Tag: going beyond

Earning Their Forgiveness

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Apologies are nice and sometimes we even mean them 😉

And…

People give up a lot to forgive us. They give up resentment, fear, the right to be right and to hold that on us if they are truly forgiving. They clean themselves out for the sake of loving us or partnering with us again. They risk being hurt again.

When we are forgiven, the expectation is that we will do what it takes not to repeat what we were forgiven for doing. Owning that expectation and fulfilling upon it sometimes becomes an afterthought, because we are so glad to be forgiven, we just hope it won’t happen again.

Ideally, being forgiven and still included in people’s lives can be considered an invitation to growth and taken seriously so we can honor that gift they gave us, if we really care about continuing the relationship, earning their trust and renewed vulnerability.

If we have no intention to make the necessary changes, we didn’t get it, we just were looking to get back to the status quo. We’ll probably put people through the same thing again.

We can earn the gift of forgiveness after the fact by looking deeply at who we need to become to get there, to a place where we’re not the same person who would make that mistake again. Often it’s not just about one change in behavior. We may need to become a person who wouldn’t do that again, put ourselves in the same predicament, make the same set of choices. This can change the trajectory of our lives. It can be hard work to learn and get out of old patterns and if we rise to the occasion, down the line we may see how someone’s forgiveness was the start of something wonderful, something we can be proud of.

Who has forgiven you? What’s the opportunity still available in the forgiveness they gave you if you took it more to heart? Who can you thank for what you ultimately made out of their forgiveness, how it changed your life?

What It Takes

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Working with a couple right now and it’s a challenge. Supporting two people who have experienced a ton of hurt, who are not trusting out of fear of more hurt, who have a young child together, who, underneath the fear probably love each other but the old wounds and the fear makes it hard to say out loud.

Sometimes it can be hard to outright choose to support them in a possibility that at times I see more clearly than they do. I know the triggers, I know how to support people getting past them, but maybe they would just be fine being apart. Probably stuck in the same patterns in new relationships, but at least not having to face all of this fear right now and what it puts us through, the ravages of the thoughts and reactions, how exhausting it can be, what it really takes to grow out of them.

It really all hinges on how much you want something, what you’re willing to face to get there. I’ve seen courage and love grow as patterns subside, as people realize that they can handle their own feelings, but it doesn’t make it any less of a challenge to support until we get there.

Thanks for listening.

Completing Ourselves

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completemeI used to see no truth in “You complete me.”

Of course, I’ve had many moments of completion with people. Moments where I felt no fear, no pain, where my anxiety ceased, where the presence of something internal or external seemed to make everything all right and even have me experience myself as perfect how I am and how I may not be. In the movie, I read the phrase as final. As if now, in this moment, all is right now and will be right forever because of you.

Fairy tale. Just thinking about that movie and that scene used to make me abdominally uncomfortable. And maybe that’s because I got it wrong.

Perhaps in the light of recent events, of instance after instance of violence, of unimaginable pain inflicted on each other, the cost of incompletion has struck me so starkly and had me see the value of being complete, whether it is for a moment or a lifetime as a powerful message for us instead of just stopping at what I saw as the fallacy of the moment in the film.

It’s hard for me to look at school shootings, terrorism, premeditated violence, fundamentalism or beliefs of any sort that marginalize other human beings – as coming from someplace other than incompletion. A sense of disconnection, of being unreachable and temporarily or terminally less than whole. That they and/or we seem ungettable, distant, lost, worthless, sources of pain and ultimately expendable.

This isn’t meant to excuse anything anyone does from suffering in an incomplete state. I just mean to share how profound, how essential and how extraordinary completion has begun to occur to me. Perhaps it really saves lives.

We do have the power to draw completion from each other, to feel heard, known and to have the energy drawn to us that calms us, that relaxes the fear and has us return to ourselves again. It can happen through stories, symbols, songs, touch, substances, short-term sexual relationships, the sharing of ideas, a familiar meal and some things I care not to mention. Some of these solutions are extraordinarily temporary and even harmful, others can be expansive and healing. Conscious completion is an experiment in sustainability, but we crave completion so much that we take on all kinds of things to try to get there.

Whatever we utilize, it needs to be surrendered to for it to work or be so powerful that we are defenseless against it. We need to get ourselves past our own protection to allow completion. We wind up waiting to validate these entry points until they overwhelm us with their beauty, intoxicating qualities, convincing logic, whatever it is that helps us raise the bar of the tollbooth and allow it in, that force that we let come inside our fragile selves, before completion can occur.

Of course a kind, lovely, impressive, ever-expanding and new relationship can complete us for a moment or a stretch of time. It can make a fantastic case, but if we knew how valuable completion was, we’d lower the bar to entry and prioritize how essential it is to return to being ourselves again and again and again.

