Jake Eagle's Blog, page 6

Owning Myself, Not Editing Myself

One of my talents and ways of making a living is being an editor and it’s work I love to do—I love words and working with languages. But there is another kind of editing I do that I don’t like—editing myself, holding myself back, not being fully myself.

Recently, I was in New Mexico and I spent time with many of my favorite people. I was fortunate to spend many hours with Jake and Hannah along with others and I thoroughly enjoyed being “home” for two weeks. There is something in New Mexico that is deeply healing and wonderful for me and I relished being there with the people I love most.

I’m not present when I’m editing myself

And yet, I blew many of my chances to be completely present. As my departure date drew closer, I found myself sad and weepy—over the top sad and weepy, not just mildly unhappy that I was leaving so many loved ones. I was really upsetting myself and feeling deeply disappointed. When I dug into myself and my feelings of disappointment I awared myself that I was sad because I had wasted precious time, with Jake in particular.

I love Jake Eagle and appreciate him deeply. The work I have done with him is nothing short of phenomenal. I came to him less than five years ago and in the time we have worked together I have radically and remarkably changed my life. I am extremely grateful for his wisdom, support, and clarity in helping me explore, accept, understand, and ultimately love myself. Something no other therapist, teacher, or guru was ever able to do over the course of forty years of real effort, Jake helped me accomplish in under five years. And we didn’t meet once a week, we met once every three to four weeks for an hour, over Skype. I still amaze myself when I think of how easy he is to work with and how much we have accomplished.

And yet, I am afraid of losing him. I am afraid that I will disappoint him or cause him to withdraw his love for me. I am afraid that I will say something or not do something and he will judge me, shake his head and walk away. I crazy myself with this thinking and yet, pretty much on a daily basis when my thoughts turn to Jake I worry, fret and anxious myself that he is preparing to walk away from me because I am not good enough.

Part of the solution is humor

As I write this I am shaking my head and laughing at myself. Humor is probably one of the greatest gifts Jake has given me. Long ago he taught me that not taking myself so bloody seriously and treating myself with compassion and humor was a wonderful solution for much of my heaviness, anxiety, and habitual sink- holes.

So here is my commitment to myself—I am going to out myself with humor when I am editing myself. If I am on Skype with Jake in a session and I feel my heart start to race and I begin to edit myself I am going to tell him what I am doing. If I am at home having fantasies of his judging me I am going to send him an email telling him I am making him a bad guy again. When I am with others and feel the need to diffuse or hide myself I am going to breathe deeply, take myself to heart consciousness and ask myself, “Do I really need to hide myself right now? Am I truly in danger or am I just freaking myself out by anchoring myself in Safety Consciousness and familiar patterns of editing myself?”

Here are some of the ways I edit myself: I entertain—I tell long complicated stories about stuff I don’t really care about in order to distract, dissipate or hide myself. I lie. I lie by omitting, exaggerating, and minimizing myself. I divert—I change the subject, I don’t listen well, I try to impress, dazzle, or surprise to avoid being seen. I invisible and hide myself in all these ways because I am accustomed to living in Safety Consciousness and focusing on creating safety.

Does pushing people away make me safe?

What is ironic to me is that by doing all of the above I further cement my belief that I am not safe. When I feel anxious, I entertain or lie or change the subject, and by doing so I miss an opportunity to connect. When I hide from Jake I end up pushing him away. He doesn’t walk away, I hide myself in a cloud of stories and verbal smoke and mirrors and he just ends up tired of trying to find me in the maze I create. But he never leaves me—I am the one who disappears and becomes less visible.

So, not only have I made a commitment to out myself when I begin to edit, dazzle, entertain or evade, I have asked Jake to be more assertive with me when he feels me doing this—and for those of you who know him I’m sure you’re aware that he has the ability to read people even over Skype. There have been many sessions with him where he has simply asked me the simplest question, an innocent question, and in those moments I wake myself up and usually own that I am making myself anxious or not talking about what really is going on for me.

I just returned from attending the winter lab with Jake and Hannah and nineteen other people. While at the lab and since returning home I have shifted myself significantly. I believe that my ability to shift myself and my responses to Jake—my habitual editing and need to impress—changed easily because I started outing myself.

Owning myself not editing myself

This has repeatedly been my experience of this work—when I discover something—a part of me or a historical way of behaving that I don’t like, I own myself. I greet the part of me with open arms and I acknowledge my poor behavior without judgment. When I accept myself and ask others to witness me, all the secrecy and need to hide myself dissolves and I am left with new choices. How do I want to integrate this part of me? How can I behave differently? What does this part of me that I don’t like, need in order to evolve and stop acting poorly? The answer is always acceptance, understanding, witnessing and integration. All of my poor behavior comes from immature parts of me that I have suppressed and denied. All of them can be accepted, witnessed and integrated and in that process, the need to behave poorly dissolves.

At the most recent lab, in Playa Viva, Mexico, I named myself Treasure Chest. I understand now, that all the parts of me that I discover are treasures—gems I have buried for safe-keeping. True, some of them are diamonds in the rough, but they are all valuable to me, when I take the time to work with them and polish their rough edges. With the help of my lab mates—many of who are Pirates seeking their own treasures—I was able to acknowledge, reveal, embrace and integrate the little girl in me who believed she was unlovable. And in that moment I shifted myself.

