being in an enlightened partnership is not about never projecting. It is about being mindful and self-reflective enough to recognizing when you are doing it.

The more you can observe yourself and accept yourself without judgment, the more you are able to relate from your “essential self” and with the “essential self” of others. Enlightened partners recognize that judgment of others is an opportunity for self-reflection and personal growth.

Enlightened partners recognize that whenever they remove judgment from their perception of themselves they lift and expand their consciousness. They know that to see themselves impeccably is to observe, without judgment, the thoughts and feelings that inspired their actions – and they know in their heart that they have always done the best they could with the resources available to them.

Enlightened partners know that a compassionate perception of self determines a compassionate perception of others.

An enlightened partnership is an intentional creative relationship that fosters the development and evolution of each partner and is dedicated to a soulful wisdom, compassion and trust. Enlightened partners are motivated by an inner vision and passion for a high level of cooperation and creativity.

Committing to enlightened partnerships is not for everyone. There is a difference between simply having great relationships and having enlightened partnerships. The crux of that difference lies in intention and aspiration. The intention of an enlightened partnership is to use the relationship consciously for spiritual growth, to heal unresolved issues from the past and to become fully awake. That is, after all, the meaning of enlightenment — to be fully awake to reality, free of the illusions that invisibly bind us to unhealthy ways of relating.

Enlightened partners aspire to a clear minded, open-hearted state of creative, passionate engagement. And if you can do that in your most important relationships — you know, the ones that tend to trigger you the most — you’ll be evolving very quickly!

Relationships are seldom as simple as we would like. They bring out our needs, anxieties and conflicts with people from our past — our parents, friends and former partners.

Our relationships with our partners are colored by our own personal legacies. We often react to our partners as if they were someone else — and most of the time this causes conflict in the relationship. After all, when we entered into a primary relationship we expected love, nurturance and validation just for being who we are. A relationship, we usually imagine, should provide a safe zone where our partners cherish us for expressing our unique qualities. This is a simple expectation. Why, then, does it seem so hard to achieve?

How we perceive our partners is influenced by how we learned to deal with other people in the past. This process can go back into early childhood, even to infancy. Indeed, our earliest primary attachment to a caretaker — a mother, a father, or another adult — can have an effect on how we deal with other people for the rest of our lives. For example, if our earliest experiences taught us to trust in the world, then we are likely, barring any other event that leads to distrust, to take a trusting attitude toward people throughout our lives. Conversely, if a child is never shown love during the earliest stages of life, it may be a challenge during adulthood to learn how to experience love. Early experiences from childhood can have a powerful effect later on. (This is a strong argument for treating children well.)

Children experience both good and bad in the world. Plenty of good experiences, like love and trust, feel comfortable and produce a positive self-image in children — a positive way of defining themselves. The bad experiences, though, create feelings of conflict and frustration. These negative experiences also go into the self-definition that the child is developing. But they don’t feel compatible with the more positive feelings, so, according to one theory, the child projects them onto somebody else. (Projection means finding in someone else the qualities that you don’t want to accept within yourself — like blaming your partner for being controlling when you are the one who has the tendency to want to control.)

Projections

It is not only early childhood experiences that cause us to project our unacceptable feelings onto someone else. Friends can have the same effect, as can partners from our previous relationships. This is a process that happens throughout our lives. How many times have we heard someone say, “Treat me for who I am — I am not your former partner”?

The major point to keep in mind is that we project our own problematic feelings onto another person. For example, if we have an issue with the feeling of jealousy, we will project our own jealousy onto someone else, and perceive them as being the jealous one! This is because we can’t tolerate seeing ourselves as having a problem with jealousy — and it’s easier to attribute it to someone else. In other words, we feel unable to correct the problem in ourselves, so we focus on this issue in the other person. The way out of this, of course, is to become aware of this projection and understand how it affects us.

When couples experience conflict in their relationship, projections are often at the root of the problem. If we are living with our own conflicts and are unable to make any headway in understanding them, it’s as if we look for the problem in the other person. In fact, at a certain level, we may actually seek out partners who have the qualities that we find problematic within ourselves. If we have difficulty in asserting ourselves, for example, and we get frustrated and angry with other people for running over us, we may see out partners who do just that — people who dominate us. Just as often, though, our partners may not see themselves as domineering, but because we need to work out our own problems with the issues of dominance and submission, we will search for these qualities in the other person. We take any cue we can from our partner and magnify it. Then we’re able to project our own problem onto the other person, saying it is their fault. By blaming the other person, we protect ourselves from having to come to terms with our own issues. We can safely continue our submissive pattern and blame the other person for having the problem.

In an enlightened partnership, when projections are causing relationship conflicts, it is preferable to increase our awareness of our own internal conflicts and how we project these conflicts onto our partners. We can look for examples of our projections in other life situations until we see a pattern. When we have awareness of the problem, we can understand the many ways it influences our behavior — and this can give us some control over the problem. We can then try out new ways of dealing with people. For example, when a person experiences frustration time and again from feeling dominated by others, learning some assertiveness techniques can help them alleviate the problem.

Most of the time we don’t recognize our own projections unless we have an intention to discover them or someone points them out to us. The process of “sorting them all out” almost always involves communication; sometimes with the person we are projecting on and sometimes with a trusted advisor or close friend. There is a process of getting a “reality check” because our projections always “feel” true to us.

This communication can only occur in a safe emotional climate where honesty about thoughts, feelings and impressions is brought forth. Whenever we discover our projections we reclaim a piece of our personal power and we are that much closer to the enlightenment that comes from deep self-awareness.

NOTE: It is important to understand that projections are not at the root of every problem that couples experience. Sometimes the other person does indeed have a real problem that can lead to an abusive situation. In this case, it is not advisable to try to understand it as projection, but to see it for what it truly is and to take appropriate measures to change the situation.

Next month in Turning Great Relationships Into Enlightened Partnerships – Part Two, we will talk about what happens when the other partner colludes in the projections. We’ll also have an example of a couple involved in projection so you can see more clearly what we are talking about here. Plus, we’ll offer you some important questions so you can assess your own relationships.

Too many of us are using enormous amounts of energy protecting ourselves from the truth. It seems “easier” in the short term to live with half-truths or even self-created fantasies designed to protect us from unpleasant feelings. But in the long run, it simply doesn’t work.

Sooner or later reality catches up with us and we have to deal with it anyway. The longer it takes the more costly it is. The good news is that dealing with the truth makes us stronger.

In our private coaching practice we help people with all phases of partnership, from creation to completion. As we look back at the thousands of couples we have helped navigate the turbulent emotional waters of divorce, there is one glaring similarity in 90% of the cases. If they had talked openly, honestly and responsibly about their problems when they first began, they wouldn’t be getting a divorce.

How much better off would they be if they had chosen to deal with their problems head-on rather than avoiding the feelings of temporary discomfort that can come from difficult conversations. It cost them more in the long run to avoid confronting the truth than to deal with it. Sobering but true.

The question is – how often do you avoid dealing with the truth because you are afraid it will be uncomfortable? Do you find yourself avoiding difficult conversations because you think that by waiting the problem will somehow disappear?

