Creating an Enduring Relationship

During my Christmas vacation this past year, I was engaged in a conversation with my oldest niece. In the course of that conversation she informed me that she was not going to get married. When I asked why, she told me that it was because “fifty percent of all marriages (in America) end in divorce” and went on to explain that she had no interest in becoming part of the divorce-rate statistic. I shared with her my perspective that she could get married and not add to the divorce statistic. Implying that I didn’t understand her point-of-view, she asserted the significance of the statistics previously cited.

It may be of help for you to know that she and I entered this conversation with very different personal backgrounds. My parents have been married almost fifty years and remain happily together. But my niece’s parents divorced several years ago and she has been subject to, and a witness of, the pain, emotional turmoil, and heartache that this decision has had on her parents, her sister, and herself.

Since that original conversation, I’ve replayed it many times over in my head. And I’ve wondered how this (statistic) could be viewed differently and how I might be able to make a difference for her. Is there another, possibly more powerful, point-of-view from which we might view these astounding statistics?

Over this past weekend, I awoke to a thought that I now view as the answer to this question. And I believe that this concept holds a powerful perspective from which we can all learn so that we might make better choices in those we choose as significant others and even as friends. The thought to which I awakened was to “marry someone whom you don’t want to change.” The concept sounds simple enough and it’s certainly easy to say. But I believe that we all fall prey, at one time or another, to this hazardous, slippery-slope.

When I awoke with this thought, I began to think back over my partnership. Next month I will be celebrating my 13-year anniversary with my significant other. Most couples experience their first major difficulties around the two-year mark of being together. The first year or two of relationships are often referred to as “the honeymoon phase” because partners are generally still enchanted with one another during this time. However, around the two-year mark, partners generally begin to view each other from a more realistic point-of-view.

Behavior or habits once viewed as cute or entertaining, many times becomes annoying to us. We begin to start recommending “small” changes to the other and suggesting how he could better himself! Your girlfriend’s consistent behavior of being 15 minutes late is no longer viewed as her taking care of herself or wanting to look good for you. Instead, it now takes on new meaning, such as a lack of respect for you and your time or a lack of time-management skills. Your husband’s behavior of leaving his clothes wherever they fall when he removes them from his body may have once been viewed as carefree. Now, the same behavior becomes an anathema to you who likes to have a tidy home and feels the responsibility to clean up after him.

To borrow a popular American colloquial phrase, this is where the “rubber meets the road.” The hard work of a relationship only starts when you begin to see what you may view as flaws in your partner. After all, no one has a difficult time relating to another when the two are in total agreement. It’s only in discord, or in differing points-of-view that we find we need to walk in grace with one another. Only when we can find the grace to allow another to be who he is without requesting, or even desiring, that he change behaviors or habits will we find that we have the capacity to love another unconditionally. This is what it takes to stay together for “the long haul.”

Of course I’m not suggesting that anyone stay in a relationship where there is physical or emotional abuse or where another’s actions threaten our well-being in any way. However, outside of these types of circumstances, the ability to create a lasting relationship that works comes down to our individual abilities to accept another exactly as he is, and exactly as he isn’t. This requires that we adopt a new perspective for our relationships—one where we view nothing as missing or in disrepair.

[End of Post]

Copyright ©2011.  All rights reserved.

Why Reality Is Subjective

Most people, when they begin to hear the messages of, and believe in, the Law of Attraction, The Law of Faith, &/or Healing, they come to a point where they have heard enough to test their own wings, so to speak.  So they begin to believe for that which they desire and now understand that they can have.

However, stepping over into this new realm isn’t always easy.  And many people come up against the very same obstacle no matter what it is for which they are exercising their belief.  That obstacle is: what can be observed as the realistic present circumstances of one’s life through the five senses versus what one is believing.  And, when this comes up for some, they find themselves arguing for what they “see” as real versus what they are believing to be real.

One might say, “I’m believing for my healing but everything that I can see and feel, and everything that the doctors report as my condition tells me that the reality of the situation is that I have a serious disease and I need to subject my body to invasive medical treatment.”  However, the reality of any situation is never dictated by what one sees, hears, smells, tastes, or feels.  The reality of a situation is only given by what one perceives to be the truth.

The reality of me as a writer can only be given by the future into which I’m living.  If I only believe that what my five senses tell me is my current life as a writer will always be my life as a writer, I would discontinue writing for others immediately.  However, I choose to believe that I have a gift and I believe that gift will open doors for me to make a living through writing and doing other things about which I am passionate.  My life as a writer exists today because of my perception of seeing myself as a published author.  That life is the life I live into every day as given by the future I have created for myself.

