There’s a wonderful Indian story of a young man who was told by his guru, “You are Brahman. You are God.” What a thing to experience! “I am God.” So, deeply indrawn, this young man goes out for a walk. He walks through the village, goes out into the country. And coming down the road is a great elephant, with the howdah on top, and the driver on his head. And the young man, thinking “I am God. I am God,” does not get out of the way of the elephant. The mahout shouts, “Get out of the way, you lunatic!” The young man hears him and looks and sees the elephant, and he says to himself, “I am God and the elephant is God. Should God get out of the way of God?” And of course the moment of truth arrives when the elephant suddenly wraps his trunk around him and tosses him off the road.

The young man goes back to his guru in a disheveled condition – not physically hurt, but psychologically in shock. The guru sees him and asks, “Well, what happened to you?”

The young man tells him his story and then says, “You told me that I was God.”

“And so you are.”

“The elephant is God.”

“And so it is.”

“Well, then, should God get out of the way of God?”

“But why didn’t you listen to the voice of God shouting from the head of the elephant?”

I think you have set yourself an admirable goal!

The words we use matter and the word complain can be troublesome as there tends to be various semantic reaction to it. For many to complain is negative as in to accuse, attack, whine, find fault, yammer, gripe… More likely than not when we complain we complain in this way with the result that people won’t hear the issue at the source of the problem as the dialog is likely to pivot to the personal.

A pivot to the personal to avoid dealing with the issue at hand is for many a conscious or unconscious strategy of avoidance – either way unhelpful if you’re hoping to improve the situation.

When addressing an issue we can “complain” or we can communicate.

To achieve your goal to complain less you will need to learn better ways to communicate when those you work with let you down.

Based on the book Crucial Conversations One of the first skills we must master in order to create a safe place for dialog is to master our stories.

When it matters most and our emotions kick in, we often do our worst – even if we try to convince ourselves that we’re doing the right thing.

Learn to create emotions that influence you to want to return to healthy dialogue.

Others don’t make you mad, you make you mad. You see and hear something, and then you tell yourself a story. That story triggers your feelings. Then you either act on those feelings or have them act on you.

Manage your emotions by retracing your path. Return to the source of your feelings. Separate facts from feelings. You can see and hear facts. Stories, on the other hand, are judgments and conclusions that trigger your movement to silence or violence.

And watch for three clever stories:
– The Victim Story that makes you out to be the innocent sufferer. Ask yourself, “Am I pretending not to notice my role in the problem?”
– The Villain Story that emphasizes others’ negative qualities. Ask yourself, “Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do this?”
– The Helpless Story that convinces you that you have no options for taking healthy action. Ask yourself, “What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?”

Good luck on your hero’s journey to better dialog

Its sounds like you’re depressed and or experiencing an existential issue… (Which comes first the chicken or the egg) It also sounds like you have lost touch with your sense of self (boundaries of who you are)

I’ve been there and wish I had a magic answer.

One thing people are going to tell you is that you just have to get up and do something. Don’t overthink it just do it. They are correct, change will require you to get up and do something, however that’s kind of like asking a man with broken legs to just get up and run.

You will need some space to heal

If you can afford it I might recommend professional help. A third party to talk to without worry about judgments so that you have a space where you can hear yourself and perhaps understand what is happening.

There are also a lot of books about creating healthy boundaries that might help you get started.

Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where i end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom. Taking responsibility for my life opens up many different options. Boundaries help us keep the good in and the bad out. Setting boundaries inevitably involves taking responsibility for your choices. You are the one who makes them. You are the one who must live with their consequences. And you are the one who may be keeping yourself from making the choices you could be happy with. We must own our own thoughts and clarify distorted thinking.

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Peter.

I am worried that I am being reactive by asking for space.

To my way of thinking asking for space is neither fight, flight or freeze so not reactive.

Creating some space it probably a wise response as is seeking help in order to work through this.

Nothing is worse than overthink the problem of over thinking

I very much admire those that trust themselves enough or maybe just out of blissful unawareness or innocents are able to step out of comfort and leap into the unknown.

