When we have a vision of how the “perfect” meal should come out we then feel the stress of the difference.  We then feel compelled to make the meal “fit” that image in our mind.  That compulsive feeling appears to be the answer to what will make our stress feel better. When we have an expectation of how someone “should” behave, and they don’t fit that mental image, we create stress.  The answer our distorted belief system proposes to stress is to figure out how to get someone to behave differently.  So we stress some more about coming up with the “right” way to change someone else’s behavior. All the while not paying attention to the other half of the problem,,, our expectations.

The need to control things or other people and make them “perfect” might seem like the solution, but actually it is just another reaction to a previous feeling.

So my suggestion to reducing stress is to first be aware of the need to control and make things “perfect”.  Then shift your attention away from making reality fit a seemingly “fixed” mental image or expectation. Instead, put your attention on that expectation.  Expectations are much easier to change than someone’s behavior, the reality of airline delays or, getting the mashed potatoes just right.  To be flexible give your self more than one option of what would be “okay.”  For practice or fun make it a game and give your self, and the people around you 3 or 4 options.

Stress is a good indicator that you are more attached to the illusion image in your mind than you are being present with the world around you.

Of course it is only easier to change the expectations when you are aware that you have them,,, and that they are not matching up to reality.  Notice that, and you’ll begin to see that you can change the stress you feel by detaching from some of your expectations, and accepting the mashed potatoes just the way they are.

May Blessings to you, family, and friends this season.

Gary van Warmerdam

The problem didn’t start here.  There’s been tension for years.  Three years ago he looked out into the future and realized that at a certain point the kids would be moved out and it would just be the two of them.  He thought he should do something to improve the situation and get closer with his wife as there wasn’t much connection there.  Attempts to communicate and share lead nowhere.  His efforts to be more affectionate were rebuked.  He would try to talk and she didn’t want to.  After years of failing you just stop trying.  Wanting some kind of connection, and not finding it at home he began perusing the internet.  This led to more problems with his wife.

When Jake is in his townhome he’s afraid of being alone and not having anyone for the rest of his life.  Old patterns of jealousy from high school resurfaced.   Late at night his head is filled with annoying thoughts about what she is doing.  He feels compelled to get in his car and drive over to her house (his old house).  As an engineer he is intellectually smart enough to know it is silly.  At the same time, there are forces of emotion driving him to behaviors he doesn’t want to do.  He goes back to his small townhouse, and is sad at the direction of his new life.  He longs for a happier time with his wife.  If only she would open up to him he hopes.  That would change everything.

Jake is considering the financial costs of divorce.  He doesn’t like it.  On top of that, he’s feeling that his 13 year old daughter is being corrupted by what his wife is telling her.   He is being made out to be the bad guy.  Jake shares all this and then asks me, “What should I do?”

“Would you like a silver bullet solution to the problems?”  I ask.

“Yes,” he says with hope.

We hope for such an answer.  As we hope, we focus all our attention on that fantasy of how life could be different if only…. (fill in the blank… with some bit about how we or someone else should be different than they are).

I tell Jake, “You have a Tree Problem.”

“What?”  he says with a sense of confusion.

“You have a Tree Problem,” I say again as if that explains everything.

“I don’t understand,” Jake replies. “What do you mean I have a Tree Problem.”

My little diversion trick is working.  His focus has shifted a tiny bit to my comment and with it his emotions have changed. His attention is no longer fixated completely fixed on his problem.   He’s off balance with my little Judo response and that makes it easier to move him a bit further.  Curiosity and confusion is a big step away from sadness and hopelessness.  It’s also a better state to make changes and work on things from.  He’s already taken two steps out of feeling trapped and hopeless and he hasn’t realized it yet.

I begin to explain the “Tree Problem”.

If you have a big tree in your backyard and you want to get rid of it, can you go over to it and push it out?  No.  You will push and push, make your self tired and after a while you will feel defeated.  You will conclude that you are not strong enough, a failure, feel overwhelmed, and that it is hopeless.  That tree is too big with all it’s branches, not to mention it is also rooted to the ground.  But what if you get an ax?  Maybe it is a dull ax.  You hack away at the trunk and spend all day and make it half way through.  You might look at that tree and conclude that you haven’t accomplished a thing because the tree is still there.  It’s a poor assessment of progress but it is the a common misinterpretation we make when working on our own issues.

What if you got a file for your ax?   Your ax would be sharper and you might have gotten it down in the first day.  You wouldn’t have gotten it down in the first swing, but maybe in the first day.  For a really big tree, maybe it would take a couple days.  Of course a chain saw would be faster.  Perhaps it comes down in a few minutes.  But with a chain saw you need other items as well.  You need a sharp chain and that requires a different kind of file.  You’ll need oil to lubricate the chain and gasoline to run the chain saw. It might take a bit more work to get the tools and equipment, but you could take the tree down faster.  Of course there is fear in making such changes.  What if in making all these changes the tree falls on our house.  There’s fear in solving a tree problem because there’s going to be consequences in other areas of our life.

Now even if you get that chain saw and fell that big tree in your backyard the job isn’t done.  It’s laying on the ground and it’s too big to move.  So you take your saw or your ax and you start cutting off the limbs.  You cut the trunk into short lengths.  Then you take your ax and split the large trunk logs into pieces small enough to move.  Once each is piece small enough you can pick it up and move it out of your back yard.  That’s how you solve a tree problem.  You break it down into a bunch of manageable size pieces that you can handle.