I didn’t feel the need to impress, cajole, hide or entertain. I experienced myself as present, easy and able to contribute and witness with love and equanimity. Now, I am not naïve, and I accept that I will likely return to feeling insecure and shaky. However, I will not repress that part of me again. I will never go back to believing I am fundamentally unlovable—I may indulge myself temporarily and feel sorry for myself momentarily, but I will always have the awareness that my feeling unlovable is a story. It is a story I told myself when I was a small child and I believed it for a long time. And now, because of the tools I have from practicing Reology/Live Conscious, I have the ability to tell myself a new story. Today my story is that I am loved deeply and deeply love. What stories do you tell that hold you back? Come seek treasures with me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Owning Myself, Not Editing Myself appeared first on Reology.

Embracing Change

Jake and I are embracing change in 2017—big change—as we have decided to move to the Big Island of Hawaii. We spent 2+ months on the island in 2016 and upon returning to our beloved New Mexico we realized we were different. Between us, we’ve lived in New Mexico for over 75 years and yet, it no longer felt like home.

Deciding to move, selling our beautiful home, uprooting our lives has not been an easy journey. But easy is no longer our primary desire. Stretching, growing, changing, expanding, exploring, and taking risks that make us both feel more alive rather than safe are now our goals.

Some of our motivation to move has been driven by watching our parents lives narrow down to their ultimate small deaths. Most people’s lives end this way. They choose safety and comfort and narrow their worlds down to a smaller and smaller experience. We don’t want to do that.

We’d like to step up to what energy we have left before it’s too late and do something exciting, adventurous, and life expanding.

This takes sacrifice

We are leaving behind a lot that we love—family and friends and a local following. Though we will still connect over the Internet, we’ll miss seeing them in the flesh. Nothing replaces a hug. But we’ve experienced a sweetening of all our relationships knowing that our time together is limited and richer as a result.

Yes, our time together and life is always limited but this move is waking us up to what most of us want to ignore and as a result, we are making what time we do have be far more precious.

We are leaving behind a beautiful home on over 17 acres, backed up by thousands of acres of Indian land and national forest. We are letting go of the home we creatively designed and built together, and poured our hearts into. And we are moving to a place where we’ll get far less for our money. And yet, despite the seeming difficulties and challenges, we continue to excite ourselves and look forward to our future.

Uncluttering our lives

We’ve especially enjoyed the uncluttering of our lives. We’re letting go of the years of collected things that we’ll never use but could not part with. Things that have gathered in closets, the attic and the storage shed, and we are freeing ourselves as we pass them on to thrift stores, family, friends and the like. Releasing this clutter has become a way of growing younger and more liberated, rather than hanging on to it all like some antiquated sense of ourselves.

Uncluttering and letting go includes grieving and feeling anxious about all we’re leaving as we step into the unknown. These feelings are all essential parts of choosing change and growth rather than safety. If the leaving weren’t difficult, maybe it wouldn’t be so meaningful.

In the big picture it feels wonderful to Zen up, step into the unknown, and take charge of our 3rd act rather than allow our lives to narrow down to nothing before our final letting go.

We’re taking a big leap and we’re happy for the journey.

The post Embracing Change appeared first on Reology.

The Answer To Life’s Problems

Are you ready for a New Year? How different will it be from last year? Will you be far less anxious? Will you have much greater clarity about your life purpose? Will you free yourself of your negative self-talk? Will you love your partner as well as you’d like to—or finally attract the kind of partner you’ve always wanted? Will you be less reactive with your kids and model equanimity for them?

How to make this year different

If you do the things mentioned above will you feel more satisfied in your life? For me, the answer is “yes.” So, how do we continue to grow, feel less anxious, live our purpose, stop our negative self-talk, and love better?

The answer is paradoxical in that it requires not focusing on these specific challenges, which is what most of us do on a regular basis. Most of us who are interested in our own personal growth try to solve or address our challenges by focusing on them. That’s not always the best solution.

Our solution rests on the famous Einstein quote:

We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.

When Hannah and I first learned to use ReSpeak—a way of speaking that helps us be more conscious—we saw that it was one way to access a different level of thinking. And, it is, but it’s not the whole story. Think about this . . . imagine being in a cluttered room—a room cluttered with your fears, habits, immature behaviors and your endless internal dialogue,—and you want to get to another room, one that is free and clear of all that clutter. To do so, you have to walk down a hallway to get to the next room. Well, ReSpeak is like the hallway, it helps you get out of the cluttered room.

But if you want to gain access to the uncluttered room, a room you may be only vaguely familiar with, how do you do that? As Einstein said, you need a “different level of thinking” or different level of consciousness. Do you remember the famous Apple Computer ad campaign, “Think Different”? That’s what I’m talking about, learning to think different.

Stop focusing on the “problems”

You see, all those “problems” that are part of life, they don’t stop, they don’t go away—ever—they just change faces over time because they are part of being alive. And when we encounter those “problems”—the clutter in our minds—we almost always react from the same place. We react in ways to make ourselves feel safe and secure. Most of the time it’s not our physical safety we are concerned about, although sometimes it is, but more often it’s about feeling secure in who we are. When something threatens our sense of feeling okay about ourselves we are most likely to react, not with equanimity, but with resistance.

If you say something critical about me, I’ll resist. If you suggest I made a mistake, I’ll resist. If you ask me to step outside of my comfort zone, I’ll resist. If I make a mistake or behave poorly, I’ll resist owning my mistake or poor behavior. If I neglect you and you point it out to me, I’ll resist seeing myself. I resist that which threatens my need to feel good about myself.

