IS IT WORTH DYING FOR? - PART 4

(Part 4 of a 4 part series)

IS IT WORTH DYING FOR? A synopsis of Dr. Meyer Friedman’s research into Type A behavior

By Jill Cody, M.P.A.

“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.” - Eckhart Tolle

Developing a Monitor

We all have a relentless committee in our heads telling us what to do. More often then not, this committee possesses judgmental voices. It’s easy to understand how these voices got in our heads. While we were growing up our mother and father were telling us what to do; often judging us. They meant well. They wanted us to be successful. To help us achieve our success, they would point out our mistakes and tell us what to do. The problem we experience when we become an adult is that we don’t let go of our parents’ voices. We keep them in our heads where ever we go. We get trapped in the “I’m not good enough until I” syndrome. Which is what we often felt when dealing with our parents. Instead, as adults, we need to replace the messages our committee tells us to “you’re wonderful whoever you are” and “its ok to make mistakes."

Developing a monitor, Dr. Friedman says, is the mechanism to replace the messages in our heads from ones that tear us down to ones which serve us better. The monitor is “metacognition” or self talk. The self talk we want to cultivate will help change the Type A’s belief system to more healthful belief systems in seven ways. These seven, more healthy belief systems are:

1. A Type A personality hinders, never helps a career.

2. Type A behavior can be changed.

3. Sweetness is not a weakness.

4. Insecurity and/or inadequate self-esteem cannot be eliminated by the sole pursuit of material objects.

5. The trivial errors of others do not always require our preoccupation or correction.

6. Things worth “being” excel things worth “having”.

7. The means should justify the ends.

The “monitor” is a neutral voice. This is very important to understand. The internal voice you hear must be a neutral one. It can’t judge. It can’t evaluate. If the thought has an edge of emotion to it, it’s not your monitor speaking to you. It is emotionless. It says things like “isn’t that interesting” or “I wonder why they did that”. The monitor helps move us from responding to situations from our “ideal” self to our “real” self. The ideal self thinks in terms of “shoulds” and “should nots”. It searches for perfection. The real self will see the world as it is, not as we want it to be. The ideal self is constantly looking for approval and doing things to satisfy others.. The real self is secure, confident accepting and doing things to satisfy itself. The ideal self wants to make others change or wants the situation causing it distress to change. The real self changes the way it thinks about or views the problem.

Start listening to your self-talk. What is it saying to you? Is it judging others? Is it comparing and evaluating situations on how things ought to be? Can it change and replace a judgmental thought with a neutral one?

One of the most powerful monitoring phrases I learned while attending the Institute was “is this worth dying for”? Once I understood what physical harm I put myself in when I was experiencing time urgency or free floating hostility, I realized that every time I was living in those modes I was slowly killing myself. As soon as my monitor noticed I was tensed up from being in one of these thought patterns, it would ask me “is this worth dying for?” and the answer to myself was always “no”. As soon as I had that brief thought process completed in my head, I immediately calmed down and was in control again. The miracle I experienced after I did this a few times was that what I was getting tense or upset over never really happened. For example, one morning I had an appointment with someone who I didn’t know very well and with whom I wanted to make a good impression. Traffic was going very slowly. I could see by the clock on the dash that I was going to be late. My time urgency mode kicked in. I started getting anxious about what he might think of me. I started getting short and judgmental with the other drivers on the road. Out of the blue, my monitoring voice asks me “Jill, is this worth dying for”? I had to say no. I relaxed. I accepted that I would get there when I got there and I thought of a humorous apology for being late. When I arrived, I learned that he was late too and I had to wait a few minutes. The entire emotional “wrap” I was placing on the situation in the car before my monitor spoke to me was for nothing. Since that experience, I have noticed similar situations over and over again.

