Time Apart From Significant Others

A couple of weeks ago, my friend posted on Facebook that people need to spend time away from their significant others, possibly vacationing apart and definitely not working together all of the time. His comment followed an intensive year of him living, working and generally spending all of his time with his partner.

His comment wasn’t new and I have heard others say similar things. What was serendipitous was that Heather had just left for an 18 day vacation.

What I have taken out of the time apart:

I still carry some of my concerns from the past. I’m not certain that this will always be the case though. The concerns manifested themselves in slightly different ways than before and I can see them for what they are. Which is something that doesn’t happen so often when we are together because I’m in a different head space.

From time to time, it can require effort to remember why we are attracted to each other. But this effort is worth putting in because it’s important to remember the reason for your attraction, given the tendency for humans to stop noticing the familiar. Thoughts and emotions are not self sustaining so generating the positivity is critical for keeping it going.

We’ve come a long way and there is a long way to go. Personal growth is similar to relationship growth in that it is always a possibility. Each new thing you learn, alters who you are and who they are. The evolving nature of relationships should be viewed as fun, something with a beginning and a middle, but no end.

Communication is critical to happiness within a relationship. Heather and I are aligned in many areas, but there are some aspects of our personalities that fall outside of the others awareness. Sharing these with an open mind is paramount to cultivating a strong connection. Neither one of us is wrong for what we believe, how we think or the actions we take. Talking about these things removes any road blocks from our future and enhances our understanding and respect of the other.

I have a number of areas of personal development to work on. This pleases me because it would be dreadful to believe that I didn’t. Heather does a lot of learning when she’s away, so when we talk on the phone, there is always a lot of new stuff to cover and hundreds of new ideas. When she gets home, we talk about these things and they alter my understanding of the world, myself and our relationship. Her return is exciting, not just because we get to reconnect, but because we get to recreate.

8 Lessons From 2012 – Part One

In no particular order and with credit given whenever it can be.

You don’t have a lot of time” – Sean Sullivan. This lesson was given in 2011, almost as soon as I told him that my dad had a brain tumor. Sean lost his father to cancer and he witnessed the rapid decline associated with this disease. I didn’t know exactly what he meant when he said it, but I took his advice and did everything I could to make the best of the time that was remaining. The family ate, talked, and enjoyed each others company and spend little time spend dwelling on what was about to happen. I understand what “you don’t have a lot of time” means now and I understand that it doesn’t just apply to dying relatives, it applies to everything in life.

Life is meaningless and empty so you’re free to create whatever purpose you like” – LandMark Education – March 25, 2012. I find this very empowering because I spontaneously do right by most people. Given this, setting out to make life be about what I want is a lot easier and gratifying than searching for some universal meaning.

So, how is life going to be better than before?” – Heather Arthur – May 4, 2012. It was our first date and Heather was doing what Heather does, rattling things to see if they stand-up to the challenge. My answer, after a lot of squirming, was to say that I didn’t have a plan to make them better, but that I wouldn’t be repeating any of the same mistakes so life was going to be different, and that meant the possibility for better. I had never felt so vulnerable and alive.

Teaching is not like other jobs, teachers have a much bigger impact on the world than almost every other profession” – Des McKinney – December 18, 2012. We had been talking about the rotating teachers strikes in Ontario and I was struggling to understand the teachers position. Once Des laid this one on me I gave-up any notion that they have an unreasonable sense of entitlement. Let’s face it, teachers have shaped every single person I talk to each day and my ability to earn a living is the result of a lot of their intervention. Teachers are kind of important.

Language alters the context which impacts how we view the world – Heather Arthur – May 4, 2012. During our first date, we were talking about the fact that we were both single. I commented that all of my past relationships had failed. Heather gave me the sour face and said “change the context, try saying that you have had great experiences with some amazing people and now you are all growing forward with life.” So I said it and immediately felt my past unfold into something more palatable. I’ve done this with a bunch of other things and have used this technique with some of my clients with similar success.

Thoughts created feelings which create actions, change the thoughts and notice how the feelings and actions change” – Leigh Moore – February 20, 2012. After my dad died I was having some struggles piecing certain things together. Leigh gave me some therapy and focused on one thing that was going to change my state very quickly. She noticed that some of the things I was saying weren’t based on an objective reality and were based on an internal narrative that wasn’t working for me. Her coaching created the possibility that things were not how I thought they were and as soon as I introduced a different possibility I started to feel differently.

