TABLE OF CONTENTS A quick note from Michael:........................................................................................................................... 2 Part One: ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 Part Two: ..................................................................................................................................................... 21 Beyond Acceptance and Agreement .......................................................................................................... 22 Beyond Reframing....................................................................................................................................... 25 A Multidimensional Experience .................................................................................................................. 28 Plato's Cave for a New Millenium ............................................................................................................... 31 A Most Unusual Job .................................................................................................................................... 33 A quick note from Michael:............................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. Part One: ........................................................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. Part Two: ........................................................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. Beyond Acceptance and Agreement ............................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined. Beyond Reframing.......................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. A Multidimensional Experience ..................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Plato's Cave for a New Millenium .................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined. A Most Unusual Job ....................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
A quick note from Michael:
This e-book is in two parts. The first is an adapted transcript from a radio show I did this past Valentine’s day about relationships. While I’ve edited it to make it easier to read, I’ve left the dialogues with callers pretty much “as is” to maintain the conversational feel of the original. The second part is made up of a series of short articles I’ve written over the years which will help you gain a deeper understanding of the inside-out understanding and how it applies to every single area of our lives. If you would like to read more tips, listen to the original radio show, or indeed any one of over 250 show in our archives, you can sign up for the Genius Catalyst Café here or by following the link in the resources section at the end of this book… You can also tune in and even call in live to my show, Supercoach, each and every Thursday at Noon pacific/3pm eastern on www.hayhouseradio.com.
Part One:
Loving
Michael: The fundamental question we’ll be attempting to answer today is this: In a world where other people can’t make you happy, why bother being in a relationship at all? So, what am I talking about there? Well, if you listen to the show regularly, one of the things that you’ll know is that the fundamental understanding of life that I’m sharing on this show is what I call “the inside-out paradigm”. And, the inside-out paradigm says that our experience of life comes one hundred percent from thought in the moment. In other words, we don’t experience life, we don’t experience circumstances, we don’t experience other people - we experience our thinking about life, our thinking about circumstances, and our thinking about other people. Now, that turns out to be ridiculously significant, because when you look deeper into the nature of Thought, and how it works, you start to see that a lot of the things that we do in the world try to cheer ourselves up, make ourselves feel better, make ourselves feel more loved, and make ourselves feel more whole, are fundamentally flawed strategies. It’s not that we’re not sincere in what we want; it’s simply because the world doesn’t work that way. It would be like very sincerely going to a vending machine that sold candy, and wondering why you’re not getting a steak dinner. It just doesn’t work that way. So, one of the things we’ll be exploring together is this question: Where do our feelings come from? And, you know, if you’ve been in a relationship, one of the places that you probably think: “Well, clearly they must come from other people because there are certain people that when I’m with them I just feel amazing. I feel so loved, I feel so whole, I feel so special, I feel important. And there are other people that I just feel horrible around. I feel, you know, pointless and useless, and, dirty.” You’ve had thoughts like that, haven’t you?
Now, I’m not pretending that there aren’t times that I’m with somebody and I think “Oh wow, I just feel amazing, what a great person - I want to spend more time with them!”, just as there are people around who I find myself thinking “Oooh, I’m really uncomfortable, I’m not enjoying this, yuck, I need a shower!”
But what I’ve come to understand through my work and through looking deeper into the nature of thought, the nature of consciousness, the nature of mind, and the nature of experience, is that what’s happening isn’t to do with the people; it’s to do with what’s going on in my head when I’m with them. There are certain people, who when I’m with them, I don’t have much on my mind. I don’t have much of an opinion about them. I’m just able to be with them directly. And the nature of the world that we live in, the nature of what I call the “universal mind” is that we are all made of the same energy. Which means when were not up in our heads thinking about this and thinking about that and creating experiences of all that thinking, were naturally in the energy of life. I’ve got a friend who describes it like this: You can be in your thoughts, or you can be in your life. And when were in life, it’s one of the most beautiful feelings that there is. It’s that feeling of incredible deep connection and deep love that really makes us head over heels. I mean it’s what makes a relationship more than just sex, right? It’s that beautiful sense of connection that we feel with somebody that makes us think, “Gee, I’d like to spend the rest of my life with you”. But what we mean is, “I’d like to spend the rest of my life in this feeling. And you’re nice too.” Now, it would be easy to get cynical and to think “Well, if it’s just a feeling then why don’t I just manipulate it so I can feel it all the time? Why do I need other people in my life at all?” There’s actually an answer to that question. People seem to serve as amplifiers for the feeling of being alive – we somehow feel more of it when we’re sharing it with others. That’s why when your head isn’t filled with thoughts like “oh, I’m so shy” or “I’m just not the kind of person who ____”, it’s easy to connect with other people and it feels so great. Here’s how it works: When you’re not in your head, you’re in life; when you’re in life you naturally connect with other people; when you connect with other people, you get to feel all those amazing feelings of love and connection and wholeness. Now that's natural, and the fact is that you can be in that space of love and deeper connection with anyone at any time. In fact, the only reason that we're not all loved up all the time is that we do spend a lot of time in our heads. We spend a lot of time thinking about things like “Is this person right for me? Is this
the one? Am I really ready for a relationship? They seem like they might be the one, but I’m not sure because my psychic told me that…” As soon as we start to have a lot of thinking about our partners, we’re going to start to have a different experience of them. It doesn't even matter what the thinking is – whether it’s positive or negative. When we start spending more time up in our heads, we’re not spending so much time in that deeper feeling of love and connection, and we’re going to start to feel a lot of other feelings that we don't like so much. We’re going to start to see issues. And when we get disconnected from the feeling, we’re going to start to think: “Oh dear, we're fundamentally incompatible. You know I'm from the west side and she’s from the east side. I’m in the Jets, she’s in the Sharks. I’m a Capulet and he’s a Montague.“ And that really highlights the only two elements in any relationship. There’s our feeling of connection with and affection toward one another, which is at the heart of why we want to be in a relationship in the first place. And then there’s the issues – the things that we think are important to have sorted out before we allow ourselves to rest in that feeling. When we’re in love, which just means we’re feeling the deeper feeling that’s there when we’re not up in our head, we don’t care what they do with the toothpaste cap – we barely even care whether or not they use toothpaste. But when we’re not in that feeling, everything starts to matter. After all, is it really OK to feel a deep sense of love and connection if they put the toilet roll on the wrong way so that it comes up from the bottom or down from the top? What if they don’t put the toilet seat up or down? If they’re not neat enough or messy enough? When we’re up in our heads and out of touch with the feeling, we start to question everything. “Are we still in love?” we think to ourselves. “Were we ever?” So we resign ourselves to another goddamn learning experience and resolve to move forward, sadder but wiser. “I still love you”, we tell our future expartner, “but I’m not in love with you anymore.” But when we recognize that we’re living in the feeling of our thinking, not the world, those same thoughts about the life or death importance of an errant sock or mis-spent twenty dollar bill don’t tell us we have irreconcilable differences – they alert us to the fact that we’ve lost our way. Because it’s hard to notice the absence of something until the moment we find it again. There's a metaphor that I wanted to share that I first heard from my friend Dr. George Pransky, author of my favorite relationship book, The Relationship Handbook.