Practicing Life Saving Drills

One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Stephen Covey is: “You can’t talk yourself out of something you have behaved yourself into”. This couldn’t be truer then for Type A personalities. The main problem is that we don’t know what Type B emotions and behaviors feel like. Type B personalities are just as effective, if not more effective, then Type A’s, but how do they act? The drills, which Dr. Friedman developed, are meant to give Type A individuals a sense of what a Type B reaction or experience is like. Dr. Friedman has divided drills into two categories: General Drills and Specific Drills. Samples of my favorites are as follows:

General Time Urgency Drills

1. Remind yourself daily that life is unfinished business.

2. Listen attentively to the conversation of others.

3. Before you speak, ask yourself:

- Do I really have something to say?

- Do these people wish to hear it?

- Is this the right time to say it?

4. Seek beauty wherever you can find it.

5. Try driving in the slow lane. (More about this later)

6. Learn to punctuate long work periods with relaxation.

7. Stop trying to think or do more than one thing at a time.

8. Don’t project your own time urgency on others.

Specific Time Urgency Drills

1. Visit a museum, zoo, aquarium, or park.

2. Study a dawn, flower, bird, tree, or sunset.

3. Walk, talk and eat more slowly.

4. Leave you watch off (start with one day a week).

5. Ask someone what they did that day and listen to the answer. (How about starting with a family member?)

6. Get in a long line in the market and study the faces of other people.

7. Ask a person to lunch and ask questions about them.

General Hostility Drills

1. Announce openly, to your spouse or close friend, your intention to eliminate your free-floating hostility.

2. Eliminate ideals that are really just excuses for anger.

3. Start smiling at other people and at laughing yourself.

4. Practice living with uncertainties and doubts by deliberately attempting to adopt unfamiliar and unexpected opinions.

Specific Hostility Drills

1. Deliberately say to someone. “Maybe I’m wrong,” at least twice a day, even when you are not at all certain you are in error.

2. Buy a small but thoughtfully chosen gift for your spouse, other family member, or friend.

3. Ask yourself in the evening, “What did I do wrong today and what did I do that showed kindness to someone?”

The most powerful and, thus, most difficult drill is the “Driving Drill”. It should be started immediately as you are reading this book. I especially like this drill because it puts many of the other drills into action. When I was in the Institute, they told us to drive in the slow lane, going the speed limit, and if anyone did anything “stupid” we were to think of a funny reason why they did what they did. As a well-honed Type A, I had a very difficult time selecting the slow lane, so I compromised and drove in the second to the slow lane or middle lane. Later, I learned that on the California driver’s test there is a question which asks you, “Which is the smoothest lane of traffic to drive in”? It so happens to be the middle lane. So, I now “challenge” you to begin the driving drill. I can’t watch you, so you’ll be on the honor system, but if you do accept the challenge here are the rules:

1) Drive the speed limit

2) Drive in middle lane

3) As soon as you are about to judge someone else’s driving, think of a funny reason why they may have done what they did.

4) If you really want help in this exercise, tell your family and/or friends and have them help think of funny reasons. (Remember: A funny reason should also not be judgmental or cynical.)

We live in a Type A culture; work in Type A organizations and families reward Type A behavior. Does this entire general acceptance make it right? I personally don’t think so. It’s a killer. As soon as our collective consciences realize this, the healthier we all will be.

(End of series)

Is This Worth Dying For? - Part 2

By Jill Cody

(Part 2 of a 4 part series)

IS IT WORTH DYING FOR? A synopsis of Dr. Meyer Friedman’s research into Type A behavior

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

— Lao Tzu

Time Urgency

One day before my “enlightenment”, I walked through the front door of the company I worked for and a gentleman sitting on a couch near the door asked “Jill, don’t you open doors when you go through them”? I just laughed and kept on going. At the time I responded positively to this question. In my mind I was thinking, “No, I’ve got things to do. I am woman, hear me roar”! You know the behavior. The one that looks like you’re so busy because you are so important. I look back on that incident now and shiver. There was a message there and I didn’t get it. He was obviously taken aback by the sheer force by which I was walking through the door. One of the manifestations of time urgency is walking too fast. Doing everything too fast such as eating, talking and driving. The urgency we create in our minds by thinking we have to “accomplish or achieve more and more things, or participate in more and more events in less and less time” causes us to rev-up. We become human doings instead of human beings. This thinking causes us to add an extra notch of speed on everything we do so that we think we can get more done. Do we really? How much time did I lose by becoming ill? Probably everything I thought I was saving by hurrying. In fact, Dr. Friedman calls time urgency the “hurry sickness”. Well, I can vouch for that. Relationships suffer too. People respond to character. When you are going to fast -proving yourself- they can’t see it. They can’t see the wonderful person you really are. Slow down and watch your relationships deepen and grow - with everyone.