How you think you’ll feel about things in the future is different from how you will feel about them – Life – anytime in 2012. I knew my dad was going to die for 6 weeks before he actually passed. But when it happened, how I felt about it wasn’t anything like how I thought I would feel about it. I was sad, but there were moments of gratitude, joy, and nothing at all. The lesson I’m taking out of it is to just accept that things are going to happen and that I am going to feel something when they do, but not to spend much time thinking about what the feelings will be because I’m going to get it wrong.

How you feel right after something happens is not the same as how you will feel in 3 months, but how you feel about it in 3 months is usually how you will feel about it in a year” – Des McKinney January 30, 2012. The day after my dad died I asked Des how he felt. Instead of answering the question I asked he decided to change my life and reveal the answer to a more existential question. Right after something happens or as it happens we’ll feel very strongly about it. That probably won’t last.

This is part one. Last year presented me with some amazing growth opportunities that I dived into.

A Call To Action Becomes A Possibility When The Consequences Get Closer

Some political problems, like the impending fiscal cliff, cannot be solved until the very last moment, because the external pressure has to be so high that politicians can actually get forgiven for making the painful choice. If a Republican had acted 3 years ago and voted to increase taxes or a Democrat has voted to dramatically cut spending there would have been backlash from some of their supporters; they would have lost a lot of them and risked not getting reelected. But now, doom is so close that things have reversed – politicians face alienating their electorate by resisting tax increases or spending cuts. The notion of things falling apart in less than a month is a big motivator for creating the possibilities that become actions and solutions.

This tendency for action or different action to be taken as we get closer to the consequences is not isolated to politics because it seems to be a quality of most humans.

For example:

“The doctor told me that I needed to get into better shape.” This is usually interpreted by them as “I am going to die soon” and this is a compelling why.

“One of my friends / family had a heart attack and they are younger than me.” This too is interpreted as “I am going to die soon.”

Most drug addicts need to hit bottom before they stop using – death needs to be the next logical step in their addiction.

Many people who stop smoking do so only when they view the consequences (cancer, emphysema, etc…) as being inevitable if they continue to smoke.

Many students hold off studying until they view there to be no more time to waste.

Take a moment to think about your own behavior and that of those around you – how often are pragmatic actions tabled until they become crisis actions?

So what?

Be it your eighth cigarette or your 50000th, the threat of illness is always the reason why you should not smoke.

Being overweight or under exercised always increases your chance of dying early – this doesn’t become the reality the moment the doctor tells you to move more and eat better, or because someone you know has a heart attack.

Doing drugs always lowers your potential and does some damage to your body.

Consider the possibility that the “why” that seems to come to light as the consequences get closer is ALWAYS the why.

The Stories We Tell Are Not Reality But BECOME Reality

We are story tellers, almost all of us. The stories we tell, the really good ones, we tell not to others, but to ourselves. It is that simple. We learn to not tell them to others because they tend not to receive them very effectively. Others tend to argue with us about them, tell us that they are not a good reflection of reality or that there is another possibility that we have not considered. So, over time, we learn to keep our mouths shut and firm-up our view about what these stories mean.

The impact of these stories can be powerful, often more powerful than reality; which the stories eventually become.

Most of the migration away from objective reality occurs when we are young and these early experiences lay the foundation for one to more easily accept things that are not reflective of how others see the world.

For example, at school, an example is made out of a good student for speaking out of turn. For one reason or another the teacher decides to single them out for talking to one of their friends while other more rowdy students are also talking. This has the impact of getting the class to be quiet, but it can also create a story based on conflicting evidence within the good student that being consistently bad is an effective way to mitigate the wrath of the teacher. While this small tale seems innocuous, if the young person adapts this as a coping strategy they are well on the way to throwing academic potential out the window.

The stories that young people tell as a result of abuse are often much more damaging. When a caregiver fails to protect a child from abuse or when they do not respond quickly or decisively to it, children often create stories that have them as being less worthy of protection or love, that have them as objects for other peoples enjoyment or have them develop personality disorders that make movement into and through adulthood challenging or obnoxious.

Without proper scope or divergent opinions, abuse can be normalized and carried forward through these stories. Parents who chronically beat their children raise kids who continue this pattern – not because the children necessarily believe it is right but because they don’t know that it isn’t appropriate. Without proper guidance and role-modelling, what is common is normalized and the pattern of abuse continues.

These stories get traction in our minds and they are sticky. It can take years of therapy to identify and loosen a story to the point of it relinquishing its virulent grip. Even then, the stories may have become part of the individuals identity such that they ALWAYS pop-up and will require constant effort to hold back.

