Say What?

So in observation of a long-term dysfunctional relationship is a petri dish fraught with examples of how not to be! Recently, another hideous such example from such a  relationship was brought to me, so thought I'd share....We'll call this lesson in life, "Get Over Yourself"

It's never okay to manipulate your relationships. Throwing a tantrum in the midst of your manipulations is ridiculous and LOL, albeit tragic at the thought of how truly pitiful such a person is. If you want someone in your life, sending them a text reprimanding them for not kissing your ring, is juvenile and beyond egomaniacal. So often, I've heard that so and so doesn't ever call me....Do you have a phone? Then call them. Waiting around passive aggressively stewing over someone not doing something you telepathically wish them to just so your ego can stay in check .... well there are no words except, bye bye now! 

Internal Not External

So ;-) A lesson learned in a rhyme:

A little bitty Finch sitting by a tree;

Wanting to be a Hawk so very badly.

The size was important, but the status more so;

Poor little Finch didn't know how to grow.

Growth of that magnitude is something from within;

Neither does it matter what or how you're born;

The kinda growth we're talking is mentally performed.

You can desire a status of any or every kind, but true stature is from internal growth and understanding. Such stature neither cares to whom you were born, what you look like, or how much money you can collect. Anyone in any situation can have as much or as little as they develop from within. 

Pretending To Be OK or Really OK?

It's easy to fall into pretending to be okay versus really being okay. We've all been there thinking it doesn't matter or trying to impress someone with how we can handle whatever. Being truly okay is making the right choices and honoring yourself as well as those around you (in a healthy noncodependent way of course). Pretending to be okay is a temporary fix that we end up paying triple for down the road. Think of it as a ponzi scheme that we're doing to ourselves!

Lost Your Umph?

Loosing your mojo is yucky. It happens mostly when we get overextended and in repeated violation of our own self. Being down and feeling like giving up is the hole in which we then reside once we've gone too long in that place. Climbing up out of the hole and getting our umph back seems like an impossible feat and one not even worth trying at times. So what needs to be done to get back to you? Pause, examine, and make some difficult decisions. Listen to what your subconscious is telling you, not what your surroundings and giving up self is muttering at you. It's hard to climb out when you're drowning in the impossible, so not focusing on all the drowning and instead looking at the reality and the choices available. Know that 'pushing through' is not always the right answer. You'll know this to be true if you still feel like hell after thinking that is your only option. Simply trudging forth into what knocked you down in the first place could be nothing more than your ego not allowing you the option of defeat for what you were trying. The only failure would be giving up altogether, not trying something different or walking away from what isn't healthy for you. Failure isn't acknowledging something isn't working and you either deciding it was not going to work because of xyz and trying something different or a different approach to the same end.

Inappropriate Dealings

It's easy enough to know how to "handle" someone who is inappropriate at times or that you are not 'entangled' with in relationship or work. But, "handling" someone who is inappropriate in continual, dysfunctional ways that you have to work with or relationship with is not always as obviously easy. I'm not talking bad jokes and foul language inappropriate because..well come on, that's my thing ;-) I'm talking about abuse of relationship inappropriate.

Case in point, a client that is continually berating you in a passive aggressive manner, in and out of the presence of other clients, can seem impossible to "handle". Here's why: Aggressively talking back at them does not work because they are being passive aggressive for a reason. They don't want to confront the real issues, and certainly aren't going to own them, so 'calling them out' is only going to get ugly, make the other clients feel awkward, and probably cost you a client or two. Playing their dysfunctional, passive aggressive game doesn't work either. They delight in getting to feel heard without being accountable, so this little duologue serves no real purpose, and is extraordinarily frustrating. Knowing why this person is the way they are, as well as knowing what their real issue is through all the passive aggressive bs is part of then knowing how to contend with their behavior in a functional way. Removing your own feelings of wanting to eviscerate them to avenge yourself is definitely a must. Now, you can practice your functional use of the Four Agreements in this unnecessary situation. Be direct not subtle. Say what you mean with no passive aggressive vagueness. Don't get into a whole allowance of them to continue bad behavior by dragging you into an argument. This shouldn't be an argument or an airing of grievances, but instead a tactful bottom-line of what will not be deemed acceptable in this relationship (a.k.a., your boundaries). Since you have arrived at them being passive aggressive for the reasons you did, and knowing that an argument with them is futile...also knowing that you cannot control another person (reaction, feelings, behavior, etc.), then your approach of tact and boundaries of the main issue is all you can do. Their reaction is probably to pout and tantrum, which is a whole other thing, but the same holds true in that actions equal consequences. Their actions may be the consequence to both of you of them having to leave your establishment, so before entering such a line in the sand you have to be willing from a business standpoint to pay that consequence for someone else's bad behavior.

