Moreover, look at today’s context: The election of our first African-American President has spawned a not-unexpected backlash of fear, racism and hostility.  That backlash is clearly an element in the Tea Party movement, and is stoked for political gain by frightened Republicans. Few Republicans will admit that; and few Democrats have the courage to expose it.

Given the larger, world-wide context of change, danger and uncertainty, it’s no surprise that President Obama has become the receptacle for fear and hostility.  For example, the right-wing and its Republican allies are intent on portraying Obama as a commie-leaning, anti-American, dangerous alien — despite that evidence that he’s a pretty centrist, business-supporting, moderate via his actions and policies.  I think the outrage and vitriol expressed about and towards him is fueled by a mounting sense of hopelessness and danger, with no discernible way out.

The fact is, we’re living with a continuing, frightening economic tailspin; unchanging unemployment levels; endless wars with no clear purpose or exist strategy; an obvious need to let the tax breaks for wealthy people expire (and opposition to such from the Republicans); fears among both parties about tackling the mounting dangers of climate change; and a host of other continuing uncertainties and dangers.

In this context, few political leaders offer solutions that can be supported or enacted, given that the Senate now seems to require a filibuster-proof majority for any legislation.  Columnists like Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Charles Blow and David Brooks of the New York Times are among the few public figures exposing the core dynamics underlying this odd mixture of free-fall and stalemate.  Many feel as Maureen Dowd described recently in the Times, that “…we are in a monstrous maze without the ball of string to find our way out.”

Our times need “out-of-the-box,”  courageous, outlier-type thinking and actions.  Having begun this piece about recent racial issues, I’m reminded of a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., that fits: “Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

In previous posts I’ve written about the roots of that seemingly inevitable decline and what helps. But there’s another part of relationship failure or loss that can be a basis of new growth. Let me explain. Over the decades I’ve witnessed countless examples of people drawn into new relationships that are simply new versions of previous, failed relationships — old wine in new flasks. And inevitably, disaster is lying in wait, right down the road. I think that often happens when an important part of the foundation for a positive, sustainable romantic and sexual relationship is neglected or overlooked.

That is, mental health practitioners focus a great deal on building better mechanics of listening, mirroring to each other, techniques of communication and compromise, and so on. All good stuff. But what can go missing is a deeper learning, emotionally and spiritually: Learning not only what went wrong in your past, failed relationships; but also learning from the residue of the loss and using that awareness in your future relationships. That means incorporating the meaning of the loss or failure into the fabric of your life, and identifying what you need to learn from it as you go forward.

That missing ingredient came to mind recently while reading an essay by a woman who encountered the son of an early, lost love. Reading it stirred up an old memory, as I described in a previous post, in a different context.

As a young boy growing up in upstate New York, I sometimes roamed through some nearby woods and fields. As I did that one bright summer afternoon I came upon a large tree – perhaps an elm or poplar. I noticed that its trunk had a deep scar, and looked like it had been struck by lightning some years before.

That came to mind, for reasons I’ll explain later, reading Lee Montgomery’s essay, “First Love, Once Removed.” She describes a drop-in visit by the son of her first lover, with whom she had many romantic and adventurous experiences in her early youth, during the 1970s.

She writes, “When I think of Ian, I think of endless days hanging out in the woods and fields around our New England prep schools, sucking dope out of a metal chamber pipe. Ian showed me the world and taught me to live in it. New York City. The Great West. And Europe, where we lived for several months during his first college year abroad. He was socially connected and wealthy, two things I was not. For a long time, it didn’t matter.”

Eventually, their relationship ended. No surprise, for two 18 year-olds. She went on with her life: “I went to college, fell in love again (and again), married, went to graduate school and made a career. For his part, Ian….inherited a lot of money, moved out West, married, had no career that I knew of and shot himself when he was in his 30s.”

His son, who was quite young at the time his father committed suicide, was now about the age Montgomery was when she and his father were lovers. She describes his dropping by her office one day, hoping to hear some stories of what his father was like. The memories felt and alive as she drew into them and spoke with her young lover’s son about his father: “Sitting across a booth studying this young man, I was overwhelmed. So many years later, I was stunned to find the feeling of first love still there….We were really happy once. My word, imagine to be that age, in love and alive.”

Montgomery’s poignant essay brought to mind the importance of facing the enduring loss of love and connection. It affects us permanently, and that can be a good thing. No matter whether it was because the two of you grew in different directions as you enter adulthood life, or from failure to build on what you once shared together. Nor does it matter if the relationship ended because of something you did that harmed or damaged the relationship. None of those experiences can be undone. Nor should they.

