I have to stop going to the hardware store for milk
©istockphoto/sdominick
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
Today I’d like to talk to you about getting unstuck from unhealthy situations in important relationships. I have heard it said that 99% of the solution to any problem is to become conscious of your behavior first. So I’d like to start by sharing a little exercise with you, for which you are going to need a pen and paper, I’ll pause a minute while you go find one…
Welcome back! To begin, on your piece of paper, write the numbers 1. 2. and 3. underneath each other.
First, what I would like you to do is to think of an important yet frustrating relationship in your life, could be a romantic one, or it could be with a parent or sibling or friend. Got it? Good. Now write the name of that person next to the number one.
Next, think about what it is that you most need and don’t get from that person – could be something like acceptance, affection, consideration, passion, commitment, sensitivity – you get the idea. When you have chosen that thing, write it next to the number two.
Finally, calculate how long you have been in this situation of not getting this important need met in your relationship – could be days, weeks, months or years. Write this answer next to number 3.
Now write this sentence on your piece of paper
I have to stop going to the hardware store for milk. I have been doing this for ten years now.
Crazy or what? You know how Albert Einstein defined insanity? See the top of this post again if you need a reminder.
Now, I am going to have you write the sentence again with some substutions for certain words. You see where this is going? OK, but no chickening out now.
It’s important that you see this written down.
Here we go,
I have to stop going to __(your answer to number 1)_ for __(insert your answer to number 2) I have been doing this for __(answer to number 3)__
Take a look at this sentence without guilt, shame or judgment. Just notice – with curiosity about what might be motivating you to keep up this – shall we say – level of optimism about this particular relationship. There has to be a reason that some part of your brain is telling you to keep showing up at the hardware store for milk. It’s probably not a rational part. It’s likely to be part of you that is totally stuck on the idea of How Things Ought To Be. It might well be a younger part of you that says with sad confusion,
But this person is my fill in the blank they are SUPPOSED to fill in the blank.
You might respond to this younger part of yourself kindly ’Yes they are sweetie. And they ought to and you deserve to have them do that. But… I’m a little worried about how much it hurts you to keep getting your feelings so hurt when you are disappointed.’
Just saying.
Always remember that the only person you have any hope of changing is you.
Take this piece of paper and stick it on your bathroom mirror for a month. Each time you brush your teeth, take a look at it and try to come up with some ideas of how you might try to do this differently. It doesn’t necessarily mean ending a relationship. But it might mean working on laying down the expectations you have of how things ought to be, so that you can have a little more peace about how they are.
Think about it. Ask yourself this question
If I could give up the belief that ******* should be ******** how would that change how I feel about the way things are?
Chances are if you didn’t have the expectation that this person should behave in a certain way – you wouldn’t be suffering when they don’t. Try this on for size. And let me know how it works for you. I’m going to be working on it right alongside you.
Let’s do this in three dimensions
Hello there,
How about we do this in three dimensions some time? I am booking individual and couple sessions in April at this time and have some limited availability for Skype sessions in March. Also, today I updated the Workshops and Seminars page so please click on over to check out the Spring workshop schedule which includes the Freedom Peace & Power one-day life-makeover workshop for people who want to give their healing, growth and living at their full potential a super boost and the highly successful Vive La Différence weekend workshop for couples interested in more relationship goodness and joy than they will know what to do with.
Hope to see you soon, even if it’s on Skype.
Mirabai
My purpose is love
©istockphoto/Creativeye99
I had an amazing weekend facilitating the Vive La Différence Weekend for Couples with Bruce Gold. I am awed and humbled by the transformational power of love. It truly is the strongest medicine. This morning, one of the participants forwarded me an email she had received today which I would like to share with you along with a song – MC YOGI Give Love.
Daily Inspiration for Monday, February 27, 2012 from Renaissance Unity
Purpose
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”
~Emily Dickinson
Today’s Affirmation
My passion is freedom and my purpose is love.
