Jim Harmon

Death and life are in the power of the tongue. When I was a young man, I was friends with another boy who was very bright. His parents lavished praise on him. His teachers placed him in gifted classes. The success came quite easily to him. What a shame that people spoke all those words of death upon him. Yes, it is a peculiar take on it but I am very serious. The reason I believe this to be true is we can be one of two types of people. Either we are growth minded or we are fixed minded. I’ll explain this simply with the metaphor of the strength of muscles. Suppose there is a naturally large man named Lee who appears to be very strong. His parents, teachers and friends speak fondly of his strength. Lee is comfortable with this persona and embraces the strong man nick names given to him. Lee looks strong man, talks strong man and acts strong man. What do you suppose Lee will do if he is in a gym with people watching and he is asked to hoist a two-hundred and fifty-pound bar of weights on the floor over his head? What does Lee risk by trying to pick it up? If you are growth-minded you might think there is nothing at risk. For the fixed mindset person, the risk is great because their identity is at risk. To fail at picking it up would prove that Lee is not really strong. Remember that strength is just the metaphor in this story. For another person you can replace strength with being smart or whatever identity they embrace. For this fictional person Lee, the identity is strength but for other real people in our lives the true thing a fixed minded-person could identify as is usually much more personal and scarier to have revealed as false. The growth minded person would look at the same bar and perhaps shake their head acknowledging that there is no way they can pick that up now. They would also say that they need six months of hard work starting with lighter weights and this two-hundred fifty-pound bar will be no problem.

It does harm to praise and reward people for things they have not worked hard for.

A teacher and my Father planted an early seed of growth mindedness into my life.

At the end of second grade my father sat me down for a serious talk. It had to do with the issue of getting promoted to third grade. Apparently, I was being promoted “by the skin of my teeth”. My guess is the reality had something to do with the improved quality of the second-grade teacher’s life if I were not in her classroom for another year. My father reported to me that the teacher believed I was smart enough to do the work but I just had to work harder. This message changed my life. I heard the message, I am smart but smart isn’t enough, I have to work hard. The book of Proverbs tells me that “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.” As difficult as it is to understand who I am and why, I do know there is one more detail to the story. Not long after this I prayed a prayer that changed my life. I asked God to help me remember things and to be able to figure things out. I seemed to have realized that I need to work hard and the work is beyond me so I need God to enable me to do the work. As a third grader this whole thing was just a seed but the seed grew roots. I believe that a big part of the seed of this concept becoming a full-grown growth mindset is that people didn’t feed me lies. Nobody in my life was telling me that I was anything that I wasn’t. It seems that the current manner of things is to make everyone feel special. Thankfully I wasn’t fed that poison. I knew I wasn’t special yet. Yet is the key word of the growth mindset.

I do not intend to give the idea that everyone is equal and we can all achieve the same things if we just work at it hard enough. IQ is real. Some people are smarter than others. I have shaken hands with a professional football player. That man’s hand engulfed mine. Genetic advantage is real. The growth mindset gives you the advantage of being the best version of you if you are willing to do what it takes to achieve and maintain that best possible version of you.

I chatted with a friend this morning and he asked about a recent hiking trip I took. It was a hike up and down many mountains over five days in the wilderness. I gave him the honest truth. I do not like climbing mountains. I don’t care how beautiful they are. I do not like climbing them and I find them more beautiful from the bottom than I do looking at the valleys from the top. But, yes there is a but, I am afraid of going on a hike of this nature without thoroughly preparing for it and it is rare in life to do something I am truly afraid of, so I sign up for the hike- not to climb the mountain – but instead to train for something that I am afraid of enough to make me train harder than I would if I wasn’t afraid. The purpose is not the destination. The purpose is the journey. The hard work was done in the journey. I am proud of the journey. It was on the journey of months before the trip that I would walk 20 miles every other day and 10 miles on the days in between. On the 20-mile days I would also climb 120 floors of a building consecutively until I could do it without my heart rate going over 120bpm. I also lost 25 pounds. I prepared because I knew not preparing would result in failure. I have stood at the bottom of mountains wondering if it was possible to get to the top without a path and then climbed them. At one time it was not yet possible for me to climb the mountain. The key word is yet. The growth mindset allows you to enjoy and celebrate the journey instead of that momentary fleeting joy of reaching the destination. I had an associate once tell me that the dream is better than the reality. Another friend told me that the chase is better than the catch. It is the dreaming and the chasing that are the hard work. We are made to enjoy the journey. Focus the words of praise that you give to others on the hard work of the journey rather than on the identity of having already achieved the prize. The man who told me the dream is better than the reality was referring to owning a Ferrari. Ferraris are awful nice and I would like to know just how nice, but the truth is that the prize, even when it is a Ferrari, tends to pale in comparison to the journey of striving.

