Personal Fires

One thing at a time. It’s all you’re capable of. Whether or not you believe yourself to be working on many things, it’s not actually true. You are actually working on one thing while being distracted by others.

You can see that this is true if you become aware of your mental chatter when you are focused on a task. If you are thinking about what’s coming up next, or what troubles you may have getting it finished, then these are simply concepts which are floating through your mind.

These concepts aren’t always necessarily helpful. So it’s important to be aware of them. The reason to be aware of them is so that you can recognize how much energy they are taking from you. If you have background noise going on while you are trying to put your efforts into something; can you see how that will require more energy?

It’s likely that you feel stressed out, because you don’t know how to quiet this mental chatter. Or possibly it’s an anxious feeling which you constantly experience. It’s as if something is missing from the present moment but your not quite sure what.

It’s difficult when this mental habit overshadows everything you attempt to do. You may wonder how come you are not as focused as you once were. You might think that you are not capable of dedicating yourself to only one thing at a time.  Nothing could be further from the truth. You are completely capable. It is this capability which is contributing to the mental feedback you’re getting.

It’s not necessarily your fault that this mental habit has developed. We live in a very fast paced society, where more and more is expected from us. We are expected to keep up with work, take care of the children, communicate with friends and family, and maintain a household. On top of that, you may be attending school in order to acquire advanced skills to advance in your career. All this is going on with the background noise of the news media contributing to our worries.

While it may feel as if the news is important,  we should not allow the media to have an impact on the present concern. If you are constantly worried about the economy, or war, or political decisions, there is no wonder why you can’t stay focused! There is simply too much on your plate at one time.

If you want to get rid of that nagging voice; then you need to make a decision. You must make a conscious choice that you will not distract yourself with thoughts that do not have a present concern. Sure, at some point you may want to address these issues, but you must do it in your own time. You cannot save the world, and focus on your current task  at the same time!

I know that this mindset might seem to belittle some of the cares which you have right now. So what though! Are these cares helping you or hindering you? I think it would be safe to say that they aren’t contributing to your success. After all, successful people are focused. They know what they can control, and what they cannot. A successful individual knows that you can only handle one thing at a time.

Perhaps the image that you have of a successful person is someone who is constantly working. Is it important to be constantly moving in order to attain success? What does success mean to you? Are you comparing it to someone else’s idea of success?

I bring up success because I think it’s what most people tend to be striving for in one way or another. I could be wrong about this. Of course the idea of success is different for everyone. Some may think that success is eliminating poverty or disease; while others see success as acquiring material wealth. Whatever your idea of success is, it must be realized one step at a time. To put too much pressure on yourself while you work towards your goals, will not help you. In fact, whether you reach your goals or not,  will you have enjoyed the process of getting there?

If you are the type of person who has thoughts, concepts or ideas constantly on the backburner, then let them stay there. Just make sure that they are not showing themselves as a string of thoughts which interrupt you while you are dedicated to working on something else. I know this statement might seem contradictory. How is it possible to have something on the backburner, without having constant thoughts related to it? Easy – write it down, and forget about it. You will come back to it, if it’s important.

The habit of staying completely present may not come easily at first. Though, I highly recommend making a committed effort to do so. If you start to see yourself as someone who is highly aware, focused and present,  rather than someone who is always worried or distracted, then you will surely notice a change in your thinking.

In order to become a person who is focused entirely in the present, I strongly recommend practicing meditation. If meditation is something which you are completely uninterested in, thats ok. Maybe you would be better off starting a hobby. Or take an activity which you already do, and just remind yourself to be completely immersed while you do it. Eventually this mindset will carry over to other activities.

Acting from this centered, highly focused state will allow you to access creative insights which you may have been missing out on before. Have you ever noticed, that while you are just relaxed and having fun, interesting ideas seem to pop into your head out of nowhere? It has everything to do with a state of “flow”.

I’ve challenged myself personally to act more in a state of present awareness. Within a short period of time I’ve noticed a dramatic change in the amount of mental chatter I consciously engage in. I encourage you to challenge yourself, and see how it feels to “turn off” the mental chatter and just let go. I promise you that you will be glad that you did. After all, what are you really missing out on?

I’m a big fan of the TV show ‘Two And A Half Men’, and a line from that show is the basis for this post.

For those who may not be familiar with the show, it’s about two brothers. Charlie, played by Charlie Sheen, is a hard-drinking playboy who lives on the beach in Malibu. For him, life is a game. His brother, Alan, played by John Cryer, has been forced to come live with Charlie after divorce puts him into financial straits. Alan is uptight and anal, and resents the ease with which good things come to Charlie.

In the episode in question, Charlie has injured his “male parts” while having sex, and Alan has accompanied him to the hospital to be inspected. The doctor turns out to be a beautiful young woman, and Charlie can’t help but hit on her. Alan is amazed and appalled, and when the doctor leaves the room, he gives Charlie an earful of his opinion.

