It's Not About Them, It's About You

Introduction, Thank You

This book came about in a unique way. I was reading a lesson from an online  ecourse from CoachVille, my favorite learning location online, a course by  Thomas Leonard, the great brain behind CoachVille, and, for that matter, behind  coaching itself. Something about that lesson specially piqued my interest, made  my ears perk up.  I didn’t know why, but something about the way Thomas had assembled the  points in his lesson caused me to stop, copy them out and put them in a  document on my computer desktop and stare at them. What was it about these  words? It was as if they had other meanings that I didn’t know about but could  discover. I tried changing the wording a bit here and there, and curiously staring  some more. I was doing the equivalent of circling like a dog, tapping them with  my cane, kicking the tires.

Suddenly I knew what it was. They fit so well the book I’d been wanting to write.  It was a book I’d been thinking about for a long time, how to get one’s self back  again. The form for the book came to me right then, based in part upon these words, now bent into a shape that was more to my own purpose. They applied to  a subject area removed quite a distance from the lesson for coaches I’d been  reading. 

Sometimes these things happen, something clicks and we don’t know why. If we  follow it along its path we can create a whole new meaning for it, or one sideways  to it. And, thinking about that process, I realize now that it is a sort of metaphor  for finding one’s self again, allowing the creative process to work its magic, leading where we want to go by routes that present themselves to us, sometimes  in surprising ways.

Thank you Thomas, for your lesson, and the inspiration it provided for framing  parts of the book in my head and heart so well. And thank you also to all the  people who have taught me the tools I know how to use, and who provided  foundational material for some of the tools I’ve invented.

And thank you to  everyone who supported me in my quest to regain my own lost self. Thank you  so very, very much.

Pat Gundry

How to Use this Book

You may want to read the book through completely before doing any of the  exercises or clicking on any of the links, then go back repeatedly through the  book to do exercises and explore some of the web based material. Or you may  want to work directly through the whole book at first reading. This book is meant to be used over time and be a continuing resource for you. It is also meant to be used with a notebook, or paper that you can store in a folder to keep your worksheets in an easily accessible place.

Chapter 1 What To Do If Your Relationship Is Costing You Your Self

Lost yourself? Don’t know where you went or how it happened? You aren’t alone. A multitude of women feel the same way, and not a few men. How could this happen? How do you get you back?

Why don’t marriage books address this issue? Probably because it doesn’t fit their model, which is more: co-operate, give and take, compromise, give up some to get some. Traditional marriage counseling is a problem solving oriented culture—we have a problem, we see a counselor. The counselor focuses on the problem, seeks a solution. Individuals don’t tend to go to a marriage counselor saying, “I’ve lost myself--don’t know where or how, but I want me back.” They go with something like “We fight about things: money, sex, children.” Or, “He’s/she’s aloof, neglectful, demanding, abusive.”

My approach is that the person who’s lost her or himself is the one to focus on, not the couple, and not the one the self was lost to.

I’m going to approach the losing and regaining of one’s self in a relational environment from the perspective of a personal coach/change specialist, which is what I do and what fascinates me. I’m going to insist that we focus on you, not on them. Hard to do at first, but it gets easier, and then downright enjoyable and  satisfying.

As most of those who reclaim and become their own person again come to realize at some point in their evolutionary recovery, any reaction/frustration you’re having relative to your partner is 100% about you and virtually never about  them.

I know that probably sounds shocking, but please stay with me.

The loss of self occurred, and continues, because:

• You didn’t set up the boundaries properly. 

• What you require for your own self/person isn’t clear or enforced.

• You haven’t automated the management of your relationship.

• You’ve taken on the wrong partner (you may be able to negotiate a change without changing the partner). 

• You are being exploited, due to your ignorance.

• What you have to offer isn’t what your partner most wants or needs.

You’ve been forced, gently maybe, even undetectably, out of your own personal operating system into one that’s not yours, doesn’t fit you, and never will. You’ve  had to relinquish your own system to run on an ill fitting alien one. Eventually so many changes happened in the way you manage your life, including how you make decisions, what your priorities are, even how you think and perceive  experience, that you can’t get back to how you used to live. It’s lost.

The good news is that it’s correctable. Not necessarily easily, but it might be easy, or at least some of it could be easy. It might be quick and painless, or it could take you awhile and pinch a bit. But the process will be easier and more comfortable than continuing in the emptiness and loneliness you feel now. Be prepared to do some work and take as much time as you need to do a smooth, ecological job reclaiming you.

I’m going to show you, step-by-step what you need to do, why you need to do it, and how to do it. And more than that, how to protect you from getting lost to you again. And in the bargain, I’ll be providing many good tips and tricks that will enhance your life and make it all around better and more satisfying.

Our work will involve shifting your focus of attention, answering the following questions, and completing tasks related to them.

Here’s where we’re headed:

• Focus on yourself, not on them.

• Determine what you want and exactly and precisely how you’ll know when you  have it.

• What do you want to happen automatically, that you don’t have to ask for repeatedly, or check to see if it’s been done?

• What qualities, attributes, and skills are essential in a partner, the ones you’re not willing to have absent?

• Where are the boundaries going to be?

• How will you enforce those boundaries?

• What’s the deal breaker? What would they have to do to convince you to move ahead without them?

• What resources do you have in yourself and for yourself that make you secure and able to take care of yourself abundantly well without a partner/spouse?

• What resources do you need to add, or add to?

• What’s the first step in that direction?

• How are you going to re-educate your present partner to the new realities?

• How to restore and upgrade your own personal operating system.

• How to protect you in your future.

• How to generalize and increase benefits. 

Chapter 2 How/Why You Lost You

“I’m dancing as fast as I can.” book title

First of all, I need to say this: If you were happy and content in your relationship, you’d probably not be reading this book. Unless, maybe, you are a curious sort with nothing better to do, or a reviewer, or just want to help others. If none of the above apply, then you’re uneasy and don’t know what’s wrong, or where the unease is coming from.

That uneasy “I don’t know what’s wrong” feeling is common for someone who’s  losing their self, or has already lost it.

“In the first months after I married Marty I was puzzled at my unrest, my feeling of desperation just under the surface. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I wasn’t  happy, and I didn’t know why. Yes, there were little things that bothered me, he was a bit controlling, and he’d get offended easily at small things, but it all  seemed too small to be serious. Later, I gradually felt I was losing myself.  Eventually, I was just not there anymore. I couldn’t regain the feeling that I was  the real me, no matter how hard I tried.” Kim

I’m going to go through the list of common causes. They may all apply to you. If they do, good. That means you have lots of ways to reverse the situation. If only a few apply to you, still good, it means you’ve got a handle on an open door leading to more insights that will come to you in the process of working on what you know already.

• You didn’t set up the boundaries properly.

You may have been keeping your self in an open bucket in your relationship. Or, maybe your partner thought he’d received an invitation for more than you had in mind for him to take.

Boundaries are the most common problem in relationships. Good girls are almost bound to have poor boundaries, as are good boys. Some people have reciprocal bad boundary protection. That is, they want to make a deal with a partner for mutual boundary invasion. “You don’t have any safe place for you, and I don’t have any for me. We’ll both pillage at will. Get upset/ hurt/angry, and then we can make up.” If you don’t have good boundaries you can bet eventually some natural boundary invader, trained in it from infancy, will spot you across a crowded room and come running. You’ll be a boundary invasion magnet.