Is it better to avoid looking at the fact that you are losing money doing the business you love? Or is it more prudent to run appropriate financial projections so you can avert disaster down the road?

Is it better to be honest with yourself that certain life-style choices are costing you your health, or just wait for the suffering and the medical bills to show up?

Is it easier to keep struggling with your bills every month, or to look at the part of you that seems determined to live beyond your means?

Is it better to keep struggling with a relationship, that when you look at it, hasn’t been fulfilling since the first few months you were together, and that was 12 years ago?! Or is it wiser to take a deep breath and a long look at why it’s so easy for you to settle for less than you want?

Is it better to walk on eggshells with the people you care most about because you’re afraid to hear what you already know to be true? Or is it less stressful to simply deal with it? Initiate a heart-to-heart talk and make choices based on the reality of the situation rather than what you wished was true.

Is it worth the risk to tell the emperor he has no clothes, or wait for him to find out some other way, then have him feel hurt or betrayed because you didn’t have the guts to simply tell him?

From time to time it is important to take stock of what we are trying to avoid. The pure and simple truth is that denial, personal or group denial, is very costly. It costs us our self-respect and our personal power. Denial drains our energy like water through a sieve. It also costs us time. We waste so much of our life when we bury our head in the proverbial sand.

Sometimes, when we come out of denial, we feel regret for all the lost moments. Like when a solution presented itself and we didn’t notice because we were too busy fooling ourselves that we “didn’t have a problem”. Some people lose their whole life doing that.

One of the most difficult things for human beings is to perceive “what is”. Reality is often obscured by our own beliefs, biases, fears, prejudices and limitations.

To be enlightened is to be awake. Awake enough to discern the false from the true, especially within our own psyche. Most of us need to develop our capacity to observe ourselves without self-invalidation so we can begin to see the deeper reasons for the choices we make and the actions we take.

So, what is there for you to do? Begin a rigorous exploration of your own heart and mind. Go into the deep stillness of your meditation and ask, “What am avoiding?” or “What am I in denial about?” Then wait for the answer. You may have to ask it more than once. The next step is to ask, “What can I do to deal with it more appropriately?” Write your answers down and keep them in a place where you can see them frequently throughout the day. Then take one step at a time.

You’ll notice that as you start taking the steps you’ll begin to feel stronger, your mind will feel more focused, you’ll have more energy. Even though you may decide to do some things that are temporarily uncomfortable, sooner than later, you’ll feel the strength that comes from integrity. The integrity to be true to yourself by looking at what is really going on in your life.

You’ll feel more alive, more alert, more at peace. You’ll find yourself in a rarified sphere of being AWAKE. The air is sweeter here than any you have ever breathed and you’ll feel that whatever it took you to get here, was worth it.

The manipulator’s tactics

Manipulation in a relationship usually progresses over a long period of time. Manipulators learn over time how far they can go. They are unlikely to attempt to manipulate the other person at the beginning of a relationship since this could bring things to an immediate end. They observe the other person’s vulnerabilities and learn eventually how to exploit them for their own purposes.

There are two basic tactics that are used to exert control, and they usually go hand in hand. The first is a promise of gain. That is, the manipulator will promise to provide something if the partner goes along with what the manipulator wants. “I promise – no arguments for a week if you’ll end your friendship with Pat.” The other tactic is the promise of avoiding loss.

In this case, the manipulator threatens the partner with the loss of something if the partner does not go along with the manipulator’s desires. “I’m going to stay out with my friends late every night unless this house is cleaned spic and span by the time I get home.” (Of course, these two examples are obvious manipulation attempts. Most manipulators use more subtle methods than we see in these examples.)

Manipulators need to be in control

Manipulative people have a strong need to be in control. This may derive from underlying feelings of insecurity on their part, although they often compensate for these feelings with a show of strong self-confidence. Even though they may deny it, their motives are self-serving, and they pursue their aims regardless of the cost to other people.

They have a strong need to feel superior and powerful in their relationships – and they find people who will validate these feelings by going along with their attempts at manipulation. They see power as finite. If you exert power over them, they will retaliate in order to gain back the control they feel they are losing. They cannot understand the idea that everyone can feel empowered or that everyone can gain. When they are not in control – of themselves and over other people – they feel threatened. They have difficulty in showing vulnerable emotions because it might suggest they are not in control.

Manipulators don’t always plan their moves

Those who are manipulative usually don’t consciously plan their maneuvers. They emerge from the manipulator’s underlying personality disorder, and are played out within the context of a victim who colludes with, and unwittingly encourages, the manipulation. There is a wide range of tactics used by manipulators ranging from verbal threats to subtle attempts to arrange situations to suit the manipulator.

For example, one of the more common forms of manipulation is called splitting – turning two people against each other by talking to each one behind the back of the other, getting them to dislike or distrust each other, and leaving the manipulator in a position of control. They may use active techniques like becoming angry, lying, intimidating, shouting, name-calling or other bullying tactics. Or they may use more passive methods like pouting, sulking, ignoring you, or giving you the silent treatment.

Some ground rules for dealing with manipulation

• Focus on changing yourself, not the manipulator. It is not helpful to try to outmanipulate a skillful manipulator – you are simply making yourself vulnerable to further manipulation. You will not change a manipulator by focusing on his or her imperfections and trying to work toward their achieving insight. You may think that it would be helpful to share with the manipulator how you feel and how his or her behavior has an impact on you – but this is generally not helpful since most manipulators are not capable of empathy and may use this information against you in the future. The only effective method of changing manipulative behavior is to disable it by making a change within yourself, thereby changing the dynamics of the manipulative relationship. If you cease to cooperate with the manipulative tactics, you will alter the nature of the relationship. If manipulators have to work hard to maintain control in the relationship, they usually give up – often by leaving the relationship and finding someone else to control.

• Assess the worth of this relationship to you. Depending on the severity of the manipulation and the damage it has done to your sense of happiness and integrity, you may need to consider whether it is worth it to continue the relationship. Of course, there are many situations (parent/child, for example) when you must stay in the relationship, so it is helpful at least to achieve some clarity about what you want in your life and assess how the relationship has the potential to lead you toward your personal goals.

• Use assertiveness techniques to change the nature of the relationship. You might be so accustomed to complying with the manipulator’s tactics that you automatically do his or her bidding without thinking about it. First, you need to stop your automatic compliance. You do this by buying time to think about each situation as it arises. “I’ll get back to you on that when I have the time to think about it.” At this point you are now in control of the situation. It is not helpful to let the manipulator ask you why you need time since this invites your loss of control. Simply repeat the same thing over and over again without explanation. “I need more time to think about it.” Next, you need to confront the fear, anxiety or guilt that has driven you to comply in the past with the manipulator’s demands.

This requires a deep look within that may be achieved by working with a relationship coach or therapist. Exploring your own personal feelings, why you react as you do, and how to use alternate responses may be a challenge, but the benefits are far-reaching – and they may save your relationship, or at least prepare you for healthier relationships in the future.

