Click here to view the video on YouTube.

There are 3 parts to the experience Love, and 3 distinct skills of love to master. Find out where you are strong in Love, where you are weak, and the simple steps you can take to master all 3 parts of the experience of Love.

Transcript of the video:

Hi. This is Dmitri Bilgere, and I’d like to talk to you today about the three parts of the experience of love in your life. So much of the work that I do with people is about helping them connect with their experience of love, and I’ve found that when you understand these three parts, or phases, of the experience of love, it actually really helps you bring it into your life.

So what are these three parts?

The first part is: How does love come in to you? How do you receive it? 

So this is really the question I’m asking: When you open yourself to whatever you call it–your blessing current, the love of the universe, God’s love, the love that other people have for you, that the people in your life who love you have for you–when you open yourself up to that loving, blessing current, what is your experience of that like? Do you find that you’re really good at opening up to that and letting that come in and letting that maybe touch the parts of you that are having a difficult time, letting that buoy you up? Or is that more difficult for you to really allow blessing and love in?

This “in” part is the first of the three parts, and it’s important. So that’s my first question for you: How are you at letting that love in?

Second question: Once you take it in, how do you experience it? How do you hold that experience of love, or blessing, or goodness inside of yourself? How does it fill you up? If the act of letting it in is inspirational, how does it fill you up and make you know that you are loved and you have love? That you are blessed and you have blessing?

This is an important part. This is a lot where self-esteem and the ability to believe that you can do things lives. The belief comes from this sense of, “I’m filled up with love and I can dwell in it.”

I’d like to suggest you think of it as a suit of clothes you can step into. If it coming in is somebody giving you the clothes, the experiencing of it–how you hold it inside–is how you wear and put on that sense of blessing and that sense of love.

What’s that like for you? Are you strong in that? Or is that a place where you could use some practice?

 And then the third part is: How does it go out from you? When you’ve said, “Yes, I’m going to allow blessing and the blessing current and love into me,” and you’ve said, “Yes, I’m actually going to experience it inside myself. I’m going to let it fill me up and I’m going to have it,” then you have to ask, what is it like as it flows out into your world? How good are you at loving others? How good are you at blessing your life, both the way it is and having sort of that esteem to believe that, “Yes, I can step out into my plans. I can actually try new things. The love that comes into me and fills me up can flow out into the world.”

It’s a calisthenics you can practice

So as you evaluate yourself, you can ask, “Where am I strong?”

A lot of people I work with are really good at giving love to other people. They’re less good, however, at receiving it for themselves.

Or maybe they can receive it for themselves, but it doesn’t seem to stick with them. So they have an experience where they’re loved or an experience where they feel blessed, but it doesn’t hang around.

Or maybe they’re really good at feeling a lot of esteem for themselves, but they’re not so good at giving it to other people, or trying something new in their lives and believing that that something new can go well.

So I want to suggest to you that each of these is a discrete experience you can open yourself up to.

• What’s it like when it comes in? How good are you at that?
• What’s it like when you experience it and hold it? How good are you at that?
• And what’s it like when it flows out?

If you’re only good at one part of this, see how it feels to go to the others. Very often I work with people who are good at loving, but not so good at receiving love, so I’ll say, “Great. This love is coming out of you. Imagine you’re loving someone you love or something you love. Feel how for that to happen you have to be filled up with love. And feel how for you to be filled up with love, that has to come into you from somewhere else. And you can get those links in the chain. Now feel how it feels to move from the loving out to the holding love inside for you. Feel how it moves from that to the sense of receiving it as it pours into you. And feel it coming back to you. And feel it going out.”

It’s almost like a calisthenics you can do to get better at the three parts of love. Because I want to see you being able to turn in the moment and receiving love and blessing from the people who love you, from the universe, from whatever higher power you believe in. I want to have you be able to really fill up with it and walk around in your life with this sense that you’re filled to the brim with love and blessing. And I want you to really be able to let that spill out into your life so you can give it to others, so you can create a better world for you and for the rest of us.

So let me know what you think in the comments. Ask any questions, give me your opinions. And this is Dmitri Bilgere, until next time, signing off.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Too often we use “integrity” and “accountability” to beat ourselves up — or to beat up other people.

I think we can do better than that.

And after blowing my own word — right after teaching about accountability on a recent men’s weekend — I learned some great new stuff about integrity, accountability, and the state of your heart.

I’ve posted what I learned in the video above.

Integrity is an important tool for creating great things in your life. There’s no doubt about that.

But if you blow your integrity, you must know how to handle it so you can get back on track, feeling even better than before.

… And that’s where most of us fail.

When you blow your integrity, it’s not enough to “own” that you did it. It’s not enough to “get back into integrity” with other people.

You have to look at what happened in your heart when you didn’t keep your word.

In this video I share a new view of accountability that takes your heart into account… Because it does no good to “get back into integrity” with other people, if, deep inside, you’ve given up on yourself.

If you are at all interested in integrity and accountability, I really think you’ll want to watch this video.

P.S. Please share this video with anyone you think might appreciate it. I know it’s an issue a lot of people struggle with; hopefully this will help.

If you’d like to be updated when I post new articles and videos, sign up in the sidebar to the right.