It would be nice if one could be nice and not be vulnerable. You can, but you have to know how, and that’s not usually taught at nice school. It would also be nice if you didn’t have to protect your boundaries from the one you love. But, sorry, you have to do it there too. If you didn’t do that, and  invasion and removal of your own ways happened bit by bit, you’ll have to learn  how to create and maintain boundaries now so that when you get you back you’ll have a safe place to be. 

• What you require for your own self/person isn’t clear or enforced.

“I always thought if he loved me he’d understand me and notice what I like and  don’t like, and want to treat me the way I want to be treated.” Alicia

I once knew a woman who assumed she could read other people’s minds. She was really bad at it, but that didn’t stop her from believing she was an expert. Most people are not only not so good at it, but they have given up trying to be good at it. If you’ve assumed you made it clear what you want for yourself in the way of respect, space, quiet, assistance, and privacy but it’s not coming your way, you’ve not made it clear enough. That’s not to say you haven’t tried. Some people aren’t  perceptive enough, and some people don’t want to perceive it. You may have to get their attention first. It varies as to how severely that attention getting has to be expressed.

• You haven’t automated the management of your relationship.

“I’ve told Celia over and over that I need her to write down in the checkbook immediately any checks written on our joint account. But too often, it just didn’t happen, and we get another overdraft charge.” Josh

What do I mean automate the management of your relationship? I mean don’t keep going over the same ground again and again, because it becomes a habitual source of disappointment and modification of your own standards and expectations. It’s a waste of your time and resources. Set up your relationship for better things than re-running old arguments and disappointments. You’re  draining off the good stuff you could be investing in getting more of what you want. Set up some standards and stop the replays. I’ll tell you how in Chapter five.

• You’ve taken on the wrong partner (you may be able to negotiate a change without changing the partner).

Nobody wants to admit, or face the fact that they may have chosen or accepted a bad deal when they joined up with their partner. But that may be the case.

In the  best of all possible worlds, with the pick of the bunch, and the wisdom and insight to know what you’re getting, would you pick the one you’ve got? Maybe not? But that is what you’ve got, or what you had when you lost yourself if you’ve gone on since then. What do you do now? You don’t necessarily have to part company, but you do need to assess the situation honestly and fairly. It’s not fair to either of you to expect that they or you are not who you are, or to assume either are capable of what they presently are not capable of.

If you’ve taken on the wrong partner, then you need to change the way you deal with that partner if it’s been based on what you thought they were, but turned out not to be. 

• You are being exploited due to your ignorance.

Sorry to have to say so--but it’s a relief to admit it if it’s true--but you may be just plain being exploited. You may believe he or she has your best interest at heart, means well, will change, has a problem that they are working on (always on the road but never arriving), when in actuality they are hoodwinking you into being their doormat or emotional punching bag. If that is the case, you need to detect it, face it, and make some changes.

• What you have to offer isn’t what your partner most wants and needs.

“My husband likes me to wear backless, open toed high heels at home, and tight pants and low-necked, off the shoulder, slinky blouses. It’s not really what I’d choose, but it stops him from complaining that I’m not sexy enough.” Mae

You may have been chosen for the wrong reasons. Your partner may have been mistaken about what he or she thought they wanted, what they thought you were like, could provide, or their needs and wants have changed. So, they spend a lot of effort trying to remake you into what they’d prefer. That creates a lot of wear and tear on the organism of the one being reshaped. Your partner may not want to come right out and say that they’d like to remake  you, but their efforts keep drifting that direction.

They’d just like a little change here, and one there, and couldn’t you be more like that, or her, or not wear those, or slim down or beef up? When they get done tweaking, you’re not you anymore.

Reclaiming yourself will involve stopping the remakes, excavating your own preferences and tastes, behaviors and needs, and setting about re-educating your  partner to the new reality: You are not the makeover queen.

Chapter 3 Focus Shift

Focus on yourself, not on them.

“If he’d only change, we could be so happy.” Dawn

“There were days at a time, early in my marriage, when I could think of nothing else but how my mother-in-law and father-in-law were treating me. I wondered if it was true that I was doing something wrong even though I had no idea what it could be.” Myra

If they’d only change, you could be happy again.

No, if you’d only change, you could be happy again.

It’s not that you can’t change another person. It can probably be done. But it’s not emotionally cost effective. Don’t be suckered into trying to change someone who is making you unhappy, disturbing your efforts at being yourself, or “just  needs a little help.” Uh, uh. No. It’s a racket, a sad way of letting you be responsible for their behavior. You have enough work to do managing your own assets, let them be responsible for theirs. Thing is, the more you try to help them, the more they can come to like the attention and lack of responsibility, the more they want you to make them your  permanent job.

This is the hardest thing to do in this book. So when you master it, you are in the  groove, on your way, able to leap tall buildings with a single bound—so to speak.

What you’ll find is that it’s almost impossible to do at first. Thinking about the other person is so automatic that your mind snaps back there like it’s attached by a rubber band. It seems so reasonable. They are doing something specific that’s unfair, unkind, inconvenient, selfish, or stupid. All they have to do is simply stop it. Or, they are not doing something kind, loving, fair, reasonable, wise. All they have to do is do it. Why can’t they do that? Everything would be fine then. Or fine  enough that you’d be able to think of something else.

It may be natural to think that way, to try to get them to see it, to think they’ll do it when they say they see it. But it doesn’t work. If you look around you you’ll see that you are doing more and more thinking about what they could do and should do, and that they are doing less and less of what you’re hoping they’ll do.

The only way, I repeat, the only way you can get your self back is to stop focusing on them and learn to focus on you.

You do know how. Babies do it; they  know where their toes are, what feels good, and usually how to get more of it. You’ve just been trained out of it. You can learn to do it again. It’s like riding a  bicycle, once you’ve learned it you’ll be able to get it back.

But, what if you need to think about them sometimes, to focus on them? Fine, you can do that. But you’ll learn to limit it to an appropriate amount and at an appropriate time. Then it won’t obsess you and divert you from your own way of being in the world.

Or maybe it’s not your partner you are thinking about all the time, maybe it’s someone else’s needs. Maybe someone has become so needy there is no space left in your thoughts for your own needs. Maybe it’s your boss at work, or a coworker, or predatory or overwhelming situations. Use the same process, but translate it to fit your environment.

Don’t try to please them either. I’m not saying don’t be nice to them, when you want to. Not saying don’t be kind, or don’t be considerate, or don’t be courteous or helpful. I’m not saying don’t be  loving, generous, or empathetic. I’m not saying not to meet obligations that are clearly yours either because they are important, necessary, or you’ve chosen  them.

I’m saying it’s not your job to please other people. It’s their job to please them. And your job to please you. Doing something for someone to see them smile and give them a good feeling is a choice you get to make. You don’t owe it.

One of the subtle ways people lose their self is by having their partner, or someone else—maybe a boss, relative, or friend—provide recurrent obligation-linked requests, be chronically needy, be clingy, be easily offended or have their feelings hurt, or otherwise give the message that you need to please them. Don’t go there. And if you have already gone there (probably), stop it. Back up, step sideways, change your response behavior.

How to do it

• Set aside a time each day for focusing on the other person, or the other persons, if there is more than one who is displacing your own ways of being and perceiving. You don’t need to assign much time to this, ten to fifteen minutes are enough. If you have a time when you know you will focus on them your mind can let thoughts about them go when they come up at other times during the day.

