Flourishing Today

Does anyone “deserve” to have a relationship, just because they are a man or a woman?

This may sound like one of those “duh” things, but you’d be surprised at how obvious it isn’t. As a woman, I’ve had lots of time to think about relationships – from my parents, to my girlfriends around me with their heartbreaks and successes. When I was young, I certainly didn’t get it, but I was regularly assured that when I was married, I’d understand. So of course there is unconscious expectation that I’d have a relationship.

On top of that unconscious expectation, being a woman is being a valuable commodity, right? Of course I’d have a relationship. As a woman, you’re supposed to be both desired and treated with respect – no matter how you behave. That combined with outside affirmation from family and friends: you’re a wonderful person, you could have anyone you wanted… But it is a lot more complicated than that. Someone choosing to spend their life with another person is a beautiful, miraculous thing- we only have one life to share and it deserves the respect of all involved. It isn’t about being a Fabergé Gender, it is asking ourselves how we contribute to a Fabergé relating. You don’t scold a Fabergé Egg because it doesn’t shine right under florescent lighting, do you? You dust it, take care of it, and put it someplace where it can be displayed to its advantage.

There is a difference between an expectation that I deserve to have a relationship – simply because I am a [fill in the blank] and wanting to relate deeply with another person while being willing to take care that opportunity and gift. It is the quality of the relating that makes the moments infinitely precious beyond individual “deserving.”

Gender doesn’t make someone a Fabergé Egg… Peter Carl Fabergé crafted Fabergé Eggs. As far as I know, no human was born from some sort of jeweled egg. As we lovingly nurture, practice, and appreciate the qualities that make something precious, we craft the way we relate… with a shine.

To your shining,
Kaye

In theory, we are all human. We all live on the planet Earth, and unless we decide to go off and live in a cave, we have to deal with one another the best we can. Recently I was talking to a friend who advocates public health care, and couldn’t understand why some people “got it” and the others strongly rejected her ideas. Her experience left her wondering: what’s wrong with them??

Over drinks, we sat down and I explained Spiral Dynamics, a theory of human development introduced in the 1996 book Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change by Don Beck and Chris Cowan and was based on the theory of psychology professor Clare W. Graves. It was used highly in Apartheid South Africa to help create understandings that don’t trivialize experiences and cultures to a black and white understanding, but raise an awareness that different people exist with different values based on the environments they are in — just as a child who raised in a zen monastery might be in a different place in how they relate to life than a kid of the same age, surviving in the streets of New York. Each experience is valid – they simply look differently at how to relate to the world. Don Beck, states that these stages of social development and cultural dynamics “spark violence, spread prosperity, and shape globalization.”

Chart from Integral Rising: http://integralrising.org

As the environments change, we are forced to adapt and meet those changes with new values, while bringing along the things we’ve learned from before. The hotshot gunslinger who is getting old, realizes that he is no longer the fastest gun in the West, and comes to realize we might want to have some community rules around here. To make it even more complicated,  people in the same value system might have greater acceptance or rejection around other systems. One green might reject the gunslinger attitude of a red, and see the orange as only a slightly more civilized red. Where as another green might also reject the values of the red, but see the orange as a potential partner for spreading a philosophy. On top of that, none of these are solid, but instead a dynamic system depending on life situations and stresses. Someone who might ordinarily hang out in a green value system, might find themselves turning to the lessons learned in a beige or orange system in order to survive. And it is theorized that each person is a breakdown of a primary 50%, 25% and 25%.

The late Professor Clare W. Graves, Union College, New York said it best:

“At each stage of human existence the adult man is off on his quest of his holy grail, the way of life he seeks by which to live. At his first level he is on a quest for automatic physiological satisfaction. At the second level he seeks a safe mode of living, and this is followed in turn, by a search for heroic status, for power and glory, by a search for ultimate peace; a search for material pleasure, a search for affectionate relations, a search for respect of self, and a search for peace in an incomprehensible world. And, when he finds he will not find that peace, he will be off on his ninth level quest.”

So why do I bring this up? Whether you’re in business or looking to connect with people around you, the planet is inhabited by people who are operating in these systems whether they know it or not. It makes it a lot easier to live with them, and enjoy the eccentricities around you, when you realize: It’s not personal. It’s people.

Friends,

Ever feel like you’re operating in the middle of an explosion? Like right now: I have dinner and breakfast dishes sprawled out around me, a stack of papers is vertically filed in chronological order on the table, and my room looks like it’s a clothing grab-bin instead of a room.

On my desktop I have two text documents open (one of which I’m writing in..), a Trial Version of Single Step goal setting software, and three browser windows open with a totaling of 30 tabs, with everything from copy I’m working on for a friend’s photoshoot on Facebook to Franklin Covey’s Time Management and Focus solutions.

