Chandra Unplugged - No nonsense, Straight-up blogging from a Life Coach

The Art of Communication - How to Do It!

Everyone agrees that good communication is the foundation of all relationships, but how do you begin to relate differently if you’ve never been taught a more effective way to communicate? Here is a new way to deliver and receive information that feels good and brings positive results.

1. Say how YOU feel, rather than talking about what is wrong with the other person.

• The emphasis is on YOU – talk about yourself.
• Be conscious of only talking about your feelings.
• The minute you talk about the other person, that person gets defensive and cannot hear you. When you say how you feel, the lines of communication stay open.

2. Set a timer and take turns talking.

• The best way to learn how to properly communicate is to set a timer. One person talks for three minutes without interruption and then the other person talks. Do this three times, alternating with each person talking for three minutes.
• This method allows each person to talk AND listen to the other, giving the other complete attention.
• Most of the time when we have a disagreement, everyone ends up talking at the same time. This way allows for a complete exchange of information without frustrations or defensiveness getting in the way.

3. When the other person is talking, do not think about what you are going to say next. Just listen.

• The timer method guarantees that you will get your chance to talk – so don’t get nervous.  Pay attention.
• This is an opportunity to really listen to what your partner is saying.  Can you suspend judgment and just listen? If so, you might just hear something you have never heard before.
• Real listening takes place when you are not thinking of what you are going to say next.

4. Be concerned about “feeling right” rather than “being right”.

• After all, isn’t the idea of all communication to have a connection?
• What is the point of being “right” and feeling completely disconnected from your partner?
• Keep asking yourself, “How do I feel?” If you feel hard and defensive, you are actually pushing the other person away.

5. All feelings are valid even if you disagree with them.

• What is wrong with someone having a different feeling than you have? We are all different.
•  As long as a person’s feeling does not result in action that is harmful to another, different feelings are what make us interesting.
• Take a deep breath, and surrender to the moment, and listen and talk only when it is your turn.

Dreading Family Gatherings?

Do you dread family gatherings? If you have a meddling mother-in-law that is constantly critical or a father-in-law that drinks too much and is bigoted, you are most probably anxious at family functions. Learn the best way to deal with these problems before, during and after dinner.

1. Potential problems need to be addressed and discussed BEFORE everyone shows up.
   • If you are dreading a family gathering it is because you are feeling things that need to be addressed and you are avoiding them.
   • Focusing on negative feelings actually brings those things to you. What we focus on grows!
   • BEFORE anyone shows up, you need to be clear and not confused.

2. Partners need to support one another and be very clear about priorities.
   • This is very important. Unless partners are aligned, the rule of the day is “divide and conquer.”
   • A boundary set by two is always more powerful than one set by one.
   • In order to avoid conflict, the two of you need to to be in sync.

3. Abusive behavior is never acceptable, regardless of the situation. Immediately set boundaries.
   • Never excuse abusive behavior.
   • Any behavior that diminishes another person, whether that is verbal or emotional, needs to be stopped immediately.
   • Do not say things to excuse abusive behavior like, “Oh, it’s just my father, he doesn’t really mean it”. He does really mean it or else he wouldn’t have said it or at the least, he would have apologized.

4. You have as much right to state your opinion, as does anyone else. Speak up.
   • So often we say nothing because we do not want to cause a scene. But there is a way to speak in a very decisive, non-confrontational way that lets another person know what they have just said is unacceptable.
   • Not saying anything – when you know another person is being abusive – means you are being abused as well.
   • Abusive or inappropriate behavior makes us want to back away, clam up, retreat.

5. Just because you allowed something to happen once, does not mean it has to happen again.
   • Every moment is an opportunity to do it right.
   • Just because you allowed this behavior once before does not mean you need to allow it again.
   • Over time, hopefully, we learn how to better take care of ourselves. Stopping abusive controlling behavior is a sign we are learning to love ourselves.

How Not to Make the Same Mistake Twice

We all make mistakes; that is the process of living of life. But how many times do you need to make the same mistake? Time is moving along, so it is best to figure out how not to make the same mistake twice.

 

1. We all learn by making mistakes – this is the process of discovery.

• It’s impossible to live a life and not make mistakes.
• We learn more from our mistakes than we do from our failures. This is how we learn about ourselves.
• Sometimes we enter through the back door; we learn what NOT to do.

