Think, if you will, about the RMS Titanic, resting on the bottom of the deep Atlantic Ocean since its spectacular sinking one cold April night in 1914. I’m sure you’re familiar with the photos and videos that have been published over the years since the wreck was finally discovered by Robert Ballard in 1977. The great ship, weighing in at 46,326 tons when she left the shipyards in Belfast, is now festooned with ugly growths called ‘rusticles.’ Gradually, the iron ship’s massive hull is being consumed – eaten actually – by iron-eating bacteria. Before too very long, the great ship’s entire structure will disappear into virtual puddles of bacterial excretions. The pile of refuse that remains after the bacteria have done their work will be unrecognizable.

The Jeep, the Titanic, and your most intimate relationships may have a great deal in common. We humans are subject to a corrosion that beats out the destruction caused by oxidation and bacteria hands-down. I am convinced that fear causes more destruction in the lives of men and women than any other single agent. We all have it; yet, when the bravado of self-assured adulthood begins to yield to the deeper questioning that comes with midlife, fear emerges with a ferocity seldom experienced at any other period of life.

When I was considering the subject of this article over the past week, I was troubled and questioning my own understanding and appreciation of this universal phenomenon. “If fear is so corrosive and damaging to life and to relationships,” I wondered, “why is it so universal? Why is it there at all?” I’ve often heard that a little fear is a good thing. The more I think about it, the more I am certain that fear provides us with the necessary protection that we need to avoid getting into life-threatening trouble. There definitely is such a thing as a ‘healthy’ fear. We all need it to keep us from getting too irresponsibly cocky and making rash and self-destructive decisions. A little fear is a very good thing, I concluded. “So,” I asked myself, “is a little fear like a little rust?”

I have come to believe that there are actually two types of fear. The one – healthy caution – provides us with the protection that we need against rash decision-making. There is another type of fear, however, that arises from insecurity and self-doubt. This kind of fear, like the iron-eating bacteria in the hull of the Titanic, slowly but consumes its host. Psychologist Carl Jung located the core of self-doubt in what he called the ‘ego,’ while the true personality he identified as the ‘Self.’ In this sense, your ego, convinced of your fundamental vulnerability, lives in mortal terror. While the Self continues to try to convince you that you’re fundamentally OK – regardless of what’s happening within or around you – the ego drowns out that more rational voice with its own terrified screaming.

At midlife especially, when the Self finds itself beset with radical changes on all fronts, the Ego’s constant doubts have a chance to erode not only your self-confidence, but also, at the same time, your capacity for acceptance, trust, and engagement. Under the fearful influence of your ego, your willingness to accept life on life’s terms (and your most significant relationships on their own terms), to trust in your own judgment and others’ good will, and to engage yourself unreservedly in the work of giving of yourself begins to collapse. Self-preservation begins to assume a priority beyond anything you’d previously experience. Your choices no longer to accept, no longer to trust, and no longer to engage begin to take their toll. Fear begins its corrosive corruption of your quality of life.

The popular spiritual work, A Course in Miracles, defines the ego as “a fearful thought.” I completely agree. The ego is convinced (and is determined to convince you) that you are in mortal danger and that only you can save yourself by withdrawing from intimacy. Ironically, under the guise of self-preservation, your ego infects you with the fear of being killed, while, at the same time, it’s in love with death. Its strangling fear begins by cutting off your vital connection with the divine Spirit by convincing you that your Higher Power, or God, cannot and will not save you from death and destruction: that the only Savior you can count on is yourself.

Next, its corrosive influence extends to your most intimate relationships, seeding doubts and watering them with imagined faults and failings in the other that “threaten” your security and well-being. It convinces you that, once again, only you can “protect” yourself from ruin. Finally, as its work runs its course, it not only cuts off your capacity for unconditional and unqualified love of others, it locks you into a kind of imagined self-protective mode where not even the grace of God can reach you. Ego-driven fear, left to run its course, will eventually succeed in causing you to forget, at the deepest level of your being, who you are.

Who are you? You are the beloved Child of a Power greater than yourself Who called you into being from the origins of the universe and who sustains and protects you in all your ways, regardless of any detours your fallible human consciousness my send you on along your way. All your Higher Power or God requires of you are the ‘virtues’ that I wrote about in my last article: acceptance, trust, and engagement (or ‘faith,’ ‘hope,’ and ‘love’). If only you would choose to ignore the fearful screaming of your ego and focus on the invulnerability of your Self and your connection with your Higher Power, you can be set free from fear to choose to respond to that Power with unconditional Faith, unconditional Hope and unconditional Love. Only then, in truth, can you accept, trust, and love yourself or anyone else.

