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A Great Relationship

As a vast oversimplification, great relationships are formed from internal forces that cause strong attraction to someone (the soul’s contribution), a clear understanding of the relationship’s achievability (the brain’s contribution), and feelings of fulfillment and Beshert (the heart’s contribution). WIth these things present, relationships should be perfect, no? Unfortunately not. Because relationships can be sabotaged with unwelcome additions (your ego’s contribution).

As aforementioned, we create adaptations from which we need to unadapt to avoid bringing this baggage into our lives, and most often into our relationships. From our past experiences we harbour fears that turn into jealousy and attack. We harbour disgust that manifests as disinterest and avoidant attachment. We carry loss and abandonment that presents as neediness and inquisition. We were made to feel powerless and exploited and now respond with rage and accusations. These adaptations can and often do result in distorted cognition, which is commonly paired with other behavioural issues that impair and sabotage otherwise beautiful connections.

Relationships are comprised of two dots (people) connected by a line. When things are imperfect we presume there are relationship issues that need to be fixed. Very often the issue is one of the dots. The expression of a personal issue creates a relationship problem, but the relationship is not what needs to be fixed. Apparently it only takes 1 to tango.

If the universe has smiled on you and gifted you a connection that moves your soul, mind, and heart, and yet something is wrong in action, dig deep into that psyche of yours and deconstruct those protective and offensive mechanisms you’ve erected. They helped you cope in the past and really do try to help protect you from future pain in life, but like all barriers, as much as they protect you from bad things they also prevent good things from coming in and from you going out. All walls are prisons.

We all must accept vulnerability and know that a life lived includes pain. Pain is mandatory so accept it. But what is worse than a breakup or loss is never to have pursued what mattered and what the universe brought for you. Like the expression goes, ‘it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ Accepting this means that you dismantle your barriers, remove your sabotaging thoughts and behaviours, and simply go with the flow. When a negative thought emerges, and you want to protect yourself, the ‘no dictator‘ shuts it down, otherwise your baggage will impair and likely end what is sent to you for your complete, organic engagement.

What got you here won’t get you to where you want to go. Relationship lessons from the past are only useful in the same relational dynamics just like hatred for WW2 Nazis is not useful to Germans in your country today. Let go of the past and everything it taught you to do as it’s the only way to bask in the beauty of relational love.

Mind Control

I’ve spoken about the thinking-doing gap, which elaborates how our actions don’t always coincide with our desires. This is kinda funny, no? We can want to do something with ourselves, yet we fail. Totally funny. We are fully autonomous beings yet we cannot even do what we want. Still not seeing the humour? Somehow we defeat ourselves in a struggle for control, where something outguns our conscious desires. Ok, well at least agree it’s ironic. The reason for this is…..that we are not defeating ourself. We are actually winning for ourselves, but the opponent is not the conscious mind, it’s the subconscious mind, or it’s pal, the ego.

So to be clear, we will always do what we want, the gap is that we are not fully attuned to what our inner entities are seeking. When we want to lose weight but eat chocolate cake, it’s because the conscious mind’s desire to lose weight is outmatched by the subconscious mind’s desire to retain the weight. Sounds ludicrous, however, the subconscious is often a more potent actor in our inner cast of characters, and by holding on to excess weight it rescues you from attention, foregos risky opportunities, and helps to maintain your subconscious impression of yourself, which apparently carries excess weight.

Huh! So why do we procrastinate in assignments or go out partying when we should be studying? Why do we turn on Netflix when we know we shouldn’t? Same thing. We have an internal self image of who we are physically, mentally, economically, psychologically, and in all other dimensions. Studies show that distress builds more as we approach moments of growth than we have in moments of challenge. It seems that we will fight to maintain status quo, but when it’s time to graduate, get promoted, or otherwise ‘move up’ in life, our internal judgment wants to sabotage. Your subconscious is smart enough to know that maintenance of your internal self image is achieved one sabotage at a time. One assignment delayed. One exam half prepped. One “deserved treat” when dieting. And it’ll make you say “no” a zillion times using tricks it knows will work on you.

