'Needy' much?

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and you knew they wanted something from you? It’s as if you could see it in their eyes when they first walked up to you, or you could hear it in their voice from the moment they said “hello”? You just knew that they were desperate for your help with something. In fact, they came across as so ‘needy’ or ‘clingy’ that it made you shiver in your skin, and you wanted to bolt as far from them as possible. If you could have, you would have found the nearest window, slid it open, and launched yourself 3 stories down into a dumpster to escape the situation. Or has the shoe ever been on the other foot?

Have you ever been involved in a project, started a business, or launched a career and you knew there was a particular person that could really help you along? They could help by either telling others about what you were doing, by investing their own time, money and resources, or by hiring you themselves.

Or how about this one?

Have you ever wanted to be in a relationship with someone so bad because you knew that they were the one for you? That if they could simply see how well the two of you fit together that they would certainly be as happy as ever. That if they would give you a chance you could show them that you’d make them the happiest person in the world?

Have you ever approached someone about something that mattered to you, only to blow it? You know the feeling, a hyper self-consciousness that highlights every wrong word and action in your own mind.

Being ‘needy’ and ‘clingy’ sucks the life out of everyone, including the person who is birthing these feelings into the world. Very few healthy people want to be around that person for too long. I’m not talking about basic human needs. We all need community. We all need a safe group of people where we can truly be ourselves, let our guard down, share our wounds and insecurities and continue on the healing process. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the person that wants YOU to save them… wants YOU to make their decisions for them… wants YOU to surrender to their desires… wants YOU to do THEIR work for THEM. You have seen it. You’ve even been on the other end asking. It’s ugly. There is nothing positive about the experience. No one is empowered. Not the person who is being approached and most certainly not the person who is doing the asking.

The reason people want to get as far away from that experience as possible is because there is no LIFE in it. There is no energy around the project, the potential, or the person. It looks, acts, and smells like something that’s about to die. No one is empowered during these exchanges. And sometimes, particularly in romantic relationships, the person who is asking for you to ‘save them’ continues to persist far longer than anyone should.

But what if you came across someone who didn’t need saving? What if you met someone at a party and even though they didn’t seem to have it all figured out (the project, the career, or even themselves), they had a trust and a confidence that it was going to be alright. This person had a certain energy about them that came from a deep trust in a higher Source. They were excited about what they were working on and it was totally evident that they had been putting a ton of energy into the project or themselves. You might start asking them questions about where they find their inspiration. You might want to know the details of how things were coming along. You might find yourself highly interested, not just in their current ‘thing’, but in the actual person. That person who knows their value and has a reservoir of trust in the process is full of LIFE.

Are you hanging on to the end of your rope? Are you working on something, but all your hopes are pinned on someone else coming to the rescue? Are you desperate for a particular person’s attention and affection and nothing else will suffice? Maybe it’s time to let go of the rope and trust that the Divine cares for you and has the resources you need. And after you're caught by grace and love, you might find it easier to be gracious and loving towards yourself. You might find new reserves of energy to pour into your project or even yourself. New insights that were seemingly out of reach before, will lie in a pile at your feet.

People want to be around that person. People want to invest in that person. People want that person to invest in them. You can go from needing to be rescued to having the right people wanting your participation by trusting in the Divine and applying the supplied energy to do the work. Start by letting go of the rope… trust me, you will be caught.

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"Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go." - Hermann Hesse

"I don't think it's necessarily healthy to go into relationships as a needy person. Better to go in with a full deck." - Anjelica Huston

"When a person goes into a relationship emotionally needy, they are not going to have discernment in choosing people." - Jennifer O'Neill

It's an Everyday Thang

Sometimes people say that “youth is wasted on the young.” I don’t know that I agree with that, but I can tell you that youth is wasted on the drugged-up young: I was one of them. I lived a very different life when I was in my mid twenties. I blinded my heart and dulled my emotions with substance abuse on a daily basis. Getting high wasn’t about the high. The only place I sought to find my value and worth was with validation from women. Cocaine gave me the energy I needed to be at the party, no matter how long the party lasted. I believed that if somebody wanted to be with me, even if for only a night, it was better than not being wanted at all. And if I could say "at least she wants to be with me right now" (whoever she was that I ended up with that night)... well that meant something. A lot of people don’t realize how much money you can make dealing drugs. Managing that money well, however, is a completely different story. I did work in several bars, which enabled me to sell more drugs and hang out with my friends at the same time.

Believe it or not, I was working on my Masters of Divinity at the time. I was the rare combination… Drug Dealer and Seminary Student. You don’t see a lot of people selling coke and working on a Masters of Divinity together, and for good reason. It doesn’t work. Even as I studied scripture and theology, I lied, cheated and stole. This powerful hypocrisy lead me to hurt the people I cared about most in my life.

