Chapter 9 How You See Them Is How They Will Show Up

Report On Assignment

Objective: By the end of this session you will understand the effect your perception of others has on the treatment you receive from others in your communities. Using the tools learned in this session will accept the assignment to bring peace into an existing relationship where contention has previously existed. 

Using tool 3 we separated events in our lives from the meaning we assigned to them. The events happened and are real. The meaning we assigned is individually made up and arbitrary. The meaning we assign will most generally determine the mood and the behavior we exhibit in each situation. This is the same in our relationships with other people.

After a lifetime of experience the view we have of people who are close to us is determined by our experience of them.  Once the perception is formed we teach other people how to relate to us based upon our view of them. Once we have that view we send out vibrations which return our misperceptions back to us as reality.

One of the most important practices for letting go of the past is forgiveness. When I continue to resent myself or someone from my past I continue to be a living breathing crap magnet. To turn lose of the crap I need to let go of the grudges. Sometimes the person you most need to forgive is yourself.

       Picture of conflict:                            Picture of harmony:

See others as a detriment, responsible for your happiness or and as unimportant.

See others as a benefit, relevant and contributing to your life.

 
 

Do you see your parents, spouse or children as a hindrance or as responsible to your happiness? Do your see others as irrelevant or unimportant to you?  Take a few minutes and fill in the boxes below like we did using Tool 3. 

In the box on the left list the name of a significant individual in your life who causes you pain or whom you feel at odds with at the present time. In the box on the right, write down your perception of this individual.

Again in the box on the left, list the name of a significant person who you love, enjoy and appreciate. In the box on the right, record your perception of this person. 

List the name of a significant person in your life who causes you hurt or pain.

(For example) If my father (mother) were not in my life or had never been in my life I would be a happier person.

List the name of a person you love, enjoy and appreciate.

I see this person as real and significant.

 
          One Christmas not long ago I went into a pawn shop to get a body for my old camera. A short, stocky Hispanic woman stood behind the counter and looked like she had had a hard day. I pointed to a camera and asked her to get it down for me. She did so very quickly and efficiently. Wanting to make a comparison I asked for a second camera from the self. She very curtly replied, “Only one to a customer, sir.” Reacting to what I considered to be very rude behavior I turned and walked out. As I drove down the road I felt myself gripping the steering wheel very tightly while growling to myself about the poor treatment I have received. I suddenly realized that I was in was at war with someone I didn’t even know. I was seeing this store clerk as an obstacle. When I was able rethink my perception and ask myself the question, “What must be going on in her life to cause her to treat a perfect stranger the way she just treated me?” As I moved towards seeing this woman as having wants and needs as real and my own I considered the possibility of some things that might be going on in her life. Maybe past customers had stolen from her. Maybe someone was kicking her dog or maybe someone was kicking her. When I thought about her and her life and the things that may be occurring that I obviously didn’t understand my compassion for her showed up and my anger dissipated very rapidly. 

How does your view of these individuals affect the way you relate to them? If you changed the way you saw each of them how would that change the way you related to them? What if your perception of each of them were reversed?

          Think about the significant relationships in your life past and present. Rate them on a scale of 1 through 10.  ____________ (If the relationship is a 10 it is as good as it can be. A one is at the bottom of the heap.)

Pick one that you rated below a 5. Think about that person and write down what you could do to change the relationship when you change your perception. Now go out and do it.

The view that someone is an obstacle, a vehicle to our happiness or irrelevant gives us an excuse to act contrary to what we know to be right and then seek to justification our behavior by changing our self view and feel the betrayal in anger and anxiety.

If in the present we see others as INDIVIDUALS with hopes, needs, and cares as real to us as our own it allows us to get past our self betrayal and treat others with dignity and respect. The painful behavior they may have exhibited towards us was only coming out of their own stories and misperception of their own true identity. This leaves us with the opportunity to take action and do the next right thing because of who we are and because of who they are.