Today’s Meditation
Dear God,
Your presence in my life is like a burning fire and a cool breeze.
Your truth pushes and cradles me.
I intend to be a better person today than I was yesterday.
With Your help, I passionately live my purpose.
With my help, You transform the world.
Thank You!
And so it is.
Amen
Today I hope that you feel connected to and inspired by your life’s purpose.
Come on Baby, re-light my fire – how to get date night out of a rut
istockphoto/spiderstock
Unless you live in a cave, you are probably aware that it was Valentine’s Day yesterday. All things romantic are foremost in my mind not just because it’s THAT month again, but also because I’m majorly excited that next weekend I’ll be offering the Vive La Différence Couples Workshop in Collegeville, PA. Last week I wrote a post for Lifehack on how to make Valentine’s Day last all year and I thought it would be fitting to share one of the tips I shared on how to re-kindle the spark.
This hot date idea is entitled Strangers in the Night and it is quite the fire-starter, especially when you have been together for a long time and/or are married.
For the purposes of this exercise you will need to select a time and date to meet in a bar that neither of you have visited before. An hotel bar is ideal for the purpose of this exercise for reasons that will become apparent.
Without discussing any details beforehand, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to invent an alter-ego for the night, complete with name, age, personal history etc. Venture outside the box a little and experiment playing the role of someone who has a little different lifestyle to your own. For example, you might pretend to be a traveling pharmaceutical sales executive and power dress in heels and a business suit – perhaps with racy lingerie underneath (-of course, if you’re the guy and you try this role you will need to be prepared for quite a bit of extra attention.) Get creative and play against type – if you’re a dentist by day, how about going as a contractor complete with tool belt? Or a secret agent on a dark ops mission? You get the idea. Whatever you come up with, invest a little time in creating your character as fully as possible. Where do you live? How old are you? Kids? Not?
When you arrive at the bar, if you get there first pull up a stool with your back to the door, order a drink and enjoy the thrill of anticipation as you await the arrival of a mysterious stranger. Play hard to get or flirt like mad, the choice is yours. One of the most fun and unexpected benefits of this game is the reaction of the bartender or guy next door who is eavesdropping on the conversation and just can’t believe what he’s hearing. Especially when one of you proposes that you should leave together (or better still slips a room key to the other).
Whether you head off home or head upstairs to a room together, try to keep up the act as long as possible. This game is a sure fire cure for date nights that have fallen into a rut. Especially when you make a conscious effort to see, hear and touch each other with the curiosity of never having done it before. While you’re at it, you might want to try new foods or -ahem- activities that you perhaps might not usually explore. You get all the adventure with none of the risks and the best part is, you can pretend to be a totally different set of people as often as you want.
How to survive the most wonderful time of the year when it sucks
istockphoto.com© hartphotography1
Holidays can be the most wonderful time of the year but they can also be the most difficult. There is something about the message that this particular time should be full of joy that can create a lot more pressure for people who aren’t feeling particularly joyful for various reasons. One of the keys to getting through it is to remember that, in fact, you are not alone in feeling this way. Many people are suffering from sickness or depression, are dealing with being separated from loved ones, or coping with personal challenges or financial issues that are overwhelming.
Even if you are lucky enough to be surrounded by loved ones, ironically, this season of cheer and goodwill to all men is the time of year that families and couples fight the most. There is nothing quite like an extended period of time in an enclosed space with your nearest and dearest to push your biggest buttons and, when you add alcohol to the mix, things predictably go downhill.
Being single during the holidays is arguably worse than being part of a fighting couple: For some reason, being unwillingly single for the holidays sucks even more than on Valentine’s day, presumably because you at least have a fighting chance at ignoring the existence of the latter.
All this pales in comparison to how hard it is to get through the holidays when you are mourning a loved one. It is particularly painful, not just because it is a time full of memories, but because everywhere you turn, the message is that this is the time to be together with loved ones. The joy that the rest of the world seems to be experiencing can make those burdened by grief feel particularly isolated.