Imagine that you live in kind of a drafty house with a beautiful fireplace. And it’s kind of cold in the house but by the fire it’s amazing. So you build a fire and you’re sitting by the fire and it’s beautiful. You’re about to settle in for a lovely evening you know, by the fire with a glass of wine and your beloved at your side, when you feel just a little bit of a draft from the window over to the side of the house. You know you could leave it, but you decide that you really want to enjoy the evening by the fire with your beloved and it would be so much easier to do that if there wasn’t that darned draft. So you tell your sweetheart “Hang on, honey – I’m just going to go over and shut that window.” And you go over to the window but it won’t quite shut, because it’s a bit warped from the rain, so you go to get a file from the part of the house where you keep your tools so you can file it down and it will fit nice and tight and snug. But on your way to get the file you notice there’s another window in the hall that’s had a hole in it that you’ve been meaning to fix for ages and you decide you’d better tape it up because that’s letting in cold air as well. Of course, no sooner do you get the tape than you remember there’s a few other things that you’ve been meaning to work on, and as long as you’re in “fix it” mode, you may as well take care of them now so you can really relax and just enjoy being with your beloved. And by the time you’ve got everything fixed, you come back into the living room and the fire’s gone out and your beloved is gone. When you recognize that what’s important in a relationship is not all the stuff, the issues, or the compatibility, but rather that warm glow of loving connection that gets amplified when we’re hanging out with another human being with relatively little on our mind, then you’re just not that inclined to leave the fire. Given the choice, you’re more likely to opt for a beautiful evening by the fireplace, even while being fully aware that there are little drafts and noises and even broken windows in the house. It’s not that you won’t ever get around to mending them; it’s just when you’re living and relating from the inside out, it makes no sense to you to take yourself out of connection with your partner in order to fix an issue that only seems important after you’ve lost the connection. Let’s go to the phones and let’s go to San Francisco and let’s speak with Erica. Erica, welcome to the show. What are we going to talk about today? Erica: Hi Michael well, um it’s actually interesting that I’m calling you because I had a pretty nasty argument with my husband last night and he’s not here so it’s Valentine’s day and I’m feeling pretty bad about it. And the thing is, the metaphor of the house with the draft - I was listening to that, and it’s very much like that.
I’m very much in love with him and I know he loves me very much but, um, there’s a lot of incompatibility that I see that sometimes it makes me very sad because I sit and think why did we ever get married because he’s seems so annoyed with me at times at the things I say and do, and vice versa, and he doesn’t call me when I expect him to call me and I get kind of upset and I wonder – I think he should know, you know, he should know I want him to call me right now or there’s all these little things that keep pecking away I think at our love for each other and if there’s a distance that’s growing and I’m not really sure if – obviously I listen to Hay House and I read up on stuff in books, so I’m trying to do what I need to do because I realize there’s a lot of things I need to do to fix with myself, but he doesn’t do all that. And so I wonder is it possible for me to turn these bad habits that we have in our relationship around or turn this around on my own? Michael: Well, the first thing, the first bit, and this is the good news is - yes. There’s a beautiful expression in the relationship world which is that it only takes one to tango. When we spend time together as couples, we do get into patterns with one another - sort of habitual ways of relating. And in the same way as if you were doing a dance together, if you change your step, because they’re dancing with you, their step has to change. Now, of course, it might get worse before it gets better. But if you change, they will change. But I think the deeper question, or maybe just the more useful thing for us to talk about, is this: Do you see even in the way you described it to me, you know, “well we’re in love but there’s all these things that are going to come up, and I’m starting to think this and I’m starting to think that” – how you’re kind of going up into your head more and more about it and thinking about it more and more? Completely unwittingly and innocently, that’s what’s taking you out of that feeling of love. Erica: Yeah, absolutely. Um, it’s like uh, I’ll have days where I’ve really been working on myself and like I go for a jog, I read , you know, I journal, or whatever and I do the things I need to do because I’m a very, I’m a very passionate person. I have a lot of emotion and it’s just, I can’t stop it. It just comes out. It has to, you know. Where he is a person who is very reserved. That’s how he’s most comfortable. He’s not a big emotion displayer like I am and so even like in that languages of love thing, I have a definitely different language than he does and so, oh god, I’m totally rambling now.. Michael: No that’s alright. I was just waiting for you to pause or breathe so I could jump back in...
