Personal Discovery: Conclusion

Life is a journey, sometimes full of obstacles, sometimes a beautiful scenic route, sometimes getting lost, and sometimes stumbling upon something amazing. Throughout this journey, our only constant companion is our own self. Yet, we often take this person for granted, so focused on other things and other people. It is my fondest hope that you do get to know this companion and to become friends. The best friends are those that you can always converse with, are there through good times and bad, the ones that share memories with you and get excited about sharing new memories with, the ones that you know so well and yet are constantly surprised by. Hopefully, you will become best friends with yourself, to make new memories, and want to learn more about. Rather than anyone else, be who you are and accept the amazing person that you are.

Personal discovery is a lifelong process, not to be rushed, and repeated throughout a lifetime. Change is always happening within and around you, so accept it and roll with it and learn about yourself all over again. Don’t give up. It’s really quite worthwhile and hopefully it will lead to a more peaceful and happy life, or at least, a less-confusing one.

The most important thing to remember is your life is your own. It is unique only to you. You make the rules and call the shots and guide yourself down the road that is uniquely your own, taking your own responsibilities and consequences. Enjoy your adventure!

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drown your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

Personal Discovery: Principles to Live By Part 2

But we must be realistic also. There are times that following your principles may land you in troubled times, reduced circumstances, or downright punishment. In fact, in some cases, it may seem as if their principles ruined their lives.

There was a Japanese ambassador in World War II era Lithuania. The Soviet Union had ordered the international consulates to close. Once the consulates were closed, the gates of escape would be forever shut. On July 27, 1940, the Japanese Consul, Chiune Sugihara, looked out the window to see a huge crowd of refugees pressed around the gate of the Japanese consulate. Against the orders of his superiors, he issued visas to hundreds of Jews, hand-writing each one. He worked 18-20 hours a day until the final day of August 28^th. When he was finally forced to leave, he sat in a hotel lobby and then later sitting on the train preparing to leave, frantically writing visas. He didn’t have his official stamps with him then but kept working hoping they’d be accepted. He felt that, though it was against orders, to not do so would be against his principles. Afterwards, when he arrived back at Japan, he lost his position for disobeying his superiors and most of the rest of his life was mired in poverty. However, he had saved thousands of people’s lives. It is estimated that 40,000 descendants of those given visas are alive today. He was taught to live with duty, honor, and dignity and to not only die bravely, but to live courageously.*

Those are true principles. The ones that we follow no matter what, that we believe is the correct way to lead our life even if others say otherwise. This is not to say to follow a destructive path, especially if you know it’s destructive, merely because we are being stubborn about it. This is not only rather unintelligent, but incredibly harmful. It is in genuinely believing that what we are doing is correct and our true path, something that is true to the person that we are and the life we want to live and the world we want to leave to our children, that is the path to follow. If we live in this way, then we can say for sure we tried our hardest to make the world a better place.

Personal Discovery: Principles to Live By Part 1

In previously figuring out what legacy we want to leave, we have developed a road map for ourselves that guide our actions and decisions. To further develop that, we compile a personal rule book for ourselves, a way of living that, when internalized, help us to make the right decisions that fits our needs and goals at any point in our lives. These are principles we live by. In some ways, principles transcend even our goals and our legacy. They become a way of living out the way we are, not only for ourselves, but also as an example of who we are to the world. They become the final say in tough decisions and may even turn us away from goals that we may have been wholeheartedly pursuing merely because it would betray our principles. Principles are ingrained in us, they drive us, and contain us, and make us do things that may only be right in the long run. In this way, we must choose the principles that we live by carefully for they may determine the final course in our lives no matter what else we may strive for.