See manipulation for what it is

Finally, you might label the manipulation for what it is. “When you threaten to leave me I feel afraid. If you would simply state your wishes and show me respect, I would be more able to listen to what you want.” In a calm voice and with direct eye contact, it may be time to announce that the old manipulations have come to an end. “We both understand that you have a pattern of playing on my fears, and now you know how I feel about that. Your way of threatening me is not going to work any longer.”

In making these types of assertive statements, you are defining your boundaries. There is no need to make threats. Simply state that you will no longer participate in their manipulations. Make it clear that by setting limits and enhancing your own personal integrity, you expect a better relationship in the future. Learning to assert yourself in the face of a manipulative individual who feels threatened when not in control is a challenge, and doing this with the help of a relationship coach or therapist is recommended.

Quiz – Are You in a Manipulative Relationship?

Answer the following questions with a T (for true) or an F (for false).

____ I sometimes feel confused about what my partner really wants.

____ I feel that my partner frequently takes advantage of my giving nature.

____ Even when I do something that pleases my partner, the positive feelings   never last long.

____ With my partner I feel that it’s hard just to be myself or do what I really want.

____ Around my partner, I feel taken for granted.

____ I seem to work harder on this relationship than my partner does.

____ My partner has a very strong impact on what I think and feel.

____ I sometimes feel that I am trapped in my relationship and there is no way out.

____ I don’t feel as good about myself in my relationship as I once did.

____ I feel that I need my partner more than my partner needs me.

____ No matter how much I have done, I feel that it’s not good enough for my partner.

____ I feel that my partner does not understand who I really am.

There are twelve questions in this quiz. If you answered more than half of them with a T, you might want to consider exploring whether you are in a manipulative relationship.



We are all vulnerable to manipulation

We are all vulnerable to being manipulated in relationships, whether between romantic partners, friends, parents, children, employers, coworkers, or neighbors. When we allow another person to manipulate us, we are colluding with their desire to control our feelings, motives, and even our thoughts through deceptive, exploitative, and unfair means.

A manipulative relationship is one-sided and unbalanced, advancing the goals of the manipulator at the expense of the person being manipulated. These relationships become troubled over time. If you want to change this kind of relationship, you must first recognize the features of manipulation and then look within to understand your contribution to the manipulation. There are effective ways to stand up to manipulation and bring balance back into the relationship.

Manipulation is not the same as influence

Manipulation is not the same as influence. We all use influence with other people to advance our goals, and this is one of the hallmarks of healthy social functioning. Influence recognizes the rights and boundaries of other people, and it is based on direct, honest communication. Influence is one way we have of functioning effectively in the world. Influence recognizes the integrity of the other person, including the right not to go along with the attempted persuasion.

Manipulation, on the other hand, depends on covert agendas and an attempt to coerce another person into giving in. Even though it may appear that the manipulator is strong and in control, there is usually insecurity under the facade. The tendency to exploit others and disregard their rights is a sign of unhealthy personality functioning. In fact, people who manipulate others have difficulty in maintaining good interpersonal relationships.

Are you easy to control?

Those who manipulate other people are good at spotting people to control. If they feel unable to manipulate someone, they usually give up and move on to somebody else who is more likely to be receptive to the attempted manipulation.

Once you recognize the features of the manipulation, the next step in correcting the situation is to discover your own contribution to the problem. (This statement may seem a bit difficult to accept. After all, it’s the manipulator who has the problem, you might say. But realize that manipulation cannot occur in a vacuum. As is true of any relationship, it takes two people.) You can come to understand your contribution to the manipulative situation and then take steps to correct it.

Do you see yourself here?

Here are some common traits of those who are vulnerable to manipulators:

• You feel useful and loved only when you can take care of the needs of other people. This goes beyond being nice to other people. Your sense of worth is tied up in doing things for other people. In fact, you take this so far that you please other people at the expense of your own well-being. For example, you might buy something especially nice for your partner or a friend when you would never spend that kind of money on yourself. Manipulators are drawn to this type of person and have no qualms about taking advantage of this particular personality trait.

• You need to have the approval and acceptance of other people. Although most people appreciate being accepted, a problem occurs when you feel that you must be accepted by everyone at all times. The core problem here is the fear of being rejected or abandoned – and it is so strong that you would do anything to avoid the feelings associated with this fear. The manipulator works by giving you the acceptance that you need – and then threatening to withdraw it.

• You fear expressing negative emotions. Although expressing anger and engaging in a conflict are never pleasant, some people will go to any length to avoid a confrontation. They want things to be pleasant at all times. They fear that they will fall apart in the face of negative emotions. Manipulators have an easy task in this kind of relationship – all they have to do is to threaten to raise their voice, and then they get their way.

• You are unable to say no. One of the characteristics of a healthy relationship is appropriate boundaries that clarify who you are and what you stand for. In order to maintain healthy boundaries, however, you must sometimes say no when someone attempts to push your limits. If you are afraid of the conflict that may arise when you say no, you play into the hands of the manipulator. Learning effective assertiveness techniques is a way to regain your sense of control in a manipulative relationship.

• You lack a firm sense of your own self. A clear sense of self means that you know what your values are, who you are, what you stand for, and where you begin and the other person ends. If you have an unclear sense of self, it is difficult to trust your own judgment or to make decisions that work in your favor. Without a clear definition of your self, you may be an easy target for a manipulator.

If you are in a manipulative relationship, it is helpful to recognize the personal tendencies that allow the other person to assert control over you. You can come to understand and explore these safely with the support of a professionally trained relationship coach or therapist.

While you may not be able to change the behavior of the manipulator, you can change your own responses to attempts at manipulation so that you achieve a firmer sense of your own integrity. The unhappiness resulting from a manipulative relationship can lead to life-changing experiences that generate insight and the ability to cope more effectively with the demands of everyday living.

Listening is a skill most of us never learned as a school subject. We assume that listening is something that comes naturally. Too often we listen for what we need to hear rather than to what the other person truly intends to say. Our inability to listen is often at the root of our interpersonal conflicts. Good relationships are characterized by good listening skills on the part of both partners. When we listen well to someone we not only show that person respect and care, but we show that we are open to the world around us.

Obstacles to Good Listening

Real listening is a skill that takes practice and an honest look into how you deal with the world. If you tend to take a distrustful or combative stance toward other people most of the time, it may be hard to engage in healthy and open listening.

The same holds true if you need to please others or form dependent relationships with other people much of the time – it becomes hard to truly hear what they are trying to say…and you will hear only what you need to hear.

Take a look at some of the common obstacles to active listening that typically interfere with healthy communication. Learn to recognize them when they are happening. And remember that obstacles can usually be removed.

Being Judgmental: When you have already made a negative judgment about someone, you will stop listening openly to what they have to say. You may listen only to gather evidence that supports your negative opinion of the other person. Unfortunately, if you are not able to listen to the totality of what the person is saying, you will stay locked into your negative opinion.

Rehearsing: Your mind actively creates your argument against the speaker’s point of view as it is being presented. This implies that you have your own established opinions and that you are closed to what the other has to say.

Filtering: You will hear some things that the other person talks about, but not everything. There may be some topics, like the speaker’s anger toward you, which you simply block out because you aren’t as ready to deal with them as the other person might be. Filtering may be helpful when it is used to lessen the impact of bringing up an avoided topic, but continuing it for long usually means that it is best to examine the meaning behind your need to shut out some of the information.