If we look at a situation like Jake’s and try to solve it with one stroke or in one day we will feel overwhelmed and helpless.  It can’t be done. We can’t see an solution much less a way to get there.   Often when we face such issues like divorce we are dealing with circumstances and problems we have never faced before.  We do not have the tools or the training to deal with splitting out the finances, addressing the challenges our children, will go through, the emotions we will go through, or the prospect of starting a new life.  We might be educated, successful, professional adults, but we find ourself in a situation we have no tools, training, or experience in handling.  We are facing a tree that doesn’t want to move and we can’t come up with any silver bullet solutions like we are used applying in other areas of our life.  Our silver bullet answers seem to revolve around someone else changing and they don’t seem to want to.

Why is Jake looking for a bullet to address his Tree Problem?  Somewhere in his belief system he assumes there is one.  You can tell because he is looking and asking for one.  It keeps him running in circles chasing a hope filled dream instead of focusing on tools and actions that will work.

That tree isn’t going to be removed by a bullet and the sooner he realizes that the sooner he will stop wasting time looking for one.  It’s an uncomfortable truth to accept, but the pain is very short lived compared to living in never ending hope and frustration that happens when we chase an illusion based answer.

If it was a gopher in his yard maybe it could be solved with one well-placed bullet.  But Jake clearly has a Tree Problem.  There are many different branches.  Coming to terms with the end of his marriage, overcoming his jealousy issues, dividing up the finances, becoming comfortable in his new life, and communicating all these changes to his 13 year old daughter are all branches of the same tree.  It’s going to take more than a week to deal with each branch.

So how do you solve a Tree Problem?

Like hiking to the top of a mountain, one step at a time .  There will be times on the trail you are going up, and times you are going downhill losing elevation.  But even when you seem to be losing elevation you will be moving forward on your path.   Most of the time you won’t be able to see the top where you hope to end up.  You have to have some faith that it will be okay when you get there.  You also can’t imagine what it will look like from up there because you have never been there before.  What you can do is keep taking care of the step in front of you.  Putting one foot in front of the other is how you make a long journey.   One step at a time on your Pathway To Happiness, that’s how you get there.   There are some possibilities for short cuts at times, but you have to be walking on the path to find them.  You’ll often find clues to those short cuts from people who are familiar with the pathway.

So I leave you with a couple clarifying and hopefully practical questions to ask about the challenges and changes you are faced with?

Do you have a gopher problem or do you have a Tree Problem?

And do the type of solutions you are looking for fit the type of problem you have?   If not, are you trapped in a cycle of hope for a quick fix solution and frustration that you can’t find one?  If you realize you are in such a trap then you’ve taken another step on your Pathway To Happiness.

More practical steps are available in the Self Mastery Course, The Relationship Course, and The Self Mastery Advanced Series.

A few years back I was at my bank withdrawing some money.  My intention was to invest in the market.  I was referred to one of their investment advisers who told me, “That’s dangerous.”   The implied message is not just to be fearful, but that you will get hurt because are ignorant or incapable of making your own financial decisions.   The implied role assigned to me is the victim and to let them play the hero by helping me. It’s interesting how much can be communicated with just two words, “That’s dangerous.”

In one comment, she was offering me a completely packaged story.  It was a role I was conditioned to accept since childhood.  I was the innocent bystander that needed help.  I didn’t know what I was doing and I was in over my head.  It cast the stock market as a dangerous dragon that could hurt me. She assumed the role of helpful adviser recommending I avoid a complicated danger.  She would protect me.  She assigned her self to the role of hero and offered me a feeling of hope and security if I followed her suggestions.  All for a price of course.

I was aware of the fear she was offering me to carry by believing those two words.  I was also aware of the powerlessness and insecurity I would feel if I accepted her assigned victim role.  From that victim point of view, her hero role would look comforting, and therefore tempting.  The problem with this nifty package is that I knew the price.  For the comfort of her being my hero, I first had to accept the fear.

Learning Your Role In Life

How can we put on such a huge story so quickly with just two words?   In childhood we learn through interactions and stories to adopt roles for our selves and to assign roles to others.  Comic books, movies, and fairy tales of a dashing prince have us imagining the hero (rescuer).   As our imagination is filled with this story figure, we usually assign our self various points of view.  Sometimes we comfort our self importance and imagine being that heroic figure and defeating villains and evil forces.  At other times we put them on a pedestal and enjoy the awe and reverence we bestow on them.  The effect of the latter is that we assume our selves to be less powerful, incapable, and needing help in challenging situations.  We can call this playing a victim role.

One of the consequences of habitually applying these roles to our selves, and others, is that we need some kind of villain in order to keep our hero myths alive.  Military war heroes need evil doers.  Police officers need criminals.  Trial attorneys need bad guys to punish.  Politicians need victims in order to justify their actions as good, right, and heroic.

By the time we are adults we apply the opinion, “good person” or “bad person” to a human being.  The simplest part of our mind craves a simple answer to complex human situations.   Our self-hero image tells us we are right about our assessment, and we feel good about our judgment of others.

Out of habit we assign the role or title of “bad person” to someone very quickly.  In that assumption we miss the opportunity to see them as a human being with life history of experiences and challenges that led them to the situation they are in.  Implied in the assessment is that we assign our self the hero role, the “good character” in the story.

Learning the Victim Role

We are trained since a young age to assign the role of hero to others. We make others responsible and thereby make our self dependent on them.    Take your parents hand and have them lead you across the street or you will get hurt or killed. Follow your parents direction or you will get punished.  We learned to live out these roles as a means of survival.  Putting your life in the hands of others is the best thing to do as a small person learning to make your way in a big and chaotic world.  However, according to this early mindset, there is always someone that knows what is better for you than your self.  Some people eventually wake up from their role playing and decide to live their own life instead of the one others assign to them.  Some people don’t wake up to the automated roles of their life.

