Offense as Your Defense

Are you commonly offended or feel disrespected by others? In some, if not most cases, the aggression you feel from someone else isn’t so much an offense as your defense. When you feel like you’ve been emotionally assaulted consider looking within. Is there a possibility that the situation is not an offense so much as it is your defense mechanism overreacting?

The basis of this is a hybrid composite of perception and misinterpretation. Your perception is predisposed, locked and loaded, like a shotgun, ready to protect you from any emotional assault because you’ve been hurt in the past.

That which you look for you will find. If you are loaded for fear, you see potential danger everywhere you look and from this perspective, you are most likely to misinterpret just about anything as a potential assault.

As much as you believe you can understand what a person is really thinking, the truth is you can never know what’s going on inside someone’s head, still you look for the potential threat behind the words which is little more than bad mind reading.

Consider that some people just prefer to state the facts and they are quite adept at doing so without anticipating how it might be interpreted by another person to whom the direct response is directed (or overheard by a third-party who doesn’t fully understand the complete framework of the soundbite).

This includes the “Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay”* folks who believe that “yes” and “no” are complete sentences. By not mincing words and just stating the bare statements, assertions, and/or facts, it engenders misinterpretation to fill in the gaps of unspoken words fueled by unintended abruptness.

Then there is also Mr. Or Mrs. Nicely-nice. He or she will do anything to tiptoe around the subject or matter at hand to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings or conflict. These people do not realize that by beating around the bush their attempt to communicate can be interpreted as having something to hide or potentially a hidden agenda, which secretly cancels out their attempts at being perceived as “nice.”

For those who are socially inept, their method(s) of communication can seem rude or abrupt, making you feel as though they are being rude or mean when they are just awkward in their ability to communicate succinctly. They have no idea that their communication is being interpreted negatively, and can’t imagine why someone would not take their words at face value.

If you were to be honest with yourself, you might consider that even you tend to say things in a manner which makes sense to you in all its brevity without considering how it might be received by a listener who does not possess the full understanding of your breadth of knowledge which resides in the knowledge safely locked away inside your mind, yet undisclosed in your statement. You just assume that your audience understands what you’re saying, when nothing could be further from the truth.

When we don’t fully understand what someone is trying to communicate, we tend to fill in the blank spaces with information from our own lives.

If you are in a defensive position, you tend to fill in the blanks with hidden agendas, threats of violence, or other types of potential emotional abuse.

Be open to the idea that people are just people, and for the most part, they are not “out to get you.”

I’m not saying not to be aware, but do not look for demons everywhere, for if you do you can find them anywhere, even if it is not so.

You deserve to live a better life.

* Matthew 5:37

Start Living Your Best Life

The time has come, you’ve lived your life up until now, just as everyone expected you to. Suddenly, or a little over time which has grown cumulatively until the moment when, you’ve awakened to idea that things are not the way they appear to be, and you realize that now is the time to start living your best life.

You’ve lived a life which has been worth living. You’ve found ways to garner some sense of meaning amidst all the chaos in life. There have been moments which have been good, and you’ve found ways to make yourself feel happy, but these moments are few and far between.

You’ve done your best to maximize your experience throughout this life no matter what stood in your way. You’ve persevered and persisted to live a better life. Yet, something inside you has caused you to feel that something is seriously wrong.

Today, you realize that the world and everything you’ve come to believe ‘til this moment was far from the truth. Truth, if there is such a thing, is elusive and hidden by society and family, and you’re just not going to let other people tell you what to do, or who you are.

You decide to make a stand for yourself, your individuality, and resolve that the time has come for you to exercise your independence and freedom to be the unique you, which is your undeniable right.

You’ve lived a good life, you’ve endured pain, tragedy, and struggled to make it this far. Now it is time to

Start Living Your Best Life

When you start living your best life, you start living life on your own terms.

No one can tell you what to think, what to believe. You’ve realized that nearly everything everyone else believes is a falsehood designed to make them, the herd, easier to control, and they blindly follow the leader, as sheep to the slaughter.

This one thing you know, you’re opting out of the herd.

It’s not uncommon for you to feel both excited and anxious about dropping out of the rat race, for your whole life has been lived among that style of life which has kept you distracted by the media, societal structure, and games people play. There is a sort of addictive dependence which you have learned to feel attuned to, so there will be symptoms of withdrawal when you start to pull away.

At this moment you realize that your best life does not come from gaining the acceptance from others or living in such a way that incites approval or jealousy from others who long for a level of success (misery, infirmity, victimhood, or spirituality) which keeps us from truly connecting to other human beings.

Live a Better Life Your Best Life

Your best life is fully independent which engenders a yearning to connect with others, and the world in an authentic co-creative manner, in an effort to have a positive impact on our planet. You seek independence without separating yourself from others as you look to honor other human beings for whomever they are as you realize that you, just as they, are only doing the best you can with what you have.

As you start to understand your Purpose, Message, Passion, and Mission in this life, the idea of living your best life takes on new meaning. You are getting to know the empowered you which was your birthright. The one you were meant to be in the first place, that you which you were fully aware of when you were very young, but since have had beaten out of you by socialization or education.

In this sense today truly is the first day of the rest of your life as you take the steps necessary to get in touch with yourself, the source of all life, and the peaceful, harmonious connection to the world at large as you

Start Living Your Best Life

Nakedness in Relationships

Relationships can be scary, especially the more intimate the relationship the greater the exposures. There are various degrees of nakedness in relationships. In less intimate relationships there is less nakedness, while the most intimate relationships include full nudity.

Of course, I am not referring to the nakedness of being unclothed, but of being fully exposed, allowing yourself to be seen intimately without any social or emotional covering or façade.

