So after having a child and moving my practice to a different location, I decided that it was necessary to re-evaluate the WATER Method. After all, its important to do a little introspection every now and then. After some thought I realized that something wasn’t quite right.

If you’re not familiar with the WATER Method, go ahead and check out my explanation of it on my main page. Basically WATER stands for Words, Actions, Thoughts, Emotions and Results – the Five things you can change about yourself and the world around you. But then it dawned on me that a fundamental idea was missing in all this.

The idea was the Rules, or core values, that we have that shape many of the Words, Actions, Thoughts and Emotions we have about issues in our lives. Ever have a negative thought or idea about yourself, or call yourself names, like “stupid” or “fat”? Sometimes these are based in negative rules we have about ourselves and the world around us, and sometimes those Rules have to change.

Granted, I’m usually not one to go around suggesting that we change many of our Core Values or Rules. Most of the time those Rules are a good thing, but every now and then they’re not. In future posts, I’m going to go into this concept a bit more, so we can get a sense of what we can expect from changing the Rules we have set up that may be hurting us.

Image by Martin Stranka

One of the things I’ve found in working with couples over the last 9 years, is that many of them come into session, and the session goes a little something like this:

Jack and Jill are fighting more frequently. Jack blames Jill for being too demanding, and they have stopped having intimate moments. Jill blames Jack for not helping out enough with the house and the children, and Jack is angry all the time.  The arguing in the office starts to escalate in just a matter of minutes. He said, She said. Back and forth.

Like Jack and Jill, many couples start to point fingers at their partner out of daily frustration and years of unresolved baggage between them. However, there’s one thing they’re forgetting: the only spouse you can change, is yourself. By stepping back from the confrontations, you can ask yourself, “How am I contributing to this problem? Where am I going wrong here?”

See, its real easy to point the finger, isn’t it? But when you look into your own issues, it gets a little more complicated. In fact, there are times when I run into couples who hear what their significant other says, and rather than address the issue, they hide behind a completely different issue! So shots are fired across the bow, and even though each partner hears the other, no one is really listening.

So the Result is that rather than digging into an issue and resolving it, we skirt away from it, and run even further away from where we are going wrong in the relationship. So much so, that perhaps we can’t even see it. Sound familiar? Hopefully not, but if it does, there’s hope for you yet!

So how do we fix it? Well, first we start with humility. Get over yourself (and I mean that in as sweetly and as lovingly as possible). You’re not perfect, and neither is your spouse. I understand that it would make you very happy to fix your significant other, but you have to recognize that you can’t control that person. They have to choose to change, and when/if they do, it means that much more. You can, however, control you, which is the next step.

Step 2 is taking a look at yourself, and realize what you’re doing wrong. I know that doesn’t feel very good, but hey, you want to make your relationship better, right? Well, that means work, and when you think of the word “work,” are you really thinking fun? My guess is no. So it means you have to take a second, and recognize that maybe some of your emotions about what’s going on here, might have something to do with you and what you’re doing wrong. Find one thing…just one, and own the thing you did wrong.

Step 3 is apologize for that thing. And please, don’t tell me you’re waiting for your partner to apologize first, because really, that’s just an excuse to not do it yourself. When does someone else’s bad behavior justify your own? Someone’s got to be the bigger person here, and take the first step. Does it always have to be you? No, and it shouldn’t always be you, and by recognizing you can’t control your partner, you’re taking a step toward improvement by taking responsibility.

See, if you’re humble, its hard for someone to be mean to you, unless they really don’t love you or don’t want to work out the relationship (and these people do exist, sadly). Humility is, in my opinion, half of the key to happiness. The other is gratitude.

Finally, step 4 is devising a plan of action. Its one thing to apologize (and if you’ve been reading me for a bit, you know how I feel about I’m Sorry), its another to take it step further by making a plan of action. By taking that step, you show, not just tell your partner that you mean business.

This is what I recommend to the couples I work with, because for many of them, they have been dealing with finger pointing for years. It has to stop somewhere, and with someone, so I usually try to encourage both of them to do it at the same time. That way, both parties are admitting a wrong-doing without the other doing the finger pointing, and can plan toward making ammends from there.