We must always remember that believing in anything does not require us to deny the existence of our present circumstances.  In fact, faith allows us to say with surety, “although my current circumstances point to my insurmountable debt, I believe, and I therefore speak by faith, that all of my bills are paid and I am financially free.”  You see, faith can look into the eye of present circumstances and tell them to give way to the truth – the truth being what we perceive to be the reality of the situation.

The reality that we believe in is that everything on this earth is made up of the same thing – energy.  And just as the heavens and the earth were created by the language of God, we were created in His very image and we therefore have the same creative power to speak to the circumstances of our lives and command them to fall in line with the reality of the universe – that we create our lives, and we attract the circumstances that surround us.

Copyright ©2009.  All rights reserved.

Stories – Part II

In yesterday’s blog (“Stories – Part I”), I demonstrated how we make up stories about others. The stories we make up about others are given by: (1) our general beliefs about life itself (this is a good source for you to use if you’re ever having trouble identifying your core beliefs -> i.e. what are you saying is true about others?) and (2) our past experience(s) of these people.

The truth of any situation is that we make up our own interpretation of the events in our lives and we decide what’s true about them. According to that truth is how we then live, speak, and breathe. So, today, I want to look a bit closer to home. Because the stories we make up about others, as related to us, come directly from our past-based beliefs about ourselves – particularly those stories which are self-defeating. To illustrate this, I’m going to use an example that I read somewhere, & which includes a few of my own embellishments.

Let’s say that you’re out working in your yard and you find yourself in need of a shovel. Since you don’t have one, and rather than buy one, you decide to see if you can borrow one from your neighbor. It’s 9am on a Saturday morning. You go over to your neighbor’s house and knock on their door but there’s no answer. You know your neighbor’s basic routine and you see their car is in the driveway so you “know” that they are home. You knock on the door a second time and no one answers. Thinking they may not hear the knock, you ring the bell and wait for a minute. There’s no answer to the bell. You ring the bell a second time and wait another minute; but, still no one answers. You sooner or later realize no one is going to answer the door so you leave. But, what you and I don’t do, is we don’t just leave. Instead, we always assign some significance to an event like this. And we assign the significance immediately.

So, as soon as you’ve given up on the hope of your neighbor answering his door, you assign your meaning to the event. You leave only after you’ve assigned some meaning to that event. [Note how quickly this happens in real life.]

Before you leave, you could decide:

a) The neighbors don’t like me and that’s why they didn’t answer the door.

b) The neighbors didn’t want to lend me their shovel so that’s why they didn’t answer the door.

c) The neighbors may have been right in the middle of a hot breakfast and that’s why they didn’t answer the door.

d) The neighbors were in the middle of having hot, passionate sex, and that’s why they didn’t answer the door.

e) The neighbors were actually away from their house visiting another neighbor (they walked and that’s why the car was in the drive) and that’s why they didn’t answer the door.

Or, you could decide, more zen-like in nature, that

f) The neighbors didn’t answer the door because they didn’t answer the door! (This is the same as consciously assigning no meaning to the event.)

Each of the above reasons (with the exception of the last) has a meaning. What we generally do as humans, is assign the meaning that means something negative about us…..in this case, something like example a or b above. You won’t really know why the neighbors didn’t answer the door until you have a chance to relate the story and ask them why they didn’t answer the door. And, notice how quickly you make up your meaning about the events in your life. It happens so quickly, that unless someone else makes us conscious of it, we rarely even recognize that we’re engaging in this activity.

So, now that you’re conscious : - ) my request is that you start noticing in your life where you give meaning to what previously had no meaning. It really didn’t. It only became significant because you said that it was significant. It only became cause for concern because you put that concern into the meaning. Maybe it was necessary. Maybe it wasn’t. My request is that you play with this. When you reflect back on your day, look at the meaning you gave to the different events of your day. Then, look at whether or not you would have acted/reacted any differently if you had not given the event the significance you did. See if there’s an area of freedom for you in this discovery.

Truth Changes

Since we’re all of the same (human) species :-), we all get stuck in our thinking from time-to-time concerning what the truth of a matter is.  When I was younger, I used to hear my mom say, “sin changes.”  I asked her about that one day.  She explained that when she was young, it was thought to be a sin to go to a movie theater, to play any games with cards, to wear makeup, and so forth and so on.  But as Christians progressed in their knowledge and understanding of scriptures, and as civilization progressed, certain beliefs that were once held as true, were no longer believed.  The fact is: truth changes!

Years prior to the time of Columbus, the “truth” was that the world was flat.  It was also the “truth” in Galileo’s time that the Sun revolved around the Earth (geocentrism).  In fact, the geocentric view was so true, that the Church had Galileo imprisoned because of his teaching that it was the Earth that revolved around the Sun (heliocentrism).  The Catholic Church declared the heliocentric view to be "false and contrary to Scripture."