Remember the part of the Type A definition that says the personality is dominated by covert insecurity? This is why we feel we need to look busy so that we can also look important. Since I have learned this point I came across a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, which is so appropriate, I keep it in mind always, “He who is in a hurry shows that what he is about is too big for him”. I’m sorry to say that now when I see people speeding about, driving too fast, talking too fast, or walking too fast, I feel sad for them. I see people who are screaming that what they are about is too big for them. They now look out of control to me and not important at all. I think there, but for the grace of Dr. Meyer Friedman, go I. It saddens me because I see them struggling to get through whatever is occupying them at the moment and on a path of self destruction (definitely not Carpe Momentum behavior) and I am helpless to do anything about it. If I feel this way I wonder how Dr. Friedman must feel?

Another way time urgency is manifested is by doing more then one thing at a time. This is called “multiphasic” behavior. For example, multiphasic behavior manifests itself through such actions as writing a report and talking on the telephone, eating and walking around, or driving a car and talking on the telephone. Our society has created a culture of multiphasic behavior. We wear it like a badge of honor. I recently gave a workshop on living life in the balance to a group of employees of a fast food company. After the workshop, one of the participants told me about their supervisor who always stays late and brags about it. Working late was a badge of honor to this person. To me it says that what he’s about is too big for him. He will eventually make himself sick. We have become frazzled people developing a frenzied sweat covering up covert insecurity.

It is not also just “doing” more then one thing at a time it is also “thinking” about more then one thing at a time. Have you ever driven down the freeway and got thinking about something and realized you hadn’t been paying attention to the road, yet you were driving the automobile. Staying focused to a task is difficult if you feel pressured by time. You want to double up or maybe triple up on the things you want to do. This is how accidents can happen. The word “accident” bothers me a bit because it places the focus of responsibility onto some unknown cause that created the “accident.” But, don’t we really know that an accident means we just blew it in trying to go faster or do more then one thing at a time? How much pain and how many lives could be saved if we just slowed down and focused a little bit more? The life may be your own.

The worst “time urgency” story I ever heard was on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was closed for four hours and someone lost his or her life because another person was in a hurry. A male driver going north towards Marin County became impatient and pulled into the southbound lanes to pass. An illegal act. He caused a nine-car accident and killed an innocent person. I know it would be unrealistic to expect everyone to have infinite patience and to slow down to an appropriate pace, but what would happen if we just raised our patience level a notch and lowered our speed just a notch? Just a notch. I hope you will consider it.

Free-Floating Hostility

Time urgency is only half of the Type A’s story. The root cause of a Type A personality is a lack of self-esteem. I know the phrase “self-esteem” has gotten a bad reputation lately. Call it a lack of a good self-concept. Whatever it is, it causes us to carry anger within us where ever we go. I once heard Dr. Wayne Dyer use an orange as a metaphor for character. If you squeeze an orange, what comes out is what’s inside. If you squeeze a Type A personality, what comes out is judgment and anger because it is what’s carried inside. It has nothing to do with what is happening externally and everything to do with them internally.

I am not saying that anger is bad and you are never to feel or show it. The key is the intensity of the anger; the emotional wrap that envelopes it. The reason why people have trouble coping with a Type A person at the moment the anger flares, is there’s usually a seed of truth to what the individual is angry about. A bystander usually has to agree because whatever infraction happened to cause the anger did, in fact, occur. I can best explain this problem of “emotionally wrapping” with a couple of stories. I’ll leave my personally embarrassing one for last.