When those thoughts come to consciousness remind yourself that you will think about it later. Write a note to yourself if necessary about anything specific you want to give attention to, and then let the thought go.

• Practice enjoying the present moment. I’ve heard and read so many times the advice to live in the present moment—and thought, yeah, but what does that mean? So I’m going to tell you how, not just tell you to do it.

Start out small. If you are  sitting in the car in the parking lot waiting for someone, say to yourself, “My job is to be happy sitting here right now.” Then notice all in your sensory experience at the moment that has any pleasant element in it. You might enjoy the way the light shines through the window, or the smoothness of the dashboard, the color and shape of a tree in your visual field, the softness of your clothing, the smell of leather. Move from moment to moment, location to location having as your job enjoying that particular moment, that action, that location fully and freely.

• Write morning pages. Every morning, as soon as you can after arising, sit down  and write, by hand, three pages of whatever comes into your mind. Do it every morning, not trying to be profound or literary or even interesting, just write whatever comes to you.

• Make a treasure map. Cut out pictures and headlines from magazines, catalogs, newspapers, and printouts from online that appeal to you. Don’t try to figure out their meaning, just accumulate them. When you have a substantial pile, assemble the ones you want to include into a collage on cardboard of whatever size you choose. When you are pleased with the arrangement, glue them to the cardboard and set your treasure map where you will see it during the day.

• Pray for yourself too, in detail, instead of only for others, if that has been your  practice.   

Chapter 4 Determine What You Want

Determine what you want and exactly and precisely how you’ll know when you have it.

It’s funny, but most people don’t actually know what they want. Sometimes I ask a client to think about their perfect life, to write down what it would be like. They  are often surprised. Sometimes they laugh with delight. It’s not something they’ve  thought they could go for.

If you don’t know what you want, you’ll probably get something else. You need to determine what you want from your partner, what you want for yourself. Specifically. This may not be easy, because you may, at first, keep  thinking about whether you can get it or not, or what they’ll say or do if you ask for it, or whether it’s reasonable or not, etc.

Just do it. Write down exactly and precisely what you want. Then write down for each item how you’ll know when you have it. Specifically, in sensory detail. As in, I want to be treated with respect. I’ll know I have it when I hear only kind words, spoken in a respectful tone, see respectful looks on my  partner’s face, and when he opens the car door for me.

You can’t get it if you don’t know what it is. You won’t know when you’ve got it unless you have a specific standard to compare it to. And, your partner can’t give you what you want if they don’t know specifically what it is that you want. They also may not know if they’ve done it or provided it if you don’t tell them specifically how it will look, sound, and feel.

How To Do It

• Make a list: What I Want. Leave space after each entry for How I’ll know when I’ve got it. Then fill that one out, completely, leaving no doubt. It doesn’t matter if it’s funny or goofy. What you want is what you want. Own it. 

• Look over your list and improve or correct, eliminate or add anything that needs to be there or be taken off the list because it really isn’t important to you after all. But don’t take off stuff just because you think you shouldn’t want it, or it’s silly to want it. You want what you want. You need to get it.   

Chapter 5 Automate Your Relationship

What do you want to happen automatically, that you don’t have to ask for repeatedly, or check to see if it’s been done?

“I’ve always been disappointed at how two supposedly reasonable adults could  expend so much effort getting nowhere.” James

This is where you set up as much as possible of what you want as an automatic occurrence. It’s also where you eliminate a lot of recurring stuff that is wasting your time and energy.

If you’re having the same discussions again and again, if you’re having arguments about the same things over and over, if the same stuff is not getting done, is irritating one of you, you’ve got things to automate. 

How To Do It

• Take your list of what you want and how you’ll know you’ve got it and give yourself room to write at length below each item, maybe a whole page in a journal, however you’d like to do it.

Under each item, working on this at your own speed, coming back to add new thoughts and possibilities, write how you can make this an automatic occurrence.

Ask yourself: What could happen, would need  to happen, for this to automatically show up as a natural occurrence? What could I do to make it a natural occurrence? Is there something my partner could be persuaded to do to make it a natural occurrence?

Write down your answers. And when you are ready, begin putting them into action, wisely, kindly, and firmly.

• Make yet another list. This time a list of the recurrent unsatisfying discussions, arguments, nags, time wasters, energy drainers that keep happening. Add to it whenever you think of something more, assigning a page for each item in a notebook, or loose in a folder, or in a journal.

These are your work pages for the items. Look them over and ask yourself, about each item:

• What could happen to make this a non-recurring event?
• What can I do, myself, to make  this a non-recurring event?
• Is there something we could agree on to make this a non-recurring event?
• How can I create an environment what will make this event  naturally not occur?

Write down your thoughts as they come to you, returning to the pages for regular work on the items.

When an answer to one of the questions comes to you during the day, write a note to yourself and add the info to the pages later.

• Select one or more items and take action to eliminate it/them permanently. Work ecologically, doing good and not harm to yourself and others. Be smart about it, don’t try to make too many changes at the same time.

You will find that through this simple yet profound exercise you will be able to install an automatic receiving of much of what you want and eliminate many of the things that have been wasting you and your partner’s time and energy.

Examples

To make irritation over the bouncing checks an automatic non-occurrence:

Divide the finances between the two of you. Establish two separate checking accounts, one for each of you. The check bouncer has responsibility for only the bills that do not threaten essential household services (such as phone, electricity, health insurance, car insurance, etc.). The non-check bouncer takes care of those so they won’t be interrupted by poor payment of bills. The check bouncer lives with the consequences of bounced checks. The non-check bouncer lets them.

To make the car always have at least a half tank of gas in it:

Whoever does the weekly grocery shopping automatically fills the tank when they go for groceries. If anyone drives the car and it falls below a half tank, they fill it up before returning home or turning it over to anyone else. No reasonable exceptions. No one has to decide whether to get gas or not, it’s been automated.

If you’d like to go out to dinner at a restaurant once a week:

Select a day as the out to dinner day. Go to the family calendar and write in on that day each week  for the whole year, “Dinner Out.” If you decide not to on a particular week, it’s an exception, and you erase it or cross it out for that week only.

You want to avoid petty arguments before bedtime, you want to avoid them  coming up at other times too:

Get an agreement that you’ll postpone all petty arguments until an agreed upon time, once a week. Pencil it on the calendar in a code known only to you two if you like. If a petty argument looks imminent, have a reminder signal, or just say, “Take it up at the agreed upon time.” No more  petty arguments except then. And by then many of them will have evaporated  anyway. 

Chapter 6 Discover The Essentials

What qualities, attributes, and skills are essential in a partner, the ones you’re not willing to have absent?

“I really need a guy to be clean, and have a little class.” Julia

“Honesty is tops for me, I need to be able to trust the person I share my existence  with.” Josie

Why write a list of qualities, skills and attributes you want when you’ve already got someone who doesn’t have them?

Because you need to know what is important to you, and stop denying it to yourself. You also need to find out if you can get it from your partner, and if you can’t, you need to provide it for yourself from another source. Don’t go hungry just because there’s no food you like in the house. If you can’t get it from your partner, you need to know to stop expecting it to arrive, develop, or just magically happen from that source.

You also need to know and get the essentials because if you have them you’ll be much more satisfied with the relationship as a whole. And, strangely enough, more able to get other, less essential things you’d like to have but don’t feel you have to have.

Having the essentials creates an atmosphere that is generative of other benefits. It’s kind of like building a house, a good foundational structure is essential. If that’s there, you can safely and easily build a variety of other nice things on top of it.

