Improve the connectivity & understanding in the worlds you want to prosper

“Loyalties, I’ve got ‘em by the dozen” – from the Indigo Girls song “Little Perennials.”

My life and work is often about asking people to re-examine, re-define, and broaden their concepts of loyalty.

In the complexity of real life, we may all benefit by considering being loyal and faithful to more than just one ideology, one sect, one person, one country, or one clan.

On personal, political, and philosophical levels we may all be improved my synthesizing and incorporating multiple people and plans.

Loyalty is often not found in the one.

Rather, more often it can be found in the many.

Love and attraction discriminate on the basis of gender far less than most people do.

If you’ve ever flown,

supported by two wings,

two parents,

two loves,

or two friends,

then you may understand that if you lose one,

leaving you flying with only one wing,

you may tend to circle back to where you had been.

Sometimes are loves are the people who prod us to bloom when we feel we want to cocoon.

One of the basic principles we were taught in Mediation & Negotiation was:

If a person had the ability to get what they wanted, then they could just take it. If that was so, there would be no need for negotiation or negotiation skills. But life usually requires negotiation and negotiation skills.

Our personal controversies often reveal personal truths we have been unable to hide or obscure. If there were no hidden or under-acknowledged truths involved, there would probably be no controversy or continued considerations.

Before you decide to hate or to pass judgment on your personal controversies, first make sure you have fully vetted any ignored or unaddressed personal truths involved.

Improve the connectivity and understanding of the worlds you want to prosper.

I have never seen anything of significant good come out of the practice of “suffering in silence.”

If you are suffering, talk to people.

Talk to counselors.
Talk to friends.
Talk to the people who you are frustrated with.

Silence only tends to magnify, extend, and create sufferings.

If you’re ever in a love relationship with someone who requires you to give up contact with your past friends, family and loves in order to show your love to them, then I urge you to create distance from that relationship and re-evaluate your course.

If you’re ever in a relationship with someone who communicates they want to love only you and they don’t want to be considerate of your other friends and family, then I urge you to confront the person about their behavior.

If you’re ever in a relationship with someone and they make it clear they only want you if you separate from other healthy people and activities in your life, then I caution you to be wary of those types of requests.

If you’re ever in a relationship with someone, and it becomes clear they don’t want to add or adapt with the other pleasant and functional relationships in your life, then I hope you will challenge that person on that issue.

If you’re ever in a relationship with someone, and they suggest the only way they can love you is if they love only you, but they can’t show similar care for your close family members, then discuss that issue with them, and help them understand you are not going to sacrifice other loves for them. Dispel their delusion that hurting others will somehow show more love for them.

A person who asks you to become separate from good people who have cared well for you and yours is a person who will likely have trouble integrating into many important parts of your life, parts you should not have to do without.

Love is not about sacrificing your past to make way for a different future. Love is not about taking away from those who supported you for many years in order to give to someone new. Love is about adding, adapting, and plugging in to what already works. It’s not about separating from what you already have.

In choosing between two people, give more weight to a person who is more welcoming and inclusive and less weight to a person who is more separating and excluding. Love is big enough and smart enough to figure out how to care for more.

You could ask the people in your life to love you and only you,
But that probably wouldn’t be best for all of them

You could suggest to others that you are the only way,
But you’d probably be wrong

How does your reasoning in relationships differ from your reasoning in religion? Why do they differ or why are they the same?

Think twice about mentioning a problem unless you have the knowledge, ability, and willingness to personally be a part of the solution.

When you are in a dispute, it is tempting to want to use different types of negative techniques to modify another’s behavior. But you may find more long term success on more fronts if you first try all the good, fun, and positive reinforcement techniques you can think of before resorting to negative reinforcements.

So many of us are taught to use verbal abuse, anger, extinction, and threats of violence, silence, or separation as early means of trying to modify others’ behaviors. My experience suggests that while negative reinforcements may achieve some of your goals, they are rarely the means to facilitating kinder, healthier, and more energizing solutions for everyone involved.