Let me compare the two mindsets so you can choose which one is for you. 

Fixed mindset people believe that you are as smart or talented as you are and there is no changing it. It winds up being for them that you are either smart or not, talented or not, popular or not, competent or not. Having it makes them better than those who do not have it. Not having it makes them worth less than those who do. This is how their identity is wrapped up in the whole thing. There are fixed minded people who think they are smart as well as those who think they are stupid. Perhaps you have heard people say things like I am not good at math or drawing or speaking in public. Although these statements could be true, the implied meaning is that they can’t be good at these things which is not true for the average person. The fixed mindset for a person who believes they cannot do something doesn’t allow anything but the inability to be true. Whether the mindset is fixed on having or not having a skill doesn’t matter. The end result is that the person is stuck with being fearful about either being seen as the failure that everyone is sure they are or being found out as the fraud that only they know they are. The way this looks is either the fixed minded person believes that everything should be easy or that things that aren’t easy are impossible. This results in them avoiding challenges. When they find that something is difficult, they give up easily. Putting too much effort into something is a waste of time because either they can do it or they can’t. Feedback and correction are ignored or seen as a personal attack. Even being around others who are successful can be threatening to them. The fixed mindset keeps a person from achieving their full potential.

The growth mindset person believes that intelligence and skills can be developed. This results in them embracing challenges and having the grit that it takes to persist when things get tough because it is through effort that mastery is achieved. When a growth minded person receives correction, they are more likely to receive it as a gift instead of a personal attack. When a growth minded person encounters someone who is better than them, they get inspired and look to learn. Having the growth mindset gives a person a greater sense of autonomy and freedom.

If you would like to develop a greater growth mindset what do you do?

I tell the story of the seeds of my growth mindset because I want to emphasize that the things which develop our mindsets can be subtle and buried deep in our past.

The path to change is to begin through having faith that you can grow. The next step is to set a goal to either achieve something or develop a habit. The goal must be very specific and you must decide what will be done, how it will be done and when it will be done by. Make the goals small enough to be achieved quickly as in within a day or week. When that goal is achieved build upon it with another quickly achieved goal. If any of the goals fail do not shrink back. Change tactics or research or get help right away and set another goal that you can quickly achieve. Eventually you will be able to set and achieve larger goals which take longer to realize. You can do it. You can become reasonably competent in just about anything. I am not saying that everyone can be a rocket scientist, have their own art exhibit, be a world class athlete or have their own HBO special as a standup comedian. Reasonably competent is within your reach whether you believe it or not, I will dare to say it, in anything. Yes anything. What are your dreams. Do them by putting in the effort.

Here are the takeaways I hope you have-

• You can achieve anything with God and grit.
• Enjoy the process, not the destination.

That’s all for now.

Peace and love fellow traveler,

Jim

There is a life principle that I have found to be true and helpful. It is probably not one you have heard before. 

All crises are opportunities.

I learned this lesson the hard way. 

Just to avoid confusion- crises is the plural version of the word crisis. 

I’m going to tell you a story from my life in hopes to teach you this principle and show you how to apply it in your life.

I wanted to get out of the daily grind of the real estate rental business. Real estate investing had been a very good method to build wealth but it can be a trap requiring around the clock, 365 days a year availability. I remember one five-degree Christmas Eve night spent at a building with no heat. I was there until the boiler was fixed early Christmas morning. There had to be another way. After fifteen years of actively managing my rental business I found a way out. There are large properties which are marketed to real estate investors as a way to continue to own real estate, not have a large capital gains event, and make just as much money while doing none of the work. Me and twenty-nine others invested large amounts of cash to purchase a gorgeous gated property with a swimming pool, fitness center, club house, and fully staffed with management and maintenance persons. For me and my new co-owners this was the way out we had dreamed of. The man, who I will call Lester, we purchased it from would then rent the entire property from us with the promise that we would make 7% annually in cash payments direct deposited into our accounts along with receiving appreciation for a total conservatively projected return on investment of 13% per year. Here is how is was to work. Lester would rent the entire property from us and then rent the apartments out to tenants. He would pay all of the bills including rent to us owners and then keep what was left over. Lester played many roles. He purchased the property, obtained financing, marketed it to investors, created a management company, rented the property out to tenants, signed a master lease with us the investors, and he retained 10% of the property as his own. Everything played out as planned until September of 2009. In 2009 a couple of crises developed. The first crisis was economic. Vacancy went up a bit, rent rates stagnated and expenses were higher than projected. The second crisis was that many of the buildings developed a costly structural defect. I became aware of these crises on a conference call where Lester said he was no longer going to pay rent because there just wasn’t enough money and he told us of the structural defect. His contract with us obligated him to take care of the structural issue but he informed us that resolving it would take too much of his staff’s time which would cost a lot so he wasn’t going to pursue correcting the issue. The owners responded with questions and statements about how and when the situations could be fixed so that rent could resume being paid and the structural defect repaired in a simple manner.