I have notes from the beginnings of my next recorded hypnosis script to my left, and the notes for the upcoming NLP seminar to my right, and an assessment to come up with. I have my old employer’s phone number on my caller ID because I just called to get my W2, and I’m wondering where my next bit of income is going to come in – while I make a go of this helping people business. Luckily, yesterday, I made a HUGE pot of soup so I haven’t had to think about food, while I still need to clean up after my Irish Oatmeal and Rice Cooker Experiment.

In the meanwhile I’m reading up on Professional Blogging from Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, and “Liz” Strauss.

What is the holiday celebrated by Americans that annually damages thousands of people every year? Valentine’s Day.

Damage: loss or harm resulting from injury to person, property, or reputation

courtesy of creative commons

My boyfriend recently shared a lot of hurt he had around this sacred cow. Here is an incredibly wonderful, romantic, and sweet man who has been hurt time and time again because of the unspoken expectations around Valentine’s Day. It caused me to revisit some of my own stuff around the subject;

I am all for love. I am all for joy, and romance, and adoration and sexy appreciation. What breaks my heart is all the pain and suffering that can come around one day – the single women who wonder what is wrong with them and spend days recovering from the blows to their self-esteem. Some men are terrified by being expected to perform to some unknown standard, and knowing how hurt their beloved will be if they do the wrong thing – don’t get the right chocolate, send flowers to the house instead of the office, don’t take them to a special enough restaurant, don’t include a personally hand-written note in the Valentine’s day card. Women wonder about their worth if they’re unmatched, and wonder whether the guy loves them, respects them, or appreciates them enough if that one day doesn’t go “just right.”

…please place your own oxygen mask over your mouth and nose before assisting your neighbor.”

My friend,

How often is life about Balance? The act of taking care of yourself, balanced with the fact it’s about more than just taking care of you. The “making sure your tanks are full, because otherwise you can’t help the other guy out of gas, either.” You just get two people with their hazards on.

Simplifying or cutting back on other commitments can be both difficult and frightening. If you are strung out with work, home, relationship, family, finances, community commitments, and getting your own dinner falls to the bottom of the list, who will you really be helping? No one. You’re on the fast track to nervous breakdown.

Those of us who are a bit skittish about putting on any sort of oxygen mask are quick to forget that all the spiritual leaders we admire for their selflessness also has needs they committed to getting met. They not only had to, in order for them to continue their acts of service, but they wanted to and understood without that commitment, they themselves would starve either physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Mother Teresa would insist that the nuns stop what ever they were doing when that prayer bell rung. It didn’t matter if that woman was mid-bite, feeding a starving orphan: she got up and went to prayer. Making time for spiritual reflection and connection with God, Mother Teresa believed, was part of that oxygen mask. Gandhi had his days of silence, and meditation where it didn’t matter what noble authority tried to talk to him.

(continued from last week..)

So,

We can’t just stop a behavior. It has to be replaced with something. What do you want to do instead, in order to take care of the need? How else are you going to create that safety and self-care? Meditate more? Take a boundaries class? Take hot baths? Learn self-defense? Practice affirmations of self-love? You might consider going inside and asking that unconscious part of you what it needs to feel safe and secure, in order to let down the walls when you choose to. Brainstorm some ideas while checking in: If I do (these) things, then will the need for (this) be met? Try some things and see what works for you. Also, decide how you’re going to take care of yourself when your children are in one of THOSE moods, the moods where we wonder if our kids are possessed by hurtful little aliens. Are you going to take a time out?

Trust your instincts. In the meantime, the brain doesn’t know the difference between what is “real” and what is “imagined.” So make some place quiet and private where you can relax and practice the following meditation:

Remember a time when you were truly, deeply, and safely connected. Free of any walls or barriers. Maybe it was with a infant, or a puppy, or a cat. Maybe it was out in nature, but go to that time where you felt deeply, safely, and completely connected. Free of any walls or barriers. Now, take the feelings of being safe, secure, and connected and imagine them lighting up your entire body. Do they have a color? a sound? a smell? a texture? Feel that sensation of being safe, secure, and connected through-out your entire body.

…theirs is just more visible!

Dear Friend,

This is going to be a two part article: I recently got a question about how to live without walls. As someone who lived most of her life with walls that would have made Berlin proud, I get it. And I get how hard and scary it can be, both within the walls – afraid I’d never make it out – and making those first steps outside – because what if I got hurt? It took me several years of work on top of my professional training, and narrowly surviving a car accident to get to where I could put down my walls.

Luckily, you can avoid all that.

Some people never get even as far as wondering.