What I think is the only thing I heard in there that I would say is inaccurate is that you are “a very passionate person and therefore you just have to express yourself”. Now I’m not – understand – hear me out, okay? What I’m saying, or what I’m going to say is there are times, and I know this about you because you’re human, you’re not a squirrel, right? Because if you were a squirrel all bets would be off but you’re a human. So, I know that there are times when you are quite kind of clear and present and you have your bearings, and you’re able to communicate with your husband in a way that you kind of know he can hear. Erica: Yeah, those times are when I’m not over thinking it. It comes just straight from my heart. Michael: Right. Absolutely. Now, I might be having a different conversation if I were talking to your husband. But, because you’re the one I’m talking to, you’re the one who can change the dance. But to change the dance, it’s not really so much doing a different step, it’s being aware of which music you’re listening to. So if you’re listening to the kind of crappy disjointed atonal music of your thinking, the dance that you do is going to be ugly. But when you listen to the quieter music of your heart, that quieter music of just not having much on your mind, of being in love, of being connected, the dance is just going to come out nice. And it’s going to be a very inviting dance for someone to do with you. And the neatest thing, the neatest thing about that, is if for some reason he doesn’t come around, he doesn’t do that dance with you, when you’re in that place and you’re coming from that place, that won’t be horrible for you. That won’t be like, oh my god, I did all this and he didn’t do anything, because you’re getting to hang out in that beautiful feeling. And you’re getting to hang out in that clarity and peace of mind. Best case, he’ll do it with you. Worst case, you still get to hang out there. Erica: Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you Michael. Michael: Thank you Erica. Bye. You know, a lot of what I’m going to be saying may initially sound counterintuitive because if I got my good feeling from my partner, then it would really matter what they do and don’t do and what their habits are and aren’t and whether they’re willing to change or not; but when I start to see that my feelings are coming through me, they’re coming up from the inside out, they’re shadows of my own thinking, then I’m less worried about what my partner’s up to. Because I really do see, wow, I could relax into this. And when I relax into this, things are just going to get better and I’m going to get clearer.
Let’s go to Vancouver and let’s talk to Sarah. Sarah, welcome to the show, what are we going to talk about today? Sarah: Hi there. Um, okay so long story short, I decided that I was ready for love and I manifested my boyfriend and I actually chose the date and I wrote this letter to the universe and said I really want this very special person and I described him and I got actually everything I wrote in the letter except the bank account and an Audi. And so I figured we just needed to work on the money factor together. But what’s going on is I feel like now that we’re living together, we’re on two different planes and things are really difficult and I feel like I’m willing to work on things and grow personally, and grow my business, and he’s not willing to expend any kind of thought or learn anything. And I’m wondering um, in this kind of circumstances, what do you do? My heart is with him but I don’t feel he’s right. Michael: There’s an old quote – when did you go to school? Sarah: Um, 1993. Michael: 1993. So, forgive me if these references are way too dated; but the quote is by a woman named Judith Viorst, and she wrote: “Infatuation is when you think he’s as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Connors. Love is when you realize that he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford – but you’ll take him anyway.” So the problem with manifesting the perfect mate is most of the time we do it by the form. So like you say, “wow, everything was there but the Audi and the bank account”. You know, this is not a universal truth at and it’s sort of a slightly tongue in cheek but not inaccurate comment: I’ve seen an awful lot of people attract their ex-partners through a manifestation. Sarah: Well, this is what I was wondering if I manifested him to the person I was before, and I didn’t put my intention out there for the person I wanted to be, which Is whom I am now. Michael: And I’m going to suggest that it may be something even simpler than that, which is that because what matters really in a relationship is that deep feeling of love and connection… Sarah: And I’m not feeling that.
Michael: You’re not feeling that. But you’re also not looking for that. Right? As long as you’re looking for what’s that going to look on the outside, that’s like going around the house and going “oh, I really wanted granite countertops and I really wanted beveled edges, and I really wanted hardwood floors I really didn’t want carpet…and by the time you’re done you’ve missed it, you’ve walked away from the fireplace again. Sarah: When we started out, the main thing in the universe was that we had a very strong connection of love and it was like we were surrounded by a healing glow of love that protected us together and we were so connected. And we were –to begin with – and I don’t know, how do you get back to that? Michael: Well, this is the good news. Because, all that’s actually happened is that you’ve gotten away from the fireplace. And it happens to all of us at times, but if we don’t know that’s what’s going on, it can seem like more than that. All that’s actually happened is that the details of the relationship have started to seem more important that the feelings . Sarah: Right, because we’re having money issues Michael: Right, I understand that. Look every couple goes through it. Literally, every couple goes through it. What I can tell you is that if you would be up for taking a week off from getting all that stuff right, and just going back to enjoying his company, worst case, you have a great week. Best case, you have a great week and you start to actually get back on track and you’ll work the other stuff out. We all do. Right? Life happens. Life’s a contact sport. If you’re coming from that deeper feeling, you can handle it, whatever it is. Let’s go back to the phones and let’s go out to Connecticut and let’s speak with Mary. Mary welcome to the show. What are we going to talk about today? Mary: Hi How are you? Michael: I’m well Mary: I want to say thank you, first of all. I really enjoy your show and your work and listen to it as often as I can so thank you for that. I’d like to just run something by you – I’m divorced now 7 years after a 19 year marriage. I’ve done a lot of introspection and work across many different sources and I’m financially sound I’m healthy, my children are grown and on their path and friends typically say things to me like you’re the complete package you’ve got it all and yet I have just not been in a committed relationship that’s lasted or endured for any length of time since my divorce. I’ve met very nice men in their own right, but it just seems like I cannot either meet the right guy or open up or I
don’t know what it is, but I sometimes wonder if I’m just destined to be single and just focus on work and have that role in life with my family. I don’t know. I don’t get it. I’m confused. Michael: Fair enough. Now, I’d be shocked if you haven’t made up some reasons for all this. So if somebody said to you “Tell me why this is happening?” even if you were completely wrong - what do you make up? Mary: I think initially I was really picky and I was afraid for sure. I had a negative marriage, but honestly I have really done the work. I’ve gone back and I’ve tried to release things and I’m healthy physically and mentally, so I think I’ve done my best to remove those blocks – the emotional blocks. I don’t get out a lot. I mean I have to tell you that it’s not like I meet a lot of men. They do cross my path - I go to the gym, I’m a professional so I meet men at work, but it just… I don’t know. Michael: Good. Let me then ask you then the first in a series of insane questions, which is why do you want to be in a committed relationship in the first place? Not saying for a moment that you shouldn’t be, but why do you want to be in one? Mary: I enjoy it. I enjoyed being married. I would like to create a home again with one person. I’m monogamous - casual doesn’t work with me. I enjoy monogamy. I work hard. I enjoy planning weekends that are light, like when you go hiking or are in the city for dinner - it’s easier and it’s what I truly like. I don’t desire to date many different men. I‘ve done that and they’ve wound up being friends. I can’t tell you how many dates I’ve been on that I’m still in touch with. Michael: Let me ask you something else. If we were to lay out the stages that lead to a committed relationship, the first would be flirt, the second would be date, the third would be commit, and then somewhere after that you might move in set up a home get married and all that kind of stuff. If I were to ask you which one of those three stages you fall down in, what would it be? Mary: I think commit but it’s not believe it or not, It’s not on my part. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dated a man for a couple times, and it goes really well - we have a lot in common, the conversation is great and engaging - and then they’re not ready for a committed relationship. And I as I said before I am really not into casual relationships, I’m looking to do something more long term, so it usually falls apart at that point. I don’t know - I don’t see what the point is in staying with a man that doesn’t have the same ultimate desires as I do.
