The Personal in a Public Forum

     We are so spread out today. Friends and families who, back in “the day”, would have stayed within coffee distance now have to move where the work is. Even when we live within that distance, the increase in the hours that go into a normal work day make it difficult to make that coffee date a priority. So we are so grateful for the opportunities the internet provides to stay connected and share with everyone we’ve chosen to include in our communities. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter… we can better keep track of what’s going on in the lives of our “people”, and we can make sure no one is left in the dark about the basic goings-on in our own lives. It’s a wonderful and useful adaptation to changing circumstances.
     But there are aspects about this public sharing that are challenging to our personal relationships, and I’m afraid we may have to learn how to handle these challenges the hard way. This blog, for instance, whose purpose differs from these social-networking sites, has become a real challenge for me in this sense. Though not meant to be a forum for posting my personal news, in order for my writing to be meaningful it has to be in some part personal. But how do I address these personal issues without possibly offending friends and family for making these personal stories public? This has, in addition to the overwhelming amount of writing I have had to do for school, been a large factor in my not having written in a while. I am having trouble reconciling this issue for myself.
     Social-networking sites like Facebook leave us vulnerable to the same kind of offense. We may post something publically that some friends are really happy to have access to, but a specific person may wish we had not shared that way. And there are additional concerns. The “mass” quality of the choice to share information this way makes these communications less intimate, less special, and therefore can devalue the relationship. Friends may be grateful for the information, but unhappy that they had to find it out “that way”. It encourages a lazy, impersonal approach to our relationships, and gives us opportunities to cop out when facing personal discussions about difficult things. It can also seem to devalue the information itself – when we casually throw something on our Facebook wall, this brief and public communication can give the impression that we have a cavalier attitude towards our own news.
     These are all manageable issues, and I am in no way taking a stance against social-networking and blogs. The intention of these constructs is to allow us to stay connected and close. But if we can remember to value the relationship first, and use the social network to serve the relationship, hopefully we can avoid sacrificing relationships for the sake of the social network.

Easier said than done, but something to consider.

There’s a fine line between wanting to be right and wanting to be understood in any argument and they can often look like very much the same thing.  We push and push and push to get our point across, relentlessly pursuing a concession.  A concession, yes, but of what kind, exactly? 

 

I push because I assume you don’t understand my point.  After all, I think, if you truly understood, you couldn’t possibly still believe I was wrong and you were right.  But then what if you demonstrated you absolutely understood?  What if you took a moment to not only acknowledge what I was saying, but that you understood why I was saying it, why it made sense to me?  What if you did all that, and then told me why you STILL disagree?  I suppose I would have to listen to what you were saying, or at least stop pushing my point.

 

And who knows, maybe if I truly understood what you were saying, if I took the time to demonstrate I absolutely understood, maybe I wouldn’t still believe I was right.  Or maybe I just wouldn’t care so much about being right anymore.  Either way, it’s worth a try. 

     It’s interesting, though – now that I have come to see this Personal Evolution aspect of the marriage relationship, I am seeing all of my relationships in this light. 

     Maybe it’s because I’ve never been good at casual friendships.  I’ve never been the popular type – capable of chatting without intruding on people’s personal experiences, joking casually and cleverly, good for a good time.  Not that I’m a total bore.  I’m very capable of laughing and having a good time, and I’m a terrific audience for the clever.  I like to play, do, and try.  But my sense of humor has always come out most strongly in the process of exploring the depths – I am very good at finding the funny in what is deeply personal and deeply TRUE.  So my friendships have always had an element of this kind of exploration, of grasping for understanding, of trying to learn from it all. 

     So that’s ok.  I struggled with that for a long time in junior high and high school when that was a source of some real self-esteem issues, but as an adult, I have learned to embrace it and focus on the richness those relationships provide me.  And as an adult I am seeing that if my friendships are going to be about this, then they can be about so much more than a friend who is loyal and understanding, and who seems to like me.  I can choose my friends for what they inspire me to reach for.  I can choose them for my own Personal Evolution.

      And then I can look at my other relationships – the one’s I haven’t chosen, the one’s I am stuck with - and I can see them the same way.  These relationships, too, provide me with opportunities to be better than I am currently being.  Every interaction is a scene in which I have a part to play, and I chose who I will be in it – will I be a good listener, will I be compassionate, will I be self-respecting, will I be honest, will I be curious… will I handle this the way I’d like to handle this?  And hopefully, in this way, I will become more and more joyful in my life, as the gap between who I am being and who I’d like to be closes, as I become my best version of myself. 

