November 11, 2010
by Rod Smith
Every now and again a real hold-in-your-hands Mercury newspaper finds its way to Indianapolis and I eagerly turn the pages. I read the news and marvel at the prices you are paying for stuff. As has been always so, I LOVE “The Idler” (it was my first real reading when I was a child) and then I see this column.
Seeing it. Reading it, evokes a few responses I’d like to divulge:
I’m humbled and honored. To occupy this prime position is a great honor, one that I do not take lightly.
I am thrilled to bring my perspective on families, relationships, therapy, and mental health to you.
I am delighted to be repeatedly informed of You and Me sightings on refrigerator doors, school bulletin boards, hospital notice boards, and in Church newsletters. What a delight.
But the real joy surges when a reader writes of how You and Me helped change his life or when a woman writes that she is learning to stand up for herself, speak her mind, declare he boundaries, I am reminded of the real reason I love writing You and Me.
Next week I will be write from two wonderful European cities: Amsterdam and Geneva – where I will be speaking for Youth With A Mission (YWAM).
Posted in Communication, Differentiation, Education, Faith, Recovery |
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November 7, 2010
by Rod Smith
Friends give you room to be right, wrong, late, or to be early. They allow you the “space” to be forgetful, sad, happy, angry, frustrated, when such space is necessary. In return you are careful with the liberty authentic friendships afford you. You don’t presume upon it. You remain respectful and you do not regard your friendships with a sense of entitlement.
Friends listen. They listen not only to the words you say but also for your soul to speak. They wait for your soul to trust, emerge, share, knowing it might take decades for it to say anything at all. They listen in order to love, not in order to advise, modify, or to assess, judge or condemn – but in order to love. They want to understand, hear, see, value and appreciate. In return you have become a skilled listener.
Friends live fully. While being committed to listening to you, while committed to waiting for your soul to speak, while being invested in building community with you and sharing life with you, they are first and foremost committed to finding and developing their own skills, developing their own dreams, and living their own ambitions. Friends know that among the greatest acts of friendship is the act of living one’s own life completely.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Differentiation, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership |
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October 21, 2010
by Rod Smith
Lake Geneva, Switzerland
“Thank you on behalf all my many single mother friends for the article published yesterday. Thank you for acknowledging our bravery and struggles. Thank you understanding the many roles we play and the many difficulties we overcome because of our love for our children. Thank you for noting it is near impossible to have a romantic social life as solo parents. Thank you for listing and understanding what women do not need in a potential partner or in friendly advice. I am 50 and the mother of two sons whose fathers disappeared when the going got tough.
“I have been a single mom for 32 years, and despite the challenges, long hours, and little thanks associated with the job of single mom, I have been blessed to have my sons and love them dearly. I am also proud of having still managed to forge a career, own my home, a car, and travel the world. I have recently studied to become a Life Coach. I just sit with the thought that my children did not chose to be born and hence, are entitled to the best Mom and woman I can be. One thing I know is that my son’s will make wonderful Fathers.”
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Faith, Family, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Parenting/Children, Past relationships, Schnarch, Single parenting, Step parenting, Teenagers, Trust, Victims, Voice, Womanhood |
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September 28, 2010
by Rod Smith
Send me your "Something Beautiful"
Write something beautiful – and send it to me.
Keep your contribution to 200 words. Pick a moment from today or from any time in your life and recount it.
I have a few motives:
1. I like to surround myself with beauty. Your writing will assist me toward that end.
2. I believe that each of our lives is a collection of its own set of miracles, its own quarry of joys and delights, even if it is, at the same time, filled with challenges.
3. I’d like to publish a few of your offerings (thus the word limit) and send a prize to the writer of the best piece.
So, have at it. I will be the sole adjudicator of your “something beautiful” submission, and, until it goes to press (if it does) your only reader.
I will send the winner his or her choice of three books: one of the Joan Anderson books I mentioned earlier this week or a copy of a book I have read every June for about 8 years: Failure of Nerve by Ed. Friedman. Please place “Something Beautiful” in the subject line of your Email or your comment. I will close submissions by Friday, October 1, 2010. I look forward to reading something beautiful from you.
Email address: Rod@TakeUpYourLife.com
Rod Smith
9/29/2010
Posted in Anxiety, Attraction, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Faith, Friendship, Leadership, Listening, Love, Therapeutic Process |
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September 1, 2010
by Rod Smith
1. Refusing to lie for you.
2. Allowing the consequences of your actions to hold you accountable.
3. Allowing you to fail.
4. Getting out of your way when you are angry so you may deal with whatever is upsetting you.
5. Refusing to rescue you from your moodiness.
6. Telling you the truth as I see it.
7. Resisting the urge to let your self-made issues pull me down.
8. Keeping my phone, Email, messages private, unless I choose to share.
9. Allowing myself to be happy and fulfilled even if you are not.
10. Supporting, loving you, while allowing my uniqueness (and your uniqueness) to blossom.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Education, Faith, Family, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Meditation, Responsive people, Sexual compatibility, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Womanhood |
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July 13, 2010
by Rod Smith
“Can abusive behavior like controlling behavior, badgering, jealousy about other relationships, monitoring things like a partner’s phone, and physical pushing, shoving behavior and even more violent outbursts stop?”