The subconscious is where all of our trauma and adaptations are stored. It retains its own worldviews and logic on things, which is often massively incorrect and totally detrimental to living a big and joyous life. It retains stereotypes, prejudices, and “truths”, all of which serve to protect you from your perceived harms and are really damn tenacious and hard to extinguish. We’ve all got these ugly beliefs and behaviours, and from an energetic standpoint, are really the embodiment and manifestation of the things you judged and experienced as negative, but didn’t release into the world but rather harboured yourself with your own protective cordon.

I called the subconscious more potent but not more powerful intentionally because the conscious mind can do anything it wants, and it really needs to be the captain of your ship. If you have surgery scheduled for tomorrow and you’re prohibited from eating or drinking anything for 24 hours, will you eat or drink anything? Absolutely not. Because your conscious mind can and will ignore the incessant nagging of your hunger and thirst because it senses from you when it’s time to take charge. In this example, surgery is a ‘big deal’ and so your conscious mind ensures that you are ready for that procedure. Funny enough we don’t need something so profound, just something meaningful to us. I’m sure we’ve all woken stupid early for some flight to the Caribbean because that’s super fun and important to us. So the bottom line, when something is important enough to our conscious mind, it can and will order our other internal entities to obey.

So how do we elevate importance? Good question. This is something that if it isn’t inherent, you won’t beat your subconscious in a debate. This is why diets can work temporarily but then revert back. Instead of trying to argue, there are two approaches:

Take on that internal self image. Choose to be thinner, more educated, better dressed, super successful, whatever you want. Use the power of intentionality in meditation to bring things to you. Your brain cannot distinguish between dreams and reality, and so visualizing these experiences in your mind in rich detail makes your subconscious think it’s already happened, in which case it needs to accept it (which it may, after a very nasty fight). You can also use other complementary tools, like creating a slideshow of your life with your awesome boat, killer abs, emceeing excellence. Again, whatever you want. Make it as real as possible in your mind, and even feel the emotions as you cycle through your imagery. Perception is reality so teach that little jerk what your life now is and it’ll reluctantly come along.
The second technique will always be needed, and I call this the “no dictatorship”. When a thought comes into your mind to do something that even hints at preventing achievement of your objective, you respond back swiftly in your mind with, “Not a fucking chance, no!” You don’t listen to the voice, you don’t argue with it, you don’t let it run its arguments, you immediately and decisively say, “Not a fucking chance, no!” When the inner voice tries more, you reply back louder and more clearly each time. If you can do this you are guaranteed to achieve your objectives, even in the absence of 1. above.

You’ve now got all you need to achieve any objective you want. All that’s needed is for you to disallow any undesirable thoughts and actions. Piece of cake. Another tip…if you want to minimize the number of times you must exhibit ‘no dictatorship’, whatever the temptation, remove it. If you’re dieting and have delicious salt & vinegar chips sitting in the pantry, don’t make yourself say no a million times. Get rid of the chips (I’ll take them) and then it’s no longer an option. If it’s Netflix, have someone hide your remote or take away your TV. One “no” is far, far easier than infinite “no”s.

But wait, what about things I want to do and prevent myself from doing? Of course we need to address how the ‘no dictatorship’ works for that too. Let’s say you set your alarm for 5:30am so you can go to the gym. You wake up to your shit annoying alarm and want to hurl it across the room. It’s pitch black and you’re bagged and you haven’t taken a sunny vacation in years. It’s freezing and awful outside and the last thing you want to do is haul your tired body to the gym. BUT, this is the will of your conscious, and your conscious will overcome everything if knows it’s important.

The ‘no dictatorship’ says no resoundingly to all the voices that persuade you to stay in bed, stay warm, drink coffee leisurely. It rages back with ferocity to refuse any stupid saying, like “I’d rather enjoy my life and die younger than do this”, because we know that’s not true. Your conscious mind chose this activity to achieve the outcome you want in life, and nothing will stand in the way. You entertain precisely zero of these voices, and rather state, “Not a fucking chance, no!”