The same strategies used above applies in all personal relationships, just with the absence of it being a business transaction, etc. Being true to your word, and in all things saying what you mean without pretense, vagueness, or passive aggressive nonsense. Owning your part in action and feelings. Setting your boundaries without being harmful. Harmful is different than being 'hurtful'. Since you cannot possibly control another's reaction or feelings, then you cannot possible be direct and tactful without some hurt involved. Being harmful is to be intentionally mean....saying more than is necessary to getting your point made or boundaries set. In resolution to any issue in relationship there is no need to draw blood.

Subconscious Struggles

Our subconscious is our barometer, our record keeper, and our no filtered feelings. Bad dreams and restless feelings and anxiety is one way our subconscious talks to our conscious minds when we are in conflict with ourselves or another. When we ignore our subconscious it only gets louder in its communication. As our record keeper, it holds onto everything we have been through in our lives and especially what we haven't yet worked through in our conscious minds. Our subconscious takes in everything around us and within us. The negative self talk and fears we harp on in our conscious minds is absorbed by the subconscious and becomes our reality. It is vitally important for both our physical and mental health to not only be true to our words and thoughts outwardly to others, but also internally to ourselves as our subconscious hears everything we tell ourselves and absorbs it as facts ... it holds onto to what we don't acknowledge and work through to conclusion keeping it as our reality until we do. 

All About Balance

from previous Post: Still Searching For Balance?

Balance is fleeting! We no sooner think we've found it and poof it's gone. Sometimes the stressors in a new situation can cause this poof, and sometimes we just get lax in our daily practices that achieve balance does it. Not overfunctioning or underfunctioning in our daily lives is a tricky little harmonization. The best course of action when it all seems "undone" is to sit quietly and make a list of everything on your plate...the big and little stuff. Break your list down into two lists of daily and long term, and then prioritize. Just having it all on paper and out of your head helps tremendously. Having set goals of everything in a reasonable timeframe frees up your mental traffic jam.

Balance

Overwhelmed?

To-Do's, Have To's & The Remainder

Little Bits At A Time

Okay so here's the deal, life & to-dos are overwhelming if we think about the whole list at once. Especially if we are adding in completely new balls to juggle! If we wait until the perfect timing, or our complete comfort with all that needs to be done, then we'll never even begin or complete. First, know there will never be a perfect "time". Second, know that there is no "perfect" anything. You might come close at times, but you're never going to accomplish "perfect" anything all or any of the time. Choose to accept that more than not "done" is better than "perfect", and "doing" is better than "waiting". Don't fall into the trap of beating yourself up along the way either of "I should be doing all this other too", or "I should just give up because I can't get all x,y,z done". Every day do what you can (legitimately try/do), and every day try to add one more item that gets left off or behind. "Adulting" is no different than exercise.....you have to warm up and practice the basics before you can add the more advanced moves. If you give up more than you practice the basic/daily tasks, the likelihood of you ever getting to the new or bigger parts of your to-dos is next to none (because you don't really want to if you aren't really trying). Harsh reality that everyone who has exercised for fitness or weight loss is, that you have to really, really want it to achieve it...because the discipline that it requires is not within the realm of reach if not for the desire to obtain it!