Any of the scientific areas of study - - Physics, Mathematics, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, Biology, Medicine, Chemistry, etc. - - have had major shifts in what they believed to be the truth from the time of their inception until now.  As we grow in knowledge, each new generation starts at a greater level of understanding than we did.  Therefore, this great wealth of knowledge continues to feed the study and research conducted in each of these fields, allowing new discoveries all of the time.

Why then, knowing this, do we get so “stuck” in our beliefs of what is the truth?  Might it be a more powerful place to stand if we could consider what we know to be true as simply a perception or viewpoint?  If we approached everything as if what we know is simply our viewpoint of that thing, we might open ourselves up to actually listening to others whose views differ from ours. 

If our views are true, they’ll stand up to the challenge of interrogation.  Truth needs no vindication.  And, truth has no need for anyone to believe in it in order for it to be true.  It just is - - by its own merits - - with or without agreement.

You could have an argument with a friend.  You might say, “Did you know that light travels faster than sound?”  Your friend says, “No it doesn’t!  Everybody knows that sound travels much faster than light.”  You could argue back and forth for 30 minutes and then ask others to weigh in on the argument with their beliefs.  For all of the good that would do, you might as well be pounding sand!  During the course of your argument, did the truth ever, even once, change?  Was the truth dependant upon a majority of people agreeing with it?  Of course not!  The truth remained that light travels faster than sound and it required no agreement or understanding from anyone in order for it to be so.

I assert that, what we see today as the truth, is fallible.  We would be better served by looking at what we believe to be true, as simply a position or a vantage point.  This would broaden our abilities to consider other possibilities and alternatives.  Regardless of whether we are flexible and open-minded, or whether we are guarded and unapproachable by others’ views, the truth will stand.  The truth will remain.  And, the truth will endure.  Will you?

Our Worlds are shaped by our Perspectives

Perspective is a very powerful thing.  Our moods are given to us by the perspectives we assume.  Our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions are all driven by the perspectives from which we choose to live our lives.

We sometimes overlook the power of perspective in our daily lives.  But, it is the absolute framework for the quality of our lives.  Our perspectives determine our willingness to take action in any given situation.  If we believe we are unbreakable, our perspective will lead us to take risks, ask for things that others won’t, and attempt things that others may shy away from.  If we believe ourselves to be broken, our perspective will keep us from easily making friends, prevent us from requesting anything from another for which the answer might be “no”, and stop us from taking any action at which we might ultimately fail.

We must make every effort to vigilantly remember:  the perspectives we assume provide the context for which the content of our lives shows up. 

As an example, if you have the perspective that you are unlovable, the only context in which people can show up for you is in a space of unloving.  In that space of unloving, any given person’s actions will be used to prove to yourself that you are incapable of being loved - - regardless of how benign the action might have been.  [Remember: We always find proof of what we’re looking for.  If we’re looking for proof that people are dangerous, we will always find proof of it in their words and actions.  If we’re looking for proof that people are loving, we will always find proof of that in their words and actions.]

Last week I needed to be at a specific place at a specific time.  I left the house late.  As I was driving, I became very aware of my thoughts and feelings.  I was tense.  I was irritable.  I was in an upset and everyone else who was driving in my path was doing so incorrectly.  I was making all of the driving actions they took about me.  If someone pulled into my lane ahead of me, they were inconsiderate and oblivious to the fact that I was in a hurry.  Quickly, I regained consciousness and choose a new reality - - a new perspective.  I thought:

When I believe that I’m going to be late, I get upset and everything that happens is wrong…..it’s like the world’s conspiring against me.  However, if I didn’t have to be anywhere at a specific time and I were just out running errands, everything would be great and the actions that other drivers took would (of course) not be about me.  In fact, they would be of little consequence to me.

I didn’t take the perspective that I wasn’t going to be late.  I was pretty certain that I would be and lying to myself about that would not be the best solution.  Instead, I said to myself, “OK, I’m going to be late.  There is nothing I can do to change that.  All I can do is communicate my impending lateness to the party concerned and allow myself to be with the fact that I will be late.”  Hurrying, driving recklessly fast or taking risks in my car where not actions that I wanted to take.  Instead, I simply allowed myself to be with the fact that I would be late and I was able to easily switch gears back to a “running errands” type of driving mood - - no hurry, nothing wrong, no irritability.  

You choose what you want in life.  No one chooses that for you.  Don’t get into a rut of thinking that you’ve been given your perspectives in life.  You may have had certain influences (such as your parents or guardians) in your life, but you chose the perspectives by which you live your life.  And you now have the power to freely choose different perspectives - - ones that empower you to live your best life.