Relationship Better Endings

When I coach people through a Life Path Mapping process, during a reflective phase I ask them to consider how they have managed transitions in their lives.  For each major Turning Point they have identified with their life mapping, I ask them whether in retrospect they wish they would have done anything differently and, if so, what might have transpired.

Most life mappers tend to say they would not make any changes in their past decisions or choices, because of all the subsequent change that also would have occurred.  They have learned from whatever has happened, so why look back?  Yet, those who do entertain this almost taboo thought experiment find it illuminating because it helps them to focus on what really are their core values and long-term goals.

Significant relationships often bring about Turning Points in our lives.  Entering a new relationship, with another person or with a pet or with new colleagues as you assume a new role in your career, opens many fresh opportunities for growth and development. It is like you have pressed a REFRESH button, although of course soon you are likely to encounter similar situations and challenges you have faced before. How will you approach this similar challenge this time?

 

One way to ‘trouble shoot’ fresh relationships is to review your past.  Take stock of the strengths you bring to these new relations as well as the patterns of inhibitions or difficulties you have encountered before.

Here is a Better Endings journaling tool you are welcome to entertain:

Reflect upon a relationship from your life history that was never well resolved or that continues to be troublesome in some respects, or one that ended poorly.  Consider that situation as a STORY.  Now then, change that story.  Imagine and/or journal about and re-write the ending or a better resolution of that relationship. What might have happened or could happen differently?  

images are from pixabay.com

(After my own reflections today): If you find on reflection that you feel there is nothing about your past relations that you COULD have changed (as that is how it seems they were meant to be), still you can look ahead and contemplate what changes you might make as you approach a new relationship or to improve your present relations.

The more attention you give to how YOU might improve your past relations, the better prepared you may be to go forward with a new attitude, welcoming the new opportunities before you!

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

How to Build Your Strengths

When I was an undergraduate at SUNY College at Buffalo (1972-1976), I majored in English and minored in Philosophy and Creative Studies. Creative Studies was unique to this college, with faculty led by Sidney J. Parnes and Ruth Noller, pioneering experts in the creativity field.  Dr. Parnes (Sid) went on to later co-found the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Center at Buffalo.

Every summer the Center for Creativity Studies at Buffalo State College held a Creative Studies Conference, inviting the brightest innovators in this field to present their study findings and to present workshops about the creative process. I attended one in 1974 that I shall never forget, as I acquired a simple tool there which I have always remembered and still utilize and about which I share with my own university students—and now, you!—to this day. It was offered in a workshop titled something like “Strength Building: A Creative Process.” Unfortunately I do not recall the name of the presenter. I believe he was a CEO of a creative corporate consulting firm.

“Take out a piece of paper and a pen. Now I would like for you to write down 10 of what you consider to be your Greatest Weaknesses.”

That is how the workshop began. The workshop presenter, a well groomed man in his early 40’s, gave us around ten minutes to compile our list of weaknesses. I don’t recall at all what I wrote down then; which is good, according to the insights he shared over the rest of this exercise.

“Now then, on a separate piece of paper, please write down a list of what you perceive to be your 10 Greatest Strengths. I’d like for you to rank order these strengths of yours from one to ten, with ten being your highest, greatest strength of all.”

I seem to recall a few of these even today, forty years later. “A good listener” was on the list (I don’t think at the top); “persistent” was probably there, too; “a Friend” I am guessing I would also have included on my self-perceived list of strengths at that time.

“Now then, please take out your page with the list of your perceived weaknesses. I would like for you to TEAR THIS UP.  Please throw the paper scraps away in the waste basket that I will now pass around the room.”

Hmm! I was surprised. I thought for sure we would be focusing on those weaknesses to learn how to “build our strengths.”

“Never focus on your weaknesses,” the creativity consultant stated. “If you were ready to deal with them, they probably wouldn’t  be on your list of weaknesses anyway.  Instead,” he invited, “ ALWAYS CONCENTRATE ON DEVELOPING WHAT YOU ALREADY FIND TO BE YOUR STRENGTHS.  IF YOU DEVELOP YOUR STRENGTHS FURTHER, SOME DAY YOU WILL LOOK BACK TO FIND THAT SOME OF WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE COUNTED AS WEAKNESSES ARE NOW AMONG YOUR STRENGTHS, TOO!”

This man explained about how developing our greatest strengths has benefits that expand all of our skills or talents along the way. I could relate this to fencing at the time, as I was on an intercollegiate fencing squad that placed within the top 10 in the nation at the the following year’s national tournament.

I applied the workshop KEY to fencing all that next year. ACCENTUATE STRENGTHS! Develop those skills or fencing moves and attacks that I liked most and could do the best. Don’t dwell on weaknesses, and all will improve. I must say, he was so right! They did! I learned that when I focused on a weakness in fencing, a move or skill I had not yet been able to master, I became self-conscious on the fencing strip, and any athlete knows that is never a good thing! When instead I focused mainly in practice and coaching lessons on honing particular moves and attacks I already felt naturally good at, I developed a portfolio of strengths, a repertoire of successful strategies which I found I could rely on “without thinking” during a bout. That is what fencing absolutely requires is the fluid capacity to ACT and to CREATE strategy in the immediacy of the Moment. This approach was highly successful. That next year I defeated many of the best fencers from the best university teams throughout the country. I was focussed on what I COULD do, and DID that!