How To Do It

• Make a list (this is getting familiar) of those qualities, attributes, and skills that are essential in a partner. These are items that you really need to be there, top importance, not just like-to-haves.

• Check to see if they are present or absent in your partner. 

• Are they there in some form and could be developed further if the partner wanted to?

• Are they absent, but possible?

• Are they just never going to happen?

When you are ready, and it’s a good climate for such things—which you can  perhaps help create—go to your partner and tell him or her what is important to  you, or part of it, and ask them to provide more of that, develop it, or work toward it. Make it clear that it’s really important to you, and you are willing to reciprocate, as much as you are comfortably able, if they tell you their counterpart essentials. (Don’t fall for them turning it into some bargaining  session. And if they trivialize it, don’t let them get away with it. If they try to trivialize it, end the meeting graciously but firmly and say you’ll discuss it later when they are in a different frame of mind.)

If you can’t get there from here at all with your partner on this, you need to  seriously consider changing the nature of the relationship, creating some distance, and possibly moving on. They aren’t right for you and never will be.      

Chapter 7 Decide On The Boundaries

Where are the boundaries going to be?

What is it OK to do to you? And what is it not OK to do to you?

99.999 percent of  the time, people who’ve lost themselves have weak boundaries, fuzzy boundaries,  boundaries with holes in them, thin spots, or poorly defended places. That’s just how it is. The door’s open, it’s too easily kicked open, the lock’s  broken or a cheap one, you’ve left the window open a crack, and it yields to  pressure.

If you want you back, you have to find out where your boundaries are,  increase them dramatically, and make them strong. You don’t need to make a list here (whew!). But you do need to ask yourself some  questions to discover what boundaries mean to you, where they are, and where  you are going to enlarge and strengthen them.

• What is it not OK to say to me?
• When I say no does it mean no or does it mean maybe? Is it a statement, or a request?
• Do I allow other people to disregard my no?
• Do I allow other people to invade my personal space or get closer than I’m  comfortable without stopping them?
• Do I do things for other people when it’s not best for me and not essential that I  do?
• Do I take the smallest piece of cake every time?
• Do I let my partner have the remote control all the time?
• Do I watch movies and TV programs I don’t want to because my partner wants me to or refuses to allow me to have equal access to choice?
• Do I have sex when I don’t want to? Do I have types of sex I don’t want to  engage in?
• Do I fake sexual satisfaction?
• Do I often feel cheated, but don’t know exactly why I feel that way?
• Is it OK for someone to hit me or destroy or damage my property?
• Do I eat leftovers I don’t really want to keep from throwing them away?

I read about a therapist who practiced what he called Provocative Therapy with his clients. He said once he thought maybe he’d gone too far, but it turned out  that he hadn’t and it worked after all. He said he had a woman client who was depressed. He decided that the best way to get her out of her depressed state would be to change it to any other state. He tried several different tactics to get a  bit of disagreement or anger out of her, but she was so self-effacing and non-selfprotective that she didn’t respond. So he, pretending it was absentmindedly, rubbed his muddy shoes on her dress.
Eventually this got to be too much for her and she did get angry.

How much mud would it take to make you stop people from putting their dirty  shoes on you?

Ask yourself, throughout the next week, where your boundaries are. Notice  where your comfort line would naturally be.

• Has someone just crossed it?

• What do you need to do to move them back to where you need them to be?

• How might you do that in a way that works for you and is respectful of them?

• What could you have done differently to have prevented the incursion before it  happened? • What can you do now to prevent the same sort of incursion in your future?

• Can you create an environment in which this episode just wouldn’t happen?

• What step or steps can you take right now to make a change in this direction?

Chapter 8 Set Up Enforcement

How will you enforce those boundaries?

“People don’t mess with me. My expertise in karate shows somehow. I must  reveal a confidence by my body language. Whatever it is, it works.” Kate

Who do you know who doesn’t get their boundaries invaded? How do they do  that? Learn from observing and remembering good examples. Use them as models  to help you design your new behaviors, adjusting the models to fit you and your own experiential contexts.

Practice telling someone no so you can do it more easily. Not for contrariness sake, but so you can become comfortable saying it. You could even say to a friend  or partner, “Ask me to do something, so I can say no.” 

Remember past boundary invasions and think of how you could have prevented  them, stopped them, backed people up to behind your comfort boundary line. Mentally rehearse doing just exactly that. Fine tune it, adding or changing whatever you need to make it effective and satisfying.

Now go into three similar situations that might occur in the future where you could use those new skills. Imagine yourself doing that. Each time you think of a boundary invasion that has happened in your past, do  this process. Practice in your mind is highly effective. Putting it in your future  makes your practiced skills available to you then.

Chapter 9 What Is The Deal Breaker?

What would they have to do to convince you to move ahead without them?

Why do you need to do this? And what do I mean, deal breaker? You need to do it because people with boundary issues can be moved in on gradually. If you are  dealing with boundary invasions, you need to establish what you’ll not allow. Period.

Some men allow their wives to slap and punch them. Some women are vicious and violent with their men because they know they can do it without reprisal. Most abusers escalate their abuse over time. People who’ve not been physically abused will often know where the limit is for them, what they’d not tolerate. That’s one way they avoid being physically abused. Potential abusers discover right away that those people aren’t good victim material. They move on to target those who will allow small invasions and  violations. They test to see where the stopping point is, gradually increasing their  invader territory. You need to know how much and what you will tolerate from a partner for many  reasons: 

• To know what’s really important to protect yourself, your property, and loved ones from. 

• To know when it’s time to make plans to leave. 

• To know where to draw the line, far before the partner reaches the deal breaker. 

• To let the partner know that you are to be respected, protected, and honored  and to stop precisely where and when you say to stop.

How will you enforce those boundaries?

“People don’t mess with me. My expertise in karate shows somehow. I must  reveal a confidence by my body language. Whatever it is, it works.” Kate

Who do you know who doesn’t get their boundaries invaded? How do they do  that? Learn from observing and remembering good examples. Use them as models to help you design your new behaviors, adjusting the models to fit you and your own experiential contexts.

Practice telling someone no so you can do it more easily. Not for contrariness  sake, but so you can become comfortable saying it. You could even say to a friend  or partner, “Ask me to do something, so I can say no.” 

Remember past boundary invasions and think of how you could have prevented  them, stopped them, backed people up to behind your comfort boundary line.  Mentally rehearse doing just exactly that. Fine tune it, adding or changing whatever you need to make it effective and satisfying.

Now go into three similar situations that might occur in the future where you could use those new skills. Imagine yourself doing that. Each time you think of a boundary invasion that has happened in your past, do this process. Practice in your mind is highly effective. Putting it in your future makes your practiced skills available to you then.

Chapter 10 Inventory Your Resources

“He/she who has the gold, rules.” The other Golden Rule

What resources do you have in yourself and for yourself that make you secure and able to take care of yourself abundantly well without a partner/spouse? It’s much better to be with someone because you want to instead of because you need to or have to.

Always have at least three places to go and plenty of money and means to get there.

This is an uncertain world. You may need to leave for many reasons unrelated to your partner. It’s just plain sensible to always have an escape plan from anywhere you are at any time. My father taught me to, first thing, after entering any building, auditorium, restaurant, any place, to look for the exits and know how I’d get to them if I needed get out in a hurry. He taught me not to sit with my back to an uncovered window. To carry a knife safely pointing down, to use leverage to lift things and make work easier. I’ve always been glad he did.

