Author: Advisor to Men

It is a myth that the females of our species are the more social gender. This appears to be largely based on the way women have “besties” and “gal-pals” and “her girlfriends,” people she can’t seem to exist without. If she doesn’t have these people in her life, she pays a price.

You do too , for as she suffers your life becomes complicated. Though women in general tend to have more empathy, men are more social.

According to social scientist Roy Baumeister, typically, women have at least one, sometimes up to five, women pals whom they guard jealously from each other and use for emotional regulation. It’s how most gals are made.

I remember telling my divorce lawyer about this. His wife was complaining that very morning about a new woman who moved in a few doors down and was now visiting his wife’s bestie across the street, causing her stress.

Sometimes, a woman can’t make it in the egalitarian sisterhood. I have coached many women of all ages who were stung by “mean girls” in high school or on the job.

Hell, my woman worked for a time in a nursing home among the sisters and talked about this every day.

But a woman adrift from the sisterhood is left with an emotional void in the form of unregulated emotion.

Mankind is a belonging species, and she is the source of belonging.

I’ve known pretty girls socially excluded from the sisterhood who suffered as a result. Some pretty girls will tend to find one tough girl whom they pair up with for protection.

One of my first girlfriends as a teen was a stunning blonde, a Jean Harlow look-a-like so despised by the other girls she found refuge in just one loyal friend who was probably 300 lbs.

Her other alternative is to find men as protectors and remain unregulated emotionally at some cost to her psychology.

Missus was headed to the beach with kids in tow and I made a comment about her pink bikini (though it’s long gone) She smiled and said, “I could go to the beach with my tits hanging out and a tiny bathing suit, and no one would talk to me.”

I got it. Sisterhood.

Missus tells me her strategy has always been to befriend girls who could look out for her. She’s the baby of her family, with two big sisters and an older brother, so she recreates the family dynamic in her friendships.

If a kid in grade one or two tries to join two other girls who have been playing together, chances are they will move away and go do something else. Besties is a closed system. Boys don’t tend to do this.

If you give word puzzles to primary-school-aged groups of eight boys and eight girls, the boys will fuck around… a lot. But come crunch time, with the clock running down, all the boys will contribute answers to solve the puzzles on time.

Girls will spend their time interviewing each other and then pair up so that the group ends up as four pairs of girls instead of one whole team. They contribute in pairs to the whole.

Both systems work. One is egalitarian, one is competitive.

Men tend to have many far more superficial or shallow relationships within many groups of men.

This is probably why men build cultures (women stress-test them).

Men compete to find the experts among them and then, defer to that expertise.

Operating in bigger groups is also why we suppress emotion more readily: expressing your feelings in a group is riskier and can be used against you.

If a man does not see his friends for a time, generally his suffering isn’t as obvious as it would be when a woman is deprived of hers

Geoffrey Greif’s book Buddy Systems put male friendships into four groups:

Must friend: if you have them, your best pals; you include them in most parts of your life.
Trust friend: comfortable with and trust & would be closer buddies if conditions allowed.
Rust friend: good buddies you don’t see regularly but will always be counted as friends.
Just friend: context friends from work, community, or club and fine to keep it that way.

Whereas she will share life’s challenges among her close circle of friends, he might not at all, choosing instead to “soldier on.”

Men suppress emotions for good reasons, to get things done. It’s repression that costs us. Denying we even feel something.

We are often called upon to do a culture’s “dirty work.”

Whether that be pumping sewage, working high steel, putting out fires or fighting enemies on the other side of the world, it is men who mop up when the going gets tough.

It is men who suffer 95% of workplace fatalities, for example.

We cannot entertain the same emotional frameworks women do lest it hamper our effectiveness.

In cultures across the world, men are found to experience much less fear compared women. We can also take more pain (another debunked myth).

Making men more feminine to suit new cultural norms is problematic social engineering. Weaken western men over a few generations and we risk being overrun by stronger masculine populations.