A couple of years ago, after I had completed the Institute training and had shared it with my husband, we attended an arts & wine festival in our town. We were standing in line at the purchasing booth when a woman cut in line demanding her money back from the volunteers staffing the booth. It was very easy to determine what had gone wrong since she was yelling her story. Apparently, the item she purchased was no longer with the vendor to pick up after she purchased it. He had sold it to someone else thinking she would not be returning for it. She needed to get a car to transport it and was gone too long or so the vendor thought. Yes, it’s true that her purchased item was gone. Yes, she did deserve her money back. But, to yell at volunteers and stop all lines of transactions occurring at the booth was an intensity of anger not appropriate to the infraction. To make things worse, they didn’t have her check any longer because the Chamber of Commerce staff had just collected the receipts. Upon observing this incident, my husband leaned over to me and whispered, “AIAI Attack”.

What is an “AIAI Attack?” Dr. Friedman sometimes explains the behavior of a Type A personality in four words: Anger, Irritation, Aggression and Impatience. When free-floating hostility lashes out it’s called an “AIAI Attack.” What is really important to remember, if you are on the other side of an “AIAI Attack”, is that it has nothing to do with you. This is especially helpful if the Type A individual is a member of your family or if you deal with the public a lot. You don’t need to take the anger directed towards you personally because you know the anger is carried within them. It just happens to be releasing towards you for the moment. There is a quote by Dr. Stephen Covey that is fabulous in describing what’s going on for a Type A individual at these moments, “Unresolved feelings never die, they are buried alive and come forth later in uglier ways.” Free-floating hostility is always ugly. It’s ugly to watch. It’s ugly to experience. It’s ugly to feel.

One day I was that ugly person. Well, I’m sure there were many other days, but this is one I especially remember. I was going to stop at a shoe repair store and there was a parallel parking space in front of the store. I pulled forward to back into the space when a car behind me zipped into it. Isn’t it true that to park in a parallel space you are to back into it? I drove just a little bit around the corner to another space. As I look back it was really no big deal, but then I was furious. The injustice I had experienced. The woman was getting out of her car just as I was heading to the shoe repair store and I yelled at her. “Don’t you know you are suppose to back into a parallel parking space?” I used my finger and everything. Not the middle one. The other one. The scolding index finger. I’m still embarrassed by that story, but it is a perfect example of a little, everyday incident that can get the ire of a Type A.

Dr. Friedman asks, “What is the Type A doing to their life?” “What is the personality doing to itself?” Where did the personality go?” What are the things in life that get its ire?” “What is it doing to the body?” Right now, ask yourself the same questions.

(Part 3 covers “Constant State of Struggle” and “Self Destruction is Not Inevitable”)

Life as a Transformative Learning Process

 by Pettis Perry

Transformation as a Natural Life Occurrence 

Over the course of our lifetimes transformation is going to occur in one of two ways. It is going to occur with us as active and intentional agents of transformation. Or, it is going to occur with us as passive participants going along for the ride. In either case, it is going to happen. With odds such as these it makes logical sense to be an active agent of transformation by acting with intention to manifest what we want in our Life journeys.

Developing a foundational understanding of how transformative processes result can go along way towards reducing the stress that naturally occurs when we feel as though our individual worlds are falling apart at the hands of the traumatic events we encounter as Life simply happens. This fact became blatantly important to me as I learned to confront my own demons. My own experiences taught me that the more I understood transformative processes the more coping skills I developed to work through the very traumatic experiences I encountered in my own Life. In the process one thing that emerged as an absolute certainty was that the foundational understanding of transformative processes literally became my tipping point to stop the dread and to begin turning my life around to create what I have now. What I learned has also enabled me to create new frames of reference for the ongoing  traumatic events occurring in my own Life.