This is the setup to the story so let me summarize it with a little bit of hindsight inserted.

1. Life was going along blissfully
2. Crises occurred
3. There were two responses to the crises
   1. The owners’ response was to desire life to get back to normal as quickly as possible.
   1. Lester’s response was to shirk his contractual obligations.

Doesn’t this sound so familiar in some area of your life? Something bad happens and you rely on someone else to act responsibly to make the bad thing go away. This somebody could be the government including all of the parts of your local city services, your doctor, your employer, your employees, your insurance company, your car mechanic, your home repair man, your church, your spouse, or your parents. Sometimes the people we rely on do not fix the problem. Perhaps it is due to incompetence or a conflict of interest and sometimes it because the people we rely upon turn out to be very selfish. Perhaps even very selfish with no moral compass.

The owners didn’t know it but they were dealing with a very charismatic man who was also selfish and had no moral compass. He had a history of using crises to make a lot of money. We also didn’t know that it was likely that we would lose every bit of money invested in this property. 

Who were these owners? Most of them were retired people who had owned rental property in California and made a lot of money when they sold their properties in a hot real estate market. This money was going to allow them to retire in comfort. They had fought many battles in life and they were ready to be done fighting. They also didn’t know anything about each other except for the names of their co-owners.

When the conference call ended informing me of problems at the property, I realized that Lester would provide a solution that was in his best interest and the owners would have to accept it because we had no other choice. There is another life principle which is not the topic today but I will mention it. Stress is caused by lack of options. I did not know what my other options were but I was very concerned about the one option of accepting whatever Lester was going to do to us. I embarked on a research project and thanks to there being very little privacy on the internet, I found the addresses of almost all the owners. I sent them a letter stating our issues and requesting that we join together in search of a solution. The other owners responded and we realized that we had no idea what to do. We agreed to hire a law firm to research the issue and present our options to us. This report, yes just the report, cost us twenty-five thousand dollars. It told us that we had to be very careful because if we did anything that the lender could deem as a threat to the stability of the management or financial health of the property the lender could immediately foreclose and take the property from us. We were also made aware that in the foreclosure process Lester could buy the entire property from the lender for the amount of the debt and we would lose everything. We also found out that if there were any losses to the lender or to Lester, the general partner of the investment, we could all be held personally liable. We found that there was another property which was extensively damaged and Lester collected money from the owners of that property to repair the damage and then kept all of the insurance money for himself. What we found is that we were facing a mine field set for us by Lester’s very smart attorney and the lender who represented a group of bond holders not interested in taking any risks and willing to take a nice property if the opportunity arose.

There did turn out to be one option. It would cost us hundreds of thousands in legal fees and thousands of hours of our personal lives but it was the only viable option we had. The end of a very long story is that it worked. We got Lester into a strangle hold which he badly wanted out of. I traveled to sit down with him and we negotiated a resolution. We paid him to give us his ten-percent ownership and to walk away from and give us control of every entity that connected us to him. As you all know the real estate market of 2009 turned around and got very hot in some areas of the country. This was one of those places and the owners sold the property for a tremendous return on their investment.

What we have here is a story of a crisis. There was opportunity in the crises. Unfortunately, it was the bad guy who jumped in first to use the crisis for his benefit. Fortunately I was able to turn the crisis that Lester created upside down and use it as an opportunity for all of the other owners to retain their retirement nest egg, their peace of mind, and their trust that there are still people in this world who do what they say they will do. It costs me thousands of hours of time which were taken from my family. Justice is a core value of mine and I believe it was worth the cost to be able to see good prevail.

How can you use this?

1. When there is a crisis, opportunities are available. This could be relationship, financial, career, or personal growth opportunities. Just a couple of quick examples. When there is a crisis, people have needs. People need other people to comfort and protect them, people need things, people need people to solve the crisis. There is lots of opportunity if you can be the person to provide what others need.
2. You must think differently about the crisis than almost everyone else. We are at an informational disadvantage. There are bad operators who are experienced in taking advantage of crises. There are organizations with agendas opposed to your wellbeing which jump on crisis opportunities and turn things to their advantage. The media makes money by sharing stories that get our attention. The media thrives on crisis. People become divided in crises and political groups thrive on dividing people. The question to ask yourself in a crisis is- what if this isn’t true. Those who take advantage of us do so by presenting their version of the story and then giving us their solution to that story. What if the story is false? If you do nothing other than refusing to identify and act as a victim, you are taking a huge first step in thinking differently.
3. You must prepare in advance. Make sure you have margin in every area of life so that you have resources which enable you to choose an alternative. You need to have time available, you need extra money, you need food, you need to be in good health so that you have extra energy, you need skills. You cannot take advantage of opportunity if you have nothing to give. The opportunity is that people need things. You need to have things to give.