2. You do not have to experience everything on the physical plane in order to “get it”.

• Life is created from the inside out. That means that before something manifests on the physical plane, it is already created on the inside.
• By the time it surfaces on the physical plane, it has speed and critical mass; in other words, a lot of energy is behind it.
• So…if you feel uneasy and know things are happening that do not feel good to you, you can stop the forward momentum before the mistake manifests on the physical plane. 

3. Do not rationalize or gather consensus for your mistakes – admit error and move on.

• Often, when we have made a mistake, we have trouble admitting it, and our ego takes over.
• We immediately gather consensus for our point of view and try to make ourselves right. This only prolongs the process and increases our anxiety.
• Admitting when you have made a mistake is the smartest thing you can do. The minute you acknowledge your error, the energy begins to shift.

4. Only you really know if the same patterns keeping repeating themselves.

• Be brutally honest with yourself. Is this just another variation of the “same” mistake?
• In dysfunctional relationships, we often “pick” the same person with a different name.
• Trust your instincts.

5. We learn what works by knowing what doesn’t work.

• A road map tells you where to go and a boat map tells you where not to go.
• When you know where “not to go”, you avoid making the same mistake twice.
• There is nothing wrong with making mistakes if we learn from them.

Understanding Children - What We Need To Learn About Ourselves

Do you feel your child is out of control? If so, it is important to understand how out of control children are often the result of parents without boundaries.

1. Out of control behavior occurs because we allow it.

• We teach children how to behave by the way we behave. If you lose your temper and become frustrated, that is the behavior you are teaching your child.
• Children intuitively know whether you mean what you say.
• Unless you are willing to be inconvenienced when disciplining your child, you will never be able to go the distance in getting the job done. 

2. It’s a child’s basic nature to test limits.

• It is a child’s basic nature to say yes and go, when we say no and stop.
• This is what children do. This response is not so much testing you as it is testing for them.
• How far can they go and stretch before someone says stop and means it? They are waiting for someone to say stop.

3. Children need boundaries to feel safe and understand the world.

• You need to win.  That means you are willing to do whatever it takes to make them feel safe.
• Boundaries create safety; they give children parameters for moving about in this crazy world.
• Out of control children are yearning for boundaries, stopping posts along the way that give direction and grounding.

4. Regardless of age, children are smart and instinctively understand family dynamics. Ex. How to pit mother against father.

• The most important aspect of parenting is for one parent to be in sync with the other.
• Children automatically recognize the weak link and if they feel they can get their way by pitting one parent against another that is what they will do.
• This is normal and natural and what all healthy children do.

4. Nothing controls behavior better than discipline and love. (You may not like or tolerate your child’s behavior, but you can still love him.)

• If you are out of control, your child will be out of control.
• It is important to distinguish between behavior and essence.
• You can not like your child’s behavior but still love your child – and you need to make sure your child understands that.

New Relationship - Same Issues???

Starting a new relationship and afraid of making the same mistakes again? If you don’t learn from past experience – what’s the point? As all of us know, there is no end to the number of times we can keep making the same mistakes. Learn how to stop what doesn't work!!

1. Accept responsibility for EVERY relationship you have ever been in.
   • None of this 50/50 BS. Take 100 percent responsibility and you will take back 100% of your power.
   • I had a moment of enlightenment many years ago when I was getting out of a major relationship. My friends agreed with me that he was so shallow and I was so deep (ah…to have good friends); a real mismatch. But my realization.. was that for the time we were together we were a perfect match. My stuff overlapped his stuff and that as much as I complained about his ability to be intimate, if I could have really done it, (be intimate), I certainly wouldn’t have stayed with someone who couldn’t as long as I did.
   • YOU are the one constant in every relationship you are in.
2. Do not have “overlap relationships”. You need time to process feelings and information.
   • The absolute worse thing you can do when getting out of a relationship, is to quickly get in another.
   • You need time to process; to figure out what went wrong, what was good, what was bad. If you don’t spend this time you will never be able to learn from your mistakes.
   • You also need time to grieve. Even if you are glad to be out, don’t forget, you had hopes and dreams and none of them are going to happen. There’s a certain sadness when dreams don’t come to fruition.
3. Do not rationalize. If it doesn’t feel good, it probably isn’t.
   • Do you pay attention to the red flags or do you just ignore them because you have an agenda (to be in a new relationship) and don’t want to be thrown off course?
   • Remember - What is in darkness is going to come to light eventually.
   • Be brave. Deal with your feelings even though feeling them might scare you. It’s all coming out. It’s just whether it comes sooner or later.
4. Spend time alone. Unless you can be alone, you will never have healthy relationships.
   • Spending time alone, being able to enjoy your own company is the key to all good relationships.
   • Do you like your own company? Are you afraid to be alone?
   • If the answer is yes – that is exactly what you need to do.