Paolo Friere (1921-1997)

I first became aware of transformative processes during the 1970s while working on my undergraduate studies. That is when I was introduced to Paolo Freire through his work The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire (1921-1997) was a Brazilian educator interested in why some children who were raised in the poorest of neighborhoods succeeded while others did not. He used the term contientization (". . .developing consciousness. . .that is understood to have the power to transform reality. . ." Taylor, 1993 as cited in Infed) to explain the critical consciousness awakening processes. He believed that learning comes from the lived experiences of people creating an emerging critical consciousness that shapes what become new paradigms to explain how our individual realities of the world work. This process of Becoming and forming critical consciousness produces the need to take control of  changing our living conditions and therefore prompting us to take action. 

Jack Mezirow (1991) and other psychologists expanded upon Freire's critical consciousness work to identify 9 phases of transformation. According to Mezirow (1991) transformation occurs through 9 phases initiated by what he called a disorienting dilemma which could be anything that knocked us off balance. A disorienting dilemma could result from the birth of a child, the death of someone close to us, the loss or gain of a special friendship, job loss or gain, undergoing training or education, receiving personal or professional feedback, or some other significant experience that impacts us deeply enough to shake us up through its significant meaning.

Once we become disoriented, as biological creatures our bodies want to regain and maintain homeostasis (its equilibrium).  Therefore, every time something comes into our lives to upset our equilibrium we struggle to regain our balance by exploring the meaning of the disorienting dilemma through our own unique ways of processing information and experiences. How well we are able to manage our disorienting dilemmas and how quickly we are able to regain our equilibrium is a function of the severity of the disorienting event and our capacity to psychologically and physically cope with the event. The better shape we are in psychologically (including socially, emotionally, and spiritually) and physically the better we are able to cope with the  disorienting events we are sure to encounter along our life paths.   

The Phases of Transformation
  
Phase 1 -- Self-examination

The disorienting dilemma triggers our emotions including grief, anger, self-doubt, fear, etc. We can choose to attempt to suppress those feelings or to confront them. When we opt to suppress our feelings we place ourselves in a position of having those feelings continue to surface throughout the course of our lives until we finally confront them and try to mitigate their impacts. 

Therefore, realistically speaking, childhood traumas that are left unresolved can continuously resurface well into the later stages of life causing substantial and prolonged pain and suffering (often resulting in acts of self-sabotage) until they become resolved. In extreme cases the traumas can contribute to significant physical and mental health problems. 

As an example, when we covet being a parent then we are likely going to see becoming a parent as the change we want to make and as a wonderful opportunity filled with loving commitments to be fulfilled by the experience. Any disorientation under these circumstances are, generally speaking, met with joy and expectation. 

On the other hand, when we do not want to become a parent, but nonetheless find ourselves in a position of becoming a parent, then we are likely going to find dread when considering the prospects of parenting. In either case, learning to become a parent will be a disorienting dilemma for most people because of the stress produced by becoming and being a parent. 

Phase 2 -- Critical Self-assessment

The difference can be seen for the parent who wants to be a parent with the disorienting dilemma presenting itself as an exciting opportunity for a wonderful new future with lots to learn. Parents who do not want to become  parents could find themselves feeling absolute dread with the thought of becoming parents. This dread can produce one or more disorienting dilemmas (e.g., having responsibility for someone else when you are not psychologically prepared or motivated to do so) and thereby producing sources of severe conflict such as feelings of being trapped by the new responsibility that you do not want.

As we move from suppressing our feelings towards increasing the desire for self-examination we move towards freeing ourselves from the demons that hold us back through acts of self-sabotage. For example, becoming a parent changes our views of the world in extraordinary ways e.g., moving from selfishness to selflessness, balancing between home-work life issues, and moving children from discipline to self-discipline, etc.

(2011) The Hockey Center, Powassan, ON

At the point of self-examination we choose how we intend to respond to the dilemma. Was the dilemma created by some truly random event? If it appears that it was a truly random event, then we have to accept the event as a natural consequence of living. 

However, even when events appear to be purely random, they might very well not be as they appear. For example, if we track the story of the decisions that caused the dilemmas to occur in our lives we might very well find that a series of moment-to-moment decisions placed us in the position that produced the dilemma.