For many, there are principles that are already ingrained in us, taught to us by our peers, our family, our environment, our particular way of life or moment in history. Look at the way you make decisions both large and small naturally, when you acquiesce or when you stand firm, how you feel bad when you feel like you betrayed one of the principles. These are the rules that drive our life. It may seem sometimes that life is the only game we play where we are learning the rules as we go along and everyone seems to have a different set of them. It is important to be cognizant of them or you may be at the mercy of your principles rather than the other way around. Though it is notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to change your principles, this doesn’t mean we should be blindly driven by them. Every major decision made, and most of the minor ones, should be consciously made. By consciously made, it is meant that we are fully aware we are making a decision that have effects and consequences and we understand the reasoning behind each decision. This doesn’t have to be a long drawn-out process. In fact, this process would probably be a split second of reasoning. Also, this shouldn’t paralyze us in making decisions. Instead, this should make it easier to make decisions because we are prepared for them and we can follow through every decision we make in the good faith that we made the best decision we could have made and we can deal with the consequences no matter what may happen.

Understanding what general principles we follow on a daily basis should develop naturally from our personal conversation and discovery of ourselves. However, it is important to develop for yourself, overarching principles that are specifically set out to not only cover our general principles, but also encompass the general focus of our life. It’s like the pointy tip of an arrowhead shooting forwards in our life, it leads and we follow behind.

We start off with generalities. In many families, they have family crests or mottos that, though the various members of the family go off in their own ways and their own paths, resonate in every member and guides them in accordance with that. This is something that doesn’t affect where you go in life but in how you go about it.

In 1883, on the initiative of Colonel Charles McCawley, the 8^th Comandant of the Marine Corps, the United States Marine Corps adopted the motto Semper Fidelis, often shortened to Semper Fi. This is Latin for “Always Faithful”. The motto signifies the dedication and loyalty that individual Marines have for “Corps and Country” even after leaving the service. Many Marines get this tattooed on themselves as a constant reminder to live their lives by this motto. Even though Marines have gone on to a myriad of different futures, they are all connected and live out this simple phrase.

Activity:

Design a personal crest. Add in symbols that represent the important things in your life and come up with a personal motto that seems to reflect the attitude that you want to face life with. A motto should be short, to the point, and carry a significant meaning. Put it somewhere where you can see it frequently.

Similar to this is the mission statement in business plans. Business plans lay out how a business works, what they are going to sell, how they are going to earn money, where their customers are, how they are going to grow their business. The mission statement, in a business plan, encompasses all of those details by focusing a business in a certain direction. It guides them even when things don’t go according to plan and the unexpected happens. In the same way, sometimes things pop up in our lives that don’t go according to plan or something happened that you don’t know how to deal with. We need something to fall back on and that can be a personal mission statement.

Activity:

Yahoo’s mission statement is “to connect people to their passions, communities, and the world’s knowledge.” Google’s mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Though they started out as similar Internet companies, their different focus has led the two companies into developing in different directions. Write your own mission statement as if your life was your business. Ask yourself what direction you want to go in and how you want to get there. What is your life’s purpose? What are your passions? Then write something short and to the point that encompasses what you want to direct your life towards.

For certain people, they have a clear set of principles that not only guides them, but in a way, are defined by them, infusing themselves as the living embodiment of them. Bruce Lee was a martial artist, teacher, and movie star. However, those achievements wouldn’t be as well-known without the principles he developed and lived in his life. They were his longest living legacy and they are even now lived out by many people around the world. Most people know him best for his unique style of martial arts, Jeet Kune Do, or the style of no style. He often exhorted others to be like water, “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

He also lived his life according to his own life principles.

“Basically, I have always been a martial artist by choice, and an actor by profession. But, above all, I am hoping to actualize myself to be an artist of life along the way. By martial art, I mean like any art, it is an unrestricted athletic expression of an individual soul. Oh yes, martial art also means daily hermitlike physical training to upgrade or maintain one’s quality. However, martial art is also about unfolding the bare human soul, that is what interests me. Yes, I have grown quite a bit since the day when I first became a martial artist and am still growing along the process. To live is to express oneself freely in creation. Creation I must say is not a fixed something, a solidification.” – Bruce Lee

Take time to develop your own overarching guiding set of principles. This may take a short time or this may take a lifetime. Sometimes, these principles will change. Sometimes you may break them. But through it all, use them to guide you through it all.