Advising: Sometimes people just need to be heard. We don’t have to fix every problem the other person talks about. Giving advice instead of just listening may make us feel needed, or it may be a way of distancing ourselves from hearing the other’s true feelings. To tell someone else how they should feel or behave can be a way of belittling them or telling them that they are not to be trusted. Unless advice is asked for, it may be best not to give it.

Mind Reading: You may disregard what your partner is saying and try to figure out what he or she is really trying to say. You are acting like an expert on your partner’s feelings, but this deprives your partner of the ability to communicate freely and with candor – and for you to understand your partner’s stated point of view.

Pleasing: You are so concerned about being nice, keeping the peace, and placating that you’ll jump in to agree just to keep everything happy and smooth. It may be helpful to look into why you feel compelled to do this and what it might mean for your relationship. Again, the desire to please prevents you from hearing what your partner really needs to say.

Deflecting: Whenever a certain topic is brought up that you feel uncomfortable with, you redirect the conversation to something else. You’ll tell a joke or change the subject, even if the topic is of genuine concern to your partner.

A Listening Exercise for Couples

Reciprocal listening is a powerful tool for couples who need to improve their communication. Couples who try this may become aware of how limited their communication has been in the past. They also learn an effective technique, which can increase the respect, trust, and intimacy of their relationship. This exercise may seem structured and perhaps contrived at first, but stay with it. The rewards can be immense.

The couple decides on a minor disagreement that they need to talk about. Each partner takes turns being either the speaker or the listener. The speaker has five minutes to speak without interruption. As the speaker, talk about the problem as you see it. Present your argument briefly and stick to the point. Be sure to use “I statements” to present your views and don’t place the blame on your partner (that is, just talk about how you feel about the conflict without putting your partner in a defensive position).

After five minutes your partner (the listener) will verbally summarize what he or she has heard. This allows the speaker to let the listener know if anything has been left out or if it has been misinterpreted. Keep going until the speaker feels that the point has been completely heard.

As the listener, pay close attention to what is being said and try to attune yourself to your partner’s needs. When you summarize what your partner has said, make sure you don’t disagree, argue, or criticize. Just repeat what you have heard.

Now switch positions. The speaker becomes the listener and the listener, the speaker. Follow the same procedures until the new speaker feels satisfied that his or her position has been understood. It is important to avoid letting this exercise turn into an argument. Because this is such a powerful way of learning to listen and to communicate better, many people prefer to try it with a therapist present, at least for the first few attempts.

Heart to Heart Talks

You can take this exercise even deeper by using Heart to Heart Talks in which the listener, rather than paraphrasing back what they heard the speaker say, simply responds with a neutral comment, such as “Thank you” or “I understand”, or if they didn’t understand, says “I didn’t understand that, can you please say it in another way?”

There are four kinds of Heart to Heart Talks; Discovery, Clearing, Nurturing and Affirming. Heart to Heart Talks begin with the speaker using a lead in phrase or sentence fragment, such as “Something that’s important to me in relationships is . . .”, and completing the sentence with whatever comes to mind. The speaker continues for a couple of minutes with the listener simply responding as indicated above. Then they switch and the new speaker uses the same lead in phrase.

Unlike reciprocal listening, Heart to Heart Talks teaches the listener how to listen with a quiet mind. The listener is really tuned into the speaker, listening to what they are really saying, rather than listening to the voice in the listener’s head.

Heart to Heart Talks are one of the most powerful tools available for learning how to listen deeply without distraction. This kind of listening has a profound effect on the speaker who may have the experience of truly being heard for the very first time.

Listen to the Children

Children need to be heard. Listening to children gives them the feeling that they count, that they matter. They can draw on the strength and experience of an adult whom they trust – and they trust those who give them stable and consistent attention. It is during childhood that they develop a level of self-esteem that may follow them throughout their lives, and the child who has been listened to is much more likely to develop a positive self-image than one who has not been heard.

One of the best gifts an adult can provide a child is showing the child how to use active listening skills. Adults can model good listening techniques for children and advise them on ways to listen better by picking out the highlights of a conversation and asking relevant questions.

Use the following listening techniques in dealing with the special needs of children:

Pay special attention as they talk. Maintain good eye contact and forget about the telephone and television. Children can tell by the adult’s reply whether or not they have the adult’s attention.

Know when to, and when not to, use active listening. Use active listening when you are free enough of your own problems to show the empathy and acceptance a child needs. Use it when you are in the mood and have the time. Listening should not be a way to change the child’s behavior. Pay attention to the child’s mood too, and make sure the time is right for the child to talk. Sometimes a child just wants to play or to be left alone.

Listen with patience. A child has a more limited vocabulary and often takes longer to express ideas. Listen as if you had plenty of time. We may feel that we know better and cut the child off – but it is far more beneficial to let the child express a thought freely at his or her own pace.

Children sometimes need encouragement to talk. Children haven’t had much experience in the art of conversation, so we sometimes have to ask questions. When a child feels an adult is attentive, the child will be more willing to open up.

Listen to the child’s nonverbal messages. Children communicate not only through words, but also through their body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, energy levels, or changes in behavior. Pay attention to these cues and respond in the way that is best for the child.

It only takes a little practice with listening using the tools mentioned here to improve your listening skills, and thus your overall communication skills, to become a truly accomplished communicator.

Last week we learned about the five different kinds of beliefs (Basic, Personal, Authority, Derived and Inconsequential) and which ones can be changed (Personal, Authority, Derived). We were also introduced to Terri, who has just been let down by a man, one more time. And we saw the beliefs Terri has that were triggered by this most recent betrayal.

Now, let’s get down to it and see how to change those undesirable beliefs!

In Terri’s situation, in which she felt betrayed and was lied to by her fiancé, we asked this question: “What kind of beliefs would Terri have to have to create the experience of betrayal and being lied to?” We mentioned two possibilities; I can’t find a man who will love me the way I want and men are untrustworthy liars. It’s also possible that Terri has a belief that she is not lovable and/or does not deserve a lasting, loving relationship. Or that love doesn’t last. Or the men she loves don’t love her.

Terri can begin to change these beliefs in two ways. One is with the use of affirmations and the other is with “choice statements”.

Affirmations are positive thoughts that you intentionally insert into your consciousness (especially your subconscious mind) to produce a desired state or experience in your personal reality. Affirmations can be very effective and powerful when applied properly. So, what is the proper application of affirmations?

The way the old beliefs became implanted in your consciousness was through repetition, i.e., hearing your family and cultural beliefs repeated over and over again, sinking into your subconscious mind until they became a part of you. That’s why these beliefs take on the appearance of “that’s just the way it is”, without questioning. Until, like Terri, you begin to wake up to the subconscious programming that is determining your experience in life and relationships and decide to do something about it.

There is an art to inventing affirmations. Basically, you want to craft a statement that is roughly the opposite of the undesirable experience and reflects the desired experience.

Let’s take Terri’s beliefs, “I can’t find a man who will love me the way I want” and “Men are untrustworthy liars” as an example. If Terri wants to have an experience of being loved the way she wants by a man who is honest and trustworthy, it might sound something like this. “I, Terri, am now attracting into my life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates me just the way I am.”