I was completely disconnected from my God, I had no sense of worth or value, and I was as lost in depression as I could ever possibly be. And the shame that came along with knowing that I was where I was in life because of the choices I made was like walking around with the rotting carcass of a two ton elephant strapped to my back.

Interestingly enough, this behavior is not uncommon. It’s almost cliché, except for the fact that it was my life and for the most part, I felt like I could not escape. I don't tell you this to glamorize my life story, far from it. I believed I was a loser, that I deserved that life, and that I would be dead by thirty. One afternoon while I was taking a shower I collapsed to the bottom of my bathtub, weeping and crying out to my God for help. When I emerged from the water and steam filled bathroom, I was determined to come up with a plan and execute it at any cost. Four months later I sold everything, except what I could fit into my Toyota Camry, and drove across the country to crash at my parents house for about a year.

What I wasn’t aware of at the time was that I had the choice to change my life, every moment of every day. Even though I was in a living hell, the fear of change was more powerful than the pain that I had created… until it wasn’t. However, even after months of the brilliant clarity that came with sobriety, there were days that I wanted to return to that lifestyle because it was comfortable. I may have been messed up and completely self-destructive, but at least I knew how to handle life in that mode. As a sober person, everything was new and brought with it a sense of intense fear. The simplest of tasks, like scheduling appointments on a calendar seemed like it took the energy of escaping the Earth’s gravitational pull.

Every day was a choice. Connect with my God, get centered, and choose a new way, or return to where I had come from. Sixteen years later and I don’t know how to express in writing how rewarding it is to have stayed the course. The only thing that comes to mind is to say the names of my two little girls and maybe you might be able to recognize what is wrapped up in this imagery. Life.

Today I value myself; connect with the Divine hourly; have deep and meaningful relationships with the most rewarding friends a guy could have; and know my purpose, as my life and income are wed to helping others make their own changes, discover work that matters and learn to love themselves. I still make mistakes, but I’ve learned how to process through them in a healthy manner. Living an extraordinary life isn’t a one time decision. It’s a choice that’s made every single morning followed by action steps that back up that choice like powerful punches landing on the jaw of ‘the comfortable’.

Maybe you want someone else to make you feel better about yourself. Maybe you are at the end of your rope and feel like you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. You do. Today you have the most power you will ever have… the power of a choice. Maybe you begin exercising the power of that choice with a simple prayer asking for help.

It could be that you’ve never been to those depths, but at some point you decided that you wanted a better life for yourself, one with purpose and meaning that energizes and compels you. Now you’re wondering why things haven’t changed yet. Is it possible that you’ve forgotten that living a meaningful life is a choice one must make everyday? It doesn’t take a new year to make changes, just a choice.

When you woke up this morning, what did you choose? If it wasn’t clear, concise, and followed by actions, chances are high that it wasn’t an empowering choice. Here’s another cliché for you… thinking you’re not making a choice is most certainly a choice.

If you are interested in subscribing to the mailing list and receiving these via email, simply click under ‘subscribe to the mailing list’. _______________________________________________________________________________________ "The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time." - Abraham Lincoln

"This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live." - Omar Bradley

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Viktor Frankl

Special thanks to Mike McHargue for an open conversation and help in refining this piece

How's That Working for You?

The five words that changed my life.  Ironically, I was the one who uttered them to myself.  That’s right, I talk to myself.  So do you.  My story is a familiar one.  I didn’t have the first clue about valuing myself or loving myself and for the longest time, I had no idea that was a problem.  I had a great childhood.  I still have the most incredible parents when it comes to feeling loved and cared for.  In very concrete ways they expressed their love for me since before I can remember.  I’ve always just known their love.  I grew up in an incredible community and was involved with some wonderful people through my entire childhood and into college.  I share that so you can be aware that even people with the healthiest of upbringings have major struggles with insecurities and negative thought patterns.  I used to think that I was the only one.  Now I know I’m like every other person on the planet. Several years ago, when I hired a mentor, I knew that there were things in life that I wasn’t able to figure out and I knew I needed help.  Insecurities and limiting beliefs, attached to things like fear of loneliness, finances, my own sense of worth, and intelligence, had been haunting me since I was an adolescent.  But I didn’t know how to deal with them.  So I found a mentor I trusted and that I knew had turned things around in his own life.  His name is Mastin Kipp.  I had taken a couple courses from Mastin online and I had quickly begun to build a rapport with him.  We had similar stories, which helped with my trust.