Before signing off I want to add another nugget of strength to your ‘no dictatorship.’ Our internal voices want us to do all sorts of things that are improper and incorrect and lead to suboptimal outcomes. It wants you to believe in your superiority and the inferiority of others. It wants you to believe that momentary indiscretions and some ethical blips are okay. It wants to slip in “treats” of drugs and porn and candy. It wants you to be beholden to the embodiment of your fears and greed, and lay waste to anything that stands in your way. As you confidently state, “Not a fucking chance, no!” to some of the uglier thoughts you can also say, “That is definitely not the person I am.” Discriminate against your voices that discriminate and segregate, so that in you are always the person you want to be.

Mindful Living

I’ve written a few blogs about our purpose in life but I have neglected to talk about how to align our lives to our purpose when it’s so easy to simply exist.

Mindfulness is not just about feeling our breath in our body or the chair against our bum. Mindfulness is being alert to whatever is a focal portion of the present. The present consists of an infinite number of focal points, so our free will gets to choose where we direct our attention. But take note that humans are both thinking creatures and creatures driven by purpose. The assumption is that what we do, we do to achieve a preconceived and desirable outcome. Yes, I know, this is very often not the case because impulsivity exists and people can often just go through the motions without thinking too much about it. But doing that fails to achieve your outcomes; rather it blindly achieves those of others, and we are way too awesome to succumb to that.

If you want to be more than an automaton, robotically going through life, for all actions you must ask yourself “why am I doing this?” And if the answer is anything but the outcome you want to achieve, then you need to change tack. Doing this aligns your actions to your objectives, and in the process assumedly also expresses your values and preferences. This is how to live life deliberately and in a way that achieves success on your terms.

Let’s start with a complex example. You want your kid to feel loved and your kid likes to play hockey, however your kid is not doing well in school and therefore should not play hockey and rather concentrate on his studies. Do you bring your kid to Sunday practice? Yes, if your objective is for your kid to feel loved. However, if your objective is that your want to kid to be loved, and loving someone often means doing what’s best over what’s most enjoyable, then the action changes completely and junior stays home to hit the books.

Now let’s use an easy example. You are texting with your partner and you’re in some big bloody hurry. You ask yourself why you are texting. If the answer is to resolve who is picking up the loaf of bread after work, you can be mechanical and logistical. However, if your objective (which may not be front of mind while you’re all busy) is to ensure you get your Wonder bread and to make your partner feel loved or special, you will need to sprinkle in some flirtation, care, or some other kind of relational magic that really costs you nothing but achieves so ridiculously much.

Per our examples, answering why really defines who you are. In the first example you chose to be either a buddy-parent or a parenting-parent, and in the second example you chose to be a mechanical bread beast or a loving, thoughtful partner who also loves gluten. The choice is yours to be whoever you like, and as you see, the difference in a relational context is mindblowingly vast simply from the slightest nuanced tweaks in the answer to the why question. So take the time to question “why” of all of your actions, and for each, give ’em a tweak to align to your objectives. And if your objectives suck, stop sucking. It’s too easy to be awesome and show some love and care and thoughtfulness in any exchange.

Prognostication Excellence à la Life Architecture

Have you ever wanted to know the future? It’s time I shared a little trick so that you, too, can accurately predict the future.

We can classify all things in the world as either predictable or random. When I flip my light switch, the light comes on…provided that the bulb doesn’t randomly blow out. When I drive my car to work I get to work…provided that some random event does not prevent this. My heart pumps blood throughout my body predictably….until it randomly stops.

The predictable stuff is quite knowable. Much is part of the natural functioning of the universe, and the rest comes from our decisions. The latter is what gives me my magical powers.

When someone makes a decision, and that decision will be carried out in the natural world, how it will unfold is quite predictable. If someone chooses to overeat chicken wings, they will gain weight. Neglecting to acknowledge someone’s birthday – that has predictable consequences. Move to a small town and the impact on your dating life is pretty predictable. All of this is not exactly rocket science but when it comes to seeing our own lives through this lens, for some reason we are blind.