There’s a Fundamental Mistake at the core of every loss of heart:

Believing that if you can’t see a way towards achieving your heart’s longing, it means that there is no way forward.

There you are, pursuing your heart’s longing. Perhaps it’s to find a great job, or to build a great relationship, or to lose weight and develop stellar fitness.

You’re buzzing along, but then something gets in the way.

What “gets in the way” will vary. It may be that you’ve tried everything you can think of, but still can’t seem to land the job you want. Or it may be that you’ve tried “spicing things up” with your spouse, but your spouse hasn’t responded. Or it may be you tried dieting, but diet food all tastes like sawdust and is flat-out boring to eat.

You hit a problem that is in the way, and you can’t seem to get past it.

In the face of that problem, you make the Fundamental Mistake: On a subconscious level you conclude, “I’ve tried everything, and nothing works to bring me closer to achieving my heart’s longing. Therefore, there must not be a way forward.”

And that’s the moment you lose heart.

From then on you are likely to head in the wrong direction

Once people have lost heart, they usually go into analysis mode. They ask, “Why didn’t it work? Why did I hit that problem?”

After they’ve figured out the “why,” they go into “fix-it” mode. They start taking action to fix their situation, to try to make it go the way they want it to.

For instance, a person might say, “The reason why I can’t achieve my heart’s longing is that I’m too lazy. I’ll fix it by making myself work harder.”

Or a person might say “The reason why I can’t achieve my heart’s longing is because my family isn’t supportive of me. I’ll fix it by confronting them and getting them to be more supportive.”

There are endless numbers of “whys” and “fix-its.” But the bottom line is this:

The “whys” and “fix-its” don’t help, because you haven’t cared for the state of your heart.

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You have to look at who you are being when you ask “why” and when you try to “fix it”

Once you’ve lost heart, you pursue your “whys” and your “fix its” as the person who has already accepted that there’s no way forward.

And that doesn’t work well.

You can verify this by answering these three simple questions:

• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how good are you at taking truly inspired, innovative action? Probably not very good.
• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how good are the decisions that you make? Probably pretty poor.
• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how well are you able to analyze why something didn’t work, and what your next actions should be? Probably not very well.

Once you’ve accepted the idea that there’s no way forward, you’ve become a person who already knows that you are doomed. Yes, you can take action as that person, but those actions will be guided by your loss of heart, so they probably won’t work out very well.

You can’t just think your way out of it

Upon hearing this, many people say, “I’d better stop doing that! I’ll stop deciding that there’s no way forward!”

That doesn’t work, because losses of heart happen in the blink of an eye. You are pursuing what you long for, you hit a big enough problem, and you subconsciously accept that there’s no way forward. Subtly, something inside of you crumbles. The loss of heart occurs. It happens fast.

You can’t prevent loss of heart retroactively. You have to get good at noticing when it has happened, and at caring for yourself when it does.

Pretending that it doesn’t happen, or trying to police your every thought to keep it from happening, will only make you go nuts.

The good news: Just because you can’t see a way forward doesn’t mean you can’t be shown

Fortunately, just because you can’t see a way forward, doesn’t mean you can’t be shown one.

However, you can’t be shown a new way forward, unless you

• admit that you’ve lost heart, and
• are willing to open to the healing of your hurting heart.

Admitting you’ve lost heart. First, you have to admit that you’ve lost heart. For most people, the experience of accepting the idea that there’s no way forward is so painful that they don’t admit that it’s actually happened. They “double down” and try harder, acting with increasing force and desperation.

To be shown a new way, you have to be willing to admit that you’ve lost heart. You need to be willing to say, “Wow, when I’m pursuing my heart’s longing, and something gets in the way, I do lose heart. And the way I lose heart is I accept the idea that there’s no way forward. Wow, I really do that sometimes. Ow.”

That’s a fundamentally different approach than simply asking “Why didn’t it work?,” and trying to fix it, as a person who believes there’s no way forward. When you admit that you’ve lost heart, you are taking your healing process in an entirely different — and far more effective — direction.

Being open to the healing of your hurting heart. Second, if you want to be shown a new way forward, you have to be open to the healing of the hurt your heart experienced when you accepted the idea there’s no way forward.

I help people do this by guiding them to turn to their Source — by whatever name they have for it — and to bring their hurting heart with them to that Source.

This is where you use your compassion to “gather up” the part of you that has bought the idea that there’s no way forward. Then you turn, with expectation, to the Highest, Most Merciful Reality that you can imagine.

As you turn, you ask this question: “Is it really true that, just because I can’t see a way forward toward my heart’s longing, that there really isn’t one?”

You then bathe in the Light, until you experience some sort of transformational answer to that question.

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What sort of answer will you get?

I can’t tell you exactly what sort of answer you’ll get when you do this, because the thing about transformation is, it’s unpredictable.

When you open yourself to be transformed in the areas where you’ve accepted that there’s no way forward, you can’t know in advance what you’re going to be shown.

I have noticed, however, that transformation tends to fall into a couple of distinct categories:

The transformation of Insight. Sometimes when a person turns to Something Higher, they get a clear insight. They see something new, generally along the lines of, “Hey, it’s not true that I’m fated to never find a new way forward. In fact, I really could think about my problem this way: [New insight about a way forward, or a new way of thinking about the problem].” They feel charged up to take a new action and often have a clear direction.

