50 Ways to Create Great Relationships by Steve Chandler - Chapter 34 - Celebrate Your Independence - One of the most secure states of mind you can be in for creating relationships is a state that was taught to me by hypnotherapist Lindsay Brady. Brady's term for this state is emotional independence. When I'm emotionally independent, I don't let my emotions depend on how other people treat me or what other people say to me. My emotions are mine to cultivate and nurture and I'm not about to give that secure sense of control away. My emotions are feelings I get from the thought patterns I construct in my head. When I respond to a customer who is shouting at me by getting scared and then angry is only a habit. Is it the habit I want? Does it serve me? If I would rather form a more secure-feeling habit than that, I can. I might start by choosing to become more conscious-not less-when the customer is angry. I might rather go up my ladder of consciousness than down. And I know that either direction can be made into a habit. So I might rather train myself to respond thoughtfully, even cleverly, in the face of someone's anger instead of emotionally, or frozenly. People used to believe that their emotions were all caused by outside events and other people. People also used to believe that the world was flat. People who still believe in what psychologist Dr. William Glasser calls the "stimulus/response view of the world" are making a mistake that is even greater than believing that the world is flat. By believing that you have no choice but to just respond to whatever stimulus is out there, you've surrendered all the power within you to create a life. People do not have the absolute power to scare us. People do not have the capacity to make us mad. People don't intimidate us, and people don't frustrate or irritate us. It just seems like they do-in the same hallucinatory false way that the world seems like it's flat. Fortunately we know better about the world, but most of us don't know better about other people. By hallucinating that other people are the problem, we extend the hallucination into a futility by then trying to change other people. The way we know this is dysfunctional thinking based on mistaken beliefs is that it never works. There's only one process that works and that is creative thinking followed by courageous action. The exciting conclusion we reach after enough practice is this: we create the relationships in our lives by what we think and the actions we take. Relationships are best created when they don't feel out of control. Control is the source of that great feeling in a relationship when both sides are enjoying every challenge. Not control in the false sense of controlling another person, but control in the true sense of controlling our own consciousness. But it just doesn't matter My friend Carson suffered a very dramatic breakup with a man with whom she had been living in Michigan for seven years. She had watched as he allowed himself to be seduced by a woman who hung out in health clubs and looked for people to seduce. It wasn't a simple case of bad judgment, or a "mistake" (as our top statesmen like to call it when they are caught violating their marriages). It was a betrayal. And it had been coming on for years. Carson took a while to grieve the loss of the relationship after bravely throwing her man out of her life. That grieving process was going to have to occur, whether she liked it or not. She was like a lioness with a thorn in her paw. It would have to work its way out on its own. But Carson also knew that there were things she could do to eventually achieve emotional independence from the whole affair. She knew that emotions live in the body and are experienced in the body. ("Feelings are felt," she said.) She learned that when the body is broken down, as it is when we have the flu, we are in less emotional control than usual. Conversely, when the body is built up, negative emotions have a harder time fastening onto anything. In a body singing with oxygen, negative emotions feel out of place. So Carson went on a program of aerobics and dance. She worked out every day, pumping her lungs full of life-giving oxygen, and expanding her consciousness in ever-widening arcs (as every aerobic activity will do). She signed up for a musical chorus and began meeting new people and taking part in concerts being performed around the community. She declared herself to be starting a new life. She identified the personal betrayal as the end of the chapter that was Part One in the book of her life. By thinking of it that way, the betrayal even began to take on some positive qualities. The qualities of a turning point. Every day her emotional independence grew. She went through an angry period, where she was just flat-out furious with her partner for what he had done. She was also angry with herself for letting such an obviously uncommitted relationship last for so long. But soon the anger gave way to an intoxicating new feeling: the feeling of not really caring. "I remember the day I woke up and realized I no longer cared," she said. "I no longer cared about him or who he was seeing or what he was doing. It just didn't matter." When my children were young, I used to use a scene from Bill Murray's wonderful little movie Meatballs. My kids especially loved the part in the movie when it's a day after the first day of the two-day camp olympics between Murray's camp of regular kids and the opposing camp across the lake of rich kids. The rich kids were way ahead in the competition and Murray's character calls a meeting of all the kids in his camp the night before the final day of competition. As he announces each and every advantage the rich kids have in life over his kids he gets an insane look on his face and yells, "But it doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter!" Soon all the of kids are shouting, "It just doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter!" My kids loved that movie and we watched it more times than I can count. And we also developed the habit, when life threw our family one kind of minor tragedy after another, of gathering ourselves together and having one of us spell out each one of the things about the tragedy we didn't like, and after saying it, yelling, "but it doesn't matter." And finally, when all of the bad things were brought out into the open all of us would march around the house, just like in the movie, shouting at the top of our lungs, "it just doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter!" Consciousness is like a flashlight in a storm. It shows the way out of emotional entanglements. The first step is to ask myself the question: Where will I shine my light? If I shine it on how I can serve someone in life, then I can really enjoy the feeling of new control. As long as I am making a difference, I am in control of my light. I am in control of my imagination and the energy of my thoughts. But the minute my attention slips out of my control and starts roving free, seeking out little painful feelings in my system, I begin to worry. I begin to wonder what you think of me and why. I have lost my independence. The way back is this: My emotions are mine, not other people's. They are valuable and full of fresh color and energy. I will practice every day working with them and keeping them independent of other people. Every day will become independence day. Visit www.SteveChandler.com for more information.
