Day 6: The Relationship Dance

You have been pondering your personality for several days now, considering how you can cultivate yourself to be more loving and virtuous, and how to grow a better relationship with the world. 

But relationships are a dance with partners, who have their own styles, strengths, and excesses. If we bump up against them in the wrong way, we might send them reeling into excess, which will possibly spark our own spiral into excess, and it can become a crazy dance pretty fast.

The relationship dance is complex, and it helps to take some time to practice the steps. If you are having conflict or discomfort with another person on a regular basis, you might find yourself saying, "I just don't understand where he's coming from." And that is exactly the problem: You don't understand his style, his strengths, or what pushes him into excess. You can use your instincts and a little thought to figure it out.

The most common factors leading to excess are physical factors: Hunger, lack of sleep, illness, hormones, and stress. The list below shows generalized examples of other factors, divided into four personality styles. (Note that its normal for people to fall into more than one style):

1. Easy-going Accommodating Styles might get excessive if they perceive unfriendliness or disapproval; have an intense confrontation; have too little structure; feel stifled by deadlines; or if others reinforce their clowning.

Day 7: Review and Plan

Take a few minutes to review your sixth week. Write about your accomplishments and what you need to work on. Did you:

• Brainstorm some goals, dreams, and exciting ideas for your future in the areas of your health, lifestyle, finances, bad and good habits, things you'd like to learn, things that bring you happiness, and your spiritual life?

• Write about your present relationship with yourself, your inner judge and your Inner Guide, challenges and successes, and how your values, beliefs, and priorities support self-love?

• List just a few (2-4) specific Self-Love Goals for this next month (30 days)?

• Use your Love Journal each day to get to know and understand yourself better, look for ways to practice friendship with yourself, and note times when you might need to draw on generous, open-hearted kindness, or extra time, attention, and nurturance for yourself?

• Brainstorm some small generous acts you might do this week for yourself, as practice, that will challenge your growing edge?

• Practice a Love Meditation, and send the "pink light of love" to yourself?

• Discern the top self-care habits that will most help to renew your physical self, and add a few to your priority grid?

• Discern the top 1-4 subjects of learning that will make the biggest difference in your life now, and add them to this month's priority grid?

• Discern and choose the top 2-4 awareness practices that will nurture your spirit, that might make the biggest difference in your life now, and add some combination of awareness practices to this month's priority grid?

• Experiment with building an explosion of inner synergy intentionally, for a particular project, in order to infuse that project with vision and passion, and engage with full effort?

Day 6: Create Inner Synergy

Stephen Covey says "Fulfilling the four needs [spiritual, mental, physical, social] in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a "critical mass" of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion-- an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision, passion, and a spirit of adventure to life." 

"Inner synergy" is when your body, mind, spirit, and heart are all cooperating to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. I love the image of "an explosion of inner synergy", and I've experienced that passion, but I wondered if it was possible to harness that energy when I want it and need it. 

Can we create inner synergy purposefully and on demand? Can you build it intentionally, for a particular project, in order to infuse that project with vision and passion, and engage with full effort?

I thought it was possible and designed an experimental plan, which I've been testing for a few years now to good effect. Give it a try, over the next few days:

• Choose a high priority project, that connects to your values and principles, something you want to do soon; something challenging but within your abilities.

• Each step below has multiple ways to engage. You can take as much or as little time with the steps as you like - you might want to stretch it out over a few days, repeating each step a few times in different ways, building a little more energy each time. Or you can speed shift through the steps, and explode into action today!

Day 7: Review and Plan

Take a few minutes to review your fifth week. Write about your accomplishments and what you need to work on. Did you:

• Brainstorm some goals, dreams, and exciting ideas for your future in the areas of your relationships, your family, your friends, and your community, and ways you want to be of service?

• List a just a few (2-4) specific Love Goals for this next month?

• Set intentions to follow through with each of your priorities for the week?

• Open the door to bodhichitta (your completely open heart and mind) with a 5-minute Love Meditation?

• Start a new Love Journal and make notes in it, each day, of conversations and interactions you had the previous day, your general frame of mind with the world, and about the people you will see and conversations you may have in the day to come?

• Write about your growing edge - where you most need to focus your attention when it comes to love?

• Brainstorm some goals for extending kindness to the world; for creating and nurturing your community; small generous acts you might do this week; and a list of bigger actions you could take someday to help your community and your world in the days or months ahead; and some goals for equanimity - and add them to your Month Map or your Inspiration Page?

• Try out the 'Zen Pause" practice to internalize equanimity?

Day 6: Brainstorm Equanimity

Equanimity is another essential love habit - the ability to maintain an even-temper, patience, and grounded-ness in the midst of the chaos of life and the perplexing behavior of others.