The transformation of Assurance. Other times, a person gets a new sense of being loved and cared for even when they don’t see a way forward right away. They feel a new level of compassion for themselves, generally along the lines of, “Wow, I start to see that there is love for me, even when I’m having a hard time. Now that I see that, I may not know the exact route forward, but I know if I keep following this love, there’s a good chance I’ll be shown one.” They feel calm, warm, and able to “stick with it” in the pursuit of their longings.

And, of course, sometimes you get both.

Having told you these things, I feel I also should give you a warning: While it’s a good idea to turn with a sense of expectation, it’s always a bad idea to turn with a specific picture of what your transformation “ought to” look like. The key is that that you are opening to something beyond your own thoughts, in order to discover how transformation comes to you. It’s a process of discovery — don’t let your thoughts about what you “should” be receiving get in the way of what you are receiving.

What you can change, starting right now

To review:

You lose heart when you are pursuing something your heart longs for. Something gets in the way that you can’t seem to get past. And you accept the idea that, because you can’t see a path to what you long for, there is no way forward.

In the face of that happening, you are likely to try to figure out why you got stopped, and to go into “fix-it” mode.

That doesn’t work well, though, because when you take action as someone who’s accepted the idea that there’s no way forward, you’re actions aren’t going to be particularly innovative or inspired.

I’m suggesting that, from now on, you start to notice when you’ve accepted the idea that there’s no way forward. And I’m suggesting that, when that happens, you take the time to care for your heart that is hurting.

Rather than asking “Why did that happen, and how can I fix it,” try admitting that you’ve lost heart. Turn to your Source with the question, “Is it true I’m fated to not find a way forward toward my deepest longing?” Receive healing and insight, and bring that renewed energy and resource into your pursuit of the life you long for.

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It takes attentiveness and practice, but the result — being able to keep moving toward the life you really long for — is worth the effort. I’ve seen this happen with scores of people I’ve worked with, and experienced it myself.

If you’d like help with any part of this process, you can send me a private message with your question on my coaching page (link opens in a new window), or leave a comment here in the comments section below. Either way, I’d love to hear how this lands with you.

Related posts:

• Maybe you shouldn’t jump off a cliff
• Everything is personal
• Why can’t you just visualize a crosswalk, then step into traffic?
• Self-compassion: Healing’s secret ingredient

And it is.

But we do take things personally, because we are people… and simply deciding to stop taking things personally isn’t going to work.

Let me explain…

You’re a person. I’m a person. Anyone who’s reading this is a person (or perhaps an exceptionally smart dog).

We’re persons, so we have personal relationships. That’s the kind of relationship persons have.

We’re not robots, having robotic relationships. If we were, perhaps we’d be able to just flip a switch and not take things personally any more.

But, like I said, we are persons.

And as a person, not only do you make it personal when things happen to you — you do it in an instant, far too quickly to stop before it happens.

So the question is NOT “how do I stop taking things personally?”

The question is, “How do I handle it when taking things personally is messing up my life?”

This is important, and goes a lot deeper than it looks on the surface. In fact, I’d say that this propensity to take things personally, and not knowing you are doing it, touches every area of your life.

In this post I’m going to share with you what you can do about taking things personally in your life. Plus — as Morpheus said to Neo in “The Matrix” — we’ll see how deep this rabbit hole really goes.

Why did that driver cut you off?

We’ve all had it happen. You’re in traffic, driving along, minding your own business, and somebody comes screaming down the road and cuts you off.

That’s a perfect example of something that would be great to not take personally. But sometimes you do. And when you do take it personally, it’s too late to stop it from happening — you have to deal with the personal relationship that you created.

That’s right… When you took it personally, you created a personal relationship with that driver.

How do I know? Well, if I were to ask you about that person who cut you off — and if you were to answer me without editing yourself — you would know all about him. You might say “That dude is a jerk! He thinks he owns the road! And he thinks it’s okay to just cut me off in traffic! And did you see how he was tailgating me earlier? That guy is out to get me!”

Our knee-jerk life-response is to create a personal relationship — with someone we’ve never seen, and don’t know — and to believe we already know everything about him.

And yeah, we generally don’t say, “Wow, that guy must be having a bad day!” We make a story that they are a bad person, and develop a relationship with the “bad person” in that story.

You won’t be surprised to hear me say that taking things personally like that is not a great way to live. It makes you tense and jumpy. It builds a backlog of anger inside of you that you end up dumping on some other innocent person. It makes you feel like you are the victim of life. It sucks.

Fortunately, it doesn’t have to end there.

The heart knows truth from falsehood

It is said that “the heart knows truth from falsehood.” That means that the human heart responds well to things that true, authentic, and wholesome, and responds poorly to things that are false, incongruent, and unwholesome.

We see this in healing work all the time: When a person has an authentic emotional transformation, everyone present feels it in their hearts. When that person speaks, people feel their hearts touched by the truth of their words. It feels good to be around.

By the same token, if a person says they’ve had an emotional transformation, but haven’t, people there feel that in their hearts, too. Something doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel complete. The falsehood is apparent to the human heart, and we feel it.

