Eve Hogan

If you want to have healthier relationships, you are going to need to do something differently.

Most of us have heard “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” but my guess is that few of us have the self-awareness to notice when we are acting insanely. We can easily see it in our friends, family and strangers, but when it comes to our own lives, we seem to have a blind spot.

Try as we might, we keep finding ourselves getting into the same behaviors and same arguments with our loved ones, or even picking new loved ones and recreating the same old issues with them.

As Einstein said, “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.” In order to do something different, you have to have an introduction of new information, a new level of awareness or some new skill or tool at your disposal. If you want to have healthier relationships, you are going to need to do something differently.

Here is what most of us do on automatic pilot that perpetuates the insanity:

1. We expect the other person to do something differently… we ask, beg, plead, sabotage, insult, put down, get sarcastic, avoid, withdraw, fight, or get revenge to get them to change.
2. We wait for something outside to change the situation—someone else to fall in love with us, someone else to fall in love with our partner, our partner to leave (or die), a lottery win or… something else outside of us to make a cataclysmic change.
3. We seek advice from others who are not any healthier than we are or who don’t have new skills to offer us. We tend to tell our friends our woes—all from our perspective—in an effort to get them to side with us, (which they want to do). This often doesn’t bring in a higher-level solution because they are stuck in the same ego-based viewpoint as we are. It simply leads to more judgment, arguing, suffering….

1. Tell the truth. Often a huge part of the problem is that we are unwilling to tell ourselves, or others, what is truly going on with us. On the flipside of that, we think our beliefs are the truth when in actuality they are not. Part of the process of telling the truth begins with recognizing how much you don’t actually know to be true. Often we share our beliefs with others as if they are the truth, when in actuality, they are not.
2. Use responsible communication—choose your words carefully so that they are in alignment with what you are trying to create.
3. Learn new skills and put them to practice—read a book, take a workshop, listen to classes on CD, research on the Internet. Information is more easily accessed than ever before, no matter what your budget.
4. Get coaching or counseling from someone whose life choices and advice you respect—not someone who is simply going to side with you.
5. Develop a practice for developing self-mastery—meditation, journaling, exercising—find what works for you to bring you closer to your authentic self. Raising your own “vibration” will cause you to approach your problems from a different level than they were created.
6. Take action. Whenever you are stuck, do something—preferably something different. Almost any action will help you get unstuck so that you can choose the right action.

Approach your problems from a different level of consciousness and skill than that from which they were created.

With Aloha,
Eve

Intellectual Foreplay Question of the Week:
Are you open to learning new skills and trying new things, or are you choosing to stay at the same level?

Love Tip of the Week:
Even a moment of self-observation can bring about a new level of self-awareness. Self-awareness allows you to see choices. Awareness of choices gives you the power to do something different.

Eve Hogan, author of How to Love Your Marriage, Intellectual Foreplay, Virtual Foreplay, and Way of the Winding Path, is also the proprietor of The Sacred Garden, a nursery and healing sanctuary in Makawao. For coaching or speaking events, call (808) 573-7700. Website: www.EveHogan.com. Blog: www.AskEveAdvice.com. Send questions to AskEveAdvice@aol.com.