What are your best strategies for getting along with the people to whom you feel closest?

Caution?
Compromise?
Understanding?
Avoidance?
Communication?

Or maybe you don’t strategize….

I realized recently that I incorporate strategies into many of my relationships.

This can be totally energizing or totally exhausting, depending on whether I’m in charge of the strategizing or my neuroses are steamrolling with them.

My father was an incredible man. He lived in war and loss and poverty and abuse, but still lived a life that he would say, “Was getting better all the time.” His background, however, resulted in a low grade anger that didn’t dissipate until his final years, and I would get yelled at as a kid. I could take it. I could be that for him. It hurt at the time but has turned out to be an incredible gift for me; it has given me valuable lessons to apply to my work and my personal life.

It also taught me to strategize! I would sit in the living room developing stories about how to navigate the next time he would yell at me. The stories rarely calmed him down, but they would result in me feeling much less hurt. Neurosis developed! Strategize to avoid hurt….

So, last week, when I was watching my mind strategize to prevent me from feeling hurt, I made a different choice. I was calm and honest about how I felt. I was open and communicated the exact thoughts that were resulting in the hurt. And I intentionally rewrote the automated script that was causing me to hurt myself. I switched to being in charge of my strategy.

Wanna guess what was on the other side of it?

Relief.

What neuroses are running your scripts? What strategies are you trapped in to avoid pain?

I’m sending you love, believing that the veil between you and relief is incredibly thin.