Michael: Well, there are a couple of different ways to think about that. One is you can get very deliberate, whether you do it through a dating site or whether you do it through a direct communication like wearing a sign on your forehead that says “don’t kiss me if you’re not committed”. I don’t know how that would go… Mary: I think I have that, yeah. Michael: But there’s an element to which when you’ve got that big a dog in the fight, when you’ve got that much of a horse in the race, when it’s that important to you - the reaction that anyone is likely to have is a slight leaning away. Mary: Ok Michael: When we sense that somebody doesn’t need anything from us, we actually lean towards them. We’re drawn in and are actually curious about that. It’s kind of an unusual experience. And especially if they’re pretty present with us and we enjoy their company and we kind of go “Huh” in an intrigued way, and we get that this might be a person worth spending a bit of time with, and there’s something about that that’s incredibly attractive. Now if your desire for commitment is worn like - and I don’t mean you’re doing it on purpose - but if it’s worn like an iron corset it says “Don’t come close unless you’re in it for life!”most people are going to walk away from that. Mary: And you know what’s interesting though... ‘cause I agree with you completely and I understand that. I think it’s also a generational thing. I am around 50 and I don’t like to play games. If you ask me out, I’m available if I’m available, so I don’t play those games. So I don’t know the balance between what you’re saying and… Michael: So I’m going to suggest, Mary, that there is no balance to be had – that these are fundamentally different things. If we try to build a relationship from the outside in, that’s when things like “The Rules” and “The Game” and all of that start to make sense, because it’s all about “How can I trick you into either sleeping with me or committing to me?” Now that’s an entirely different kind of relationship then the kind that I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is two people who notice that when they hang out together, there’s a really nice feeling, and they like being in that feeling and they enjoy each other’s company and so they spend more time together. And at some point, because they’re having such a nice time spending time together, and they’re spending so much of their time together in that sort of nice feeling, they decide to take it to another level and make some
commitments around it in terms of exclusivity and living arrangements and lifestyle choices. But if you don’t first take the time to really enjoy being with them -and I don’t mean sleeping with them if you don’t want to sleep with them - I just mean spend time together enjoying each others company – you’re going to struggle. There’s something about the best relationships where you grow together over time. But you can’t necessarily always tell what it will be like at the beginning, because the most you’re going to have at the beginning is a really nice feeling and maybe a strong attraction. But over time, if you hang out in that nice feeling together, a lot of the things that at first might seem like they might be conflicts seem to work themselves out. It’s almost like two different trees that start to grow together. They both still have their own separate root system, but they become intertwined in a really beautiful way Mary: I get it - I understand what you’re saying. Michael: Again, you’re going to make your own decisions, but from what I hear it really may be as simple as letting it take a little longer. Because what it sounds like happens is that after a date or two, you go up into your head. And instead of being in that loving space with someone, you’re now in your head about them. And that’s going to be hard for you because you’re then not feeling it, and it’s going to be hard for them, because chances are they won’t be feeling it either in those moments. Mary: Right. I think I have to learn exactly how you say, like pull it back, and it usually goes up after quite a few dates, and it’s amazing and its great and we are both enjoying each other, so I’ll stop seeing other people. So that’s what I probably should not do. I should probably continue to see other people. Michael: You know what, Mary you’ll figure that out. I haven’t been on a date with someone other than my wife in 25 years, so I can’t tell you how to do that. But what I can tell you is that the more you get that in the end, this is going to come down to one question: Am I in my head or am I in love ? And once you’ve answered that question, you’ll figure the rest out. Mary: Thank you. Michael: Thank you, Mary. This is a universal - the more you start to see the inside out nature of our experience - that we are not feeling our partners, we are not feeling our relationships, we are feeling our thinking - the easier life starts to get.
Let’s go to Canada and let’s talk with Mark. Hey, Mark - welcome to the show. What are we going to talk about today? Mark: Hi Michael, thanks for taking my call. How are you? Michael: I’m very well, thanks Mark: Good. I have a question about how to let go or how to find a compromise. I’m out of my marriage of 18 years for one year now. My girlfriend who I know I am incredibly in love with and I know is incredibly in love with me is more recently out of her marriage. We basically fell in love when we were both married. What I’m finding now is, where this is supposed to be our time to build a relationship together, I’m trying to figure out whether it’s her guilt or something that she wants to hold onto or if she feels that there’s just boundaries now that she is putting up and creating, where she needs to be there for her former husband - whether it is taking care of him if he’s not well, still going out with him and their 3 children every so often to do sort of family things… I have no doubt in my mind that she’s not interested in him, she just feels that this is a relationship she has to maintain. And what my thought is I understand that you have to have a relationship you know school concerts, pick-ups and drop-offs , maybe you go and have lunch together every so often, if you’re at a conference together maybe you have breakfast together downstairs in the dining room, but it’s now done. It seems like she’s got one foot in her former marriage and one foot in with me, and I know how much she loves me and I’ve shown her a completely different side of love and relationship then she had with her ex-husband for 18 years. We are going to be going to therapy for this, but she has basically now said “I will not change this - I need to do this - I would do this for anyone and you need to understand this!” and I said “Well, this is sort of my territory now. I have no interest in doing anything like that with my former wife.” And she said “Well, I’m not going to budge on this,” and I’m saying “Well, I don’t think this is appropriate for this relationship,” and then I just try to change my feelings and talk about my feelings more. “I’m just not comfortable with this; this doesn’t feel right to me that you would drop stuff with me and go off with him and…” Michael: Mark can I… Let me ask you a question. You’re in Canada, right? Mark: That’s correct.