The most important survival skill at this time of year is to give yourself permission to have the feelings you are having. Stop telling yourself that you ought to be feeling differently just because the calendar is on this particular page. It is hard enough to deal with difficult feelings without heaping guilt and shame on top of them. Quit Should-ing yourself. Expectations are 99% of the cause of all suffering. Give up the expectation that you should be feeling or reacting any differently to the way that you are. At a minimum, accept that the reality is this is how you are feeling. Even better, show yourself a little compassion and respect the fact that if you had a choice, you wouldn’t choose to be feeling like this.
Step 2 is to imagine yourself as someone else that you care about and think about how you would treat them if they were feeling this way. Perhaps you would be a little more patient? Give them a break? Give them permission to curl up under the covers until they felt stronger? Everyone is unique and we all have different things that make us feel better – and crucially for some people, the most important thing is simply having permission not to feel better until we do. Sometimes it takes a heck of a lot more time and energy to try to stop yourself having a feeling than to let it run it’s course. Sometimes, little things can help a lot. Be brave and ask for help. If that’s too much or there doesn’t seem to be anyone available, come up with a short list of things you can do for yourself that might help. Maybe it’s going to the movies and escaping reality for a while, finding someone to talk to, getting some exercise, making yourself some nourishing food.
Step 3 is to remember that practicing gratitude can be a very helpful aid. Sometimes, even coming up with a list of things to be grateful for is a major challenge (click for a link to a post on some suggestions to get started). If that’s the case, try an appreciation list instead. When all seems lost, sometimes it helps to focus on appreciation for the things we have experienced, the ability to feel, the breath that still carries hope that there will be a better moment ahead. If these holidays are hard for you, I truly hope something here will be helpful. Please remember that you are not alone and that everything changes. This too shall pass, I promise. I wish you peace in your heart.
The alpha woman in love – does your success hurt your sex life?
I saw this photo on the w
eb today and I just had to buy the poster. To me it says so much about what so many women I know yearn for in relationship: To be able to be the driven woman, charging ahead towards her goals and yet to also enjoy the feeling of being held by powerful arms. This guy is so clearly un-threatened by her power. He doesn’t have a problem letting her drive, he exudes confidence, intellect, sexiness and fun. He trusts her enough not to second guess the direction she’s taking and is on the look out for something awesome on the way that they can share and enjoy together.
The alpha woman and relationships
The subject of the alpha woman and relationships has come up twice this week, once in a fascinating chat I had with a dynamic woman who is a highly successful entrepreneur and mega star of the blogosphere and again on Twitter, in tweets between Patti Stanger, of Bravo tv’s Millionaire Matchmaker fame (@pattistanger) and reality tv star and Pageant Queen, Monica Pietzrak (@Monicawickedfit).
The first conversation revolved around the fact that for women entrepreneurs success can actually put more strain on a marriage than failure. We got to talking about the subtexts in a relationship to do with money and power. The Twitter exchange went like this: Monica tweeted “Why do successful alpha women crave the alpha guy? Will it truly never work? I’ve always been told “can’t have two #1′s” and Patti quipped in reply, “Ha! Yes it’s true we want a man to overpower us. So when you get an alpha man you become a beta woman!”
Patti’s use of the word “overpower” makes me flinch a little. This is a highly controversial area, not least because of the historical abuses of power and violence between the sexes. Many women fear to disclose a secret desire to be ravished, lest it is taken as an invitation to rape. But it’s worth venturing into the breech and talking about because it’ s an issue that many of the brilliant and beautiful women I know wrestle with: How do we reconcile our desire and ability to equal and even exceed men in business with our secret yearning to be “treated like a woman”. Just to be clear, whilst referring to straight women here, this issue relates to anyone of any gender whose preference lies in predominantly “feminine” traits and who enjoys intimacy with someone whose preference lies in predominantly “masculine” traits.