For the victim, when someone comes along offering to play that caretaker, rescuer, hero, role, we feel infused with hope and are thankful that they are answering our prayers.  It is a prayer that we have learned to pray to a more powerful being out side of our self.  Again looking for help and power outside instead of within our self, not really discovering what we are capable of.

The Business of Your Role In Life

The victim role of powerlessness, overwhelm, and insecurity is continually projected at us.  We learn to follow the rules and behaviors of others in order to feel safe.     How many commercials tell you that investing is complicated hard work and that you should leave it to trained professionals?  Pay them the commission and have them save you from hurting your self with financial mistakes.  The message,,, you are not smart enough or good enough to do this your self.

Insurance companies make their income from you being scared of possible outcomes and relying on them for comfort.  Banks protect your money.  Men are advised what to buy their loved one at the jewelry store so not to screw up a holiday.  Marketers assign us the role that we don’t know what to do in our lives or even in our relationship.  They come with answers to alleviate us from the fear they have offered us.

The Politics of Your Role In Life

Politicians count on you to project on to them your hero stories learned early in life.  We study the American Presidents and their great and challenging deeds.  Our teachers have us put them on pedestals and project awe and reverence at them.  We don’t see that they are human beings just like us.   In our minds we associate current presidents with past presidents and the attitude of someone saving us is comforting.  In that imagined story of comfort we don’t notice the powerless role we assign for our self.  Our projected image of them blinds us from seeing the actual character and qualities of our leaders.

What Role Will You Choose for Your Self?

How much do you live in a state of powerlessness, and insecurity because of the beliefs and roles you have adopted?  How often do you comfort your self emotionally by placing others on pedestals?   What price do you pay by assigning other people to be your heroes?  How often do you see people as ignorant or incapable just so you can attempt to save them and prop up your own imaged hero image?  What roles do you play in your life and who assigns them to you?

The process to unraveling these mysteries and what we are actually capable of is a matter of self discovery.  The Self Mastery course in Awareness can help you discover the roles you play in your life.  The Self Mastery program is a means to inventory and change your beliefs, emotions, and the roles you have been playing in your life.

No one will assign you the role of waking up from your habitual patterns.  You have to assign that role to your self.

Generally I find I can either answer questions I have by listening to something you’ve already recorded or by simply realizing the question was bogus to begin with, but every so often I stumble on something that lingers.

I believe I’ve mentioned a girl I have pretty strong feelings for. I had *a lot* of agreements about relationships and love that I’ve had to cut through, but I’ve noticed I don’t feel the same about those subjects as I did before. The mind will try to pull me into drama over little things, but it does succeed very often anymore.

But I do notice the feeling itself is different. I’ve noticed a lot more love in my every day experience, but the way I feel for this girl is just… Different. I enjoy the feeling and no longer believe I have to stop feeling it because we aren’t involved romantically.

So I suppose I’m asking if love is a feeling that has–for lack of a better term–different flavors or colors. I wouldn’t consider this question particularly necessary to answer, but it leaves me curious.

Thanks again.

Degrees of Love

Dear Degrees of Love,

Love has many varying flavors, and degrees of intensity.  Every musical note, sound, and voice can have a different quality of love. It is endless.  Each color, plant, animal can have a different emotional quaility.  This is why there are many aspects of happiness.  Sometimes is is an uproarious laughter, and sometimes it is a quite state of compassion and acceptance.  Both are pleasant, but in different ways.

As you cut through the agreements about relationships (beliefs usually of need)  we find out our neediness changes.   Our love becomes more generous and less selfish.  Our desire is for the people we love to be happy and there is less and less need that they have to be with us.   This is a more unconditional love.

I spoke with James the other day who was trying to figure out what he should do about his relationship. He and his girlfriend had broken it off again and he didn’t know if he should give up or try whole heartedly to commit. It was a pattern he had done before.

He was frustrated because he couldn’t come up with an answer to his question. It was especially frustrating because James is an educated, intelligent, and professionally successful guy.

James had a number of beliefs that created impossible conflicts for him to make the right choice about his relationship. He didn’t see those core beliefs. He also didn’t see that he was asking the wrong questions. He was operating unaware of what his mind was doing to him. Kind of like those cats reacting and chasing the red dot reflecting on the floor. They don’t notice the person moving the laser pointer around that is in control.

Should I end the Relationship

If he ended the relationship he was facing the prospect of being alone. Related to being alone his mind constructed a scenario of being lonely, depressed, and in grief over the loss of the relationship. His mind didn’t have another chapter to that future story. To avoid the painful emotions his assumptions projected his mind darted to staying in the relationship as a solution.

Should I Stay in the Relationship

His mind had set up an impossible structure of being with this woman. Actually it painted a terrible picture for being with any woman. James has a number of beliefs about what it means to be a husband and father. It would require him to spend all his energy trying to be the “perfect husband” in order to fit the image he had fabricated in his mind. James felt overwhelmed at the task. He felt he wasn’t up to it. Based on those expectations the Inner Judge in his mind concluded he wasn‘t good enough.

His mind also projected that the responsibility wouldn’t allow him freedom and flexibility in his career choices if he had to provide for a family. He saw it as an unending treadmill with little room to do other things he enjoys. James felt trapped by that picture of his imagined future. In that picture he was both feeling trapped and feeling unworthy.