Read this as many times as necessary-

Crisis is a catalyst for change. Change is an opportunity for growth. Growth is what we are expected to do with all that we are stewards over. All that we are stewards of has been entrusted to us for the purpose of loving God and His creation. Love destroys fear. Fear causes us to not take advantage of opportunities. If we love we will not be afraid in times of crisis.

That’s all for now.

Peace and love fellow traveler,

Jim

I’ve noticed that I have a lot of expectations.

Perhaps you can relate to these statements of expectations-

• People should just do their jobs and do them competently.
• If I don’t remind them to do it, the task will never get done.
• If they only cared about me, they would stop doing ….
• They must be doing this on purpose to annoy me. 
• Why do you always have to drive like a maniac?
• Why can’t they be on time.
• Why aren’t they on board with what is happening here. They are so uncommitted.

I guess that you have realized that reality teaches us that you can’t fix or change people, so what can be done about this tension?

I am going to say something that may be as hard for you to hear as it is for me to write. Stop having expectations. Why should we stop having expectations?

• Expectations can create resentment and disappointment.
• Eliminating expectations causes you to feel better about yourself and others.
• Expectations allow you to put the blame on other people which is poor leadership
• Having expectations limits your ability to be delighted with other people.

It seems impossible to not have expectations. If we are not going to have expectations then what do we have instead?

Replace expectations with strong agreements.

What is an agreement? An agreement is a co-created pact.

A co-created pact is the result of all people involved taking responsibility for the outcome and determining who will be responsible for the what, what-ifs, when, and how of the issue.

Agreements create better relationships. They also apply to every relationship you have whether it be employee, employer, contractor, vendor, customer, volunteer, family member, friend or co-worker.

Let’s explore why expectations are a problem-

Do you have an agreement if your boss lays a huge project on you and says, “I need you to get this done by Friday, OK?”, and you respond by saying you will do your best? This is an example of, at best, a weak agreement. When you look over the project, you realize it would take at least two people working full time to get it done by Friday and as a result the project fails to be completed. Should your boss expect that an assignment you did not really agree to will be completed? What if completion is the expectation? What if you work sixteen-hour days, the job gets done, and the boss has no idea that the assignment was unreasonable? What if you tell your boss you need more resources and the response is that none are available so you let it fail? The result of this situation could easily be frustration for everyone involved.

A strategy of using an agreement could ensure success of the project and the building of a relationship.

Here is an example of a parent and teenage son comparing an expectation and an agreement.

Expectation – Son has been told it is his chore to cut the grass every week. It is Saturday at Noon and the son is still in bed. Family is coming over for a party that afternoon and the grass has not been cut all week. The Father is fuming that his son is not doing what is expected and so the Father is knocking on the Son’s door and complaining to the Son about sleeping in so late, about being irresponsible, and waiting for the last minute which is holding up the setting up of tables and chairs in the yard. The Father is annoyed and the Son is annoyed and altogether it is a bad start to what was hoped to be a nice day.

Would you rather have this sort of stress from expectations or have a strong agreement like the following-

Agreement – Father and Son speaking the weekend before the party. Father: “Son this coming weekend we are having the whole family over and it is important to me that the grass is cut before Saturday or at the very latest, early Saturday morning.” Son: “No problem.” Father: “So what can I expect?” Son: “I’ll get it done before the party.” Father: “Is there anything that could get in the way of you doing it before Saturday?” Son: “it’s a busy week. I’m on the planning committee for the dance Friday night and I have a paper due and I have practice every night on Monday through Thursday.” Father: “Sounds crazy busy. When could you fit in the grass?” Son: “How about Thursday after I get home from decorating the gym for the dance?” Father: “That would be great. Is this something that you will try to do or can I count on you doing it?” Son: “You can count on it” Father: “Is there anything that could keep you from doing it on Thursday night?” Son: “I almost forgot we are out of gas, could you get some?” Father: “I will do that and thank you for making time to cut the grass on Thursday night before the party. It is very important to me.” Perhaps you are laughing at how impossible it is for you to have a conversation like this with your child. Realize that you are the adult and until you are able to co-create a strong agreement you will have to rely upon the brute force of rules and consequences. This relegates you to a role similar to that of a tyrant. The way to escape this with your children or with anyone else is to implement an agreement focusing especially on steps 1 and 2 listed below.