All of this is happening in one room—the cluttered room—which represents a certain level of thinking, a certain way of seeing the world, and this is what I call “safety consciousness.” It’s not a bad place or a bad way to think or see the world, in fact, it’s totally essential that we live in safety consciousness because that’s the state of mind we use to accomplish things, be productive, and form relationships. It’s 100% necessary. And it’s limiting.

Freeing yourself of mental clutter

What I’ve found is that by spending time in other rooms—rooms with no clutter—I experience a completely different level of thinking, a different way of seeing the world. And from these other rooms, I don’t feel the need to protect myself, compete, pressure myself, or defend myself. The more time I spend in these other rooms the easier it becomes to move out of safety consciousness and into a whole other way of living.

This “other way of living” is one in which the problems and challenges of life are no longer problems or challenges. It’s not that they change, they still exist, but I no longer see them as problems, challenges, or obstacles.

Since I no longer see life events as problems, I stop resisting them. As soon as I stop resisting them—whoosh, I’m free of all my clutter, emotional baggage, reactivity, defensiveness and confusion.

This is exactly what we share with people in our retreats—how to live in this other way. During our retreats we see that all of us face similar challenges. We are a group of twenty people, forming community, and none of us escapes the challenges of being human— the challenges just take on slightly different forms in each person. After realizing this, we start to feel more self-accepting of our own situations. Then, together, we learn to navigate through our cluttered rooms, because we all have them, and then we learn how to access the other rooms.

Live different

It’s not a ten-minute conversation or a quick read of an article that helps us make this huge shift, that’s why we put on these week-long retreats. We need a week so that we can all immerse ourselves and learn to “think different.” And it’s not just “think different,” it’s also be different, love different, speak different, eat different, exercise different, mediate different, accept different, and live different.

I can tell you more about the other rooms we learn to enter, but I can’t do them justice in a short article, maybe not even in a long one. This is about an experience, an experience of a different way of living your life so that you feel better about yourself as a result of becoming more mature, opening your heart, loving more generously, and living without anxiety. Is that really possible? Can we actually live without anxiety? No, not when we limit ourselves to safety-consciousness—the room with all that clutter.

But when we walk down the hall and use the key to open the doors to those other rooms, yes, we can live without anxiety. It takes work and practice, but the irony is that after we learn to do this, life is easier.

As I write this article we still have space in our next retreat for one couple and one individual. The program starts January 28th, 2017 and lasts a week—but the results last a lifetime. If you want to live different, fill out the Personal Information Form below and then we’ll schedule a time to talk by phone and figure out the next steps.

The post The Answer To Life’s Problems appeared first on Reology.

The Invitation

The Invitation—by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me

what you do for a living.

I want to know

what you ache for

and if you dare to dream

of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me

how old you are.

I want to know

if you will risk

looking like a fool

for love

for your dream

for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me

what planets are

squaring your moon…

I want to know

if you have touched

the centre of your own sorrow

if you have been opened

by life’s betrayals

or have become shrivelled and closed

from fear of further pain.

I want to know

if you can sit with pain

mine or your own

without moving to hide it

or fade it

or fix it.

I want to know

if you can be with joy

mine or your own

if you can dance with wildness

and let the ecstasy fill you

to the tips of your fingers and toes

without cautioning us

to be careful

to be realistic

to remember the limitations

of being human.

It doesn’t interest me

if the story you are telling me

is true.

I want to know if you can

disappoint another

to be true to yourself.

If you can bear

the accusation of betrayal

and not betray your own soul.

If you can be faithless

and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty

even when it is not pretty

every day.

And if you can source your own life

from its presence.

I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the full moon,

“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me

who you know

or how you came to be here.

I want to know if you will stand

in the centre of the fire

with me

and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me

where or what or with whom

you have studied.

I want to know

what sustains you

from the inside

when all else falls away.

I want to know

if you can be alone

with yourself

and if you truly like

the company you keep

in the empty moments.

By Oriah “Mountain Dreamer” House from her book, THE INVITATION © 1999. Published by HarperONE, San Francisco. All rights reserved. Presented with permission of the author. www.oriah.org

The post The Invitation appeared first on Reology.

Presence Trumps Force

There are two ways to be powerful—one is to use force, the other is to embody presence. Force may get you want you want, but you’ll leave behind messy emotional footprints. Embodying presence will get you what you really want—if you want a life without suffering.

In the US elections this year we see two people using the power of force: scare tactics, coercion, threats, deception and exaggeration—to influence voters. I am not saying that the two candidates are the same—they are not—I am saying that most of what we see modeled in the world today is people using the power of force to get what they want.

When we use the power of force we create winners and losers. Resentment builds. The person using force can be perceived as the perpetrator, the person being forced feels like a victim. The victim will inevitably resent the person who holds power over them and they will seek to use their own force as a means to retaliate. So goes civilization and so go relationships.

I see it every day in my private practice; romantic partners using force with each other when it would be much easier and more respectful to use the power of presence. Parents using force with their kids, which results in a backlash, and it would be so much more helpful to model choosing the power of presence.

Force

Force may be overt or covert. Overt force comes in the form of intimidation, abuse, violations of a person’s rights, obstructionism, and restraining people from exercising their free will. Covert force comes in the form of passive-aggressive behavior, lack of cooperation, procrastination and denial.

Force wears many faces. Hitler. The bombing of Hiroshima. The Taliban. Perpetrators of sexual abuse. Detaining people at Guantanamo Bay. Intervening in the Bosnian war to bring about the Dayton Accords peace agreement.