Much of our lives are pretty predictable too once it’s clear how we express our personality. If someone has an anger management issue or another form of emotional dysregulation, no big deal, but if you know that they express this to loved ones in their household, then one can predict strife, discomfort, and of course, proactive measures to avoid an episode that may appear as concealment or secrecy. If someone has avoidant attachment, guess what? They will avoid attachment and be predictably distant.

It seems the magic here is in seeing yourself. We know if someone is volatile and going to explode quite predictably. Do you see your own characteristics and how they predictably manifest? Patterns often point directly to the cause that’s within you. Have you never had a relationship of depth? Predictably you won’t if you don’t offer that or don’t prioritize relationships in this way. Such is the zen of life architecture. How you choose to be and live predictably results in the life you have. It’s as simple as overeating wings. If you live in a place that precludes you from commuting to work, you can’t hold that job. If your emotional dysregulation precludes you from having terrorism in your relationship, the end result is predictable. And if you don’t show love in action, you cannot receive it.

I’m not saying you’re now ready to set a psychic business at your home, but with some practice you will see that almost all things are entirely predictable, and to know this about others, and see it in yourself, is a most valuable and rewarding skill.

Healthy Skepticism

There are a lot of folks out there with some pretty terrific stories. One that keeps coming up in my feeds is the 26-year-old who owns 6 properties and is being interviewed for what must be unique savvy and investing acumen. Today’s story pushed me to blogging when my feed was more self congratulation about tremendous weight loss for doing some inane diet.

We are wired to believe that when someone attains something remarkable or enviable, they have something to teach us. Dumas famously said, “nothing succeeds like success.” This is true, but we need to be more discriminating about what comprises success.

We are in a global real estate bubble that has rewarded property owners with two-year returns ranging from 35% to many multiples of the purchase price. Money has been essentially free, with many trillions of dollars printed and borrowed and flooded into most economies. So whether you held property or aluminum or used cars, every one of those things has gone up a lot in value. Does a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic-response of (irresponsibly) flooding every economy with oceans of cash make every holder of property a genius? No, it actually is the opposite. If the world is sick and businesses and consumers are in lockdown for a year, and you are stupid enough to leverage yourself to the tits, you were rewarded for your stupidity and greed with luck. Is there something to be learned here? Of course. Never listen to this person because (a) they now are dangerously emboldened by their own investment prowess despite having none, and (b) they will spout advice that is irresponsible and harmful. Luck is not success, and when someone wins the lottery, only a fool thinks that they have a technique that can be learned.

Back to our dieter who lost over 100lbs. This is remarkable that someone lost so much weight, yes? Actually, it’s not. When someone is carrying a lot of extra weight, the body has to burn a lot of extra calories just to move around. Gaining an extra 100lbs, for those without a medical condition, is a feat that requires years of overeating. It is a lifestyle that consumes the diet of 2 or 3 people to achieve and to maintain. So our savvy dieter merely needs only to eat like one person and they will lose weight with no restrictions at all, no exercise, nothing. This is not a special diet and is not a secret that needs to be shared. If they did use a special diet while losing the weight, that improperly correlates the diet with the weight loss that would have occurred regardless once a more sensible quantity of food was chosen. Is eating a responsible quantity of food “success”? Probably not one you’ll see on motivational posters any time soon.

I’ve never been a fan of the notion that a long marriage is a successful one. I’ve met lots of people who were married for lots of years and they were miserable. Not all, but enough to know that they stayed together because they believed that long marriages are “successful” ones irrespective of the lived experience.

Remember that correlation does not mean causation, and for most everything, there are other reasons why things happen. Be healthy in your skepticism to try to see where overly simplistic models mislead us into finding causal relationships, which hopefully prevents us from worshipping these false idols of success.

Self Fulfilling Prophecies

Henry Ford famously wrote, “whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” And he was only just scratching the surface. The more apt sentiment is “perception is reality”, however it’s not limited to what one sees, it’s what one expects to see.

The notion of the self fulfilling prophecy (SFP) is analogized nicely in the ‘wood eye’ story. Our prophecies are not limited to our areas of high sensitivity, but span areas of vulnerability, hurt, fear, uncertainty, and anywhere else the ego seeks predictive assurance to lessen exposure to potential pain.