When I first starting working with Mastin, he began describing exercises intended to help with learning to love myself.  At first I thought they were absurd.  Mirror work.  Self-affirmation sentences.  Telling myself that I loved myself whenever I felt a sense of shame for making a mistake.  One morning while I was alone and practicing these exercises, I said out loud, with a heavy dose of jaded arrogance, “this is  TOTAL HOGWASH!”  (ok maybe I used a stronger description).  What I said to myself next surprised me.

“How’s that working for you?”  I was stunned.  I couldn’t remember the last time I was content.  Thinking the way I had been thinking for so many years had led me to this point.  How was that working for me?  Not well at all.  I realized that I needed to make some major changes, but I didn’t know what.  So, even though it went against everything within me, I decided to give these exercises a chance.  Slowly, after practicing these exercises, I began to notice a difference in my overall thought patterns and demeanor.  I had once prided myself on being an over-analytical perfectionist and cynic.  But along the way, I stopped identifying with those characteristics.  I didn’t know how it worked scientifically, but I saw the evidence.  As my friend Mike told me, “you don’t have to know how an engine and transmission work in order to drive your car.”  Mike's one of the most intelligent people I know and so I asked him to explain it to me.  He's great at breaking down complex matter into laymen's terminology.  So he did.

The most ancient part of the human brain is the limbic system. Our feelings of fear, anger, and aggression originate there. The limbic system is fast and ruthless, and we’ve used it for survival for as long as we’ve been around. Thanks to its speed and efficiency, the limbic system can make judgments and decisions much faster than the newer hardware in our heads. Our brains are like a muscle–what we use most gets strongest. Negative, critical, fearful or aggressive thinking tends to strengthen the response of our limbic system in our daily living.

More recent structures in human brains like the neocortex and the anterior cingulate cortex are the parts of our brains that produce love, compassion, and empathy.  If you focus on those types of thoughts, you will enhance the neural circuits in the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex and it encourages your brain to support that way of thinking.  Intentional focus toward these kinds of thoughts has been clearly demonstrated to have helpful physiological and psychological benefits.  You can actually begin to find your identity in those thoughts and feelings.

Why do I tell you all of this?  Simple.  Maybe you’re like me.  Maybe my story resonates with you on some level.  Maybe you’re tired of being cynical, judgmental, critical of yourself, and influenced in major ways by your insecurities.  Maybe you know you need to value yourself and love yourself more but you just don't know how. Maybe when you hear me always talking about loving yourself, accepting yourself, and sharing practical ways to begin to do this, you are skeptical.  Maybe you also think that doing any kind of ‘positive’ mental and emotional exercise is too ‘Stuart Smalley-ish’ for you.  Maybe you think that is too 'touchy feely' could never work.  Maybe you’re thinking, ‘I’ll just stick with what I know.’

Well let me ask you, with the most sincere and humble of intentions, how’s that working for you?

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"For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something." - Steve Jobs

"When we are no longer able to change a situation" - we are challenged to change ourselves." - Viktor E. Frankl

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." - C.S. Lewis

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I'd like to thank Mike McHargue for his brilliant ability to take complicated matters and make it possible for every person to understand them.  You can read more about The Intersection of Science and Spirit here at mikemchargue.com

Turning to People you Trust

I’m about to tell you something that you already know and may already practice.  It is going to be the simplest advice I’ve ever given.  But I’m going to share it anyways.  You can never over estimate the power of reaching out to a friend.  Reach out now to someone you trust.  No matter where you are in life today or what you are up against, reaching out to a friend will add incredible value to your life. Not just anyone mind you.  Someone you trust.  Someone that you’re pretty certain will embrace you regardless of the situation you’re in.  Reach out to that friend that you know isn’t full of trite quotes and pithy clichés.  The one that usually makes your day feel lighter after you’ve talked to them.

You might say, Brad, I don’t really reach out to friends.  I don’t really need them that much and I don’t feel comfortable sharing or being vulnerable.  If that’s the case then it really must suck to be you.  How’s that working for you by the way?

You might say, Brad, I don’t connect with people as easily as you do.  Well, that might be true.  But that doesn’t mean that you won’t benefit greatly in the next 5 minutes by reaching out to a friend on the phone, sharing a bit of your heart, and feeling a bit more connected to humanity.  I’ve said it before.  If you can feel a bit more connected to humanity, you can feel a bit more connected to the Divine.  Or whatever it is that you particularly put your trust in for resource and Love

It’s not a secret that when we are accepted and loved by others we tend to feel more gracious with ourselves, with others, and more alive in general.  There is this beautiful thing that happens when we are our authentic selves and we connect with a loved one.  I only have crude letters and words, placed together to form sentences in an attempt to describe this beauty.  But it’s that  overwhelming sense that there is more to life than just our narrow perspective and view.  It’s the recognition of how valuable and precious it is to not be alone and to have the ability to share this journey with others.