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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Often, when we seek to rectify a situation or relationship, we start from a place of business. “What can I do to fix this?” we ask. We try to fix the other, or if we’re smart about how things work in the real world and recognize that we are simply incapable of fixing another, we turn to fixing ourselves.
The only way you can ever hope to change is if you give up on the change and just embrace yourself. You are good enough. If you are telling yourself, “Self-love has to wait until I’m done with self-renovation,” you may spend years in a loop working on yourself. Working on yourself is convenient. It keeps you so busy fixing problems that you never have to actually resolve the issue. Loving yourself, even with all the reasons you believe you are unlovable, creates real space for empowered change.
Perhaps you can get love from a partner, or parent, or family member or friend who wants to love you. Perhaps you have to work for it. You may have to be a specific type or achieve certain measures of success to be loved by that person. You are willing to do anything, even if the price for that love is high and exhausting, because someone’s got to love you. Perhaps you are chasing love that keeps slipping away. You see it from afar but you never really feel good, and when it is in your grasp, you push it away. You are proficient at repelling love or even compliments.
A real relationship is this: two whole people, individually taking good care of themselves, and connecting from love and overflow. Autonomy is our ability to take good care of ourselves.
The cycle of overflow recognizes that all the love we give comes from ourselves. We can only love, give and serve if we ourselves are full. Our first priority is to take care of ourselves. We don’t have the ability to control others, take away their pain or save them
from their burdens, but we do have the autonomy to ensure that at least one person in their world is doing okay – and that is us.
When we keep giving ourselves what we need, this is what happens: we become so full of love, we overflow. We naturally share our love with others. We feel so good that we want the same for those around us. This is the cycle of overflow.
We farm out our lives into the hands of other people. When you do that, I can predict this: someone will let you down. Because nobody can hold your heart the way you can. And it’s not their job.
Autonomy means you know you will be okay no matter what happens in your relationships. Humans are fallible and they may fail you, but they can’t truly hurt you, because they don’t have that power. You have the power to protect you, and you honor that to the best of your ability. This frees you up to be you, to love everything in the world that you love.
It frees you up to love others as they are, not as a steward of your safety and wellbeing, but as themselves, human and imperfect beings. And it frees the other person up to be himself. That person may be in a bad mood one day. It happens. But it doesn’t threaten your safety because you will be fine. That person may have had a very difficult experience. You can be there for him, because his experience doesn’t threaten yours. You can be there as a resource. You can trust that he will make it through. You don’t need to fall apart on his behalf. You can trust his process. You are free. Things may
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a relationship where the other person is disrespectful, you don’t have the ability to change that person. But you sure can decide what you want to do and how you want to respond. Most important, you can know how it affects you.
You don’t need to pretend it isn’t there. You don’t need to judge yourself, to think if you had been stronger, had better boundaries, been wiser or more selfless, you wouldn’t have been in this place. You simply acknowledge that human beings have a direct impact on one another. Since you are in direct line of another human being’s behavior, this is the experience of it. You acknowledge it. You feel it. You own it.
Because you are focused on relating to the other person, the spotlight is on that person. You look at them and away from yourself. You talk to them. You listen to them. You feel them out.
you are able to change your awareness and focus on your part in the interaction, it gives you a really large part in what is happening. You can now control the rules of the interaction. You can’t control what the other person is doing, ever. But you do have leverage, as a majority owner in this interaction.
When you maintain awareness of an interaction, you can ask yourself a simple question: Is this interaction serving you? Because if it is demeaning you, overlooking you, or giving you a feeling that is less than affirming, it’s time to ever so subtly, ever so powerfully, change the dynamic.
We can’t change anything that the other person does. We wish we could, and we spend a lot of energy on changing others. We explain. We label them with names and couch diagnoses. We beg. We threaten. Oh, what don’t we do when we are in a relationship with someone we wish would be behaving differently! But that’s not within our ability. As humans, we can only change ourselves. There is power in that recognition. Yes, it feels pointless. I’m not the one who needs to change. He’s the one who is causing all this heartache.
Rather than looking towards your partner and waiting for him to change, take the courage to change yourself. You can change how you respond. You can walk away from a painful conversation. You don’t need to prove that you deserve better because you are not looking to change the other person, anyway. You simply remove yourself.
We all silence ourselves sometimes. We cram into old ways that don’t fit. We pinch our needs like petulant children who just want things at the most inopportune times, and instead of indulging in our desperate tantrums, we try acting like stoic adults. We silence ourselves because it’s easier than honoring our needs enough to see them through.
When I asked for my needs, I asked for them plainly. Stated my needs, stated how I was going to attend to them, asked for the specific help I needed.
How to Succeed in Negotiation Step 1 – Know What You Want
Step 2 - Ask for It
I have one rule in communication: Be honest. Take a deep breath and be brave. Just say it. Say it simply. Say it clumsily. Just say what you want. And if something other than what you want comes out of your mouth (because it can be so hard to tell the truth when it comes to your needs, your limitations and your values), you can say it again, but clearer this time. You can take as many tries as you’d like. You can forgive yourself for how you’ve said things. But the thing must be said.
Step 3 - Silence
You don’t explain. You don’t defend yourself. You don’t beg. You don’t add caveats. You don’t say, “But it’s okay. It’s what I want, but I totally get why you wouldn’t …” You just breathe, shut your lips super tight, and relax all the areas in your body that feel like they want to scream.
Step 4 - Trust the Process
Step 5 – Let Go
Step 6 – Listen
Step 7 - Repeat the Steps, Refining the Process
When you have a hard time seeing your own worth, you can’t know that you are worthy of respect. You continue to take abuse and blame yourself for it. You continue to overshare and overcompensate in the relationship, while the other person gives you little in return. You spend and expend yourself in the hope of redeeming your unworthiness.
