If you really really want to be happy, here's more on forgiveness

In a recent post, I said that if you want to have a really amazing life, forgive yourself and everyone else in your life for everything. Why?: Because an unwillingness to forgive often doesn’t hurt the person we refuse to forgive at all, but it always hurts us. As long as we don’t forgive, we are bound to the other person with bonds of pain or anger or a desire for revenge. Forgiving doesn’t mean finding a way to excuse someone. There may be no excuse in the world for what they did. But forgiving does mean giving up the desire to punish them. Holding on to the need to see them pay for their words or actions is holding on to the injury itself. Forgiveness releases us from the power a wrongful action still has over us and sets us free to heal and move on.

I was having a conversation with someone who had read this, who they are is not important, and she was lamenting about her disappointment that some of her children were unwilling to forgive her and, of course, there were a number of reasons for their unwillingness to do so. Because her situation is surely not unique, I want to write about what I would have liked to tell her had there been more time.

First, if you’re disappointed that anyone in your life is unwilling to forgive YOU, then you are clearly not forgiving THEM. What you’re wanting is for  the other people to be the way you want them to be and unfortunately, that is not a choice you get to make. People are the way they are, they will do what they choose to do, and all you get to do is to practice the serenity prayer: grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

What you can do is discuss with them their grievances with you, give them an opportunity to communicate, listen with compassion with no need to explain or justify your behavior, apologize, and then ask if they are willing to forgive you. The decision is then theirs. If they choose not to forgive you, they are the ones that get to suffer, not you, as long as you’re willing to forgive them.

More importantly, you’re not responsible for anyone’s happiness other than your own. How you get to be happy is to follow the instructions I’ve been writing about, including this piece on forgiveness. When you’re willing to forgive, you get to be happy. But that includes being willing to let them not be happy. And I know it’s tough with close family members. There was a time, many years ago, when one of my daughters struggled with forgiving me. We tried to do what I’m writing about with her many many times, I would listen, she would communicate her upsets, I would apologize, but she couldn’t forgive. And it got so bad that the only possible choice for the sanity of both of us was for us to go our separate ways.

Was that a happy choice? Yes and no. It didn’t make me or her happy to have to make that choice, but we were both happier after the choice was made. She didn’t have to continue to confront her issues with me and I didn’t have to continue to deal with her unloving behavior. So one of the things I would say to any of you who are in this situation is that you have the right to set boundaries. If people are unwilling to forgive and continue to be angry or resentful, tell them to go and deal with it someplace else and not on or around you.

With my daughter, we both lived with this for over seven years while she worked out her own issues. Thankfully, she was able to get to a place of true forgiveness and now we have a truly amazing relationship. Now could I have counted on that happening? No. But I surely held out hope that it would and miraculously it did.

In conclusion, as I opened, if you want to have a truly amazing life, forgive others, even if they’re unwilling to forgive you, and give up the need to control anyone else or take responsibility for anyone else’s happiness. The greatest thing you can do for unhappy people is to not be one of them.

ATTITUDE: Is yours worth catching

Summarizing what we’ve discussed over these past few weeks:

You were born with the same exact power to create as everyone else.

• You can create anything
• And, you’re creating all the time
• There’s never a time you’re not creating
• There’s not one thing you see with our eyes that’s the truth – it’s only a projection of your past thoughts
• Your thoughts create your experiences 100% of the time
• Your emotions are the fuel that either makes everything happen or prevents things from happening.

This week, let’s talk more about how to put these principles into action and create the life of your dreams:

Since your emotions are the fuel that either makes everything happen or prevents things from happening, you must learn to “choose” your attitude. No successful person allows the circumstances to dictate their attitude. Successful people choose their attitude and bring it to the circumstances of life.

So, what does it mean to “choose” your attitude? First, it means you choose to be satisfied and happy. If you’re waiting for the circumstances to be exactly the way you want them to be in order for you to be satisfied with your life and happy, I promise you’ll have a long wait. Your life’s the way it is and that’s that. Now you get to decide if you’re willing to be satisfied and happy. You can still want a lot more, but why not choose to be happy and satisfied now and take your satisfaction and happiness along with you on the journey rather than waiting for some day that will likely never come before you are that way? Makes sense to me. Furthermore, if I can’t trust you to be happy and satisfied now, when you likely already have an amazing life, how can I trust you to be happy and satisfied and some unknown time in the future when you’ll probably still be waiting for life to turn out.

Choosing your attitude also means to be optimistic, positive and enthusiastic and to have faith and trust in your future. Every truly successful person I’ve meet had this genuine knowingness that everything was going to turn out great and they looked forward to the future with optimism and enthusiasm.