And the heart is like a mirror

Of course, the truth of the heart is not always easy to read. The poet Rumi talks about how the heart is like a mirror for the truth, but the mess of our lives gets all over it, and can make that truth-light hard to see. He says, “Set about polishing your mirror!,” and I think that’s good advice.

One way to polish the mirror of your heart is to start feeling into your heart to perceive the truth in it. To turn to your heart in open questioning, in the expectation of being shown something beautiful.

In the situation with the driver who cut you off, you can ask yourself, “When I feel into my heart, is it really true that that driver is just a bad person who is out to get me?”

When you ask your heart the truth about that other driver, and really listen for the answer, it changes the personal relationship you are having with that driver.

• You start to open to a flow of something new, generally love and compassion.
• Instead of having all the answers, you start sincerely questioning.
• You start to listen inside for something good, where before you mostly had a lot to say about something bad.
• Your heart starts to feel the goodness that you weren’t feeling before.

By simply asking your heart, “is it really true that driver is a bad person who is out to get me?,” that relationship starts to change — and you start to change with it.

So let’s look deeper down this “rabbit hole.”

These automatic “taking-it-personally” relationships don’t only happen with other people.

They also happen with life itself.

And when that happens, it doesn’t just impact your morning commute, or what it’s like to be in traffic.

Your “automatically personal” relationship with life controls everything.

Why didn’t life give you what you want, when you wanted it?

So here’s the question:

When it feels like life is “cutting you off in traffic,” what personal relationship do you form with it?

You can answer this by asking yourself, “What types of things do I say when life doesn’t go my way?”

For instance, a lot of people say things like this:

• “It’s just my luck.”
• “Of COURE that happened to me.”
• “This ALWAYS happens to me.”
• “It’s Murphy’s Law!”
• “Life isn’t fair.”
• “I might have known.”

Many people develop an attitude of “it’s just my luck” or “of course that would happen to me.” It’s important to look at that. It’s not just a cute pessimism or an ironic world-weary attitude.

When you take life personally — which we all do, because we are people — you make the force behind your life into a “person” that you have a relationship with… just like you had a relationship with the guy who cut you off in traffic.

So…

Just as the way you take the guy cutting you off in traffic defines your relationship with him…

The way you take life personally defines your relationship with the force behind your life… That is, it defines your relationship with your Divine.

It defines the Divine

When you’ve made it personal that life doesn’t give you what you want, it defines your Divine as one that holds back on you, trips you up, and is out to get you.

In short, you are believing in a certain kind of a higher power that made you to experience that bad luck. You’ve defined a Divine who is against you in some way.

It’s worth taking a moment to really look at the results of doing that.

How good are you at really bringing your best self to your life when you are believing in a Divinity that has set up the world to work against you, for you to have bad luck, and to naturally be on the losing end of “life isn’t fair”?

You’ll probably agree that, when you are feeling like that, you are not going to bring your best self to your life. In fact, you’re probably going to bring your resigned, dejected, unenthusiastic, cynical, resentful, already-defeated self to life. And that’s not good.

Feeling the truth in your heart

Fortunately, the heart knows truth from falsehood.

Just like you asked your heart “Is it true that the guy who cut me off in traffic is just a jerk who’s out to get me?,” you can ask your heart if the Divine is personally out to get you, too.

You can ask, “When I feel into this in my heart, is that really the way the Divine — the Highest, most Merciful reality — is?”

When you ask your heart the truth about the Divine, and really listen for the answer, it changes the personal relationship you are having with the Divine.

• You start to open to a flow of something new, generally love and compassion.
• Instead of having all the answers, you start sincerely questioning.
• You start to listen inside for something good, where before you mostly had a lot to say about something bad.
• Your heart starts to feel the goodness that you weren’t feeling before.

By simply asking your heart, “is it really true that the Divine is cursing me and out to get me?,” that relationship starts to change.

How have you taken life personally?

It’s worth asking yourself these questions:

• How have I taken life personally?
• Do I hear myself saying things like “it’s just my luck”?
• If so, what kind of a “person” am I relating to as the architect of that bad luck?
• How has my taking it personally defined my Divine?”

Then you can remember that the heart knows truth from falsehood, and ask your heart,

• Is it true that the Divine is really out to get me, or trip me up?

When you let yourself feel into the answer to that, your relationship with your Divine will change, open and grow… and your entire life can change with it.

I’m not saying relationships should come down to that. But often they do. People assemble evidence about how their partner is being a jerk. They gather supporters to back up their point of view. And they create plans and take action to put a stop to this jerky behavior, once and for all.

While it’s certainly true that other people sometimes do things that should not be tolerated, it’s dangerous to jump to conclusions too quickly about who the jerk is in a situation.

I’d like to give you a real example from my life, in a little Holiday Story I call,

Who’s the Jerk Here? A Holiday Story by Dmitri Bilgere

Jerky, Jerky Fawn

My wife, Fawn, had been being very unreliable recently (even by her own admission). I’m not going to go into the embarrassing details, but she had been going through a time of frequently saying she was going to do things — sometimes important things — and either not doing them, or putting them off for so long I had to do them for her.

