Your family – blood-, marriage, relatives-by-choice, adoption, and any other means people become family – is vastly more than a list of people on your group-chat or birthdays to try and remember or the ready-made crowd for weddings and funerals.
The hundreds of links (a family of 4 has 16 relationships) in your network – your family – and how you are linked (just right, over-connected, under-connected, loosely-affiliated, cut-off in anger, the “I’ll never talk to him/her-again” kind of connection) is of crucial importance.
How you are connected will either sustain and support and nourish you or drain and exhaust you. And, there is no escaping. Severe disconnections can wield a driving power even in a so-called non-relationship.
We are all “linked” and positioned in a variety of ways within the same extended family and so a family can nourish and support while, at the same time, it can rip to shreds and bleed someone dry.
I’d like to avoid this dramatic contrast but simply look around — listen to people’s family stories — you’ll see it is so.
We are each integral to the health (and un-health) of our family.
We are each a cell-within-the-whole.
The healthier we are, the more “just right” our connections, the more we will be nourishers and be nourished within the unique group of people we each call family.
The healthier I am will lead to a healthier “we” even if it results in hardship* along the way.
* attempts at greater health will be met with resistance from those around, especially those who’ve “benefited” from unhealthy habits and patterns.
There is a difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking.
In a troubled emotional environment peacekeeping saps energy and can be a never-ending task.
Peacemaking lays groundwork for authentic peace to prevail.
Peacekeepers work hard to keep the tensions from rising and work at pretending that nothing is amiss.
Peacekeepers avoid conflict. Their reward is the semblance of tranquility, the demise of integrity and escalation of anxiety.
Peacemakers invite necessary conflict knowing there is no other pathway toward understanding between warring people and groups.
Peacekeepers can endure fake “peace” leading to feelings of being called or anointed while they tiptoe through minefields they pretend don’t exist.
Peacekeepers apparently “enjoy” feelings of martyrdom. How else would they rationalize the accompanying stress of trying to hide or tame the proverbial elephant in the room?
Peacekeepers often see their role as “spiritual” and “humble” because they endure without “saying anything.”
Peacemakers value authentic peace more than its distorted parody. The peace that exists between people who possess the courage to endure conflict, for the sake of lasting peace, is like pure gold when compared with its counterfeit cousin.
Move with courage toward lasting peace.
Assume your legitimate role as a peacemaker rather than avoid conflict in order to keep a semblance of peace that is not worth having.
Backbone — a metaphor for courage. Your literal backbone keeps you upright. It keeps you standing. Your metaphorical backbone symbolizes your courage. I’ve met many people “slump” through life and stand for very little, people have been successfully filleted by themselves, by life’s trials, or by others. Spineless people are “easy meat” for high-maintenance, low functioning relationships. Access your backbone and shimmy up your spine. Love it. Strengthen it. Enjoy it. Deploy it.
2. Creative Brain
This is the part of your brain where you can think about thinking. It’s where you appreciate art and humor. It’s your realm of infinite possibilities. It’s your spiritual mind. It’s NOT your explosive or “fighting” brain or your “loves-me-loves-me-not” feeling brain.
Access your creative brain. Explore it and explore with it. Try to live with this part of your brain “driving” your behavior.
3. Voice
Your Voice and using your Voice embodies your willingness to speak your unique mind, to say what you see, think, and want, express what you think and want. It’s realizing that silence born of lack of courage or lack of confidence is seldom helpful to anyone. Many people have lost their voices in the name of love, submission, or in keeping peace. Access your Voice, deploy your voice, and persist with expressing the things that are important to you.
1+2+3=YOUR FORMIDABLE TRIANGLE
Once you embrace your Formidable Triangle you will be free to love yourself and others in ways that are healthy for all.
Over time, awareness of the three corners of your formidable triangle, and accessing each when necessary, will become “second nature” to you.
The corners will merge and form a firewall to protect you from draining relationships and exchanges. They will also merge and empower you to be your healthiest self under most circumstances.
To enjoy your Formidable Triangle ALL three corners are required.
Treasure and use your BACKBONE. Access your THINKING. Express yourself — your VOICE — loudly and clearly and you will attract healthy, high functioning adventures and relationships.
When first cousins Grace and Mercy show up from within you (they live rent free without exception within us all) and reveal their natural beautiful ways, human encounters get an added touch of the divine.
The cousins are hard at work and always ready to assist any person who wants to participate in acts of unmerited kindness. They play a willing hand in every expression of goodness and delight in participating in all moments of empathy. Mercy and Grace become especially evident and empowering when you express even a smidgeon of desire to offer forgiveness and generosity as a way of life. When we want them to influence and become “a way of life” they dance a little jig of joy.
When you and I permit Grace and Mercy to do their thing within us — they are always ready for an opportunity — no matter what may be our proclaimed faith or the absence or even the denial of one, we come face-to-face with our divine imprint.
Grace and Mercy will steadily reveal what wonderful tenants they are and transform any willing host of their counter-culturally subversive, loving ways.
May the sisters dance and have their way.
They will make you even more beautiful than you already are.
If it has to be earned, or can be traded or leveraged – it is not grace.
The millisecond an exchange of what is supposed to be full of Grace is tagged with expectation and is not freely given, it becomes something other than grace. It may be a bargaining chip, an attempt to control another, or something deployed in hopeful attempts to fix or change another, but, once it is currency of any sort, what is being “offered” is something other than Grace.
Grace is about the giver.
