Live Big: How Understanding the Serenity Model will Increase Your Emotional Maturity

Do you ever read the headlines on the celebrity rags in the grocery store check-out lines? This one is in rehab. This one is getting a divorce (again). This one feels (or at least looks) like a new woman after massive cosmetic surgery.

What would it take to make you happy? The answers that pop into your mind — love, money, peace and quiet — sound good, but then, take another look at the tabloids. These people appear to have it all, but they are obviously miserable.

Life is just too short to be miserable.

In recent blogs, we’ve been talking how to change your life and achieve lasting peace by attaining emotional maturity. One of the keys to success here is to understand The Serenity Model.

Let’s refer back to The Hero’s Choice. The main character of the story, Hal, had his world rocked when he was ousted from his own company. This disaster was quickly followed by money worries, tension in his marriage and fractures in his relations with his kids. His friend, Donald, an older man who has been through fires of his own, has taken on the role of tour guide in Hal’s journey toward emotional maturity.  The following is an abridgement from the book:

“It seems to me,” Donald tells Hal, “we live from one of four attitudes or perspectives.  First is survival. From this perspective, life is a battleground. We don’t like the way things are, yet we feel powerless to do anything about it. Our basic stance is reactive and self-protective. We feel like a pawn of events and circumstances, and try to make ourselves feel better by making excuses, blaming others, or escaping into drugs or alcohol or other addictive behaviors. Life is painful.”

Hal nodded. “I’ve been there. In fact, I feel like I’ve been in survival mode since I was fired last month.”

Donald looked at him, nodding. “A crisis does that to us.”

“So, what are the other three perspectives?” asked Hal.

“I call the second one security. This is how most people spend their lives. We’re steady, dependable and basically honorable in our approach to life . . . Living in security is more about avoiding losing than about winning. We carve out a comfort zone to stave off failure, rejection and discomfort. . .”

“So what’s next?” Hal asked.

“The success mode,” replied Donald. “We meet life head-on, conquering challenges and taking advantage of opportunities. We’re proactive and motivated, disciplined and goal-directed. We put out an image of having it all together and being in control. We don’t like showing weakness.  Life is good — but only when we perform well. Many people come to the realization that success doesn’t automatically lead to happiness and fulfillment. In fact, their success begins to feel hollow. There’s success, or achieving a predetermined outcome. And there’s fulfillment, the sense that life is full and meaningful.”

Let’s stop here. I’d like you to take a minute to look inward. Do you have fulfillment in your life? Are you at peace with who and where you are? If you never complete any of the things on your to-do list, never fulfill any of the tangible goals that you’ve set, will you still be at peace?

Perhaps at some point, the celebrity currently smiling out of the cover of TantalizingTabloid Tales was convinced that she would be happy if only she had the perfect body and face. Perhaps she thought she’d be happy if only she got that movie or TV role, or achieved the kind of fame that put her on magazine covers. Now what is she thinking? That she’ll be happy if she wins an Oscar or Emmy? What if she never wins one? What if she does? Will she be happy then?

What about you? Does something external have to happen in order for you to have peace and fulfillment? Let’s let Donald explain further:

“When success doesn’t lead to fulfillment, most people redouble their efforts, believing that accomplishing even more will bring them their elusive prize.  What they don’t realize is that success and fulfillment are not the same thing.  We need to remember that success has to do only with outer, material things, and fulfillment has to do with our inner or spiritual world.  The more important journey isn’t the one out there.  It’s in here,” he said, pointing to his chest.

Hal asked, “How do you achieve serenity?”

“You don’t really achieve it, like reaching a goal.  It’s something we create – and maintain – through our choices.”

Like Donald, and, increasingly, Hal, you will find peace and serenity if you use your Key Moments to make intentional choices to:

• Practice living from your true or real self
• Align your life to universal laws or principles
• Be governed by “want to” or “choose to”
• Accept others and the realities of life
• Live real and congruent
• Be interdependent and care about the welfare of others
• Honor your trust based beliefs
• Stay alive in the present
• Make your choices consciously

Are you ready to Live BIG?  Live a life that feels meaningful, whole and complete by developing emotional maturity and centering your life within The Serenity Model.