Now, this will seem like a lie to the part of her mind that is convinced that not only are there no men in existence like that, but if there were, she couldn’t find them! The project of working with affirmations is to convince your subconscious mind of the truth of your affirmation until it is accepted. The way you know your affirmations are effective is that you begin to see evidence in your experience.

There are two powerful ways of applying affirmations to transform your beliefs at the deepest level. One is with writing and the other is verbally with a partner. Here’s how they work.

When writing affirmations, you want to be sure to work in all three persons, like this:

1. “I, Terri, am now attracting into my life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates me just the way I am.”
2. “You, Terri, are now attracting into your life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates you just the way you are.”
3. “Terri is now attracting into her life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates her just the way she is.”

Number one is the first person, number two is the second person and number three is the third person. Second person affirmations are very powerful because that is how we received much of our programming when we were young. The third person is as if you are overhearing others talk about you.

It is recommended that you write your affirmations three to five times in each person at least once a day.

Working verbally with a partner is very powerful and is a great way to encourage and support one another in your goals and dreams. It works like this. Select an affirmation and say it with feeling to your partner. Your partner will enthusiastically agree with you, then repeat.

After a few rounds in which your partner agrees with you, your partner will then repeat your affirmation back to you, and you agree with them, then repeat your affirmation to them. This process is described in our book, Straight From the Heart, and includes lots of examples of affirmations for relationships.

Now, sometimes the difference between your current reality and the state of being you are affirming is just too great and seems impossible to achieve. When this is the case, you may feel inner resistance to the affirmation, which is counterproductive. That’s when you want to use the “Choices Method”. (The Choices Method was developed by our friend and colleague, Dr. Patricia Carrington, as an advanced form of Emotional Freedom Techniques – EFT. You may learn more about EFT in our online multimedia EFT Training Program – http://www.efttrainingonline.com/)

Here’s the difference between traditional affirmations and Choice Statements. Notice how it feels to say each one aloud.

• “I am wise and discerning.”
• “I choose to be wise and discerning.”
• “I am attractive.
• “I choose to acknowledge my attractive qualities.”
• “I feel peaceful.”
• “I choose to feel peaceful.”
• “I am wealthy and prosperous.”
• “I chose to take steps to become wealthy and prosperous. I am determined.”

For Terri’s affirmation, the Choices Method might sound like this, “I, Terri, now choose to attract into my life an honest, trustworthy man who loves and appreciates me just the way I am.”

You can work with Choice Statements exactly the same way you work with traditional affirmations. You may find working with Choice Statements to be more convincing and more readily accepted by both your conscious and subconscious mind.

Affirmations and Choice Statements are like a grappling hook thrown into the future you desire. You use them to pull what you want to you and you to it.

Working with your beliefs to transform your experience is working at the causal level. Trying to improve your life and relationships any other way is like trying to reach into the mirror to adjust your clothing.

“Men!”, Terri exclaimed, her eyes red and swollen from crying. “I’m so tired of having my heart broken. Why can’t I just find a man who’ll love me the way I want him to?”, she asked no one in particular. “What’s wrong with me?”, she cried.

She just learned that her fiancé was still seeing his former girlfriend and had been lying to her. And this was just one more in a long string of betrayals for Terri. She just didn’t know if she could take another one, but here it was. This could mean the end of her engagement if they didn’t get this sorted out. But, she felt so hopeless – and wasn’t even sure she wanted to sort it out.

Reading this, it is easy to feel that Terri has been “done to” one more time. Yet, sympathizing with her about how bad men are does not empower her to see her part in creating her circumstances. And, more importantly, changing them.

The best way for Terri to reclaim her power and dignity in this situation – and that is to look at the beliefs within her that helped to create this painful event. Your rerlationships reflect your beliefs about relationships and about yourself. Until she can discover the beliefs within her that have contributed to her string of betrayals, she will never know lasting peace of mind in her relationships with men.

Your beliefs are fundamental to your sense of self and the world. You are oriented to the world through the medium of your beliefs. Many of your beliefs are so close to you that you can’t even see them. You are essentially embedded within them and experience them as who you are and how the world is.

For Terri, at least one of the beliefs she has is that she cannot find a man who “will love her the way she wants him to.” She probably also has beliefs about men being untrustworthy liars. The problem is that these troubling beliefs lie deep within her subconscious mind, well below her everyday awareness.

An important part of becoming enlightened is simply learning to observe your beliefs, without judgment. “But, if my beliefs are hidden in my subconscious mind, how can I observe them?”, you might well ask. One of the best ways to do that is by looking at your experience and asking yourself, “What beliefs would a person have to have to create an experience like this?”

In Terri’s case, what beliefs could create her experience of betrayal and being lied to? We mentioned two possibilities; I can’t find a man who will love me the way I want and men are untrustworthy liars. It’s also possible that Terri has a belief that she is not lovable and/or does not deserve a lasting, loving relationship. Or that love doesn’t last. Or the men she loves don’t love her.

Your experiences in life are born in your consciousness, from the seeds of belief. If you plant tomato seeds in a garden, do you expect to get corn? Of course not! The problem with the beliefs planted in your consciousness is that, for the most part, you don’t remember planting them because they were planted long ago in your childhood. So, by the time they appear in the garden of your experience, they appear to come out of nowhere. Unless you can identify the seeds of belief that have been planted in your mind and begin to uproot them and plant new ones, they will continue to produce their predictable results.

Dr. Milton Rokeach, a renowned psychologist, distinguished five different kinds of beliefs.

1. Basic beliefs that are socially shared, e.g., “We all need to eat in order to live.” These kinds of beliefs tend to be facts about our universal experience as human beings.
2. Personal beliefs that are not socially shared, e.g., “I can never do anything right.” or “I am God’s gift to women.” These beliefs are concerned with self-identity and one’s view of the world and are completely subjective. These kinds of beliefs are assessments and may or may not have anything to do with reality.
3. Authority beliefs are those that are outside our direct experience. They result from others whose authority we assess as credible, e.g., “CNN is the most accurate news network.”
4. Derived beliefs are a variation of authority beliefs in that they rely on identification with the authority. This is how we acquire beliefs from our culture, religion, and our family, e.g., “Suicide attacks on our enemies is justified because martyrdom is good and we have no other means of defense.”
5. Inconsequential beliefs are simply a matter of preference and personal taste, e.g., “Steve Martin is a funnier comedian than Billy Crystal.” They are opinions.

The negative beliefs that are worthy of changing are in numbers 2, 3 and 4 – personal beliefs that determine self-identity and world view, authority beliefs that we accept from others we see as more informed, and derived beliefs from authorities with whom we are identified.

Now that we have identified the kinds of beliefs and which ones are subject to change, in next month’s edition we will talk about the process of belief change. We will work with Terri’s beliefs and show you how you can use the same tools to identify and change your undesirable beliefs.

People yearn for relationships they can trust. They want to be able to depend on people. They want relationships characterized by ease, clarity and harmonious cooperation. But, is there any adult who hasn’t felt let down or betrayed by someone who didn’t live up to his or her agreements?