The SFP is a very sophisticated trick. The ego, always protective of our fragility and desire to avoid pain, attempts to figure out a cause for every painful effect we experience. I got cut off by an Asian driver, so Asian drivers are dangerous and avoiding them provides me greater safety. I got my heart broken by a blonde, so blondes are dangerous and avoiding them provides me greater safety. This impoverished form of thinking is obviously illogical, but we all create these stereotypes and hold on to them dearly. Why? Because humans are born fearful. Nobel winners Kahneman and Tversky proved that humans favour fearful thinking over productive thinking, so we’re just wired this way. But that doesn’t mean we need to listen to that silly logic.

The SFP is our prediction of what will happen based on our past experiences and the unconscious bias we have formed. Countless people carry these SFPs into new relationships, as past relationships are sources of hurt and future relationships are sources of vulnerability. So we enter into relationships with that hidden SFP that takes the form of reservation, caution, holding back, or snippy responses to things that didn’t actually happen. It looks at clues and forms of evidence to confirm what we suspected all along – this new person is evil, crazy, probably has a secret life that is intolerable. Okay that’s perhaps a little extreme, but the SFP takes the same approach. You are simply trying to falsify the positive attributes so that you can uncover the truth. Your truth. And then you have once again proven yourself a predictive genius and Sherlock Holmes contemporary.

What’s really happening is that you are not truly interacting with this person. You are interacting with a mental concoction of who this person is, and irrespective of what this person does in real life, your mental interactions, and your detached and suspicious behaviour, will craft the prophecy that you knew all along. And this is why people can give up. Not all _________ (insert group here) are bad. You make them bad by experiencing these things only in your mind, and sabotaging them in real life, and you create the circumstances that lead you to exactly what you predicted. And when seen from the outside, it’s pretty darn foolish to watch.

In another blog I spoke about our need to unadapt, which is to dismantle the psychological negotiations we have brought into existence to avoid pain and achieve more predictably enjoyable outcomes. Here I am saying we need to do the same for our faulty thinking. We need to dismantle all our stereotypes and beliefs so that whatever we encounter in life can be experienced in life and not just in our heads. Doing this exposes us to potential hurt, and our egos flex to avoid this, but the prize is too great to succumb to this fate. The gift of life is to enjoy all that is life; it is not a gift to hide from life and live in our heads.

What do I Want in a Partner?

Well…I like my partner to be tall, and have nice teeth, be well travelled….oh, and like dogs and brunch.

Partners are not chosen from catalogs or compared to lists, and if they are, they are being slotted in to your life. and/or fantasies. This means you have architected a whole fanciful existence of stuff for you, and you are trying to shoehorn some poor bugger in there. Odds of success are moderate, but the end result will be entirely dissatisfying because this is seeking a life addition and not a relationship.

Before I go on, I should mention that even more determinative than hopes and fantasies are pre-existing marriages. If someone is married when you meet them, you probably won’t hook up. However we overlook the other forms of ‘marriage’ that people have such as marriage to a city, their pet, religion, ego, neighbourhood, profession, people, self-identity, fears, etc., and are unwilling to be flexible about those things so they will certainly occupy some portion of any future relationship. If someone would not move cities when you must, or not spend a weekend in a way that doesn’t include their family, they are married and are looking for a threesome to join in that marriage.

The most important and determinative form of marriage is marriage to dysfunction. Dysfunction develops as an adaptation to circumstances. It attempts to improve a situation by building an understanding and controlling the self and environment to minimize pain and suffering. It is most often (mostly) wrong and causes far more issues outside that circumstance, but that’s another blog post. For now, know that marriage to dysfunction is like getting married in Vegas when you were blitzed. You don’t even know you are married. Well, most people in informal ‘marriages’ don’t know they are wed. But from the outset of a new relationship you negotiate in the presence of that dysfunction so it can form a polygamist trio. And often the poor sap on the other end doesn’t even know it’s happening, they just accept it as “who I am”, and fall back on blanket notions that acceptance equates to love. That isn’t true. Fighting against and divorcing dysfunction is the hallmark of a truly progressive and powerful dynamic. If your partner isn’t the person who helps you identify and extinct your adaptations, why are they called “partner”?