Michael: Ok, so on a scale from 1-10 where 10 is “really likely” and 1 is “its just not going to happen” – if I say something you don’t like, how likely are you to get on a plane and come out to LA and try to punch me? Mark: (laughing) Probably not very likely. Michael: Ok great, then let’s talk about this. As I listen to you, what I hear is a lot of sincerity and a lot of love and a thought that you should have some control over your partners behavior Mark: And that’s very interesting because when I thought about that - “Am I trying to control her?” - I thought “No.” A relationship to me is about discussion about compromise. You do it her way, you do it his way, you do it either way. But the other thing I meant to add on to this is that she’s making a lot of these decisions unilaterally. Michael: So Mark… you’re wrong. Mark: Ok. Michael: All I mean is, your sense of whether or not you are trying to control her is wrong. And I don’t even mean anything deep by that. I just mean that you would like her to stop doing what she’s doing and do what you would like her to do, and it’s not ok with you that she’s not doing that, and you’re putting pressure on her to do that. That is, by definition, you trying to control her behavior. Mark: Fair enough Michael: Ok, that’s all I’m saying for now. Whether or not you keep doing that – that one’s going to be with you – but if we don’t agree on terms we’re not going to get anywhere. Mark: Yes, and I agree, that’s fair enough. Michael: Ok, so here’s where I’m going to start to say something that when I first say it, it’s going to sound like I’m telling you that “smoking is bad for you”. Mark: Ok Michael: It’s true, of course, but no one would expect that to work to get people to stop smoking. There is a stat – I think it’s something like one out of ten people quit smoking because the doctor tells them they’re going to die. When you try to control someone else’s behavior - when anyone tries to control anyone’s
behavior - 99 times out of 100 that person is going to do more of the behavior that you’re trying to get them to stop. They did this experiment once where they noticed that when a gorilla wants to fight another gorilla, it pokes it in the chest, and the maximum number of pokes is something like 8 times that one gorilla can poke before the other will respond in kind. They then decided to do the experiment with Nobel prize winning scientists, and so they got these Nobel prize winning scientists to poke each maximum they other, and the maximum the Nobel prize winning scientists to to was only five pokes. So there seems to just be something hard wired into the system that when we’re pushed, we push back. Mark: Ok. Michael: So there’s no way to win a control game except to completely overwhelm the other person into submission - at which point you no longer have a relationship amongst equals. Mark: I agree. Michael: What’s interesting, and if you’re open to it it’s what I’m going to suggest, is that a really useful thing for us to talk about is whether or not you can see that it’s possible for her to do what she does, and you to feel peace - even if ultimately you decide to feel that peace and not be in the relationship. So I’m not saying that you’ve got to “make this OK” or you’ve got to make this work. I’m just saying that it’s not serving you, it’s not serving the relationship, and it’s not serving her for you to be trying to get your peace of mind by her changing her behavior. Does that make sense? Mark: I think so, yes. Michael: So peace is innate. It doesn’t come from outside us, it comes from life itself. It’s the feeling of being alive when we’re not contaminating it with our own thinking. Mark: Ok Michael: So our default state is peace. If you look at a puppy or if you look at a baby, you can see that their natural state is peace. Of course, they get uncomfortable, and then they whimper and cry and scream, but they always default back to peace. That’s the nature of being human. Our default state is peace – it’s wellness. Mark: Yeah
Michael: Now what that means is that if I’m thinking I ‘ve got to do something in the world to get peace, or in this case that I’ve got to get someone else to do something in the world to get peace – I’ve gotte confused about where peace comes from. Mark: Ok, fair enough. Michael: So here is where it gets interesting. When I’m at peace - when I’m in my happy place, and I don’t mean an artificially induced happy place, I just mean I’m back to that feeling of “Aahhh” (contented sigh) Mark: Centered… just feeling good, right? Michael: Right. Then I can look at my partner’s behavior and there will be things about it that I like, and things about it that I don’t. And there’ll be days when I’m not so centered that I’ll really strongly dislike it, and there’ll be days when I am more centered and I just kind of notice “Oh, I have a preference here”. And from that place, I’ve got access to my deeper wisdom which lets me know whether this really is a problem or if it just doesn’t fit a picture I’ve got in my head about how things are supposed to work. Mark: Ok, yep. Michael: I guess as I’m hearing myself speak I realize what I’m moving towards is almost an invitation: Would you be willing, over the next week, to see what what it’s like to reclaim peace? What would happen if you were to take your peace of mind off the table of the relationship, and to spend as much time hanging out in that space as you can? We know that you’re going to get caught up and get upset and all that will happen, but you’ll always come back to peace. And just see what changes if you spend a week disconnecting your peace from her behavior. Now understand, it may be that what changes is that you get really clear that you don’t want to move forward in a relationship with her. It may be that you get really clear that you are happy to stay in a relationship with her regardless of what she does. It may be that you get to a place where a different way of having that conversation with her occurs to you that isn’t based on “Hey, if you don’t change then I’m not ok.” But whatever it is that comes from that, it tilts the odds in your favor. it doesn’t mean it’s a done deal, but when you approach things from wisdom and from peace, it just makes it that little bit more likely that they’re going to work out well. Mark: Hmm… ok.