Force is used when intervening in a teenager’s life to stop them from hurting themselves. It is also used when you tell your partner that they are wrong to feel the way they feel. Or, when I force myself to do what feels wrong to me. Interrupting people is a use of force. Withholding love. Making a child take his medication.

Force can be used for good and evil. Force is not always bad. But too often force is used when presence would be a better choice.

Presence

Presence is always overt, never covert. I access the power of presence by fully occupying the space I’m in, in the present moment, being fully available to compassionately witness others and myself. When I enter a state of presence—spacious being—I am aware of the miracle of life.

I don’t know if it’s possible to live continuously in this space—I am not able to do so—because there is the business of doing, planning, negotiating, consuming—products, information, and food. For me, the question is one of depth. How deep do I want to go? When I access the power of presence I am accessing myself at a deeper level than when I go about the surface activities of life.

Presence wears many faces. There is the presence of Gandhi, advocating non-violent protest for Indian self-determination and independence. The presence of Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World, and was denied US citizenship because he would not commit to taking up arms to defend the US. The presence of the Dalai Lama who never victimizes himself when all evidence suggests he has reason to do so. The presence of Aung San Suu Kyi, the state counselor of Myanmar and winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for Peace, who said,

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

Aung San Suu Kyi was talking about the power of force. For we can lose the power of force, but we can never lose the power of presence. Presence lives within us and is always available to be claimed.

The power of presence was modeled by Thomas Merton, the American Catholic writer and mystic, who said,

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image.

The twisting he refers to requires force, the “letting those we love be perfectly themselves,” requires presence—the presence to witness them as they show us who they are.

Presence Is A Choice

When we learn to access the power of presence we realize no one can take it away from us so we stop feeling threatened. We relax; open ourselves to our feelings and the feelings of others. And often, the power of presence—being fully present with another person—is all they need. So many arguments are not about the subject of the argument; they are a disguised desire to be witnessed.

In our personal relationships, when we access the power of presence we don’t argue, quibble, make wrong, deny our partner’s experience, coerce or manipulate. Whatever my wife, Hannah, tells me, I start with the assumption that it is true for her. This very simple idea eliminated 70% of the arguments we used to have. Whatever she tells me is true for her.

Although the power of force may be appropriate when we intervene to stop a teenager from hurting himself, it is not necessary when we are trying to get a teenager to spend less time playing video games. The difference is that in the first example the teen is harming himself and we may need to force the resolution of the problem because the stakes are high. In the second example—the teen playing too many video games—the power of presence is more appropriate. What would that look like? There are two pieces. The first is taking the time to thoroughly understand the teenager’s experience as it relates to playing video games. Why does he play so much? What does he get out of it? Does he have any concerns about it?

The second key is lovingly expressing our concerns. Then the decision rests with the teenager. If you, as a parent, were to test this method as a one-off, after years of relying on the power of force, it might not work because of built up resentments. But if you change your parenting approach and consistently rely on the power of presence you will be fundamentally altering the dynamic with your child in such a way that he or she feels respected. This alone will change the way your child hears and values your message.

Presence Trumps Force

I sadden myself that we don’t teach these basic concepts to our children. We could save them so much suffering. There are times to use the power of force, such as when we intervene to stop a teenager from harming himself. And there are times to use the power of presence. In general, when we replace the power of force with the power of presence, we stop creating resentment and we create respect. First, respect for ourselves and then respect from those people with whom we relate.

Presence requires willingness and an ability to be in the moment, to know one’s self and to reveal one’s self in an appropriate manner.

To develop the power of presence takes practice, and with repetition it can become a habit. When I use the power of presence everything slows down—the space between the stimulus and response increases and possibilities replace problems.

The work we are doing in our retreats is aimed at teaching people a different way to live and love—including how to access the power of presence.

Click here to register for our upcoming i-Workshop:

The Power of Presence

The post Presence Trumps Force appeared first on Reology.

Honoring Your Truth

It is extremely important that we honor our truth, speak up for ourselves and create healthy boundaries. We all need to create safety in our lives, remove ourselves from abusive relationships and protect children who can be victims of abuse.

The turning point in my life was when as an adult I confronted my father about his abusive behavior that occurred when I was a child. From that point on there was a powerful shift in how I moved through my life. The abuse no longer had any conscious or unconscious hold on me after I stood up and spoke my truth.

The Difference Between Honoring Your Truth and Honoring The Larger Truth

When we aren’t needing to protect ourselves or someone else from abuse we need to consider that there are more “truths” than our own.

I recently had a conversation with an irate father that illustrates this difference. The conversation came about because Jake and I have recently been offering 30-minute phone conversations—at no charge—to people experiencing some challenge in their lives who want to hear a fresh new perspective—a Reology perspective.

In my conversation with the irate father he shared with me his story of being estranged from his daughter. He explained to me that she had disconnected from him after an argument they had a few months ago. He’s tried to reach out to her but to no avail. She doesn’t respond and she makes excuses for why she won’t connect with him.

The father told me why he did what did and said what he said in the fight he had with his daughter. He explained why he was justified in getting mad at his daughter because she disrespected and dismissed him from her life after all he’s done for her and all the sacrifices he’s made for her.

He created a story that he’s been telling himself, and hurting himself with, over and over and over. He said, “I need to honor my truth.” And he uses his “truth” to justify his anger.

