Chapter 24

Don't Squat With
Your Spurs On!

Most of the important things in the world have been
accomplished by people who have kept on trying
when there seemed to be no hope at all. - Dale Carnegie

Defining Moments
One of the most important ways a person can stand in their power is to not lose sight of the future they desire as their experience.
In working with all the people I have, there seems to inevitably come a defining moment, a point when it appears that nothing is working! The key word here is "appears." When you are laying new groundwork, you must retain your ability to SEE the future you are working to make.
We are an impatient bunch! Our old ways of thinking will rear up their chatty little heads at us and tell us we were crazy for trying this stuff in the first place. Our perceptions will try to return to the familiar, to what they've always been. And it's true, our experiences will go back to what they've always been, unless and until we take these defining moments and re-shape them, re-name them and re-claim them.
Here's a normal scenario:
By this point in the book, you've most likely put this book down and gone out and tried some, if not all, of the things I've recommended that you do to get different results. You will have gotten some results instantly, as you re-labeled people and situations, and sent out that new vibe. You couldn't believe it would be so easy! You try it again, and get a new, more desirable result! This may go on for a week or so. And then it will seem like you've hit a wall. You are now trying a new vibe on your most difficult challenge. Nothing happens. You try again. Nada, Zip, Nothing! Now, you are feeling like you must be crazy for buying into this stuff, and you are just going to forget it and work on learning to accept the things you can not change.
But then, that little voice in your head reminds you of all the "scientific" evidence. So there must be some truth to all of this. And, after all, you did see some early results. Once you have this new knowledge, and proved to yourself that it works, you will never again be able to be at peace as a victim in any situation. So you re-open this book, and you find yourself here. That little voice is also telling you that you have this book in your possession for a reason, and it's not about giving up on something that

you can, in fact, have a healing effect on. It is a message to get your butt in gear and send a new vibe!

You are right on schedule!

There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as if everything is.
- Albert Einstein

Don't Stop 5 Seconds Before the Miracle!

After you have studied these concepts and even put some into practice, to stop now would be like squatting with your spurs on: it hurts you more than it does anybody else!
We have a tendency to give up, for we believe that to go forward with such a simple plan would be crazy. Nothing can possibly be that easy, right? But, what's really going on is this: what these new practices involve is an emotional risk, the likes of which we have not taken before and that we fear taking. We have been taught to comply, give up and try with all of our might to force ourselves to settle for less than what we really want. It has been a predominant belief that to fail at a risk like this will be worse than having not taken a risk at all. Wrong. To not have risked - now that would be the real loss. Remember that there is no such thing as failure, only results. And here's the best part: If you don't like the results you are getting, then change them. It's just a clue that you still have a solution that's trying to happen. That's all.
In working with re-labeling and the LOVE VIBE, calling Love forth and sending it out, we are in fact taking a risk. We are taking intellectual, emotional and physical risks. You can not call love forth without feeling the effects of what you are doing. By re-labeling and sending love, you are giving a gift to another individual or situation, which you would like to change, or at least to experience differently.
After re-labeling them and sending the LOVE VIBE, the question is: did they receive it? And if they are not showing an immediate change, then why aren't they? If this is where you're at, then most likely it simply means you are either pushing against what you don't want, or strangling to death the outcome that you do want! Holding on too tight to a desired result energetically pushes against the situation or person, with whom you would prefer different results. You may be obsessing, planning and trying too hard. The disappointment we then feel will negate the work that we have been doing in re-labeling and holding a higher vision.

Give Up Your Attachment to Their Outcome

In working with someone like Mary Ann in Chapter 19, or any of the children in my classrooms, the attachment can be different than with the

intimate relationships in our lives. In more intimate relationships, like our marriages or our own children, the connection is closer to our hearts and has a greater immediate affect on us. If your work is your greatest connection, then you can feel it as intimately as in family relationships.

In dealing with the Mary Ann's, to whom we are not emotionally attached, as long as you see yourself being of service, you are not likely to be consumed by how fast or how well they do. You are able to detach more easily from their progress; or lack thereof.
When dealing with your partner or your children, however, we haven't really been taught to see ourselves in a service position. We are not as patient, if at all, or as kind. This is much more challenging, and it totally contradicts what we've seen modeled in relationships. It contradicts the ways we have subsequently learned to try to retain some kind of control and safety in our more intimate relationships.
We are attached to everything the important people in our lives do, because we are connected with our hearts, and we also feel that it all somehow reflects upon us. Even if we are beyond that, we may feel the intensity of their situations, and energetically be affected by what they are doing or not doing, or not getting. We feel their vibes of frenetic activity, avoidance or aggression (or all of the above), and we feel it when they are not fully stepping into their power and their greatness.