My own principles are shorter and to the point. They may be more succinct but they still give me the boundaries and direction in which I live my life.

• Everything is allowed but not everything is beneficial

• Everything is allowed but not everything is constructive

• Everything is allowed but I will not be mastered by anything.

In the same way, there is no right or wrong way to develop your own set of principles. Just as long as they work in your life and represent the real person you want to be. You may even find that you can change someone’s life or inspire others through it.

David Gentiles was a pastor who wore work boots, drove a creaky Ford pickup and wore a chewed-up Cleveland Indians baseball cap. But he could see the potential in people and convinced those people that they had potential also. This man followed his principles, beliefs, and heart and changed the lives of many people including the best-selling book “Blue Like Jazz” author Don Miller and “90 Minutes in Heaven” author Don Piper. Though he is relatively unknown, his influence is far-reaching and heart-touching because through him, others were given the courage to step out and change so many more lives.

Personal Discovery: Legacy After Death Part 2

Not only do we need to know what we want to do, we need to be aware of everything we don’t want to miss out on. In previous chapters, we’ve talked about how to figure out our priorities, or what’s important to us. We’ve talked about what we dream of doing. We’ve talked about the impact we have on both others and ourselves. But here, I’d like to ask you, what do you not want to regret? It is said, “Those who fail to try, try to fail.” Imagine you are on your deathbed, flipping through the memories of your life in your mind. At that moment, what stands out the most? What are your most important memories? What do you regret ever happening? What risks should you have taken? What do you not want to regret?

The things that stand out the most at the end of our life are those that are important to you in some way, whether they be things that are cherished or things that mark us in some definable way that made us the person we are today. The things that are cherished need to maximized in our lives for the future and those that mark us should be carefully stored in the past so that we can go back to them as a sort of map for how we became how we are.

For those things in the past that you regret happening, first of all, there is no need to regret them. They are a part of you, your identity, and they have imparted many lessons on what we shouldn’t do and how much burden we can bear. Second of all, use them as a template for future actions, so that we can more likely prevent ourselves from future regrets and not only that, but be able to guide others away from regrettable actions with our own personal experiences. We are able to have empathy for others who have gone through similar situations, comforting them by truthfully saying, “I understand”. Finally, as there is no currently plausible way to travel back into time, there’s nothing we can do to change those past regrets. Move forward; make the next moments and days and years of your life without regret. Sometimes, no matter how trite or cliché it sounds, it is better to have tried and failed than never trying at all for if we try, we have a chance at succeeding but if we never try, we will always fail to achieve.

We only have our one chance at life and we don’t want to come to the end of that wishing to have done it differently. I don’t want to come to the end of it and leave behind a legacy of hurt and disappointment. I want to know that I have lived my life to the best of my abilities, no matter how long or short my life may have been. In this way, we need not be fearful going into death because we have succeeded in life.

Personal Discovery: Legacy After Death Part 1

What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind after you die? It is thoughts like these that lead us to live our lives in the way we’d like to be remembered, giving us a final destination on our roadmap to our goals and boundaries to our actions.

Ender Wiggin, in the novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, became a Speaker for the Dead. A Speaker for the Dead would be someone who went to another’s funeral and would tell that person’s life-story as a eulogy, the truths of that person’s life both the good and the bad. What legacy do you want to leave behind? How do you want people to remember your life as after you are no longer in this world to tell them? What truths would other people say about your life-story?

Activity:

Choose four people: a family member, a close friend, a coworker or someone who works along you, and a neighbor. If you were to die today, and they were the only ones chosen to speak at your funeral, what would each one truthfully say in their eulogy of how they knew you and the person that you were? Now, what would you wish they would say in their eulogy? Is there a difference? If there is, then what can we do to bring it more in line? What do we need to do differently that we’re not doing in the present?

