What We Learn By Seeing Ourselves in Others We Admire or Find Difficult

What We Learn By Seeing Ourselves in Others We Admire or Find Difficult

 “What we see in other people – particularly those who affront us – is ourselves. They wouldn’t get to us the way they do if they didn’t already have a place within us. They are the mirror. Either that, or we are being visited by someone we will become. Rather than looking upon them with distance or disdain, treat them with kindness because they are kin to us.”—Br. Curtis Almquist, Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Esther Harding also concisely explains how we change as we see ourselves in others. We change as we become aware of our sins and faults when they are reflected in someone else. We often recognize the parts of ourselves that need to change only when they appear in others. We say, “This is awful. I do not want to be like that.” Then, through some unknown factor, perhaps God’s Grace, we realize that the character defect, the sin, the failing is also in us. I often find myself not wanting to be around a particular person. That is usually a clue that they carry a trait I do not recognize in myself. Seeing it in the other person, I am repulsed by it. 

The flip side of this truth is that sometimes the people we most admire possess a gift we do not recognize in ourselves.

I also know from 12-step work how people change. They hit bottom or fear hitting bottom. They become so overwhelmed by their condition, so “sick and tired” of how miserable their life is, that they will do anything to change it. They see someone else who has recovered from addiction and wish for that life. They then seek help from that person.

So, what does all this have to do with our life in the Spirit? My experience is that it is indeed the Spirit, the Christ, the God within us, that is a catalyst for change, whispering in our ear that the defects we acknowledge in others may also be in us—that a better life is possible. Those in 12-step programs call it a “moment of clarity.” I believe God is speaking to us at that moment of clarity, and we can listen. Finally, we can hear, as Benedict tells us, with “the ear of our heart.”

Eventually, we see others as gifts, whether they repulse us or we admire them. We recognize the similarities we learn through inner work. We learn to thank them for their presence in our lives.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Open and Closed Regrets

REGRETS: OPEN AND CLOSED

Ken Fellows:   Guest Writer and Artist 

ken fellows

“Though we would like to live without regret and sometimes insist proudly that we have none, this is not really possible, if only because we are mortal.”— Ben Baldwin                                                                                                                                       My brother Sam was the youngest of our four siblings. I was the oldest. Sam was born when I was 16 and heading off to college. I was far less brotherly toward him than my other two siblings were. As an adult, Sam grew generally distant from our family, a bachelor living in another state and working as a bartender. 

Highly intelligent, Sam’s thinking and planning were romantically grandiose, bordering on delusional. He had unfulfilled schemes to be everything from a professional boxer to an explorer on expeditions to undersea ‘lost’ worlds. Living a seemingly lonely life, Sam hung himself at age 37. Only days before his suicide, Sam had phoned me (a virtually unprecedented event) to say “hello,” which, in retrospect, was his personal “goodbye.”

     Suicide always leaves friends and loved ones holding the bag. Sam’s death left me with lasting regret that I hadn’t been more attentive, more supportive …more of a lot of things… for him. Now, even years later, I suffer what can be termed “closed-door remorse,” a regret that can’t be fixed because the person is no longer alive. Whenever I think of Sam, I feel recurring sadness and guilt.  

     Many years later, in my midlife, while working at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, my secretary announced a phone call for me from “Andrea D.” I hadn’t heard that name in 40 years.

      Andrea had been my girlfriend in our late teens and early college years. We were both Midwesterners attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After a three-year romance, she abruptly asked mutual friends to deliver the news that she needed a change … that she needed to seek greener pastures. We had no contact after that until her phone call. I had known for years that she had established a clinical psychology practice in our hometown. She had become a patient of my dentist brother, John, and sometimes inquired about me. I also knew from John that she had never married.

     Quite surprised and somewhat hesitant, I picked up the phone to greet this woman from my past. Perplexed about why Andrea might be calling after so many years, I hesitated to greet her. After exchanging a few awkward pleasantries, I asked why she was calling. She said, “I just want to apologize.”

