3 Habits that Cause Problems

How many times I hear people upset about things they have either no power to change or ones they are unwilling to do the work to change. Think about how much energy is used in this strange diatribe that permeates so many of us. The only person I truly have power over in my life is me—and that feels sketchy at times.

When life is not meeting my expectations it is probably time to examine them rather than rant or drop into a funk. I have found my efforts to change life have proved fruitless and frustrating. This is not difficult to verify, and yet it escapes the attention it deserves. A blind spot in the psyche?

Equally counterproductive is self judgment. It is the cat of nine tails used to beat ourself up with. If it changed things I would be all for it. In my experience self judgment reeks havoc with making changes. Yep, that's what I said. Think about it. There you are going about your life and you find yourself in one of those, what was I thinking moments. And, the next thing you know you are busy berating yourself… then what?

For me, after that is labeling myself bad and/or wrong. At which point my clarity of thought, and call to action vanish. Things grind to a halt and the failing I have experienced moves into the pile used to affirm my inadequacies.

Here is a thought, review the problem and ask yourself how you might have done it different.

Third on today's list is giving unsolicited advice. My tendency to do this has required attention to making a change. Many of us like to tell others what they should do. How many of us think it is helpful when we are on the other end of it? Since this work is my passion it takes a kind of vigilance to hold back advice and ask if the other wants some feedback. I have found learning to do this has been a relationship saver.

While making the effort to do any of these is a big job. They each seem to bring serenity into my life and those who are around me. What have you let go of that has made a difference for you? 

Endings and Beginnings

As the final days of the year run out it seems a fitting time to review what has been working in my life and what hasn’t. Each year I find it useful to see how I have done in regard to whatever aim I have taken on for that year. The time passes whether I have an aim or not, though for me it takes on a deeper relevance when there is something I want to work with. It is a way to direct my attention. The first time I did this was 30 years ago when I decided to live in a question. Each time I felt the urge to argue with someone I asked my self the question: Do you want to be right, or do you want this relationship to work? By the way, my answer varied dependent upon the circumstances. I kept that same question in front of me for three years while I learned to intercept default responses. Over the course of those years I learned new ways to deal with upsets that were not self righteous.

I have had many questions and aims I have worked with since then. I find they are best when they are simply stated and easily remembered. It is hard to keep an aim when it is to complex. At least for me it has been. At another time I remember working with one about feelings of competition that would arise in me. I had seen that at times that the need to win, or be best at something would feel like a force that overtook my good sense. I saw how this sensation would feel compulsive and how I behaved with others did not leave a good feeling with me.

An aim is personal and when it carries a true desire to alter some habitual behavior that no longer serves me it is a great tool. So, as the new year is right around the corner I invite you to join me in setting your own aim for the coming year. What would like like to aim for in the coming year? 

Happy Holidays

  The holidays seem to put (me) many of us into more stress than other times of the year. It is a time of expectations, family and expenditures; each with their own type of pressure. For this reason I have found it important to make sure I have some quiet time to actively engage in what I want to experience. Clearly from years past I remember the Kitchen Nazi within that seemed to make an appearance at each Christmas dinner. A few years ago, I realized how she popped up when I was preparing and serving the dinner--wringing the joy right out of me. Since then I have fired her, although she tries to grab my attention when I am not careful.

   My wish for all is that you do what you need, to make this time of year as peaceful as you can for yourself and those around. I wish you a wonderful holiday and personally I will be happy to see the new year and my newest addition to our family Evan who may just be our best Christmas present ever.

Partners and Problems - Listening

    When an issue comes up between me and another, my default position is defense. Usually so is theirs. I have discovered I am not listening to what happened to them when I am in the middle of explaining my side/position. And… I do not feel heard when they are explaining their side/position.

When someone is talking about me, it is difficult to hear it about them. Yet, when I can it reveals their perception of me. It is how they have heard or seen me, it is how I appear to them. Now the big question for me becomes, what was my part in that perception? Uncomfortable as this was for me in the beginning I eventually was able to see how my reactions kept me from learning. I can not let go of something I defend and the other cannot be heard as long as I refuse to acknowledge the effect it had. 

Partners in Problems #2

    Some subjects that need to be talked about are difficult. They feel dangerous to bring up. Confrontation is not something many of us look forward to. When confrontation would flare up somewhere I was often at a loss as to how to deal without an argument. I knew that wasn’t what I wanted. So one day I said that.

“I don’t want to fight with you and I don’t know how to fix this without you. I want a solution that works for both of us.  One we are both okay with."
I said this out of desperation—it was the truth. It opened up a dialog that hadn't been available before. I found it far more fruitful to look for a solution. 
My default position is being right.  It is necessary for me when feeling the energy of confrontation, to remember I am looking for the solution... unless I'm not.

