Archive for the ‘Relationships’ Category

Feedback Helps Growth

Thursday, August 26th, 2010
The Truck has a new paint job!

The Truck has a new paint job!

To keep growing it takes courage to seek feedback and hear the truth from people that are close to us.  A new friend, Gary has been giving me feedback about how I am being.  I must admit that for the most part I did not understand what he was trying to tell me and I also had a lot of resistance to the message that I was hearing.   After all, I had already done a significant amount of personal development work and I really like the person that I have become.  Especially when I compare myself now to whom I use to be.

One of the things that I really appreciate about myself is that I am a committed and avid learner.  So although I had resistance to the message that I was hearing from Gary, I started to check out this messages with other people that are close to me.  Two things happened.   There were those people who love me for exactly who I am and the way that I am today.  These people questioned me about my desire and motivation to change.  Their basic position was that we are fundamentally who we are and that I am just fine the way I am.  I am just fine the way I am and sometimes the people who love us may not be helping us to grow.

I continued to seek more feedback. Due all the emotional energy that I had resolved over the last two years my intuition told me that Gary might have a point and something else might be possible.  One of my friends, Jim, indicated to me that we enter into intimate relationship with people to learn a lesson or resolve something in our life from the past.  Gary was clearly trying to illuminate something in me that was a blind spot.  The problem with a blind spot is that it is very tough to see it and have a clear picture of what could be resolved.  I explored the issue with another friend of mine, Peter, and he told me exactly what Gary had been trying to express, only he expressed it with a very visual image.  He gave the feedback to me in a classic way that put all my defences at rest.  He told me what was wonderful about me and then told me where the improvement might be.

Here is what Peter had to say.  “You have all these wonderful gifts that you use to support people through their turmoil and right now you are transporting these gifts around in a beat up pick-up truck.  These gifts that you have are so wonderful that they deserve to be transported in a brand new Chevy Silverado 3500HD pickup truck, with leather seats, air conditioning and a fantastic tie down system to hold all your wonderful gifts in place.”  When Peter painted this picture for me, I got exactly what Gary had been trying to tell me.  It wasn’t a matter of me being good enough or not good enough, it was that there is another way for me to be and that is “elegant.”

How do I become elegant?  No idea, but I am clear that it is possible and I know that the first step in accomplishing anything is to have a clear intent. And now I have that!

I am grateful to all my friends who provided feedback for me to explore this issue in greater depth.  It is awareness that allows us to continue growing.

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Trust in Relationships

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

I read some notes last night from a mastermind meeting that I went to about 2 months ago.   What my friend provided me with was a redefinition of the word responsibility.  The etymology of the word means being  ”morally accountable for one’s actions” is attested from 1836.  He redefined it as being able to “respond to possibility.”

Yesterday I had a major and profound insight in my life.

I am in the process of  living into my vision of having a virtual business that I can conduct from any place into the world. My first adventure will be to live in, and work from, Belize for three months at the end of this year.  I have one friend there, my dive instructor who I am in contact with on Facebook.  I let him know that I was starting to look on the internet for a place to stay and he offered to find me a place.

When he came back with a solution to my problem of finding a place with internet access, I showed up with a whole host of additional questions.   I felt a sense of nervousness in my body.  Would this place be OK?  Would I like living here?  As a guy could I trust him to make this decision for me?  Not withstanding all these questions, I told him to go ahead, but could I possibly see some pictures.

What I realized yesterday was I have never trusted a man to look after me and make an appropriate decision for me.  I have always had to have control of my own life.  On an energetic level if I don’t trust that a man will look after me, then who do you think that I attract into my life.  Men, where I am the driving force, men who can trust me to look after them.  Needless to say at some point either the man or I became unhappy and things fell apart.

Men are historically conditioned to be providers and as a woman I want to know that I can trust a man to provide for me, even if I earn more money.  Being a provider goes beyond money, it relates to a man being on purpose, having a target that they are going for, and having a zest for life.   So it is interesting that my inability to trust was sabotaging what I want most from fully showing up in my life.