View of Self         View of Others             View of World            Feelings               Behavior     Needy                 My Audience                   Judging Me            Anxious/Afraid         Timid     Inferior                Privileged                          Hostile                   Helpless             Aggressive     Superior             Ungrateful                        Owes me                Resentful             Arrogance Nothing                     Nothing                         It is as it                      Peaceful           The next                (neutral)                    (neutral)                           should be                                               right thing

 
 

 

 

Assignment:

Between now and our next session pick at least one damaged relationship in your life, contact that person and do and say what you need to do and say to attempt to bring peace to that relationship.  

Healing Relationships and Understanding Forgiveness

                                       Forgiveness is a private matter.

To forgive someone:

1.  I do not need their permission.
2. They do not need to deserve my forgiveness.
3. I do not need to tell them they are forgiven.
4. To avoid forgiving is like drinking poison hoping someone else will die.

In healing a relationship often the concept of forgiveness is relevant. To help us out it is suggested that we love our enemies as we love ourselves. Three basic questions are asked about self love and then applied to our enemies as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self Love  

1. Do you always enjoy your own company? No I don’t always enjoy my own company. Sometimes I get very irritated with myself.
2. Do you look at some of the things you do with loathing and horror? Yes. I look at some of the things I do and it makes me cringe to think that I could do such things, but I still go on loving myself. I hate the sin but not the sinner.
3. Do you hope you are going to make it someday? Yes. I definitely hope that someday I will get it together be the best person I can be. I will never give up on myself.

 

Enemy Love

1. Do you always enjoy this person’s company? Obviously not. Enjoying their company is not a requirement for forgiveness.
2. Do you look at some of the things they do with loathing and horror? The obvious answer is YES. You do not have to say what they are doing or have done is good when it is not. Again you condemn behavior not the person.
3. Do you hope they will make it someday? This is the important question. If you have hope for their happiness in the future you have passed the test. If your hope is for their continued misery you will bring that misery upon yourself.

 

 

Self-forgiveness and the process of demotivation.

When I was completing my PhD I took a class in labor negotiations. The teacher for this class had been a corporate executive somewhere out in the Midwest. He described his unofficial job title as “The Corporate Hatchet Man.” He worked for an organization which had a very strong union making if difficult to fire people. My teacher’s job, as he described it, was to focus on an individual who had been marked for dismissal and get them to quit. The method he used he referred to as “The Process Of Demotivation.” The process of demotivation contained 5 steps which are listed below. I will take some time here and describe each of these steps.

1. Creation of conflict
2. Self Directed anger
3. Loss of Hope
4. Depression or Rebellion
5. Self Destruction
6. Creation of conflict. Conflict is created by calling someone’s competence into question. Each of you, I am sure, has had that experience. When someone of power or influence in your life like a superior, spouse or respected individual tells you you are less than perfect. That criticism immediately causes you to begin to question or doubt yourself. When a marked individual would go to the demotivator for suggestions he would say, “There is no point in giving you a suggestion because you are a loser and everyone here knows it. This treatment wove cause the victim to move to the next step.
7. Self directed anger.  At this point the marked individual would begin to question their own competence and doubt their own abilities. Again in trying to work it out with the demotivation who is out to destroy the victim he would say, “Give it up. You are never going to baking any progress here.” This would case the victim to move to the next step.
8. Loss of hope: At this point the identified victim gives up all hope of ever making a contribution or being recognized as competent on the job. As my teaching said, “We can live without a lot of things including love, but we cannot live without hope. Loss of hope leads to,
9. Depression or rebellion: Either of these two attitudes would be described by the demotivator as unacceptable which would take the victim to the last step:
10. Self destruction: Self destruction would take the form of quitting the job, getting drunk, driving one’s car into a tree, cutting the wrist or anything that could be done to get the victim away from the demotivator. According to my teacher the process of demotivaion never failed. It worked every time. He never started out to demotivate someone that didn’t become demotivated. Has this ever happened to you?

Remember to continue the Wax On, Wax Off exercise by continually affirming your own competence and the competence of others. You are now a people builder.

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