Live BIG: How to Become Emotionally Mature

Hal hated the man, everything about him, from his knowing sneer to his rolling swagger.

He wished fervently he could get away and considered getting up and walking out without a word to either of them.  But then he garnered his faculties and decided to accept this reality.  He would choose how to respond, and his choice would be to act cordial and cooperative.  He felt a surge of strength as he realized that handling himself in a dignified manner with both these men would be a bigger personal victory than if he met with Keith alone. . . .

The Hero’s Choice

Do you want to change your life?  The single tool that you need, more critical than your intelligence, background or education, is emotional maturity.  In the last few blogs, we’ve been talking about exactly what emotional maturity looks like.

When your inner grown-up is running the show, you will be more self-aware.  You’ll recognize your feelings and manage them in a responsible way.  You’ll handle and build positive relationships and move yourself steadily toward your definition of success.  In other words, you will excel at life.

How can you be emotional mature?

1.  Be present.  Be in the moment.  You’ve heard it a thousand times, but it’s no less true for the repeating of it — this minute is the only one you have.  You can’t rewrite one minute of the past.  You can’t construct one minute of the future, except by taking hold of this minute you have right now.  You’re reading this blog right now.  What will you do with the next?  Focus on it when you’re in it.  And now the next?  Focus on it when you’re in it.   Hattie allowed herself to be defined by her past, her lack of education, her fear of rejection and change.  Each time she considers taking ownership of her present, her mind bounces back to those thing.  If she chooses to be present, she will instantly empower herself.  She could decide what she wants her remaining twenty or so years to consist of, and then set off to get it.

2.  Embrace reality.  Refusing to think about uncomfortable things gives those very things incredible power over your life.  Mona refuses to think about the reality of her financial situation and so continues to make it worse with each swipe of her card.  If you are worried about your finances, sit down and take stock of exactly where you are — how much you owe, for example, and exactly how you will pay it off.  Fun?  No.  Wildly uncomfortable?  Words can’t express it!  But by taking ownership of the reality, you’ve now equipped yourself to change it.

3.  Exercise responsibility.  You have choices.  You always have choices.  Refusing to admit that is like using a hard steel industrial padlock to secure yourself into a flimsy cardboard box.  There are numerous behaviors that Hattie could have changed in our example.  You also have numerous choices, but if you’re a “Bratty Hatty” they might be invisible.  Challenge your assumptions.

4.  Clarify your vision.  We talked about this a little bit in my blog about the definition of success.  Hattie wanders through her life, ruled by impulse and circumstance.  What does she want?  From our story, you’d have no idea of what she really wants out of her life, because she has no idea.  What do you want?  Define it, so you can get it.

5.  Act from Integrity.  No excuses.  No whining.  No hypocrisy.   Hattie pretends that she wants to be productive, but there’s no evidence of that in her actions . . . and the discrepancy doesn’t trouble her.  Again, challenge your assumptions.

By now, you’ve probably built a strong mental image of emotional maturity.  Maybe you’ve spotted some areas in your life that you want to change.  In my next blog, I’ll talk about another factor in your emotional maturity, called The Serenity Model.

Live Big: Are You Ready to Put the Grown-up In Charge?

Shamefully, Hal watched his wife and daughter turn their backs on him and walk inside.  Never had he felt so cut off.  He wanted, desperately, to hide, disappear, to revoke his own birth.  He wished for the earth to swallow him whole so he would never again face another human being.  Overwhelmed by what he had done, he stood frozen as waves of grief and shame pulsed up from deep within him. . .

He stared into the darkness.  His life was spinning out of control . . . and everything he did was making it worse.

The Hero’s Choice

Yesterday we met two sisters, Hattie and Millie, who fall on very different places on the spectrum of Emotional Maturity.  Today I want to introduce you to the specific qualities that make up Emotional Maturity (or the lack of it).  I’ll refer back to Hattie and Millie as I go through these, but you’ll likely see some reflections of your own life as well.