Think it can’t happen? It is happening now. That’s how nature works.

Western population growth is abysmal compared with the Third World. Don’t worry, the elites will use their resources to stick around while your line of descendants die out.

Humans are designed to exist in small, relatively homogenous groups.

All of nature is like this with few exceptions. You and I both definitely need a tribe, a group we call our own.

The answer to problems of masculinity is more masculinity.

Not less. It’s your birthright. You are what the heavens decreed.

It’s the universe of infinite wisdom which decided your gender, green-lighting your potentials and possibilities… as a man.

I encourage you all to be men.

That includes male friendships you keep in your orbit.

For example, when I moved here five or so years ago, I found out one of my best pals from my early teenage years lives up the street on a farm. Turns out he’s still hanging with one of our crew, my old friend from across the street from my parents. Hadn’t seen them in decades.

We get together every month or two or three over breakfast to talk politics. Because EVERYBODY needs straightening out on that one. Lol I even gave one of them a book by our former conservative Prime Minister.

Otherwise, if I see these men, I find an excuse to drop in. I’m out picking up feed nearby, or I want to know something, or whatever.

But to meet up we generally contrive a reason.

There are some big differences between men and women, and we should not use women’s friendships as a measure of a man’s connections to others. That’s just weird.

We are not the same, we are unabashedly, unapologetically, men.

One thing I think more and more men are doing is belonging to a group of men dedicated to personal or professional self-improvement.

Masterminds membership is a commitment you make to yourself and a group of men who get to know you.

The internet could save men, says my friend Kevin. Advisor to Men runs the Board of Directors every Friday and Saturday. For an hour or so, every man checks in and gives feedback to the other men. They say it’s the best deal on the internet.

It’s what the world needs is more powerful men. Men who can use power and love to find meaning and freedom.

Family and work life tends to isolate a man. Don’t let that happen.

Let me know what you think…

Powerful, true and free…
cw

That women are more about people and men more about things is one of the most durable sex differences. Oh sure, there are outliers. It is just exceptions do not disprove a general rule. 

One of my gal friends sent me video just last week of a baboon troupe exposed to kid’s toys, trucks, or dolls. Sure enough, the male baboons were interested in the trucks while the female baboons picked up the dolls and dragged them around like babies.

My friend said she ignored the dolls as a child and preferred trucks. She is truly one of a kind and does not fit typical predilections. She grows an extraordinary garden engineered for production & efficiency out of four-gallon pots lined up and down her driveway that has my envy.

https://go.oncehub.com/ChristopherWallace

HUMAN NEEDS

Abraham Maslow once said, “If you are planning on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.” Codifying human needs usually mentions his 1943 work, almost always illustrated by others later as a hierarchy with self-actualization at the top.

John Schindler, co-founder of the Monroe Clinic in Wisconsin, who in 1954 wrote, How to Live 365 Days a Year, said we have six needs: love, security, creative expression, recognition, new experiences, and self-esteem.

Tony Robbins adapted these into three pairs to simplify our understanding of basic human needs: Certainty & Uncertainty, Significance & Love-Connection, Growth & Contribution.

While the ranking of needs in importance is individual, survival requires meeting at a minimum the first four needs. Overall life satisfaction depends on meeting all your needs in adaptive ways. This not only decides our attraction to others, but influences being able to experience love as opposed to unhealthy dependence. Adulthood means learning to meet your needs in healthy ways, and if necessary, autonomously. They are your needs.

No matter what race, sex, religion, origin or upbringing, we humans have six basic needs. We will use the word need because for most, the word “desire” means something wanted but optional. Desire is a better predictor of human motivation according to Stephen Reiss, author of Who Am I? which includes a desire profile. However, it is enough to say needs are also desires, it is just that some you cannot do without (the first four).

Our inability to rely on ourselves to adaptively meet those needs can create unhealthy attachment. The whole of your emotional system is based on belonging according to a 1995 meta-analysis of attachment studies done by Baumeister and Leary. When you belong, your emotions rise; when you disconnect, emotions fall.