Get in the habit of looking for things to appreciate wherever you are. My favorite way of saying this is: cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Learn to be appreciative of and grateful for all of the things you now probably take for granted, like: having a house to live in, a bed to sleep in, food to eat, a car to drive, roads to take you places, traffic lights to keep you safe, your family, friends, co-workers and customers, and most of all, when you awake each day, for the privilege it is to be alive and contribute to life.

And if that’s not enough, here are some additional thoughts to think about: Speak only about what you love and brings you happiness. What good could possibly come from speaking about what you hate or makes you unhappy. But isn’t that what far too many of us do? Makes no sense. Stop watching CNN, which stands for “constantly negative news.” Focus on what’s working in your life and the good news of the day. I personally love the way the NBC evening news with Brian Williams ends with a section called Making a Difference where they focus on people and organizations who are doing just that. I often turn on the show just for that section.

And for the grand finale, do not allow yourself to feel irritated or disappointed. Learn to accept people and life just the way they are and it is and just the way they and it are not. Give up complaining, blaming, criticizing and gossip. Could you even begin to imagine what life would be like if you did that? We so take those things for granted, as if life is just supposed to be that way. No, it’s not supposed to be that way, it’s just that we have made it that way. And the fact that we have is probably the biggest reason why people are not happy and don’t have the life of their dreams.

To be continued . . . 

Is conflict among teams really inevitable?

Is conflict among members of a team really inevitable? Is all a manager able to do when a conflict arises is meet with the team members and do his or her best to soothe the hurt feelings and play nice and try to get people to forgive each other?

If you read the recent article entitled How Conflict Goes Viral by Lindred Greer in Inc. magazine, you would surely conclude that the answer to both questions is: yes. According to the research done by Lindred and her team, conflicts “inevitably arise” and predictably go through three stages starting with a conflict between two individuals, after which others take sides and the team starts to disintegrate. Since conflict is inevitable, managers need to take action and make sure they do not stay unresolved.

While I don’t take issue with the final statement under the assumption that conflicts are inevitable, I do take exception to the underlying assumption that they are. In our research, we have found that using the Unshackled Leadership philosophy, we can literally transform team members from a world where conflict is inevitable to a world where it is not.

To do this, you must first understand that we live in a world of duality. There literally are two worlds going on simultaneously. Einstein says one is friendly and the other is hostile. A Course in Miracles says one is dominated by love, the other by fear. In the predominant hostile, fear based world, of course conflicts are inevitable. But is it inevitable that people live in that world? We say no.

The real issue is that for most people, that’s the only world that exists. If you put your hand in front of your eyes, you could block out the sun. But that doesn’t mean the sun goes out of existence. In the same manner, just because most people have only seen the world of hostility and fear, that doesn’t mean the other doesn’t exist.

So is there a solution beyond accepting the inevitable? We say yes. Train people in the Unshackled Leadership philosophy which literally transports them from the hostile world of fear to the friendly world of love and watch them play nicely together in the sandbox of business.  

Your life is a reflection of your thoughts

In the last weeks’ posts, I said I was going to share with you the essence of what The Roadmap to Success program teaches. And please be clear that there’s a difference between “the essence” and the whole story. If you find the essence of interest, you can access the whole story at http://www.unshackledleadership.com/the-roadmap-to-success-program.

In the previous post, I explained the incredibly simple and straight-forward creation process. For you and I, it’s analogous to the creation process for a farmer. To grow corn, for example, you only need three things: fertile soil, corn seeds and water.

For you and I, the process is the same, just different components. For us, we awake every day into the fertile soil of creation, the seeds are our thoughts and the water is our emotions. I asked you to think about this as the week proceeded, to map it onto your experience, and see if you can see how this applies to your life and those of others you know well. I hope you’ve done this and will continue to find evidence of how this works so you can begin to apply the creation process in your life.

This week, let’s explore what all this means on a very practical level. And I warn you up front, you’re either going to love or hate what I’m about to say:

First, you must understand that there is no such thing as a neutral thought. Every thought gets planted in the soil of creation and produces on some level. It just has to be this way. The soil can’t select the good thoughts from the bad ones. So no thought is neutral. Because of this, life is not happening to you, it’s happening from you. You really want to get that one. Life is not happening to you, it’s happening from you. You’re not what you often think you are, a victim of the world you see. You’ve created the world you see.

That’s the toughest thing to accept for most people. People think life’s circumstances just happen and all we get to do is to respond to these random circumstances. Nothing could be further from the truth. You’re the creator of all of your circumstances. I’ll bet you can’t even imagine that you’re that powerful. Well guess again. You really are.