You may never need to be self sufficient or leave, but you need to be fully, abundantly capable of it because it gives you personal leverage, confidence, and is evidence to you that you value yourself and take your well being seriously. Your self will be much more willing to return if you convince it that you will take good care of you, that it’s going to be safe to return. You’ll also get better treatment when you do this--from your partner, and others who may be tempted to treat you less than perfectly.

Money

Count your money. Know what money is actually yours. Do you have money in your own name? Your own bank account? Your own investments? What do you own, in your own name, that is worth money? How much is it worth? If you were to leave a relationship you’re in, what money, or what that is worth money will you be able to keep? Is the money you have working for you? Is it fully appreciated by you for the resource/backup/safety net that it is and/or could be? Do you have a financial cushion, easily available, equal to six months income? Are you working toward financial independence for yourself?

Information

Do you know where all your vital documents are? Do you have backups for your important computer files? Do you store copies off site? How often do you back up? Do you know what your legal rights are in your state? Can you quickly access addresses and phone numbers of your support people? 

Skills

List your skills. Every one you can think of, and add to the list whenever you think of more. Look under the things you know how to do, have done, where  you’ve been, who you know, look everywhere, under the rocks and behind the bushes of your experience.

Knowing well your own skills will set the stage for your ongoing development of more skills, enhancement of the skills you already have, and accurately and adequately presenting yourself to the world. 

Qualities/Abilities

What are you good at, just naturally? Letting humility and modesty sit quietly aside for the time being, list all the good stuff. Don’t leave anything out. And, you may want to ask people who know you for their opinions and observations on this. Don’t allow any negative assessments, even if hidden in a seeming  compliment. Ask them for the positives only. If it seems true, own it. If it doesn’t, toss it out.

Support Network

Who can you count on to support and help you if you need it? Who are the true friends and who are the maybe friends? Do you have relatives who would take you in? Who can you call to talk things over with? Who can you chat with online?

Be aware that some environments appear to be supportive but when things get  sticky turn out not to be. It’s common for organizations, churches, and businesses to foster a family atmosphere, encouraging members/employees to believe it’s one big family. It’s often not, as people find out when they get fired or do  something that makes a wave or two in the water.

Fitness

How physically fit are you? Are you overworked, overstressed, underexercised, overweight? Assess your own fitness level, emotional as well as physical.

Protection

Look at your ability to protect yourself, your property, assets, finances, dependents. Can you do that well? 

Alternatives

Do you have choices as to where you work, what you do to earn a living, or could  do? Are there alternate ways to provide food and clothing, childcare, housing?

Reserves

Do you get enough sleep? Do you have money saved? Do you have strength reserves? Is your car well maintained, always ready to drive? Do you keep your  gas tank always more than half full? Do you have money hidden in the car, and in  other places that you could get to quickly? Are your clothes ready to wear?    

Chapter 11 What’s Needed?

What resources do you need to add, or add to?

Money

Funny thing about money, it’s a loaded subject with so many people. It’s like sex, we’ve been taught to fear it and enjoy it, that it’s dangerous and natural, practical  and impractical, banal and out of reach, that too much is dangerous, but everybody wants just under that amount, and nobody knows what that amount is.

No matter how you think of money, or what combination of the above is true for  you, you need to take care of the money if you want to be true to yourself. It’s  like flossing. You really must take it seriously, even if playfully seriously. You can take money seriously and play with it too--why not.

Count your money. Know what’s really yours, where it is, what it’s doing for you. This is so essential, I can’t over-emphasize it. Know where your money is, all the  time, and what it’s doing for you. You need to know what you have before you decide what you need and were and how to get it. You need to take good care of what you already have if you want to get more.

Educate yourself about money. Know as much about money as you do about the  things you know the most about. Money is survival insurance, it’s freedom insurance, it’s being responsible for your own well being and for the well being and safety of those who depend on you.

Skills

Compare the list of skills you have with the list of what you want for yourself, and what you need for yourself and for people who are dependent on you. What  skills could you add to those you already have that will make it possible for you to improve your life and go toward what you want for yourself?

Where can you  learn and practice these skills?

What is the first step in that direction?

What skills do you already have that can be put to use to bring you toward what you want?

What skills that you already have can be polished and sharpened, added to, enhanced and developed?

Qualities/Abilities

Questions to ask yourself:

Which of my abilities and qualities are being stifled? 

Where do I need to allow me to be fully me?

What about me, that is my own natural way of being in the world, do I need to more fully own, appreciate, and  allow freedom of expression?

How can I begin to do that now, today? 

Information

What information do you need that you do not have?

Where and how do you  want to store it?

Apply these questions to the different areas of your life: work, home, personal information, family data, emergency information, health records, tax and financial, contacts, support networks, etc.

Support network

Where can you beef up your support network? 

Fitness

Are you as fit as you want to be?

What simple change can you make right now  toward a higher level of fitness?

Being fit enhances and enables every other effort toward providing well for yourself.

Protection

Carry pepper spray in your purse, keep some nearby at night. Carry a cell phone, keep it by your bed at night so that if your regular phone lines were cut or inoperable you’d have a backup. Install deadbolt locks on your doors, window locks that allow for air circulation but not entrance.

Add other safety features  wherever and whenever you discover a place for them: a first aid kit in the car, flares, a blanket, jumper cables, etc.

Make sure you have protection for your possessions and money, adequate insurance, a will, a living trust, a safe place for your essential documents. 

Alternatives

Always be preparing yourself for your next job and/or next residence. Have choices that you could step into quickly. Keep your resume up to date and ready to print out, your audition tape ready to mail, your interview clothing clean and pressed, money for a move or an unexpected trip.

Reserves

Reserves, much more than you need, provide a margin of safety, of time, and tell you that you are important to you. They give you an advantage edge. It’s really  interesting what happens when people build their reserves. They gain confidence and free up energy for the things that are important to them. Try it, and notice  the difference.   

Chapter 12 Take A Step Forward

What’s the first step in that direction?

Good grief! I’m suggesting, even insisting that you make a LOT of changes, provide a huge amount of things for yourself. Do I actually expect you to  accomplish all this? Yes, I do. And without struggle or overwork.

The way to get there is to take one step forward.

Here you were, thinking change was necessary all right, but somebody else was going to be doing it, not you. Now, I’m telling you to give that one up, and set out on a personal quest, changing yourself instead. That may feel overwhelming, initially.

But it doesn’t need to actually be overwhelming, in fact, please don’t let it be. Don’t even go down that road. Instead, do it the easy way, or at least the much easier than overwhelm way, a little step at a time—that’s all you will need to do. This isn’t a long book, it’s pretty straightforward. But it is dense with material. Take your time and just begin doing the tasks. Start small. Be kind to you here too. 

Mistaken ideas about goal setting and achievement

I used to think that one just went for it, and sort of flung myself forward toward whatever I wanted to accomplish. Then, years ago, I read a book with a simple  methodology, called “Choose Success: How To Set and Achieve All Your Goals,” It  changed my life by changing my approach to getting what I want.

Another big help, was discovering an interview with David Allen in the magazine Fast Company. I promptly went to his website, read everything there, ordered his  audio tape program, and then his book “Getting Things Done.”

What I learned, among many other good things, was that one only needs to know and do the next action to take. That’s all.