Michael: So then the question on the table is “Would you be willing to take that on as just a week-long experiment?” Mark: Yeah. It’s a matter of separating out your ego, isn’t it? Michael: That would help Mark: My ego is screaming and saying “This doesn’t feel right! I don’t like that I’m not being communicated to! I’m not being asked how I feel about stuff!” Not that she has to do everything I want.. Michael: That’s why I asked the question at the beginning, Mark – it’s your ego that would want to get on the plane and punch me. Mark: Alright, brilliant. Michael: Thank you very much, Mark. Mark: Thank you for your time. Michael: You’re welcome! So I’ve been sitting here thinking, “Hmm… do I have a brilliant 60 second wrap up that can take us to the end of the show?” And I guess that what I’m aware of is that it’s Valentine’s day, and I’ve got my own valentine who I’m just in love with. And I know that when I stay by the fireplace - when I make my connection with my wife more important than the details of our life together - our relationship works beautifully. When I start to lose my bearings and think that what she does or what she wears or what she cooks or whatever I might come up with is more important to the success of our relationship then the time we enjoying each other’s company, I’ve gone astray. When we’re hanging out without too much on our minds and just allow that natural feeling of connection to just come up in us and to bounce off one another and to amplify, it feels to me that I have the best marriage in the world. But really, that’s just the potential of any relationship. That doesn’t mean there is anything bad or wrong with you if your relationship doesn’t work out. It just means that no matter what you’ve been through up until this point, the potential for a beautiful, loving relationship is still there. Have fun, learn heaps, and I hope you have a very, very happy Valentines day – bye bye for now!
Part Two:
Living
Beyond Acceptance and Agreement There is a popular term, most often used in business, called "buying in" - that is, to what degree do the people in an organization "buy in" to the changes and initiatives that have been proposed by leadership. The higher the level of buy in, the greater the likelihood of success. The same is true, of course, for each one of us. On an almost daily basis, we are faced with change initiatives in our own lives. Some of them are initiated by us a new diet or exercise regime, a shift in our career direction or a change in our relationship status. Other changes are thrust upon us, from sudden health concerns to equally sudden changes in our financial or employment status . In order to better understand the impact of buy in on the success or failure of changes in our own lives, let's take a look at the three levels of "buying in"... 1. Resistance Some would say that resistance is the opposite of buying in, but it is actually the first rung on the ladder of acceptance. In order to resist an idea, I have to first buy into its existence, plausibility, and relevance. If I'm not already bought in at some level to the reality of a new change initiative in my life, I won't resist it - I'll ignore it altogether. For most of us, resistance is an extension of what my friend Bill Cumming calls "the battle of the high chair". We marshal our personal and social resources into battle behind the rallying cry of "I'm not going to eat this change and you can't make me!" Is resistance futile? Not always. Lots of "good ideas" turn out not to be very good ideas at all, and if nothing else resistance can be a way of buying time to look for other options and allow new possibilities to emerge. But if the change initiative is already underway - i.e. you've already lost your job or your partner has left you or your mortgage company has sent you a polite letter suggesting that it might be time to cut back on your discretionary spending before they repossess your house - then resistance is not only futile, it's frustrating and potentially damaging. The longer you wait to involve yourself in an already ongoing process of change, the less freedom, flexibility, and influence you are liable to have over how that change unfolds. Which takes us to the second level of "buy in"...
2. Acceptance and Agreement Have you ever had a conversation with one of your kids (or partners) where you "laid down the law" and told them exactly what they needed to do in order to continue to get privileges in your home or in your bed? Chances are that if they perceived that you actually did have the authority to follow through on your threat, you got their acceptance and agreement - that is, they agreed to do what you demanded, generally with a sulky stomp and a few well chosen epithets muttered under their breath. But did you notice that the quality of compliance was less than optimal and somewhat short-lived? Agreed upon curfews get inexplicably extended; agreed upon chores get mysteriously forgotten. And while you no longer have to face an argument every time you bring up the necessity of cutting back on spending, your partner (or you yourself) can't really find any places to save money. And therein lies the problem with acceptance and agreement - more often than not, it is built on the back of regret and resignation. Regret that you ever allowed yourself to get into this situation (or were unlucky enough to be born into it); resignation to the fact that things like this are just your lot in life and your cross to bear. So what lives beyond acceptance and agreement? 3. The Embrace When we embrace a change, we embrace the possibility of good things coming from it. Better still, when we embrace that possibility, we naturally and effortlessly tap into the energy and creativity to make it real. Suddenly, we find not just one or two ways to save a few dollars but dozens of ways to save hundreds of dollars. We realize that taking out the trash is uninterrupted time just for us - a chance to listen to music, take a break from work, and contemplate whatever it is we enjoy contemplating. We get an insight into what we really want to do with our lives and before we know it, we've gone from having no prospects to creating an inspired action plan, all in the blink of an eye. Through embracing change, we find ourselves at cause instead of effect surfing the wave instead of being dragged along underneath it. We rediscover the resource of hope, and our fear of the unknown disappears in the wonder of possibility. And while we will still sometimes falter, and stumble, and even fall, the excitement of the ride is usually enough to get us back into the game with an even deeper embrace for the infinite variety of life.
Have fun, learn heaps, and if you are going through a change in your life right now, may you embrace it with all your heart and be rewarded with all the creativity, inspiration, and wonder you can handle...