Being Over Zealous is Pushing at Them to Get It
Zealousness is generally a good thing, when you are generating energy to sustain you in keeping your dreams alive and in forward motion. As with all things, keeping the energy to sustain a desired result is different than over-efforting (using force) to make things happen on what you perceive is the right or correct time frame.
The art of getting more of what you want and less of what you don't want is in knowing when to do your part. If you find yourself being over zealous, then you will also find yourself being too anxious, too intense, insistent or needy. Then you are driving an energy that repels. Everything in due time.
In pursuing a desired result, whether it is a harmonious work or personal relationship, or children who are doing well in school and in their personal lives, you want to treat it like a marathon, and not a sprint. My problem has been that I have approached much of my life as a sprint and then wondered why I'm constantly tired and disenchanted.
If someone is not doing their part, sharing their load, and you come from a long line of women who are martyrs, or of men who are controllers, you will not just energetically change completely overnight and be able to sustain a dramatic difference in your present level of experiences. You've tried re-labeling, and it worked. Then you will most likely become overzealous and expect that this change you have helped

induce in this person is now rooted in some kind of deep, rich soil. It is not. You need to plant it and water it and make sure it gets enough consistent light in your mind's eye. It is a marathon.

I have found that behaviors in children can change and remain reversed far easier and far quicker than with adults, who have developed highly resistant habits. And then again, there can be absolute, quantifiable miracles that can occur with adults, too, where the change is so dramatic that it is firmly planted and in place for the rest of a person's life.
I can't predict, and you can't predict. It's important that you just do the work and keep your pace as you would if you needed to go farther than you originally planned.

A Case on Point:

My husband's biggest complaint of me was that I was repeatedly holding him to what he had done in the past, that I wouldn't "re-label" him in my mind as competent and capable. After many unhappy arguments in which I desperately tried to put words to the energetic connection I was feeling from him, I finally realized that I had re-labeled him. I had always seen him as competent and capable in business and relationship skills. The problem was that I was too attached to his getting it and fully stepping up into it, and I had wanted it yesterday, on a faster time schedule.
I found myself saying mentally, and then verbally, "I'm so tired of waiting on you to perform up to your capability." To Craig, this translated into "You're never going to be good enough to please me!"
Yet, with the Mary Anns and the school children, timing was never an issue for me. Why? Because I didn't take them home with me, and I didn't have to live with the issues that they were working on mastering.
Now, it could be possible for a person to get attached to Mary Ann's outcome, if they wanted her to be successful for their own personal gain, so they will look like the hero, the know-it-all, the Supreme Being. And all of us have the capacity to find ourselves tripped up by that ego state. If we are, it just means that we are not truly being of service.
My husband had been verbally and physically beaten down as a child, as I had, only more by his father. His mother, while trying to sound positive, was not. She was sarcastic in her approach and, during Craig's formidable years, was in constant fear of her husband, and while loving him, was constantly trying to be compliant. This didn't work then, and it doesn't work now. Because there is no real way to be compliant energetically. By not stepping into your power, you are actually causing more misuse of power, increasing the potential for conflict and abuse. There is an energy that exists between you that says you don't have to be taken seriously, because you aren't taking yourself seriously.
I came into this world with enough strong will for the two of us. Unfortunately, that can't be shared or traded. Unlike my husband, when I

would get knocked around, I'd keep coming back for more, not giving up until I had turned things around. He learned in childhood to hide and try to remain invisible and compliant. In working so hard to be compliant, he usually just quit. Quitting or avoidance has an energy to it that, once again, literally draws a more powerful person to misuse their power with you. One attracts the other. The more Craig tried to remain invisible, the more he messed up. The more he tried not to get his father angry, the more his father got angry, because he felt his son was trying to escape, and not performing up to his capabilities. When his father felt this vibrationally, he would become angry and withdraw his love, believing that this would somehow teach his son to perform at a higher level. Which is really like pushing someone down with your foot and then yelling at him or her to get up!
This is a scenario that many of us have endured as children. The methods we used as children to survive this, we are finding, will not work for us in the adult world. People who are still trying to make the avoidance tactic work must decide what they stand for, what they believe is their purpose and passion, and do something toward that endeavor, no matter who tells them that they will fail at it. Avoidance just keeps you in the victim position, getting the same results, and nothing good comes from that.
And so you see our connection. I sense and I feel it when he is in avoidance, and it feeds into my fear that he is allowing me to run everything. The responsibilities of marriage, of maintaining a home, of building a business, all require that each person does their part, and I felt that how he was showing up was unacceptable. I wanted him to set standards, stand up for his life and most importantly, pitch in and do his fair share.
Little by little, my husband and I have been carving out the "new male" and the "new female" roles that many, if not most, couples in our society today are beginning to experience. In these new roles, men are becoming more supportive of their mates, sharing or taking over the homemaking, while women are becoming more powerful, sharing or taking over as the breadwinner. In the traditional role model, the mature masculine has been seen as the provider, protector, teacher and as someone who should be waited on by his spouse. As a "new woman," a single mother, provider, protector, an entrepreneur, and later as a step-mother making it all work for basically three families, I did not experience ANY man as someone that I could respect.
And yet, if I am to have a connection with my husband which includes the gift of the more pleasurable aspects of what a loving relationship can entail, the key here is that I had to turn things around and find a way to respect him. To have what I want means that I need to give something. In order to experience a kinder, more supportive world that we are all capable of giving, and to have a deep, abiding and blissful love experience, I knew I needed to find a way to respect men, and be