The key is a reality check when things start to look or feel off with the young people in your life. Ask lots of questions and provide lots of information about your experience of objective reality. Ask about their stories and listen closely to their answers, there will be a wealth of information contained within them that will light-up parts of their minds that may be destined to become their future reality.

Motivated Reasoning – How To Dissipate Cognitive Dissonance

At dinner the other night, Leeno brought-up the concept of Motivated Reasoning in the context of addressing feelings of cognitive dissonance. I had previously thought about the mechanism by which someone moves forward with an illogical assumption or belief in-spite of their level of intelligence or ability to collect information and draw objective conclusions.

An example would be the belief that you can have a cheat meal because you spent 20 minutes on the treadmill. If you want to avoid gaining weight, generally you need to exercise or burn off more calories than you eat. 20 minutes on a treadmill will burning off about 150 calories which isn’t enough for a meal.

Motivated reasoning comes into play when we are seeking evidence to support or refute our preexisting beliefs. In fact, holding a particular point of view will very often determine where we look and what we are open to accept as “truth”. It can make us very subjective, judgmental and wrong. The decisions it can lead us to can shorten the length and lower the quality of life.

We seek out view points or evidence that supports our way of thinking because we tend to dislike being wrong or having to face and consider evidence that isn’t compatible. Other than being motivated to avoid the pain associated with the feelings of discomfort associated with opposing points of view, we are also motivated to experience pleasure, pleasure that tends to accompany being “right” about things – remember, the human brain is constantly searching for patterns that match past experience, and with every match there is a release of reward chemicals.

It is for these reason why intelligent people will hold onto ideas / beliefs that are false and run against their better judgment. To combat this tendency, it is important to maintain an open mind when faced with any information, particularly that which confirms what we believe. Given that we seek-out information that supports our point of view and that this information will cause the release of reward chemicals, it is almost impossible to remain spontaneously objective.

This creates a dangerous situation in that an individual can easily be manipulated by those who put forward information that goes along with their existing belief – blinded by the chemical high, their ability to process facts is severely diminished. A group of people can be wiped into a frenzy if they share a belief and someone is able to massage this belief.

When faced with evidence that goes along with your point of view, take a moment to consider it with the same scrutiny you would consider any information. Remain focused and aware of the fact that those sharing the information have the same tendency to lose objectivity when faced with information that confirms their belief. What appears to be evidence may simply be opinion shared by one person to another.

Being Your Past Again – Don’t Create New Behaviors

“You have a tendency to act emotionally at times like this. Just don’t do anything until you know what you feel. To me there’s nothing going on but maybe there is. If it doesn’t hurt to wait, wait. What is actually occurring will become obvious quickly.”

I was on the phone with my brother having asked him for advice, and that is close to what he said.

I thanked him, hung-up and felt better.

One of the many things I admire about my brother is his ability to not respond emotionally to anything. Des and I have chatted in length about it and he’s very clear that it is a skill he has worked hard at and one that is still working to perfect as there are times when he finds himself beginning to feel stuff that isn’t based on the immediate reality.

It’s based on the past, and in particular, an old way of responding to a stimuli or situation that is similar. Some of these things will trigger reflexive responses that are years old and learned from a single event. As is the case with relatively young people, unfamiliar events may only have happened when we were incapable determining a logical response. Rage, anger and destruction based on fear may have been the conditioned response to stimuli and the unconscious expression of this behavior is what flows our when faced with a situation that seems to match.

This way of being is unworkable and Des knows that I have a tendency to act without much rational thought when faced with these moments.

At the time, I wasn’t sure what to do, which is why I called him. I felt a particular way, but couldn’t find a reason for it. By taking the time to think the thing through, it became very apparent what was going on and I was able to see a past action being triggered. It wasn’t right or wrong, it was just outdated and unworkable. Taking the time to realize what was happening created a clearing and the possibility for logical action.

The up-side is that the new logical behavior will begin to become the new response to that particular stimuli. Which is what you need to happen in order to learn and advance your life. Without creating new behaviors, we’ll continue to be exactly what we were in the past.

How To Alter Someones Brain Functioning

People can get inside our heads and toy with our brain. Everyone can do it, most of us do. But it’s a mindless thing because we rarely see what has happened or that we were doing it. It is so wildly simple that it is kind of terrifying, particularly because the ability to have someone impact our thinking is hardwired into our genetic code.

MOST people can and are toyed with in this way a lot, daily. I used to do it to my clients and I’ll do it in most meaningful conversations with people I don’t know or have just met because most people don’t really want to talk openly with strangers in-spite of their desire and need to be social. For this to be effective, you need to trigger one of a number of deeply routed automatic response within a person. Once triggered, the thoughts of a person change in a very predictable way.

