The Power of Connective Communication

Dated: date November 9, 2010 – 4:32 pm

When you are outcome-oriented in your communication, you’re going to have a more difficult time communicating versus when you are connection-oriented. When your goal is to connect with a person, understand them and their world, to know who they are, see what they’re up to, you’re going to find that things just go effortlessly. It’s smooth. It’s easy. But when you’re selfishly oriented, trying to make what you want happen – trying to produce and outcome in your communication, you’re just going to find that things are difficult and hard.

I recommend that you spend your time working on being concerned, trying to understand, seeking to appreciate. And what you’ll find is: Communication is a breeze there.

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How She Gained Respect

Dated: date January 19, 2010 – 10:40 am

As a life coach I focus on a process I call, “Radical Responsibility”.  It’s a term I borrowed from my mentor, Dr. David Hawkins, the author of Power vs. Force.  It is the antithesis of being a victim.  Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?”  you ask, “How am I causing this?”  In truth neither question is better or worse, they just give you a different experience of your life.

When you ask, “Why is this happening to me?” you are basically saying that there is a world out there that you have to deal with and you don’t like it.  You are in resistance to the stimulus that you perceive in the world.

When you ask, “How am I causing this?” you are acknowledging that you are the creator of your experience.  You are putting yourself into a position of power by saying, “The world is this way because of what I’m doing.”

Examples of Radical Responsibility

A client of mine has a big business with thousands of people involved.  She complains that people don’t respect her.  When I ask her the victim mindset question, “Why is this happening to you?”, the answer is, “Because I’m the big boss and everyone is jealous.”  This answer makes her powerless to affect change.  When I ask her the radical responsibility question, “How are you causing this?”  At first the answer is, “I’m not!  People are just disrespectful and jealous of me!”  But with further examination she begins to see something else all together.

Together we discover that when people come to her for things and she can not give it to them, she tries to pacify them.  She feels bad that they can not have what they want.  It begins to become evident that people know how she’s going to respond and they are now trying to manipulate the situation to get what they want.  She interprets their behavior as disrespect.

With radical responsibility we step back from the situation as view it in a new way.  She is causing these “nasty” and manipulative responses to her decisions by not being a straight shooter and feeling bad for people.  Their reactions are not disrespectful, they are what people do when they sense there is a way to get the decision to sway in their favor.  In other words, when people sense weakness, they become dominant.

As soon as she saw it, she shifted.  The awareness of it made her more flexible.  New options for her response started to occur to her in the moment of confrontation.  She felt powerful and the problems disappeared before her eyes!

You are the creator of your experience, not the victim of your circumstances.  The world is responding to you, not the other way around.  What area of your life can you apply radical responsibility to?

Who am I that is having this happen?

I am the source of all that is happening in my life.

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Communicate… Don’t Hallucinate!

Dated: date May 22, 2009 – 9:13 am

istock_000007248761mediumAs a life coach, I deal with clients who are afraid to take actions that will change their life for the positive.  One client in particular was ready to make a big change.  She realized that she hated her job and she was doing it to prove to everyone that she was “someone”.  When I confronted her on this, she went into total meltdown. “I will ruin our family.  My husband will leave me.  I’ll have to start all over.  I can’t do that to my husband,” she sniffled through the tears.  But the truth was, she wasn’t making any money doing what she was doing anyway.

I proposed that she was hallucinating.  I asked her to consider that she knew nothing about what would happen if she changed jobs and that in fact, she was making all this crap up.  She didn’t like it.  But she tried it on.  I took her through the special 5 step responsibility process, she had the talk with her husband and what-a-ya-know… he was 100% in support of her being happy, not obligated!  You must learn to communicate, not hallucinate.

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Is the Golden Rule Getting you in Trouble?

Dated: date May 21, 2009 – 8:20 am

Alone in a CrowdThe golden rule states, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Luke 6:31)  If you are new to personal development, it’s a pretty good place to start.  But in the end it will get you in trouble.  Everyone is different and believes that they should be treated uniquely, based on their preferences.

Therefore, treating people based on your preferences will generally create conflict… especially with strangers.  Kindness seems like a good idea to most personal development students but in some cases it backfires.  For example:  Many people were raised in environments where kindness was seen as weak and easy to take advantage of.   In some cases you must take on a more dominant style in order to be in harmony.  That proves to be difficult to the “positive crew”.