We are wired for connection, we wish for connection, and we wait for connection says Polyvagal clinician Deb Dana. Co-dependence between us is normal but exists on a continuum from healthy to dysfunctional. When the individual loses their sense of self, egocentricity may rule their relationships. Let me explain this further.

That a child is egocentric commonly refers to a preoccupation with the self. The Piagetian view is that egocentricity pertains to speech and thinking directed by individual needs or concerns. You are invited to consider that it also means no emotional separation between the child and parent. You can imagine how nature creates this egocentric emotional attunement between adult and child for survival reasons. Children therefore experience families physically.

It can be unhealthy in adults. Get to know a partner and finish each other’s sentences. Become so familiar with each other that you can predict their moods and desires, even get good at what makes them happy or sad. But do not lose yourself. When adult interdependence turns to overdependence, it prevents mature love.

We use the world love to describe connecting to others. But there are differing states that we often call love, which are not really love at all. It is important to know that not everything you identify as love, is love. I prefer belonging, for humans are mammalian herd animals.

We will consider how the six human needs fits within love as we go.

First let us look at the six human needs one at a time

Certainty – This is the primary survival need, to avoid pain and gain pleasure. It is the need for connection, safety, stability, comfort, and resources to sustain us. It supplies predictability in an often painfully dangerous world.

Variety/ Uncertainty – This is the need for change, challenge, excitement, and stimulus. Paradoxical to the need for certainty, we need a certain amount of uncertainty to be happy with our life, to bust out of comfort zones and grow.

Significance – Everyone wants to feel like a somebody. To stand out and be considered worthwhile and appreciated. Often, this refers to the need for esteem and might also include a spiritual need to manifest our talents fulfilling what we believe is our purpose. Honour, the esteem of those you care about, bridges significance and connection.

Love/Connection – This is the need for connection with others. It is the need for a sense of being a part of something. It is the need for belonging, oneness with others, community, and the universe. It is the need to love and, in some cases, to be loved (when young) or at least to belong. Our need for sexual intimacy is in this section.

Growth – This is the need to grow and develop, find fulfillment, and self-actualize. To take whatever talents were bestowed upon you by heavens of infinite wisdom and sharpen these as if taking stone to steel. It is to become more.

Contribution – This is the need to contribute beyond your being and affect your world. The need to give and supply something of value for other people, the world, and the universe at large. It is the need to make a difference.

We all have diverse ways of meeting these needs. We meet them in both conscious and subconscious ways. We may be confident about meeting some needs more than others. But it is important to understand that we meet these needs (we seek happiness) in both healthy and unhealthy ways.

MEETING NEEDS: brainstorming healthy versus unhealthy
1. Certainty

Healthy: creating consistent routines to maintain your body; to nourish soul and spirit; to develop solid work habits which reliably produce sustenance; to form and preserve predictable and stable relationships. It means an internal locus of control, a positive identity, and being organized and orderly while striving for optimism, fortitude, and safety.

Unhealthy: allowing sloth, becoming obsessive or compulsive (including addictions including eating disorders and cutting), externalizing responsibility, and controlling relationships. Being unemployed or on assistance beyond necessity. Keeping a negative identity, tolerating personal shame, preoccupation with gloom, self-pity, rape, murder, war.

2. Variety/Uncertainty

Healthy: trying new people, places, and things It may mean traveling, finding new hobbies/passions, engaging in stimulating conversations, networking, and meeting people, taking jobs, moving areas, watching new plays and films, seeing art, or doing art, playing games or sports, reading books, accepting challenges. Life satisfaction, growth and relationships are related to how much uncertainty you can tolerate.

Unhealthy: engaging in risky activities without adequate precaution, putting others in danger, all addictions, self-sabotage, picking fights with significant others when bored or restless, cheating while in monogamous relationships, running away from problems, quitting things on a whim, blaming, violence and war.