Do your choices show that you actually believe that you are who you are? As a Child of your Higher Power, do you exercise unconditional acceptance of life on life’s terms and of the others with whom you share the gift of intimacy in this life? Do you trust that, no matter what happens to you or to others, you will always be cared and provided for? Are you willing to accept that your life depends on the quality of the commitments that you’re prepared to make on a daily basis?

“What about getting hurt?” “What about betrayal?” you may ask. In return, I want to ask you, “What is your circle of influence, and what is your circle of concern?” You may well be concerned about other peoples’ ideas or behaviors, but you have no control over them! You have control only over your own attitudes and choices. Your decisions to accept, trust, and be committed never depend on what the other person says or does. They depend wholly and exclusively on you and your willingness to love regardless of the cost. That’s the way your Higher Power loves you; that, in a nutshell describes the essence of Love itself. Love doesn’t necessarily involve intimacy; love doesn’t necessarily involve intimacy (those things require two committed people). But love does require you to choose commitment over fear, and forgiveness over anger and resentment. Can you handle it?

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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Must couples in trouble necessarily fail? No, not necessarily: no healthy couple is doomed to failure. In fact, the only ‘doomed’ relationships are those where one or both partners are unapologetically physically or emotionally abusive . Without a doubt, the only realistic option for someone who finds her- or himself in a fundamentally abusive or exploitative relationship is to exit immediately. Apart from that, I believe that many (if not all) relationships “on the rocks” could be healed under the right circumstances. From my perspective, the fact that this healing so often fails to take place could be an indication that one or both of the partners have stopped listening. Additionally, ceasing to listen indicates a spiritual problem. Let me explain.

It would seem that the  person who hears another’s voice, but is no longer committed to listening to what the other has to say has given up on her or his partner, as well as their relationship together. If you look more closely, however, it soon becomes clear that the person has actually given up on him- or herself. Empathetic listening and appreciative inquiry represent a three-fold choice: 1) to accept the other, 2) to trust the other, and 3) to engage with the other. Closing off the lines of communication also represents a choice: to cease accepting, trusting and engaging with one’s partner. Before I relate this to fundamental spiritual principles, let’s look briefly at each choice.

The choice to accept another human being is foundational. True acceptance represents a fundamental option to see in the other person another self, with exactly the same sorts of strengths and weaknesses that we ourselves possess. This choice to acknowledge the other person as another self  has two destructive opposites. The first perversion of acceptance we call ‘exploitation‘. Philosopher Martin Buber contrasts these approaches with the terms I-Thou (for true acceptance of the other), and I-It (for exploitation). To see your partner merely in terms of his or her usefulness (like a tool or a piece of furniture) or her or his capacity to satisfy you represents a fundamental denial of humanity on your part. The second perversion of the choice to accept your partner shows itself as conditional acceptance. In brief, “I’ll accept you if you do such-and-such or so-and-so.” Conditional acceptance of another puts you in the position of being their judge, jury and executioner. In fact, it represents nothing less than your attempt to usurp the position in your partner’s life properly held by God alone.

Next, let’s look at the choice not to trust your partner. Why don’t you trust her or him? Because you’ve been hurt before? The refusal to trust your partner goes way beyond self-preservation. Once again, it is passing a judgment of condemnation on another person — another self — who exhibits the same sorts of faults and failings that you yourself exhibit. In fact, if the truth were known, the faults and failings that you find most easy to condemn and most difficult to forgive in others are the very ones that you exhibit most strongly yourself. In fact, the two keys that are absolutely essential to unlocking both acceptance and trust are these: first, to acknowledge an identical humanity in both yourself and the other, and, second, to commit yourself to the path of unconditional forgiveness. Who cannot look at the plight of even the most desperate of people around us and not be able truthfully to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I?” The greatest message of Christianity — and also, I’m afraid,  its most forgotten and neglected — is simply this: unconditional, unlimited forgiveness. If you cannot forgive unconditionally, you cannot trust for very long.

