“I’m calm!” Susan said, her nose just a bit in the air.
“I’m not upset at all. I’m just telling you that my husband is a mean, rotten person. He is not nice at all. I just want you to know.”
Is Susan in Self Energy as she explains all this?
Well, she’s calm and apparantly logical and rational.
Does that make her in Self Energy?
No, and I’ll tell you why.
Quality #1: Self “Gets” Other People’s Struggles
See, one of the important abilities of people to function in the world is to get along with other people.
And sometimes that is really difficult to do because those other people are difficult.
They’re either “mean” as Susan claimed, or “strange” or they’re moody and you don’t know what to expect. Or depressed or numb, or escaping all the time.
Like I said, difficult.
But the more we dig inside ourselves to understand our own struggles, the more we can understand the other person’s stuggles.
And the more we “get” the connection between their past and their present reactions, the less namecalling we will do to them.
Instaed of pinning labels on them, we will go, “Oh, yeah. I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. And since my partner is in therapy or coaching with me, I will be patient for this to work itself out.”
Another word for this is “perspective.” Self has perspective, or seeing the Big Picture.
I was just reading an amazing story about a man, now in his 50s, who as a teenager kept getting beaten up. So he decided to join a gang so as to have protection.
Being in that gamg felt safe – and good. But being in a gang meant wars and at 16, he killed someone and was sent to prison for 27 years.
When he got there, he was scared all over again. But he did exactly what he learned in the gang – which was to be tough.
So tough, in fact, that every time he was up for possible parole, they said he wasn’t “ready.”
Finally, the last year before he was due for discharge, a theater troupe came to teach the prisoner acting.
He loved it. There, he got to be vulnerable under the disguise of playing a part. Finally, finally after 42 years, he got the chance to be real.
He cried.
It was a whole, new experience for him. He was a bit shaken by it. But it felt…..real. Being vulnerable, even crying, is really who we all are underneath all the bravdo, meanness, and toughness.
This started him on a journey of feeling all his feelings.
When he was discharged from prison, he volunteered to be part of the theater company to help other prisoners release their feelings.
Today, the tough guy protector is gone. Or at least, it has a new role inside of him. And he says, “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of that boy I killed. I feel so sorry.”
[Luckily, with my methods it won’t take 27 years or even 7 years, for a tough, mean person (or a scared or depressed person) to get to their true feelings.]
The question then becomes, for Susan, which part is covering up her Self-Energy and why?
She has a logical, self-like part which wants to present a good facade to the world. But the reality is she’s still very hurt and very angry at her husband or she would not try to “show” someone she was speaking to just how bad he is.
Quality #2: Self Doesn’t Have To Prove Anything
From the very fact that Susan felt a powerful need to vent to some other person about her struggles, right there it shows she was not in Self-Energy.
A person in Self doesn’t need to explain or defend themselves and their own reactions.
A person in Self-Energy doesn’t take responsibility for another person’s feelings. (Obviously, a person in Self-Energy wouldn’t be abusive, of course.)
Here’s another great story that I read about this:
So there was another woman, we’ll call her Mary, who had been in 2 serious car accidents. Unfortunately, in one of them someone died.
Needless to say, she was scared of being in a car and especially with someone else driving in a way that didn’t make her feel safe.
She married a lovely man who did have the habit of rapidly changing lanes. He’d never been in a car accident, and in fact was a good driver in spite of his speediness.
As they were on the road, Mary complained about his driving.
John, her husband, did not take responsibility for for her scared feelings as he knew that his driving was safe.
He didn’t feel guilty.
He didn’t feel obligated to change his driving.
Here’s what he said to Mary, with love in his heart, “Honey, you have some choices here. You certainly can take an Uber and meet me there….
Or you can drive. I can pull over and we’ll switch; I don’t mind…..
Or you can just lean back and close your eyes so you can enjoy the ride.”
Isn’t that great? I loved that story.
Quality 3: Self Actually Hears What Others Say
Why is that?
Because Self-Energy means that there is no Agenda. The person operating from Self-Energy doesn’t have to prove something so they can attend to the other person.
Their minds are not busy coming up with arguments and stories to make a point.
Their minds are freely given, open to the other person.
They are present.
Getting to Self-Energy is not easy, but it is doable. Definitely doable. Who wants to get there? Let me know in the comments or by DM or email because that is exactly what I teach in my 4-month coaching class (among other things like what triggers you and where the triggers came from and healing your inner child, as well as having Self-to-Self conversations with your partner.)