Equanimity is an expression of love: It’s the serenity we exhibit when we have to wait, and also the kindness we show to those “difficult people” who don’t listen to reason, who interrupt, who are overly sensitive, or who are so annoying. Equanimity allows us to let go of frustration and irritation, and treat those people with skill and gentleness. It allows us to counter disrespect and contempt with compassion, and to remember that human needs are not always logical, but are always more important than our schedule.

Equanimity is a habit that requires love and self-control; it requires that you cut people slack and allow them to be imperfect; that you relax and let go of time anxiety; and that you acknowledge your impatience and irritation but don't act on them. It's powerful; it opens hearts. People feel liberated when you let them know that you are unruffled and in no hurry. Your patience is a gift to them, and will allow them to heal and grow.

And it's not only useful with in-the-moment situations, but also for grounded-ness in the face of world upheaval and fears about the future. Life is a rainbow of chaos, and equanimity is a super-power that will get you through.

One practice I have used to internalize equanimity, is what I call my "Zen Pause". I practice it when I am calm so that I will be able (perhaps) to use it in times of stress. Stand up right now and try this:

Day 5: Brainstorm Generosity

The work this week is to define and set intentions for cultivating the habits of love, at your own growing edge.  Today we will give attention to generosity, the habit of being open-hearted and open-handed with any undertaking that involves a commitment of time, effort, and/or money.

When we are generous, we share what we have freely - money, food, help, or time- without expectation of reward or return. We put full effort into looking after people. We are open-minded, give people the benefit of the doubt, and grant them our attention and life force. We are of service to the world.

Generosity begins in your heart. It requires extravagant love and alertness to other’s needs. It also requires courage, in order to step outside of your comfort zone and be generous to all kinds of people. Consider your growing edge with respect to generosity: How can you increase the flow of blessings in the world? You might need to push past feelings of reluctance and fear to a place where generosity is spontaneous and fun. Or you might need to get creative with generous acts that fit into your schedule.

(Please note that generosity is not a habit that has come easy for me! I am not by nature an openhanded or open-minded person; I like to hold onto my marbles, and I don't "suffer fools", as they say. But I've worked at this habit for a long, long time, and can attest to it being learnable.)

Take out your Love Journal:

Day 4: Plan to Create New Community

Your community includes every single person you know or meet: Your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, acquaintances, shopkeepers, and the people you pass on the streets. Your community might also include people you talk with online. 

Community is inclusive and often accidental, and you need this kind of diversity in your community to fuel the most growth in your life. You will be gifted by many chance encounters with people who will propel you towards excellence. 

However, you can also intentionally and strategically create new community that meets your currant needs, gathering in the friendships that help you to grow into a better person. 

For example, two years ago, when I had a clear but undefined impulse to become more active for social justice, I went to a variety of events and committee meetings until I found the two action groups I wanted to join. I based my choice on the people I liked best, and consequently, made friends who are now essential to my life and priorities.

Maybe you want to find someone to talk to or walk with, or a neighbor who can help you with yard work, or an online study group... the options for community are endless (even in a pandemic).

Take out your Love Journal:

Day 3: Start a Love Journal

The habits of love include generosity, honesty, patience and equanimity, forgiveness, gratitude, communication, respect, kindness and care - among others. We will focus in on some of these in the next days, and today we will start with kindness, our outward expression of day-to-day love.

You practice kindness with polite language, and other small acts and habits like gracefully waiting your turn, using a friendly tone of voice, offering help, giving a compliment, or a simple smile. I'm not going to bore you with a list of random acts of kindness - you know the drill. 

When we are at our best, we extend kindness to friends and family, co-workers, neighbors, strangers and service workers, and we also extend kindness to animals, plants, and to the Earth. We begin to learn to be kind when we are small, so we should be experts, but we still manage to be rude and hurtful  sometimes, maybe unintentionally, and if not out loud, at least in our thoughts. 

What is your growing edge?

Day 2: Shine Your Love Light

Your first giant step on the path to keeping love central in your life and in your everyday interactions, is simply to set an intention to open your heart - to invite bodhichitta. 

The Buddhist term bodhicitta means "completely open heart and mind". Developing bodhicitta is a journey: You move toward a flexible way of thinking and feeling, releasing fear and a need for security, and embracing the possibility of love.

Pema Chodron, in "The Places That Scare You", says that bodhichitta comes from the soft spot we each have, that allows us to feel the pain of others. "Without realizing it we continually shield ourselves from this pain because it scares us. We put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. ... But fortunately for us, the soft spot—our innate ability to love and to care about things—is like a crack in these walls we erect. It’s a natural opening in the barriers we create when we’re afraid. With practice we can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment—love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, inadequacy—to awaken bodhichitta."

Today I ask you again to access your intuitive mind - your connection to God, or the Inner Guide - and open a door to bodhichitta.

• Set the mood: Light a pink candle and dim the lights. If you want, you can turn on some favorite instrumental music very softly.