Why would anyone want to promise THAT?

     So then how does that apply in the case of a marriage, where walking away is not supposed to be an option?  That’s the whole point of my last entry, isn’t it, that it’s easier to love and respect yourself and your partner equally when walking away is a viable option.  You can negotiate towards your mutual happiness, or you can decide it’s not possible and let the relationship go.  Does that mean it is only possible to sustain this level of mutual love and respect outside of marriage?  Does it necessarily all fall apart once we say “I do”?

     This is the challenge that marriage presents us.  It is (or at least can be) a voluntary promise to consistently work towards yours and your spouse’s mutual happiness, NO MATTER WHAT, for walking away is no longer an option.  But why on earth would anyone want to promise THAT? 

    Personally, I saw it as a tremendous opportunity for Personal Evolution.  Marriage creates an imperative for stretching yourself as a person to include this other person you have chosen.  It requires you to strive to equally consider your own needs with the needs of another.  And, in theory, marriage provides you with a safe place to try, fail and grow, because your partner has made the same promise to you.  The reward, in addition to your personal and spiritual growth, is the benefit of everything this other person brings to the table.  A partner in this world.

     So for me, much of the question of my readiness for marriage was about two things. 

     First, how ready am I to equally consider my needs with the needs of another?  For a long time, I struggled to consider my own needs.  I had a tendency to give it away.  Some I know struggle more to consider the needs of another, they tend to hold it too tight.  The truth is that this is an erroneous dichotomy, it is not actually an either/or prospect.  So I needed to feel confident in my size as a human being, to understand my capacity for simultaneous and infinite generosity. 

     And second, have I met a man who will make this process a joyful one?  I needed to feel confident that I had found a partner with whom it might actually be POSSIBLE to always find the win/win in any given situation.  And I needed a man who deeply inspired me with everything he brought to the table; who therefore made the “work” of growing together a happy career. 

     I consider myself truly lucky that I was able to make this decision so consciously, and truly blessed with a marriage in which I never think of questioning why anyone would want to promise “THAT”.

Should I tell my wife?

     A young, married coworker came to work a week ago all aglow from a chance encounter with a long lost girlfriend.  The conversation had brought closure to what was a confusing break up for him.  Feeling warm and fuzzy, and not wanting to be rude, as they parted ways the young man got her phone number with the casual intention of being able to stay in touch.  A good husband who was obviously uncomfortable with keeping secrets from his wife, but also not wanting to needlessly upset her, and certainly not interested in subjecting himself to an emotional reaction, he asked the question : “Should I tell my wife about this encounter?”

     After a moment, I gave him this suggestion – either tell your wife the whole story, or get rid of that number. 

     On some level, he had to see what having this number left him open to – if not an out-and-out affair, certainly more secrets and deception - and therefore to see the validity of his wife’s possible discomfort with the story.  What he was objecting to was the accusation he was expecting, when he hadn’t done anything wrong, and felt he was not going to do anything wrong.  This way, his continued communication with this girl is on the up-and-up with his wife, or there is no communication at all and no need for alarms.  Though why, if he decided to lose the number, he still wouldn’t want to share the story with his wife is beyond me.  Maybe that’s a whole other conversation.

     Therefore, a note to wives out there – take a moment to examine whether you have ever given your husband a good reason not to want to share the truth with you.  In this case, it would of course be perfectly reasonable for the wife to be uncomfortable, and to clearly communicate this discomfort and what she needs to feel safe.  She might even mention that she knows he will put her feelings and the marriage before any possible relationship with this girl.  But she wouldn’t make the marriage stronger by punishing him for telling her with accusations and premature anger.  She’d do better to recognize that this was a positive experience that he wanted to share with her, and trusted her to handle with understanding and dignity.  An acknowledgement of and appreciation for his sharing the truth would go a long way.

Choosing Happiness

 We have all heard, at some point, the idea that we are responsible for our feelings, that no one can “make” us feel anything.  But what does that really mean, when our experience is that the behavior of someone else seems to be the cause of our feelings?  How can we, therefore, be “responsible” for them? 

We are responsible for our feelings simply because they belong to us.  Though our feelings are always valid and sometimes may even be considered “normal”, the fact is that someone else may have different feelings in response to the same thing.  Why would one person feel one way, and someone else another?  Because of the different thoughts in each person’s head.  The question of why we are feeling something can certainly be explored in terms of what has happened to “make” us feel that way.  But this inevitably leads to blaming our feelings on something outside of ourselves, and takes away our power to do anything about them.  It is more productive to explore our feelings for what they are telling us about ourselves – our thoughts, our beliefs, our values.  Once we do that, we can actively make responsible choices around those feelings. 