merciful about my husband's most personalized journey into becoming the "new man."

Pull Your Vibes Back In.

In deciding to rigorously put my focus on the things I already did value and respect about my husband. I began to build a new place inside of myself that I could go to when I would become triggered and send out the I DON'T RESPECT YOU vibe. I became willing to be committed to becoming disciplined about pulling that vibe back in and changing it. I was determined to bring peace, love, harmony and good will to our marriage. For me, it was about becoming totally devoted to the goal I was seeking. Because of my professional background, knowing as much as I know was not always a comfort to me because, sometimes I would really rather nag him than make the effort to change my vibe and my approach.
I'd had enough experience with this to know that it would work if only I would work it. By holding firm to a person's already existing positive attributes, and remaining unattached to their progress, outcomes or timing, I am truly able to be UNDISTURBED. It is easy to send good vibes to a person or situation when I'm detached and undisturbed.
It's all about practicing harmlessness. I knew all of this, and yet I will admit, that I did not do it perfectly, and I did not do every time I knew I could be doing it. When I would slip back in to my old habits, I would remind myself that with children, when I would remain undisturbed, regardless of what they did to try to re-enact the labels that they came into my classrooms with, the negative behaviors would fall away.
By detaching and sending LOVE VIBES we pull our fear vibes back in, and it then allows us to be undisturbed. In repeatedly saying to yourself: "I am undisturbed, I am undisturbed, I am undisturbed" you will begin to experience peace, and that which has disturbed you will begin to fall away.

Where We Are Today

By not squatting with my spurs on, pulling my over-zealousness energy back in, and yet still holding firm to the vision of the future that I wanted to create in our marriage, Craig elected to step up and participate fully with me. He acknowledges that he felt a shift in me, and that it has been much easier to take his emotional risks in being all he can be. He felt that I was on his side, not on his case. As long as I was noticing and calling him on his shortcomings, I was contributing to keeping him stuck. The difference in energy, he says, feels like I am providing him with a stable foundation, a safe haven, to grow from, rather than a search light, looking for signs of weakness.
Together we are carving out a more equally powerful and harmonious marriage. To say that we never fuss with each other would not be true,

for we are still growing and creating as we go. Craig has become an ardent advocate of sending me the LOVE VIBES, especially when I'm fussing about something he has or hasn't done. I love being sent the LOVE VIBES because it is such a soothing balm, especially in contrast to the
YOU B____ VIBES!

Through a series of serendipitous events, I stepped more fully into my greatness and continued to change myself and my approach. I pulled my vibes back in and gently held in my mind the things I most admired, respected and valued about my husband. The result? Craig, in his own time and in his own way, stepped up and stepped more fully in to his passion and determined that he was about the business of being my marketing director and yes, even my protector. He keeps the occasional negative naysayer away from me as need be, and he consults with me on absolutely every aspect of the business we are building together. He handles everything related to marketing and the Internet. I am free to speak and write. He's also become quite helpful in the kitchen! Now, to get my 16 year old son more focused about home responsibilities will be my next endeavor!
Because of our extensive baggage from the past, and because we never know when we will feel emotionally triggered, Craig came up with a "shorthand" way to get us back on track. We have agreed that, when we argue, fuss or fight, if one of us says, "Can we start over?" or "Can we begin again?" we can, and we do begin again.
It is a great way, we've found, to interrupt the past habits and our knee-jerk responses and begin the conversation over. At the heart of all interactions is a deep-seated need and desire for peace, love, harmony and good will, and the act of asking for a new start is both an act of love and a call for love.
We also use this as our mantra when things are going sideways:

PEACE, LOVE, HARMONY, GOOD WILL
PEACE, LOVE, HARMONY, GOOD WILL
PEACE, LOVE, HARMONY, GOOD WILL

One of us will say, "Well, I just want peace, love, harmony and good will right about now." And it will instantly interrupt the legacy of what has gone before us.

We begin again.

It doesn't all have to happen today. So, keep your "spiritual spurs" on. And, whatever you do, don't give up and don't give in to that ever present temptation to squat!

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