The DNA of Relationships (11 page)

As I’ve said, this has changed my life. Just the other night my stomach was upset and nervous about something. I couldn’t shake it. I felt discouraged about a situation, as if I had failed.
Why am I upset?
I thought. I went to bed, but the feelings wouldn’t leave me. So I practiced Dr. Hart’s principles. I reviewed the situation. I felt as if I was disappointing several key people in my life with one of the chapters in this book. But I also felt stuck and couldn’t figure out how to improve it. Then the thought came,
God’s power is made perfect within me through my weaknesses.
The truth of that promise changed my thinking, and my thinking changed my feelings. Instead of feeling discouraged, I felt grateful for the weak areas of my life that remind me of my dependence on God. I started thanking God for my weaknesses and cried out to him for his power to work within me and help me finish this book. I fell asleep instantly, at peace and with a grateful heart about being dependent on God. As soon as I changed my thinking, my heart reflected the corresponding emotion. I woke up the next day with an idea and started writing feverishly. Even my editor liked it.

* YOUR THOUGHTS CONTROL YOUR FEELINGS AND REACTIONS. *

What are the implications of Dr. Hart’s insights for your relationships? How can you control your reactions by controlling your thoughts? This process underscores what we have been saying so far. You must take your focus off the other person and look at yourself. Before you can control your reactions, you must control your thoughts. And when you do, you will find amazing freedom.

2. Take Responsibility for Your Buttons
It doesn’t help a relationship—not in the least—to focus on all the “stuff ” you think the other person needs to change. On the other hand, it’s enormously useful to address what you are doing, to look at your own thoughts and reactions, and to ponder your own fears and emotions. It does help when you do your own personal work. It helps a lot.

“When my wife and I get into something,” says one of my coworkers, “I have the ability to go off by myself and start thinking,
Okay. When I reacted that way, I wonder where that was coming from?
That’s very productive. It’s a waste of time, however, to talk about the other person’s reactions. But it’s very good to find out the other person’s feelings and to express your own feelings. That’s where you begin to solve conflicts.”

Remember this: When your buttons get pushed, they’re
yours
, and
you
are responsible for them. We often see people caught in pseudo-karate mode in which they spend all their time trying to keep the other person from pushing their buttons. They expend a lot of their energy on trying to control the other person’s behavior. In their minds, it’s all about the other person’s not pushing their buttons.

How much more productive it is when they can honestly say, “Wait a moment! These are
my
buttons. It’s
my
job to understand where my reactions come from, what they are about, and how to control them when my buttons get pushed.”

* YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF YOUR BUTTONS. *

And it doesn’t matter what kind of buttons they are. We’ve all met people with sensitive buttons. You can’t be around them a minute without pushing one of their buttons because they are very sensitive. It could be that you’re such a person yourself. But if someone pushes your button, he or she pushes a button for which
you
are responsible and that
you
control.

I’m talking here not only about actions but also about thoughts. Many people easily understand that they make choices about their behavior. They don’t always grasp so easily that they make choices about thoughts and ideas.

But if we had no ability to choose what thoughts we have, then why would God tell us, “Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise”?
⁴
And how could the apostle Paul claim, “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”?
⁵

You are emphatically
not
at the mercy of those who push your buttons. They do not have to control how you react. You do not have to give them the power to determine what you think or what you do. You must take control of yourself.

It’s absolutely crucial to remember that when you choose to tap into the Power of One, you empower yourself. You begin to control what you can control rather than trying to manipulate what will always lie outside of your power.

Some adults remain childishly dependent, unnecessarily needy, and forever at the mercy of anyone willing to take care of them. Whether you’re about to celebrate your eighteenth or your eightieth birthday, you can choose today to take responsibility for yourself. You can choose the Power of One.

Do you ever think that traffic makes you angry? It doesn’t. What makes you angry is how you choose to respond to it. Traffic doesn’t control how you feel. You have the power to take personal responsibility for your reaction to that stalled car in the express lane during the middle of rush hour traffic. You have the ability to tap into the Power of One.

Regardless of the size of your fear button, the Power of One gives you the ability to break the destructive power of the Fear Dance. This goes not only for trivial things like a reaction to stalled traffic but also to big things—even as big as infidelity.

A friend of mine was counseling a Chicago couple trying to weather the horrible storm of infidelity. The husband had begun an online relationship with a woman several states away, and eventually, while claiming to take a business trip, he met her in person. Later in therapy, the husband kept talking about how the affair never would have happened if his wife had taken care of his needs. He said to her, “If you had been more loving…If you had been more accepting…If you had been more physical with me and met my sexual needs.” He continued to point the finger at his wife, refusing to take personal responsibility for his actions.

His strategy obviously didn’t heal the relationship.

Meanwhile, the wife angrily blamed her husband for the affair, insisting that he hadn’t been there for her and that he worked too many hours. She listed fault after fault, never once admitting that, in fact, she really had been neglectful and hadn’t given herself emotionally or physically to her husband.

Her strategy didn’t work especially well either.

“This couple didn’t move forward in a productive way,” my friend said, “until they started pointing their fingers back at themselves and saying, ‘What can
I
do to change to make this marriage better?’ ”

Listen! Do you want great relationships? If so, then you need to learn this new dance step. You need to exercise the Power of One. It’s the only way to experience the true freedom that all great relationships provide.