I also think we’d wind up being less susceptible to the empty promises of our fellow disaffected human beings and their invitations to the more unhealthy solutions they promote i.e. anything that looks like more separation and the villainization of other human beings. We might even get clear on what it takes to stay there and teach it to each other from an early age. That sounds like real empowerment to me and a source for greater peace, acceptance, love, happiness and cooperation amongst us.

What gets you complete? What might it mean to you if you prioritized getting complete and were successful at it?

Maybe Marriage Takes a Village, Too

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community
Maybe it takes a village to support a marriage, too.

The things couples go through, successes, failures, money issues, grief, aging, health, changing as human beings, being hit with reality all the time and realizing how much we don’t yet know.

The more years I’m married and the more years I support my loved ones, friends and clients in theirs, I realize our marriages themselves benefit so much from being loved collectively.

It’s great to have people that love us individually, but when we have people that love our marriage, in a nurturing way, beyond judgment, people that can relate to our challenges and us as human beings who are trying our best and learning, we can make so much out of it. We can create a culture around marriage as an incomparable learning opportunity that benefits from collective wisdom and support. We can take it easier on ourselves and lean on each other. No couple has it all covered on their own.

It takes a willingness, too. Admitting challenges in our marriages can be embarrassing, because we publicly declared our love for our spouse, because we don’t want to admit that we don’t know what to do, because we can bristle against receiving help because we want to hold up a pretty picture.

We need to let go of the fairy tale as a marketing tactic for selling marriage. A wedding, sure, but not a marriage. Perhaps a more apt definition of marriage is a lovingly entered joint commitment to  evolution. We use shared goals and the experiences along the way as we share our lives to help spark this evolution, to shape it.

I think the best part about my marriage 14 years in, is the growth, the learning and giving it to each other as a gift, finding ourselves in new places as new people because we needed to evolve and used the commitment to each other to hold the process. I’ve needed to learn so much about myself in trying to become a truly worthy partner and there’s much more to go.

I think of all of the forgiveness I ask for when I learn what I needed to learn. Humbling. Some of that learning is truly challenging, but I couldn’t be any more grateful for earning it, for who I realized I can be, for the commitment and for the woman in my life who gives me the reason and the person to share it with.

I thank those who were willing to speak to me, to be my teachers, to be my friend and to sometimes just listen for helping me get here and who I know I can count on for what’s yet to come.

“Success has failed.” – Osho​

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freedom

Osho was a controversial seer. He stirred the pot and gave people a lot to look at and consider. I pulled this quote from listening to one of his talks, probably from the 80s. It provides an excellent example of how insight is born. Insight is the opportunity for freedom.

Much like the scene in War Games where the computer discovers the futility of global thermonuclear war by playing the game over and over and over again, leaving no “winner”, the futility in this statement – Success has failed – gives us a chance to truly examine what we are up to. Living inside of a futility, of a pattern in our lives that exists without true satisfaction, is like a death, a small death, an abdication of the possibility of our lives. Our life examined may sometimes look like a collection of these small deaths, which is why this investigation can be so freeing and perhaps even necessary. For a moment, we can put how we live our lives aside to investigate what else may exist outside of how we are defining success, happiness, the purpose of our individual and collective existence, even.

Is the outcome of our 401Ks truly success? Is the promotion? Is consumption, the next gadget, the next day meeting your fitbit goal? Is the down payment, the next client? Is it the next win over whomever you feel is in the wrong? Is the next escapist binge the thing?

We get caught up in the day to day. If we let our definition of success drop for the sake of discovering our own definition, testing each new thought for futility as well so we keep ourselves from the next trap we can fall in, we give ourselves a chance to redefine and reframe our lives. To get off the hamster wheel. Is the life we are working towards or even admiring truly what we want?

I think the Kardashian thing (not sure what else to call it) is our own creation designed to help us get the message that some of what we have been idolizing, like fame, celebrity, obsession with ourselves and wealth for it’s own sake is absolutely futile, is not an attractive destination.

This is just a nudge to look for ourselves and drop out of our collective trance born from societal conditioning, media, our own reactionary ways (wanting something better than what we have or have had to deal with in the past), etc. A chance to investigate what truly moves us and how we would create our lives straight from our hearts.

I just want success, on your terms, from your own experience, for you.

If you want to investigate this further with me and create a plan to get there, feel free to be in touch.

Are You Really Welcome Here?

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armsfoldedREALLY wanting someone to understand something, especially when you think it’s for their own benefit, has nothing to do with them getting it. In the end, how much you want them to get it is what may impact them the most and usually puts our (work, family, friend, romantic) partners in defense, reaction and protection.

The willingness of your conversation partner is the most valuable currency there is in relating to each other. Cultivate it wisely and know when it hasn’t been offered to you.

Sometimes there is no in door. Knowing how to love and take care of ourselves when the door we want to be open is closed can be the most valuable currency for our own well-being and finally takes the pressure off the other person to take care of you by letting you in.