Their legacy becomes woven into the larger tapestry of your life, even as that tapestry enlarges over time. The challenge is to incorporate all of it; learn about yourself from all of your experiences, especially what didn’t work or what was negative…or else keep repeating new versions of it.

That’s what brought to mind the old tree trunk I saw as a young boy. Damaged where the lightning had struck, I noticed that the trunk had continued to grow around it and gradually encompassed the damaged part within it. It was like oneself: Even if you continue to grow and change, learn from your experiences and continue on with your life, your losses nevertheless remain part of you…. always there, a visible, enduring part of you. But by embracing that reality, loss of failure in love can be a good thing for your future relationships; if you can learn to integrate it and meld it into your ongoing life journey, your personal “evolution.”

Here’s a way you can begin learning from your failed or lost love relationships. I call it doing a Relationship Inventory.

Start by making a list of your major romantic relationships. Then:

• For each one, reflect on and write down what attracted you to that person, at that particular time of your life. What were the qualities of that person that aroused your interest? Why those qualities? What were your life circumstances at the time? What role did those play? Include family influences, as well as the impact of what you thought love was, at that time. How would you assess your own level of development or awareness at that time?

• Describe in one or two paragraphs what you think happened during the relationship that led to its end, from today’s perspective. That is, from the vantage point of what you know about yourself today.

• Write down what you think you learned – or were unable to learn at that time – about yourself from that relationship.

• How did that help – or could have helped, had you been more aware at the time — evolve your capacity for a positive, sustaining relationship?

• How can you use that knowledge and awareness now, with your current – or next-relationship?

In a previous post I wrote that a key pathway to psychological health and resiliency in today’s world is learning to “forget yourself.” This post describes ways to do that in three important realms of your life – your work, your personal relationships, and your life “footprint.”

In the earlier post I explained that “forgetting yourself” doesn’t mean neglecting your own legitimate needs or concerns. Rather, it means letting go of our human tendency to overly dwell on ourselves – our own concerns, needs, desires, slights, complaints about others, and so on. Psychological health and resiliency in today’s world grows when you can do that and put your energies in the service of something larger than yourself: problems, needs and challenges that lie beyond your own personal, narrow self-interest.

That may sound like a paradox, but it’s based on a new reality: Today’s world is changing more rapidly than you can imagine and is becoming immensely interdependent, interconnected, unpredictable and unstable. In this new environment you can’t create or sustain a positive, healthy life through the old ways of reactive resiliency, of coping and hoping to rebound.

That is, chronic unhappiness, dysfunction and overt emotional disturbance lie in store for those who remain too locked into thinking about themselves and who use old solutions to achieve success in relationships and at work. For example, trying to achieve power and domination over others, and thinking you can hold on to that. Fearing collaboration and avoiding mutuality with people who are different from yourself, or with whom you have differences. Looking for ways to cope with stress and restore equilibrium or “balance” in your life. And overall, being absorbed by your own conflicts, disappointments and the like. The latter are inevitable, and dwelling on them is a breeding ground for resentment, jealousy, and blame. That’s a dead-end. The consequences are visible in people who are unable to handle career downturn, who experience mounting relationship conflicts and who suffer from a range of psychological problems like depression, boredom, stress, anxiety and self-undermining behavior.

In contrast, positive resiliency in today’s environment is the byproduct when you aim towards common goals, purposes or missions larger than just your own narrow self-interests. That keeps you nimble, flexible, and adaptive to change and unpredictable events that are part of our new era. Then, you’re creating true balance, between your “outer” and “inner” life.

Here are three ways you can move through self-interest. Each describes a shift, or evolution from the older, reactive form of resilience to the new, proactive form:

Upgrade your career to the 4.0 version; Practice “Harnicissism;” and Become a Good Ancestor

Yeah, I know — those descriptions sound odd. In future posts I’ll elaborate on each of them. But this overview will help stimulate your thinking about what they look like in everyday life.

Upgrade To Career 4.0 The most savvy men and women already know that today’s workplace requires a high level of collaboration with very diverse people. You need to align your talents and skills with common objectives, whether a product or service. That means diminishing your ego in the service of teamwork towards that larger purpose, while constantly looking for opportunities for learning, growth and impact. In essence, that’s the 4.0 career upgrade.

To oversimplify for the sake of contrast, the 1.0 career is doing whatever kind of work is necessary to survive. The 2.0 orientation is what most people think of as “careerism” – aiming for increasing personal power, authority and position within an organization. The rise of Career 3.0 during the last 20 years reflected a desire for more personal meaning and sense of purpose through work.