3. Significance

Healthy: developing a positive identity, expressing your uniqueness, meeting goals, developing a sense of style, sharing belief systems that fit your worldview, seeking meaning for life and for your existence, allowing yourself to be noticed, putting your hand up in class, accepting compliments, being a problem solver, taking responsibility, leading others.

Unhealthy: Tearing others down, rescuing people, acting out to get attention, holding a negative identity, hiding behind a label, using others to gain status, lying to impress people, denying responsibility, and blaming, rape, murder, war.

4. Love/Connection

Healthy: sharing intimacy, openness, becoming a part of social organizations, teams, and groups, developing compassion, time in nature, seeing the interconnectivity of all things, healthy sex, physical affection, exchanging gifts, seeing the good in others and telling them, practicing self-care, giving just because you can, quality time with others, caring for pets, having a spiritual life.

Unhealthy: Self-sacrificing, joining gangs, high-risk sex, sickness to gain attention or control relationships, off-loading problems on those around you, acting helpless, creating stories to sustain dishonesty about yourself or others, exaggerating sickness or always having problems or becoming accident prone for attention, people pleasing, rescuing others, all addictions, causing others to feel as if they need us, rape, murder, war.

5. Expansion/Growth

Healthy: learning, adopting new paradigms, expanding your model of the world, letting go of old ideals, embracing technology, following your bliss, lateral thinking, consulting expertise, accepting advice, honing talents into strengths, seeking wisdom and knowledge, seeing life as a series of lessons, finding meaning in every life event in a continuous expansion of understanding of self and the nature of your existence.

Unhealthy: Pushing yourself too hard, making everything hard, not finishing things, procrastination, unrealistic challenges abandoned instead of adjusted, being unable to listen to other people, letting things get to the breaking point before you improve them, war.

6. Contribution

Healthy: Random acts of kindness, being part of things that you believe in, sharpening your talents into strengths and using them to make a difference, helping others just because you can, helping to improve your community, doing your part, giving for the simple joy of giving, focusing on the solution, raising a family, defending those around you.

Unhealthy: projecting narcissism into the community, virtue signaling, using capitalism to rape the planet, joining conspiracies, joining causes which perpetuate the problem, covert contracts, self-sacrificing, war.

Notice that some things we do will meet more than one need. For example, waging war or joining a war is an unhealthy way to potentially meet every one of these needs. It is no longer such a mystery why humans have not been able to stop waging war for thousands of years when we recognize it meets many essential human needs. Whether healthy or unhealthy, or good or bad, all human behaviour can be described as need driven.

Meeting needs adaptively creates satisfaction in the self-interested brain. By meeting needs in a healthy manner, a life of meaning is possible, and you may obtain a measure of freedom from the suffering of this existence.

Chosen for life by heavens of infinite wisdom, your purpose is to make a difference manifesting your talents nearby, expanding meaning and freedom while finding your place in the sun.

It is crucial to life satisfaction that we meet every one of these six needs. The idea is not needs suppression, but to summon your adaptability around them. It is unnatural for humans to deny what they need, leaving a void that might be filled by errant spirituality, conspiracies, cults, and cults of personality. Understand your needs and the needs of those around you to gain compassion for yourself and others, and to avoid confusion and powerlessness.

Needs and Relationships
What some call a loving interdependence is a really a lopsided love that is about needing someone. This is fine to a point: everyone loves to feel like someone’s chosen, and we are wired to connect with each other. It is just that often love is a subconscious recognition that another person or thing provides us with a need that we do not feel capable of meeting on our own.

You may be blinded by the intense biochemical reaction usually associated with falling in love and become enamored with someone until they disappoint under the burden of meeting your needy expectations. Your self-concept is how you see yourself contrasted with how you believe others see you. We cannot escape the group, and we can fool ourselves.

I say we are in a perpetual search for wholeness. The key to being and feeling complete is to meet these needs in healthy ways on your own. If happiness is a decision, then let it be so with love.