We all desire to connect with other people, to know one another to varying degrees. We find comfort in having people in our lives with whom we can relax, and just be ourselves.

You are so much more than your public persona. You have a particular view of yourself, of how you want the world to perceive you, so you adopt a fully adorned representation of yourself to present to the world. No one knows this is just an act, except for you.

Yet, you desire to drop all the act and to be fully open, honest, transparent, and fully naked, loved and accepted for who you are with no pretense, agenda, or need for covering the vulnerable you who is hidden underneath the multiple layers of your external representation.

You have many levels of intimacy, where you shed some of the public personas and let others have glimpses of who you really are among friends and family. Still, you yearn for someone with whom you can be fully naked, without the fear of stripped down to the most intimate details of your life and who you really are.

In most cases, the only hope you have is to find a romantic mate with whom you can share the most intimate details of your life without the threat of judgment. This is love. As much as you desire such a level of vulnerable intimacy, it is possible to trust someone not to judge you or disclose your innermost secrets to the world?

To be fully naked, not just in the body, but in the soul, where your partner can see and hopefully some grasp of, level of understanding, or at least an inkling of what private things have hurt you in the past, why you have certain sensitivities, what makes you tick, and what turns you on, not just in the sexual sense, but what makes your heart sing, and why.

Where do you doubt yourself? What are your shortcomings? What are your greatest fears?

What makes you happy? What makes you sad? What makes you want to throw caution to the wind and go for it?

This level of nakedness in relationships is what engenders true intimacy, entrusting your most intimate details in full view of your closest, most intimate partner. The one you can trust with all your transparent nakedness, fully exposed, with nothing left to hide.

This represents your most intimate relationship of all, yet it is elusive, and you fear opening up in such intimacy because you fear that you cannot trust anyone with the intimate details of your life.

It is likely that you trusted someone with some intimate details of your life only to have them disregard and disrespect you, judge you for intimating such details, and/or used your openness and honest against you.

You’ve learned, the hard way, not to trust anyone.

Still, your heart yearns to be joined with someone you can fully reveal yourself, who you can trust as the witness to the completeness of your life, as you are for him or her, the same.

This is the nature of the romantic soul mate, the one with whom you may have the potential of sharing an unconditional love.

You will run across many soul mates along the journey of your life, some who are potentially the best of friends, or the most intimate of lovers.

I hear countless regrets from those who later in life realize they once, or many times, had access to a potential soul mate but did not allow the relationship to explore the possibilities due to fear.

You must be able you overcome your fear to take the risk of experiencing nakedness in relationships in order to allow the soul mate to reveal him or her -self to you.

Your fear causes you to interrupt the idea with, “But…”

You’ve got to move your but to what. “What if…?”

Your what to when, “When should I…”

Your when to now. “Now is a good time to take action.”

Make a move to take the action to see if the possibility is closer than you thought.

If it turns out it’s not, keep looking and taking action to test the water, being mindful of the nakedness, or level of transparent intimacy you share, may not include actual nudity or be sexual in any way.

Don’t let your life be filled with the regret of having let him or her get away.

He or she is out there, waiting for you to reach out.

Trauma-Inspired Programming

How Does Past Trauma Affect Your Life Today?

Not unlike an Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm, throughout our whole life, we collect data and develop programs that run in the background in an effort to understand and allow us to perform better as we encounter new situations and circumstances.

We run thousands of tiered If-Then-Else programs in the background, our subconscious, in an effort to have better experiences as we go forth into an unknown future. This is how we learn. This is how we grow, and this is how we limit our potential and quality of life.

At the moment in time that a program was initiated, it may have been appropriate and fit for the situation at hand, but now in the present day, the old program is still running, and it may not be serving you in the now. In fact, it may be hindering your potential for living a better life.

Let’s say you had a parent that would leave you unexpectedly alone when all you really wanted was a little love and attention. At first, you would desire of cry for attention to no avail. You never received the love and attention you sought. After a while you wrote a program to help you to deal with the situation, so you could go on with life.

IF your parent left,

THEN you would change your expectation, assuming they would not return at all.

“Fine,” you might think, “I will just find comfort in my time alone with myself. I don’t need anyone.”

ELSE the parent returns, you have already asserted confidence in your own independence, you might reject their presence, encouraging them to leave,

“Why don’t you just go enjoy yourself elsewhere? I don’t really need you here.”

You reason its better to reject than be rejected, plus the pain is far less severe by lowering your expectations, creating boundaries, and enforcing them. All at the young, tenderest of ages.

Even at such an early age, when you may not have been able to form the words, you were a survivor. You developed a program that made you stronger, more independent.

If you never recognize it, delete, or reprogram it, that program continues to run in the background to protect you and keep you safe, even if it no longer serves your best interests. Left to run on its own, it will affect all areas of your life, from career to social interactions, and the quest for love.

That’s just one program among thousands, or more likely millions, of programs accumulating in your subconscious machine code.

Hopefully, by now, your starting to realize that you are the Master Programmer (MP). By taking the time to go back and check your old programming codes, you can delete old programs which no longer serve you, and/or replace them with newer, more useful programs which will empower you to live your best life.

SOURCE CODE SEARCH

Search for the programs by reviewing the traumas of your life, year by year.

Make a T-Chart for every year of your life. Title it by your year of age and the calendar year.

On the left side of the page, list any traumatic event you can think of.

On the right side of the page, across from each traumatic event, detail how the trauma affected your life. This will help to identify the program which needs to either be deleted or replaced.

This process is never complete because as you start to look for trauma and either delete or reprogram the subroutines, more data becomes accessible.