For example, when I was in junior high school I was hit by a car in front of my house. I was struck broadside by the vehicle with sufficient force at the point of impact to knock me into the air to produce a landing some 75 feet from the vehicle. When I regained consciousness I was screaming at the top of my lungs trying to get my mother's attention because she was inside our home and did not see what happened. 

As my awareness came back I saw that my head was a few inches from the concrete curb lining our property. Had I hit the curb with my head, it likely would have killed me. When I looked back at my bike, I saw that it was pinned at a 45 degree angle under the front bumper of the vehicle. I knew had I not had the presence of mind to kick my leg closest to the vehicle into the air above the height of the handle bars, I would have been pinned between my bicycle and the bumper which also likely would have killed me. Luckily, I survived the incident with scrapes and a badly bruised butt which apparently absorbed the bulk of the impact--I must have literally been thrown off my bicycle in the exact position in which I was sitting.

This incident produced a framework for a disorienting dilemma for me to resolve. I blamed the women who hit me for not seeing me because she was not looking where she was driving. She never saw me until I screamed "LADY!" just before she hit me. She did not react in enough time to break the momentum of her vehicle which struck me at about 30 mph. The dilemma emerged because, although my mom never yelled at me, she let me know her displeasure by saying "If you had eaten the dinner I prepared for you, rather than wanting to go to the store to get something else to eat, you never would have been hit by that car." Unwittingly (or not), she planted a seed that would not germinate until several decades later as I was looking back on my Life in my efforts to resolve my feelings about the major events in my Life. 

This was an exceptionally powerful teaching moment. My mother was right: Had I not made the decision to go to the store I would not have placed myself in a position to be hit by the car. As I have gotten older my lessons have provided 20-20 hindsight for me to track my acts of self-sabotage and general decision-making patterns to many of my major Life dilemmas. I have since learned that I have greater control over both the positive and negative things occurring in my Life than I had previously understood. 

Phase 3 -- Recognize that Discontent and Transformation are Linked 

In addition to learning about my own mortality at a very young age, my accident taught me many years later that each decision we make on a moment-to-moment basis conspires to produce the major events in our lives. While in college I held enough experiences to begin understanding how my ongoing decisions were connected to the outcomes manifesting in my Life. My decision to study social sciences (the various studies of human behavior) proved to be fortuitous providing lots of opportunities for me to explore my own behavior and to learn that my own evolution was going to require a lifetime of serious study.  

(2011) The Traveler, Vancouver Airport, B.C.

During one of my darkest nights of the soul my mentor taught me that I was precisely where I needed to be at that particular moment. At first, I did not understand what she was telling me. She was telling me to embrace the pain and suffering as my teacher at a moment when I wanted to run from it. What she helped me to learn was that precisely because I was disoriented I was in a position to transform my Self into something more magnificent. My dilemma was in fact my teacher, and it was teaching me about transformation and living with intention (see our December 12, 2011 Life blog Living With Intention).

Phase 4 -- Explore Options

A basic manufacturing axiom is that form follows function which means that we have to understand a thing's function before we can design it. Asking, what part of the problem am I? Why is this happening? How did this happen?  What is the true magnitude of the problem? are all good questions to ask in order to frame the scope of the problem. Once we frame the problem we can exert energy to resolve it by exploring our options. The caution here is to identify problems and not simply their symptoms. For example, continuous anger (symptom) might be the result of being put down or abused as a child; an unhappy marriage (symptom) might be the result of the marriage having served its purpose; and not finding the job you want (symptom) might be the result of  working in the wrong type of work preventing you from following your true Life path--the purpose you were born to serve. 

During this phase, feelings of  guilt might erupt because we did something to self-sabotage, we were fired, failed to resolve unfinished business with someone who has now passed away eliminating opportunities for obtaining closure, or any number of other events that throw us off balance.What is absolutely important here is to search our inner most Self  to seek what truly makes us happy.

The purpose here is to maximize our creative capacities to identify as many options as possible. The trick is to do this without convincing ourselves beforehand that it is impossible to achieve one or more of the things we have on our list.  

