Posted by Amy Hale on December 5, 2011 at 7:16 am
Do you want to make the most important relationships in your life work? What are the significant relationships in your life – examples: your spouse, your child, your boss, your colleague, your parent, your sibling — anyone who is a major player in your life.
What approach do you take in regards to particular major relationships? Do you make that relationship work, do you let that person walk all over you, or are you passive to the point where you’re just waiting to see what’s going to happen.
I’m often surprised that when someone comes in to talk with me about a relationship, they are usually waiting to see what’s going to happen next. This might look like a good 
choice at first, but the problem with this approach isthat if you wait long enough – you’ll inevitably see things you don’t like.
I’ve noted three key differences between a relationship that a person want to make work and one where the person is waiting to see if things will turn out the way they want.
First, you can choose your battles you can use the my way or the highwayapproach. In any of my relationships, there are certain areas I just won’t negotiate,including boundaries that involve my physical and mental well-being. It theline gets crossed, the person isn’t allowed to remain in my presence. However, inrelationships that I choose to wait and see, I give a more leeway to somepeople than I do others.
Forexample, if your 5 year old sticks her tongue out at you, is that a “dealbreaker” for the relationship? Of course not. If a friend sticks his tongue outat you and calls you a name, you might not like that. If you don’t, you mightjust use that as a “deal breaker” and relinquish the relationship.
Second, you can fix the problem or fix the relationship.As with anything, what you focus on expands. If you want to fix the problem,the problem becomes more evident. It also become less tolerable. When you decide that you want to make the relationship work, you bring in more of the concept of relating. You build on the better points of that relationship.However, if you’re in a “wait and see” relationship, and there’s a problem being focused on, you tend to re-evaluate the relationship.
Third, Many people care about things and what happens and some people over-care. When we decide to focus on making a relationship work, we don’t stop caring about ourselves and our own personal needs. When choosing for the relationship, we also don’t require to make our happiness dependent on relationship. On the other hand, when we are waiting tosee what happens and how things will turn out, we can get caught in the “over-care”trap. This means that when something doesn’t go your way, you take it personal and get caught in the never-ending cycle of inner argument and resentment.
Today’s Experiment:
Make a list of you top five important relationships.
Next to each one, decipher whether this is a relationship you have decided to make work or are you “waiting to see” how it turns out.
If you have chosen to “wait and see” in any of your relationships, experiment with how that relationship would change if you decided to make it work.
Let me know what happens. I love hearing from you.
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Posted by Amy Hale on April 12, 2010 at 5:58 am
Recently I took on a new client who is clearly a genius. Unfortunately, he refused to take an IQ test just in case he turned out not to be an “official” genius.
For years, I refused to read any books about relationships or do any exercises on building awareness because I feared that deep down, my relationship might be doomed. (For the record, 6 years and still going strong at this time of writing!)
In both cases the fear is clouding our perceptions. The reality is that until we are honest with ourselves, we are living a lie!
This Week’s Experiment:
Get a notebook to write in. (Don’t use your journal, if you have one. You’re going to destroy the pages)
Now, write for at least 5 minutes what you really think about the following topics:
a. Your partner
b. Money
c. Sex
d. The Government
e. The opposite sex
Be sure to write the stuff you would never say because it’s too rude, naughty, freaky, or just plain terrifying!
Decide whether you are going to burn, shred, or keep your work!
Please share your comments below.
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 19, 2010 at 2:01 pm
If you’re on the right path, you’ll get to where you want to go. Consistent commitment keeps you on the path.
The hardest thing for people to unlearn is the short attention span that’s been shaped by television, entertainment, letting the kids rule the roost, and by letting pernicious, untrue self-victimizing thoughts snuggle up into our belief systems. And this inability to be flowingly calm and ‘real’ is really just the inability to return the mind to the most important thing it can be thinking about in the present moment. It leads to a lot of much unfinished business. The unfinished business then leads to drama. The drama leads to self-dramatization including wild stories about how other people make us unhappy or destroy our dreams. This self-dramatization replaces the committed life.
As Steven Pressfield writes in, “The War of Art,” “Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Jenny shows up for church with a tattoo. It’s more fun than a movie. And it works: nobody gets a darn thing done.”
Please share your thoughts & converse with me.
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Posted by Amy Hale on November 11, 2009 at 1:19 pm
This week has been a whirlwind for a client of mine – a good one. Historically, this person has been so
meone who reacts to events in her life instead of taking ownership for her situations and creating solutions. However, she has recently discovered something completely different. Over-responding is much more desirable, healthy and emotionally profitable than over-reacting.
Last week, her landlord sold the building she had been renting in since the inception of her business and gave her 30 days to move. Even though that event was a huge shock, she decided not to over-react but over-respond. I reminded her that she is an entrepreneur who knows what she wants and goes for it. In fact, this past week when we set our minds to moving her into a new space, everything fell into place quite effortlessly. We expected to have to wait for movers to move her, however, when she called them, they said the only time they had available in the next few weeks was Saturday (four days after her call to them.) It seemed like magic.
The best part is before she even moved in, she was meeting new people and finding joint ventures with her office neighbors – something she was still challenged with at her previous space.
I truly believe in over-responding. As my good, late friend Thomas Leonard would say, “Anytime something big happens, whether it’s good or bad, do something bigger and you’ll continue to reach success.”
This week has been a whirlwind for a client of mine – a good one. Historically, this person has been someone who reacts to events in her life instead of taking ownership for her situations and creating solutions. However, she has recently discovered something completely different. Over-responding is much more desirable, healthy and emotionally profitable than over-reacting.
Last week, her landlord sold the building she had been renting in since the inception of her business and gave her 30 days to move. Even though that event was a huge shock, she decided not to over-react but over-respond. I reminded her that she is an entrepreneur who knows what she wants and goes for it. In fact, this past week when we set our minds to moving her into a new space, everything fell into place quite effortlessly. We expected to have to wait for movers to move her, however, when she called them, they said the only time they had available in the next few weeks was Saturday (four days after her call to them.) It seemed like magic.
The best part is before she even moved in, she was meeting new people and finding joint ventures with her office neighbors – something she was still challenged with at her previous space.
I truly believe in over-responding. As my good, late friend Thomas Leonard would say, “Anytime something big happens, whether it’s good or bad, do something bigger and you’ll continue to reach success.”
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Do you push and push, day after day, not taking a break? Not even for a moment? I’m not talking about all of the work that you do. I’m talking about the self-bullying you do to yourself. Do you ever get tired of telling yourself that you “should” have done something different, or “If I hadn’t said that?”
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