Walk With Wayne | Newsletter

...Share the Journey ...Retrieve your Self

August 2004 Vol. 2, No. 6

A Monthly Newsletter Published and Created by Wayne Peacock
©2004 Wayne Peacock. All rights reserved.

Issue of the Month

Unmet Needs & Manipulation - We all have wants and needs. The subject of this discourse is how we go about getting our basic needs met.

Most commonly, we attempt to manipulate others to get our unmet needs met. I say "attempt" because others invariably know or sense they are being manipulated and thus resist going along with the ruse. Worse yet for the manipulator is that even when they get the response they are after, the victory is transitory and ultimately hollow. For example, if deep within, we hold a core belief about ourselves that we are not good enough, no amount of external validation from others is going to dissolve our all powerful core belief.

We learn to manipulate early in life. Picture a little boy who feels ignored by his mom or dad. It only takes a small incident to send him running to his bedroom crying loudly so as to manipulate his parent to come and provide the needed attention. His unmet need is to feel seen by and connected with his parents. In his world, he is warmly embraced when he cries after scraping his knee. We accept that behavior. No one would expect a six-year old to identify his emotion as loneliness and then proceed to ask his mom for some relationship building time together. However, as I can attest, the necessary manipulations of a six-year old, keep showing up in our adult life long after we are capable of identifying our emotions and responding in a non-manipulative manner. If asking for what we want was only that easy.

Client of the Month

When Barbara and I began working together, she was functioning as an insurance sales and training specialist. She was proud of her hobby of crafting wood signs but did not seem to have many fun or energetic activities in her life. Neither did she appear to be getting any satisfaction from friends and family. In her 50's, divorced and the mother of two grown children, she provided a much needed, yet burdensome, home for her brother. The issues she brought included a desire for clarity around her career, an intimate and financially secure relationship, and a yearning to receive acknowledgement for her contributions from those she touched. Implicit in her hiring of a life coach was a recognition that what she was doing was not working and that help was needed.

Barbara has courageously moved ahead for seven months in the search for connection and intimacy in the world: to see and be seen, to hear and be heard, to meet and be met without blame, judgment, or fixing. While Barbara has often failed in her search, she has never moved on without an equally determined effort to learn the lessons.

To facilitate her search, Barbara has accepted the challenge of growing her self-awareness, tried on many new perspectives, and begun the job of developing new ways of being with others that both feel good and work magic. A starting point was the placement of her awareness when she is listening. What she found is that when she places her awareness on herself, everything she hears is treated as information for her utility. It is all about her. Connection is not possible. The other person is an object, as opposed to a fellow human being.

Alternatively, when she places her awareness "over there" on the speaker, the speaker feels heard and respected. They are connected and magic is possible. As her self-awareness grew, she began to notice what she felt like when others listened with one ear and had a conversation going on in their head with the other. She felt cheated, ignored, and resentful and guess what, nothing more than an object. That is when the lights went on for Barb. Bingo! Others must feel the same sense of resentment that Barb experiences when the tables are reversed.

The obvious and humiliating conclusion Barb came to over time was that what she wanted most from others, to be seen and heard without judgement, she was unwittingly not giving to them. She was creating the very barriers to intimacy she wished to tear down. The idea started creeping into her head that maybe others were not the source of her problems as she had come to believe. And then she thought, "If I am the creator of my problems, I can also be the solution." With this awakening insight, Barbara now knew that the only person in the universe who needed to change was Barbara.

Barbara has come to accept responsibility for her joy and sorrows. Being responsible can be very difficult but it feels so much better than seeing yourself as a victim. She knows that she is always at choice. In her determination to find out how she could find intimacy and fulfillment, she has discovered how she creates her own suffering. This realization has been both humbling and freeing. Freeing in the sense that she never again needs to drain her precious life-giving energy by manipulating others to meet her needs. Humbling in the sense that it is really very simple after all, intimacy or isolation, she gets to choose. All Barbara needs to remember is that by connecting with, and serving the greater good, she will find many allies and unlimited fulfillment along the path.