Charlie’s response: “The difference between you and me is that when life gives me a lemon, I make lemonade. When life gives you a lemon, you bite in and suck it inside out.”

Anyone who has spent any time in self-reflection or self-improvement studies is likely nodding his or her head right now. It’s pretty easy to see how attitude effects us all. What’s not as easy is knowing how to make changes in our attitude. I’m looking forward to sharing more perspectives, techniques, and tools for doing just that here in 2010.

Wishing you a great year!
Tim Star

You are far more likely to receive the kind of treatment you expect than that which you do not expect.

In my last post, I said that “relationships are negotiated, even if no words are exchanged.  In addition, the negotiations are constant…” This means that how you relate with other people is not pre-determined, and can be changed at any time, by either party.  (We all have relationships with everything in our worlds, but for the purposes of this post, the conversation is limited to relationships with people.)

Let’s say you go to dinner at an upscale restaurant.  Long before you arrive, you will have created certain expectations about how you will be treated by the staff of the restaurant – from the parking valets on up.

Those expectations are based on many things; previous experiences with that particular restaurant, or similar; input you’ve received from sources such as friends, media reviews of the restaurant, or even TV shows.

But, just as importantly, your self-image, and the way you view your place in the world, will pre-determine your expectations.  If you see yourself as a victim, or somehow unworthy of dining at a restaurant of that caliber, you will carry yourself differently than if you see yourself as worthy of the finest that life has to offer.

That viewpoint will broadcast itself to everyone you come into contact with during this event, through body language, speech patterns, eye contact, etc.  Unfortunately, animals (and humans are animals)  seem to be wired to take advantage of situations when there is an opportunity.  So, if you’re broadcasting weakness or uncertainty, others will pick up on it and exploit it.

This might be evidenced by the valet speeding off in your car right in front of you, spinning the tires and revving the engine.  Inside, the maitre d’ might treat you a bit less personally than other diners, and seat you at a table near the kitchen.  Then, it might be an unusually long time before your waiter arrives, or for your food to arrive, once you’ve ordered.  You get the picture…

After a night like this, you might leave thinking, “I’ll never go back there again.  The service was crappy.  I don’t know what all the hype is about.”

So, who’s to blame?  (Blame is a good topic for another discussion.)  Should anyone you encountered during the evening  have treated you any less spectacularly than they treated anyone else there?  No, of course not.  But they did because you invited them to do it.  You showed weakness, and the pack took advantage of it.  It’s what happens.

So, the natural question is, “How do I avoid this in the future?”

If you’re interested in an answer from a metaphysical standpoint, look for information on the Law Of Attraction.  I have a blog called What’s Your Path? that gives my interpretations of it.

In more (apparently) practical terms, your self-image is the problem.  If you think you’re a failure; you can’t do anything right; you never win; life is hard; you don’t earn enough money; you don’t have a nice enough car, or house, or watch, or clothes…  All of those mindsets are prescriptions for failure.

What to do?  Anything! Anything that gives you a strong possibility for success.  Find some kind of activity that holds a certain amount of challenge for you, but one that you also believe you have a good chance of accomplishing.

The goal here is to do something that makes you feel good about yourself for having done it; something you can be proud of, even in a small way.  If you’re overweight because you don’t eat right and don’t exercise, get up and do something.  Go walk a mile.  Or ride a bike for 5.  Anything that will make you feel better about yourself for having done it.

Once you believe that you can accomplish that goal at will, that there is no more challenge, no more question, it’s time to step up to something harder.  To stay with the example above, increase your target to 2 miles on foot, or 10 miles on the bike.  Whatever!  The numbers aren’t important.  What is important is to give yourself obtainable goals.

What will happen is that as you reach your goals, you will begin to develop more and more confidence that you can reach bigger goals, and you will begin to set more difficult, but still believable, targets for yourself.

With time, you’ll look forward to the act of tackling the challenge as much as achieving the goal, because it’s the journey that makes the goal feel worthwhile.  It’s the effort that gives the goal value.

When you regularly accomplish those things which you set out to do, your self-image will be far improved over what it is currently.  And, it won’t be inflated ego.  It will be self-confidence based on proven performance and tangible results.

And, somewhere along the line, your experience at that upscale restaurant will be very different, and much more pleasant.

In my next post, I’ll talk about a different kind of method to use to improve the way your relationships with people develop.

Few areas in life cause people as much stress as our personal relationships.  Whether it’s with a spouse, parent or other family member, friends or co-workers, relationships are prime candidates for conflict.

The good news is that relationships are changeable.  No matter who you’re having an issue with, something can be done about it.

The bad news is that that something might have to be fairly drastic.  You might have to move, quit a job, or cease contact with a relative.  These should all be considered pretty last-straw actions, but if you’re in a relationship where nothing else has worked, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that they’d be well worth the effort.