When I surrendered to the idea of trusting my friend to choose an appropriate place for me, I could feel the flutters of fear in my chest.  I was actually afraid to let someone look after me.  Being a voracious learner in life, I have requested that my friend not send me pictures of the place he rents for me!

I said I wanted this to be an adventure and the adventure starts now.  I want to be responsible; I want to be able to respond to the possibilities as they occur.  Resistance and fear may show up and I am committed to resolving these in my life.

What is it that you don’t trust, be it at work or in relationships?  What is it that you are afraid of?  If you’re a woman, what are you doing or how are you being to create this situation?  If you’re a man, how ready are you to fully support the trust of a woman?

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Why does back stabbing occur at work?

Friday, April 16th, 2010

This statement was posted on face book:

‘There are days when I hear my friends’ stories of corporate politics and backstabbing … I wonder… why do people have to play that way?”

In this month’s news letter from Catalyst Business Coaching I will talk about this from the corporate perspective and how to respond appropriately.  Here I would like to talk about this from my personal perspective.

People who responded to the post indicated that people behave this way due to watching reality TV and drama magazines.  This is the social conditioning argument, they are taught this in family life, school, team sports, dating, and the list goes on.  ”This is a sickness that pervades more than just the work place.”   I agree it is everywhere, because we as people are everywhere, and we have different kinds of insecurities.

From my own experience as I look back on who I was in the corporate world 10 years ago, the back stabbing seemed to come from a place of fear, lack of abundance, wanting to be better than someone else and looking for approval. Essentially I wanted to be loved and was afraid that I might not be. I felt separate from others and hence entered into competition with them. Unfortunately it was a game that was all about ME rather than a game that was about US.

Don’t get me wrong.  At the time I believed that I was acting in the best interest of the WE. I thought that my solution was the best solution and the right way to go.  So I excluded other’s opinions and when they didn’t agree with me I would talk about it with my “friends at work”. I would speak about how the other person was wrong and I would use great logical arguments as to why I was right.  Was this backstabbing?

Do we promote back stabbing even more when one person’s perspective is fueled by gossip and a dash of embellishment?  How many of us tell stories about other’s?  Even after all the work I have done, my ego still wants to be right and I have to catch myself when I speak about others.  My ego continues to behave as if I am separate from others and yet I know that I am connected to everyone.  It is a constant practice to be impeccable with the words I speak.

Jacque

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Finding our True Self

Friday, February 26th, 2010

The blog post below contains a story about Lora and her search for her true self after divorce.  It took divorce for her to start uncovering who she really is and what makes her happy.

The Search for Authenticity   http://bit.ly/aeKmT4

The question was posed, “why is this lesson one that so many of us have to learn the hard way?” “How can we help our children so they don’t have to learn the hard way?”

Why did I have to do it the hard way?  It was because I already had an idea of what life was suppose to be like as I matured into a young adult.  Get a good education, get a good job, find a man, have kids (this step never materialized) and this is what life is all about.  I continued  on this path until one day I realized I had lost all sense of happiness.   It wasn’t until then that I started asking the questions; What is life about?  What do I want?  I then went on a journey to find happiness.

On the journey I found out that I had to do lots of personal development work to drop off baggage from my growing up.  I think we all develop baggage — emotional conditioning — that we can choose to deal with in adult hood or not.  For me dropping off this baggage has allowed me to find my authentic self — who I really am when I am fully showing up as me.

I think we all need to do this as adults.  It seems to me the problem occurs because we avoid doing this work until a crisis precipitates — such as divorce — and then we start the journey.  In my case I started when I had major stress at work and was looking for happiness.

How do we help our kids?  Let them know that there is another kind of learning that they can do as adults — personal development and spiritual development.   There is more learning to do than what is taught in high school and university.

Is all the personal development learning worth it?  Absolutely.   I love who I have become and how I relate to people and all the opportunities that are in front of me.  Plus I get to use it for the rest of my life.

Jacque

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