What Is an Agreement?

What is an agreement really? An agreement is a method for coordinating action between two or more people. It is supposed to smooth the way for efficient harmonious interaction. But why do people so frequently not live up to their word? Usually an agreement fails because it does not reflect the true desire and motivation of all the people making the agreement. People who agree to something because they are afraid of what will happen if they don’t agree, will more than likely not follow through, unless they are pressured to do so.

It is important to know that agreements alone will not secure the safety and dependability we all yearn for. For an agreement to be effective the internal motivator that drives it should be so compelling that the people involved are aroused to fulfill their part, of their own volition. In other words, an agreement you can count on has to come from the right place.

Why Am I Agreeing to This?

That means that each person must answer the question, “For the sake of what am I agreeing to this?” This reason needs to be explicit. You can’t assume the same thing motivates everyone. You have to question, discuss and clarify. Successful agreements are always driven by a clear purpose that inspires action. There are two very important things that need to be part of a process for creating agreements that will work. A clear and inspiring purpose for your agreements and a process for restoring trust when an agreement has been broken.

A good purpose statement for sharing household chores might be something like; “We agree to share in household chores so that we can enjoy a relationship that is free from resentment and filled with trust, intimacy, passion and fun!” For business agreements something like, “The purpose of the following agreements is to ignite an unstoppable force for imagination, creativity and collective accomplishment.” It is also a good idea to post this declaration in a place where it will be seen frequently by the participating members, e.g., refrigerator, coffee room, bulletin board.

Once you have crafted an inspiring purpose statement for your agreements and you have listed the agreements, make sure they are consistent with your purpose. Then you need to determine a protocol for handling the inevitable broken agreement. This protocol needs to be something everyone accepts and is willing to use.

Agreements Aren’t Always Kept

Yes, it may be sad but true that even with the best intentions, sometimes agreements aren’t kept. You agree to be on time and you get a flat tire. You agree to pay a special project bonus and your biggest account defaults on a payment. The best kind of protocol is one that quickly restores trust and completely neutralizes any disappointment or hard feelings. This is important because we want to make sure the memory of the event doesn’t carry forward any resentment, blame or guilt. Any of these feelings are toxic to a harmonious future.

We have found that using amendments to restore broken agreements is a stellar solution. When someone does not keep an agreement for whatever reason, they offer an amendment to the other person. It is much better if someone does not have to ask for an amendment, but the person who did not keep the agreement readily offers it.

Apologies and Amendments

An amendment is different from an apology. An apology includes saying “I’m sorry” and how you will handle things differently in the future. An amendment is something you do to make up for whatever disappointment or bad feeling happened when the agreement was not kept as promised. An amendment is not a punishment. It is an opportunity to restore trust. What you offer for an amendment depends on the intensity of inconvenience or distress the other person experienced because you did not keep the agreement as promised.

Imagine someone who is late for a meeting and says upon arrival, “I apologize for being late. I’m sorry you were kept waiting and wondering. How about I bring flowers for the front desk tomorrow to make up for it?” Offering an apology and an amendment is a winning combination. It is a very grown up move that rekindles trust and allows everyone involved to bounce back to a very high level of teamwork.

Amendments work best when they are pleasurable for everyone involved. Treating someone to lunch is a better amendment than cleaning their car, unless of course you enjoy cleaning cars. Buying flowers tomorrow is better than doing a big thing in two or three weeks.

No Big Deal?

Sometimes people want to pretend that the agreement being broken was “no big deal” and an amendment is not necessary. We caution you against this consistent reaction. It sends the wrong message. It is important for people to keep their word, to be accountable for their promises. The ill feelings that come from broken agreements can build up over time. Using amendments is a great way of averting the kind of disastrous blow-ups that happen when people get fed up.

It is a good idea to bring a light heart, a sense of humor and your creativity to the amendment process. Remember the purpose of an amendment is to restore trust and harmony to a relationship.

Written Agreements or Verbal Agreements?

Sometimes people balk at the idea of written agreements. It seems like too much trouble. But if you take a step back and look at most of the failures in your relationships you will probably notice most of them came from lack of clarity and alignment. The hallmark of an enlightened partnership is intentional design. Great relationships don’t just happen, mediocre ones do.

The process of clarifying purpose and agreements is a necessary part of the design process for relationships. The conversations you will have will illuminate what is truly important to each person. This knowledge is essential in creating relationships that work well over the long term. If you create agreements that reflect the authentic motivation of each person and you plan for predictable breakdowns in a way that fosters accountability you can relax into a new certainty and trust in your most important relationships.

How Do We Reach Intimacy?

Each person seems to understand the intimate experience in his or her own way. In a sense it takes a journey of personal discovery to learn how to share intimacy with another person. Here are some guidelines that may help to define that journey –

Know Your Self: Get in touch with your own private experiences. In our stressed-out world this is often hard to do because our attention is directed outward much of the time. It helps to sit – doing nothing and being distracted by nothing – and spend time in reflection and introspection. Observe your thoughts and feelings. The brain has pleasure centers – close your eyes and imagine yourself experiencing pleasure. Become familiar with those parts of yourself that are strong and that feel whole and integrated. Learn to feel comfortable with the part of yourself that senses calmness, confidence and peace. (Some people like to spend a few minutes every night before bed, perhaps with just a candle burning, reflecting on the events of the day. Others prefer to keep a daily journal of their private thoughts and feelings.) Until you know your own private feelings, it is difficult to share them with someone else.

We cannot expect to be intimate with another when we are out of touch with our own internal experiences.

Communicate With Another Person: Share what you know about yourself with another person who can be trusted. This involves several steps. First, you need a sense of commitment to that person. Strangers passing through your life are not the appropriate people with whom to share your deepest feelings. Intimacy has to be reserved for a person who will be there over the long haul — a close friend, a partner, a family member, or, if we’re lucky, a soul mate. You also need a feeling of trust. If the other person is not able to appreciate the delicacy of what you are sharing, it is futile to try to achieve intimacy. In the worst case, your words might be held against you later, which can be damaging and may lead to cynicism and distrust. Knowing whom to trust involves acquiring good judgment about other people. A trustworthy person is one who can honor and respect you for sharing your most intimate experiences. Finally, understand that intimacy involves making yourself vulnerable. The guarded and defensive person will never find true intimacy. Finding intimacy means taking a risk, opening yourself up, sharing the most personal part of yourself with another person. Can the other person handle it? Can the other person care? If they can, you are no longer alone.

Intimacy Is Reciprocal: A healthy intimate relationship is one in which both partners know themselves and are able to come together with a sense of equality. Certain relationships are not meant to be reciprocal (the coach/client relationship, for example, often involves a high level of deeply personal communication, but this is primarily on the part of the client). Perhaps the most intense and lasting levels of intimacy are achieved when both partners are able to share equally with each other. As the listener, you have to be able to honor and respect the openness, vulnerability, and courage of the one who is communicating personal ideas and emotions. Value judgments, criticisms, and advice-giving have no place in intimate communication. The goal is to appreciate and acknowledge the validity of the other person’s deepest feelings. If you are aware of your own thoughts and feelings, you may then have the ability to appreciate similar experiences on the part of the other person.