While Barbara often finds that old habits of manipulation die hard, she is continuously making decisions and taking action from a place of clarity about what she feels will create the life she wants. Her career interests have shifted from unrewarding work to workshops and small jobs that bring out her aliveness. Her family has helped find alternative housing for her brother, which is a huge relief. She has completely redecorated her home to represent the beauty and passions of her future. In the process she has found how much she enjoys creating, decorating and working with her hands. Most important, she is making choices that serve her needs.

Challenge of the Month

The context for this month's challenge is getting our needs met in a non-manipulative way. The challenge is much more interesting and fun if taken with your partner, a friend, or your book club.

Write each of the following words on a piece of paper and lay the words in a big circle on the floor: intention, deep listening, clarity, ambivalence, presence, connection, asking for help, and non-attachment.
One by one consider and discuss what each of the words means to you. This is a critical step, which may take a half-hour.
Next, each of you choose a need of yours that is not being met, write a word or phrase on a piece of paper, and place it in the middle of the circle. Ideally, the need is one that you have tried unsuccessfully to get met through manipulation.
Now, in silence, choose any word in the circle that jumps out at you, and see how that word could inform you about getting your need met.
Discuss what you learned with you partners.
Then, choose another word in the circle and repeat the process. You can do this with as many words as you want.
Finally, develop and discuss your plan on how you will go about getting the need met in the future without manipulation.
Agree to have a follow-up conversation each week until the need is met.

Muscle of the Month

Muscle #3 - Ask for what you want, accept what you get, and work on your head for the difference:

I have an opinion that the relationships in our society would dramatically improve over night if each of us had the intention of figuring out what we want and need from others and then communicated our needs with courage, simplicity, and humility. I know this to be true in Wayne's World. My experience is that it is basic human nature to want to respond positively to requests for help. I have found that when my relationships are off, everything changes for the better when I pierce through my pride, fear, or ambivalence, find just what it is I need, and then represent those needs to others without demanding they be met.

How often do you hear a story from someone where things have not turned out like they expected? Is it sometimes more than one story in the same conversation? It is hard to resist the temptation to ask, "Did you tell them what you wanted? Did you check out whether your expectations were reasonable? And did you notice that the answer is almost always 'No', followed by a rationalization or excuse?" These victim stories originate in the home and the workplace. They can pervade conversations. They are unsatisfying because someone or something is being blamed for not meeting an unexpressed need.

It does not need to be that way. We can change the relationship by:

1. Taking personal responsibility for clearly communicating our needs.
2. Expressing gratitude for what we receive.
3. Remaining unattached to getting what we ask for.

Monthly Teaching

"A healthy psychological bond means we are honest with each other, verbally and nonverbally. Our ability to be honest is related to the accessibility and flow of our emotions, our freedom from all the stories we've made up about ourselves and our ability to attune to each other and relate from our essence. Our psychological development also reveals itself in our ability to articulate our needs and feelings, and to not worry excessively about our partner's reactions to us."

Charlotte Kasl, If the Buddha Dated, Pg. 66
Penguin Group, NY, NY, 1999

Editor's Note: If you have gotten this far I want you to know that this subject of getting our needs met is deep and wide and one that people have studied and written about for ages. I hold no claim to be addressing any more than a brief introduction as perceived through the mind of an experienced life coach. I welcome any and all comments. I offer a complimentary 30-minute coaching to anyone wanting to work with the material in this newsletter.

Brag of the Month

I applied for and received the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) designation from the International Coach Federation. This is a milestone in my coaching career. I am grateful for the many clients who made this possible.

My remaining goal is to receive the Master Certified Coach (MCC) designation. The requirements are such that it is at least seven years away. Let's see, by that time I'll be how old? Anyway, this is what the third stage of life is about: finding new pathways to intimacy.

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