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Yes – but often not within the same entanglement. With close counsel and strong third party monitoring (at least for a period of time) the perpetrator can gain insight, grow, and self-monitor his or her use of unhelpful and destructive interpersonal behaviors.
While it is NEVER the victim’s responsibility (no one is sufficiently powerful to make another abusive) a lot can hinge on the degree of “fed-up-ness” within the victim.
Abuse (all categories) continues and intensifies when the victim covers for the perpetrator, “rewrites” the behavior, excuses it, or when the victim feels he or she deserves to be poorly treated.
Most perpetrators will back off (at least temporarily) when met with a sound and early refusal to allow an abusive repertoire within the relationship’s behavior cycle.
It is never the victim who causes the abusive behavior, but the victim must immediately remove him or herself from the abuse (which is seldom easy because people are attracted to persons who are similarly relationally mature or immature) or the behavior will intensify.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Anxiety, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Divorce, Domination, Faith, Family, High maintenance relationships, Manipulation, Reactivity, Recovery, Sex education, Sex matters, Sexual abuse, Sexual compatibility, Space, Spousal abuse, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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July 1, 2010
by Rod Smith
“Our daughter (10) is riddled with fear. She won’t sleep in her room, get up in the night without one of us getting up with her, or even enter her own room after dark to get her clothes for the next morning. She is able to speak very openly and graphically about her fears. Please shed some light on how we can handle this.”
No blame or shame...
This sounds like family anxiety passed from generation to generation and your daughter is the recipient of unresolved generational anxieties. An effective family therapist will serve you well. He or she will give everyone in the family (as many people and generations as your can gather for a meeting) assignments to explore the family’s unresolved complexities. Reconnecting with each other, being willing to sit down as a tribe will increase the likelihood of calming everyone in the family’s cumulative anxiety, even if at first it appears to make it worse.
Encourage your daughter to write her immediate and long-term goals. Encourage her to plan small steps of growth like being willing to sleep in her own room one or two nights a week. Do not punish her for her worries and concerns – they did not begin with her.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Education, Faith, Family |
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May 31, 2010
by Rod Smith
1. To be the most generous person you know.
2. To hold everything you own with an open hand.
3. To share everything you know with willingness.
4. To do all you can to empower the people within your circle of influence.
5. To be able to say “yes” more than “no” to the adventures that come your way (Ed Friedman)
6. To have the capacity to “see beyond” the limitations set by your family history, your nationality, and your faith story.
7. To be able to live within your means.
8. To embody forgiveness, freedom, and grace for all who will repeatedly and naturally attempt to sabotage you as you live your full and passionate life.
9. To embrace your dark side (everyone has one) by trying to understand it, accept it so that it will not need to push itself onto your center-stage and take you by surprise in response to your denial of its presence.
June 1st, 2010: Today our journey to Australia and Singapore begins. Traveling in the USA used to be a pleasure. Now it is usually a nightmare: no food on domestic flights, heavy security, frequent flight cancellations, lots of impatient “entitled” people. You can only imagine what all this means to my two boys! Hoping for two successful connections: Chicago and San Francisco.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Responsive people, Triangles, Trust, Voice, Young Love |
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May 23, 2010
by Rod Smith
“Rules of engagement” for conflict between friends and lovers and members of the family:
1. We fight to love each other more powerfully while understanding that conflict is sometimes necessary to remove or negotiate our way around natural restrictions that come in the way of all love.
2. We fight to better understand each other and because some deeply seated beliefs and positions are only clarified through benign conflict.
3. We do not fight to hurt, damage, or destroy but rather to clarify thinking, to define ourselves more clearly, and therefore, to see each other more fully.
4. When we fight we do not bring old issues into the fray, triangle others onto our side, or hide behind Scripture or other sacred writing.
5. When we fight we do not use stereotypes about men or women, race, creed, culture, or nationality.
6. We put a time limit on our conflicts, agreeing that the necessary conflict will not pervade every part of our relationship. Troubles in parts of our relationship do not need to contaminate the whole.
7. When we fight we will always give each other the benefit of the doubt, the offer of complete forgiveness, and an open dialogue free of cynicism, sarcasms, and retribution.
8. We will agree to disagree, respect our differences, and embrace our similarities. (From Gail S. Gibbons)
Posted in Anger, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace |
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February 15, 2010
by Rod Smith
Love her mother....
(former Durban City soccer star) wrote to me this week. Celebrating the joys of parenting of his infant daughter triggered his reminiscing: “You never taught me how to do this,” said his brief note referring to when I was his school teacher. You are correct, Grant. There isn’t curriculum that can effectively teach you to be a dad. Nonetheless Grant, here are a few challenges:
1. Dedicate yourself to your daughter to the same degree you enjoyed the dedication of your own mother and father. You could not have had better parents.
2. Love, serve, and honor your partner. Loving your child’s mother is the single most powerful way you can love your daughter.
3. Be as committed to honesty with your child as you were with others when you were a boy.
4. Don’t let the mundane, but necessary, tasks wear the joy out of you. Babies need fun more than they need clean nappies.
5. Go away for an overnight and a full day often with your daughter – just the two of you. Get no help packing or planning from anyone.
6. Finally, leave the teaching to your daughter. She will teach you how to be her dad more effectively anything you will ever teach her.
(Name used with permission)
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Faith, Family, Friendship, Listening, Marriage, Parenting/Children, Trust, Voice, Womanhood |
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