Proactive engagement with disorienting dilemmas changes problems into opportunities. As we begin to change our frame of reference from problem to opportunity we are then able to more freely explore our options to create new ways of Being. Identifying our options serves as a prerequisite to transforming a disorienting dilemma into a new plan of action that will lead to a new way of Life.

Phase 5 -- Plan a Course of Action

(2011) Steve Powers, Bellingham, WA

Once we have identified where we are and where we want to go we can identify the gaps between the two points and then create a plan of action outlining how we intend to get from point A to point B. Making the journey between the two points offers opportunities to acquire new knowledge in preparation of completing the transformative process.

Getting from one place to another requires at least some level of planning. Just as we develop shopping lists, use GPS or MapQuest, and plan our days in any number of ways, we have to create the plan and then work the plan. 

When a disorienting dilemma is confronting deeply held beliefs and emotions the impact can be exceptionally traumatic for even the strongest of personality types, buckling the knees of even the strongest of  people. At this point we have a couple of choices: We can plan to confront our deepest held fears, we can try to live in denial that they exist, we can deny that we had anything to do with creating them, or  we can convince ourselves that they resulted by someone else's hand. Living in denial will result in the recurrence of similar events forcing us to confront them repeatedly until we resolve them and get them behind us. Therefore, as adults, accepting ownership for our Life events, living with intentionality to manifest what we want, and planning a way out of our dilemmas is proactive rather than reactive making the act an intentional act of transformation.

Phase 6 -- Acquire New Knowledge

The more proactive approach is to learn how to work through the emotional pain enabling us to move towards a Life free of our troublesome burdens. Thanks to one of my colleagues and mentors Dr. Suzy Ross, I have come to know this process as riding the dragon to confront my demons.

(2011) Cabo San Lucas

By confronting our demons we are forced to resolve them through deep reflection and ultimately forgiveness of Self and others. For example, a person reconciling many years of abuse may find themselves having to forgive their own responses to the abuse or other persons involved with committing the abuse. A person who has been a survivor of such abuse has to also resolve residual anger and even embarrassment from whatever events they encountered.  

Learning to truly understand the dynamics of our situations requires acquiring new knowledge for us to see our worlds differently. We can obtain that knowledge by engaging experts in discussions, reading books, taking courses, engaging training programs, etc. Nonetheless, what we have to come to know is that whatever we were doing beforehand simply wasn't working and needed to change by acquiring  new knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Phase 7 -- Explore New Roles

By acquiring new knowledge and learning new ways of Being we are able to try on new roles and develop new competencies. As a result, we might take on a new and challenging position, take on some hidden fear with the intention of overcoming it, or find ourselves thrown into a situation which requires a baptism by fire.

Each new experience provides opportunities for us to practice what we are learning. By exploring new roles we can test our new knowledge and skills as we develop new abilities through practice. As we deploy our new behaviors we can watch to see how well they fit with what we want to create for ourselves. It is literally like trying on several suits of new clothes before buying the one you most like. If you don't like what you see you simply try a new role.

In my own case, while fully engaged in my own dark night of the soul I decided to make a major shift in the role I played at work. I went from being "the employee voice" and defacto leader of the department to being a silent participant. My changing the way that I behaved (without saying anything to anyone) changed the way that others in the department behaved. What I learned from this test was that I could reduce my own energy output and still achieve my same objectives--change in our department--because others picked up the slack. The other thing I learned is that we never left a meeting without me being asked what I thought about the discussions. This opening allowed me the advantage of having listened to all of the input before offering my own. This change took me out of the spotlight and therefore I was no longer a target in my department because I was no longer the sole bearer of all of the bad news. More importantly, my shift facilitated leadership practices being expressed through my colleagues: They grew to take on the challenges making them more self-sufficient. This was a valuable Life lesson--the more you do, the more others will let you do.