She offered nothing more, both of us aware it was for her abrupt end to our relationship years earlier. I insisted she had no reason to feel remorse, and she countered that her apology was “just the right thing to do.” After a brief exchange of courtesies and small talk, we said our goodbyes.

     Some time later, reflecting on her call, it occurred to me that, as a mental health therapist, she likely often urged penitence in others and perhaps was exercising repentance herself. Her remorse is an example of an “open-door regret”… shame that can be ameliorated because it involves a living person, however awkward and uncomfortable the offered contrition may be.

     The lesson from her call is that when one cares about a relationship that has been undone, one can somehow establish contact, make a visit, or do something to reach out … to push past the mental clumsiness and reluctance that block needed action.

     When I reflect on her apology and the courage it took for Andrea to carry it through, there’s a valuable life lesson --- open-door regrets allow us to extend ourselves to do what should be done, however difficult and humbling it may be.

    After attending Al-Anon meetings for many years, I learned about “making amends” as an enhancement to offering apologies. The intention and sentiment conveyed in ‘making amends’ is that one not only faces up to and apologizes for ill behavior but also promises to do better in the future. It seems like a more sincere, enhanced effort than offering only personal acknowledgment and lament for past transgressions.

     In his insightful book The Power of Regret, Daniel Pink introduces the valuable concepts of “closed and open regrets.” He further suggests: “We all should transform regret into reaching out and doing better.”

Ken Fellows

Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com

Is Your Left Brain or Your Right Brain Running Your Mind?

Who's Running Your Mind, Your Right Brain or Your Left Brain?

Guest Writer: Lara Patriquin 

We've all heard it: left brain logical, right brain creative. It's cuter than it is true. Both sides think. Both sides feel. The real question is who's in charge.

Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist spent twenty years on that question. His book The Master and His Emissary takes its title from a fable: a wise master governs his realm through a gifted emissary. The emissary is brilliant — focused, articulate, efficient. But over time, he forgets he's the emissary. He starts to believe the realm is his.

That, McGilchrist argues, is the story of the modern mind. The right hemisphere is the master — it sees the whole, keeps us connected to what's alive and meaningful. The left hemisphere is the emissary — the narrator, the planner, the one with the words. It's supposed to serve. Instead, it's running the show.

You know what that feels like. It's the ticker tape — the voice that keeps score at 2 a.m. and can't say "I don't know."

Here's the thing: the left brain is a superb employee and a terrible boss.

The calendar, the plan, the sentence — give it a task and it delivers. But we've handed it questions it was never built for: Am I happy? Am I enough? And it just answers. Badly.

The work, then, isn't self-improvement. It's a demotion. Return the left brain to the role it was made for, and let the master back in the room.

Start tomorrow morning. Whoever gets to your mind first runs your day — and left unattended, the emissary clocks in early with a to-do list and a grievance from 2011.

Throw a Morning Party instead:

phone off, long breaths, hydrate, sunshine, journal, meditate, something inspiring. Let the master speak first.

Happiness isn't something the emissary can deliver. It's what's already here when the master is back in the chair.

There's a whole book about this! 

Thrive Mind - An Illustrated Guide to the Subconscious

The bunker is the subject of my book — how we build it, what it quietly costs us, and the glitch in the nervous system that lets it seize the controls: the mechanism that convinces us we’re small and under threat, when our real nature is joyful and brilliant.

It’s in my editor’s hands now, out in the next few months. Here’s an early look at the bunker itself:

What working with me looks like

We go into the bunker together, calmly, and take inventory — questioning the beliefs that keep you defended, and changing your relationship to the emotions you’ve been bracing against. Less a discipline, more like clearing out a room you forgot had a window.

Curious what’s in yours?

Thinking 2.0, 961 S. McClelland, Salt Lake City, Utah 84105, United States

Lara Patriquin, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology

School of Medicine, University of Utah, Speaker and Coach at Thinking2.0, (505) 269-4097 Book your complimentary call here.

Joanna joannaseibert.com.