Recently, I started a series of arti­cles. I sug­gested that four areas (sex­u­al­ity (1), (2), rela­tion­ships, (1), (2) voca­tion, and self-responsibility) could be looked at for guid­ance on how our lives are pro­gress­ing, and that the four needed to be no less than neu­tral in “feel,” and to be in balance.

Today’s arti­cle is the last in this series. We’ve been look­ing at using aspects of our lives as keys, or indi­ca­tors, for how our self-development is going. I’ve been sug­gest­ing that we should not set­tle for any­thing less than neu­tral in the “felt sense” of our sex­ual selves, our rela­tion­ships, and our vocations.

What, then, is self-development, or self-knowing, or self-reflection?

Notice I did not say “self–improve­ment.” Per­haps the biggest mis­take you can make (a great way to waste your life) is to think you need improve­ment – to be fixed. We are not bro­ken. We have, within us, all we will ever need to lead deep, mean­ing­ful and ful­fill­ing lives. The prob­lem with the “self-improvement” move­ment is that it is based upon the notion of the lim­ited vale of being fully human—thus, every­thing is in deep need of repair. We beg to differ.

We tend to believe that peo­ple do the best they can with their present resources and under­stand­ings. If they hon­estly believe that oth­ers are out to get them, or “make them” feel feel­ings, then that is the sys­tem out of which they oper­ate. Their thoughts and deci­sions are con­gru­ent with this belief. Things begin to shift as the belief shifts, cou­pled with behav­iours that lean in the direc­tion you wish to go.

Fan­tasy is not Real

There’s no magic, no res­cue, no end­less, chargy bliss. There are moments of all of it, but the hard truth is that there is noth­ing easy about life. Life, in the form of real­ity, hap­pens to all of us. The cur­ricu­lum of life has as it’s grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony the death of each of us. This is either scary, or empowering.

I sug­gest it is the lat­ter, because once we “get” that we do not have for­ever (per­haps today is our last day…) then two things happen.

1) I begin to see that how things are right now is how things are, right now, and

2) I find myself drawn to shift my behav­iour and per­spec­tive, to start liv­ing the things I have for­merly thought I’d get around to some day, and I find myself finally engaged with here and now reality.

This is why I started writ­ing this series of arti­cles. I noticed that clients (and myself, occa­sion­ally) are so focused on the ‘unfair­ness’ of the way “life” is treat­ing them that they are per­pet­u­ally caught in the mud. Rela­tion­ships come and go,
drama is deep and scary,
and noth­ing ever seems to get bet­ter. If this is your focus, of course noth­ing changes. All that’s hap­pen­ing is you’re men­tally review­ing how hard-done-by you are.

I’d like to sug­gest the oppo­site – that the key to a suc­cess­ful life is to be able to take a firm step back from the drama, and to then to do more of what is work­ing and stop doing what is not.

Dur­ing the run-up to find­ing our present lodg­ing, Dar and I seemed to be play­ing tag team to a weird game of “we’re about to be home­less and liv­ing under a bridge…” It would tend to hap­pen to one or the other of us, around 3 am (the ‘witch­ing hour’ when the dark­ness is about to yield to light, and nec­es­sary dream and ‘other’ mate­r­ial breaks through. Odd how often this is 3 am…)

Now, the impor­tant piece is that nei­ther of us take our dra­mas seri­ously. This is not to say we do not scare our­selves, or make our­selves sad. It’s that, as we are lying there in the midst of this self-generated pain, we also know that it is an illu­sion.

The illu­sion part is what I choose to do in my head has absolutely noth­ing to do with the real­ity of the sit­u­a­tion I confront.

The way out of this drama-making is sim­ple. When Dar­bella is at it, I just encour­age her to breathe and notice that, in this moment, there is indeed a roof over our heads. When I am at it, Dar does some Body­work on my chest, and I get the feel­ings out. Invari­ably, we roll over and go back to sleep. This process went on pretty reg­u­larly for six weeks.

And then, right on time, we found a place to live.

This is the joke. Unless we are dead, life goes on.

Tests, obsta­cles, things we get our shorts in a knot about, are all meant to get us to notice that “This too shall pass.” The goal of self-development, it seems to me, is accep­tance of the real­ity of the present moment, cou­pled with the will­ing­ness to stay present and also make choices that will min­i­mize the pain and allow us to move on.

Many peo­ple enter ther­apy with the idea that a few ses­sions will be all that it takes to get past being in pain. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Excel­lent ther­apy gives us tools for deal­ing with the pain that is inevitable in life.

Oth­ers walk a spir­i­tual path, and think that being ‘holy’ means that ‘god’ will keep one safe. This is the Santa Claus ver­sion of god – if I’m a good boy, god will watch out for me and give me all of the good­ies I ask for.

At The Phoenix Cen­tre, we teach pres­ence and con­sis­tency. We are not try­ing to make peo­ple pain free – this is not pos­si­ble. We are not try­ing to make per­fect peo­ple liv­ing per­fect lives. Again, not pos­si­ble. We are craft­ing the ways and means of help­ing peo­ple to be respon­si­ble for themselves.

I sup­pose the thing that is most impor­tant is con­sis­tency. I can’t get over how many peo­ple e-mail me to tell me how ‘some day’ they are com­ing for a ses­sion. But first, there’s this excuse and that sit­u­a­tion to deal with. And all I notice is that they are set­tling for stay­ing stuck right in the mid­dle of their messes.

Self-responsibility requires that I actively engage in self-exploration, with­out excuses and with­out drama.

It’s about com­mit­ting to reg­u­lar work, book­ing time for your­self, and mak­ing it hap­pen. This work needs to move from an occa­sional ad-on to the cen­tral activ­ity of your life.

Set­tling for pain, mis­ery, ill­ness, sick­ness, crappy rela­tion­ships, mean­ing­less occu­pa­tions – all of this is optional, and a waste of a life. Find­ing one’s cen­tre in the midst of the drama, let­ting go of the cling­ing, is a dis­ci­pline any of us can master.

In com­ing issues, we’ll dis­cuss how.