The final choice is the choice to engage with your partner. If you refuse to engage with her or him, you thereby give credence to the (Jungian) ego’s false belief that you are vulnerable and need protection. It’s the same force that drives people’s frantic searching for that illusive (and illusory) ‘security’ that they believe will fix everything and protect them from danger. Once again, it would be foolish to put ourselves in harm’s way by engaging with an abusive partner. We owe it to ourselves and to them to take the necessary precautions so as not to allow ourselves to become victims of deliberate abuse. However, if you imagine that refusing to engage with your well-intentioned partner will grant you some sort of immunity from harm and from hurt, you are mistaken. Do you believe that spiritually you are invulnerable and that nothing outside of yourself — not even death — can destroy the essence of you? “Greater love has no one,” we have heard, “than to lay down his life for another.” Oddly, dieing for someone can actually be a whole lot easier than living for them.

Finally, what does the choice not to listen say about that person’s spiritual condition? The testimony it gives is nothing short of damning. Personally, I would liken it to what Christians refer to as the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ or the ‘unforgivable sin.’ Here’s what I mean. Whenever I write, I use the terms ‘acceptance,’  ‘trust’ and ‘engagement’ as  synonyms for what are called the ‘theological virtues’, namely: faith, hope , and love. The ‘sin’ against faith is the decision not to accept the will of God exactly as we encounter it in our world. The ‘sin’ against hope is the choice not to trust that our only Source of genuine security is divine providence. The ‘sin’ against love is the refusal to become meaningfully engaged with those we were sent to serve: our fellow creatures who, along with us, share the “image and likeness of God.” If the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ is a refusal to believe that the love of God is powerful enough to forgive us (and so we refuse to ask for forgiveness, and therefore refuse to accept it), then turning a deaf ear to someone we once claimed to love is a ‘sin against love’, for, as we know, the opposite of love is not hate, but deliberate indifference.

What can you do if you find yourself failing to listen? Remember the futility of protecting yourself. What can you protect yourself from? Even more importantly, what are you protecting yourself for? After all, your mission here in this world is not to try (futilely) to keep yourself safe. It’s to share with your fellows (and especially those in relationship with you) the same kind of acceptance, trust, and engagement that your God has shown to you. God hears his people’s cry . . . can you do any less?

And what about you who find yourself ‘learning to love one another’ and your words keep falling on deaf ears? You, too, have the opportunity to pass on the love of God. Your acceptance of the other can be renewed continually. Your trust of the other need never fail or fade. You may stand ever at the ready to engage. However, engagement (love) requires reciprocity. God does not condemn, so how could you? God does not constrain, either (because love can never be forced), but rather waits for all eternity for the other to emerge from his or her isolation and re-engage. You can have the willingness to re-engage, whether or not the other ever seeks it. You may never re-engage as you once did: time and the world goes on while the other chooses to isolate, stagnate, or (what’s worse) repeat the same self-defeating choices and behaviors with other partners. You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to accept and trust and engage with people at every stage and every condition of your life: people who, like you, have chosen to listen not only with their ears, but with their hearts.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

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During my discussion last week with Jim Duzak, "The Attorney at Love" who was my guest on the Midlife Matters internet radio program, I learned that many people who still care for each other break up because they have given up on trying to communicate with each other. When communication breaks down, then relationships break down, and then both party's sense of personal well-being becomes compromised. I truly believe that many work and personal relationships (and egos) could be salvaged, if people only worked at perfecting the skills involved in resolving conflict and coming to consensus (meaning, "I can live with that decision"). As a coach, I've learned a great deal about how people communicate, and as a partner in a committed relationship (fourteen years last Friday), I've learned how hard it is to implement those lessons. What follows is the result of my personal knowledge and experience.

Here are The Midlife Master's Rules of Engagement:

• Keep your purpose in mind. Your purpose ought to be to resolve the disagreement and come to a resolution of your differences. Too often people allow the heat of the moment to distract them into heading off on tangents until the partners suddenly discover that they can't remember what they're arguing about. Stick to the point. Whenever you find yourself off-topic (and off-task), gently bring yourself back to the main issue. If there's a question whether or not to bring in another topic use this rule of thumb: "When in doubt, don't!"

• You can disagree without being disagreeable. There's a difference between fighting and arguing. It's the difference between heat and light. An agreeable conclusion is always possible so long as both of you approach the discussion with good will. You can have a very animated discussion without getting nasty about it. Many of the rules that follow are tools that you can use to diffuse conflict and keep the discussion on a healthy, respectful, and non-hurtful plane. The purpose of your discussion is not to determine who's right and who's wrong, but, rather, to come to a conclusion that you can both live with.