Take a moment and think about something in your life you’re really happy about. . . . Congratulations, you created that. Now take a moment and think about something in your life you’re not so happy about. . . . Congratulations, you created that too!

Again, this is something that unfortunately most people are not willing to believe. Why? Because it means you have to take responsibility for everything in your life! Everything in your life is there because you created it being there. What’s not in your life is not there because you haven’t created it being there. You may not like that, but that’s just the way it is. I recommend you start accepting it.

Why? Because it’s really very very good news. If you really think about it, it becomes evident that if you want to change anything in your life, all you have to do is to change your thinking about it. Wow. You can give up all your efforts to change other people and your circumstances and work on the only thing that will ever make a permanent difference in your circumstances: your thoughts about you and your circumstances.

Want more money, change your thinking about money. Want more success, change your thinking about what you deserve and what success means. Want better relationships, give up your judgments about other people and learn to think in more loving ways. Want to improve your health, change your thoughts about exercise and diet and who you are as a human being.

If you run a company and have lots of problems and challenges, stop spending all your time worrying about and/or trying to fix your problems and challenges. Those thoughts will just produce more problems and challenges. Instead, follow the procedure laid out in Chapter 19 of Unshackled Leadership, http://unshackled.squarespace.com/unshackled-leadership-the-book/. Create a vision for your company, then create a strategic objective, and then live every day like that strategic objective is indeed your reality, and step back and watch those seeds become a reality.

The point here is that life is not meant to be a struggle. It was actually set up for you to win and have what you want. If that’s not happening, it’s just because you either don’t understand the game or are not playing it consistent with what you want. Either way, you have the power to change all of that.

To be continued . . .

More on dealing with challenging people

In my article last week, I stated that I’ve become convinced that the number one concern of just about everyone in a leadership or management position is figuring out how to get people to get along and figuring out how to deal with challenging people. I went on to say that the only formula I’ve ever discovered that works is for you to understand that in every situation where you are dealing with other people, you must first understand that you only and always have just two choices.

Choice number one: accept the person just the way they are and just the way they are not. Choice number two: you decide you can’t accept choice number one and you terminate the relationship. Not every relationship is intended to and can work. Sometimes, you just can’t find the gold. If you can’t be 100% committed to the other person, it serves nobody to try and keep the relationship alive. Trying to do that is my definition of pain and life does not have to be a painful experience. So cut your ties and move on.

Here’s my concern after sending that article: you will all too quickly opt for choice two because it doesn’t seem viable to opt for choice one. This could be a big mistake. See I also believe that every relationship that comes into your life is meant to be a learning experience, for you. Some people are casual encounters, a chance meeting in an elevator, sitting down next to someone in a coffee shop. Others come into your life and stay for awhile. Sometimes, they stay for a lifetime. But every relationship happens because it’s meant to happen, because if it wasn’t meant to happen, it wouldn’t have happened.

Now if that’s a bit too deep for you, I’m sorry, but think about it anyway. All of those relationships are designed to reflect to you who you are, how you see you, how you see others and how you operate in the world. You’re meant to evolve and become a more peaceful, kind, compassionate and loving human being (hope you like that) and every human being who is challenging is so because they are pushing you against your limits to be those things.

I remember a woman who worked for me years ago. She was really smart and capable and I desperately looked for the gold in her. But I had such a hard time trusting her and counting on her integrity and it continuously got in the way of our relationship. It got so bad I eventually opted for choice two. But it was years later that I realized at the time I had a huge issue of trusting myself and she was just mirroring that to me. So I ended what could have been a great relationship far too soon and later came to regret that I did that. So always be willing to look and ask: what is this person confronting me with and what are they giving me an opportunity to learn.

I have a dear friend and client who, upon reading my article, wrote: “Whenever I have a difficult person to deal with...I go to prayer. Not for just the other person but for myself.  In my own strength I cannot do what God asks. It is too difficult. God has a way of fixing things that I could never fix on my own. And I go to HIS Word for an answer.”

Now I don’t usually write things like that, but it’s not a bad suggestion. In the world of spirit, we are all perfect expressions of the creative force that is the source of us all. I’ll follow my friends lead for a moment and call that God. If we are all, in the final analysis, children of God, should we really be so quick as to judge people as unacceptable and remove them from our lives?

In conclusion, I’m not taking back what I said last week. Choice two is clearly an option. My point this week is to think long and hard before you go down that tunnel. There is so much growth involved in opting for choice one. Go back to last week’s post and read what I wrote about choice one. It’s powerful stuff if you take it on. You’ll learn to let go of your judgments and insensitivities and become a more peaceful, kind, compassionate and loving human being. What could be bad about that?