Stressed, Stressed, Stressed

Are you constantly stressed out and don’t know what to do? We’re told that we need to manage stress. But is managing stress the best we can do? How about getting rid of stress rather than managing it?

1. “Managing” stress is avoiding the problem.

• Deal with the problem. We are usually stressed out because we are not dealing with what is.
• We rationalize unpleasant and unhealthy situations because confronting them produces anxiety. What we don’t realize is that not dealing with them produces anxiety in the form stress. 
• What stresses us out is what we fear. 

2. Confront issues by accepting responsibility. Don’t blame others.

• Whenever you feel stressed, look to yourself to relieve the stressors.
• Your attitude in regards to accepting responsibility for the life YOU have created is what eliminates stress.
• I would much rather deal with a specific problem, feel the fear and anxiety, and know that it is not going to last forever. Stress is something we constantly carry with us when we do not deal with our issues.

3. Do not rely on time to make things better…. it can also get worse.

• Remember, time does nothing but pass.
• Things that are good may get better, but things that are bad get worse over time.
• It is what you do with time that makes the difference.

4. Change your attitude even if you cannot change the situation.

• It is not what happens to you in a life but what you do with what happens to you.
• Your ability to face a problem head-on and not make excuses is crucial in the elimination of stress.
• The minute you take your power back and accept responsibility, the stress is relieved.

5. Do things differently if you do not like the results you are getting.

• We all know what Einstein said: “Doing the same thing again and again and expecting to get a different result is insanity.
• If you wait until you feel like doing it differently, it will not happen.
• This is where you need to use your intellect. The old way is not working – do it a new way and see what happens.

Without Change, We Stop Growing

How many times have you said or heard, “I will never change.  I like myself exactly as I am." The willingness to change is essential to love and happiness and without it, we stop growing.

1.  Change is always about you, not the other person. When you do it for someone else it never works.

• So often we “change” to please another person not understanding that the change will be short-lived at best.
• The only time change works is if it is really what we want to do.
• It has to come from very deep inside and there needs to be a firm resolve. That resolve is what keeps you going during the hard times and doesn’t allow you to give up.

2.  Unless you are willing to change what doesn’t work you will keep getting the same results. All behavior has critical mass and momentum.

• Remember, time does nothing but pass.
• Things that are bad get worse over time, so anyone who says, “Let some time pass and things will get better”, didn’t know what they were talking about.
• The longer you behave in a particular way, the more energy is behind that way of being. Dysfunction stuff becomes automatic as time goes on.

3.  Change needs to resonate as true for you.

• You know you need to change regardless of what anyone else says. 
• Ask yourself the question: If I was all alone on this universe would my behavior be attractive to ME? Be honest. Are you attractive to your Self?
• If the answer is “No”, then you need to change.

4.  Change is an opportunity to grow and stretch and makes you feel good about yourself.

• If you don’t change and grow, what are you doing on this planet?
• If you think it is to keep making more and money, you are mistaken.
• Remember, an authentic life is different than a successful one.

5.  You can decide whether you want to be around someone who refuses to make changes.

I had a client tell me that her husband said he would never change and that he liked himself just the way he was (with bad behavior and all). I told her that just like he had the right to decide so did she, and that she could decide whether or not she wanted to be around someone who didn’t want to change.

What Is Anger Anyway?

Is anger ruining your life and your relationship? The truth about uncontrollable anger is that it is really a cover-up for deeper feelings.

1.  Anger is not a “real” emotion. It is what results when we refuse to feel what we are really feeling.

• Anger is a reaction, it is what happens when we don’t deal with the real feeling, whatever those might be.
•  It is a defense against feeling.
• The moment you FEEL, the anger stops.

2.  Anger is sadness flipped upside down. It is always about a loss, an unfulfilled expectation.

• If I ask someone who is angry, "What are you really feeling?' - the person usually starts to cry.
• Feeling the sadness makes us feel soft and eliminates the hardness of being angry.
• The minute you feel, you stop being angry.