• Talk about the subject, not your partner. This is just a corollary of the first rule: keep your purpose in mind. Your purpose is to resolve the issue not to change your partner. You're unlikely to effect a change in anyone's behavior other than your own. You have no control over how your partner behaves, either inside or outside the current discussion, so trying to change him or her is most likely an exercise in futility and a waste of your breath. Focus on the point at hand and let your partner deal with him- or herself.

• Avoid trigger words. The word 'why' is unique among words in the English language (and that may very well be true in other languages, as well). For whatever reason, the limbic brain interprets the word 'why' as a direct challenge that triggers a pre-conscious reaction from the autonomic nervous system: the 'fight, flight or freeze' response. In other words, asking 'why' puts your partner immediately on the defensive without his or her even being aware of it. Since your object is to seek resolution of the issue at hand, putting your partner in the discussion on the defensive defeats your purpose (he or she can no longer hear you). Using other similar words can avoid this problem (for example: 'what was the reason' is not a trigger).

• Avoid absolutes and exaggeration. You do yourself no favor by over-stating your case. The words 'always' and 'never' have no place in an argument, since they are always an exaggeration and they are never accurate. Using exaggeration almost always pushes the discussion off-topic, because it provides a perfect excuse to focus on the inaccuracies in your statement rather than the subject at hand. The very worst approach you can take is to start a statement with "Why do you always . . . "

• Avoid advice-giving and lecturing. Here are some more words that signal trouble in your discussion: 'you need to', 'you ought to', and 'you should' (as well as 'why don't you'). These phrases signal that your aim is to change and/or control your partner's behavior rather than seeking common ground. As I mentioned before, the only person whose behavior you can influence — particularly in an argument — is your own. If you can keep your attention focused on the subject rather than on your partner, you will avoid the temptation to change the focus of the discussion from it to him or her.

• Avoid impugning your partner's motives. Only God knows the secret motives of the heart. Even a trained and licensed psychiatrist can only come to a conclusion regarding another's motives based on what he or she has been told. No matter how well you know your partner, you have no real idea what's going on inside his or her head. You are perfectly free to disagree with your partner's statements about his or her reasons for doing or saying something (you can certainly say, "I don't believe you"), but you do not have the right to speculate about what the real reasons may be ("You're only saying/doing that because . . . ").

• Avoid injustice-collecting. Once again, this is a corollary to the rule about sticking to the topic at hand. Someone who practices injustice collecting operates from what I call a 'victim mentality.' That means that you suffer in silence when things don't go your way. There's also no 'forgiving and forgetting' for an injustice collector — anything your partner's ever done that you didn't like is fair game. Dredging up old garbage (either never properly handled at the time or not fully atoned for in your own mind) only muddies the water, puts your partner on the defensive, and spells doom for the purpose of your discussion. Don't do it, and don't allow your partner to do it to you.

• Avoid ultimatums. This is just another reminder that you're not in control of your partner's behavior. Furthermore, you're not going to generate good will by attempting to force an issue. Most times, an ultimatum is a bluff, and, in anger, your partner may be just in the mood to call it. Even if it's not a bluff, putting consequences in the form of an ultimatum puts the power over your own decisions into the hands of your partner. Saying "If you do this, I'll do that" puts you in a bind. It's perfectly acceptable to say, "I can't live with that . . . if you decide to do that, I'm going to have to consider my options."

• Watch your body language. Only about 1/3 of our interpersonal communication happens through our words alone (that's why e-mails can be so dangerous: they lack the other 67%). Most of what we communicate happens through our tone of voice and body language. It's a real challenge to develop such self-awareness that you stay cognizant of your tone, your facial expressions, your gestures and posture (while concentrating on what's being said) to such a degree that your non-verbal statements communicate only what you consciously intend.

• Keep your cool and your dignity. Feeling anger during a heated discussion is healthy. Acting on the anger is not. It is never OK to be physically, verbally, or emotionally abusive for the sake of winning an argument. When you yield your self control to the feelings of the moment, you've lost any hope of achieving your purpose (which is to reach a consensus). Remember: you are in control of you. It's your responsibility to remove yourself from a discussion as soon as you feel that your self-control is being compromised, or that your partner has crossed the line of respecting you. Your approach should be, "I can't talk about this now. Let's take a time out and come back later when we've both cooled down." For the sake of your own safety (and decorum), first say it, then do it . . . regardless of what your partner may say or do. It's your responsibility to diffuse a deteriorating situation; you don't need to wait for permission.