Partners and Problems

Here’s the problem. Two people love each other and usually do well together until what seems right to each, is not in agreement. So how do they keep from arguing with each other over who is right?   


When I am in a relationship with another and we are in disagreement, to the point that the tension can be felt between us. I find my default mode is defensive, meaning I am listening for each place I disagree; I am framing my response to defend my position. I speak/think, using the metaphors of battle. I am now acting as though one of us is right and the other wrong. This does not usually end well in my experience; and rarely produces something I want. In a relationship when one partner has a problem, both are at the effect. I find it is much easier to talk when we have a problem and we are looking for a way to resolve it.

More about this tomorrow - 

Feels real--is it?

   One of the things that caught me off guard often was the automatic way I assumed that because I had some particular feeling the thoughts I had about it were real. If I was angry it followed (in my mind) I had a good reason to be. If I was scared, was the threat real? Observing my reaction to things over time led to some interesting realizations.

My emotions, are real; whether the cause is real or not. My body responds chemically and my breathing changes.  The reality of the sensations brings a sense of reality to the reason(s) that flood my mind. While I might have seen this at times in my life I had not pondered how it was the underpinning to many unnecessary upsets. Feelings were often prompted by familiar signals that I reacted to before there was time to think about the situation. I could be angry because of an assumption I was making. The anger was real whether the assumption was true or not.

This finding for me opened a door to making changes I had not considered before. My emotions happen so much faster than my ability to think things through.  Letting this truth seep in has allowed me to shake lose of some of those automatic upsets I had not known how to release.

Owning our Pettiness

Every once in awhile I would catch sight of my pettiness. 
    Those moments when: I hoped something bad would happen to someone I was angry with; I judged without knowing anything more than some feeling I experienced; I begrudged someone something I didn’t have; I made others wrong for doing the same things. These thoughts and feelings were peppered throughout my life in many forms. They were snippets of negativity.

It did not take long to notice that when I felt successful at something what followed, a bit behind, was some snippet that seemed to cancel out my good deed; by reminding me of a bad one. It was my own self sabotage routine. My ego was forever telling me how good or bad I was. Until I was able to observe it without taking sides it felt like it was me.  

What are you listening for?

Do you listen in a way that creates problems?

Things done habitually fade into a kind of white noise background that I cease being aware of; unless something unusual alerts me and/or I place attention on it. Included in this are the habits of listening acquired over time. I have learned to check in with myself after a conversation goes south, meaning I became defensive, offensive and/or both. I have discovered three common ways I listen that take me where I don’t want to go:

1. I listen to see whether I agreed or not.

2. I listen to see if they thought I was at fault 

   for something.

3. I listen to be right.

It was all about me when that happened. This way of listening is definitely my default setting when my attention is elsewhere. No matter what kind of defense I used it rarely made anything better. It did not produce what I wanted.

I learned to listen for what they were feeling, were the angry, hurt, felt demeaned by some way I had acted? Had I meant to have them feel the way they did? These were different ways to relate to an old problem. If I didn’t want the result I had to try new things. I saw their responses as a combination of what I put out and how they were wired. When I stopped justifying, I caught glimpses of what they had witnessed. I could see how I came off to them. Many times it was unpleasant to look at.

Early in working with this it all happened after the fact. The incident would occur, the reaction would take place and I would blame myself for not knowing how to stop it. Now I’m not so afraid to discover where I have been a bulldozer or a jerk. I’m not so invested in keeping those behaviors any more. 

Default Attitudes

    We each have our default positions. It has become important to find mine because they define my limitations real, imagined, and/or both. They are the places where my mind is made up. They define what I believe and what I don’t.

They define the possibilities that show up in any given situation (in the moment). They are a, kind of, prerecorded set of feelings, and attitudes, followed by words that back them up. We each have them, though they can be quite different from one another’s.

Default positions can be found in likes and dislikes, expressions (physical, emotional, language). They are anyplace my reactions are. They filter the possibilities, they are the way I hear myself—inside, the habitual ways my world/life is interpreted. Are habits bad and wrong? It’s easy to default to that, and yet, it would miss the point. Habits, when not observed as habits, define choice.

Here are some examples of what has happened when operating from my defaults:

When told something I already know, I can feel self-righteous indignation come up, I internally contract, and have a thought like: What do you think, I’m stupid? I didn't get to vote on whether this response came up or not. It is an upset that looks for places to happen. Default responses are like throwing a dart with a blindfold on. Once in awhile they hit the target and more often than not they don’t.