From a Reologic point of view, what he calls his “truth” is more accurately his interpretation of the details he remembers—his story. His daughter will have her own memory, which she will call her “truth”.

And The Truth Is That None Of It’s “True”

From the daughter’s point of view, she needs to individuate from her father. She may not be doing this in the most graceful way, but individuation can be awkward. She needs the space to figure out who she is without her father telling her what’s right and wrong. The only way the father can help her with this is to gracefully let go.

There Is Always a Larger Truth Than Our Own Narrow View

It may help the father to realize he is no longer responsible for his daughter’s wellbeing. He can help himself when he sees there is a larger truth to honor here. If he sticks with needing to honor his own “truth” he will continue to push his daughter away. Does that serve him? Does that serve his daughter?

If he lets go and accepts his daughter’s need for time and space, it’s possible that they’ll eventually develop an adult/adult relationship rather than the adult/child version they’ve always had.

This is the larger truth: their relationship is evolving.

Stop Telling Your Story!

I suggested he stop telling himself his hurtful story, allow his daughter to have the space she needs to individuate and in the meantime to go enjoy his life.

After our call was over he took some time to consider what we’d discussed, then sent me an email containing these thoughtful words:

Thank you for your time today. I did find the call very helpful and will put into conscious practice stopping the reel and redirecting whenever my story begs retelling.

I am realizing that in order for my daughter to individuate she needs distance from me and I’m okay with that. So, instead of feeling sorry for myself that she is estranged from me, I choose to celebrate that she is individuating from me.

Instead of being sad that she does not contact me, I celebrate that she is growing into the independent woman I raised my daughter to become.

I will bask in the gratitude of life and remain focused on my current goals to be present and explore this great grand world!

How Beautiful Is That?

This is an exquisite example of transforming one’s self from safety consciousness to heart consciousness. In our initial conversation the father was caught trying to create safety for himself, but after our conversation he shifted, opened his heart and included his daughter’s “truth” as well.

This father realized that what was going on for his daughter wasn’t about him. And the final piece was for him was to lovingly gift his daughter the space she needs to become a mature adult.

When we are in safety consciousness we may think that we need to hold onto a “truth” in order to make ourselves feel safe. And often, what feels “safe” is simply what’s familiar. When we shift into heart consciousness we become aware of a different kind of truth where we take more than ourselves into consideration.

This father changed his focus from victimizing himself to celebrating the good job he’s done as a father—a change from self-inflicted pain to feeling the love he has for his daughter and an appreciation of himself for letting her go.

Loosen Your Hold On Your Stories

I’ve invited this father to join us one day at one of our retreats where he’ll be able to steep himself in this Reologic point of view—where we begin to see that not everything we think is true, but a story we’ve made up—a fabrication of our minds.

This isn’t a familiar way of seeing things and our lifelong conditioning leads us to believe our stories. But in retreat, over the week, you’ll begin to adopt this new orientation. You’ll begin to loosen your hold on your stories and “truths” and experience a new freedom—freedom from the stories that make you unhappy and anxious.

And all your relating with others will begin to feel lighter, clearer and kinder.

The post Honoring Your Truth appeared first on Reology.

Must Our Histories Cast a Shadow on Love?

Can love really be easy? Can relationships be easy? Or do our darker sides, our shadows, that are born out of neglect, abuse, or lack of nurturance early in life—result in us having to work hard to love and be loved? Do our early life emotional deficits—as well as rejection and failed relationships later in life—create fear, mistrust, and self-doubt that will require hard work to overcome?

Do I need my partner to trigger me?

The notion that relationships are hard work is supported by statements of Harville Hendrix, famous author of Getting The Love You Want. He claims that we are drawn to partners who unconsciously remind us of both the positive and negative traits of our parents, and serve us by triggering our childhood wounds. Or another famous therapist, Dick Schwartz, who coined the term “tour-mentor” to describe our partners, because he believes our partners torment us as a means of promoting our growth.

And then, of course, there is Freud who introduced the idea of repetition compulsion, which suggests that we have an incomplete dynamic with one of our parents, usually of the opposite sex, and that as adults we look for someone with whom we can complete the dynamic. For example, maybe as a young child I was unable to connect fully with my mother because she was a rager. I then grow up and look for another person, probably a woman, who behaves in similar ways—raging—so that I can satisfy my childhood desire to get a raging woman to love me.

The problem with trying to resolve this dynamic from my childhood is that I will be attracted to someone who rages and isn’t easy to connect with. That’s why I was never satisfied when I was young—I couldn’t easily connect with my mother when she was raging—and I won’t be able to easily connect with a woman today when she is raging.

Accepting the hole in my heart makes me more whole

The solution is to accept that I will live with this hole in my heart forever. It is a hole that cannot be filled by relating with a woman who rages. I may be able to fill that hole by connecting with another kind of woman, but the original desire—connecting with a woman who rages—will forever go unmet. Paradoxically, when I accept my hole I become more whole.

I strongly believe it is a mistake to stay in painful relationships in which our childhood wounds are triggered, and justify staying based on the belief that the relationship is necessary for our growth. There are three things we can do to avoid such relationships and ensure our growth.

We individuate from our parents so that we don’t unnecessarily try to resolve our parental issues with our partner.
We individuate from our partner by open heartedly, and with humor, shining light on our shadows.
We learn to access heart consciousness, experiencing love that not dependent on any other person, and this makes love easier when we do find the right person.