Beyond Reframing "Reframing" is the art of shifting perspectives, and is considered a core skill in pretty much any field that involves directing people's perceptions, ranging from therapy to politics to marketing and advertising. A good re-framer can convince you that black is white, or at the very least that white is the new black. For example, one of my all time favorite re-frames is contained in the text of Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice. It is in the form of a letter from a university student to her parents: Dear Mother and Dad, Since I left for college I have been remiss in writing and I am sorry for my thoughtlessness in not having written before. I will bring you up to date now, but before you read on, please sit down. You are not to read any further unless you are sitting down, okay? Well, then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out the window of my dormitory when it caught on fire shortly after my arrival here is pretty well healed now. I only spent two weeks in the hospital and now I can see almost normally and only get those sick headaches once a day. Fortunately, the fire in the dormitory, and my jump, was witnessed by an attendant at the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one who called the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also visited me in the hospital and since I had nowhere to live because of the burnt-out dormitory, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It's really a basement room, but it it's kind of cute. He is a very fine boy, and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to get married. We haven't set the exact date yet, but it will be before my pregnancy begins to show. Yes, Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking forward to being grandparents and I know you will welcome the baby and give it the same love and devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has a minor infection which prevents us from passing our premarital blood tests and I carelessly caught it from him. I know that you will welcome him into our family with open arms. He is kind and, although not well educated, he is ambitious. Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not engaged, I am not infected, and there is no boyfriend. However, I am getting a “D” in American History and an “F" in Chemistry, and I want you to see those marks in their proper perspective. Your loving daughter,
Sharon While reframing can be useful and is certainly fun, it can also sometimes blind us to a deeper truth about the nature of thought. Many years ago, I read a book by Robert Anton Wilson called Prometheus Rising. One of the very first experiments he encouraged readers to do was to deliberately read things that were as close to 180째 from our normal way of thinking as possible, a practice I continue somewhat informally to this day. While I can't remember his examples, in today's world Democrats would be encouraged to watch Fox News while Republicans watched Bill Maher; bornagain Christians would be invited to read The God Delusion and atheists to subscribe to Christianity Today. The idea was not to try and change anyone's mind, but rather to raise our consciousness to the level where we could see the nature of the mind, and more specifically the nature of thought. Because our personal reality is of necessity constructed inside our mind via thought, we are all prone to get stuck in what Wilson called "reality tunnels" - that is, points of view that seem so real and justified to us that we cannot see how any reasonable person could possibly see things any differently than we do. As our level of consciousness rises, we will still see what we see and believe what we believe - we just hold our own thoughts and opinions more lightly as we gain some insight into their transitory and at times almost arbitrary nature. When we look more deeply in this direction, we begin to see that thought works much more like a paintbrush than a camera. We are not so much recording reality with our minds as we are creating it. Yet in order to usefully reframe something, we first have to believe there's something real to reframe. If Sharon's parents hadn't been stuck in a reality tunnel where letter grades were significant, there would have been no need for Sharon to have put them into a different perspective. And if you weren't already stuck in a reality tunnel that something is a major problem in your life, you would have no need of trying to find a more positive way of viewing it. In other words, when your "reality" looks real to you, like a photograph, it's human nature to want to frame it in such a way as to make it seem better or worse than it actually is. But the moment you see the arbitrary "made up" nature of your personal reality, like a painting, you're free to make it up differently in any moment. Of course, there will always be things in our lives that seem more "real" to us than others, and we will be tempted to frame them in whatever way makes us feel better about things.
But when that happens, perhaps the most important thing to remember is this: Even the most life-like photograph ever taken is still just a photograph.
A Multidimensional Experience In the opening chapter of Supercoach, I describe the difference between the horizontal and vertical dimensions of coaching as follows: Traditional coaching takes place primarily on a horizontal dimension – coaches assist their clients in getting from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’. Yet lasting, sustainable change nearly always happens in the vertical dimension – a deepening of the ground of being of the client and greater access to inspiration and spiritual wisdom. While this has generally led to an either/or approach to success and personal growth and a sharp division between therapy and coaching, transformative coaching – or, as I like to call it, ‘supercoaching’ – uses the vertical dimensions to create change on the inside while you continue to move forward towards your goals on the outside. To better understand the difference between these two dimensions, let me share a real-life case study that walked into my office not long ago. A friend's daughter had just discovered (via text message) that she was not being accepted into the advanced performance group at her dance company. Resplendent in anger and frustration, she laid out the insensitivities, biases, and incompetencies on the part of the decision making panel that had led to her rejection and a detailed list of possible actions to get the decision reversed. She then asked me for help in three areas: a. A crash course in effective negotiation and influence strategies to assist her in persuading the panel of their error b. Designing a backup plan for what to do if she was unsuccessful in her attempts, including a potential smear campaign against the relevant parties so that they would lose their jobs and more sensible and appropriately skilled people would be able to review and assess her potential c. Brainstorming possible alternative career options if this proved to be indicative of the realities of the industry she was committing her life to. Now, each one of these interventions would have made perfect sense in the horizontal dimension, where our primary goal is to improve our experience life. But in the vertical dimension, our primary goal is to gain a deeper understanding of what's really going on behind our experience of life. While that understanding inevitably leads to clearer thinking, better decisions, and a higher quality of life, it does so indirectly and in ways that are often surprising. One of the things I've come to understand about the nature of emotions and gut reactions to know that when you're drowning in negative emotion, it's a terrible time to trust your gut. So I counseled patience in the short term, promising that if she came back later that afternoon, we could revisit her plan
after she had allowed a bit of time to regain her bearings and take a look at things with fresh eyes. While she was initially frustrated by my "unwillingness to help", a few hours later she returned to tell me, quite sheepishly, that the text message turned out to have been a ruse - a misguided attempt on the part of a well-meaning friend to make her think she hadn't made it so that she'd be all the more delighted the next day when the head of the company planned to announce her successful "promotion" in front of all of her peers. On reflection, the head of the company was actually "a very good judge of talent and a very nice person", dance was "the only thing in the world she wanted to pursue", and the idea of sitting down to study negotiation, persuasion, and influence was kind of boring and would I mind terribly if we left it to another time? Now, it's easy to dismiss this story as the result of an "artistic temperament" and to point out that your problems are real and not the result of a simple misunderstanding. But in my experience, our problems are always the result of a simple yet fundamental misunderstanding: We think we are experiencing reality; we are actually experiencing our thinking. The more time we spend trying to "improve reality", the more real our thinking appears to us. This is the ultimate dilemma of the horizontal dimension - no matter how many times you tune up the engine of an imaginary car, it's still not going to get you where you really want to go. By way of contrast, in the vertical dimension we recognize that we are always already exactly where we need to be. Well-being is right here, right now, and there is nothing you need to do, achieve, or change in order to be happy and at peace in this moment. The more deeply we understand the nature of thought and the nature of the human experience, the more we experience the deeper feelings which are our birth right and the more we see the world around us with clarity and insight. And all our attempts to improve our lot in life in the horizontal dimension turn out to be little more than a stressful distraction. Of course, we can no more live purely in the vertical dimension than we could in the horizontal. Life seems designed to be experienced in 3D, and even though we may know at some level it's just a trick of perception that makes it appear this way, we will still get caught up and at times overwhelmed by the illusion. But if we can let go of even a little bit of the compulsion to fix our problems and improve our lot, we notice that the edges of the world get a bit softer and life
seems a whole lot less frightening. Because there's less "reality" to fix, there's less to do and more time to do it in. Which means that when we find a circumstance we actually want to change or create in the world, we have the energy and resources available to do it. I'll say it again: We experience our thinking, not our circumstances. And since in any moment we can have a brand new thought, we are never more than one thought away from a brand new experience of being alive.
