As you may be aware, coaches have coaches. We benefit from outside perspectives, additional resources, and compassionate support, just like our clients do. I seek mentors for my own personal development, and to continue to grow my awareness and capacities, in order to serve my clients better. I have been studying with Michael Neill for the past year. And what a journey it has been! In a recent meeting with him, I asked if we could explore relationships.
I have always been fascinated with relationships. Especially because I have struggled in so many of my relationships over the course of my life. And yet lately, seemingly without any effort on my part, I had been noticing that my relationships have changed dramatically — for the better.
Recently, I have noticed that I am feeling more love and connection to my children, family, and friends than ever before. I am aware that I am enjoying my work with clients more and generally enjoying most people around me. And I seem to be able to work more effectively with a wider range of people.
I wondered why I was experiencing such profound changes, when I felt I really hadn’t put any conscious work into this area of my life.
As Michael and I engaged with my question, we unpacked the connection between the concepts we had been exploring in our work, the truths I have been uncovering and living from during our months together, and how these realizations have led to this relationship revolution I am now experiencing.
1. Because I know that I am OK, I also know that other people are OK. In my own growth work, I have come to know that there is simply nothing wrong with me. And from there, I can extrapolate. I know that there is nothing wrong with any human being, especially and including one whom I am in relationship with; we are both fine at all times. It is just that sometimes we get lost in our thinking, and then we may not be so pleasant to be around. Or we might feel like others are not so pleasant to be around.
Now I know that each of us will come back into balance the moment our thinking falls away.
We all have this capacity. Because I know this, I don’t get fazed by where people are. They get to have their experience, and I am OK with that.
2. There is the actual person I am with, and then there is my thinking about the person I am with. When I am in my thinking, when I am believing my thinking, I cannot see the person in front of me. I see my thoughts. And then I am responding to my thoughts about them, not to who they really are.
When my thinking falls away, the person in front of me becomes alive, like my backyard does — in those moments when I am sitting at my desk and gazing out my window; I discover all sorts of beauty. There is always something new to see, something that will take my breath away. This is true because people, like my backyard, are always changing and transforming.
When I am open like this, something new, a new perception or idea, will come through me and surprise me.
3. On the other side of Thinking is Love. Do you have a teenager? Do you remember being one? Typically, parent-child relationships during the teenage years are... fraught. What I notice lately is that when my thinking falls away, and I am with my teenage daughter, she becomes one of the funniest, most brilliant people I know. She will say things that completely stop in my tracks. In that moment, I feel love and I feel connected — to her, and to something larger. But when I get caught up in my thinking about her, I see her as a messy teenage girl who doesn’t help around the house — and I am pissed off!
Between the two versions of our relationship, I so prefer the feeling I experience about her, and between us, when my thinking falls away.
The beauty of this new understanding is that now I can see that any relationship can become fresh. I just have to be willing to let my thinking go.
Would you like to see a current relationship in a new way? I’d love to help. Give me a call.