In our work, Hannah and I model and teach that love can be easy. But, we also support people in working with their “shadow” aspects. What does “shadow” mean? To me, it has to do with the aspects of myself that I deny; therefore I keep them hidden in the shadows. I avoid owning the aspects of myself that I find embarrassing, disappointing or confusing, which include some of my beliefs, behaviors, needs, and fears.

Shadows fade in the light

People often equate their “shadow” or “dark” aspects to being “bad” or “wrong.” But I don’t think of my shadow aspects as bad, rather they are aspects of myself with which I am uncomfortable. And shining light on my shadows is part of the solution—and this too can be easy. But so often we hear things like, “You have to be courageous to confront these parts of yourself,” or “You need to be brave to look into the abyss.”

As soon as one suggests that it requires courage to do something, that presupposes that it will be hard. But what if we do away with the idea of courage—and stop anticipating that what we need to do will be hard? Then, facing my shadows can be easy. Think of it this way, all I’m doing is embracing notions I have about myself. After all, what is a shadow? It’s an idea, a critical judgment I hold. It’s not the Truth.

You may respond by saying, “Well, I did a terrible thing, I committed adultery and I’m ashamed of myself.”

Okay, that’s not usually a “good” thing—committing adultery—but it is an experience and it is up to you how you use that experience to shape your life. I’m not trying to minimize one’s poor behavior, I’m saying own it, learn from it, grow into a better person. As Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.”

The 3 R’s

There are 3 R’s that make it easy to work with our shadow aspects.

1) Remembering that I tell myself stories . . . about my childhood, my previous relationships, my failures and limitations—and although the details of my stories may be accurate—the meaning I make, the conclusions I reach, are all made up. When I remember this, I stop taking myself and my stories and my explanations for why I am the way I am so seriously. The point is to become aware of the stories I tell myself, to become aware of my shadow, without over-identifying and thinking “that is me.”

2) Realizing that everything is temporary helps me shine light on my shadows, allowing them to change, evolve, become transparent so that they no longer stimulate the same kind of emotional response. It is my resistance to my shadows that sustains them.

3) Revealing the purpose of my shadows frees me from my shadows. For example, as soon as I reveal that I am afraid of intimacy—which is a very intimate thing to reveal—my shadow is no longer in hiding and once it comes out into the sunlight it is no longer a shadow.

Now, I want to come full circle back to the idea that love can be easy. Easy is not the same as lazy. In our marriage, Hannah and I pay a great deal of attention to our relating. We don’t think of it as hard work, in part, because we nip any problems in the bud, before they become too big and scary. Additionally, we remind each other that we are best friends and our intentions are to be kind and helpful. This is the context within which we relate.

We never use the notion that “love can be easy” as an excuse to avoid a difficult conversation or walk away from our discomfort. We never say, “Well, if this isn’t easy than it isn’t meant to be.” Instead, we say, “Love can be easy even if this moment feels challenging so what do we need to do differently?”

Having individuated from our parents made it easier for us to form a healthy relationship, and we have intentionally focused on individuating from one another. In hindsight, if we had access to the tools of Reology, the entire individuating process would have been faster and more graceful. And, without those tools I don’t believe we could have ever arrived at the space we’re in today, making love easy.

The post Must Our Histories Cast a Shadow on Love? appeared first on Reology.

Growing Younger — What’s holding you back?

Or in ReSpeak we might say: “Why hold yourself back from growing younger?

“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun.” Mary Lou Cook

In the year 2000 I went to Japan with my husband, Jake. He was teaching in Tokyo again and I decided to go along for an adventure. I had narrowed my life down to a pleasant and easy existence, with a creative home based business and growing a garden. What more did I need?

But I sensed my life had grown too narrow. I was less willing to go out to try new things and I was becoming more isolated. Something in me said I needed to go beyond my comfort level to wake myself up a bit—perhaps to feel more alive.

After arriving exhausted in Tokyo, I rested a few days and then ventured out on little jaunts by myself into the city. First, I just walked the streets, where I time warped myself with ancient, quaint little villages tucked in between skyscrapers and the noisy rush of the city.

Then I ventured out on the public transport systems—with a goal of seeing a giant bronze Buddha, thousand year old temples, feeling my way without speaking the language, and then heading back to the hotel before dark. I got braver each day.

After a few days of exploring Tokyo, I packed my backpack and my Japanese dictionary, and headed off by myself on a train out of the city and into an even more foreign world. I’d booked a little Ryokan (Japanese Inn) in a distant town and arrived just as the sun set with a growing need for food, so I left my belongings in my room and took a walk.

Soon I found myself lost in a tangle of tiny streets that all looked alike. It was dark and I’d left my travel book back in my room so I couldn’t even show anyone an address. I wandered for hours and hours. And finally, I found my street somehow.

I had lost myself—then I found myself.

I literally I found myself that night. And since then I’ve never quite been the same. I’m more willing to step into the unknown— stretch myself—because I trust that I’ll find my way.

As we age we tend to narrow down our lives. We take fewer risks and go on fewer adventures. I watched my parents lives get narrower and narrower as they moved into their elder years, until they were left wandering the halls of a seniors’ residence and eventually fearing even that. I have vowed not to follow in their footsteps.

So, for me, the cure for “narrowing down” is opening up—opening myself up to something new—something bigger than just a new yoga class or even a weekend workshop. Every year I go for a week-long retreat to explore myself in a new situation, stimulate my curiosity and creativity, and for growing myself younger.