(And by the way, she okay’d me sharing this story. Thanks, Fawn! )

Anyway, this unreliability was becoming very upsetting to me. It wasn’t like she was too busy. She had plenty of time to do other things. But when she told me she would do something, she would consistently — and from where I sat, deliberately — not do it.

Here I was, working my fingers to the bone! And she wasn’t even doing the few minor things she said she would! And it was going on, and on!

And at the holidays, too!

Surely she was the jerk in this situation.

Right?

Time to Do Some Healing

I decided to do the same kind of healing on myself that I do with my phone coaching clients.

When I’m talking to a client, the first step is always to find out what they want help with.

So I asked myself,

Okay, Dmitri. What do you want help with here?

I realized that I wanted help holding my wife to account to do what she said she would do.

That led to the second question:

Why did I want that? What was the longing in my heart I was trying to fulfill by being better at holding her to account?

I realized that I really, truly, wanted to feel like Fawn and I were on the same team. I wanted to feel like we were standing side-by-side facing the world together, and like I could count on her in our relationship.

And that led to the next question:

What was I getting instead?

What I was getting instead was that my wife was being really unreliable. It seemed like I couldn’t count on her.

That’s what I was getting instead of the “team” feeling that my heart longed for.

And that behavior was what I was complaining about.

I think a lot of people would leave it there. “Here’s the behavior I don’t like in my partner. I can prove she’s being a jerk. Everyone agrees. How can I get her to change?”

They’d then set about figuring out ways to “deal with it.”

And That’s Where Ya Gotta Look Deeper

While it’s true that not all behavior is acceptable, I think it’s important to look at the state of your heart before responding to a difficult circumstance.

In my case, I had to answer the next question:

In the face of the circumstance where your wife is being unreliable and you can’t count on her, how do you lose heart?

This was important, because how I lost heart goverened how I showed up in the relationship.

And I realized that in the face of her being unreliable, I had started to lose heart by believing that I  had to expect nothing of her.

And that’s where things started to get interesting.

Jerky, Jerky Dmitri

Rather than focusing solely on what Fawn was bringing to the relationship, I started to look at what I was bringing, too.

I asked myself:

When I believed that I had to expect nothing of Fawn, how did that lead me to treat her?

It turns out that it led me to treat her pretty poorly. I was treating her like she was capable of nothing. Like she wasn’t really competent. Like I’d naturally have to clean up her messes, and take care of everything in our relationship myself.

I saw who I had turned into:

I had turned into a jerk.

Two Can Play the Jerk Game

You know, we get so caught up in defending ourselves against the bad behavior of others that we rarely take the time to look at who we become in the face of that bad behavior.

I see this in my coaching work all the time.

When people are upset with their partners, they usually want to articulate what they are upset about so they can figure out “the best way to handle it.”

I was doing that, too: Fawn wasn’t keeping her word. Therefore, I had to figure out a way to make her keep her word. End of story.

But in the coaching I do, I don’t help people articulate what upsets them about their partner so they can defend themselves better against their partner.

In my work, I help people articulate what upsets them about their partner for the purpose of discovering how they give up on love.

Then I help them heal their heart that has given up, so they can put beauty into their relationship, and be a positive influence on their partner — no matter how their partner is behaving.

In my case, I had given up on love by accepting the idea that I had to expect nothing of my wife.

I want to be a great husband — a man who lifts his wife up and builds up the relationship, even when things are difficult.

But instead, I was being a husband who expected her to not keep her word. Who thought poorly of her. Who looked down on her.

Jerk, jerk, jerk.

Dmitri Learns a Holiday Lesson

Next I really looked at the state of my heart, by asking the question,

What does it do to your heart to believe you have to expect nothing of your wife?

When I really looked, I saw that taking on that belief broke something inside of me.

I saw how in the circumstances of Fawn being unreliable, I actually took the step of concluding that I was fated to a relationship where I could expect nothing.

And that belief broke my heart.

Turning to the “Blessing Current”

The healing coaching I do has two parts: The first is really facing the heartbreaking fate that you’ve accepted as true. I had done that part. I was honestly seeing how, when Fawn was unreliable, I took on the belief that I was fated to having to expect nothing of her.

The second part is acknowledging that when you’re believing in a heartbreaking fate, you are not in touch with your internal “Blessing Current” — whatever you might call it — and opening yourself up to experiencing that Blessing Current again.

When I then turned to that Blessing Current in myself, and let that Light begin to touch my broken heart, things started to change.

What I Started to See

As I started to feel the Blessing Light touch that hurting place in my heart, things immediately began to lighten for me.

As that place in my heart filled with Light, I started to see that my wife actually needed me to expect more from her … but, just as much as she needed me to expect more from her, she also needed me to believe in her.

I started to see that she needed me to see her greatness, and expect it, and believe in it.

I also started to remember times of seeing greatness in her, and her inner “solidity.” I started to see that the way to expect more of her was to relate to that great and solid part of her, to “put my heart next to her solidity.”

I realized that I really could expect more of her — not in a judgmental, domineering way, but as the man who truly sees her greatness and solidity, and who relates to her from that space.

And I started to see that, from that space, there was a real route forward for the two of us to be powerful in the world, together.