“What should I do?“

The world of the mind and imagination is a fascinating place. You can easily lose your attention there and feel lost and powerless. The belief system in the mind constructs a picture of being alone and unhappy. The belief system also makes assumptions about a committed relationship and projects being burdened, trapped, and unhappy in marriage. After constructing these two unhappy scenarios the mind then asks, the question,

“What should I do?“

There is something particularly crafty about this question in this scenario. Layered into the question are hidden assumptions that point the attention to look only at these two previously constructed possibilities. Cats are a lot like this with that laser pointer. They lose sight of everything else around them. Their ability to focus is one thing that makes them great hunters. It’s also what makes them chase reflections and miss the bigger picture. Cats are so focused on the reflection they can’t see who is moving that laser light.

James puts his attention on trying to find an answer to that very simple question. That one question has trapped his attention.

He follows a direction of logic until he imagines the possibility of being alone. When the emotional body begins to perceive the unhappiness of this projected future it begins to look for another way. It’s a natural instinct to avoid emotional pain, even if it is from reflections in the imagination.

He considers committing to the relationship for the rest of his life. It’s the only other option his mind offers. His core beliefs have constructed an image of what he is supposed to be as a man. It includes perfect husband, protector, emotionally available, supportive, and a bred winner financially. He should be “like a rock”.

According to this Image of Perfection there’s no room for not knowing what to do in any situation. There is no latitude to be human. There too little room to enjoy his life, and have fun within this imagined box his beliefs have built. If he doesn’t meet this image he is a failure according to his inner judge. The Image of Perfection is so high that failure is certain. The imagined emotions are too unbearable to consider. His mind jumps to another reflection of light darting past in his mind. He has to get out of the relationship. The cats run the other way down the hall.

When James looks for an answer he isn’t going to find anything solid. He’s chasing reflections of imagined futures that his fears and core beliefs are projecting. Since his fears and beliefs of not being good enough are projecting the future everything looks bleak. He feels trapped and yet compelled to answer.

He doesn’t look beyond those two options because that one question has trapped his attention. “What should I do” implies that there is a “right” answer and that he should choose it. It assumes that one of the two scenarios in front of him is “right”. It assumes the other will be wrong. Oddly enough neither question addresses his happiness directly. Happiness in life is left as an indirect consequence of choosing the “right” answer.

That question puts his whole future happiness into one choice. With that much weighing in the balance the question makes itself more important. It becomes vital that he find an answer. He focuses his attention even more into the possibilities of those two answers hoping to see something he missed before.

It’s like the cat trying to put his paw on the red dot.

What James fails to realize is that the question and assumed answers has trapped his attention. The construct of beliefs is a much bigger trap than the relationship could ever be. At least in relationship there is always the prospect of break up or divorce. His mind doesn’t offer alternate options. When the attention is trapped by beliefs and assumptions like this a person doesn’t have the awareness to see other options.

Cat’s are a lot like this when they chase reflections of light. Sometimes they chase the light reflection from my watch all over the office as I type. Their instinct to hunt that spec of light down is pure survival instinct. Humans are like that. Since the time we were very little we spent years in school training to find the right answers to questions that other people asked. We spent years learning to answer questions as if our survival depended on it.

What we didn‘t learn

We never learned to ask the questions. We were not trained to ask our self better questions so that we can come up with a better answer. We never learned to question the question. Because we didn’t control the questions we never got a chance to direct where our attention went. We just chased answers. We even jump to find answers when our own mind asks the question. We chase the reflection instead of grabbing the pointer.

The problem that James faces is not that he is stupid and can’t figure out the answer. The problem is that he doesn’t hold the laser light. He is not beginning with useful questions. “What should I do?” doesn’t have an answer that will make him feel happy and fulfilled.

What will help James is to stop chasing reflections of light and get hold of the source. He’s got to get hold of the laser pointer in his mind that is asking the questions. It’s the part of his mind leading the show. When he starts asking better questions he will stop chasing dead ends.

Ask a better question Get a Better Answer

Do I want to be happy? How important is it?
Have I ever been happy when I was alone? Is it possible for me to be happy with other people? How much of my happiness is dependent on me? How much of my happiness is dependent on another person? How much of my happiness do I want to be dependent on another person? How do I change the balance?

What do I want to feel emotionally? What do I want my relationships to feel like? What can I do to feel that way all the time?

Free Will – Does James have a choice to be happy?

At the level of awareness that James is operating on it won’t make much difference to his happiness how he chooses. No matter the choice his mind will second guess himself afterwards with doubting questions. The voice in his head with questions will cause him to wonder if he made the “right” choice. His mind will imagine different scenarios and produce insecurity, fear, and unhappiness about his choices. His Inner Judge and Victim will conclude he was wrong with either choice. It’s just how that part of the mind operates until you become aware enough to change it.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The motivation for the “should” question was always about being happy. The real question was, “What should I do so that I will be happy in my life?” It’s just that when you shorten it you get caught up in a different question. The emphasis changes from being happy to being “right.” Your mind puts in different assumptions and you chase impossible answers up and down the hallways of your mind.

Cats chase reflections of light hoping to catch their prey. They don’t have the awareness to notice who is holding the light source. People are a lot like cats. People chase answers to questions that trap their attention and spin them in circles.

If you want a happier outcome in your relationships and your life don’t just chase better answers. Get a hold of the light source and control where you point your attention.

For exercises in gaining control over your attention, changing core beliefs, and changing the emotional experience of your life, listen to the free audio sessions in Self Mastery.

___________________

Suggested Listening – Hidden Assumptions in Questions – MP3 Audio Download. This is from a previously posted podcast.

The most important aspect to master when dealing with a liar is your emotional reactions. You can’t always change the behavior of a liar, but you can change how you feel and react to them. Once you learn to change your emotions about a situation you begin to see a lot more options.

If you are honest with the situation you will realize that your happiness is more important than their behavior anyways. The motivator for wanting someone to stop lying is so that you don’t end up unhappy.