Having the capability to meet needs independently means you are free to keep falling in love with a partner forever. You may even decide to put lust first… and let love take care of itself.

When we are not meeting our needs, a tendency to feel incomplete compounds and is felt emotionally. Someone who meets those needs “completes us.” Think about that next time you hear it said. All relationships are co-dependent to an extent, to which degree may revolve around how impossible it is for an individual to meet their needs autonomously.

Happiness in a relationship may be dependent on a partner meeting one or more of your needs you do not feel capable of meeting on your own. This may be obscured by “opposites attract,” when people with quite different personalities often have opposing deficiencies and strengths when it comes to meeting their own needs. What you seek is to be complementary to each other, so that the two of you combine forces and become more.

A person, who feels incapable of creating variety for themselves may be attracted to an unpredictable mate because that person creates that sense of variety and excitement for them. An unpredictable person may prefer a conservative spouse because their nature creates a sense of certainty and stable comfort for them, which they feel incapable of creating for themselves. In which case, we could say it is opposite needs that attract.

This is fine if it does not become one-sided dependence. Men need respect more than love, and loyalty. Have a look at the shield up top for more information.

The pejoratively used misnomer “co-dependent relationship” commonly refers to a relationship between people who feel so incapable of meeting their own needs in healthy ways that they are completely dependent on the other person to meet those needs for them. And from the outside, it appears as if the relationship itself is more important to at least one of the persons involved than they are to themselves. This enmeshment works… until it does not.

It is unlikely for anyone to indefinitely prioritize someone more than themselves. Even if I save my children, defend my wife, or stand shoulder to shoulder with you to fight the enemy, I am serving my self-interested brain.

We often miss what someone derives making others their priority. For example: sometimes people who selflessly prioritize the people around them are just looking for love. They may be convinced that by self-sacrificing, they will be loved in return. This covert contract is an unhealthy way of meeting that need and tends to build resentment when they are taken for granted. It is negotiating reciprocity and cooperation which underpins our interdependence.

In Conclusion 

Our happiness is not the only thing that is dependent upon our ability to meet needs autonomously. Our ability to love powerfully is in fact contingent on your ability to adaptively meet needs all on your own.

Most people fear that if we meet all our own needs, there will be no purpose for relationships. Or that it means ending up alone and no longer experiencing love. That is not what happens, for the opposite is true. Instead, relationships within the bonding dynamic share even more as each can meet their own needs but also meet some of the other’s needs.

We only own three things in life: thoughts, feelings, and behaviour and these are always an individual’s responsibility. We are responsible to the people around us, not for them. All you have to offer the world is your time, talent and effort. Own these six at all times, or at least as much as you can, and you will live a satisfying life.

When you decide to be happy it is a decision you make independent of others and what they do or do not do. Only then will we experience adult love. Born to belong (our #1 need) nothing creates personal expansion more than relationships.

Going from relationship to relationship, trying things out, looking for completeness and answers, all those encounters inevitably point back to ourselves. The answer is still the same: you. You are what you are looking for in other people.

Carl Jung taught that we try our best to solve our problems but that the eyes see out. Because of this we tend to project our internal struggles onto those around us. Once you understand projection, you operate from a much deeper wisdom.

The tendency to search for other people to fill a need means risking they will eventually fall short. The relationship will reflect whatever you lack right back at you. Others function as tableaus upon which we paint a subconscious life.

Stop and if possible, adaptively provide for yourself. It is your job to meet your six needs. They are your needs.

From the most enlightened to the consciously impoverished person, every human in existence has these same needs. The former has perfected the art of adaptively meeting needs for himself or herself, while the latter struggles.

Consider how you are currently meeting your needs and/or the needs of your partner. Replace unhealthy ways of meeting the Six Human Needs with more adaptable methods and carefully examine the needs balance between you.