The six parts of an agreement

If you are going to replace expectations with agreements you must agree to-

1. the desired outcome and the reason that outcome is desired.
2. what everyone involved in the agreement will get out of it.
3. who is responsible for each part of the agreement.
4. the time and dates pertinent to the agreement.
5. the communication required and when the communication will occur.
6. the consequences of breaking the agreement.

When you do this, you have a relationship.

The stronger your relationship, the easier it is to create strong agreements.

Good relationships are based on agreements.

Relationships based on expectations and assumptions are a source of relational stress.

Some expectations seem reasonable.

I had a situation where a coworker would arrange his schedule so that he was committed to a very easy task that would take up his day every Friday. He had many other responsibilities that would pop up and need to be done on Fridays but since he was committed to another project those responsibilities would fall on other people, including me. This annoyed me a great deal. I expected my coworker to be fully responsible and respectful of me. Even though this coworker did not work for me I still could have created an agreement encompassing all six steps. 

Agreements take time and effort but they produce predictable results. Expectations take no time and they produce a result commensurate with the lack of time and effort invested.

Here are some points to keep in mind

• If you are wondering where to start with creating agreements it is no harder than identifying complaints. What complaints do you have about others and what complaints do others have about you? Complaints reveal expectations. Replace the expectations with agreements.
• When you have a request to make of someone it is the perfect time to ask them for an agreement.
• You can make requests of those in authority over you as well as those under you.
• Just because you make a request does not mean you have an agreement.
• If someone is not willing to meet your request what is it that they can agree to?
• Just because someone knows what you expect does not mean that they agree that the expectation can or should be met.
• Problems with people can be a sign that there is an expectation with no agreement.
• Agreements are created through mutual creativity. This is why they take time and effort. Creativity does not always come about easily.
• Agreements are the result of respectful relationships. Expectations lack respect.
• We choose to not have expectations because they do not serve us well.
• Fights can be caused by the toxic emotions of expectations.
• How do you react when someone tells you they expect something of you? You prepare a defense. People will even sabotage expectations. When you expect something, you chase it away instead of drawing it to you.
• Ask people to enter into an agreement.
• Agreements must work for all parties involved.
• People desire to keep their agreements. If they do not you must have a conversation about agreeing to keep agreements. You cannot have a relationship with a person who does not keep their agreements.
• If you are unhappy with a situation in your life then make an agreement that changes the situation.
• Taking full responsibility for yourself is the result of not having expectations of others. This is a hard one. I will be very straight forward. People with messed up lives have issues with blaming others for their problems.
• Understand that people will not be able to keep their agreements 100% of the time. Be graceful and create agreements that have the ability to achieve the goal even when things do not go as planned.

When an agreement is broken consider these things-

• Were all six steps to creating an agreement taken?
• Was the agreement specific?
• Was the agreement clearly communicated?
• Were the terms agreed upon?
• Did all of the people involved participate in creating the agreement?
• Were potential obstacles considered with solutions provided?
• Were resources from a third party required but not provided?
• Were the priorities of the outcome determined?
• Was a communication protocol for issues set up?

I made a statement at the beginning of the article which may seem to not have a direct correlation to expectations and agreements but it is very much a core principle of this manner of interacting with others. I said, having expectations limits your ability to be delighted with other people. Consider this, what if somebody does live up to your expectation? They did nothing special. They only met your expectation. If you have the two options of either being disappointed or the melancholy of met expectations it’s a frustrating or boring life. The more expectations I have, the more negative my life will be.

Fun on the other hand is an unexpected pleasure. In other words, things are most fun when we don’t expect them. Do we belly laugh at jokes that we know the punch line to? Are we amazed by things we are familiar with? If we expect everything, there cannot be fun. People need us to be delighted with them. We need people to be delighted with us. Create the opportunity for strong loving relationships by giving up expectations. You and everyone in your life will be better for it. That is my hope for you.

That’s all for now.

Peace and love fellow traveler,

Jim

Have you been told statements like this?

Forgive and forget.

Forgiving is something you do for you.

Wouldn’t it be good if the whole family was together?

Be a team player.

Let bygones be bygones.

Don’t be a trouble maker.

It would be nice if all of our broken relationships were made perfect. Instead of wishing all of our relationship problems to be solved what if you just focused on restoring one relationship? Even if just for one relationship, ignoring reality isn’t the path to restoration. Being guilted or manipulated to go with the flow so that someone else’s false view of a wonderful world can continue in bliss does not promote healing. It doesn’t feel right when someone expects us to let it go. Letting it go does not give credence to the real harm that has been done. Letting it go violates the love we must give to ourselves to put in place protections from toxic people. I had a teacher in school who used to say; fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. This statement is true because if someone does wrong and you fail to respond by putting appropriate boundaries in place to protect yourself, others and the things that you are a steward of, then you have now done wrong. It is not loving for others to ignore the wrong done or to ask you to remove the boundaries that you wisely put in place in response to the wrong. Even when we have been wronged it is our responsibility to forgive. When we have wronged someone, it is our responsibility to seek reconciliation.