3. Don’t Give Others the Power to Control Your Feelings
You’ll never know real freedom in your relationships if you insist on letting others control how you feel and what you do with those feelings. Freedom and responsibility are merely two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.

Imagine yourself in a power struggle, a conflict that really makes you upset. What can you do? If you want to remain powerless, you let the other person determine how you feel and how you react. You rant and rave and demand and bully, hoping to get your way. Unfortunately, you’ll probably get the same kind of treatment in return. Michael and Amy found that out in the incident about the cell phone. So what happens? You end up with anger, frustration, and a bleeding, wounded relationship.

On the other hand, you could choose to exercise the Power of One and take personal responsibility. You could remind yourself that in a tug-of-war it takes only one person to drop the rope in order to end the power struggle. As soon as one person drops the rope, the game ends.

Most people don’t realize that they have chosen to participate in the Fear Dance. You may be among them. You may be thinking,
What? Why would I choose to participate in the Fear Dance?
Remember the DNA truth: Not choosing is itself a choice.

Why don’t
you
choose to drop the rope? Why don’t
you
stop the Fear Dance? Why don’t
you
take personal responsibility for your reactions? Why don’t
you
tap into the Power of One?

Most people find it very encouraging to realize that they have the power to stop the dance at any point by choosing not to participate. They can choose. And when you choose to tap into the Power of One, you decisively break the power of the Fear Dance.

4. Don’t Look to Others to Make You Happy
One of the things that will help you take control is clearing up a prevalent misconception. Many of us grew up believing a powerful but very deceptive myth. We completely bought into the idea that relationships are all about back-scratching. You know: “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.” Or, it’s like the myth of the fifty-fifty marriage: “I’ll go halfway if you go halfway.”

* YOU CAN STOP THE FEAR DANCE. *

Have you ever caught yourself or your friends making statements like the following?

• In a successful marriage, both spouses meet all the other’s needs.
  
• The best relationships “complete” those involved; what was half becomes whole.
  
• The best way to find a best friend is to look for someone who can make you happy.
  

Do any of these statements sound familiar? They probably do. Yet despite what you may have been taught, all three statements are false. Myths. Deceptions. Lies!

And if you believe them, they’ll end up costing you
big
.

The truth is, what we often call “needs” normally better fit the category of “wants.” We want others to respect us, admire us, need us. But are those true needs? No one can meet all our needs aside from God himself. If you depend on a spouse to meet your “needs,” you set yourself up for trouble. The relationship becomes an unhealthy, codependent one. Your fulfillment is emphatically
not
the job of someone else. God has given this job to you, and only you can shoulder it. God has promised to meet all of your needs.
⁶
You are the one who cooperates with him and receives his riches as he gives them.

The truth is, neither marriage nor any other human relationship makes one whole out of two halves. When you expect a human relationship to turn your half into a whole, you’re headed for disappointment. Why? Because what really happens is that you believe that this other (flawed) person will make up for your personal deficiencies. This is when your heartache and disappointment and disillusionment double. It’s not hard to see why. In your experience, do two unhappy people normally form one happy couple? Not usually.

The truth is, no one can “make” you happy. Not a spouse. Not a friend. Not a boss or a neighbor or a pastor. Abraham Lincoln spoke wisely when he said, “I reckon that people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” You, and not someone else, choose how you will react to what life throws at you. You, and no one else, decide what you will do when someone pushes your fear button. The practical equivalent of “You will be about as happy as you make up your mind to be” is nothing but “Only by exercising the Power of One—by taking personal responsibility for your actions—will you find the secret to building strong relationships.” Before you finish this book, I will show you how I recently used the Power of One to bring my own stress level to the lowest level of my life. Even my blood pressure dropped. I chose to think about life in a way that miraculously changed me. I share this here because we want you to know that the thoughts you have and your reactions to life determine your level of happiness and fulfillment.

In a passage full of insight about strong relationships, the apostle Paul writes, “If it is possible,
as far as it depends on you
, live at peace with everyone.”
⁷
Paul knew that no one can “make” someone else act in a peaceful way. On the other hand, one person can choose to make the road to peace as smooth as possible. Even if the other person has no interest in peace, you can hold out the proverbial olive branch. And even if he or she doesn’t take it, at least your own heart can enjoy a greater measure of peace than it had before.

This is nothing but the Power of One. And it’s good news! If your entire well-being and delight in life depends on how someone else treats you, then you’re in for a bumpy ride. But if you decide to take control of how you react to the challenges, insults, difficulties, and conflicts that inevitably come your way, then a whole new world opens up—a world marked by peace.

A world, by the way, available only to people who think like adults.

5. Become the CEO of Your Life
When did you become an adult? Don’t answer too quickly! Bob Paul says he didn’t grow up until he was in his thirties. And I didn’t grow up until after I celebrated my fortieth birthday!

How can this be, you ask? Simple. An adult is someone who is fully capable of being responsible for himself or herself and who fully accepts that responsibility. A person who is capable of responsibility but doesn’t accept that responsibility is functioning as a child.

When people take responsibility for themselves, they become empowered as adults. When I finally realized that my own thoughts and reactions were all mine and when I stopped giving others the power over my thoughts, I became an adult. A child is a person who remains completely dependent on others and blames others for his or her emotions or success. An adult is someone who is no longer a child.

By this definition, an adult is someone who takes personal responsibility. Taking personal responsibility, in other words, means accepting the job of an adult. If you refuse to take personal responsibility—if you reject the Power of One—then, in effect, you’re refusing to become an adult.