Let’s start with the traits associated with Emotional Immaturity.  You saw these with Hattie.  We can call these qualities part of your lesser self, or more colorfully, your Inner Brat!

Your Inner Brat:

Is reactive to life.  Hattie had many pretty wishes, but if you look at her actual actions, you’ll see that she was was like a pebble on the shore, being washed in different directions instead of choosing where to go.

Acts out of emotion. Hattie believes that seeing her father is important, but her actual action is dictated by her emotion (sadness) instead of her brain or values.

“Comes from” fear and scarcity. She would like to work at the craft store, and the income would help solve her debt problem, but she makes her decision based on her fear of rejection.

is motivated by “have to” and “ought to.” Because she has no apparent goals or direction of her own, her days are spent reactively.

Focuses on “getting.” What does Hattie want to be?  What does she want to do?  We don’t know, because when we were traveling in her mind, we saw only objects that she wanted, as if those objects were solutions.

Is dominated by the desire for security and self-protection. This takes us back to the job at the craft store.  Hattie is unwilling to take the risk to make a life change.

Avoids failure, rejection, discomfort and being wrong. This is reflected throughout our time with Hattie.

Allows separation and alienation from others. Remember the clerk in the mini-mart?  How long would it take for Hattie to walk into that store and discover whether the clerk is still the same person she was in high school (and who among us hasn’t changed since high school?)

Lives in the past or the future.  Hattie may wish that she’d gotten a better education, but if you’ll notice, her sister isn’t wasting her time wishing.

As you read through this list of qualities, some may have resonated with you more than others.  You may have allowed some of these to dictate your behaviors recently, even today.  Others may be patterns you fall into when you are tired or stressed.  When you allow your inner brat to make your day-to-day choices, you cripple your ability to succeed.  Your finances, your relationships and your self esteem all suffer.

Now we’ll take a look at the attributes of Emotional Maturity, as we saw in Millie.  I guess we could refer to this collection of attributes as your Inner Grown-up.

When your Inner Grown-up is running your life, you’ll be:

Proactive about life. If something doesn’t satisfy you, you’ll develop a strategy to change it — and then you’ll follow through.

Inclined to Act ON your emotions instead of OUT of them.  Millie was as sad as Hattie over their father’s decline.  She valued her emotion enough to “power-up” with a leisurely lunch (some “me” time) and to keep her trip to the college as something to look forward after the visit.

Governed by your vision or purpose.  What is Millie’s vision for her life?  Our little story never goes into the details, but her actions alone tell us that she has a purpose.   Do yours?

“Coming from” love and abundance.  Do you hesitate before reaching out?  Are you afraid there aren’t enough resources for you and others?  Do you compare yourself or your life to others?

Motivated by “choose to” and “want to.” Know your own purpose and values for your life, and live accordingly, instead of spending precious hours trying to satisfy others.  Make intentional decisions to change your life.

Giving and other-centered.  Although Millie has plenty to do and problems of her own, she instinctively lives by the old Hindu Proverb, “Help they brother’s boat across, Lo! Thine own has reached the shore.”

Willing to step-outside your comfort zone and willing to seek growth, take risks and take yourself to the limit of your abilities. In the last twenty four hours, have you taken a risk or stepped outside of your comfort zone?  How about in the last week, or month?  Life change is never comfortable.  If you find that you’re expending energy to stay in your rut instead of climb out of it, it’s time to make a change.

Inclined to seek unity and goodwill with others.  Life is too short to live in discord.  More important, as humans, we are made to live in families and communities and to work together toward common goals.  Treat your relationships as sacred and you’ll discover a critical tool to change your life.

Live in the present, making use of the moments you have.  So when should you begin to make these changes?

Now.

You only have now, my friend.  So let’s get started. . .

Personal Development: Can You Choose How You Feel?

Donald nodded. ”Let me ask you to do something. From now on, use the words ‘I chose’ so you really own your experience. You chose to feel hurt. You see?”

Hal shook his head. “I don’t see how I chose to feel hurt. It just happened.” Read more

Personal Development: How Can You Align Your perceptions with Reality?

“You believe what your mind tells you.”

