There is an arc to this article… I arrive to the answer after a journey to it, in the second half…
What is the reason that some people learn and grow, while others stagnate?
I read an interesting sentence in an old marketing book:
“Generally we don’t decide we want to get married and then pick the person who seems to be the most desperate to get married and propose to them.”
In that document, TheMissingChapter, the author talks about selecting a business to pursue, but what he says applies to any aspect of life.
- If you are desperate for money… banks won’t loan you any.
- If you are desperate for love… it will elude you.
- If you are desperate for success… you’ll make all the wrong decisions.
Desperation is a very poor advisor, it makes you incoherent.
The worst mistake a service provider can make is cater to desperate people.
Desperation has a reason. And that reason keeps people desperate, no matter what quality of help you provide. And desperate people are a drain on your resources.
In the last From Upset to Communication session we were doing an exercise. Each participant (6) needed to select a communication to deliver in all the fields of communication: as a mother, as a father, as a playmate, and as an admirer.
Three of those communications were about “breaking up”… delivering the “Dear John” message personally.
People cling to us for what they want… and hobble us on our path. We allow it because we hope that their neediness will bring us what we want.
It is not so much their desperation, but our agenda to get what we want that keeps us hostage.
The hardest thing is to let go of what you think you almost have…
Like the monkey and the banana… you are trapped, and unless you let go of the banana, you are hopelessly trapped, and your life passes without any real result.
Your dreams about rock star success, your dreams about moving to Singapore and suddenly being happy.
Unless, of course, you use the banana in the hand to justify not doing anything.
He who is faithful with a little, will be faithful with a lot…
This is the New Testament paraphrased.
It takes objective observation. Over time.
I use the principle to choose who I want to work with. Who I want to buy my products. Who I want in my courses.
And then add a few people for contrast.
I am a scientist of sorts. And scientists, social scientists always have a control group. Opposite in one aspect or another.
One of my best threshold tests is the water energizer test.
If you do what you need to do to energize your water, then you’ll probably do what you need to do to become the best person you can become.
Except…
Except that some people can fool me.
What is in common among those that can fool me? What in me that invites being fooled this way?
These are two questions that can only be answered together.
I went back in my life and looked at what kept me hooked in situations where I was getting none of my investment back.
What I found is a weakness of mine: I want to be useful.
For many years I wanted to “earn” love through giving my gifts away. Free coaching, free help, free advice, free living at my place, free loan.
Every time I got hurt. The coaching wasn’t appreciated. The advice wasn’t followed. My place was robbed. And the loan never repaid.
I could write the story of my life through this one filter… getting depleted/wanting to be useful.
At some point I didn’t need to buy love. And yet, on some level, being in relationships where my energies were not returned to me, where the interaction, the communication deplete me, are continuing.
So it is time to look what it is about the other side that is a common characteristic leading to me being depleted…
The answer came with this new course, From Upset to Communication.
I introduced the fields of communication… and with that I re-introduced them to myself.
I learned about them ten years ago, but am only starting to appreciate now what I learned then.
That each field has its own natural laws… and they are that, laws. Inviolable. Not principles that you can follow or not follow. But laws, like gravity.
The fields are a lot like parallel universes. Same players, dramatically different mood, dramatically different outcomes.
Everything I say, everything I write lands differently in different fields.
For example, if you hear what I say in the field mother-child, you won’t grow. You can’t. The field mother-child is devoid of growth.
So my brilliant spiritual methods will turn into justification of why someone is stupid, does stupid, doesn’t do what would make them grow.
The field of stagnation.
Each person has a favorite field to live in… Mine is father-child. Or if there is an opportunity I can see, partnership. It’s rare.
Father child is growth directed.
You experience everything in the field where YOU live, not where it’s coming from. In fact, you don’t know about the other fields… they are, remember? parallel universes.
The art of shifting an upset to communication is to shift the conversation to another field.
I must admit that the 10 thousand dollar course I did ten years ago did not effectively trained me to do that…
So I am both the course leader and a participant in this new course of mine… which is good news for us, because the only authentic way to teach anything is to be there with you in the trenches.
I have to shift out of father-child to even fathom that people are only indulging me so they can get attention from me in mother-child.
I need to get familiar and facile at mother-child if I want to be able to lead those stuck in there, out of that no-growth field.
I have been clear for a long time that the way to lead people to where I want them to go is to first align myself with where they are going. But saying it is easy, actually doing it is the hardest thing for me.
In the language of the fields, I need to meet you in your favorite field if I want to lead you to another, more favorable field for your growth.
Father/child is not cuddly. It is not warm. It is not very willing to hang out with what you cannot do… No small talk either. No chatting. No nice-nice.
Father/child makes mother-child people buckle down, and resist. And complain. And weep.
Now, I am speaking hypothesis… I have no idea if I can (or anyone else) can take a mother-child person to a field of growth and teachability.
I haven’t been able to test it yet, because I haven’t been able to enter the field of mother-child and meet them there, and walk them into the field of growth, learning, instruction, getting things done, pruducing.
When I look at my results I see that all my father-child people do well… and none of my mother-child people do well.
40% of my clients live in mother-child.
Their dominant being states are 1. desperate need for approval and 2. incoherence.
I am already starting to develop a sixth sense of what they are, from just one email, or from their facebook posts.
Obviously there is a lot more practice and learning is needed.
I don’t know if I will end up loving this process, or hating this process… You’ll know because I’ll share.
I’ll have to decide if I like to be a savior or a teacher. There is a world of difference. Saviors save, teachers teach… not the same thing.
PS: The Crown
One excellent film to watch is the BBC series about Queen Elizabeth the second. The queen who is still reigning in the United Kingdom.
If you lived in Buckingham Palace, you would know that the Queen is in Father/child… her word is law, and you can only be below her.
Her children may want nurturing, but when she wants to be nurturing, she has to become just mother… and lose the respect, the authority, the position of the queen… in that situation.
And with husband or friends she may move to the playmate/friend field or alternatively to the admired/admirer field…
The more skillful she is at moving the field, change the field, the better monarch she is, the more harmonious life she and the monarchy has.
The film is masterful and so is Queen Elizabeth at changing the field.
PPS: I am giving access to the recordings of the From Upset to Communication, and experimental workshop, where I teach shifting fields so life can shift for you too.
Email me for a link if you want to be one of the first to be taught this “art” of paradigm shifting.
PS: What is upsetting in a situation when the two parties are two different fields is that they both expect something that is not likely to happen because of the different fields.
Example: you have an intention to let your ex know that it’s ok with you if the children hang out with you only when they want to… But of course, your generosity received in the field where your ex lives is telling her that you don’t want to do anything for your children, and expect her to be a single mother with no help from you…
You cannot win…
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