• Stay engaged. Learning to argue within the rules means staying with it until you've reached a conclusion that both of you can live with. Shutting down, giving up, or other passive-aggressive approaches will not achieve your purpose. Passive-aggressive behavior is equally aggressive as active-aggression, and equally as destructive to a relationship. As I mentioned before, so long as both of you are approaching the situation with good will (a necessary ingredient to any discussion), a consensus is achievable, even if the discussion continues over a number of sessions.

These are some of the fundamental rules that can turn otherwise destructive arguments into constructive communication. Undoubtedly, there are others (if you can think of any, please send them to me, and I'll gladly add them to this list). What's most important about them is the fact that if you at least follow these few suggestions, you can exponentially grow your chances of maintaining a healthy, contented and spiritually-centered midlife transition in all three areas of concern: your career, your relationship(s) and your own sense of personal well-being.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

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What does that mean in practical terms? It means that the challenge never ends. It means that responding to that challenge implies that the goal is much less important than the journey. In fact, one of the major midlife paradigm shifts between adulthood and maturity involves recognizing that the outcome of any of our decisions is not (and never was) in our hands. Success and failure ('winning' or 'losing') in anyone else's eyes really doesn't matter, and 'salvation' lies in recognizing that it really is all about 'how you play the game' (just like the old saying taught). Here's the way to avoid the 'drop' one day at a time: you can practice the three cardinal virtues: acceptance, trust, and engagement.

Acceptance is the key: it's the sine qua non of any mature life. As the Desiderata says, "The Universe is unfolding as it should." Can you get your mind around that? You weren't born into the 'wrong family', no matter what happened during your childhood, you were never a 'victim', and the decisions that you made, at the time that you made them, were the right ones for you. Acceptance means getting yourself out of the punishment mindset. Neither God nor the Universe punishes; not even karma brings retribution. All we experience from day to day amounts to the natural results of our choices and, whenever there's pain involved, it's only a life lesson trying to get our attention. Even God experiences our human limitations.

The late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the 'original' televangelist (he and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale were the media groundbreakers) told the following compelling story:

In one of the Nazi concentration camps, a young boy was caught stealing bread. The camp was assembled and, as an object lesson, the boy was strung up with piano wire to die a horrible death in front of everyone. "Where's your God now?" growled one of the prisoners witnessing the horror. A fellow prisoner, standing nearby, pointed to the lifeless youngster and said, "There he is!"

It's not enough just to accept that everything is (and always has been) exactly as it should be. One of the lessons we have to learn throughout life (and re-learn nearly every day) is to trust that whatever will turn out for the best. If 'acceptance' is difficult, 'trust' can be nearly impossible. How can we say that everything will turn out for the best when there are so many bad decisions being made, not only all around us, but even by us? Here's the perspective: The universe has an origin and a direction, and everything in this universe is evolving along with it. When things align with this grand movement — this grand design — the whole moves forward. When things fail to align, they falter, they fail, they become extinct and no longer contribute to the whole. We always have the choice: to align ourselves with an evolutionary process much greater than ourselves, or to fall by the wayside as a useless evolutionary detour. To join with the forward movement, we have only to 'trust the process' and 'go with the flow' (as we discern it with all our hearts and minds and souls). Trust is, indeed, a day-by-day, even minute-by-minute choice.

Finally, the third essential approach to life is 'engagement'. Acceptance and trust are anything but passive. In fact, Edmund Burke said it best when he wrote, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Acceptance is a struggle rooted in the past: freeing ourselves from the mentality that somehow we should have — could have — had more or been more. It's the fight to stifle the cry from within us, "Why me?" Trust is a struggle that wrestles with our own doubts about the future and our fears that, after all, the buck stops with us. It's the gross dichotomy between our resistance to any other authority than our own and our terror of being solely responsible for our own fate. Engagement means taking responsibility for the people we have become as well as the people we want to become. It means getting our hands dirty with the messy work of suiting up and showing up for life right now. It means doing the next right thing with no guarantees that anything will turn out the way we want it to, but with the assurance that it will turn out well.

These three — acceptance, trust, and engagement — are the attitudes that separate the mature man or woman from the adult. Disillusioned? Yes, but would you want to live in an illusion and longer than necessary? "Why," you may ask, "did I have to wait so long to learn these lessons?" "Because," I say, "nothing happens by accident: you can't know what you don't know until you know it; you can't accept, trust, or engage yourself in anything before you're ready for it." Once you stand on the other side of the midlife transition you get to see things so much more clearly. In fact, from this perspective, one day at a time, there is no 'drop' at all!

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

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