The more recent emergence of the 4.0 orientation goes beyond the self-focus of 3.0. It’s a shift away from self-promotion and purely personal ambitions – whether for increasing authority or personal “happiness” – and towards effective, creative contribution to goals larger than the purely personal. It means looking for ways to have impact on something that matters, as you continue to learn and grow your capacities and talents.

From the 4.0 perspective, you move through self-interest, not into it. You’re tuned in to the larger picture, in which you’re one player, while finding ways to make a positive contribution to the service or product. It includes being aware of how you’re perceived by others, and looking for ways to be collaborative rather than self-promoting at others’ expense. As a CEO recently commented, “the definition of success is the company, not an individual.”

Practice “Harnicissism”

Don’t go looking it up, because there’s no such word. I made it up to describe the second pillar. “Harnicissism” is shorthand for learning to harness your narcissism. I don’t mean that everyone is narcissistic in the pathological sense. Most people have tendencies towards self-interest and self-absorption, and those are often reinforced and promoted by cultural norms and values. They impact and distort our romantic and sexual relationships, as I’ve written in another post here. Those same tendencies cripple effective interactions and relationships in general, and will undermine positive resiliency.

But in fact, research shows that we’re not innately narcissistic. So, a second pillar of resiliency in today’s world is leading yourself towards mutuality and equality – “power with” rather than “power over” – people in your sphere of relationships. From the perspective of “Harnicissism” you’re aware that you’re serving a larger purpose than just your own agenda: the “third entity,” the relationship itself. It’s that third entity that supports and strengthens your intimate relationship, that with your children, co-workers, or groups that you’re a member of.

The shift, here, is from primarily self-interest, towards openness and mutuality in service of a shared goal. For example, it’s a shift away from maneuvering, dominating or subtly manipulating to get your own way; to get your own needs and desires met at the expense of the other person — or even, as is often the case — at the expense of the relationship itself.

You can practice “Harnicissism” through transparent exposure and two-way openness, as opposed to being in relationships that are transactional and commercial, operating with a “return of investment” philosophy. In fact, research shows that more effective, productive relationships are forged through cooperation and mutual support rather than by power struggles. Those actions are fueled by both empathy and “indifference,” as I described in previous posts.

Become A Good Ancestor

This third pillar of resilience refers to everyday actions that help support a healthy, sustainable planet – for your own life, your children, your community, and all humans, around the globe. Others who come after you will live with the “footprint” you leave behind. That’s why I call this pillar becoming a “good ancestor.”

That is, growing recognition of climate change, along with climate disasters like the Gulf oil eruption and political upheaval around the world has raised awareness that everyone’s well-being, security and future way of life are highly interconnected. We’ve all become global citizens. Your individual actions and “footprint” will impact the health of the planet and the lives people who come after you.

Becoming a good ancestor represents a shift from selfish consumption of resources, from fear of others who are different, towards actions that help sustain the health and well-being of both the human community and the planet. For example, it’s harder to enjoy and consume pleasures for yourself when you’re highly aware of the suffering of others, whether from famine, natural disasters, polluted water, torture. All such events circle back to impact each of us. Actions that help you become a good ancestor strengthen your own capacity to deal with the disruptions and upheavals that are in store for all of us; with being able to handle a “non-equilibrium world with flexibility and positive actions.

All three of these pillars of resiliency rest upon being able to “forget yourself” in the ways I’ve described. They are the vehicle for acting with empathy, a broadened perspective, and sense of responsibility for not only yourself and immediate relationships, but for the human community and the planet. When you “forget yourself” through flexible, focused actions, you’re better able to experience stability, success and well-being through tumultuous times, like a gyroscope that keeps a ship stable through choppy waters.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, describing the recent meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, provides a good example.  With a tinge of ironic humor, Milbank writes that

A blue-and-white Israeli flag hung from Blair House. Across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Stars and Stripes was in its usual place atop the White House. But to capture the real significance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit with President Obama, White House officials might have instead flown the white flag of surrender.

Milbank was referring to the Obama administration’s decision four months ago to condemn Israel over a new settlement.

The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration’s actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover.  So on Tuesday, Obama, routed and humiliated by his Israeli counterpart, invited Netanyahu back to the White House for what might be called the Oil of Olay Summit: It was all about saving face.