So consider looking at things a little differently. Its really easy when you’re mad to point the finger and shake it a few times. But what if you looked inward and took an account of where you’re going wrong, and then made ammends for it? Would that change your relationship?

I’m all ears.

I was totally going to go with another topic as of late, but I realized that my last two topics have been increasingly synical and sarchastic. If I’m not careful, I’m going to end up like the guy Lewis Black portrays in those Aruba commercials. So in the interest of keeping positive, I’m going to touch on something a bit stronger, and it goes along with the recent theme of the conclusion of the recent Winter Olympic games.

If you’ve watched any of the games over the last two weeks (and gotten into it at all), you’ve seen victory and heartache all alike. Depending on who you were rooting for, you may have felt that same victory or heartache when your team or olympian succeeded or failed. In the moment, you’re not thinking about the opening ceremony. And why should you after all, that was a couple weeks ago, wasn’t it? And that was only a mere starting point for the actual games going on.

Ah, but if you recall the opening ceremony, you would know that there were hundreds of olympians, all vying for the same thing: Olympic Medals.

Yes, that’s right hundreds. Do you really think that every single person in there thought they were going to medal? Of course you didn’t, because you’re smart like that, and one step ahead of me as I presumed. Every one of those Oympians hoped they would win a medal, but many of them knew that a lot could go wrong, and with any competition, nothing is guaranteed.

I had the fortunate opportunity of watching most of the ice skating (like most other men, because my wife was watching it). Now normally this sort of thing bores me to tears, but as time went on I started to notice that completing these routines flawlessly was horribly difficult, and a few times people would fall on their butts trying to pull them off. If you know anything about figure skating, if you fall, you might as well just walk off the ice, because there is practically no way you’re going to get enough points to medal. You might, but its not likely. Yet, despite all this, those who fell kept skating, and continued their routine till completion.

Let’s take this a step further and about Joannie Rochette, the Canadian figure skater who’s mother passed away suddenly over the course of the games. Now I’ve worked with people who have lost loved ones, and if you’ve lost a loved one youreself, you know how difficult it can be, and how the mourning process seeps its way into every part of your life. Despite this, she found the strength and courage to press on toward the goal that she and her mother worked so hard for. She pressed on despite adversity, and got a bronze medal to show for it.

Then there are times when pressing forward doesn’t make much sense. My wife shared with me a story about how she worked for 200 hours on a self portrait for a college art class. The more she worked, the worse it got. After some thought and contemplation, she decided to start over. She finished the project in 2 hours, and got an “A”.

So what am I trying to say here? Well, some things are worth setting out to do, and some aren’t. My opinion is that if you can persevere, you should. If you don’t, that’s fine, its your life, but there is always going to be an easy way out. Maybe your approach is wrong, and all you need to do is tweak it a bit. My understanding is that no one accomplishes anything great without some level of sacrifice.

Its one thing to feel great, its another to do something great. This is actually going to be my topic for next week. In the meantime, your thoughts! Talk to me people.

Remember my laptop? The one that I thought was dead but was really alive? Turns out, its dead again. And that’s really sad, because I love the doggone thing. When it dies though, a couple things happen:

1. I have no internet at home

2. I can only use my BlackBerry Pearl to blog.

Neither of these optioons are very appealing, but given the circumstances, using the Pearl is what I needed to do, especially to prove a valid point.

I could just give up on the whole blogging thing. After all, its not like I haven’t jostled you around with my switching over from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. My SEO is prosbly in the toilet as a result as well. I suppose I could let the fact that I had the busiest week of my career last week (42 clients scheduled, 35 showed up), and another one coming up affect my desire to do this.

But if I can teach you anything about what I do, its to never give up, never surrender.

Why? Because giving up is for wimps. GIving up is for people who don’t want better for themselves and their family. If you give up, then all the work you put in getting to where you are at this point is for nothing.

So if you ever feel like giving up, come on over here and keep reading. Because there are times when I feel like doing just that. Then I snap out of it, and tell myself that I gain nothig by giving up, and that only by persevering do I gain anything of value.

Have you ever felt like giving up? What did you do to get through it? Talk to me people.

This monster was none other than the Natural Gas Forced Air Heater.

See once each winter, said heater grows donkey ears and becomes horribly stubborn, and refuses to heat the house.