And when I co-lead retreats with my husband, I challenge my creative self to invent new experiences for each group. Since many people return again and again for another retreat adventure, we add new activities, experiments, change the music and the lectures. And this helps keep us younger, awake and alive.

Both of us are introverts. So, we are not taking the easiest path for ourselves by leading retreats, but we know that each time we step up to the challenge, we become more vibrant, deeper, and our lives take on greater meaning.

We feel we are making the most of this gift of being alive by being more awake and helping others wake themselves up. I hope you’ll take the leap, open yourself up to a life expanding experience.

Truly, you’ll be growing younger

Our next retreat happens to be at my newest favorite place—Playa Viva. It’s an extraordinary place to go on retreat, with a breathtaking beach as far as the eyes can see (both ways). Sunrise releases of endangered baby turtles on the beach are a highlight—luscious healthy meals—actually the best food we’ve ever had on retreat—fun excursions, music and dancing, and people you’ll want to connect with even if you’re also an introvert.

This isn’t like a social event though. It’s more like a wake up call for the rest of your life with other people doing the same. So, why hold yourself back? As they say, life is short and then we die. But the experiences we give ourselves along the way will make all the difference as to how the end will feel.

The post Growing Younger — What’s holding you back? appeared first on Reology.

The Path of Self-Improvement

What’s the right path for you? Where are you going—in terms of your self-improvement and personal growth? And how are you going to get there? Is there only one way, or many?

Charting your own course

This is kind of how I think about psychotherapy, as a chance for each of us to chart our own course. To do this we need to take into consideration where we’ve been, what resources we have, what additional resources we need, where we want to go, and to what degree can we trust ourselves. Then the question is, “What’s the best way for each of us to get where we want to go?”

I was recently helping a client chart his course and he accused me of being “discordant.” When I asked what he meant he said, “You espouse ideas about how pretty much everything is subjective, everyone has to figure things out for themselves, but then you go on and tell me the best way to live my life as if you know what’s best for me.”

Guilty as charged

Basically my client’s criticism is valid. I am quite emphatic about how I think we should live our lives if we want to create certain results. And, I don’t often enough remind people that I’m always talking about my view of the world and what works for me—as well as many of the people I’ve worked with. I really should preface more of my sentences with statements like, “I have helped myself by . . . ” Or, “If you want your romantic relationship to be easy, Hannah and I have learned what works for us is . . . ”

So, let me set the record straight. I don’t think that there is one way or one path that is right for everyone. I think that part of growing up and taking responsibility for our lives is deciding for ourselves what practices to pursue, what workshops to attend, and what teachers to study. We each need to lay the bricks that create our paths.

I have another client who has recently made a remarkable and positive transition in his life. When I asked him what was most helpful, he said, “All the different pieces have come together for me—therapy, homeopathy, my Buddhist practice, my 5-rhythms movement practice, and the Reology retreats I’ve attended with you guys.”

And what I realized as he rattled off these different methods is that each one built upon the others. The similarities in his different practices reinforced what he was learning, while the differences in the practices required him to explore himself more deeply and find his own resolution. As a result, he has charted a course that works for him.

This is what I want for all of us; to chart our own courses—that lead us toward health—emotional, mental, physical and spiritual.

One caveat

I want to say that one of my most deeply held beliefs is that no matter what path we choose—learning to use ReSpeak is essential. Why? Because whatever path you choose, if you talk to yourself and other people using ordinary language, you will speak (at times) as if you are a victim, because that’s the structure of ordinary language. Also, ordinary language encourages us to spend a lot of time talking about the past, and in my opinion, this is not the most productive thing to do.

When we say things like:

She makes me so angry.

They ruined my day.

He makes me feel unsafe.

She makes me feel disrespected.

We are speaking as victims. We are talking as if other people are responsible for how we feel. Reology proposes that we are each responsible for how we feel. Other people don’t make us angry, we make ourselves angry. Other people don’t ruin our day, we do this to ourselves. People don’t really make us feel unsafe (except in extreme situations like a robbery or a physical assault), we make ourselves feel unsafe. People don’t disrespect us, we disrespect ourselves.

When we speak as victims, “You make me feel like a nuisance,” the other person is likely to become defensive and this is what leads to wasteful arguments about who did what or who said what—and we get lost in the past.

By the way, other people are not responsible for making us feel good either (I’ve added this paragraph because of Emily’s comment below—thank you Emily).

He makes me happy.

She makes me feel safe.

In these examples we may not sound like victims, but we’re transferring ownership of our feelings to another person. This usually leads to problems and confusion and eventually self-victimization, because what happens when “she” stops “making me happy”? I blame her. No, she doesn’t make me happy, I make myself happy. At times I may be using other people to make myself happy (using in a positive sense), but I am responsible for my feelings.

All of us are going about our lives doing what we do. And I won’t go as far as to say that we are doing the best we can (here’s a blog I wrote about that subject). Instead, I will say that—from my perspective—my behaviors are a reflection of me, not other people. The further I travel on my path, the less I personalize other people’s behaviors. And the less I personalize other people’s behaviors, the less reactive I am—less blame, less judgement.

I would not have been able to make this shift—taking ownership for my emotions—without using ReSpeak. There is something so fundamental about how our conversations (both in our heads and with other people) create our reality. Whatever path you choose to grow yourself, I encourage you to learn ReSpeak because then you will have conversations that feel easier, with less tension and more compassion.

 

The post The Path of Self-Improvement appeared first on Reology.

The Emotional Olympics

What are the emotional Olympics?