Why do I have to choose?
This is the dilemma of the modern woman - whilst I may be an expert at skilfully utilizing the “masculine” traits of my personality to kick butt in the world, when I come home, akick off my shoes and wonder in to the bedroom, my comfort (and pleasure!) zone lies in being in my feminine in relation to a partner who is exhibiting “masculine” traits. Critics accuse us of wanting to have our cake and eat it but why can’t I be an equal in the boardroom and still get the door opened? Why do I have to choose? For more on this ideology, check out the work of David Deida, no stranger to controversy himself, and his best-selling book The Way of The Superior Man.
The feminine feminist
Living 21st century, post-modern, industrial society, the pace of life is overwhelmingly masculine. It’s all about action and achievement and the faster the better. I wonder if that’s why we sub-consciously absorb this assertion that the feminine traits are in some way less powerful and judge them in ourselves. Growing up as a girl in the seventies, equality of the sexes was drummed into us at school at every opportunity, our anthem was “Anything you can do, I can do better”. The underlying message was that Pink was both Powerless and Pathetic. I exchanged it for black as soon as I could and didn’t wear it again until my thirties, when I decided to come out of the closet as a feminine feminist.
In theory the battle of the sexes should be over, but have we really come that far? What messages about being feminine and being powerful are we offering to girls – (or even more pointedly to boys who exhibit feminine traits) today? Women are certainly seen to be powerful, yet the power they exhibit often follows limiting stereotypes. Look at the media and you would be forgiven for thinking that there are only two ways to the top. One involves selling your body and the other selling your soul. Where is the middle ground between “pussy power” and being “an alpha male with a vagina”?
Vive La Différence
I think the answer for these successful women lies in giving up competition – not in favor of becoming submissive, (heaven forbid), but exchanging it for a paradigm of cooperation (which is of course, the feminine model, technically speaking). The road to peace and passion lies in embracing the concept of complementary opposites. I’m in favor of valuing our different qualities equally instead of trying to dilute them into an equal similarity, or as the French put it, Vive La Différence.
Ten Tips for tremendous first dates and one of the best holiday gifts you can give each other
I have a new post on Lifehack this week, with some advice about first dates which you can check out here if that pertains to you. If on the other hand, the days of first dates are happily far behind you, I also have something for you! Have you have been wondering about what to get your beloved for the holidays? Have you just been seized with minor anxiety because you hadn’t even thought about it yet? Let me help you out here. For a present with real and lasting value, how about coming along together to the couples retreat weekend I am presenting on December 10th and 11th? It’s the ultimate in quality time and I guarantee that this weekend will be the gift that keeps on giving, with more fun, intimacy, connection and great communication for the year to come and beyond. If you’d like to have a chat to get an idea of exactly what it could do for you and your other half, I’d be happy to hear from you. If you’re already convinced that this is clearly a) a gift that gets you mucho brownie points and b) one that will actually be pretty awesome for you too, hope on over to the registration page on
“This is not what I signed up for” How talking about the sub-text can heal your relationship
One of the biggest relationship mistakes that people make is to express anger instead of fear or sadness. That anger often arises from a sense of betrayal derived from the idea that an unwritten rule has been broken, the thought being ‘This is not what I signed up for’. But more often than not, instead of sharing the thoughts and feelings underneath it all, we ignore the elephant in the room and fight about the symptoms instead of the causes.
For Brad and Julie it all started when they had twins, right around the time he got his big promotion. All of a sudden their worlds were upside down. Between recovering from the caesarian and taking care of two babies with colic, Julie was completely overwhelmed and couldn’t wait for Brad to get home from work to give her a break.
How to know when to let go.
I wrote a post for another blog
, which I just discovered for complicated google reasons, I shouldn’t copy here, but I wanted to tell you let you know about it. You can read it here: Breaking Up is Hard to do: 20 Questions to help you know when to let go. (You’re not supposed to put in links that take people away from your website but I think this is some really helpful stuff and I didn’t want you to miss out!)