3.  Anger wrecks havoc on your body and weakens your immune system.

• Anger and stress break down the immune system.
• We come apart from the inside out; the body being the last place we display the dysfunction.
• So many diseases of the body are really diseases of the heart.

4.  Anger destroys self-esteem, self-respect and relationships.

• Being angry all the time makes you feel bad about yourself.
• Anger is by definition “holding on”; you are stuck.
• Being stuck makes you immobilized, unable to get out of your own way so that you can move on.

5.  Only through feeling – what we are afraid to feel - can we move through anger.

• Unless you are willing to feel, to be real, you can never move through anger
• This means having to face your fears and being brutally honest with yourself.
• You need to stop projecting your stuff on to others and step up and take responsibility for your feelings.

Are You Hiding A Secret?

Are you keeping a secret about yourself that’s killing you on the inside? If you are, understand why these secrets are poison and keep you from loving relationships. The Truth about Secrets:

1. Secrets foster shame and guilt.

• We keep secrets because we are uncomfortable with the feelings we will have to feel if we deal with our “secrets”.
• There is no way to heal, unless you are willing to feel and secrets provide us with that opportunity.
• When we work at keeping our secrets hidden, we end up feeling shameful.
• Dr. James Pennebaker says: By not talking about upsetting experiences, people don’t tie things together. They’ll think about this part of it, or that part of it, or another part of it, but it’s hard for them to see how the trauma may be affecting them in a broader sense. And by keeping big secrets or withholding trauma, they are not connecting with their friends because they are withholding a significant part of who they are from them. (Click here for more info)

2. Secrets become monsters when they are kept hidden.

• Secrets may start out small but the more they are kept hidden, the bigger they get.
• If I say to you, “Don’t think of a monkey”, what do you think of? That is what happens with secrets.
• When we hide the truth of whom we really are, our sense of self becomes mutated, i.e., confused and hidden behind a false persona.

3. Secrets isolate us from one another.

• There is nothing worse than a “secret” to keep us separated from those we love.
• A “secret” is the big elephant sitting in the room, the elephant no one talks about but everyone can feel.
• It creates a space that is palpable, that everyone can feel, but no one discusses.

4. Secrets isolate us from ourselves.

• This is the big one. Secrets keep us disconnected from ourselves.
• If you have not dealt with these unexpressed and shameful feelings, there is a part of yourself that you have not accepted.
• In the process of disowning that part of yourself, you cut yourself up into “acceptable” pieces (for yourself), that only serve to splinter you more.

5. Secrets create lies and more secrets.

• Only by being brave enough to deal with this stuff can we move on and have real relationships.
• Lies create more and more lies and secrets keep us more and more isolated from connecting in a real and open way.
• Secrets are the opposite of openness.

When Confused, Do Nothing!

Rushing a decision is never in our best interests but often we fear the unknown and choose a course before the time is right. Do you know that - When you are confused, it is always best to do nothing?

1. Confusion is an incongruity between what you are thinking and what you are feeling. This is what happens when you are confused.

• This incongruity always feels bad and you need to listen to how you are feeling.
• When the heart is telling you one thing and the mind is going in another direction, you will always feel split down the middle.
• Do nothing when you are in this state.

2. Confusion points the way to a new beginning – It will not allow us to take the familiar path. This is good.

• Don’t get scared when you are confused. Perhaps a new direction is on the forefront, one that will be better suited to you.
• Important here is to honor the intellect but more importantly is to honor the heart. Ask yourself, “What am I really feeling?”
• Unless you can deal honestly with what you have at this moment, you can never move to a new place.

3. Sit on the floor and ask yourself. "What am I feeling?"  

• It gets you out of your head and back in your body where you can feel.
• Sometimes the energy is so much up in the head, you can no longer feel. Sitting on the floor gets the energy back in your body where it belongs.
• Only by feeling can you get out of confusion.

4. Do not make a decision until everything in you says, “Go!”

• Doing something is NOT better than doing nothing.
• Stop wasting valuable time back-tracking which is what you will have to do if you move forward before you are ready and prepared.   
• Feel good, solid and clear before moving forward. Move when EVERYTHING in you says go and not a moment before. This way you are guaranteed success.