Dateline: January 4th, 2010 – The heater does just that. So armed with a toothbrush, pliers, dish soap, a wrench and a bucket, I go into the belly of the beast to get the old burro to move.

See, if you know anything about heaters (and I don’t) you would know that some older forced air heaters have a glass gauge that tells you how much water is in the hot water tank. The gauge was dirty, so I figure, what the hey, and cleaned it out (i watched the guy do it last year) so i can see how much water is in there. Once I know, I’ll know whether to add or subtract water to get the house warm. After that, I had to empty the water tank of all the water, then turn one valve to add more water. Nothing worked. So I turn another valve to empty the water, because apparently I had too much (actually the PSI went above 30, and the water flew out of the tank due to too much pressure). So on I go, for 3 hours. Water in, water out. Put water in the bucket, dump it in the sink.

I felt like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and wished that I had an army of magic mops to help me clean up rust colored mess I’d made.

So I call the plumbing/heating folks and they tell me that the cost to come out and diagnose the problem is $175. I tell this to the Mrs., and I might as well have told her that I went to Vegas and gambled the money away.

Here we were, no heat, no money to turn it back on, and an appointment looming like a sunset shadow. I could have lost my cool and flipped out (OK, maybe I did loose my cool and flip out), but once I flipped back, I realized that we could stay upset about the situation or make some choices that could affect the situation.

Back to the WATER Method. What could I change? What couldn’t I change? I could call the plumbing guys and ask my wife to stay home and manage that situation. So we did that. I couldn’t change how much money we had now, but I could work harder to be more aware of what we’ve been paid from insurance and what we haven’t been paid by them.

See, even if difficulty comes your way, eventually you have to make choices about how you’re going to handle them. The sooner you resolve that, and take control of what you can change the better.

By the way, turns out I either have dumb luck or hidden repairman powers (or God heard my cry of frustration), because now the heat works, and it started working before the repairman even showed up (so we called them to cancel the order – something I can change to save money). Don’t know what I did or why, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out next year when the old burro comes out again.

http://www.spaldinggray.com/

As a result I want to apologize to him and Spalding’s family for misrepresenting the information about his life and death. He did a lot of great roles and I should have been much more careful in how I discussed his condition. As a result, I think I’m going to quit the whole movie therapist criticism for now, until I can make sure I know what the heck I’m talking about.

Therefore, I deleted the last post out of respect for Spalding and his family. Which brings me to a very important point.

Its OK to be wrong, so long as you realize it, take responsibility for it, and make changes in your life. If I sat there and got all bent out of shape, I would spill myself down a further spiral of nonsense. I’ve seen this happen to others, and I’ve seen this happen to me.

If you know you’re wrong, I suggest just admitting it, and making the changes you need to make sure that never happens again. That is how change takes place, by making a stand with yourself and a decision to ensure that your life goes in a different direction today than it did yesterday.

Anywho, short and bittersweet today. I’ll do another post tomorrow and this time I’ll stick to what I do best and leave the critiquing to the critics. Please forgive my supidity and carelessness and I hope I haven’t lost you as a result.

In all of this though, I recognized a very simple truth that needed to be passed on.

Change takes time.

You can make a decision to be someone different, do something different, or feel something different. But the fact still remains, that despite those changes, they have do be done over time.

No duh, Jim. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Too right. But think about that saying in and of itself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but somebody had to plan the building of Rome, so that a day wasn’t wasted in its construction. Without that plan, the workers could meander aimlessly with no plan, and what could have taken years might have taken generations to accomplish.

So where’s the happy medium? I mean, you’re not trying to build Rome, are you? Any change that you take on needs to have a couple of things: Time and Planning.

These must go hand in hand. If you have all the time in the world, and don’t plan, you could go on forever “trying” to change, and that’s exactly what you’d be doing…trying. You could have the best plan in the world, but without the time to implement it, its merely a good intention.

So in order to change, you need to take the time to enact that change AND have a plan for change so that when you take the time to do it, you’re not wasting that time.

So if there’s something you’re looking to change, give yourself a reasonable amount of time, and point yourself in the right direction. Then continue take the time and implement the plan so that you don’t experience frustration in the plan “not working.” It only works if you keep the plan going.

What do you think? Ever had a failed plan? I’m all ears.