Change begins with Awareness

The first step in dealing with liars or emotional issues is awareness. With awareness you can deal with a liar without being upset. We’ll start by understanding how someone becomes a liar to begin with.

Our social conditioning has trained us to be liars to some degree. In some ways it is required of us. When you are aware of how people are socialized your expectations change. As your expectations change the judgments in your mind dissolve along with your emotional reactions to them.

This doesn’t mean you learn to condone lying or agree with it. You just no longer have emotional reactions about it. When you are aware that someone lied to you because they were trained by other people and circumstances you won’t take it personally. You then have an opportunity to deal with the situation in a way that isn’t driven out of emotional reactions.

We learned to lie in order to be polite and respectful.

Just for starters we learned to lie in order to be polite. When we were kids, and we visited relatives or friends we ate whatever they served for dinner even if we didn’t like it. If we really hated it we might have slid it under the table to the dog so it looked like we ate it. When the host asked, “How was the meal?” we did the polite thing and told them how much we enjoyed it.

We lie so we don‘t get punished or hurt

When I was in grade school I was visiting my friends house after school. One of the cool things we did was climb onto the garage roof and jump off into grass. My friend’s mom came home later in the afternoon and asked us what we had been doing all afternoon. We didn’t mention the jumping off the roof part. We lied to our parents so we didn’t get punished.

We lied in order to build trust and loyalty

If kids are playing and they break something they try to hide it. If they are playing with something that they shouldn’t play with they don’t confess the truth. Children don’t want to be punished so they lie or withhold the truth.

As a kid if we broke something like a vase while playing we made pact with our friends or sibling not to tell. When the parent asked what happened to the vase we answered, “I don’t know.” We lied to our parents in order to maintain the trust and loyalty of our friends. Of course parents don’t give up that easily. Usually kids will succumb to the pressure of their parent’s questions and tell the truth eventually. This turns the promise of loyalty and secrecy with our friend into a lie.

Without awareness we trapped our self in a conflict of agreements. You either kept the promise of secrecy to your friends by lying to your parents. Or, you told the truth to your parents and your loyalty with your friend became a lie. We end up with either our parents or our friends not trusting us.

Later in life we learn some advanced lying techniques

Lie to people with Power

Learning to lie to parents when we are kids leads to lying to other authority figures later in life. When the higher ups in the company propose a new direction or program do you tell them what you really think? Or is it easier to be quiet and not create the conflict with people who have power over your paycheck. Even when they ask for your input it makes a lot of sense to not rock the boat. It is easy to couch your words and only hint at your concerns. Depending on the power and emotional reactions of the person perhaps you keep your mouth shut altogether.

Maybe you have a relationship with your boss where you can speak freely and that can be great. But do you speak with that same freedom to the vice presidents and owners above your boss. Most people don’t. If people give their “honest opinion” their behavior is often considered inappropriate or political suicide.

Not many company cultures can handle an honest assessment of the negative side of an issue without an emotional reaction. With people who don’t take 100% responsibility for their emotions their upset will be your fault in some way. The paradigm of power over our livelihood combined with the instability of emotional reactions suggests that we lie by omission.

In all fairness it is also a rare person who can give an honest assessment of the down side that affects them without it partly motivated by their emotional reaction.

A Liar doesn‘t want to hurt people‘s feelings.

In personal relationships we lie so we don’t hurt the feelings of the people we care about. Suppose a couple is sitting at a restaurant and an attractive woman walks by. What does a man say when his partner asks, “Do you think she’s pretty?” Can the man say, “She is gorgeous?”

He can be honest if he is with a very secure woman. He can also be honest if she has pretended to be a very secure woman. (lied about her security) He can also be honest if he doesn’t care about sleeping on the couch for a while.

Men lie to women at times so that they don’t hurt the feelings of the people they care about. Men might also lie because they don’t want to be punished by the people that love them. Women lie to men for the same reasons.

You might dismiss all these examples as being “white lies.” These are small lies told to be tactful or polite. But the motivations for lying don’t change when the stakes get bigger. If a person cheated on their spouse would they hide it from them in order not to hurt their feelings? If your friend was cheating on their boyfriend would you tell the boyfriend? Would you tell him if he asked?

The motivation for lying increases in direct proportion to the emotional reaction and potential emotional pain.

We lie when we are in Emotional Denial

When something hurts our feelings we cover it up and say it is no big deal. When we are upset or sad we say we are fine. When our heart is broken we can get mad at our ex, yet we will say we don’t care about them anymore. It’s a lie.

If we didn’t care it wouldn’t matter so much emotionally. If we really didn’t care we wouldn’t be so hurt and angry. The truth is it hurts so much that we tell our selves we don’t’ care to avoid and deny the emotional pain. We lie about the emotions we feel to pretend they are not there. We lie to our self in an effort to feel better because we don’t know a different way to let go of the pain. We attempt to lie our way to happiness.

The best way to deal with people who are liars

The first and most important thing is to manage your expectations. When you have awareness of how people were socially conditioned you have an opportunity for compassion. With awareness your understanding expands and your judgments dissolve. Be honest and aware enough to recognize the socialization patterns that people face growing up. Also be aware of the consequences that telling the truth might incur.

When you realize the extent of social conditioning you gain a greater understanding for why people compensate with lies the way they do. The emotional reactions you had behind the judgments aren’t there any more.

In relationships you are responsible for your half of the emotions.

Taking care of your half means noticing where you are lying. If you are upset with someone for lying it is because you believe they should be telling the truth. Your expectation is that they should drop all their years of social conditioning overnight.

