How do you Relate to Others?

Someone gave me a tip on a terrific book this last month, about a little known book with a very powerful idea to teach us. The book is Leadership and Self-Betrayal by the Arbinger Institute. I found it ready for easy download onto my Kindle through Amazon. I have never seen it in a bookstore, even though it has been out for about seven years.

How do you relate to other people? There is a simple but elegant concept in this little book that I think pretty much all of us could use. You can apply this concept to your relationships with co-workers and your boss, your friends, your children or step-children, your partner, your parents, your siblings, and your neighbors.

The concept is, basically, that we all relate to other people in one of two ways: either from being in our own box, or out of it.

When we are in the box, we relate to other people like they are objects. We depersonalize them. We see ourselves as important, valuable, and benevolent. We fail to see our own shortcomings. We feel justified in not being relational, kind, or fair-minded with others because we delude ourselves that they don't matter, or they don't deserve it.

When we are out of the box, we relate to other people as people. We recognize that other people have their own story, and their own hurts and limitations. When we step out of the box, we don't assume evil intent on the other person's behavior. We watch our own tone, so that we are not hostile, demeaning, cold, or acting better than. We don't justify cruddy behavior on our part by pointing out someone else's misbehavior.

You can operate in or out of the box in any situation. You may have to correct your teenager about being more responsible with money. You can scream, yell, threaten, and demean (operating from the box), or you can choose to discuss the money situation calmly, and set limits and consequences in a more mature, grown up tone (operating out of the box).

In Leadership and Self-Deception, the main character is a middle-aged man who learns this concept at work from his new employer after he has a run-in with a direct report who makes a mistake. As it turns out, every employee at his new company gets trained on this concept. The character soon identifies that he is not only relating to his employees from atop a big box, but also his wife and teenage son who have been having problems. In the book, we get to see all the shifts that happen when one individual gets out of their box. It causes a chain-reaction of good shifts in other people.

I particularly liked the concept of self-betrayal. The book teaches that when we don't do the right thing for others---both those we know and complete strangers---we actually betray ourselves.

This book is an easy read, and a paradigm shift that could change your family, your work day, and ultimately, your life. Think about tearing down your box today, and stick it out for recycling. Taking responsibility for doing your part to make things better, with your partner, children, co-workers, family, and friends is a huge step towards being your best and most healthy self.

Building Your Support System

Are you getting enough support? There are different kinds of support, and different people in your life may be able to fill different support roles. It's important to recognize that each of us needs support, identify your potential sources, ask for the support you want, develop new support systems, and recognize your own role in supporting others towards their goals. There is lots of proof that support from family and friends not only correlates with more success in achieving academic, career and personal goals, but also helps people cope better with challenges, loss, and setbacks. Strong support can help you deal better when things in your life are stressful.

Even something as basic as getting in shape and getting to a healthy weight, or taking better care of your health is easier to achieve if your friends and family are supportive. Your family can help your efforts by encouraging you to do active, calorie-burning activities with them, or being careful about what they bring home from the grocery store. On the flip side, family and friends can influence you negatively by undermining your health efforts, whining when you make healthier choices, or insisting on the traditional high-fat foods or sedentary activities you have bonded over in the past. Some studies report that the weight and health choices of our family and friends can be a good predictor for how we are going to do with our own food and exercises choices.

Asking for the support you need is key. Your partner, family, and friends may be very willing to help support your goals if you ask. They are not clairvoyant, so don't assume they won't help just because you haven't asked. Be specific with your important support people about how they can be supportive of your goal. You may be very pleasantly surprised!

Great relationships require MUTUAL support, meaning that you not only ask for it yourself and receive it graciously, but that you also ask the people you care about how you can be more supportive of them--and do it! Strong relationships are mutually supportive, not one-way.

There are different kinds of support and different roles that need to be played. Think about a goal that you have, and list the various kinds of support you could use. For example, if you are working on getting in better physical health, perhaps you could list: walk with me, go to the gym with me, make encouraging statements, use care in choosing groceries that are brought home, choose restaurants where I can find something healthy on the menu, etc. Next, think about who you can ask to help you in each area.

There are different types of support:

Emotional Support-listening, encouragement, being there, celebrating your progress towards your goal with you

Practical Support- tasks, errands, assistance


Challenging Support-motivating and questioning if you are doing what you need to do to get to your goal

Informational Support-Gathering information, teaching you skills

This week, you may want to have some fun, and add some interest to your conversations with your key loved ones and friends about how you can be more supportive of them, and ask them for the specific kinds of support that will help you achieve your own important goals.

Giving up the Blame Game

Blaming others for your circumstances never works. It makes you more of a victim. It puts you into a passive, helpless mind frame. It's not a mentally healthy neighborhood to hang out in. It's negative, and it keeps you stuck and powerless to improve things.

You can hear people blaming all around you. Like these statements:

"I'm all stressed out because of my boss."

"My teenagers drive me crazy."

"My marriage is bad because my (wife, husband) does (x, y, z)."

"I've always had bad self-esteem because of my childhood."

"I can't control my anger because people upset me."

"My health is bad because of my genetics."

"I can't save any money because of my kids."

The truth is that there are givens for all of us----your partner, your genetics, your personality, your earning power, but there is another huge untapped influence for most of us also. That powerful influence is our thoughts and our behavior choices.

Diabetes might run in your family, but you can get great information on how to lower your risk with diet and exercise and work on that plan every day.

You might get hot-headed with anger, and come from a family of bad anger role-models, but you personally get to choose learning some better skills, and using them. To do less than this is to choose the easy way out and stay in your comfort zone of unskilled behavior.