They are contests we all participate in every day. There’s the 100-meter dash in which our tempers flare up and we’re crossing the finish line before we even know it. There’s the 800-meter run in which some dysfunctional dynamic goes on and on and on until we have totally exhausted ourselves and can barely make it across the finish line. There’s the uneven parallel bars in which we fear what will happen if we don’t say whatever we have to say just perfectly—miss by an inch and we end up on our butts on the floor. And the 4X400 relay is the event in which we pass the problem from mother to son, son to mother, sibling to sibling, or in organizations from team member to team member.

Have you been watching the Rio Olympics this past week? I astound myself with what these young athletes are capable of doing with their human bodies. And not all of them are that young. One of the female gymnasts is forty-one years old. What’s so extraordinary is the amazing things we humans can do when we develop our skills, practice and focus. These athletes make one thing—their sport—the priority in their lives, and they develop true mastery.

Emotional Mastery

What if your sport was emotional wellbeing and you were to master it? Can you imagine being highly skilled at working with your emotions? Helping other people work with their emotions? It is possible. It takes dedication—maybe not as much as that demonstrated by great athletes—but it must be a priority. Then we develop certain skills, practice those skills and stay focused.

When we do this we can live lives not of quiet desperation, but of continuous celebration.

My wife, Hannah, and I have gone from fighting twice a week to twice a year. We have gone from blaming one another for our emotional pains and insecurities to owning all of them and healing most of them. Some of the topics we used to dread talking about have now become humorous. Instead of turning away from each other during times of tension we now turn toward each other. Instead of me trying to control her, I now appreciate her for who she is—including our differences.

Emotional mastery is as valuable in the corporate boardroom as it is in the bedroom. All human beings—except for one whose name will go unmentioned—respond well to emotions that are maturely expressed, especially when the owner of those emotions uses ReSpeak to express him or herself.

The process begins with two things…

There are just a few steps involved in developing emotional mastery. The process begins with two things. First we have to decide that this is a priority in our lives. Second, we have to establish some criteria in terms of what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable. Is it okay to be rude to your spouse or children? How often? How rude? Is it okay to lash out when you feel you’ve been hurt by someone? What do you do when you’re too tired to give a loved one attention? How will you respond to someone who disrespects a boundary that you have established? How much time do you choose to spend focused on the past, processing previous missteps?

All of these are valuable questions that we each need to answer for ourselves. And, over time, we need to reevaluate our answers because as we age and grow, our criteria age and grow as well. Some of what I thought was acceptable when I was fifteen is no longer acceptable to me. Some of what I thought was acceptable a year ago is no longer acceptable to me. That includes some of the ways I treated people and some of the ways I let people treat me.

So, to begin, I need to decide how important is this stuff to me. When I say, “this stuff,” I mean the way I treat other people and the way I allow them to treat me. And, more specifically, what people? Is it equally important to me how I treat my wife and how I treat the UPS driver? Sadly, some of the people I work with treat the UPS driver better than they treat their spouses. Why is that? Why is it okay to treat my spouse poorly from time to time? Because she loves me. Because I can make up for it later. Because she puts up with it. Because I don’t have to hide my “dark side” from her. I’ve heard all these answers and many more. Only you can answer these questions for yourself, but that’s my point—answer them. What are your standards and expectations for personal conduct—yours and other peoples’?

How to navigate emotional waters

Next, I need some kind of model to help me navigate my life and my relationships. This is what Reology provides. It is a comprehensive model. It provides tools and concepts to help me conduct myself better. For most of the past fifteen years my wife and I have been focused on teaching people to use ReSpeak. It is a way of speaking that brings me into the present moment, eliminates blame, and helps me take responsibility for myself. In short, it helps me develop emotional maturity, which is a key to emotional wellbeing.

More recently, we are expanding our work to focus on Three Degrees of Consciousness. The first degree, safety consciousness, is addressed by using ReSpeak, and the creation of a healthy personal narrative. These are ways that I make myself feel safer and more in control of my emotional responses. The second degree, heart consciousness, is addressed by learning the “ReDo,” and how to live with more gratitude and love in my life. The third degree, spacious consciousness, is addressed with a specific meditation practice. Accessing spacious consciousness minimizes the sense of urgency and angst in my life.

Having a model to rely on is helpful—essential—when we live in an uncertain world, because we need a way to find our bearings. Whether you use our model or you choose another isn’t the point—although we know of no other model that is as comprehensive, practical and effective. The point is to find a model that you enjoy using everyday so that you use it.

Wake up!

After you have a model to use for guidance, there is another step that is required to develop emotional mastery. It is to step back, wake up, go high, dive deep—or whatever you want to call it—it is the necessity to go outside of our ordinary lives so that we continually explore new frontiers.

We all acclimate to our lives and our relationships. We get stuck in “good enough,” or habitual patterns. The solution is novelty, new challenges, wake up calls. The same is true of athletes. If they didn’t have something to push them, which is what an event like the Olympics does, they would grow bored or stale and lose sight of their ideals. This is the purpose of our retreats (labs), to provide a place and enough time in which we step outside of our day-to-day lives, learn new skills, hang out with other people who share a commitment to personal growth, and inspire ourselves by being challenged to go deeper and do better.

If you want to take yourself to the next level—whatever that is for you—in terms of developing emotional mastery, come to our upcoming retreat where you will learn to slow down, connect, ask new questions and find new answers. You may even win a medal just for being you.

The post The Emotional Olympics appeared first on Reology.