(2011) Shogun, Buffalo, NY

Phase 8 -- Build Competencies and Self-confidence

Part of the learning process is practicing what we have learned as we take on new ways of Being. Learning and practicing new competencies provides new potential skills and abilities. A couple of easy examples to illustrate this point is when I was in the Navy learning to fold clothes the Navy way and then later working as a custodian. Although I learned to fold clothes as a youngster, the Navy taught me a much more efficent and spacing saving method which carries over today. Additionally, during the early years of my career part of my work responsibilities was that of custodian. The two skills sets came in handy throughout the rest of my career as an executive leader with facilities and maintenance responsibilities.

We use trial and error to identify and then practice the most comfortable new roles to assume during this stage of evolving to become a transformed and more enlightened Being (more informed). As we become more certain about our new way of Being we have to continue increasing our competencies in key areas in order to increase our Self capacity to support this new way of Being and to place ourselves in a position to maximize future opportunities we cannot yet see e.g., working on my Masters degree made it possible for me to take advantage of an emerging opportunity to continue my education in order to get my doctorate. Little did I know it at the time that three years later I would  find myself teaching full time at a large College where I would meet someone who would become my spiritual teacher during one of the most dark nights of my Life. Now, twelve years farther down my path I have the best job in the world teaching for a university that allows me to live almost anywhere in the world.

The point here is that I never intended to get my doctorate until the idea emerged at the suggestion of one of my teachers in my Masters degree program. I was perfectly contented with my work and Life at the time and making some sort of a career change was nothing more than a passing thought. 

The single most important lesson from my Life training course, described above, has been that we never know what wonderful things might emerge along our journey but we have to be prepared to take advantage of them when they do occur. Opportunities manifest frequently, but they are fleeting. We have to learn to recognize them and when the door opens  to be prepared to walk through it; and through preparation we will have the confidence to take the next step that could literally change our lives in wonderful ways. 

In my case, the college job opportunity would never have been made available to me had I not had my doctorate and, therefore, my life would be very different today. With 20-20 hindsight I can now see that everything that has occurred in my life has led me to this precise moment with an ability to write this blog.

By approaching disorienting dilemmas with intentionality to learn from the experiences offers us growth opportunities because they become viewed as part of nature's way of illuminating our imperfections, so that we can learn from them. In this way, stumbling blocks literally become stepping stones.

Phase 9 -- Integrate the New Perspective As Part of a New Way of Being 

Over time we become a newly transformed Being because we have acquired new information, fully integrated new coping skills, created new ways of viewing our lived experiences, and absorbed new experiences into a more fully evolved (enlightened) Self  who is then more capable to manage through the next disorienting dilemma we encounter.  In the process, we also transform the ways in which we live on a day-to-day basis enriching the overall Life experience from moment-to-moment.

(2011) Jacquie Perello, Cabo San Lucas

To live a more enriched and meaningful life we have to reconcile the fact that there is nothing in our way but ourselves. Therefore, when we get out of our own way all sorts of miraculous things begin to happen. It is so simple yet we make it so difficult. Our very happiness is only a frame of reference away from any present thought. By changing how we view what happens to us as a natural occurrence of Life events then we are able to accept that transformation is a Natural Life occurrence to be embraced. Once we embrace transformation as a natural Life occurrence then we are able to capture its essence and actively use it for our own purposes to create a meaningful Life for ourselves. 

In the end, the choice is ours to do with Life what we will--good, bad, or indifferent--we own it whether or not we like it. To that end, I don't know about you, but in my case, I'm aiming for the farthest edge of the Universe.

Namaste, fellow traveler! 

 References

Acknowledgement: Paolo Freire retrieved December 16, 2001 from http://www.google.com/search?q=paolo+friere+pictures&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=fZM&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=zMTrTpL2KKiSiQKJgKnMBA&ved=0CCQQsAQ&biw=1138&bih=512 

infed. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-freir.htm   

Mezirow, J. Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New Directions for Adult & Continuing Education. (74). 

Mission to Learn (n.d.) retrieved November 30, 2011 http://www.missiontolearn.com/2009/05/definition-of-learning/

Taylor, P. (1993). The Texts of Paulo Freire, Buckingham: Open University Press.