I am a big advocate of proper boundaries. I am also a big advocate of emotional health. Your boundaries and your emotional health can both be cared for in the process of a relationship being restored. Here is a simple plan for reconciliation. It is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

1 Reason for reconciliation

• When you have wronged someone the right thing to do is to seek reconciliation. God has commanded that we reconcile with those who have something against us.

2 Requirements to achieve reconciliation

• Repentance
• Restitution

3 Goals of reconciliation

• Trust
• Respect
• Love

Trust and Respect

To reconcile something is to make it right and restore it to a whole condition. Of the many atrocities that have been and are currently being committed I will bring up a couple. There is a nation that had a policy of removing children from indigenous families. The intent of the policy was to assimilate the indigenous people into white culture and over time to make them white. The stated purpose of this assimilation was to protect a people who were believed to be dying off. Between 1905 and 1967 tens of thousands of children were forcibly removed from their mothers and fathers. This nation is Australia and the children stolen were of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent. How do you make something like this right? In 2018 at least 678,000 children suffered abuse in the United States. How do you make something like this right? The people of my country, the United States, engaged in buying perhaps as many as 450,000 people stolen from Africa and enslaving them as laborers. How do you make something like this right? These are ridiculously large issues but it doesn’t take much of a problem in our own lives to create a situation that seems beyond reconciliation. Many parents, children and siblings are estranged from each other due to offenses that need to be no more than perceived to produce real enmity. The workplace is filled with grudges. Marriages fall apart due to unreconcilable differences. Every one of us have had some wrong done to us by another person resulting in a broken relationship. A person in a broken relationship can feel as if they are in a pit which cannot be climbed out of. The way out of the pit is to rebuild trust and respect. The first step is for the person wronged to put proper boundaries in place that allows them to live in a place of safety and peace. Boundaries are not put in place to punish the wrong doer. They are to protect the wronged. The second step is also with the person who was wronged. They must forgive. I talk about this in the article The exception to forgiving. The link to it is at the bottom of this article. Now it is time for the person who committed the wrong to act by repenting. Trust is built when a person acts consistently with their repentance. Acting in this way shows good character. Good character earns respect. Respecting another person’s boundaries shows love. When you have wronged someone and they put up a boundary to keep you at a distance you must not push against it to try to get them to remove it. This shows that you do not respect the other person as an individual who is separate from you and you are not loving them. As trust and respect are built, the person wronged sees that they can prudently and safely move their boundaries. Given sufficient time and love, the boundaries can be removed. There is a catch here that we all need to be aware of. When any of us puts up a relational boundary, we do not tell the other person what we have done. This means if a person puts up a boundary to keep us safely away from them, we are likely to push up against it and not like the cold shoulder. This is when the people who put up boundaries have things turned upside down on them and they get blamed for the relationship falling apart. If you put up a boundary and are receiving grief for it, I believe it is best to share the existence of the boundary with a trusted person who can inform the person who wronged you about the boundary. If you sense that someone has pulled away from you it is time to tune in and be sensitive. A good place to start is to think over what wrong you could have committed. If you can’t come up with something ask directly or through a trusted third party what wrong you have committed. 

Repentance and Restitution

Can the Aborigines, abused children, descendants of African slaves, and you and I just forgive and forget so that relations between the wronged and those who committed the wrong can be restored? When a wrong has been committed the relationship between the people involved changes. There is a loss of trust and respect among many other effects. This is why saying sorry doesn’t fix the problem. Sorry doesn’t create trust or respect. I believe that reconciliation requires repentance. Repentance is thought by some to be the act of saying sorry but this is a misunderstanding. Wikipedia describes repentance as the activity of reviewing one’s actions and feeling contrition or regret for past wrongs, which is accompanied by commitment to and actual action that show and prove a change for the better. Repentance is accompanied by change. This change can rebuild trust and respect over time. There are situations where the action required to make something right is restitution or compensation. The paying of restitution or compensation may make something right but it certainly doesn’t restore trust or respect. The reason “to forgive and forget” does not cause reconciliation is because it takes real action to build trust and respect. It is right for a person who has been wronged to set up a boundary that defines what it means to be safe from the person who committed the wrong. When the wronged person sees that the perpetrator has changed, they can carefully alter the boundary to let the person who wronged them closer so that they can test sincerity and judge whether true change has occurred. 