It is a reflection of the heart of the person – group, church, organization – freely giving it. It is not about the person or people on the receiving end. Is it not about whether it’s deserved or not, fair or not, or any one of those typical things people will say when someone has been the unlikely recipient of authentic grace.
Grace, with Listening (“You have my full attention”) and Presence (“I am here with you and for you”) are among the most powerful gifts we can offer each other.
Life itself tries to teach Grace to the willing learner.
May the learning curve be smooth and kind and gentle for you and for me.
When it seems that things are coming at you from all sides….
Hold onto yourself.
Even if you are surrounded by supportive loved ones, you are all you’ve got.
You are your own constant companion and your relationship with yourself is the longest relationship you will ever have – so you might as well be best friends.
You might as well learn to enjoy yourself.
How you treat yourself is (already) the platform from which you see others and it forms the lens through which you see all things.
When under pressure, don’t talk to everyone about what you are facing.
It’s a hopeful myth that all talking is helpful.
It’s not.
Choose a few trusted people and talk only to them
Spewing – freely-recalling, random mumblings, blaming others, yelling, speaking from a place of confusion or anger – has limited and few benefits.
Holding onto yourself involves planning what you will and will not share.
You are allowed to keep things to yourself.
You are allowed to plan and decide how you will behave, who you will be.
All this, and more, is all part of learning to hold onto yourself.
When you hold onto yourself, some will tell you are being selfish.
Self-awareness and selfishness are poles apart.
[I will be in Durban in February and April — not March — and would love to speak at your church, school, or fundraising event — make contact by email or private message.]
From a recent lunch in Cuba — note the hat and cigar. This vegetarian did not partake!
Listen to your conversations, yes, eavesdrop on yourself.
I try to do this and I am often embarrassed how regularly I’m on auto-play. I hear the same stuff – the same stories and one-liners – coming out of me over and over again.
It is as if I am bored with myself and those who are part of the “conversation.”
I don’t like this about me and I don’t particularly like it when I’m caught in someone else’s well-worn loop.
Sometimes I hear traces of contempt and sarcasm in my conversations.
I am very careful about avoiding swearing and blasphemy, yet there are times I am apparently okay with using words as clubs and bullying others with snarky sarcasm. These verbal habits are surely at least as toxic as possessing a foul mouth.
The gift of thoughtful conversations, where people listen without waiting to talk and people hear what is really being said is something to which I deeply aspire despite what sometimes comes out of my mouth.
By the way, I am heading to Duban during much of February.
I would be delighted to speak at your school, church, business, or club – and I promise to watch my mouth.
Drop me an email if you are interested.
Let’s see what time permits.
Two new pieces in our home — picked up in Lome, Togo and framed locally.
Take time, lots of it, yes, weeks, perhaps even months, to think deeply about your life and to write about it.
Great art deserves careful consideration and meticulous planning. Such contemplations will not require, in the meantime, you to stop functioning. Humans are vastly capable and can think and plan and ponder their unique works of art while engaged in day-to-day life as it is.
“Am I going where I want to go and doing the things I really want to do with the people who are most important to me?” is the backdrop question.
Articulating goals, even if they are unsure, generic, will bring you an added confidence as you pursue your ArtLife.
Identify which people are really important to you.
Evaluate what activities are really important to you.
Assess your direction.
Some people will tell you that this is a selfish way to live and, sadly, some will indeed plan selfish lives and reap the disappointment such planning will bring.
A life seen as art, planned as art, results in fulfilled, generous and thoughtful people.
Haphazard living, pointless, random existing, dependent on others for a sense of meaning and purpose, is a selfish life if I ever saw one.
Listening, no matter how skilled you are, cannot be faked.
You may be a skilled multitasker but even you can’t listen and, at the same time, do other things.
Even if you’re one of those people who can “spin a lot of plates at one time” or whatever the metaphor is, even you can’t do other things and listen and really hear the person talking to you.
Listening takes more than both ears. It takes both ears, both eyes, a closed mouth, and your whole focused body.
Even thinking about or wanting to check your phone, let alone the shifty reptile-like quick glances you give it and think no one notices, upsets your capacity to hear and it disturbs the speaker’s ease in talking to you.
Another thing that really upsets listening is your own unresolved stuff with other people, living or dead. As soon as any person “goes deep,” the millisecond he or she approaches anything close to something unresolved in your life, even if it’s from years ago, it’ll set you off inside, close your ears, or start you talking.
That’s how we ward off stuff, manage triggers, fight to keep things buried.
To listen is to love.
It’s often the only thing someone may want from you.
“The doldrum days” (the wait for the New Year) are over. The pace of life will resume. Many new year pledges will be forgotten. I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to dig a little deeper:
Dig deeper when it comes to caring for your health. Determine to do what you know will prolong your life. Look around you. It is obvious when people live against their own longevity, day by day, meal by meal, nap by nap. Everything in my day-to-day experience improves when I dedicate time to exercise and eating well.
DIg deeper into your loving and caring and creative side. In other words, all of your relationships. The adult in you has long recognized our human desire for powerful human connection. Reach out to the important people in your life. Minimize potential for regret.
Dig a little deeper into your relationship with money. You are either in charge of your money or it is in charge of you. Credit card debt, excessive gambling, binge spending, have ruined many lives and marriages. Repeatedly spending beyond our means is a sure-fire formula for ruin.
Eating, relating with others, earning and spending, are all deeply spiritual exercises. They reflect the conditions of our souls, our inner-beings. This is exactly the reason upsets in any of these areas of our lives can be fuel for distress.
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This graphic illustrates the reach of this column…..
difficultrelationships.com 