Though we don’t need to plan out every step we take in our lives, we need to know what direction to be walking in. The talents we have are nothing to be proud of because they are a natural part of us to be used or unused. It is what we do with that talent that is important and what we accomplish that determines our greatness. That is what we can be proud of and what we will be remembered for. Or else if we just see the goal, but we stand unmoving or we move in the wrong direction, no matter how much we want to reach our destination, we will find it difficult to get there.

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” – Steve Prefontaine

By knowing what we want to be remembered for and to work towards that goal, we can also learn to make choices to prevent things we don’t want to be remembered for. Wrong choices can overshadow a lifetime of good choices. When we know what we want our legacy to be, we can steer away from things and actions that would impinge on that.

But what if it’s too late? What if we already overshadowed by things that aren’t really how we want to be remembered or known for? Then, it is even more important to know what you would like your legacy to be because you will have to work harder to gain it. It’s not impossible though. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Everyone will. Learn from them and keep moving forwards. Have your eyes fixed on that goal and no matter your missteps or the strange maneuverings of life, your actions and perseverance will inevitable take you nearer and nearer to where you want to be.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot

When Alfred Nobel’s brother died in 1888, several newspapers mistakenly thought that it was Alfred Nobel, himself, who had died. They published premature eulogies of him that denounced his work, the invention of dynamite, calling him the “merchant of death” saying he “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before”. Shaken by these words, he decided to change his life and focus on the people who were changing the world for the better. He set up the annual Nobel awards, recognizing and honoring those that make a large contribution to the world. One of them was the Nobel peace prize.

Personal Discovery: Change your Relationship with Faith

Faith and our deep abiding belief in it can become a solid foundation in our lives that also enhances our understanding of our world and our place in it. Many of us desire a deeper relationship with it and to give it greater priority in our lives. We desire to have a more personal connection but don’t know where to start or how to move forward.

We first need to understand what makes it up. For faith to become a foundation in our lives, we need to understand the foundations of our faith. Go to the nearby place of worship and ask about the foundations of faith. Most have them in an easy-to-read pamphlet along with any number of eager people to explain it. What basic tenets make it up? What are the basics of belief you must have in order to call yourself a part of that faith? Understand enough that you are able to be able to articulate it clearly to another person who has no idea of your faith and still have them understand what you are talking about. Different beliefs often have a lot of terms that we can take for granted but are otherwise meaningless to those outside the belief. Get to know what these terms really mean and be able to explain it clearly. Only in this way, can you truly understand what makes up your beliefs.

Now, we expand our knowledge in two ways. We can go deeper into it and we can also go broader into it. To go deeper into our beliefs, we build upon the foundation. It’s like making a soup. The foundation was the water for without water, it isn’t a soup. Then, next we add what should go into the soup that gives it distinctive flavor: the vegetables, the meats, the spices and flavorings. To do this, we read the holy writings, we integrate the practices in our lives, we spend time thinking quietly in order to come to understand more and more of what it is. We immerse ourselves into it, learning as much as we can about what it is exactly and how it transforms our life. It’s a private communication between you and your beliefs.

To go broader into your faith is to add the side dishes that put the soup into context and make it into a meal. To do this, we learn about the history and the noted people who have been a part of the same beliefs, we read other people’s writings, and discuss with others about their thoughts. We open our focus to how our faith has impacted others and the world we live in.

Understanding our beliefs can be a lifelong process as most things in our lives. However, while we learn more and more, we need to remain in conversation with ourselves by analyzing what we are learning and seeing how this changes the way we react to ourselves and to other people. Are we finding what we need? What needs to change? It is okay to question your own beliefs to make sure you completely understand why you believe what you do. Once that happens, we know why we can hold firm to our beliefs and so our faith grows even in the face of detractors. If we don’t understand why we believe, we may fall away easier because we don’t know where to hold firm.