Plato's Cave for a New Millenium Imagine you are sitting in a cinema watching a scary film. The film is well made and you get caught up in it to the point where you physically shrink back into your seat when the pretty girl heads down the dark stairway on her own with an old flashlight whose batteries mysteriously stop working as soon as she hears a strange creaking sound from the furthest, darkest corner of the basement. As the music builds towards a crescendo and you just know a monster is going to burst forth at any moment … someone’s mobile phone goes off, repeatedly playing the opening bars of that pop song you can never get out of your head no matter how hard you try. From this moment forward, no matter how gripped you have been by the movie, it will be difficult to get back into it in the same way. Now let’s watch another film together. This is a movie about you. It’s filled with problems and obstacles and triumphs and tragedies. It’s a movie where you see yourself failing to achieve what you want to achieve, being dragged down again and again by your tragic personal history or succeeding against the odds and triumphing in the end. It’s a movie about how difficult it is to find true love, or how lucky you are to have found it for yourself, how men and women are sinners or saints, and how people always mean well or stab you in the back every time. Whether you’re stuck in a cubicle or living large in a corner office, working from home or not working at all, this is the movie of your life – for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer. This time, instead of a mobile phone going off, I’m going to ask you to turn your attention away from the screen and come with me back up into the projection booth... Whatever is happening on the screen is your experience of life. What is being projected onto that screen will appear real to you to the extent that it ‘fits’ with the movie you’re used to seeing. The projector is your consciousness – it simply shines the bright white light of awareness on whatever is projected in front of it. If that light isn’t on (i.e if you are ‘unconscious’), you will have no awareness of and no direct experience of your thoughts. Each reel of film running in front of the projector is made up of your thoughts. If you have scary thoughts, you’ll see scary things on the screen of your experience and experience scary feelings; if you are projecting romantic thoughts, you’ll see romantic things on the screen and tend to feel romantic feelings in your heart. Comedies will tend to make you laugh and tragedies make you cry – that’s just the way things work. What powers it all?
The electricity behind life – the underlying energy of the universe. (We could as easily say the whole cinema is made up of energy as well, but let’s save that conversation for another time!) Why does all this matter? Because if you are watching a film you don’t really enjoy, you are unlikely to try to change it by getting into a prolonged debate with the characters on the screen about it. If you do, you probably don’t expect them to respond in turn. But when it comes to the movie of our lives, the first place most of us go to change things is right up to the screen. We spend all our time and money and energy trying to change our experience on the outside, not realizing that the whole thing is being projected from the inside out.
A Most Unusual Job I was recently trying to explain to somebody what transformative coaching "really" is, when they asked me to share some examples of problems or situations that clients came to me with. I reviewed a number of case histories in my mind, and while adjusting as many details as needed to maintain confidentiality, shared stories of a bright young CFO dealing with the simultaneous disintegration of the markets and his marriage, a salesman trying to add one or two "zeroes" to his bottom line, a therapist looking to make more of a consistent difference with her clients, and a celebrity whose concerns about being unworthy of love were causing problems on set, at home, and on newsstands across the country. The next question they asked me was what was my expertise in each of these areas - in other words how could I help people solve so many different problems without having degrees in finance, marriage, sales, therapy, and counseling? My answer was that in my experience, it doesn't matter what the presenting problem is - if it involves human beings, the solution is always going to be the same. Regardless of our personalities and personal histories, we all have within us a deeper essence that is untouched by our conditioning and circumstances. You could call this part of you "the spark within", or "the inner flame", but I like to think of it as our true nature - the source of our fundamental sense of inspiration, sparkle, and aliveness. Some of my clients have called it their "twinkle" - the thing inside you which appears on the outside as a twinkle in the eye, spring in your step, or as the warmth behind honest laughter. But we also have the power to think, and to experience our thinking as though it were really happening to us. And when we get caught up in the dream of thought, we get cut off from time to time from that inner sense of aliveness. Most of us don't notice it at first, except as a vague sense of something being not quite right. Work just isn't as fulfilling as it once was, our partner isn't quite as handsome or beautiful or loving as we thought they were, and don't even get us started on what might be wrong with us. Because we have been conditioned from birth to believe in the myth of an outside-in world, we assume the path back to well-being and joy and peace of mind must be through getting a better job or a better partner or working on becoming a "better me" And the harder we work on changing the world to change the way we feel, the more distant we get from out true self, and the more important it seems to work on all those things, and the more lost we become. So regardless of what "problem" a human being thinks they have, the only real problem is feeling cut off from your innate wisdom and well-being. And the
moment you reconnect to your inner twinkle, you live in a different world. Nothing changes, but everything's different. Life stops seeming so scary and the world stops seeming like a problem to be solved. Any changes to be made become obvious and while not always easy, remarkably straightforward. Every situation can be handled through a combination of common sense and insightful action. Goals stop being the difference between happiness and misery and go back to being the targets that we aim at to make the game of life more fun to play. As transformative coaches, we don't have to be experts in each of what the Taoists called "the world of 10,000 things". We simply assist people in reconnecting with that deeper part of themselves that somehow connects us with the larger whole. We wake people up to the dream of thought and point them in the direction of a deeper truth. From that place, they can handle whatever problems life throws at them with grace, approach their goals with a sense of fun, and live (for the most part) from a place of quiet peace and joyful well-being. Does it always work? I wish it did. There are times where the dream seems so compelling that to even suggest it might be a dream brings forth anger and resentment. And some people are so convinced that they're fundamentally broken that the idea of a true self with innate mental health, wisdom, and wellbeing is perceived as naive at best and offensive at worst. "If you say it's just thought one more time", a client once said to me, "I'll kill you." But the best bit about this work is that the only way to do it effectively is to embody it for yourself. Your own grounding, clarity, and understanding are the keys to the impact you're able to have with others. So while we all get lost in our own thinking from time to time and wait for the world to change before we allow ourselves to feel peace, we can return home more and more easily. In a way, we get paid to be happy and content - to live from our inner twinkle. And while sometimes I can get caught up in thinking which makes that feel like a burden, most of the time I'm just grateful for the kindness of the design. With all my love,
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