When you do this, you will gain power and eventually lose emotional wanting, which is always suffering. You will instead win with no deficit of the heart. Furthermore, your relationships will be a source of joy instead of pain. Here is how:

The only person in life upon whom you may reliably count on for unconditional love with any certainty is you. This means when you love others without expectation, you can truly feel love. The best way to feel love is on the way out, emanating powerfully from you. A man’s relationships should come from his power as a man and never be his power.

You feel the love you give. As it passes through your nervous system and heart to others, you benefit first.

Now consider this: a man matures emotionally when he stops looking for love; he has reversed the flow. By his honour, he holds ancestral reserves of power and love for those whom he defends in meaning and freedom.

Invariably, he will be loved for this, though he is unconcerned…

@2022 CHRIS WALLACE advisortomen.com all rights reserved

THE ENERGY BILL
Let’s talk about personality integration. Firstly, let me point out that to use the term “integration” clearly implies that there exists disintegration in a man’s life. We must not fear this.

This is work most men never do and it costs them. What they find is they are often “hooked” or “triggered” by circumstances and so they learn to avoid them. Or they have motivations they don’t understand or acknowledge. This puts him in a weaker position and although this strategy works, it’s still a pattern of avoidance and he usually remains dissatisfied.

The problems start early. When a child is forced to align with benefactors over his own instincts at a level beyond his ability to understand, he will cling to acceptance and turn away from parts of himself.

Parents use guilt successfully but when that guilt exceeds the child’s ability to resolve, he will reluctantly move forward, subjugating himself to his caregiver’s will. He is thus forced to stifle and deny a part of himself to avoid the perceived rejection of his parents. This is how shame develops in degrees.

What other choice does the boy have? He relies upon his caregivers for his entire succorance: nurturing, shelter, safety, and the positive regard he craves. The carrot and stick, threat and reward approaches by his caregivers act as a takeaway close, and seed in him a craving for acceptance and unconditional love.

As he grows into adulthood, part of his energy is spent unconsciously holding those denied parts of himself in check, all the while conflicted under this push and pull. This causes confusion, doubt, and a lesser existence.

The psyche holds back some of his talent, for it is indiscriminate in its defense of the soul. The spirit speaks… but is muffled. The yearning is there but is wild and unreconciled and often, steeped in suffering.

It’s like having a house with an enormous electricity bill. To save power, you turn off lights and switch to fluorescent bulbs and even install energy saving appliances. To no avail, your bill is still too high.

Then one day, perhaps when another expensive bill arrives in the mail, you discover an underground cable running from just below the fuses in your power panel to the back wall and towards the direction of an old shed deep in the backyard.

It’s right on the fence line with the next property and as far as you know, no one ever goes there. You thought it was empty, none of your business, not yours to deal with, and so, you have avoided it.

After enquiring around and establishing that it is fact part of your land, you get the courage to break into the shed. Inside, you are temporarily blinded as you find 1000-watt bulbs, lots of them, running 24/7. It’s not a cannabis grow-op so what else could it be? Seeking the source of this power you spot the feed going into the ground towards the direction of the main house.

Just as you are saying to yourself, “Holy shit! How long has this been going on?” you spot what looks like an image of your younger self, floating in suspended animation under the intensity of the lights. You recognize him from pictures you have seen of yourself.

Bewildered, you suddenly realize he is held in by the energy you yourself have unknowingly been providing all these years…

He responds only to your voice. You can’t explain what you do and say for these are as mysterious as the situation itself, but you give yourself over to discovery, determined not to leave the boy behind.

You have a conversation and it’s the most important talk you ever have. You listen and reacquaint yourself with him and once you have regained his trust, promise to never leave him again. You gently invite him to come up and into the big house.

He tells you things, and it’s as if he’s been waiting a long time for the two of you to be reunited and to share his story. You reassure him. He tells you more. You fill in blanks with whatever wisdom you have accumulated, and you realize what you need to do is to reparent him. He’s afraid but you persevere and take him wherever you go. He learns to handle new experiences as you defend him.