Sometimes, something we believe may actually be detrimental to us. It causes us to treat others and to treat ourselves in a way that we don’t like or is harmful. When this happens, we need to take a step back and first decide whether it’s because we are misinterpreting our beliefs. If we are, then we need to figure out where we went wrong. Again, this goes back to whether or not we understand what our beliefs truly are. Go back and talk to the leaders of your faith or others you trust that are knowledgeable in your beliefs. Go back and think things through for yourself on a personal level. Seek after what the truth is. If you believe that you have found the truth and it still sits heavy on you, you need to seriously think about whether or not your beliefs are wrong. There is no one else in this world that can answer this for you. Only you will know whether your beliefs are true or not and only you can decide whether or not to believe them.

Your faith is an integral part of your life and your identity. It is profoundly personal and yet has a far-reaching impact on the world around you. To change your relationship to faith is akin to changing your relationship with not only yourself, but something beyond yourself, and that is quite an important choice to make. Your mind can only do so much. Ultimately, go with your heart and your soul, go with what you feel is right and true and have faith that you have reached the right conclusion.

Personal Discovery: Change your Relationship with Others Part 4

Family relationships are particularly complicated. We have all the same complications of a relationship but often without the possibility of separation when things go badly. Often, our responsibilities towards our family need to take precedence over our personal feelings and family will not necessarily feel the need to change and work towards a better relationship with you. Therefore, we come back to the principle of choosing our battles wisely. There are times when you need to submit and times when you need to stand for your feelings. To find the wisdom to know the difference, we must first understand ourselves and then take the time to understand and love the members of our family. It is always better to tread carefully among family relationships and to be respectful to the other members.

Romantic relationships can also be complicated. There are 5 main types of these relationships, though some relationships have elements from multiple types with varying degrees of intensity:

• Love – a deep physical and emotional attachment

• Attraction – a physical attachment often stemming from a emotional attachment; milder and often a precursor to love

• Lust – a purely physical attachment

• Platonic – a purely emotional attachment

• Pure Gain – neither physical nor emotional attachment; attachment for other reasons

What can be said about love relationships has filled many books and will not be discussed too much in depth here. What is important here though is to look into your own understanding of yourself and be realistic. Figure out what you need in your life, what you can handle in your life, and what you are really looking for. Then, match it. If you are looking for a Lust relationship, then find someone else looking for that. If you are looking for just a Platonic relationship, then find someone who doesn’t want more than that. Many conflicts stem from people looking for different types of love relationship trying to make something work but in the end, neither person is satisfied.

Our relationships with other people succeed easier when we have a good understanding and relationship with ourselves. It is through an acceptance of ourselves that we can begin to accept another person fully. This makes for successful relationships.

Personal Discovery: Change your Relationship with Others Part 3

There are always going to be times in a relationship when there is conflict. It is worthy to note that, most conflicts happen when people care about a certain issue and their own viewpoint enough to take the time, energy, and emotion to conflict with each other. To clear up a conflict, we need to know the root causes of the conflict and based on that, develop solutions and compromises that would ideally appeal to both sides. This takes communication from both sides and a willingness to be open-minded to understanding why this topic is so important to each person. Sometimes, we can win a battle but lose the war. We can be so focused on what we think is right and forcing the other person to see it our way, that we instead drive the other person away. We don’t want to win an argument and end up losing a good relationship. We need to know when to tactically retreat and choose our battles. Unless it is so important to you that it is worth potentially losing a good relationship, it is better to sometimes compromise or even submit to the other side for the time being, no matter if it feels uncomfortable and discomfiting. Otherwise, stand firm. Even better, would be to prevent a conflict from happening in the first place.

In these conflicts, we can come out hurt or feeling betrayed. We want to keep our relationship going but it’s hard to trust the other person again with the same degree of emotional intimacy. It is in these times that we give our forgiveness to others. This may feel impossible to do. How do we forget the hurt we have inside of us? True, it is difficult, if not impossible to forget trespasses against us. We shouldn’t blindly just fall into the same situation to be hurt all over again. But, to be caught up in the hurt will only, in the end, harm us even more. Give yourself a chance to move forward, away from that pain. If you can’t be with that person anymore, move away but don’t remain trapped by that pain. If you can give the other person another chance, then freely give that chance to them instead of bringing that same hurt up over and over again. Choose to move forward and fill your life with happiness.