You do need to know where you want to go, it’s true. But you don’t have to have a big elaborate plan to get there. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. Just know what  the first step is, the first action in that step, then take that action. Then determine what the next action step is. And do that.

1. What do I want to do?

2. What is the first step toward that?

3. What is the first action to take?

4. Do it.

5. Repeat.

The Back Door Approach

Another way to get to where you want to go, pleasantly quirky, is to eliminate everything that doesn’t support what you want to have/where you want to go. As in, asking yourself what would be the component pieces to having an absence of fighting, or, say, an absence of fatigue. Absence of Fighting might go like this:

Absence of Fighting

1. Hang out with people who don’t fight with me.

2. Avoid talking about fight-prone subjects at mealtime, bedtime, in the car, while watching TV.

3. Only fight fair.

4. Only fight about the issue at hand, not side issues.

5. Put complaints in writing.

6. Insist on fighting after a physical workout rather than when an issue comes up.

7. Wear a silly hat while fighting.

8. Only fight with one party in the bathtub nude and the other sitting on the toilet lid, clothed.

9. Have a talk time every Saturday morning for thirty minutes. Each partner talks for exactly 15 minutes about anything they want to and the other listens without comment.

10. Have a fighting penalty agreement. For each fight both parties must contribute ten dollars from their own funds to a common kitty, which can only be used for something neither of you would enjoy—like a donation to your least liked cause.

It’s fun to consruct these Absence Of lists. You sort of pull the supports out from under whatever it is you want to “absence,” creating an environment unfriendly to it and supportive of what you want instead. Try making a list of ten items, as above, or twenty-five, or even one hundred. Then make a check mark beside each one as you complete it or establish it as a  new practice.   

Chapter 13 Re-educate Your Partner

How are you going to re-educate your present partner to the new realities?

“I tell ‘em what I’m going to tell ‘em. Then I tell ‘em. Then I tell ‘em what I told  ‘em.” Pastor Barnes, revealing his sermon construction formula. 

Don’t do that. The best way to re-educate people in your life is to live in your new reality. You won’t need to do a lot of telling. Just begin to live in harmony and agreement with what you’ve learned about what is important to you, what you want, and what you’ve determined is essential.

When you meet someone new, you immediately begin to learn how to treat them and how to relate to them. They teach you how by their body language, their voice tone, what they say, how they say it, what they do, and how they do it. You know automatically to not joke with some people, not to hug some people, that you can confide in some and not in others. 

When something comes up, deal with it. Deal with it in accordance with what you’ve decided is the way you intend to be treated, the way you are going to live. Will this be well received? No, it won’t. There will be some bucking and kicking.  But it can diminish very quickly, or not. Don’t put yourself in harm’s way by  standing up to someone who is potentially dangerous. Instead, work on getting  away from them, out of harm’s way. You have an even bigger issue to deal with  than re-educating your partner. You need help. You need safety. Make that your top priority.

But for others, hang in there. Be kind, and know when you are being kind, because you may be accused of being unkind just because you are choosing for yourself now, not acquiescing to your partner’s demands or preferences. It may  take people around you awhile to adjust to you being true to you. After all, they  may have helped you stop being you, for reasons of their own. They’ll have to  acclimate.

Be aware that some partners won’t like the real you. That’s why they tried to  banish that you, modify it, reform it. They may decide they’ll put more pressure  on you, or even go elsewhere. You have to be committed enough to yourself to continue even in the presence of rejection. Think about it, if it’s not you they want, is giving up yourself a price you are willing to pay to get something that’s  based on fakery?

But other partners, though they may not like it at first, will respect you again, or for the first time. They will adjust and adapt, and eventually, they’ll like you even  better than before, because who you are is always better than who you could  pretend to be. 

Chapter 14 Restore And Upgrade Your System

How to restore and upgrade your own personal operating system

“I realized that my husband was habitually asking me what I was thinking about, then proceeding to argue with me about it! I caught myself shifting my thoughts to other thoughts so that if he asked me, I’d not have to tell him something he’d challenge and harass me about.” Jana

Observe yourself before you lost you

People have different styles. There aren’t good styles and bad styles, better or worse styles, there are simply personal ways of being in the world. You have a right to your own. It may seem to others, or even to you, that adopting another person’s style is OK, or an improvement over your own. Why not? Because it can involve losing access to ways of being that are essential to your happiness and sense of completeness.

That’s not to say one can’t learn from observing others. Actually, finding a good behavior model to learn from is a good idea. But that doesn’t mean you substitute the model’s way of being in the world for your own, but that you add a skill set, a behavioral choice, a new perspective to your own. You don’t displace your system with that of someone else, you add resources, so you have more choices. And you do the choosing of what and when to use among those resources.

Think about the following list, and if it appeals to you and works for you, answer the questions on paper, in a journal or elsewhere. You will probably want to come back to the list repeatedly as you think of additional items or refinements to what you’ve already written.

• What did you love to do? Do you do what you used to love, or has it fallen into disuse? Why did you stop? When did you stop?

• What did you do when you did nothing at all? Doing nothing at all is an important part of being a child, and being an adult. Do you find it difficult now to do nothing at all? Do you feel you will somehow be sorry if you don’t keep working, or keep working at tasks or activities that will be approved of by someone else?

• How did you think? This one can be tricky. The person who has lost his/her self has probably been diverted from their natural thought processes, sometimes so  gradually and subtly that they aren’t aware that it’s happened.

“Rhonda would ask me questions that I couldn’t answer the way they were asked without violating my own mental processes. I finally told her, Look Rhonda, I don’t think like you do, I’m going to have to answer in my own way.” Steve

• How did you play? Have you lost the ability to play? Have you stopped playing at the things that you used to? Have you been edged out of your play activities because someone didn’t approve, insisted on joining you and then trashed the experience, or made derisive comments or used a derisive or dismissive tone when your play activities or preferences were engaged in or mentioned?

• How did you work? Has someone “improved” your working style for you, insisted you work in the way they do or approve of? Has your joy in work and  accomplishment been dulled or removed as a result?

• Who loved you? Go back into your past to the place where you still had your  self, when you know you were the “real” you. Who loved that real person, just as  he or she was? Notice the love they felt, how you knew it was there, how real it was, how they naturally loved you, that it wasn’t forced or coerced.

• What did they love about you? You were loved for a reason. You were loved  because you were loveable just as you naturally were. You had loveable qualities, you provided joy and pleasure with your very existence. Look at you then, and notice what was loveable about you.

• Who admired you? Search again, and add the admirers. I don’t care if it was your pet dog that comes to mind, everybody has had admirers. Notice who they were, and how real that admiration was.

• What did they admire about you? You were admired, the real you, for specific  reasons. What were they? What did your admirers find admirable about you?

• What were you proud of? When you had your self, your own self, wholly and unashamedly yours, no matter if it was long ago, or even for a brief interval of time, what were you proud of? Accomplishments? Ways of being? Possessions?  Friends? Family? Pets? Knowledge? Skills? Notice them now and be proud of them again. They are yours forever.

• What were your pleasures and joys? Notice all the pleasures and joys that you experienced in your past, fully and freely when your self was your own. Reexperience those pleasures and joys again as you remember them.

Restore and upgrade

You must first make a safe place for yourself, which we’ve already begun work on, expanding and protecting boundaries, noticing what is essential, re-educating those around you. You can begin to restore and upgrade as soon as you are prepared to protect your self from invasion and distortion.  It will be a gradual process.