To sum this up-

Have you been wronged? Forgive the person who wronged you, set up appropriate boundaries, and stick to them.

Have you wronged someone? It is your responsibility to seek reconciliation at a speed which the person wronged feels and believes is safe.

This is the sixth article out of six in this series on relationships. The previous articles can be found by clicking on these links. Perhaps you care for someone who can benefit from your sharing these with them.

The exception to forgiving

How to live the dream

4 reasons why relationships end

Social Distances – How close of a friend are you?

Social Distances – The end of

Reconciliation

That’s all for now. Peace and love fellow traveler,

Jim

For a number of years my wife and I provided a home for homeless children. Typically, we had 2 siblings for up to three months. We were part of an organization called Safe Families. Mothers who were in a crisis could go to Safe Families and get their children out of the crisis environment for the period of time the mother needed. The thing that struck me the most about these children was their mindset. Their thinking was of course formed by their experiences and what they had been told. It’s not just that they experienced a different life and that they had been told different things about this world than I was brought up experiencing and being told. They had a different truth than me. In their world it was normal that their father’s girlfriend would beat up homeless people and rob them. Their truth was that you had to take what was available. It was normal to steal. Their truth was to look out for only your own interest. It was normal to hide in an attic from DCFS. Their truth was that the government was their enemy. It was normal to not have at all or not have enough. Their truth was scarcity. Instability was normal. Their truth was that people cannot be relied on. It was normal to be used. Their truth was that they were responsible for making other people happy and that they were not cared for. I wonder how these children will ever break free from the patterns of thinking they have learned.

Perhaps you believe your experience has shown you that the things these young children have learned to be true are true for you also.

How do we know when our patterns of thinking need to be reframed? Very simply, it is when we lack hope and joy.

Warning. I want to pause for a moment to shine a spot light on a trap. To choose hope and joy is in our control. We cannot blame someone else. Blaming others is a trap. Do not give someone else the ability to control whether you have joy and hope. Do not give someone else the power over your emotional health. If you blame others it is definitely time to reframe. Life is too short to not have joy and hope.

Do some things require a change instead of a reframe? In other words, how do we know if our circumstances are necessary and right or if we should be doing something completely different? Yes, sometimes change is required but the reason may be a surprise. Things are often wrong because we are doing them for the wrong reason. We can have the peace of knowing that our current circumstance is right where we need to be when we live a life obedient to true principles. Right principles are the key to doing something for the right reason. Change is also required when the current situation violates truth principles.

If I am lacking hope or joy how do I reframe? List every true principle that you can think of.

Here is an example of a list that I came up with.

I am not powerless

Truth prevails over lies

It is better to give than to receive

Love prevails over selfishness

All that I have is given to me by God. He can give and take away as He sees fit.

I will do what is right even when wrong has been done to me.

I will do what is right even if nobody appreciates it.

My mind should be focused on things that are good.

There are resources available to me.

I can change.

I am loved.

I will only do things that I can do in love and joy.

Now discover what your truth statements have to say about your current situation.

Think about each truth statement you wrote for as long as it takes for you to accept it as the new reality of your circumstance.

I am not saying that you deny what is truly happening to you now. I am saying that when hope and joy are missing it is time to think that the result of what is happening to you now is different than what you have been expecting.

Your truth statements are the path which point to joyful possibilities.

What is possible based on truth? Say yes to this new life. Think about all that will come with this new life. Change your body to match your thoughts. Stand up straight, hold your head up high, smile, and breathe deeply.

You now have a dream. Dreams are good but our lives are not made of the dreams that we dream but of the choices that we make. It is time to make choices consistent with your dream.

Are you being abused? That is your current truth but it is not your future. Your dream requires that you take action to remove yourself from danger. One step at a time. One choice at a time.

Are you broke? Are you rejected? Are you sick? Are you depressed? Are you stuck in doldrums? Are you being cheated? Are you being disrespected? Are you spread too thin? Yes, these are your current truth but they are not your future. 

Your commitment to your dream will be tested.

Something happens. What thinking/talk do you layer on top of the incident? I am stupid, they are out to get me, it is someone else’s fault, I’m not cared for, I am not worth it, I should have done something different, it was my fault, I should have been stronger or smarter.

The reality is that good and bad, positive and negative happen. Not all things are avoidable. The pain you are feeling can be optional. Replace the negative talk and thoughts with your truth statements. Your emotions and your actions will follow your thinking.