Slowly but surely, you bring him into your heart and more… ❤️ He’s not alone anymore, you are there for him and the two of you are fully reunited, and inextricably linked to each other. You have conversations in various circumstances, and he gives his perspective. You acknowledge and lead him from where he is in his confusion and suffering to where you are now with clarity and hope.

You become more powerful. Assured. Capable. Humble. You use power ?and love ❤️ in service of yourself and others. You create a life of meaning, and finally, you taste… freedom.

Time goes by…

One day you realize you don’t carry the boy with you any longer. The shed out back has long been emptied. The lights have been turned off and removed. The power cable was dug up. The splice into the main house disconnected. You appreciate the extra storage space and begin keeping your lawnmower and other tools there.

And you never forget him as you say goodbye.

In a sense, the boy has died so the man could live.

You are not sad. You are powerful.

The two of you have become one.

Assimilated, transcended, integrated…

The next energy bill comes in…

… you find it’s considerably less expensive.

Now that you control all your own power.
____________________

Questions? Comments?

Powerful, true, and free!
cw

Start the dialogue here with the Taming Shame course:
https://services.advisortomen.com/courses/taming-shame

HOUSE RULES: 12 ideas to communicate effectively

1. No personal attacks. No good discussion happens if we call each other mean names. Instead, we’ll use a compliment when we feel like attacking. Think of how you can do that and what a difference it will make. If you can, imagine how you will do this and practice it now so you’re ready.

2. No using absolutes. Ex: all, everybody, each time, always, no one, nobody, never, none, every, everyone, etc. As in, “you always do that, you take forever, you never apologize, etc.” We use absolutes to exaggerate and paint us as victims. It forces a search for exceptions, expanding scope & killing discussion.

3. One person talks about one issue, while the other person listens. We resist the urge to rebuttal. Instead, we’ll take turns, play fair, and set an example. You won’t drone on and hog the floor and I won’t cut you off. The idea is to air our positions safely and equally.

4. No raising voices. If things get heated, we’ll say, “Let me take a break and come back to this, OK?” and move away. That’s a boundary. We’ll do our best later. Raising voices engages people’s fight or flight system and kills discussion. We realize a raised voice is mostly about us, not about the other person.

5. No using “I feel that…” By using “feel that”, I’m describing a thought, not a feeling, implying feelings must be accepted at face value. Instead, we’ll say, “I feel ______” and insert a feeling word. We don’t expect feelings to be validated; we’ll just state them and let them go. We take responsibility for our feelings.

6. No being defensive. Defensiveness is rooted in childhood shame, the little boy or girl inside fighting to survive. It also puts a halt to learning and one of the 4 traits that kills a relationship (with stonewalling, criticism and contempt the others). By being thankful for criticism, we keep a growth mindset.

7. No jumping on you. I will restate what you said so I understand, and mostly use your words so I don’t manipulate by reframing incorrectly. Reflecting feeling is a variation. I will let you know “I get it” and give you a chance to correct my impression because I know we tend to “think out loud” using trial and error.

8. No forgetting the end-goal. Let’s find a way forward that is mutually workable by being curious and doing our best to learn from each other. We focus first on connection, and less on outcome, while not giving up personal boundaries in the process. Our goal: conversation & agreement.

9. No rushing things. The world does not operate on my schedule. We may have to devote more energy to working things out. We’ll be patient, improving as we go, knowing sleep is nature’s idea incubator.

10. Use more “I” and less “You” statements. I can’t control others; I control me. Too much you and it becomes blaming. It’s better to tell you what I see, think, feel, and want… so you can do the same with me.

11. Lower our expectations. All our disappointments are driven by expectations. When I temper self-interest, I see other viewpoints more easily. This leaves more room for compassion and compromise.

12. We are each responsible for our happiness and for making this work. All I really own in life are my thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, all under my control. No one can make me feel anything as I`m no one`s puppet. When I make a mistake, I apologize because you matter to me.

©CKWallace, 2017, all rights reserved advisortomen.com