When asked to do something my first thought is no, I consider this a default setting, as well as the answer “fine,” to how are you? I have friends whose first answer is yes which leaves them in a fix too.

Unfortunately default responses can be counter productive.  Often they are defensive or offensive.  They don't come from reflection and clarity they come from old experiences and habit.  They have left me at odds with people I care about, when I didn’t know how to go inside and find out what I would have wanted to say from my heart. Striking back from a reaction is no longer anything I am interested in nurturing. I work at setting my boundaries while speaking from my heart, not from some habitual defense posture that damages others.

No correcting If there's no problem

    It would appear to me, I was doing fine; then someone or something would come along and upset the applecart. ‘They’ acted someway I did not expect; they were the source of my problem.

My initial reaction to problems had been to see them as taking place outside me; they were caused by others. This view placed me in the familiar role of victim—justifying any retribution I saw fit to express. I could then be self-righteously rude and feel good about it. This perspective gave me no insight into my part in the play. It was about as useful as looking for dropped keys at night, underneath a streetlight, when they have fallen in the dark of the grass.

I needed to look at whether the result I produced was the one I wanted. Perhaps I had just one-upped them, hurt their feelings, maybe I had been flip. Was that the result I wanted? Not any more, was my answer more often than not as I did more and more work in these areas. I had been defending myself for so many years it felt vulnerable to admit the problem. I was addicted to the comfort of familiarity—whether it produced the result I wanted or not.

The value I have found in looking for what is and isn’t working in my life is immense. Only when I could see how my attitudes connected to my behavior and my behaviors, connected to my results, did I see the value in acknowledging what wasn’t working.

When the default setting is blame (myself or the other) attention is hijacked from the solution. From one angle we are problem solving beings when we are not in the midst of proving whose right and whose wrong. You cannot fix what you do not see.   

Black Friday

     The Holidays are here again, and from now until New Years I tend to perceive time as a whirlwind.  This is the way it always seems to me.  I wonder what will happen if I try a new angle on it?  Last year I was ill and unable to do any of the things (except the meal) I would normally do.  Our wonderful children and grand children handled everything for me.  I didn't do it and there was no calamity.  I need to remember that.
    I have banned the kitchen Nazi who used to take me over.  She was anxious and wanted everything to turn out right, to the point she barked orders instead of asking for help. It was a job retiring her.  Her presence is not missed.
     Maybe this year I can remember to seek the spirit, and pay less attention to the shoulds and shouldn'ts  that want to steel my serenity.

Strange and Common Notions

  As my skill observing (without judgment) increased, I saw how predictable many of my feelings were. 


   I remember thinking/imagining I did not get angry often, so when I did, it was righteous anger. Given that something upset me that much, I must be right about it. This was not said outright; it is my default attitude. It’s where the energy, in the words come from. Paying attention (being present) to the impressions coming and the instantaneous reactions to them allowed  discovery of the routines that kicked-in when reactivated. What I thought of as seldom was a distortion.

Observing this act (behavior) and asking the question, did it produce what I wanted. I realized it usually left a bad taste in the relationship. Not the result I wanted. My success rate with changing others was so poor I can’t remember it working.

Ah-ha, the premise was based on the idea that if I could get them to do things the way I wanted; I wouldn’t have to feel the way I did. 


    It is one of those strange notions I lived from and did not think about. It is a common practice to see people try to change others so they don’t have to be upset by them. Saying it out loud; it sounds crazy.

Have you noticed any strange notions?

Prisoner of Habit

    My habitual ways of operating take care of me from one angle—restrict me from another. They give me tried and true methods that have been collected since childhood. Whether they work in the particular instance, age or not. They include, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, postures, gestures, intonations and all the little things others notice about me.

Inundated with impressions; sights, sounds, aromas, textures, temperatures, attitudes, words and more. Some internal place has sorted them all into the responses that belong to me. It looks for what it knows, what it can say, it looks for danger, for signals it needs to respond to. It worries and scolds if I have made a fool of myself, and boasts when I do well. It has developed over time, and with repetition. It is the automatic answer that comes out more often than not when someone says, “How are you?” or saying “God bless you.” after a sneeze. I don’t think about it any more, I hear the sneeze and the words come to mind, wanted or not.

They are mechanical/habituated ways of interpreting my life. To think about them as good or bad is to fall into back into them. A habituated response in not necessarily good or bad. It can be either. The question I found most useful in looking at this is: Is it producing the result I want?  

Finding My Part

   What I know for sure: The only part of things that happen in my life I can do something about, is mine. God knows I tried fixing other’s parts for years to no avail. People don’t want to be fixed, it makes them feel broken.