I stopped negotiating with terrorist. Out of a sense of desperation I found that some things must be non-negotiable. After years of failing to be the person that I wanted to be. After years of going through cycles of hope and self-loathing. After coming up with systems and tracking my performance failed, I came to a realization that is quite simple. I needed to undermine the terrorist that was destroying everything that was important to me. That terrorist was me. Specifically it was my lack of discipline. I finally figured out why I could be extremely disciplined with some things but was failing on the things that I truly believed were critically important. The reason is I am not an emotionless machine. Admitting that I thrive on distraction, that I am a great visionary, a great doer for a specific project, but I am not good at long-term tasks helped me to work out a solution to the struggle.

The battle was hugely frustrating. As I look over many years of entries from my journal the high degree of struggle is revealed. It is painful to review them. I want you to have hope. I am in a different place now. I have friends who have only known me for a few years and they think I am a freak of nature who is winning in every aspect of life. I am winning in every aspect of life but I had to fight my way through the jungle of thinking that I was a loser. I want you to have hope knowing that there is a path to victory and you can have a completely different life.

This is what made the difference.

To begin with I decided to change. I cannot do that for you. Every person who changes does so after they are sick and tired of things the way they are. If you don’t look at your life and feel disgust you will not change. Even if it is just one area of your life you must draw a line in the sand and tell yourself that the time is now. I did this for years. Deciding is a start but I needed more to keep going. Part two of this point is to keep going. Never give up. I love a quote from Winston Churchill- “Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” 

You are bound to be different from me. You may have to change things up a bit to get what worked for me to work for you. Decide to change and never, never, never give up.

Keystone battle

According to Google a keystone is “a central stone at the summit of an arch, locking the whole together”. The point to know is that without the keystone, the arch topples to the ground. Things really started to turn around for me in 2012. I had a list of must win battles and that was a good plan but it wasn’t enough. The problem was that I have an extremely busy life and the busyness doesn’t follow regular patterns. I like it busy so it’s my own fault. I own that fact. Being as busy as I am means that there is more to do than hours of the day and I would cheat by sleeping very little. I began to realize an important thing though. It is hard to have self-discipline when I am short on sleep. If I get plenty of sleep I do not feel like I need to eat to fuel the sluggishness, I feel able to exercise, I am able to do the things that do not come naturally to me like praying for my friends and family throughout the day. Sleep therefore is the key battle. What are your must win battles? It took repeated failure for me to figure that there is such a thing as a key battle and to figure out what my key battle is. I like this concept and I recommend that you determine what your must win battles are. As you observe your success in winning at your must win battles be aware of the possibility that there is one battle that stands in front of your other battles like a row of dominoes. If this one battle fails to fall it will prevent the others from falling along with it.

Discipline

My life didn’t get any less busy but I believe I have found a method that allows me to get the most important things done. I follow the concept of the Rock, Pebbles and Sand story. The story is told that a teacher stood before a class with an usual array of props. There was a large glass jar, fist sized rock, pebbles, sand and a glass of water. The rocks represent things in your life that are important but not urgent. These are things like exercise, eating right, your spiritual life and relationships with family and friends. The pebbles are things that are important and urgent. Examples of this are sickness, a flat tire, and work deadlines. The sand represents things that are not important to you but someone wants it now. This could be a phone call/text/email or someone stopping your work to make a request of you. The water represents things that are not important or urgent. These are time wasters like watching TV, gambling, video games, social media. If you put the pebbles and sand in the jar first then the rocks will not fit. If you put the rocks in first and then the pebbles and then the sand and then the water. Voila, it all fits. Now I am going to share with you the secret sauce I use to get the rocks in first. I use rituals. Specifically I have a morning ritual that I do Monday through Friday that incorporates the most important things. These most important things are my must win battles. My ritual plays out like this.

• Get up 6.5 hours after going to bed.
• Think about everything I am thankful for.
• Make a healthy breakfast and pack a healthy lunch.
• As I drive to work I listen to the Bible.
• Walk for six miles or in poor weather work out in a fitness center while praying for family and friends.
• Review my Oath for each of the eight areas of my life.
• Proceed with my day according to my time budget.

I do this every day. I do not need to think about it. I make no choices regarding this ritual. It takes no discipline. The key is that this process is on autopilot. Perhaps part of the reason this works is I have a limited amount of energy to make decisions and discipline myself and this process takes none of my mental or emotional energy. The one thing I know for sure is that I have carved out a part of my day when I am immune to the metaphorical pebbles, sand and water of life. My morning is all rocks and I start my day putting all of my rocks into my jar. After my morning ritual is over my day can be a complete mess and it doesn’t matter. I have already done everything that is really important. It helps that this process is complete before 7am. The people in my life do not have expectations of me in these wee hours of the day and so I am able to consistently perform my ritual.

I would love to hear if what I have shared has a positive impact on your life and any ways that you have customized this to make it work for you. I’m here for you if you have questions.