My heart felt full of love, and very close to her. I was no longer upset. And I returned to our relationship a different, better man.

My heart was healed, and I was naturally able to stop being a jerk.

The State of Your Heart Opens or Closes Doors

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that how you expect people to behave influences how they actually behave.

There have been plenty of studies that show that if a teacher expects a student to succeed, the student is more likely to do well… And that if a teacher expects a student to fail, then that student is more likely to do poorly.

When I was expecting nothing of Fawn, I was constantly sending her signals that said, “Go ahead and screw up … I know you are going to.” That environment of expectation made it really easy for her to not do what she said she’d do.

Once I made the shift to putting my heart next to her greatness, and started relating to her from there, my behavior changed. And as a result, I now see her competence — even if she might not. I’m treating her differently, and that’s making it easier for her to do what she says.

And the best part is, I’m not faking it, or pretending to see it, or claiming to expect more, while secretly expecting nothing. I truly see her greatness. From there, expecting more is natural.

So… Has it Helped?

I’m happy to tell you that things have improved with Fawn. Since I started relating to her greatness and solidity, and stopped treating her like she was going to fail to keep her word, she has become more focused and motivated. It feels to both of us like a door has opened…a door I was previously holding closed.

And that’s more likely to make for a happy holiday season for us both.

The Next Chapter is up to You

This story is a reminder that when your heart is upset, you aren’t bringing your best self to your life. And it’s a reminder to take the time to care for your heart when other people’s behavior is upsetting you.

I’m not saying you should never confront anyone. I’m not saying that you should never leave any relationship, or that you should just put up with any behavior.

But I am saying that when you see how you lose heart when someone behaves poorly — and heal that loss of heart — you become someone who can act for the best, from a clear place, no matter what you end up doing.

And that will bring harmony and beauty into your life … a great thing, at any time of year.

Wishing you happy holidays and a joyous new year,

Dmitri Bilgere

The body, like a mother, is pregnant with the spirit child.
Death is the labor of birth.
And all the spirits on the other side are waiting
To see how that proud birth shall occur.
– Rumi

[This is a repost of the eulogy I wrote for Jen in 2004.]

My former girlfriend and current close friend, Jen, died Friday, August 13th, 2004 at 1020am.

It was her third round with breast cancer, and this time it metastasized to basically everywhere. She was 33 years old.

I was present with her for her last week in the hospital, and there when she passed. It was amazing.

I got to see a life in which it was fairly clear what she came to give, and what she came to learn.

I believe Jen came to give love, and she gave a lot of it to a lot of people.

I also believe that Jen came here with a question, which was something along the lines of this:

Do people really, really love me? Will they be there for me? Am I lovable?

He life really helped her ask that question. She was adopted, so her original parents weren’t there for her in the way she wanted. She never had a stable father figure. She tended to chose men who couldn’t really stay with her, and those who tried to stay she would, by her own admission, drive away.
There were times when I feared that she would die believing that she was unloved, bitter and alone. Thankfully, that did not happen.
At the end, I think she got what she came for: she was surrounded by friends, and really got it that she was loved.
I believe she died with the answer to her question. I believe she died knowing that she was loved.
So — while it certainly is tragic that she died, and so young — her life was a success.

Things I learned from Jen

When Jen found out she was terminal, she took on life at an incredibly inspiring level. She tooks risks she never would have taken before, with love, with her time, with her money. She traveled. She connected with people. She “got it” that life wasn’t permanent. It was very impressive to see.

The night before she passed, I had a dream in which she told me to make a list of the things I had learned from how she lived once she learned she was terminal. Here they are:

Make beautiful things, and cause beautiful things to be made.

Jen really took this on in a big way in her final months. In fact, the day before she died, some stained glass windows she had commissioned were ready, so they were brought to her hospital room.

Take pictures of places and people you love, and put them up where you can see them.

She became an avid photographer, documenting her life, sights she loved, and the people she loved. When she died she was in the middle of a project of putting dozens of 8×10 photos in frames and up on her walls.

Have your home be an ongoing project of increasing beauty. Make it an expression of what is best about you.

About a month before her death, Jen started redecorating her home. I have to admit, my first thought about that was, “You are going to die soon, why redecorate?” But I quickly realized that truth of it: If you aren’t going to make your life the way you want it when you are teminal, then when are you going to?

She was having the walls painted the colors she always wanted, having molding put up, some new floors…really making it beautiful in the way she wanted.

Customize your life as much as you can. Have a “signature” style.

In Jen’s case, her signature style became pink and tulips. She loved both of them, pink tulips especially.

A few weeks before she died, she gave up driving, because she didn’t want to have a stroke and kill someone. But she did still want some freedom to move, so she got a scooter, saying “Then at least I probably won’t kill anyone else if I die on it.”

And to customize it — she got a pink helmet, and was having it painted pink.

The stained glass she had made was also customized — with beautiful pink tulips.

When you love, love. When you get your heart broken, be hurt, be mad, move on.

Jen had intense loves, and intense disappointments. When she was disappointed she had strong feelings, but eventually seemed to let them go, and move on.

Hire people to help you if you can. Being surrounded by beauty is worth effort and expense.