You believe they should adopt a new behavior and become a person you expect them to be. You believe they should be the image you hold in your mind about them. They are not the image in your mind that you want them to be. When you want another person to live according to your expectations you are lying to your self about who they really are.

Use Awareness to Deal with your Lies

Being aware of the image in your mind of another person and your beliefs about who they should be will give you an opportunity to change your beliefs. Being aware of the deeply embedded social conditioning that programs a person to lie will help you drop your misplaced expectations of another. Dropping your false image of them and managing your expectations will go a long ways to dissolving your emotional reactions to someone else’s socially conditioned behavior.

If you are having emotional reactions about someone who is lying then you will need to deal with your half. Your half includes the lies in your mind about who they should be.

Why People Lie

People lie because they have been conditioned through emotional reactions. Emotional reactions aren’t intellectually logical. They are more powerful than that. That’s why people lie in spite of it being the logical or intelligent thing to do. People will stop lying as they learn not to fear their own emotions or emotional reactions from others. Learning not to fear your emotions is a beginning step to being honest that leads to Self Mastery.

If a person isn’t skillful and effective at dealing with their emotions it is unwise to expect them to change the behavior of lying.
I’m not condoning, justifying, or defending lying. I’m attempting to expand the conversation. If you are going to deal with liars or your own lying you will need to deal with the emotional reactions that drive the behavior. Whether the pattern was learned from the past, or you are afraid of consequences of being punished today it is about the emotions. When people learn how to master their emotions they won’t fear honesty and the Truth.

Boundaries

When you have dissolved your emotional reactions to someone that is lying then it becomes a simple process of boundaries. But that doesn’t mean that you need to wait until you have dealt with your emotions before you put up boundaries. Putting up boundaries is a good way to protect your self from your emotional reactions until you clean them up.

Use of boundaries also means you might want to put a boundary on what you believe. Stop believing what they tell you.  Living by the assumption that a liar will tell you the truth is just another way of lying to your self.

For exercises in how to deal with your mind, including emotional reactions, expectations, and changing beliefs download the free audio sessions in the Self Mastery course. I also suggest you listen to the free mp3 audio podcasts on Awareness and Consciousness.

Interesting story about the challenge of radical honesty versus lying.

We don’t always get to see those critical moments of decision coming. We can’t prepare for them once they arrive. If we are to make wise decisions in those moments we will have to prepare for them before they arrive.

To give yourself the best preparation for those moments of milliseconds, develop your awareness so you make better choices. Awareness will allow you to maintain your perspective of important strategic goals in moments where you would otherwise react.

Being able to maintain perspective in potentially life changing moments is what can make the difference between success and failure, or between happiness and regret.
I’ll use an example about basketball to make my point. It’s a bit of a long story but I think it illustrates how you can destroy a lot of hard work in a matter of milliseconds.

In game 4 of the NBA basketball playoff series between the Phoenix Suns and the San Antonio Spurs there was an incident that changed the course of the Suns playoff chances.

The Phoenix Suns had the win in hand and only 18 seconds left when Robert Horry of the Spurs flagrantly fouled Steve Nash of the Suns. It was a senseless hockey check of Nash into the scorer’s table. It cost Robert Horry a two game suspension.

But in the spark of a moment, what the Phoenix Suns players did to themselves with their emotional reaction was far worse.

Seeing their floor leader get hip checked, Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire got up from the bench and headed off to engage the enemy. Diaw and Stoudemire are two of the Phoenix Suns top players.

They caught hold of themselves shy of any confrontation and returned to the bench area but damage was already done. By leaving the vicinity of the bench during a court incident they had violated a well known NBA rule to prevent brawling. Both Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudemire were suspended for critical Game 5 of the best of 7 series.

Without the play of Diaw and Stoudemire the Suns were crippled in game 5. They lost and went down 3 games to 2 in the series. The next game was in San Antonio where the Spurs had the home court advantage that helped them win the deciding game and close out the series.

The San Antonio Spurs are headed off to play for the NBA championship. The Phoenix Suns will sit in front of their televisions and watch other people live out what they dreamed and worked hard for an opportunity to do.

What’s the difference between playing for the NBA championship and going home early? Milliseconds.

What does NBA playoffs and championship basketball have to do with you and your life? Milliseconds.

You and everyone else you know makes decisions in milliseconds. Sometimes they are snap decisions. Often they are emotional reactions where the bigger consequences are not considered. The direction of your life changes depending on what you do, and what you refrain from doing in those milliseconds.

In the period of milliseconds two players lost their perspective and ran on the court to fight for their friend. Did Steve Nash need their intervention? No. The hip check was over and the opponent was walking away. Referees were on the scene to put things in order. Trainers were going over to check on Steve Nash. Stoudemire and Diaw’s involvement wasn’t going to improve anything about the situation. But they lost the perspective in the heat of the moment to consider any of that.

I understand helping and protecting team mates and friends. But what I wouldn’t want to do is jump in unnecessarily, get suspended, and cost my team mates an opportunity to win an NBA championship. That’s not helping my team mates. I’m not sitting in judgment condemning what they did from my vantage point days later. I’m just using the incident to make a point about the difference between choices and reactions in your life.

By losing their perspective they lost the ability to make a better choice. That loss off choice for a split second added to season ending consequences.

It’s easy to see where milliseconds matter to NBA players, but where do milliseconds make a difference in your life?

What happens in the moments leading up to firing a comment at your boss or an employee that sets the relationship off balance? It might send you looking for another job?

What happens in the milliseconds that lead up to an angry outburst? What if you could shift to a different point of view and make a different choice in that instant?