Value judgments, criticisms, and unasked for advice-giving have no place in intimate communication.

Keep the Light Alive: Once two people have entered into a deep level of sharing, they usually want to stay there. If there is true equality between the two, they achieve a balance which feels right and which they don’t want to lose. If, however, one of the partners feels the need to lessen the level of intimacy, the probability of conflict increases. You can avoid misunderstandings by maintaining your commitment and trust during these natural cycles that occur within any relationship. Intimacy takes work and a sense of maturity. To shirk the responsibility of keeping an intimate relationship alive invites a return to isolation.

The intimate relationship is healthy. Intimacy allows us to end loneliness and to share the deepest and most personal parts of ourselves with a trusted partner. As social beings, we respond physically to the experience of intimacy. People who have intimate relationships live longer and healthier lives and they report more personal happiness and satisfaction with the way they live. Intimacy gives us a feeling of comfort, security, and a sense of being loved and accepted. It gives us the freedom and support to stay true to the special qualities that define each one of us as a unique person.

Good Relationship Coaching can allow us to explore our own deepest and most intimate feelings in a safe and accepting setting with a professional trained to understand these inner processes. We can learn to stay true to our uniqueness and to feel comfortable in sharing our authenticity with another person. We can explore who can be trusted, and who can’t, as well as the features of our lives that may have led us to hide ourselves from others. Relationship coaching has the potential to teach us how to break out of isolation and loneliness into a world of love and acceptance. It prepares us to explore an intimate relationship outside of the coaching setting.

The Healthy Benefits of Intimacy

A number of research studies have shown persuasively that people in intimate relationships live longer and happier lives than those who are not.

• For example, we know that people in marriages or other committed relationships live longer than people who are single.
• In one classic study researchers found that 95 percent of people who described their parents as uncaring had diseases by midlife,while only 29 percent of those who described their parents as caring had midlife diseases. Having supportive and close relationships with parents in our childhoods leads to healthier relationships in general when we grow up, and it is these healthier adult relationships that are linked to a lower prevalence of heart disease and cancer in midlife. In other words, one can compensate for a deprived childhood by learning later in life how to sustain supportive relationships.
• In another series of studies, researchers found that people who are socially isolated are two to five times more likely to die prematurely than those who have a sense of connection and community.
• A study at the University of Texas looked at patients who had undergone open-heart surgery.
• Those who had neither ongoing group participation nor were able to derive strength from their religion were more than seven times more likely to have died six months after their surgery.
• Women with metastatic breast cancer were assigned to support groups which met once a week for a year. The women in the support groups lived twice as long as those who were not in these groups.
• One study has even found that people with fewer relationships of any kind (e.g., friendship, a partner, family, work, social groups, religious affiliations) were four times as likely to develop a common cold as those who had more relationships.
• Interestingly, research showed that people with pets are healthier than people without them and have to make fewer visits to doctors.

Trusting Well

It is difficult to achieve intimacy in a relationship unless we have the ability to trust. We tend to focus on other people when we think about trust – that is, we might ask, who out there can be trusted and who cannot? But it may be more helpful to look inside and to think about trust also as something that we do well, or not. Some people grow up with a good ability to trust appropriately, and others, because of their needs and life experiences, have more difficulty with this issue..

Having a good eye for trust involves having a healthy sense of our own identities – and this means having a positive self-image, the ability to value ourselves and our decisions, and a good sense for protecting our own boundaries. We need to know what we stand for and what is best for us. Trust also involves acquiring a knack for making good judgments. When we have the self-confidence that comes with knowing and liking ourselves, as well as the ability to make life-enhancing decisions, we should be able to decide fairly easily about whom to trust.

Trust between two people emerges from a process of mutual self-disclosure – we gradually reveal more and more about ourselves to the other person until the relationship achieves a sense of intimacy. The first person self-discloses only to the degree that the other person has, in a series of steps. A good balance is maintained between both people. If this balance is disrupted, it is difficult to maintain trust. For example, if one person reveals everything all at once and the other person reveals nothing at all, the balance is broken – and neither party will be able to trust the other. The building of trust is a mutual process that takes time. We feel comfortable revealing things about ourselves when the other person has shown that he or she is willing to take the same risk.

Some people trust blindly. They reveal everything all at once, expecting that the other person will be able to reciprocate immediately. What is more likely is that the other person will feel overwhelmed and may back off from closeness. People who trust blindly may want to look into issues like boundaries, self-image and why they need to be so close so quickly.

Other people find it difficult to trust at all. They may feel protected, but the walls are so high that they may never find an intimate relationship – and what a price to pay for protection! People who have difficulty with opening themselves to trust may want to look into the pain that may have closed them off – and they may want to look into ways of improving their communication skills. The rewards of intimacy are well worth it.

Are you noticing a dwindling affinity in your professional and community partnerships? Has the love drained right out of your romantic relationship? Do you feel less connected than you used to? Do you “know” that you love each other, but you just don’t “feel” it in quite the same way any more? Or, are you afraid of involvement because you fear “losing yourself” in a relationship? Do you often feel resentful of family members or friends?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may have a the emotional equivalent of a “cancer” in your relationships – the cancer of resentment. Resentment seethes silently in relationships, slowly destroying intimacy and trust and finally, love. You hardly notice as it quietly eats away at the vitality of your relationships, partly because it is so subtle in the beginning. Yet behind the veil of your conscious mind it mushrooms out of control, fed by unconscious habits.

And what is the typical source of this resentment? In a word, sacrifice. That’s right, sacrifice. It is a law of relationships that sacrifice leads to resentment and guilt in your relationships. The tendency of sacrifice is giving to get, which is always a breeding ground for resentment and guilt.

What do we mean by sacrifice? Our definition of sacrifice is simply doing something for someone else that you don’t really want to do. Sacrifice is motivated out of the fear of what will happen if you don’t give. You see, your guilty thoughts make you think that you should sacrifice for the well being of others. Sacrifice is based upon the idea that you are supposed to love others more than you love yourself. So, people confuse love with sacrifice. And, if your parents (or whoever raised you) taught you that sacrifice is love (as our culture certainly teaches all of us) you will get upset or feel unloved if others won’t sacrifice for you.

There is a wheel of sacrifice that crushes everyone who gets on it. It goes like this:

1. When you sacrifice (do something you don’t really want to do for fear of what will happen if you don’t) you have
2. An unspoken expectation (e.g., that they will sacrifice for you later or regard you in a particular way or love you more) that creates hidden agendas, but, you get
3. Disappointed because they fail to fulfill their end of the bargain (e.g., love you the way you want them to or do what you want them to) so, you become
4. Resentful, perhaps angry (after all I’ve done for you!) which leads inevitably to
5. Guilt (because resentment is an attack on the other and attack always boomerangs on us at some level) so, the best way to atone for your guilt is to
6. Sacrifice some more to prove what a good and loving person you really are. And ’round and ’round you go on the wheel of sacrifice.