That unfortunately is not who I am. Through nature and nurture I need to plan and know just want I want to do. And like you I fear that even if I do manage such a leap I will bring my own insecurities with me.

Whatever you decide to do you are going to take yourself along and so will eventually have to deal with your stuff.

My advice for what it’s worth is to talk over these feelings you have with a professional you can trust so you might clarify them. A third party who being natural can reflect back to you what you’re really saying and thinking.

What to expect from a life partner

– That they will challenge your relationship to the idea of relationship and love.
– That they will challenge how you think and feel you are.
– That they will disappoint you (you will disappoint them)
– That they will surprise you (you will surprise them)
– That they will attempt to heal past hurts through the relationship as you will attempt to heal the past hurts.
– That they will bring out the best and the worst of you – and you will bring out the best and worst in them
– That they will at times inspire you to be more then you thought you could be and at times hold you back.
– That they will be something to push against so that you might grow.

A healthy relationship learns to cultivate an “unconditional yes” to these realities and in doing so create the potential where each might become. This love is not an unconditional yes is not a unconditional allowing but an awareness that creates space were we may respond to our partners instead of reacting.

The other day I was asked what quality I looked for in a partner. I surprised myself when at the top of the list I stated someone who did not panic when they were not experiencing the ideal of love and connection that they imagined.

“The perfect partner is often the one who triggers off our core emotional wounds so that we can revisit and mend our past injuries. The reopening of our old hurts allows us to name, understand, and tend to original, yet often faulty and self-defeating, beliefs about interpersonal attachment and identity. It is inevitable that our unmet needs from childhood, which influence both our style of intimacy and our self-image/self-worth, will be played out in the crucible of our current intimate connections.”

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Peter.

We hurt so we can learn to do things differently to change to improve. Everything can’t all be good.

Unconditional love says yes to the reality it is all good even the bad. That is not a paradox

It is through the confrontation of the experience of the problem of opposites, such as the concept good and bad, that creates consciousness and so the possibility of awaking. In such a perspective all that we experience is and originates from Love.

When observed from different planes of experience judgments and labels such as good and bad are temporal and illusion. If one accepts/allows that Life is and of itself is Good then all experiences can be a experience of Unconditional Love.

It is unfortunate that for many to live and stand up for there truths they generate the energy to do so from hate, rage, and ugliness. As you say emotions of anger, fear, even hate serve a purpose. I believe that purpose is to awaken us that something is not as our truths indicate they should be and that we must act however that does not mean that such action be ugly, anger, rage… But this failure to part of the whole and so Love

In Quantum physics you have the theory of entanglement which predicts that two or more particles can become “entangled” so that even after they are separated in space, when an action is performed on one particle, the other particle responds immediately.

The hermetic principle of vibration also suggest a link to empathy, how we are influenced and how we influence. For example the experience of being at an event like a concert when everyone feels as if they are in sync… In hermetic principle every effect must have a cause however a cause may exist through change in vibration/plane of experience which we may experience as a moment Synchronicity.

Synchronicity – experiences to which a cause cannot be identified – “meaningful coincidence”, and “acausal parallelism.” Events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning. Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality.

Synchronicity may be the only way in which we are able to exercise free will the paradox being that doing so requires the art of doing by not doing as any intention of control would invoke filters and filters are always influenced by external wills.

It is also important to remember that we are only able to experience the world consciously through the sense of ‘I and me’ which is greatly influenced by the memory of our experiences. We might call these the filters look through as we experience the present. Thus the present moment is seldom seen clearly and so contains elements of illusion.

In Science they might relate this to this the law of uncertainty and the observer effect. The filters through which we observe something changes what we see and experience.

Likewise the experience of empathy will be influenced and changed though the filters, memories, experiences of the observer.

My opinion is that it is possible to know what someone else is experiencing and feeling however it would take a great deal of discernment and self-awareness to separate the observer from the observed and avoid wishful thinking

A person could spend life time’s dismantling and removing the filters through which consciousness experiences life through.