I know I try to “go it alone” in my home, and usually fail to keep it as beautiful as I’d like. Jen hired the people she could to help her make her home work. Though not everyone has money to hire people to help, the idea of getting help is a solid one.

Don’t forgo making thing beautiful in favor of getting things done.

At the end of her life, Jen saw the importance of taking the time to have a beautiful environment. That really made a difference to me.

There is risk in life. If you want to ride the roller-coaster, ride it.

A few months before her death, Jen went to Disney World — with over a hundred tumors in her brain.

The doctors told her, “If you ride the rollercoasters, you could die.” But she loved the rollercoasters.

So she rode them. As she said to me before her trip, “I want to live my life as long as I can. If I die on the rollercoasters, at least I was living.”

Make yourself as pretty as you can, and enjoy doing it.

As her former boyfriend, I can attest that she used to spend a lot of time making herself pretty — but she never really enjoyed it. She was often ashamed of her appearance, and suffered about her weight, quite a lot.

In the last months of her life she let go of scolding and shaming herself, and really seemed to enjoy looking as good as she could — even as she lost her hair, or swelled up on steroids. Her enjoyment of looking as good as she could make her even more beautiful, and a lot more relaxed.

It’s worth time, effort and money to have a beautiful life. Love silly things without reservation.

Pink things, flowery things…Jen became increasingly willing to love silly things, and take pleasure in that love.

Thank you, Jen, for what you gave me, and what you taught me.

–Dmitri Bilgere

In fact, I’ve probably said it once or twice myself.

But there’s a problem with saying “My problem is I’m too nice.” I’ve noticed that, most of the time, the people who say it are often the same people who can be overly harsh and sometimes even mean.

Yes, sometimes they are “doormats” for the world, but at other times, if anything, they go overboard with compensating for that, in the pursuit of not being “too nice.”

And in my observation, that has never helped their situations.

Today I’d like to help you get to what is really going on if you find yourself thinking “My problem is I’m too nice,” and offer some guidance of where you really need to look if you feel like you’ve been stuck being a doormat.

The man who was betrayed in business once too often

I’m thinking about this because I had a client come to me recently, complaining that his problem was he was “too nice.”

For most of his career he had worked with people who didn’t give him the respect he thought he deserved. His experience was that they treated him like a second-class citizen, and that they betrayed him and “cut him out” of the good, profitable, or interesting work without a second thought when it seemed like it would benefit them.

And he had evidence for this — it wasn’t just a baseless, groundless fantasy. In fact, he had quite a lot to say on the subject.

But because he felt like he didn’t have any other options, he had put up with this for years. He’d swallow his pride and wait for them to behave in ways that were more to his liking.

But he recently had experienced the “last straw.” Someone he’d worked with for years on building a profitable venture started selling an almost identical product to their joint customers and not sharing the revenue with him.

And he was extremely angry about it.

He was ready to “stop being too nice.”

But…

It still felt like he didn’t have any good options. He came to me feeling like his only options were to either roll over and “just take it,” or to destroy everything he’d worked for in a big confrontation. And even though he was sick of being “too nice,” the idea of destroying what he’d worked for didn’t sound very good to him, either.

He also found his mind was obsessing about what his associates had done, and endlessly running unsatisfying conversations in his head about the current situation, past similar situations, what he should say, what he should have said, what they must be thinking to treat him that way, and so on.

He was further confused by the fact that he actually DID like a lot about these people. He knew they weren’t evil. They had long-standing friendships. But yet, he constantly felt mistreated.

All this mental upset left him feeling even less prepared for a confrontation with his business associates. He was afraid he’d act crazily, start yelling, or apologize and retreat into being a doormat again.

With all the pain it was putting him in, “stopping being too nice” wasn’t seeming like such a great option. But it was the only thing he could think of. He sure couldn’t stand being a doormat anymore.

Finding the upsetting “fate”

When you are upset about something, it’s important to figure out what is really upsetting you, or it becomes very difficult to heal.

The truth was, “being too nice” wasn’t what was really upsetting my client. Therefore the solution he was finding — “be less nice” — wasn’t seeming helpful to him.

It was as if a doctor gave him a prescription for a disease he didn’t have. It wasn’t helpful.

As my friend James Keeley says, “When you are upset about something, you need to look at the fate that you are believing you are being stuck with.”

“My problem is I’m too nice” isn’t a statement about what my client believed his fate was. It is actually a made-up explanation about why things are the way they are.

As I worked with my client, he began to see that he was, in fact, actually upset because he was believing in a fate that was far beyond simply “being too nice.”

He was believing that he was fated to always be betrayed in business.

That core belief about his future fate was what was really making him crazy.

As we explored the impact of that belief, he saw that it left him either

1) resigning himself to being a doormat in business or

2) coming out swinging, hitting hard and basically “getting them before they can do it to me again.”

He began to see that as long as he believed that it was a fact that he was going to get betrayed, it didn’t matter how good he became at “not being too nice.” He was being “the guy who always got betrayed in business.”

He’d be going into those conversations already knowing how they were going to end, and subconsciously not allowing for any other option.

Trying to fix “being too nice” was working on the wrong problem. The fate of always being betrayed was still in the background, governing how things would turn out.

And that belief was what needed to change.