How do you get off this vicious circle? Three ways:

1. Use forgiveness to heal your guilty thoughts and feelings (the root of your impulse to sacrifice.)
2. Stop sacrificing, create a new understanding in your relationships that sacrifice is toxic and agree not to do it anymore or expect others to do it for you which means you have the freedom to say no without losing love.
3. Make clear requests and have your expectations be explicit.

Now, clearly there is a fine line between sacrifice and service. Real service, or giving, has no strings attached and expects nothing in return later. The reward is in the experience of the giving itself.

Sacrifice can be a difficult pattern to break because our entire culture is geared toward sacrificial love. Just reading about this idea may make you very uncomfortable because it goes to the very heart of the Judeao-Christian ethic, as we have learned it. But, when you look at it closely and dispassionately it is easy to see that sacrifice is not love at all, but in fact diminishes the experience of real, authentic love over time in a relationship.

Can you imagine what your relationships might be like if no one sacrificed, but only did what they wanted to do? It might be hard to imagine if that is all you have ever known. Think of it like this – the people you love and who love you would be in your life because they really chose to be there, not because they felt obligated to be there. Obligation is sacrifices twin sister. Obligation makes us think we need each other (in psychologically unhealthy ways) rather than choosing freely to relate with each other.

When we first created our relationship we were aware of this pattern and made some choices and agreements to help us overcome it, because we knew that if we perpetuated sacrifice and obligation in our relationship, it would kill our love with resentment. Our own relationship would succumb to the cultural cancer of resentment. So, we agreed to always tell each other the truth and that we would only do in our relationship what we really wanted to do. We also agreed not to get angry and withhold our love if one of us said no to the other. And it was not always easy, but we were very diligent, which is one of the reasons we are still together today. We really choose to be together and our love is very much alive.

The idea we are presenting here is a big idea. It is huge. It goes against our cultural upbringing that says you know someone loves you to the degree that they are willing to do things for you that they don’t really want to do. And if they decline to do them, it means they don’t love you. This has probably been used by all of us at one time or another as emotional blackmail. You know, “If your really loved me, you would . . .”

Sacrifice masquerades as a virtue in our culture. Because of how deeply this is ingrained, you may experience enormous resistance to getting this. And you may not. Even if you don’t, it is important to be aware that many people do.

In our next installment, we will talk about some solutions if you find yourself sacrificing and resentful in your relationships. We will also offer some alternative ways to “be” in your relationships to help you create relationships free from sacrifice and resentment, so your relationships can be “sacrifice free zones”! That way you learn the fine art of being true to yourself and the partnerships you create.

This video is a beautiful and touching example of how precious our relationship is with the natural world. It can be especially moving when animals, especially wild creatures, place their trust in humans.

We hope you find joy, hope and inspiration in this video.

Last Friday we had a great conversation with Denise Griffitts during her Blog Talk Radio Show, Your Partner In Success, about The Care and Feeding of Virtual Relationships .

We talked about how to avoid common pitfalls that can damage valued relationships in the “virtual world” and how to make sure you take extra care to keep them running smoothly and harmoniously.

In addition to being a virtual assistant industry expert, Denise is also a professional web developer (she did a great job creating our new site and blog). If you work on the Internet with clients, students, VAs or colleagues, we think you’ll find our conversation helpful in creating more joyful and successful virtual relationships, whether personal or professional.

Enjoy! And let us know your thoughts about the conversation.

If you are anything like we are, you may have the feeling that the world is moving faster and faster. It may feel like more is being required of you than you than ever before. Perhaps you feel challenged in your capacity to pay attention to what is going on in front of you.

In this kind of dynamic, patience and simple kindness are often in short supply as we find ourselves speaking to and treating others, especially those we love most, in ways we don’t really intend.

We share with you here a short, profound little film (5:31) that touched us deeply. We believe, we hope, it will touch your heart, as well. It is entitled What Is That? by Constantin Pilavios. It reminded us of one of the most poetic passages in the Bible from which we took the title for this post. We have included the entire verse below the film.

See what kinds of thoughts and feelings it elicits in you. We would love to read your comments.

What Is That? by Constantin Pilavios

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“Love never fails. . . And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:1-8 and 13

People yearn for relationships they can trust. They want to be able to depend on people. At the deepest level, they want relationships characterized by ease, clarity and harmonious cooperation.


The hallmark of an enlightened partnership is intentional design. Great relationships don’t just happen, mediocre ones do. If you are like most people, you yearn for relationships you can trust. You want to be able to depend on people. You want relationships characterized by ease, clarity and harmonious cooperation. The good news is it is easier than you think. With a little bit of education and skill you can design relationships that foster trust through clarity and agreement.

Clarifying the purpose of your relationship and crafting agreements is a foundational part of the design process for generating trust. The conversations you will have will illuminate what is truly important to each person. This knowledge is essential in creating relationships that work well over the long term.

If you create agreements that reflect the authentic motivation of each person and you plan for predictable breakdowns in a way that fosters accountability you can relax into a new certainty and trust in your most important relationships.

We love to learn and can always be found reading or watching something that adds to our understanding of people and the world. One of our favorite places to learn is with The Teaching Company. The Teaching Company audio and video tapes the very best university professors in the country. If you like to learn, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

Anyway, one of our favorite topics is philosophy. So, we purchased some courses that sounded interesting and one of the professors was this brilliant guy from the University of Texas with a really strong Southern accent named Rick Roderick. And he said something that has never left us and to which we have subscribed as our own philosophy ever since. (Unfortunately, Rick passed away in 2002 and I’m not sure his courses are any longer available.)

Because of Rick, we consider ourselves to be "fallibilists". And what exactly is a fallibilist you might well ask?

A fallibilist is someone who believes what they believe passionately and with all their might. At the same time, they recognize that the world is ever changing and that humanity’s understanding of the world is continually growing. Fallibilists recognize that their knowledge and understanding of the world is necessarily limited. In the pursuit of ongoing learning and education, it is not uncommon to move into such greater understanding and wisdom that your previous view of things is revealed to be flawed or limited. Upon such discovery, it’s smart to embrace the newer, deeper, broader, higher, wiser comprehension and abandon the former.

The reason I am sharing this with you, dear Reader, is to hopefully shed light on our thinking processes and help you understand where we are coming from.

Perhaps you’ve seen those bumper stickers that say, "Question Authority"? Well, that applies to all you read here or in any of our publications. That just seems like a good practice in general. Another bumper sticker you see around here in Santa Fe says, "Don’t believe everything you think." I take that to mean we should at all times question our own thinking, perceptions and interpretations.

Something we stress in our work is what we call TFBR – think, feel, believe, remember. We all have our own thoughts and feelings, things we believe and things we remember. A problem often occurs when we hold these things as the TRUTH rather than simply what we think, feel, believe and remember. Which may or may not be the truth.

What this comes down to, in a way, is the willingness to be wrong. Relinguishing the need to be right. That’s often easier said than done in our culture. To some extent it comes from an educational system that values correct answers on tests rather than the ability to reason and think clearly.

In any case, you can count on us to passionately express our own truth and experience. You can also count on us to be open to questioning our current understanding, whatever it may be, in favor of something superior that adds to the body of enlightenment and well-being. We don’t always have to be right and we’re ever willing to "live in the question".

Paul