See Your Thoughts, Don’t Just Be Your Thoughts

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engineerIf you want to reduce stress in your life, if you want to make your choices from a more powerful place, if you want to become more intentional, then developing this skill can be incredibly helpful.

We can live knee-jerk lives, where our response is completely based on the stimuli around us. Thoughts are borne from our reactions to stimuli and off we go, following those thoughts. Having a fear-based existence and stretches of our lives comes directly from this pattern. Many people we tend to judge are living inside this pattern, too.

When we can get to the point of just seeing our thoughts, knowing that we are not our thoughts, knowing that they are often creations of our discomfort, our histories and traumas, our conditions, we begin to develop a powerful ability to choose how we want to be. We start to see our thoughts roll by like trains and we get to decide which ones to board.

Better yet, we get to make our own trains and ride in the engineer’s seat.

Choo-choo!

May You Live to See Your Dreams Fulfilled

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babywithparentsI was blessed to be at a Bris this morning (a Jewish naming ceremony for a male child). Any healthy baby is a blessing, to be sure, and the benefit of recognizing the birth publicly, offering prayers for the life of the child and the parents helps to focus ourselves on the potential meaning we can grant life.

One prayer said at this service includes the following:
May you live to see your world fulfilled.
May your destiny be for worlds still to come
May you trust in generations past and yet to be
May you live to see your world fulfilled
May your heart be filled with intuition
May your words be filled with insight
May songs of praise be upon your tongue, vision straight before you.
Even as you ever yearn to listen to words of the holy ancient one of old
May you live to see your world fulfilled

May you live to see your world fulfilled. Such a powerful statement of the opportunity of life and of the wishes we have for our children. It’s also often translated where you replace “world” with “dreams”.

As a coach, it states the beauty of the relationship we hope to build with our clients, partnering with people to have the world their heart wants, come into being. As a parent, it is a transference of the joy and beauty of this life you’ve been blessed to foster and share. We want their world to be as beautiful as they are and we know we can have something to do with that happening. As a human being, it reminds me of what we tend to forget about each other. How far we stray from relating to each other as fellow ushers of our world fulfilled.

This is a prayer we can say for our friends and for those we don’t understand as well, for our families, for those we don’t agree with, because if we truly fulfill, all the way down to the essence of who we are, who we were as babies, before the world took it’s toll on us, we will all wind up in the very same place, a world of acceptance, joy, cooperation and love.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…

Coaching Group for Professional Women

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I’m looking for two professional women who are interested in being part of a four person coaching group (two have already committed).

Here’s the concept: I want to create a group of women who are committed to creating big things in their lives (you get to say what’s big to you) and each other’s. Your goals could be entrepreneurial, about breaking through to a powerful professional result, they could be relationship-oriented. Everyone will be working on their well-being as a foundational element as well. It’s hard to create breakthroughs without it.

What I’m looking to do is create power in sisterhood and really leverage it, with each woman pulling for the results of the other three and growing from each other’s processes. In addition, there will be a relationship with a man providing support for your goals who is committed to you winning, a platonic but intimate relationship with you based in trust and not power other than the power of our coaching relationship, which is yours to create. I want this to be a laboratory for how we can be together professionally and personally, empowering each other beyond the normal wasteful versions of competitiveness and gender issues in the workplace and our lives.

I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from my network about this concept, so I’m sharing it more widely. If you’re interested in hearing more about it or think it would be good for someone else in your life, email me directly here. Time and financial commitments will be discussed offline.  If you like the idea, please share it along with a note about why you’d recommend this for someone in your life.

Thanks for reading this!

Best,

Gregg DeMammos

 

Last Night at The Relationship Circle​

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relcirclePeople were funny, committed, vulnerable, supportive, honest, open, kind and brilliant while we created a temporary community of 12 people and took our own lives on.  We were willing to see the inner workings of how we operate and the possible futures we may not be prioritizing for the sake of somewhat satisfying and seductive habits that lead to predictable results in our lives.

We created uncommon experiences, powerful conversations and commitments for people to choose a path that leads us out of our comfort zones, a commitment to courage for the sake of the lives we want to live, the growth we want to see in ourselves.  That’s a great context in which to get to know people.  I really LOVED how so many people played the game last night.

Leading a transformational group for three years has been so helpful to me, too.  Working towards being who I want to be for the people that show up has been a great incentive for my own growth.  It really struck me that last night my emotions really stayed out of the conversation, at least the ones that would normally keep me from having the kind of perspective that actually can serve people.

Last month at my Advanced Circle, I called myself out there for holding a judgment about someone’s participation (I got stuck relating to her as uncooperative).  An embarrassing experience for a facilitator, but making the decision to own my reaction helped me show up way more open and loving and able last night.  So grateful to have this space.