It is true that we are never in control of things outside of ourselves, but that we can control who we choose to be in response to them.  Everyone we relate with provides us an opportunity to get information about who we are being, and to make adjustments towards who we want to be.  Our feelings are the key to getting that information.   We make choices of thought and behavior based on our feelings constantly.  But it’s dangerous to make choices based solely on feelings which we haven’t fully recognized nor taken ownership of.  To do so places us at the whim of those feelings and of the people or things we perceive to cause them.  It makes us victims.  It is how conscious we are of our feelings and what they tell us about ourselves that determines to what degree our choices will reflect who we really want to be. And the more our choices reflect who we want to be, the closer those choices can bring us to happiness.     

   

Authenticity. What the #%!@ does that mean?

     I had a very interesting conversation with a coachee last week about being authentic.  Specifically, about whether being concerned with someone’s response to you automatically makes you inauthentic.  And, in asserting my opinion that it did, I was caught in a possible contradiction.  In my first post, I mentioned the importance to our personal growth of the feedback we get from our interactions with others.  But if we are concerned with that feedback, are we able to be authentic?

     In my opinion, any time we concern ourselves primarily with the response we are getting or going to get, we are doomed to perpetrate a manipulation.  And a futile one at that, since we can very rarely predict another’s response or even accurately interpret it.  Plus, many people can tell when we are concerned about or trying to get a response from them , and then we are definitely not going to get the response we are looking for. 

     To what extent, then, should we consider the feedback we get from others?  To the extent that it is useful information in determining a much more important concern.  Who do I want to be in this moment?  The deeper my level of awareness, the more equipped I am to answer this question.  The effect or possible effect of my actions on, for instance, the feelings of another may be very useful – given this information, who do I want to be in this moment?  Maybe in some cases the information doesn’t ultimately bear on the answer at all.  Either way, it comes back to me – to the kind of person I want to be, the kind of wife I want to be, the kind of daughter I want to be, the kind of friend I want to be.  It is a deepening level of awareness, coupled with this kind of conscious behavior, that leads to true authenticity.

Hello world!

     Thank God for a husband with a sense of the current and cool.  I was going to do a Newsletter.  A newsletter, baby?  Really?  How about a Blog?  Right!  Of course!  So here we are. 

     As some of you know, I graduated from a Life Coaching program this past summer, and have been struggling with what direction I would take things ever since.  To be honest, I have conflicting feelings about the title “Life Coach”.  Despite my deeply held belief that we can all benefit from the kind of support offered by a Life Coach, there is a little voice in my head that says, “What does that even MEAN?”  LIFE Coach?  What, exactly, am I getting coached on here?

     There are three primary ways we change and grow in life;  through the journey of achievement/creation, through the changing of circumstances, and through our interactions with others.  Most coaching sort of works in that order.  We set goals to create something or to change something about our circumstances.  And then, in the course of implementing these goals, we address the issues that come up with any human we may encounter on route.  But this is problematic for me, because it is a reverse of the way in which I would prioritize these values.

     In my opinion, our relationships provide us with the most powerful opportunities to discover our character strengths and our values – the things about ourselves that give us the power to move forward in life. And they give us powerful opportunities to work through things about ourselves that stand in the way of what we want and who we want to be.  The feedback we can observe from our relationships is rich, immediate, and particularly worthy of our consideration because of where it comes from – another human being.  A dynamic and direct reflection of ourselves. 

      In addition, more than our jobs, hobbies, or material possessions, it is the quality of our relationships – the knowledge that we are understood, supported and, most importantly, appreciated, and the availability of positive interaction – that most determines the quality of our lives.

     And so here I am…a Relationship Coach.  A coach whose passion is to assist people in transforming their relationships into healthy and inspiring opportunities for growth and joy.  So my intention for this blog is to take a relationship issue each month and discuss some aspect that seems important or interesting to consider.  And we can talk about any relationship – girlfriend, husband, ex, Mom, brother, teengage kid, boss, coworker, busdriver. 

     ForwardMotionCoaching.  It was a name created based on my original intention to be a Life Coach.  When I decided to focus on relationships, I considered changing the name – at first sight, it didn’t seem to apply.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was exactly the message I wanted to send about what I do.