One thing I’ve learned is that other people are going to treat you the way you teach them to treat you.  Did you hear the underlying message?  You are responsible for the way other people treat you; not them.

A statement like that usually prompts a question in response, like “What about someone who robs you on the street?  How do you teach them how to treat you?”

There are 2 issues here:

1. How you teach them to treat you in the moment.
2. How you teach them to leave you alone in the first place.

In the moment, the way you respond to their demands speaks volumes to them.  Your body language tells them whether you are a fighter or a victim.  Do you make eye contact?  Do you fidget around nervously?  All of these things communicate to that person what they can or can’t get away with in dealing with you.

Avoiding the situation in the first place has to do with how you carry yourself in public, what kind of clothes you wear or car you drive, etc.

There is also a school of thought that says that you bring that type of people and situations into your life, and that you can also exclude them.  For more information on this concept (Law Of Attraction), you might want to take a look at my other blog: What’s Your Path?

In either case, you can decide how you will be treated by the other person.

Let’s look at a more common scenario.  I’ll use an experience from my own life as an example.

Virtually everyone has someone in their life who sees themselves as one of life’s victims.  My mother was one.  She was forever changing jobs, changing living arrangements, etc.  Her finances were always in terrible shape.  And in her mind, none of it was her fault.

I moved out of the house when I was a Senior in high school, and the summer following my graduation, my mother moved from Chicago to Tucson, AZ.  The consequence was that our relationship shifted to the telephone, rather than in person.

Mom would call me on a regular basis, and spend most of the call either complaining about something or someone, or expressing her tremendous joy and relief to have just completed a change of some kind.

It took me a long time to see the pattern, but after she was on a job for a few months, she would start complaining about how her co-workers didn’t like her; how one of them was planning to sabotage her; how they kept dumping their work on her, forcing her to do 2 jobs, or 3.  And, the boss was always in on it, just looking for a reason to get rid of her.

Then, about 6 months into the job, Mom would find another.  That phone call would be about how wonderful the new job was; the boss was so much nicer than the last one, and all of the other women in the office were just terrific.  A month or two later, the gild would be off the lily.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

On my end of the line, these calls usually resulted in my being drained of energy.  As a male of the species, my natural response to a complaint of something being broken is to suggest a way to fix it.  That would take away her victim status, however, so Mom rarely acted on any of my suggestions (although she often claimed to want my advice).

Eventually, I couldn’t take it any more, and I interrupted her litany to tell her that she couldn’t continue to do this.  She couldn’t just call me up & spend an hour complaining about everything that was wrong in her life if she wasn’t going to make an effort to do anything about it.

It didn’t go over well, but it stopped her in her tracks.  She tried to defend herself, but I pointed out to her what she was doing to me.  At one point, I told her that if she couldn’t stop, I’d have to hang up on her.

The result was that she didn’t call for a couple of months.  When she did, she commented on how she didn’t want to complain, since she knew I didn’t like it (this was a complaint in itself), but…  And, she started in.  I stopped her immediately, and asked what was going on in her life that was positive.  At least as I remember it, she couldn’t come up with anything.

It was a short call, but when we hung up, I didn’t feel like I needed a nap.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  I felt energized!  I had fixed the problem!

To be honest, the problem was not fixed.  People don’t change deeply engrained habits that quickly, and Mom would forever be looking at her life as though the world was out to get her.

But!  The way she treated me from that point on did change.  Whenever she started in, I could stop her very easily.  And, although she was always testing the waters of complaint to see how far in she could wade, keeping her close to shore was rarely ever difficult after that.

So, was this just luck that I was so successful that easily?  Yes and no.  I had a few things working in my favor:

• There was a large physical distance between us.  -luck-
• I had the power to end any interaction in an instant, simply by hanging up the telephone.  -luck-
• I had the desire to change the situation.  -not luck-
• I was willing to actually do something about it.  -not luck-

I believe that you, too, can begin to teach anyone you like just how to treat you; and you can start today.  Of the 4 items listed above, you only need the last 2.  If you can manage to add either or both of the first 2, the job will be that much easier.

Here’s my formula for change:

1. Recognize your desire for change.
2. Take action.
3. Measure your results.
4. Adjust future action as required.

Yes, Virginia, it’s that simple.  Not always easy, but the formula is simple.

The toughest part is step #2; taking action.  But, the good news in that department is that, very often, you can start small.  Baby steps.  Hmmm…  Seems to be a theme on this blog…

Does this formula apply to all relationships?  Yes.  Absolutely.  But, keep in mind that relationships are negotiated, even if no words are exchanged.  In addition, the negotiations are constant, which is why the formula works.  The only variable is in what format the negotiations take place.

_________

In this post, we’ve looked at the issue of teaching someone how to treat you in the moment, using an example of a specific tactic.  In the next, we’ll discuss the idea in more general terms.