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. ~Paul Boese

Sometimes, though, no matter how hard we try, a relationship suffers. There are a varied number of reasons for this, many preventable but some not. In these cases, we may need to consider cutting ourselves off of the relationship but this is the last resort. Before we do this, we need to be sure it is not ourselves that is contributing to the demise of the relationship. If it is, figure out if there’s anything you need to change or work on. We need to try to work things out, towards compromise and communication.

If nothing seems to work, and it is decided that to separate yourself from the relationship is the best bet, then you should do so completely. To take that final step of separation, there must have been compelling reasons and these reasons will hold for as long as you or the other person stay the same. Because of this, without change on either side, if a relationship is rekindled, the same problems will arise all over again.

Sometimes, instead of ending because of something happening, a relationship will just drift away. It can happen, especially among friends who have grown apart or move away from each other. This is a natural order of life. In these cases, it is better to view these friendships as a gift that we needed during a certain season of our lives and to view it fondly rather than bitterly.

Personal Discovery: Change your Relationship with Others Part 1

Unless we become hermits, become stranded alone on a deserted island, or Armageddon happens like in the movies and we’re the only one left surviving, we will most likely associate with other people quite a lot throughout the course of our lives. Previously, we have discussed their impact on our lives. However, a relationship is made up of two people and therefore we impact others in the same way and around and around, a never-ending cycle for the duration of the relationship and even afterwards. A relationship that works or doesn’t work is dependent on both people in the relationship and what they’re both bringing to it.

The first thing to remember is that we are all human with our own unique mix of strengths and weaknesses. No one is perfect and to expect otherwise, is to only put unneeded pressure on the other person and to be disappointed in the future.

“We come to love not by finding the perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” – Sam Keen

It was the coldest winter ever – many animals died because of the cold. The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together. This way they covered and protected themselves; but the quills of each one wounded their closest companions even though they gave off heat to each other. After a while they decided to distance themselves one from the other and they began to die, alone and frozen. So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth. Wisely, they decided to go back to being together. This way they learned to live with the little wounds that were caused by the close relationship with their companion, but the most important part of it, was the warmth that came from the others. This way they were able to survive.

Though there are different types of relationships: family, friends, and love relationships, what makes a relationship good or bad is rather universal. A good relationship builds a person up and supports them through both good and not-so-great times, encouraging them to strive to be a better person but also accepting them for the person they are currently. A bad relationship is simply the opposite of this. Of course, it’s not completely black-and-white. There are times when our relationships are essentially good but may be lacking in some elements or our relationship is essentially bad but does have a small amount of good elements in them. Whatever it is, ideally, we want to move our relationships closer to the good type and further away from the bad type.

Often, we try to make our relationship better by solely trying to change someone else. This may not work so well. Just as we ourselves cannot change unless we desire to change, so in the same sense, other people will not change unless they themselves desire to change. No amount of pleading, arguments, or bargaining will change someone unless you first give them the motivation to do so. We should respect and tolerate the other’s differences, listening and understanding them with an open mind. At the same time, we should also hold firm to the beliefs we believe are correct and ask that others respect us equally. The main things that you can do to change a relationship is to communicate your desires for how you would like the relationship to evolve, model the relationship you desire yourself, try to understand the other person, and to give positive feedback to the other person. It is up to the other person to reciprocate.

The key to any relationship is honest communication and the degree to which you open up your private emotional self. The degree will change depending on your level of acquaintance and emotional intensity with the other person but you should always remain true to the person you are. If you find yourself refraining from being yourself for whatever reason, then maybe it is time to reexamine that relationship and the role it plays in your life.