Mentally healthy people take some authority over their own thoughts. They realize that negative thoughts breed more negative thoughts and behaviors. What we think about truly expands to fill the space available inside us. Weeding out your own negative, maladaptive thoughts is each person's responsibility. A good therapist can teach you how to scale back those distorted negative thoughts in a couple sessions. Everyone needs to "take out their own trash," meaning manage their own thoughts.

How do I know that this is possible? I have had the privilege of working in counseling with individuals who have overcome incredible odds, including abusive parents, poverty, multiple significant losses, and the betrayal of others, and yet adjust their thinking to have their experiences make them softer, gentler, and more full of loving kindness for themselves and others. They go onto full and emotionally rich lives after amazing hardship, and it deepens their appreciation for the goodness and light in life.

To move past blaming others puts you in a better position to take back your own power over your own life, both your present and your future. When we abdicate responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are stuck in a bad neighborhood called helplessness.

When we take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and our part in making any situation or relationship better, that's when better things can happen in our present and future. Owning our own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors is a hallmark of emotional maturity.
When stressed, the mature person exercises more and sorts out their negative thoughts and feelings that keep them churned up. The mature person realizes that part of not being stressed out is showing humor and flexibility, and doing good self-care. Dealing with your own stress, rather than taking it out on others, is essentially a choice.

You can choose to make blame unnecessary in your life, because as you take responsibility for where you are now in your life, and where you want to go, blame becomes irrelevant. What really matters as time passes is enjoying moments with those you love and doing things you are passionate about. Both of those things are so much more fun than blaming.

Trouble with the Curve (Movie Review)

The newly released movie, "Trouble with the Curve," stars Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, and Clint Eastwood, and it's well worth seeing. Essentially, it's a baseball movie, about an old scout for the Atlanta Braves (Eastwood). He's got some serious issues with his declining health as he nears retirement age. He's being pushed out of his job by all the generation X scouts who use computers to find prospects. Eastwood identifies prospects the old-fashioned way, by sight and even by sound.

The aging baseball scout is widowed, and has a distant and conflicted relationship with his only daughter (Adams).While Eastwood's character is a bit too curmudgeon-like for my taste, it's still a heart-warming story about estranged family relationships, differences in perspective, and the capacity of the human heart to heal relationships, even late in the game.

Amy Adams is genuine, and shows depth of character as an attorney trying to make partner in a male-dominated law firm. Her adult life has been, in large part, a reaction to her childhood wounds. She's been through a great deal of loss, including the early death of her mother, and an absent father. She's admirable in her willingness to dig deep and recognize how she has kept herself guarded and emotionally unavailable as an adult because she holds on to the legacy about loss and abandonment she experienced as a child.

Justin Timberlake is delightful and just the right touch of funny and challenging to both the leads. He is another scout trying to transition his career after blowing out his arm as a pitcher in the majors.

"Trouble with the Curve" works on several levels. It's a touching film about the love of baseball and the human element in the game. It's also a great metaphor for looking at how we each deal with the unexpected curve balls we are thrown in life. In this movie, the curve balls are losses in career and family, aging, disappointment, health changes, and unexpected chances at loving someone again. In life, we all get thrown curve balls. Many things happen to each of us that we never expected, some of them good, and some of them heartbreaking.

"Trouble with the Curve" is a good reminder that choosing to be flexible, resilient, and have your heart made gentler and softer by the unexpected is an excellent choice. You can learn to adapt to life's curve balls, rather than let them take you out of the game. Curve balls, it turns out, are both a part of baseball and a part of life. Adapting well and keeping your heart vulnerable and your defenses down gives you the best chance at batting 300 in life.

Your Own True North

At times, I see a theme in the life coaching and counseling work that I am doing, running across several individuals I am working with. In the past several weeks, I have been guiding different people in the similar theme of  not betraying themselves.

Often we consider not letting others down, but rarely do we consider not letting ourselves down. In relationships, at work, and in our lives in general, we need to be our best, most authentic self. You can feel the tension and resentment that builds up inside you if you are not being honest with yourself and the others who are important to you. Notice what your body feels when you are around different people. Are you at ease, or tense?

We need to say the truth about what we need and want. We need to be brave enough emotionally to stand up to people who want to belittle us, or for whom you need to act smaller than you are in order to fit into their perception of us. We need to not be codependent with those who would marginalize us, or beat us up emotionally with our past choices. We are allowed to change and grow, and expect that the people close to us give us the grace to do so.

Every person has a basic right to say how they want to be treated. Philosopher and writer Martin Buber wrote about the "I and Thou" relationship, where we treat the intimate other with respect, compassion, and tenderness. We also have a right to ask to have that respectful relationship reciprocated to us. That is how we should strive to treat not only our partner, but also our children, our parents, our co-workers and friends.

What happens if you betray yourself in a relationship, perhaps out of fear of losing that person? You are giving away some of your own personal power to them. You are letting your need for the relationship, or your insecurities from the past, or about this relationship, run the show. You shouldn't have to betray your true north, or your sense of being at peace with yourself, in order to maintain the homeostasis in any relationship. That's a bad deal, and over time, that bargain will eat away at your sense of self. Perhaps it will also eat away at your spirit like acid rain.

This is the only life we know for sure that you get. Treat it with reverence. Make sure that you are reflecting from time to time about whether you are being honest and appearing as yourself in each of the relationships in your life. Nobody needs to give you permission. You can give it to yourself.

It is never too late to reset your life course for your own true north. I admire people who decide in middle age or beyond to retrain for fulfilling work, or recognize they are tired of ignoring their own feelings, or getting stepped on by their family, partner, or friends. You must be your own best friend and advocate for your life being lived fully.

What direction do you need to steer in order to be more fully congruent and your authentic self in all the parts of your life? This week is a perfectly good week to take a step or two in the direction of your own true north. A baby step will work just fine, and will strengthen your ability and resolve to keep on going. Ask for the support of those closest to you.