So, I invite YOU to write down a list of what you perceive to be your ten greatest weaknesses. Put that aside and on another sheet of paper, write down what you perceive to be your ten greatest strengths. Rank order those strengths to compile a final list of your strengths. Now then, please tear up your list of weaknesses and throw that away. What you are left with is the list of Your Greatest STRENGTHS! Place that list somewhere so you will see it often. Contemplate your strengths. DEVELOP them. Then go about your business, whatever it might be, and APPLY these Strengths mindfully. This is a win-win scenario for all!

I welcome your Comments, Your Insights and Your Stories to Share !

What Do Your Dragons Guard?

Okay, so I’ve devised this acronym:

Deep Raging Animistic Giant of Negativity

Or, DRAGON!

So, what are Yours?

We are speaking (initially at least) not of the positive, Bountiful, Life Breathing dragons like the Chinese New Year puppet forms, but rather of the “negative”, Fire Breathing, monstrous Dragons that jealously guard their hidden treasures.

These negative dragons can pin us down with their talons inciting fear and trepidation. They tell us what we CANNOT do or Be, what we SHOULD NOT attempt for fear of failure or public ridicule.  In a sense, “Your Dragon is your Ego,” says Joseph Campbell in A HERO WITH 1000 FACES.  In a self-protective mode it is that which might aim to “hold you back” from taking risks and, hence, at times it may prevent you from actively seeking or achieving your Bliss.

So what is it that your Dragon might be telling you that YOU should never attempt?  Is it to be an Author, a famous Musician or a Dancer or Artist, or to move to your favorite place on Earth? Maybe it has to do with your relationship “patterns” or with your “real,” physical self-limitations? Let me ask you in another way; WHAT IS YOUR BLISS that you would wish to fulfill with all of your Soul, if only you COULD?

Many speak of “Slaying Your Dragons,” including Campbell.  That makes sense. But I prefer the notion of TAMING them, instead. This is similar to the idea in the recent books and animated films, “How to Train Your Dragon” (1 and 2).

By TAMING your Dragons, I mean first you need to identify them within your unconscious archetypal cast of dramatic players, then you need to get to know each one—as they are after all a part of your own dynamic multiplicity. Once you and your Dragon get to know one another—each of your dreams, fears, goals and desires—you can aim to ENLIST your Dragon into the common cause of being an Archetype Ally.

 

Hmm, maybe a new acronym is in order now:

Dearly Respected Archetypal Giver of Needs

Or, DRAGON.

Since it is your Dragon who knows your deepest fears, of course S/He can give to you whatever you might also need to overcome or to transcend these fears and to assert your Dreams and go boldly to achieve them. This reminds me of Falcor the Luckdragon from The Neverending Story, one of my favorite animated characters. Once you have befriended your Dragon, S/He may allow you to RIDE on Its magnificent back and soar to the realm of your Blissful achievement.

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I invite you to engage via Archetype Dialogue through active imagination or journaling with one of your own Dragons.

I welcome your comments and stories!

Are You a Threshold Dweller?

One of the greatest benefits from identifying the Life Chapters of your Life Story by naming the phases that have occurred BETWEEN your pivotal Turning Points is that this brings you naturally to a position of being a Dweller at the Threshold, in Joseph Campbell’s terms (as in The Hero with 1000 Faces).  We each live always in the Present Moment, most often as if the Present is a bubble, like the bubble in a leveling tool, relatively sealed off from yet positionally linked to Past influences and Future potentials. Life Mapping can open your awareness to how the “Past” (i.e., your meaningful Life Chapters with their inherent Life Lessons) has carried you to both this Present Moment and to the potential “Future” that your Life Path is trending toward. Your mindful awareness places you at the precipice of embarking upon or unfolding more consciously into a future Moment of your own choice and envisioning; see?

If we are to constructively affect the course our life is taking—and I personally believe this is not only our right but our responsibility—we may step forward from this Threshold of awareness that links Past-PRESENT-Future into a more integrated Whole.

Being a Dweller at the Threshold, you have the opportunity to pause and to reflect; to scan the Past while envisioning the future course you desire to undertake in your continuing Adventure.  There will be another, big step to take after this, called Crossing the Threshold (stay tuned for later tools and for the Life Paths book to engage in the full process). But at this fertile, vital junction of  reviewing your life course to Now, you are able to discern meaningful trends and potentials you have already established in your unique Life Story.

I have observed in over a decade of helping people compose and reflect upon their Life Maps a very common trend. However difficult a person’s life may have been, a high percentage of people (not all) reconstruct their CURRENT Life Chapter as either at a state of Balance or as a Resolution stage after successfully negotiating earlier hardships and challenges. How about you? If you have named your Life Chapters based on the methods shared on Tuesday, what title have you given to the CURRENT Life Chapter you are in? I welcome your sharing about your own Life Chapter titles or experience.

Next week we will expand this discussion to the topic of “Life Story Genres”.  This might help you to contextualize the dramatic quality of your personal life experience.  It is a natural cognitive function of the human mind to reconstruct our life experiences in Story form. Neuroscientists believe this helps us establish a sense of coherence and “flow” to our stream of life events and it helps us to construe our sense of identity as a continuous, integrated Self. So, please stay tuned to Sunday for an introduction of our next topic of discovering your Life Story Genre.

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I’d like to add two remarks today. First, I’d like to express my gratitude to GraphicStock, the website at which I have found most of the images I use in this blog. For an annual fee I have discovered a rich well of images to represent the ideas being presented here.

Also, as it is Thursday and I’m mounting the Friday blog, as usual I am a day ahead in posting. (When I receive a story about applying these tools or find a very appropriate piece to re-blog, I will also post a separate Thursday blog, as happened last week.) My work schedule makes it easier for me to post in the afternoon or evening the day before a post is scheduled, so thanks to you, dear readers, for your patience. – Linda