Communication is very important. If the other person doesn’t know what you want, then they can’t consider working together with you to make a relationship stronger and better. Contrary to popular opinion, people can’t read each other’s minds though we all seem to think so. In fact, people in general are also rather poor guessers. If you want something or are angry at something or like something or don’t prefer something, it’s a very small chance that the other person will know exactly what it is you are trying to convey without you actually telling them. Even if you don’t know what it is you actually want and need time to figure it out, the other person needs to know to give you that time. Different people have different ways of communicating but both people in a relationship need to make an effort to communicate their wants and needs and make a point of understanding the other person’s wants and needs. Many conflicts happen because someone isn’t making themselves clear enough or someone isn’t taking the time to understand what the other person is trying to convey. Misunderstandings or miscommunication or simply a lack of communication can lead to many preventable conflicts.

There can also be negative communication. According to John Gottman, who runs the Love Lab, he can see how a couple interacts and predict with a high degree of accuracy how happy they will be in their marriage and how likely they are to divorce. He says there are four types of communication patterns that are especially detrimental to a relationship, not just romantic relationships but any relationship. Any one of these types of communications can readily ruin a good relationship so we must be careful to recognize when they do come up, either from ourselves or the other person and take measures to stop it.

• Criticism – Attacking the other person’s personality or character, usually with the intent of making someone right and someone wrong.

• Contempt – Attacking the other person’s sense of self with the intention to insult or psychologically abuse them, often using insults, hostile humor, or negative body language or tone of voice.

• Defensiveness – Seeing yourself as a victim and warding off a perceived attack by making excuses, cross-complaining, and whining.

• Stonewalling – Withdrawing from a relationship as a way to avoid conflict by changing the subject, removing yourself physically, or being uncommunicative.

Activity:

Use a recording device and sit down with someone with whom you have a relationship. Start a conversation about anything, even just about communicating with one another, and record it. Make sure you have the other’s permission to record the conversation. Later on, play it back and listen closely. Do you sense any negative communication? Are there places where it seems as if you or the other person is making assumptions about certain things? Were there places where the meaning of the conversation became confused and muddled? What parts of the conversation flowed very smoothly?

Personal Discovery: Change your Relationship with Self Part 3

Once we have understanding and motivation, new habits need to be formed to replace old behavior with new behavior. To do this, we have to pretty much rewire our minds so that the behavior becomes subconscious, and therefore automatic. The only way to rewire our brain is to perform a behavior or think the same thing in the same situation over and over until the brain realizes that these two things are now linked with each other instead of any previous associations. This takes diligence and consistency.

We need to do the same thing over and over again every day without skipping a day for at a month. What we are doing is changing the connections in our minds. We are replacing an old connection with a new connection in the maps in our mind, like redrawing a road from Destination A to Destination B. The more we use the new road, the more the mind becomes convinced that this is the better path to take. If even one day is skipped, the mind becomes confused and the new associations become more difficult to be formed, so we would have to start over from the beginning. Of course, new habits can be formed in less than a month but it is better to set your mind down the new path for sure than to take the risk that the habit didn’t form and have to start all over again.

Activity:

Some people may find it easier to track their progress or have a buddy check up on them everyday. You can use the Habits Worksheet [found in the worksheet section].  Write down what habits you desire to form and put it somewhere where it’s very noticeable everyday. Everyday, don’t go to bed until you’ve checked off a box. Once the 30 days are checked off, re-evaluate the how well it’s working. Keep up the good work!

The key is the diligence and consistency. Once that month is done, try for another month, and another, until it’s become a natural part of you. When you catch yourself doing the new behavior without thinking, then we can safely say that the habit has successfully formed and change has happened.

Please remember, however, every change, especially major life changes, requires a period of settling down and adjustment. Don’t rush or feel frustrated. Give yourself that leeway to struggle however much you need to. Reevaluate yourself every so often. Keep that conversation going. If you find yourself starting to become dissatisfied with yourself, find out what is causing it and determine if you really need to be dissatisfied. Sometimes satisfaction and peace can be found merely by accepting that we are wonderfully and exquisitely flawed. We should try to strike a good balance of acceptance and desire to do better. We must learn to strive but not lose ourselves along the way. It can be hard to find that balance. It can be a lifetime process but then, you have your whole lifetime to enjoy being yourself.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mohandus Ghandi