The most successful relationships are where two people show up exactly as who they are and act authentically to co-create a new beast called a relationship. Think 2 dots that are forming a line between them. If a line is already made and one dot is walking around wielding this big line, that poke ain’t gonna be pleasant. It’ll be more like beating that other dot with the stick until she/he relents and accepts what the relationship is without helping to shape it.

Show up as you. Be authentic and silence your ego. Give the other person space to express their free will without your demands or coercion. If you’ve shown up authentically and built something great, you have got yourself a high quality relationship whose probability of gratification is exceptional, because you both made it together as yourselves.

Relationships are most gratifying when they bring out the version of us that we enjoy most. This can only happen when both people are authentically present in the formation of the relationship, self representing, and able to be themselves without unhelpful lists and fantasies. So show up with your full life, but be open to any and all changes that feel right, including those that upend the marriages that only serve your fears and inertia.

Illuminating the Ego Shadow

Our ego is our best friend and constant companion, providing supportive and protective guidance at all times. The problem is, the ego is a life-limiting, bigoted bozo who wants to keep you from living life, being present, and fulfilling your life’s purpose.

When we start to awaken and become cognizant of the ego’s meddling, the ego becomes smarter and disguises itself in more insidious ways to ensure it wins your internal game of thrones. The following is a flowchart guide that tests whether a thought comes from the ego. Don’t let your ego do the test! If you find ego presence, kick that thought to the curb.

Emotional Regulation

When we allow our emotions to be in charge some pretty gnarly things can happen, especially if we’re prone to emotional dysregulation. Emotionality by itself is quite useful but ‘dirty feelings’ lead to ‘dirty thinking’ and subsequently faulty conclusions and harmful actions. The following is a flowchart to follow when you feel triggered or activated and don’t want to turn your life into a trainwreck.

Where is Reality?

Ummm, isn’t the question “what is reality”? No, not in this post. This post is a guide to seeing things as they are, because for some reason, reality tends to elude us when it hides in plain sight.

Things are defined by what they do and what they do not do.

Fire is hot (because it burns) and will not buy you groceries (because this is something it doesn’t d0). We comprehend this fairly easily because we haven’t attached to it any symbolism or context that would make us question these facts. However, this is not the case in human dynamics, where we pile on as much symbolism and proxies as we can.

Your boss loves you and tells you all the time how valuable you are (what they do). That makes you feel good, and motivates you to do more work after-hours and sacrifice your personal time. However, when it comes time to give bonuses and promotions, you get shafted. Your boss didn’t go to bat for you (what they didn’t do). So while your boss’ words attempt to shape your reality, reality can actually be found in the outcome of that annual review. The most likely reality is that you do great things for your boss but these things are not being recognized by the company as outstanding or to your credit. Hence reality is present, as it always is, and it’s incumbent on you to accept the one that reflects your outcomes rather than the one that stokes your ego or manipulates you into a false reality that you want to be true.

In a personal relationship, your partner loves garlic-flavoured coffee (feel free to substitute anything in here, like watching football, gambling, flirting with others) and their breath is nauseating. You have spoken and they’ve assured you that they would kick this habit because you’ve been so clear about how profoundly disturbing this is to you and your relationship. Yet they don’t (what they do). Maybe they cut back a bit, maybe they drink it more discreetly or try to brush their mouths a lot afterwards. But the outcome is still occurring and it’s repulsing you all the same (what they don’t do). So where is reality to be found? It is found in the fact that your partner knows they are repulsive to you in a fixable way and are choosing not to remedy that. Once again, reality is hidden in plain sight. You would probably rather not acknowledge that your partner is prioritizing this habit over you and your relationship, but this is reality irrespective of any half-assed attempts or words to the contrary, especially if you’ve given them time and warnings over a while.

The next question I often get it, “how to I face a reality that is painful?” The answer is ‘authentically and with all your sensibility’. Accept that person’s choice and react or respond as is appropriate given reality. If you’re playing second fiddle to a habit or indulgence, and your partner refuses to address it, accept it and do what makes most sense.