Most personal development students think that people who aren’t positive are less than people who are.  This is nothing more then The Drunk Monkey using personal development as a new tool to protect you from all the “different” and therefore potentially dangerous people in the world.

Again, if you are dealing with people who are not in your tribe and treat them the way you want to be treated, don’t get disappointed when they don’t play by your rules.  Because they don’t know your rules.  The golden rule leads to righteousness.  I’m sure that Luke wanted us to be kind to people but the truth is we use The Golden Rule to hold others accountable to behavior they never agreed to.

If you don’t take the time to understand who people are and step in line with their style of dealing with the world, you will get in trouble.  Things won’t be easy for you.

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How do I Gain Forgiveness from my Parents?

Dated: date May 14, 2009 – 7:20 pm

istock_000004219187xsmallAs a life coach, I help my clients get into harmony with everyone in their life as soon as possible.  Once you have achieved harmony with all the people in your life, everything you do is easier and comes together faster.  So here it is.

To gain forgiveness with your parents is very simple and yet 99% of all people will never do what I’m about to ask you to do.

5 Step Forgiveness Process

1.  Forgive your parents. To empower yourself in this situation, you must surrender your fears and resentments.  What is holding you and your parents in this negative loop is an unconscious commitment to being right.  You want to be right about what you did, and you want to be right about how wrong they are, for not accepting your behavior.

Your parents are stinky, farting, pooping, crazy people just like you.  They are doing the best they can.  They don’t think, they react.  You don’t think, you react.  They simply want the best for you.  They have been conditioned by their tribe to believe what they believe.  What they believe is not true.  What they believe is what they were conditioned to believe.  Your parents are not forgiving you because they are holding you accountable to the beliefs they have about the world.

You must forgive them for being conditioned, non-thinking zombies who in the end are just trying to protect you, love you and support you in having a great life.  Their definition of a great life is not the same as yours, but they are not conscious enough to know that.  That doesn’t make them wrong.  That just makes them normal.  Forgive them for holding you accountable to rules and agreements that you never accepted.  Know that they are just trying to love you and help you live an amazing life.

2.  Ask your parents for forgiveness.  You broke their expectations.  What you did was not bad in actuality.  It was bad in their reality.  Therefore, to gain their respect back, you must honor that they are stuck in this reality with very little hope of every getting out.  Honor this thought by admitting to them that what you did was wrong.  Not that it was actually wrong, that it was wrong to them.

Here is the key to asking for forgiveness.  Acknowledge the negative impact your actions and beliefs have had on them and on you.  Acknowledge the hurt that you have created and ask for forgiveness around your actions plus the impact your actions had.

3.  Ask your parents, “What have you been trying to tell me that I haven’t been letting you say?” Don’t argue.  Don’t resist.  Don’t defend.  Just sit, listen and realize that from their perspective, what they are saying is the truth.  Just acknowledge them and appreciate their point of view.

4.  Acknowledge, appreciate and thank your parents for everything you are, everything you have become and everything you have in your life because of them. This often involves acknowledging that you have what you have because of your disagreement with them and the beliefs you rebelled against.  I often say to my dad, “Thank you father.  You were the fire that forged the steal of my blade”.  I acknowledge that our hard core disagreements about life and how to live it were incredibly valuable in creating my perspective today.

5.  Make a new declaration. Now that you see the world from this new perspective, what are you committed to?

Follow these steps and you will be totally free from The Drunk Monkey’s addiction to being right that always leads to negativity and resentment.  Good luck.

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No one is anything until you show up

Dated: date March 24, 2009 – 11:58 pm
Monkey in the Mirror

Monkey in the Mirror

One of our Inspired Action Coaching clients is having a breakthrough. Not only has she forgiven her mother, father and stepmother in the last two weeks… she has also started having a lot of luck in her prospecting for new business. People seem to be nicer and more pleasant.

News Flash: No one is anything until you show up.

Today she comments, “Today my son’s teacher appeared differently. Normally I judge and assess this lady because I never really liked her. Yet, today it was like I looked at her for the first time and saw the kindness in her eyes. It was pretty cool.”

You see your reflection in other people. There are no jerks in the world until you show up. People aren’t anything until you label them. You get what you put out. When you are cool, others show up cool. When you are nasty, others show up nasty. You are getting what you are giving. There is no “others” out there. It’s all your perception.

Today be kind and loving towards everyone you meet and see what happens. You will be shocked to see that people who are normally not kind or loving, make a positive shift and become more kind and loving.

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