You can open someone up by acting the same way you do when you are with someone you are really close to. Smile, make eye contact, listen and engage their words / thoughts, ask inappropriate questions without showing any discomfort, engage them intensely and without judgment, think about their words and let the feelings they create float through you, ultimately make the conversation about them and you will find people say the most incredible things. For example, after someone told me that they were terminally ill I asked them what it was like to be dying, he was scared and while he could see the connection between his actions and his impending doom, he sort of wished that he wasn’t going to die. I learned that it’s tough to not blame your parents when you get molested by a family member and that the most scaring thing in this case was that you no longer trust anyone to look out for their best interests – if their parents couldn’t do it, no one would. An armed forces member told me that he doesn’t talk about his experiences in Afghanistan just that he’s glad to be home safe and with the people he knows how to miss.

My questions were abrupt and inappropriate but my curiosity was genuine and my desire to learn was pure. It’s easy to not feel uncomfortable about doing something with harmless and good intentions, but that doesn’t really matter. By acting like you are intimate friends with someone you get into their brain and trick it into acting as though the conversation is with a best friend.

You can close someone down just as quickly by doing the opposite. Being uncomfortable around them, by being rigid, contrived, disrupting to the natural flow of the conversation, by not being present. Don’t smile or make eye contact. Wait to talk or talk the moment you have something to say. Ask yes / no or data collection questions and move on to the next topic after receiving the data (data is context free facts like dates, times, yes or no). Basically think about and engage the other person as though they don’t matter very much because once they sense their lack of importance they will close down.

Assume a dominate / parent-like position and actions, you can get their brain to spontaneously run antiquate processes from the past. They will unconsciously take on and display child-like behavior and display the actions of a subordinate figure – raising your voice, taking a overbearing stance. By acting child-like you can often get other people to take on a parent-like role – appearing vulnerable or helpless will often trigger spontaneous parenting type actions.

Effective sales people know and employ these forms of conversational / behavior control all the time, as do most compliance practitioners. Fortunately there has been a recent movement towards information sharing and relationship building in sales, so the need to guard yourself from this type of influence is decreasing. But be warned, it still exists and you will be susceptible to it IF you forget that it can happen.

Filling The Silence With Our Fear

In driving to the gym the other day, Heather was relating a story about a conversation she had during the day. The conversation had been with a married coworker who had moved from overseas with her family. The lady misses her parents and during a chat with her husband, she became aware of just how much she was missing her father. When her husband asked her what was wrong, she didn’t tell him.

“Bet that didn’t go too well” I said.

“How could it have? We fill in the blanks with stories about us” was Heather’s reply.

She coached her friend to not say “nothing” when there was something wrong, particularly when having a conversation with someone who cares a lot about you, given the tendency to fill-in an unknown with fear and items based on their insecurity. Her recommendation was for the sharing of thoughts and feelings with those who care for you to create intimacy and fosters a sense of close openness. It will improve a relationship as it helps to keep a tight focus on the things that are important and real.

From a psychological point of view, filling in the silence / blanks with fear and insecurity makes sense. We are the perceptual center of the universe so our initial point of reference is always going to be our own. As a species, we don’t really gain an understanding that other people have a point of view until mid to late teens; although some never grasp this understanding. It can take a lot of mental effort and willingness to consider and see the world from another perspective as we will never have any direct experience with it and the action of seeing the world from another perspective requires abstract and imaginative thinking.

From a sociological perspective, we need a sense that we have some control over our environment so we see ourselves as being the cause of other people’s actions. We are almost hyper-aware of any indicators that we are not liked because these things serve as a warning that we are about to become alienated from the group; a need to belong to the group in an antiquated carryover from our evolutionary past given that isolation would usually mean death within a couple of days. As is the way when we look for something, we find evidence for our pending eviction in the actions of other people. Most of the time, we take-on responsibility and blame for the silence and fill in the missing information with things that we could have controlled.

The modern world is very different from the world our ancestors came from so many of our behavioral defaults are not relevant. Loners can do very well in north America and one could argue that many of the people at the top of the corporate ladder benefit from approaching the world in a way that does not give as much consideration to the possible impact that actions have on other people.

But relationships are not corporations so we need to engage our partners in a way that is sensitive to their tendency to regard themselves as the cause of things. The quality of the relationship will improve dramatically when what is actually going on is related to them so they don’t have to make up what it is they did to cause what is occurring.