What You Give You Get

What you dish out, you receive in one form or another. Truth! You may not always reap your rewards or your consequences immediately, but believe me you will receive what you sow. With a grateful and cheerful heart you work in your relationships and your daily tasks and the reward will be your grateful heart and the lives you touch and in turn touch you. With a lazy disposition of taking whatever you can get and busting through life with the will of a rhino, and you will be unhappy and lonely and with little true happiness. Respect is earned not demanded. Happiness is from within and not given. True wealth is in having pleasure in life and not treasures stored up. We have the ability at any given point in time to change course and decide that how we are, where we are, who we are is not a have to but a choice. 

Don't Be Discouraged My Fellow Traveler

Yeah, life and adulting is hard! Yes, some of my posts are brutally, cut to the chase honest! I write what I know and what I have experienced....mostly the hard way! I continue to learn, fail, try again, learn some more, and share everything I know so far. I used to see the world, my circumstances, my options with a very black and white (no gray) lens of wrong and right. Guess what? There is a lot of gray to both right and wrong. Guess what else? When ego is gone, when pride has left the hide, when judgment and no longer doing just to please others has been exercised from your practice like a demon, then the world of gray turns into a vibrant rainbow of color options. Life turns into challenging instead of impossibly hard. Your daily life is better than a vacation because you live in peace. I'm not Pollyanna or Mary Poppins. I'm not selling you magic anything....it's still work, but rather than gruel you have a flavorful stew of tasks. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the challenges in life are seen through whatever lens of growth you choose.....Choose wisely, because otherwise life is of little reward and all hard work and unhappiness!

Young At Heart

There are those young folks that are weathered and very difficult to be around, and then there are aged folks who are bouncy and happy to be around. To be young no matter your age is not to be immature and ridiculous, but to be full of life and a doer of life. Youth is from within, your very soul and nature, and has little to do with your birth year. A vibrant life is vibrant and radiates from within no matter the hardships or circumstances. To be youthful is not a special cream or a surgery or a tuck or an exercise. You obtain true beauty and youthful radiance from within!

Fear

Fear is an ugly little beast for sure. It prevents us from living fully every time we give into it. It's like a fatal disease that starts at the subconscious level until it's eaten through to our conscious mind. So here is a mantra: If you fear it, you must examine it. When you take fear out of your head where it eats away at you, and you examine what it really represents or from where it stems, then and only then can you conquer it....walk through it and do the thing you fear. Fear is nothing but negative self talking originating somewhere from our past, so deal with the why and you can then deal with the what. Unless, it's a death eating pit, then yes listen to your fear and don't do that thing ;-)

Consequences

Explaining consequences to children is "fun" (sarcasm), but explaining consequences to adults is tragic. There is a cause and effect to everything we do (good, bad, and indifferent). When we only think about ourselves, or the moment, or that it doesn't matter this time, then we certainly aren't thinking about the consequences to ourselves or to others. What you do matters. This is true for every action whether we see the effect to our cause presently or way in the future, it still remains. A child is fraught with easy examples of this. One such one would be them not listening when you tell them you all need to leave the house in 10 minutes, and then they are not ready (have to go to the bathroom, get dressed, put their shoes on, etc.), and then it takes 30 minutes to leave making you late for an appointment (or whatever). Very simple cause and effect, but there are much more serious ones that play out in relationships. So, here is the simple fix to cause and effect hazards:

• Do what you say you are going to do!
• Mean what you say...words mean something (see Websters for help)!
• Honor the other person whether in agreement or disagreement, there should be honor!
• Validate yourself, that's no one's job but yours alone!
• Laziness has no place in a relationship, as it's the cornerstone of complacency! 
• Listen as well as talk when communicating....'cause that's how conversations work!
• Talk with someone, not AT someone!
• Respect yourself because if you don't first, no one will, and that means you have to be respectable!
• Own your mistakes...we're all only human, apologize specifically and correct honestly!
• Be a doer and not just a taker! 
• "Intent" without "Action" is just a fairy tale, so figure out what your true intentions are, and then act on them...every time, or the time will pass!