In this series of blogs, I’ve been talking about the impact that our perceptions have on our understanding of reality. Hopefully, I’ve shown you how important it is to address this issue in your own life as you move forward in your journey of personal development. The question now is, how? If you believe what your mind tells you, as John Kelly said in the last blog, why would you think to question how you perceive reality? And how? How can you convince your mind to give up its illusions and look at the cold, hard facts?

• Play detective with your own thoughts. Gather clues and evidence and use them to distinguish between reality and your understanding of reality as filtered by your preconceptions, emotions and mindset.

• As part of your personal development, commit to writing down your thoughts while your emotions are still heightened. It’s nearly impossible to access emotions after the fact, so try to make a habit of sitting down in or immediately after a situation and journaling your emotions and perceptions. Then take another look when you are calmer and then again a day or so later. Continue to journal, sorting facts from assumptions and challenging your understanding.

• List other potential interpretations. Even if you don’t have time to sit and journal in a given situation, make a habit of reinterpreting your perceptions. For example, you call your brother to wish him a happy birthday, and he rings off abruptly. You and he have a history of jealousies and tension, so you are infuriated: “Why do I bother? He doesn’t care about me!” Good! That’s one possible explanation. Now let’s try to find at least 2 more. The more the better, so here we go:

• I guess I caught him at a bad time.
• He must hate having birthdays. Well, since I’m two years older, I can understand that.
• I wonder if he’s upset at something I’ve done lately? Or that I haven’t done.

In this example, you can only really draw one sure conclusion: You don’t know why he hung up suddenly. You don’t have enough information. If you call him again later or he calls you, you might have more information, but in the meantime, you just don’t know.

Why are we spending so much time working on this concept of perception vs. reality? I’m going to go into the why more in my next blog, but in the meantime, think about that last example. Putting yourself in that situation, what feelings do you think resulted from the original conclusion, and the subsequent ones?

Learning to manage your fact processing skills will make a dramatic difference in your personal development. To accelerate your progress even more, join me for the LIVE BIG seminar on March 12 and 13, and you can break free from your illusions for good!

Life Purpose: What Is Your Destiny?

Anything is possible. Anything. You can see it in the faces of the musicians, old and young. Hear it in the ringing voices, feel it pulsing through your veins in time with the rhythm. Read more

Pain and Stress Reduction: How Will You Handle Hardship?

Little Maria Monique came down with a severe lung infection.  It might have been treatable in the US, but in her home of Indonesia, the doctors weren’t able to treat her.  Her mother, Tjahja, sold everything she owned and flew with her daughter to Singapore for more advanced medical care.  Doctors there were more equipped to deal with the infection.  And when Tjahja ran out of money, doctors continued in the battle to save her life.  Maria Monique, her doctors and her mother fought hard, but in 2006, at the age of seven, the little girl passed away.   Her mother was heartbroken. Read more

Personal Development: Have You Ever Been Betrayed?

Personal Development:  Have You Ever Been Betrayed?

Hal glanced around the table, hoping that one of his long-time colleagues would speak up on his behalf.  No one, except Charlie White, met his eyes.  Not Keith, his golfing buddy who had lauded his every move – until Charlie’s arrival.  Not Patricia, a single parent who had asked Hal to be godfather to her adopted son.  Not Larry, a friend going back to high-school whom Hal had rescued from a dead-end job to become a partner in Western. Read more

Are You Cheating Yourself Out of Your Abundance and Prosperity?

After over two years of unemployment, Jim Moret finally had a job.  A good job – he’d been hired as the chief correspondent for the television show, inside Edition.  He should have been happy . . . but his upside-down mortgage and mountain of debt had him desperate and scared.  He writes, “ . . . the real prospect of losing everything you have worked for your entire life to achieve is devastating and utterly demoralizing.” Read more

The Hardest Thing I’ll Ever Do

When I first wrote my book, The Hero’s Choice, I wanted it to become a best-seller. I don’t mean that I expected it to sell millions of copies, but certainly tens of thousands, if not a few hundred thousand copies in the first few years. I don’t think I’m all that different from most authors who want their work to do well. Read more