NOTE – after I wrote this I realized that I’ve observed others leaving out the critical information in an attempt to manipulate how people think, feel and act. I’d recommend someone be cautions when advancing a relationship that has some or is becoming rife with silence instead of explanations.

Interesting Stuff About Conflicts of Interest

When there is a conflict of interest, people can easily abandon their ethics and serve their own needs. Even good people. Not because they are complete jerks (or jerks at all), but because they don’t actually see what they are doing.

In this clip, Dan Ariely tells a story about why you shouldn’t trust your dentist. The dentist has something to gain from selling you dental services / products but you don’t necessarily NEED the service / product. Gray / silver colored fillings are functionally the same as white once yet the white ones tend to be sold first.

The entire conversation is great, shocking actually. But it gave me some insight into why I despised selling supplements when I was a trainer – because someone was gaining from them being sold and it usually wasn’t the person who buys them.

So what?

By knowing that your service providers are capable of shifting their ethics when they stand to gain from a particular outcome that they can influence, you will maintain a level of objectivity that will empower you to make the decisions that are right for you. Keeping this in mind is always the correct thing to do, particularly when faced with the fact that they may not even be aware of their subjective bias.

Their lack of knowledge is actually what obligates you to maintain your objectivity as it serves your best interests and helps them to maintain their ethical identity.

Why is it so tough to call someone on their bias?

As Dan states in the video “once you meet someone face to face it is incredibly unpleasant to mistrust them.” It can seem like (and be received as) a slap in the face to them and it serves as a reminder that we can’t actually trust ourselves when it comes to vetting bull-crap. The second point is true for everyone so the first point is irrelevant – so what if they or you feel mistrusted, the science supports the fact that people CANNOT be trusted when there is a conflict of interest. When someone stands to gain something, there is a very good chance that they will lie without realizing that they are lying.

Your call to action

Stand-up for your best interests. Ask them for the proof when they make a claim. If something is described as better, find out if this is based on evidence or is just an opinion. Educate yourself. Perform your due-diligence before you buy. Learn to accept that bad feeling you get when you say “no” to someone by realizing that you can buy later. Notice the way you feel when being engaged by others and become aware that being manipulated feels like something; if that feeling is triggered, understand what is happening and move on.

Going Every Direction From Now

Something funny is happening to my understanding of time. I noticed it starting to shift when I started taking my NLP course and the instructor asked where the past is. I pointed to my right, some people pointed behind them and others pointed to the left. I used to view it to be located to the left, but since I teach so much and spend a lot of time directly across from other people that I’ve reversed the location of my past.

I didn’t think it mattered much until I notice that I didn’t understand time.

Time is a word, it isn’t a thing. Most people have an understanding of time, an abstract odd kind of thing that they can’t put into words very well. We’re all good at using cliché to create a feeling of what it is, but these don’t move us closer to an actual understanding of what, if anything, it is.

I maintain that time is simply a way of looking at past, present and future. A shared understanding of an imaginary line in our heads which goes right and left, or forward and back from a point in the middle that we consider now. It helps us organize our memories in a way that allows us to see events as happening before or after other events. It seems like a straight line and there are nicely spaced increments understood to be minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc….

But this understanding isn’t very accurate for me anymore. It implies that there is a future and a past, and that the past is an unchanging thing existing somewhere to the right, left or behind us. It implies that there is one future laying in the opposite direction of the past. The only thing I like about this understanding is that there is a point on the line called now which seems to move magically along the line.

What no longer works for me about this model is that the past does change, it isn’t set in stone and the future is made up an billions of possibilities. The line is a cone shaped in the future and an imaginary cone shape to the past.

The abstract piece of my developing understanding is that while we cannot go back in time and alter what happened physically – in the case of the above time cone, what the light does – we can go back in time and alter what we think about what happened. Doing this will shift the location of now and create new possibilities for the future. And we are free to go back and alter whatever we like, whenever we like and make it whatever we want. All of this is possible because of the nature of time. Remember, time is a word and not a thing. Things don’t change, words can have many meanings.

So what?

Making the decision to see the history as changeable and not static opens up a world of new possibilities. For example, the crappy things that happened to you, they can be lessons instead of moments of victimization. The great things that happened can be moved back into the future and experienced over and over and over again. Your strongest moment can be cut and pasted into any times of weakness, and your weakest time in the past can have present or future resources carried into it. You can take the resources from someone else, even someone make believe, and add them to your past, present or future. All of this can happen if you accept that time isn’t a line but a ball of possibilities branching off in all directions.