To begin:

• Become aware of the difference between how you used to inhabit the world, before your self departed, and how you inhabited the world after you lost your  self. Just notice the differences.

• Pick a place and a time that is safe from invasion by those who put pressure on you to operate in other than your own system, and sit quietly, or walk as you practice remembering the feelings of being freely your own self.

Just reexperience whatever you can. It will help if you focus on sensory perception. Pick something in your field of vision and experience it as fully as you can, opening up to the experience. Or fully open yourself to the smells in your environment, with no filtering of experience, no distancing. Notice texture or feeling sensations. Just go with your sensory experience.

This may be difficult to do. It may make you feel vulnerable, sad, frightened, or in danger. Just do it in the amount you are ready to do. It will get easier and feel safer as you practice. But be sure you practice in a completely safe environment  as long as you need to before daring to practice fully experiencing in the presence of those who may try to divert you or prevent you from experiencing your self fully.

• When you are ready to extend the length of time you experience fully, or expand the environments in which you do, check your boundaries. Notice how you will protect your own way of being in the world if and when you are  challenged. How you will leave an environment that is not pleasant for you, how you will respond to threats or diversions. Mentally practice making a safe place for you in any environment you find yourself in. 

• Practice being internally focused, and then being externally focused--able to know how you feel, what you are experiencing, and also to step back and observe dispassionately what is happening outside you. Have a choice as to how much you are experiencing your sensory environment, so that you can protect yourself from overload and save precious experiences for a safe and protected  environment.

It’s about choice. Before you lost your self, you were too  vulnerable, after you lost your self, you did not have full choice of how and when you would experience your environment. Do not entrust yourself, nor be vulnerable to those who do not deserve that trust. 

Chapter 15 The Key Piece

The Secret to Success

While writing this book, after I had it well under way, the chapters laid out, much of it written, I discovered the key element, the essential ingredient to getting one’s self back. So I’m adding this little chapter near the end of the book. Why at  this point and not at the beginning? Because I suspect the words that go before what I’m about to write may be important for some people to read before they read what follows.

The secret is to be honest with yourself. 

Your self disappeared because you could not maintain scrupulous honesty with yourself. You had to try to believe what didn’t ring true, what your own self protective warnings told you was not true. You had to take hope that things would get better, that they weren’t as bad as they seemed to be, and make it substitute for the truth of reality you were experiencing.

It’s a moment by moment task to undertake to start telling yourself the truth again. It can be frightening. Probably somewhat like being born, suddenly leaving a cocoon of warmth and semi-darkness for a noisy, cold, unsupported world. But  building in the support, the protection, the reserves that you’ve read about before you landed on this page (and, hopefully, that you’ve already begun to  provide for yourself) makes it possible to begin the back-to-honesty journey.  Maybe you can simply step through that door, and be done with the self  deception. That’s it! Finito! No more.

Maybe you’ll need to think about it for awhile, to see if this feels right to you. Being honest with yourself is like coming home again. You’ll recognize feelings in your body and spirit that have been rare for a long time or totally missing. The air will be fresher, you will feel lighter, like dregs and pollution have left your body.

Honesty Expanded

“First to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the sun the rain that thou  canst not then be false to any man.” From Polonious’ speech to his son Laertes, in  Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. 

The honesty with yourself comes first, and, as Polonious says, it will have side effects. You’ll feel a need to be honest with others, as a result. Not necessarily bare souled self-disclosing. That may not be in your best interest at all. But you’ll need to be increasingly honest in your dealings with others too. Including the person you’ve hoped would change and make everything better by doing it. You will look at the person in the relationship with honesty. And you’ll deal with them honestly. And it will probably be frightening and uncomfortable for you.  But a relief when you actually do it.

And they may not like it! After all, they may have helped train you to live deceptively with yourself, and with them too. Remember though, you can be tactful and still be honest. You may have to develop some new skills in distancing yourself when they try to trap you into saying or doing something that is not what you want to do or say.

But, honesty with one’s self is the very, very best way to get one’s self back. All the other things in this book are here to support you in being honest with yourself. Use them, adjust and adapt them, tweak them, make them your own.  Let them be grease on your slide into honesty. And a strong support to help you when you get there. 

Chapter 16 Make It Automatic

How to protect you in your future

“It’s easy to predict the future. The hard part is making it come true.” Nels

Every experience you create in the present makes it easier for you to create one like it in the future. You are practicing, doing what you are doing now. You’ll be  even better at it tomorrow. That’s another reason why it’s so important to create a good right now. Right now is rehearsal for the future.

You can, by a technique I’m going to show you, also mentally provide additional resources for your future self, to protect it, provide for it, giving you experience  having your own self back in your future.

Future pace

This is a simple, effective way to add resources to your future, to make them available where and when you need them.

You can rework your experience, then use it to add resources to your future. 

Here’s how

Say you’ve planned a birthday get together for a family member, but it didn’t  turn out as you wished. In fact, they never do, it’s something you’d like to do well, but don’t seem to have the knack, though you keep trying.

Go back to the experience, and ask yourself what could have happened to make it turn out the way you wanted, or at least much better than it did.

You might determine that if you’d started preparing a week earlier, made a list and had everything in place several days early that things would have gone better. Also, maybe you realize that you needed to take into account that some  family members are always late, and others always want to leave early. So, rather than let that bother you, you could have just accepted that they will do that, and  plan to allow them to without fretting about it.

Examine the experience several times if you need to, looking for other things that could have gone better for you if your own actions had been different.

When you have pretty much gone over the ground enough, then mentally imagine, as in creating a video tape, with you seeing it from inside the  action, that they actually did go that way.

Imagine fully having done it the better way, from start to finish.

If it still needs tweaking, go back again and re-run the video tape with the improvements.

Now, go into your future, imagining a time in the future when those skills would  be useful to you.

Create another mental video tape, again, (with you seeing the action from within the tape as though it were actually happening to you,) using your new skills and applying them to some similar situation.

Do this two more times, mentally rehearsing using the new abilities in differing future situations that could possibly happen, possible situations in which applying your new skills would make a difference for you.

That’s future pacing. It can be used to harvest the good from experience, enrich yourself with improvements you create from those experiences, then enrich your future by placing the resources there.

Rehearsing the improvements in a future setting makes them available to you then. Research has confirmed that what we mentally rehearse we find more easy to do. Basketball players who practiced only in their imagination shooting baskets accurately, in detail, were almost  as good at it as those who actually practiced tossing the ball.

Rather than regret and discouragement over something that did not go well, you can now utilize future pacing to create a resource for you from the experience.

Extreme self-care

Coaches encourage their clients to incorporate what we call “extreme self-care” into their normal activities. It means what it sounds like. From now on, nothing is too good for you. It does not mean denying anyone else anything, but does mean providing the very best for you.

Why? Because you need to believe you are worth takeing good care of. You need to believe you love you enough to protect and care for you. Because you actually are worth it, that’s why. And because it’s enjoyable, and you need lots of pleasure and enjoyment. You need to get accustomed to providing that for yourself on an ongoing basis.

How to do it

Not everyone wants to have a pedicure, manicure, masssage, facial at a salon, or slather themselves with wonderful smelling lotion after they step from a soak in the tub surrounded by scented candles. But, it’s worth a try to see if you would like it. Lots of people have never tried any of the above, or the many other things they’ve thought of as personal pampering, or luxuries not meant for them. Go forth and experiment with personal pampering.