Until realizing what I can and cannot do, I spent time on things I had no power over. I cannot change people, events or who I was born to. I cannot change the times I was born into, or the things that happen to me after they happened. What’s important to remember, is I am the common denominator in my life. So, when fate follows me and the same kind of things happen to me repeatedly, it's safe to assume I am participating. This is both the good and the bad news.

Bad news; whatever I am doing now is not working.  There will be no new result, unless I do something different. Trying to change them was not working.  I had to find my part.

I can’t fix what isn’t acknowledged. For instance: 
I did not start dealing with my problems until I almost hurt my daughter in a rage. Scared, by the thoughts in my head. It was as though the venom in my anger shocked me into seeing from the outside; to see and feel from inside her. It was some other kind of awake. It had its own flavor—something unfamiliar.  I saw my anger naked, bare of excuses, and justifications; out from under defenses. 


Another time I saw that as long as I thought my sarcasm made me cleaver I could not own how often it was mean. The sad part was how fast I was to defend these behaviors. They are but a sampling of what I saw when I could look without dropping into some kind of beat-myself-up-party.

The good news; As long as I can figure out what my part is I can learn to do something different (if I want a different outcome).
When something is bothering me I find there are uncomfortable sensations in my body. They are so familiar they go unnoticed unless I am attentive.  Paying attention to how my body responds in emotional moments has made me aware of how connected one is with the other  Calming the body, calms the mind too. I find it essential to tune into my breathing, which can stop or become shallow when upset.
Learning to look at my part as though it is information rather than condemnation has opened up the possibility of new ways to respond.  

Depression - Having and Being

 Depression deprives me of relativity, there is no up—only down. Its as though a net has been set out to catch good-time thoughts and prevent awareness. It is a place of distortions, like a hall of mirrors. The difference being, I know the hall of mirrors is a distortion. When experiencing depression I am the thoughts and feelings that pass through me. 


 Having feelings and being the feelings are distinct from one another.

History and/or Experience

 Once married to Stu I was faced with a dilemma. I knew about his attachment to women as friends. I often reacted to it--feeling uncomfortable, anxious, and withdrawn--followed by crusty, sharp words meant to control or back him off. It was one of those default reactions that came when some part of me felt threatened (real or not).

I noticed that my fear about Stu having lunch with a female friend came from my history; not from my experience of Stu, the friend, or our relationship. While this was true and a rational thought. Experience told me feelings trump intellect more than not. I pondered this off and on over time and realized that when my reaction is born out of history it feels no different than when it’s the real thing.

I have emotional hot spots where the reactions come faster than I know how to stop them. Like flinching, my feelings of jealousy and anger came unbidden. The threat needn’t be real only imagined. The sensations—real enough to make me indulge in a  parade-of-horribles  that were front and center. I had done enough work by then to know that controlling someone so I wouldn’t have to feel jealous, envious or begrudging was not feasible. It was some kind of insanity that didn’t work.

Stu understood I couldn’t stop my feelings from coming up. I was okay with him having lunch with female friends, and I needed to share what it brought up for me. The fears of losing another person in my life. My part was learning to recognize this as a fear of mine... and realizing controlling him would not resolve my issue.  
    This was powerful for me in that it gave me a way to work against feelings that could be destructive when I took them at face value. We went through quiet a few issues in our marriage this way. 
Discussing how certain things affected each of us allowed for close connections that carried us through difficult times.

So the moral of this story is to check in on what I’m feeling and the thoughts it brings up. I try to see if my experience of this person fits with what I have going on in my head. Many times I found it was nothing more than ghosts from the past. I try and check out what I am picking up on these days and assess whether it is my history, my experience, neither or both.

The only way to know for sure is to ask myself, “Is that my experience of Stu?” My reaction habitually comes up regardless of whether the threat is real or not.

The Truth Doesn't Mean Anything

The first time I heard that it made no sense to me.  Today I keep it in mind when I want to speak from my heart.

This view on truth reveals why so many communications take an unwanted turn. Truth has no meaning on its own; it just is. For example if I were to say to someone (in a matter of fact way) “the glass is on the table” it would be, simply, the truth. Then imagine I raise my voice, and glare yelling, “The glass is on the table!” Now I have imparted a meaning where there was none before, with the exception of information. While the statement is true the delivery has judgment attached to it.

When I aware enough to remember it, this revelation has helped me avoid many a problem. When another's voice carries judgment my typical response is one of defense or retreat. Depending on my objective this is essential to understand. When I am looking to resolve an issue, with anyone, speaking the truth without some implied judgment is far more potent, as it does not call forth the same resistance.


Truth as a weapon is not exactly the truth.