Dear Ones,
Pleasure and Pain. Pain and Pleasure.
These are the two main motivators. People are motivated to move toward Pleasure and to avoid Pain.
Think about this in your relationships, in business and in life. Are you offering the other person pleasure in their interaction with you? Are you offering them respite from their pain? Or are you bringing something else to the relationship? Are you increasing their pain or diminishing or blocking their pleasure? Likewise, what are they bringing to you in the relationship?
Lab animals are studied in psychology laboratories because it is so easy to introduce pleasure and/or pain into their environments. But human beings are not lab animals. There are huge differences, the main one being that humans have more control over their environments than lab animals have.
So humans can choose to avoid pain or to seek pleasure. And these choices can be made consciously or unconsciously. One doesn’t have to think too hard or too long before removing one’s hand from a hot stove. But in other situations there can be nuances and rationalizations and multiple sources of conflicting information that make choosing a direction or a next step more difficult.
In some abusive relationships a person may not be willing to assess the situation in the present and may be influenced by past energies, experiences or even past lives. In some cases, especially in business relationships, abuse can take a very subtle form of discounting, ignoring, dismissing.
Every individual deserves to be treated as a valuable person with ideas to contribute, thoughts that are worth considering, feelings that are to be included, whether the relationship is business or personal. Every person deserves to be in relationships that do not bring pain to them.
We acknowledge that sometimes there is disappointment or discomfort in a relationship that is growing/evolving, but that relationship should not be the direct source of pain, such as mental, emotional or physical abuse.
And so individuals who would live a Conscious Life must be looking at what is motivating them to take the next step or to avoid taking a step. Is that step being taken to avoid some pain? Or is it being taken to move toward some pleasure? And if the answer is to avoid pain, then there must be some positive motivating force, some pleasure, to move toward after one has accomplished the avoidance of the pain.
Ask yourself which is your biggest motivator and then use that information to set up ‘motivating milestones’ for yourself. Have you gotten stuck somewhere in your life? Are you wishing you could move forward but, for some reason, are not able to? Are you confused about which direction to take and the confusion is paralyzing you?
Your usual motivators may not be strong enough to get you moving from where you currently are. Get help identifying what energy is holding you back. Clear up the blocks. Gain clarity about the direction you really wish to pursue.
And THEN get motivated and get going!
And so it is.


MUSE-INGS: Clean the Lens or Change the Prescription!
August 24, 2011 — RosemaryRelationships. Always a challenge. Always an opportunity. Always a potential source of joy.
Sometimes we think immediately of an intimate or love relationship when we hear the word, but we are in relationships with others whether they be long term, intimate or just the person who is the cashier at the grocery store. Do you think of relationships in this way?
When a grocery cashier seems to be having a bad day or appears grumpy, what is your reaction? Do you get grumpy in response or do you get understanding and sympathetic? When your child is angry and upset and possibly screaming at you, do you react in kind or do you try to look at things from their perspective? When your partner has upset you, are you in reactive mode or thoughtful mode to see what you are really feeling and which lens you are looking through?
I was working with a client recently and received this guidance for her: Give yourself permission to have the reaction but choose the best response. You don’t have to follow through with the reaction. You have options to respond a different way. It can be easy to keep going with the initial knee-jerk reaction but when you are living a Conscious Life you hit the pause button, notice the reaction but choose the appropriate response.
For example, those of us who are helpers tend to jump to help another when we perceive the need. But is this the best response? Are we looking through our own lens and not allowing them to have theirs? Our reaction might be to jump in and help but perhaps the best response is to support them in finding their own solution.
Or someone might be angry and our immediate reaction is to feel that they are angry at us. They might not even be noticing us at the time but we react to their anger without pausing to see if that is the best response for us to choose at the time. Maybe our Dad hit us when he was angry and the little child in us is afraid that will happen again whenever we are around anger. Or we had a lover once who shouted angrily just before they stormed out of the door, never to be seen again, and we are reacting with our fear of being abandoned again.
There is always so much more going on in any relationship than meets the eye at the surface of things. Allow yourself the freedom to take time to notice where you are in your own feelings as you relate to others. Are YOU having a bad day and the grocery cashier being slow allows you to vent your feelings on them? Is your partner really upsetting you or are you already upset about something and they are merely triggering your reaction?
Be conscious of your feelings. If you need to, then practice going inside to assess what is true for you in this present moment. Your lens has been created by all of your life experiences and it exists at an unconscious level within you. It’s not something that you can access through analysis or your mind. You must learn to feel your feelings and to express them appropriately. But this can only happen if you take time to do the inner work, uncover what exists at the unconscious level and bring it into your awareness.
The most important relationship you have is the one with yourself. Are you looking at yourself through a harsh, judgmental lens, created from your past experiences? Or is your lens foggy with misconceptions or blurry images that you haven’t taken the time to examine and clear up? Maybe the place to start is to work on this internal relationship first. Then you can change the prescription on your lens and see all your other relationships in a new light!
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