Turning to the light of his deepest heart

My client didn’t need to worry about being “too nice” or “not nice enough.” He needed to turn to his experience of something greater and get perspective on whether or not it was really, actually true that the universe was set up so that he was always fated to be betrayed in business.

While many of my clients think in terms of a Higher Power in these conversations, what worked best for him was to turn to “the light of his deepest heart.”

As we went through the process of turning to the light of his deepest heart, he began to see that there was a love for him in the universe, and for his business dealings, that went beyond anything he ever imagined.

The softness of that light and love helped him begin to sense that there were other behavior options than being “too nice” or being “too harsh.”

As he started feeling that other options were available to him, he began to feel at peace with the situation. He began to feel the inner resource he needed to be able to speak in a powerful, direct way to his business associates about what was going on, without being a doormat, and without being too harsh.

Furthermore, as he spent time turned to his inner light, he began to sense that he was on a path in life, and that he didn’t have to worry about getting where he was going to go.

He began to see that, on that path, he would be given the “right things to say,” and didn’t need to pre-practice his conversations with his associates. He began to relax.

And as he spent time feeling the energy of these insights, he started to see that he had other options in his life, and that he didn’t need to keep working with people who didn’t treat him with respect.

He said, “I’m seeing that I’ve been acting like someone who isn’t valuable to work with, so that’s how people have been treating me.” He actually became excited about the thought of finding new people to work with, rather than depressed by it. At the same time, he became also open to being treated better by the people he worked with.

In that moment, he stopped living as “the guy who is fated to get betrayed in business” (and who therefore needed to “stop being so nice”), and started living as someone who was clear about what he wanted and knew that there were options for him in the world, outside of the group of people with whom he had been working.

And equally importantly, he felt freed from having to obsess about the situation. “I don’t feel the compulsion to think about it all the time,” he told me.

Now it’s your turn…

So next time you are upset about something, ask yourself,

– “What unpleasant fate does this situation make me think I’m doomed to?”, or

– What does it seem like your life going to have to be like because of this upsetting situation?”

Once you face what’s actually upsetting you, you can bring that to your own experience of your inner Blessing Energy, be it your Higher Power, Deepest Heart, or whatever works for you.

You can ask, “Is it true that I’m fated to this?,” and let yourself experience the energy and blessing that comes with the answer.

I haven’t heard back yet from my client about what happened next in his situation, but you can probably sense that the internal shift he made could make a huge difference. He had become a man who could go into difficult business conversations as someone who had other options, rather than someone who was fated to be betrayed. The odds of having some good, positive outcome went up exponentially.

I invite you to post your results and/or questions below.

This is a video of me and Fawn! We’re getting married August 2nd, 2008. I was really touched by how many people sent emails congratulating us, wanting to be kept “in the loop” for new developments in the work I’m doing, and who sent relationship advice for us soon-to-be newlyweds.  I’m gonna share the advice I’ve gotten so far in a moment, but I also want to extend this invitation. Please add your comment below answering the question:

What ONE PIECE OF ADVICE would you give me and Fawn about relationships?  

Here’s the advice I’ve been emailed so far: 

• “Marriage is like a prostate exam, a Super Bowl party and the Eucharist all at the same time.”
• “Scott Peck said there are two reasons to get married; one is to have children and the second is for the friction.”
• “Enjoy the ride, savour every moment.”
• “Remember, planning a wedding can case a divorce before you get married. ( joke… but contains a lot of truth)”
• “Yes, it is a time consuming adventure to integrate two lives, AND the richness and potential goes up exponentially!”
• “May I say it does limit who you play with from now on (in my opinion). Hence the saying, marry your best friend.”
• “After 23 years, we keep growing closer and connected, our love still shines.”
• “As a meaningful gift to you two I would like to suggest the best information on growning a close relationship: ‘The Relationship Cure’ by John Gottman and Joan Declaire http://www.gottman.com/marriage/. And their DVD has been the best investment for me on this subject.”
• “In the Latin. Ad multos annos: to many years!”
• “The only thing more important than a marriage is a birth! Oh yeah, death is pretty important event too!”
• “I find I still have much work to do and in marriage many more opportunities to do my work. The art of forgiveness is a big plus. Knowing ‘this too shall pass’ is great lesson. Remembering the love I have known for the woman I can not understand in the moment holds me present when I want to abandon. Finding the gold in the buttons she pushes, triggers in me about what I wanted in relationship. Recognizing so little else matters if I cannot hold love and respect for myself and the woman I know I love even when the reasons to love are not currently obvious. My Blessings to you. Welcome to the Hero’s Journey.”
• “If you think life is busy now….wait till you have a kid or two…”
• “Congratulations!!  If you think the wedding and marriage are big- JUST WAIT TIL THE CHILDREN ARRIVE! (if you’re going there.)”
• – “Yes, indeed, it really is very time consuming, and it really does take a shocking amount of time and energy! Just remember to stop and breathe every so often, especially when the two of you start feeling too stressed. It really is a wonderful time. Be sure to enjoy it, and don’t forget to have fun on your special day!”
• – “Just don’t let her go to the Woman Within workshop or she’ll learn all your tricks! “

 What advice do you have to add? I really am interested… Please add a comment below! Thanks!