Wear only the best you can afford, if that pleases you. Wear only what looks the best on you. Indulge in every pampering, self pleasing sensory pleasure you can think of. Go look for books with more ideas, there are quite a few out there.

What you actually enjoy, repeat, and keep on doing it. Become an accomplished  pamperer of yourself.

Boundary extension

Keep on noticing where your natural boundaries are, and then extend them a bit, make even more space for you, creating an even greater comfort zone. 

If you get tired, or bored when in someone’s company, get up, politely, and excuse yourself. The bathroom is a wonderful escape opportunity. Anyone can go to the bathroom almost at any time, take a few minutes to relax, breathe deeply, wash your face, comb your hair, apply a little lotion to your hands, whatever makes you feel comfortable and treasured.

If you’d like to have some space, maybe go for a walk, plan for ways to gracefully and courteously extricate yourself from the group and go. If you’d like to go to your room and rest for a few minutes, find ways to do that.

Plan ahead, so that your boundary needs can always be satisfied generously. If you encounter a situation where your boundaries are being infringed upon, or have been previously, use that experience as an opportunity to future pace a better, more boundary protective experience in the future.

Resource rich

Make your personal life so resource rich that you will be surrounded by the best of everything. Your life is your art, make it beautiful. You are your chief treasure, protect you and enhance you.

Reserves abundance

Provide reserves of rest for yourself, extra empty space on your shelves and in your closets. Buy extra staples so you won’t run out of soap, tissue, toilet paper, detergent. Look for places to add reserves. It will free you from work, calm you and make you feel more secure and well cared for.

Share your gifts and talents with the world

Not as an obligation, nor in any way that impoverishes you or drains you or overloads you, but as the overflow of joy from a cup filled to the brim and  running over. Share who you are, in your own way, true to you, in whatever manner that appeals to you. Who you are is excellent, it always is. There are no people who are not excellent, when they are who they are. We all have gifts and talents to share, and we have a need to share them. When the opportunity comes to you, and you feel inclined, share yours. It will enrich  the world and enrich you too.   

Chapter 17 Globalize

Generalize and increase benefits

Why wish for a loaf of bread when you could wish for a grocery store? All the changes you make for your own benefit are catalytic to making it easier for you to make more changes for your benefit. You will surprise yourself repeatedly, noticing something being easier, not being a problem anymore, and  just changing by itself because of other changes you have made.

You can look forward to noticing small changes having a cumulative effect, and also how they create other changes that just seem to happen automatically. What is happening is that you are shifting the systems that have been in place in  your life. Change has a ripple effect. That is why changes that seem to have nothing directly to do with getting one’s self back can move one toward it. So, you can be encouraged, when you take the steps throughout this book, that  you will be doing more for yourself, in more areas, than it may seem at the time.

One of the change processes I’ll talk about below, Forster’s Pull Process, includes  a way of keeping track of those good change benefits. Using it, one can easily look back at the changes and their larger and broader effects.

Perfecting the Present

One way to improve the future is to practice “perfecting the present.” Make right now good for you, live in reality now, be here now, this moment. The present is  where we live, and all futures become the present.

Not that it’s not a good idea to give attention to the future. I suggest you regularly look at the future, even make it a daily/weekly/monthly/etc. ritual. You might want to put that on your calendar so you will remember to look at future plans, objectives, things you want to add as future resources. But, focusing the rest of the time on the present, being present in the present rather than being distracted by the past or preoccupied with the future, provides  immediate benefits, and can actually lead to happiness—here and now.

I’ve found that perfecting the present, being here now as much as  possible, and experiencing the now is essential to getting the self back. You need  to be able to fully experience the present, to be sensorally connected to your present experience. This isn’t easy, initially, for someone who’s lost their self. It hasn’t been safe to be in the now, to be fully present in experience. By being honest with one’s self, by extending boundaries, by creating safe places and times, one can build space for safely experiencing the present fully. Build it and you can come live in it.

Your perfect life—Using Forster’s Pull Process

Mark Forster’s Pull Process (how I refer to it) is presented and modeled in his book How To Make Your Dreams Come True. The book is available online at  Amazon.com’s UK store where I ordered mine. Click here for a direct link to its page on  Amazon.com UK's web site.

Here is my slightly adaptive version of Forster’s Pull Process.

1. Start a daily What’s Better list.

Forster suggests you either write this in the evening or keep a running list throughout the day. I do mine each evening.

Rather than focus on problems to solve, or undone work, you focus on the good things that happen throughout the day. Every day has many good things in it, but they can easily get lost by being supplanted by a focus on what is not done or didn’t go as desired.

Seeing the  good, and the progress toward what you want encourages and pulls you toward  more good and more progress toward what you want.

2. Write a daily self-coaching dialogue.

Every morning, as soon as possible, act as your own coach, writing down a dialogue on paper with yourself acting as both coach and client. Begin your session as the coach you asking, “What’s better since we communicated?” Then, respond, in writing, as the client you.

Go back and forth between the coach you and client you, writing your comments as they come to you. This process can take only a few minutes every morning, writing one page or several. I’ve had remarkable help from this, finding I am an excellent coach to myself.

3. Write a 3 to 5 year Vision, and a Present Reality.

Write down, at length, what you’d like for yourself, ideally, in 3 to 5 years. Then write your present reality, where you are now in relation to the areas in your future vision. Review and rewrite your vision and update your present reality weekly. 

4. Work on short term goals.

Select small, easily accomplished goals that you feel pulled toward, that take you toward your vision.

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Mark’s Forster's website is at http://www.markforster.net

Eliminate tolerations

You get what you tolerate. That’s not just true in relationships and in business, but in environments too. Coaches work with clients to eliminate from their experience and environment what we call “tolerations,” basically stuff people are “putting up with,” that they don’t like.

Tolerations of all kinds drain energy from those who are “putting up with.”  It’s sort of like having a large number of software programs running in the  background on a computer all the time, reducing  speed and efficiency.

1. Start a list of what you are putting up with, large and small.

Nothing is too small—it’s surprising how much attention a hangnail can demand. Write down everything in your environment that is an irritation to you: the button that needs to be sewn back on, clothes that need to be taken to the cleaners, closets that are untidy, a car that needs repair or replacing, inconvenient storage in the  kitchen--the works.

2. Then, set aside a few minutes every day, or an hour in the evening once a week, or a whole weekend, and begin eliminating those tolerations.

People are surprised at how good it feels to get those things off their plate, to be done with them, to not be inconvenienced by them anymore. It adds vitality, confidence, and a sense of freedom to your life. And frees up a lot of energy for the things you want to be doing and enjoying.

Eliminating tolerations is another way to enrich your experience and convince yourself that you mean business about taking good care of you and living your own life well. 

Make resources available across contexts

What you do well in one area has an uncanny way of automatically showing up in other places too. To help that along, when you get better at one area, make good  changes, get the hang of doing something new or renewed, ask yourself where  else in your life you could apply those learnings and skills.

How would you want  to adapt, add to, or tweak them to fit there additionally? Then imagine that happening. Visualize it happening, notice how it would feel, how you’d stand, sit, breathe, what you’d be wearing when you have that. Then step into the  picture, makeing it an action tape, and feel yourself doing those things well with those new added resources.

You may want to fine tune it, making any adjustments you'd want, adding more or different resources/abilities, and run the newly improved video again.

Then, select an action to take now, something you can do in the newly enhanced context/environment to apply those specific skills there, and go practice it. Make the action step as small and easy to do.