Do you sometimes feel
- minimized,
- misunderstood,
- misjudged, and even
- “wrongly accused” by others?
Does every bone in your body just want to defend yourself? To change their perceptions of you as if your life depended on it?
ONE BIG SECRET
If I were asked what is one of the biggest ways that living and loving from this paradigm I call “Happy Symmetry” has changed my life, right now I would say it may be having discovered what I call MY BIG SECRET.
That’s the handle I just gave to DEFENSIVENESS. Knowing what to do with that crushing–as if our very survival depends on it– and yet hopeless compulsion to change someone’s perception of me is a game-changer! This secret is truly ONE of the most effective and freeing things I have discovered that returns me almost instantly to peace, connection, and fun.
A TRUE GAME-CHANGER
Just following the thread of where in your life you defend yourself, your actions, your views, your choices and who you are (or at least you really WANT to) can wake you up to almost everything that might be causing pain in your in your life!
It is Radical. So amazing to watch a potential conflict stopped in its tracks when I stand in the face of someone telling me things about myself that would have previously caused a bottomless need to defend, and find myself seeing how what they are saying is true and find myself saying “Wow, I can imagine how it must feel to be on the receiving end when I am acting that way! Do you want to tell me more?”
Since we are in the module called “USING Defensiveness, Need, and Vulnerability as Personalized Teachers of Peace,” in my Radical Relationship Relief Group Intensive this week, I decided to send out a link to a Letters to Myself blog post that I wrote in 2012 (and added to yesterday).
AUDIO OR VISUAL? Your Choice
And since my dear friend and acupuncturist extraordinaire, Dale Korangy keeps encouraging me to read my writing aloud so she can listen to it while she does the dishes, I made it into my first audio blog! Here’s the link to listen; just click:
15 MINUTE AUDIO [MP3] OF ME! USING YOUR DEFENSES TO GET HAPPY
It takes about 4 minutes for you to read the blog (same thing…. listed below), and about 15 to listen, so pick which ever one works for you!
Here’s the link to read the article. Just click: END THE WAR BY DISMANTLING YOUR DEFENSES.
A REAL LIVE FACILITATION
Then in the next part of this series, I will send out a short inquiry by a person in my RADICAL RELATIONSHIP GROUP INTENSIVE who has given permission to let us hear her getting a big shift around when she feels defensive when her husband tells her ‘what she should be doing.’
Enjoy and see how much happier your life gets!!
Love,
🙂 Shawn
PS–Tee Hee! the really funny thing is that when I just now told someone about this article, they rebutted me and I defended!! Hahaha!!! Just following the trail. Now……what part of me is ‘over there’ believing that him agreeing with me or thinking I’m smart and wonderful has anything to do with my happiness? Let me see….. That part of me wants to come back home.
PS AGAIN–If you want to learn more about this or work with me individually with me on a painful situation in your life, just email support@happysymmetry.com. And if you’d like to come to one of my beautiful waterfront retreats this fall, just click LOVELY WATERFRONT RETREAT INFO or email shawn@radicalrelationshiprelief.com. and we will send you the info and a beautiful video of last falls’ retreat. THANKS!