What happens in a moment of emotional reaction like jealousy when you say something you regret? Perhaps you say something that you can’t take back.

What happens when you are considering asking someone out, but then tell your self, “No they probably wouldn’t be interested in me?” In those milliseconds the mind creates a feeling of insecurity, and then that feeling determines your actions, and inactions? You talk your self out of taking action for what you want.

What happens during those holidays with family where in milliseconds a family gathering can turn into an emotional blow out?

In milliseconds reactions happen that cause relationships to break up. In flashes family members decide not to speak to each other and are estranged for years. In milliseconds people quit their jobs.

Paying attention to milliseconds may not seem like a big deal until you see the chain reaction of consequences for years afterwards. When you see the link between milliseconds and consequences, the milliseconds become as important as years of your life. You discover that you want control over what happens in those milliseconds.

The more self awareness you have heading into those unforeseen moments the less chance emotional reactions have to overpower you. When you learn to manage and master the choices made in milliseconds, everything else about your life becomes much easier.

For an excellent read on understanding decisions and reactions made in milliseconds is the best selling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Malcolm Gladwell does an amazing job of detailing the process of choices made in an instant.  He points out that with practice you can change how you react and make a better choices.

For exercises awareness so that you can gain control over those milliseconds I suggest the Self Mastery Audio program. The first few sessions are free for you to sample. They will guide you to focus your attention on those critical moments and prepare you to choose more wisely.

All of life happens in the smallest of moments. The opportunity to change the direction of your life lies in the smallest slices of time.

I often witness people who don’t feel ready to heal emotionally. They come up to the edge of taking action to free themselves from emotional pain, only to back away. Their mind has many stories as to why, but at the core it is often the same basic reason. They are afraid. It’s kind of crazy to think that people would be afraid of healing their emotions, but I never said that people were logical.

I’ll get into the fear of emotional healing later.

The inspiration for this post comes from a conversation I had the other day with woman we will call Kelly. I had spoken to her a few months about some jealousy issues that was poisoning the relationship with her partner. She had listened to a couple of the free sessions in the Self Mastery course and was encouraged at the possibility of change. She was going to sign up for the remaining sessions and do some individual session with me to focus on her specific beliefs and behaviors. Kelly didn’t sign up for the program and she didn’t schedule a session with me.

When I ran into here recently she brought up her lack of action. Her explanation to her self and me was that she was not ready to heal emotionally.

I could go in a lot of directions with this material but just want to focus on the sabotaging logic of the ego mind that is operating here. From a certain angle it is a factual truth that she doesn’t feel ready to heal emotionally. Notice I say “factual truth” and not a real truth. She doesn’t feel ready, but it is the lies in her belief system that are creating that feeling. In any case that is no reason not to engage the process.

Thinking and feeling that we are not ready for emotional healing is a factual truth that hides a self sabotaging lie. It’s not the feeling of not being ready that stops us. It is the hidden lie that keeps us from taking action. The hidden lie is that we need to be ready to heal emotionally in order to start.

We were not ready to learn to walk when we first began taking steps. When we began to learn to read, we weren’t ready to read. When people begin having sex they generally don’t feel confident and prepared. When parents have their first children, they don’t’ feel ready either. Not only do parents have no experience in being parents, but those kids don’t come with an instruction booklet that would give them the illusion of being prepared.

When we take on any endeavor worth doing in our life it is new until we have been doing it a while. In the beginning we are learning to do something and we stumble through it as best we can. We are never going to be ready to do something that we have no experience doing. But that doesn’t stop us.

When we endeavor to eliminate our emotional reactions and clean up the projections in our mind we are taking on a task that we have never done before. If you haven’t done much of it before then you probably are not very skilled at emotional healing. The next lie hidden in the decision making logic of the mind is that if you aren’t very good at emotionally healing then you shouldn’t start. Of course if we use this logic we will never do anything different in our life.

It is this kind of hidden belief that is buried into the meaning of these words. “I’m not ready for emotional healing.”

If we only do the things we are ready for we would only do the things we already know how to do. If this were the case we would never learn to walk, read, take up a hobby, have sex, or raise children.

The mind is a peculiar thing. It can propose the idea that we are not ready to heal emotionally. It can even make that idea appear to be factual. It is true that if we haven’t done something before that we are not skilled and proficient at it. This may be a fair assessment.

But then the mind does something amazing. It is so subtle that we don’t notice it unless we spend some time developing awareness. The mind tricks us into accepting the one idea of not being ready and assumes the decision is made. Without words it ends the investigation and stops all action on that one note. An unconscious decision has been made not to evaluate any other angles.

The ego mind fixates on one bit of information and uses that one fact to determine the whole stopping of our personal and emotional growth. It would be as if we went to the doctors with stomach pains and when the doctor found our temperature to be 98.6 degrees he sent us home.

All other desires, considerations for the health of our relationships, and future happiness are discarded with this fixation on one fact of not feeling ready. The mind invites us to go unconscious, stop evaluating different possibilities, and become unaware of all these other considerations.

This is the kind of unconscious logic and decision making of the ego mind that keeps us in loops of emotional suffering.

The path to freedom from this kind of self destructive logic is awareness and healthy skepticism. If we develop self awareness we will learn to see past these misdirection traps of words, and hidden decisions. A healthy skepticism and a process of questioning will pull apart the misguiding logic and free us from such an ego mind.

Being a skeptic is an opportunity for freedom from emotional suffering. If we are a skeptic we will question the logic that says if we don’t feel ready then we shouldn’t begin the process of emotional healing.

A skeptic will scrutinize this type of logic and realize that if they followed it they wouldn’t attempt or do much of anything in their life.