6 ways to escape Relationship Hell
Relationship Hell. We’ve all been there; once upon a time, you couldn’t wait to see this person, now it’s all gone terribly wrong and you don’t have a clue how to fix it. What causes this miserable phenomenon? How can you prevent it and how can you escape once you discover yourself there.
The most common reason that a relationship runs in to trouble, is the common pattern of falling in love with the potential in a person. We can find that we are essentially committed to a relationship with this imaginary, idealized version of the human being in front of us. Spend enough time focused there, and this fantasy can take on a life of its own.
Inevitably, these worlds collide and the clash between the fantasy and the reality can generate massive amounts of resentment. We can develop a sense of entitlement about the way we “ought” to be treated. We make the big mistake of comparing and despairing but continually holding up our experience against the fantasy relationship and making everyone miserable as a result.
The sense of having unmet needs is fertile ground for a vicious cycle to develop. We begin to observe the amount of (fill in the blank) we are receiving, weighing it up against they way things “should” be, and then begin to wonder whether our partner “deserves” the (fill in the blank) that we have been giving. Our resentment leads us to withhold the thing they want, which results in their reaction to withdraw and then we get even less of the thing that we wanted and remonstrate (or retaliate) by not giving the thing they want and so on and so forth.
Check-mate. So what can you do to stop the madness?
Firstly, one of the most useful pieces of advice I can give you, is to install a mental pause button or time out switch before you react to anything, Curb your impulsivity, no matter what degree of provocation you are experiencing. Take some slow deep breaths or even walk away. There is very little useful information to be gained from exploring anger. Anger is just a messenger, the solutions lie in discovering and acknowledging – even to yourself- the deeper feelings below the anger – which is usually some kind of fear.
Once you have taken your finger off the trigger, try something different, here is a list of 6 interventions to try.
#1 Let go of your expectations
That imaginary boyfriend, (girlfriend, husband, wife, partner etc) that wouldn’t be doing any of this isn’t real. Expectations are the root cause of all suffering. If you didn’t have the idea that things OUGHT to be different, how would it affect what you are thinking right now?
#2 Be present
We got so caught up in both holding on to stuff from the past and fears about a future that doesn’t exist yet that it is easy to miss the present altogether. Try focusing in on the now. Try looking at your partner with fresh eyes. Put aside your resentments, judgements and opinions and pay them some attention. Not just some in fact, give them one hundred percent of your undivided attention – with eye contact!
#3 Be honest
The truth will set you free. Be honest with yourself and with everyone else. We waste huge amounts of energy in denial and/or trying to manipulate the situation into being something other than what it really is. Radical Honesty is the key but please remember to speak kindly.
#4 Listen
I always say “Find someone to talk to who doesn’t talk”. Be that person for your partner. Stop being stuck on transmit. Bite your tongue if necessary. No interrupting. See how things shift when you give each other the respect of being willing to hear whatever they want to say without repercussions. Which means no responding, or defending in return.
#5 Give what you’d like to receive
It’s easy to be loving when it’s easy. Loving when it’s hard is what really counts. Love when you are tired. Love when you are angry. Love when you are bored. A romantic gesture when you least feel like can bring miraculous results, not least by making you feel good about yourself.
#6 Be vulnerable
Be willing to show how hurt and scared you are without covering it up with anger. Stay and stay open when you want to run away. Stop trying to explain, justify or defend yourself and most importantly, give up being right.
Each of these interventions can be very powerful by itself. In combination, they create a powerful set of skills to bring to the table. Maybe even more importantly, is that regardless of the outcome, practicing these techniques will help you feel better and feel better about yourself during the process.
Share this list with your beloved. Since what you are doing isn’t working anyway, why not suggest something different? Above all, always remember that the only person actually under your control is you.
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