A skeptic will realize that you become ready to do something by doing it over and over again until you get good at it. You become ready to heal emotionally by doing things that don’t work out and then doing them again until they do. You don’t become ready to do anything by hesitating and waiting.

Many times you only become ready to do something after you have done it for a while. You will only really feel ready to ride a bike after riding long enough that you aren’t afraid to fall. You will feel more comfortable in raising children after yours are grown. You’ll feel more comfortable with sex after you have been practicing a while. The same is true for emotional change. You will only feel ready to heal emotionally after you practice working through some of the stories and beliefs in your mind.

The Catch 22 for Kelly is that if she waits until she is ready to take take action she won’t ever take action. If she starts when she feels ready she won’t ever heal emotionally.

In the Self Mastery Audio course there are exercises that will help you to be a healthy skeptic of the self defeating logic in your mind. There are also exercises for emotional healing. If you are not yet ready to heal emotionally it would be a good time to start.

Mike lives with his wife and for the past couple of years they have been sleeping in separate rooms. They are good friends, care about each other, but just aren’t in love any more. His wife has asked him a couple times to talk about the relationship and what they were going to do. She even proposed that they should get divorced and asked him to talk about it.

When she asked Mike what he wanted to do he replied, “I don’t know.”

In the conversation with Mike his words and comments alluded to the fact that he knows the relationship is over. “If we were going to do something to really get back together we would have done it by now. The motivation just isn’t there.”

So why hasn’t Mike gone forward and ended what he feels is relationship limbo. Mike cares about his wife. He doesn’t want her to be hurt and he knows that breaking up will be a painful process. He also knows it will be uncomfortable for him. A more specific reason is that he foresees he will feel guilty for putting his wife through the painful divorce process. He will blame himself for the marriage failure and her unhappiness.

These issues are just some of the reasons for staying in the limbo of a lifeless relationship. The beliefs about why Mike will feel guilty and his uncomfortable feelings of detaching are fundamental to the problem. These issues and emotions are real challenges that real people face in their pursuit of happiness.

It’s when people are faced with these types of challenges that trite advice articles on happiness like, “Be more optimistic,” “Find more time for your self,” or “Get involved in a cause you believe in,” just don’t seem to cut it. Mike’s situation has real emotional consequences that quick advice or positive affirmations don’t address.

If Mike takes action to end his relationship he is going to go through an uncomfortable process of detaching from someone one he cares about and giving up all the aspects of comfort in the relationship. He is going to be alone. If he continues to avoid and deny the situation he represses the emotions he is feeling and lives a little less every day. Even if Mike and his wife go to counseling to reconcile, he will have to deal with the uncomfortable aspects of their relationship that they have been avoiding.

Our nature is to avoid emotional pain. In Mike’s case that means avoid dealing with the relationship. Doing nothing is the least painful of the options, at least in his immediate view. It’s understandable that when asked what he wants to do about the relationship his response is “I don’t know.” His mind has already done the math on possible avenues and all of them involve unpleasant emotions. He doesn’t want to be in emotional pain and discomfort, and he doesn’t want his wife to be in pain and emotional discomfort. He doesn’t know what to do because his mind has been programmed to look for the right answer. in this case the honest truth is that there are no “right” answers or even “good” answers. There are only choices and consequences about an unhappy relationship.

Emotional denial and avoidance make a lot of sense when you see them this way. Emotional denial in the short term is a way to avoid hurting our self and people we care about. However it also keeps people from taking action when the overall happiness of their life calls for it. Denial is a reason people keep themselves trapped in unhappy relationships or life situations. They know the situation is not good, but not bad enough to force them into action.

Facing the brutal facts is important to eliminating unhappiness. Facing the truth means acknowledging that Mike pays a emotional price every day he doesn’t take action. He also at worst hurts, and at best, keeps his wife in limbo every day he does nothing. This isn’t a very high price when he is living in the moment of today. (This is another happiness platitude.) But each day adds up. In a short time he will be avoiding the issue through the summer. After the summer he will want to get through the winter. Then it will be another year of dying a slow death of limbo in a lifeless relationship. His opportunity for creating happiness will be squandered away in a series of moments struggling to find a solution that doesn’t hurt at all.

The pathway to real happiness has to include a means to deal with and eliminate unhappiness that shows up in our real life situations. Eliminating unhappiness means taking action to go through an uncomfortable break up, or go through the uncomfortable parts of reconciliation. Both of these paths mean dealing with short term uncomfortable emotions that denial would push us to avoid.

It is only by tackling the real issues of unhappiness that we have a chance to build a new and better life. Real honesty to face the brutal facts will do more than putting on a happy face and acting happy (another shot at those platitudes I mentioned).

By the time we grow up and decide to consciously create happiness in our life it is likely that we are not starting with a blank slate. If we had a blank slate we could just adopt those nice bits of happiness advice and life would be grand. But by the time you are old enough to read this your personality has probably adopted some self sabotaging habits. If this is the case you need more than platitudes. You need some real tools.

When it comes to real life situations I kind of see it like this:

Platitudes of advice on happiness:
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Then there is the reality.
When on the road to happiness and life gives you a flat tire your lemonade and affirmations won’t help you. Neither will platters of platitudes and advice on happiness. What will help are real tools like a jack, and a wrench to get you unstuck from an unhappy situation.

Having a tool box of techniques and methods for getting unstuck from unhappy situations gives you another way to get back to being happy. If you just focus on the positive you don’t have as many options.

When you are unhappy you need more than advice on happiness. You need effective tools to deal with the unpleasant, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and factors of denial that trap us.

For a tool set to help your self get back to your pathway of happiness download practice the activities in the Self Mastery audio series.