He continues:

The president, beaming in the Oval Office with a dour Netanyahu at his side, gushed about the “extraordinary friendship between our two countries.” He performed the Full Monty of pro-Israel pandering: “The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable” . . . “I commended Prime Minister Netanyahu” . . . “Our two countries are working cooperatively” . . . “unwavering in our commitment” . . . “our relationship has broadened” . . . “continuing to improve” . . . “We are committed to that special bond, and we are going to do what’s required to back that up.”

Milbank then targets the core problem, writing that

Obama came to office with an admirable hope of reviving Middle East peace efforts by appealing to the Arab world and positioning himself as more of an honest broker. But he has now learned the painful lesson that domestic politics won’t allow such a stand.

And that feeds the continuing tragedy – for the Israelis, the Palestinians, and for all of us.  Our political leadership engages in one-sided political pandering, based largely on shoring up political support.  In so doing, it fails to promote peace and reconciliation, which should be the aim.  But doing the latter requires acknowledging that BOTH sides have engaged in destructive actions and atrocities, and that BOTH sides have legitimate, valid interests.

When one attempts to do so, however, one risks being labeled anti-Israeli, or even anti-semitic.  Such was the fate of noted historian Tony Judt, author of Postwar, the seminal analysis of post-World War II Europe.  A few years ago, two major Jewish organizations blocked Judt, who is Jewish and directs an institute at New York University that focuses on European issues, from speaking at an event at which he planned to argue that the Israeli lobby has often stifled debate.

As though to confirm his subject matter, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee objected, saying Judt was too critical of Israel and American Jewry. The groups persuaded the organization sponsoring the talk to cancel it.

Judt, who lost his family in the Holocaust, described this as “chilling,” and part of a larger pattern he and others have experienced.

Stifling debate – especially by those who seek solutions that promote a two-state solution – only furthers the endless killing, retaliation and horror for both sides. But some continue to argue strongly that one can be both pro-Israeli and pro-peace.  Notable, here, is a new organization, J Street.  It describes itself as “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans to advocate for vigorous U.S. leadership to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to broaden debate around Israel and the Middle East in national politics and the American Jewish community.”   It argues that “ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the best interests of Israel, the United States, the Palestinians, and the region as a whole.”

And, it emphasizes support for “Israel and its desire for security as the Jewish homeland, as well as the right of the Palestinians to a sovereign state of their own – two states living side-by-side in peace and security….diplomatic solutions over military ones, including in Iran; multilateral over unilateral approaches to conflict resolution; and dialogue over confrontation with a wide range of countries and actors when conflicts do arise.”

Such advocacy is both realistic and hopeful; an alternative to endless decades of more mutual destruction. It’s also helpful to experience the world of the less familiar from within the perspective of its members.  A good example is the movie Paradise Now, that portrayed the psychological evolution of Palestinian suicide bombers, from within their point of view and life experiences.

The problem is that even President Obama, who came into office presenting himself as an even-handed broker for Middle East peace, found it necessary to backtrack quickly from that position.  As Milbank wrote about the recent press conference, its conclusion found Obama

…feverishly rebuilding the U.S.-Israel relationship. The president’s opening statement in front of the cameras contained not a word of criticism of the Jewish state.  “Well, I just completed an excellent one-on-one discussion with Prime Minister Netanyahu,” he began. For those tuning in late, he added at the end: “So I just want to say, once again, that I thought the discussion that we had was excellent.” Netanyahu was pleased with the pandering.

Facing what that means can be painful. It may even feel relationship-threatening. But doing so can open the door to strengthening the true foundation of your relationship: Your vision of life. That refers to what you’re really living and working for, both individually and as a couple.

That’s the fundamental core of a relationship, and it’s often overlooked or seldom discussed. When you do face it you may discover that you and your partner were never in synch about your vision of life. Or, that you may have gone off on different tracks over time. When either is the case, you end up seeing different things altogether.

That’s a crucial problem because your core vision of life will increasingly impact your long-term health and well-being in today’s world, whether you’re in a relationship or not. We’re now living in a totally interconnected, unpredictable, “non-equilibrium” world. My 35 years as a psychotherapist and business psychologist convinces me that our new era requires a new and revised picture of psychological health and positive resiliency — what it looks like and what helps build it – to support your outward success and internal well-being in the years ahead.

My previous posts about the impact of the New Resiliency on intimate relationships have focused on sustaining or rebuilding building positive connection, emotional intimacy and sexuality in our new era. These are important, but the underlying foundation for long-term vitality and connection is a couple’s shared vision of life. But typically, a couple doesn’t talk about it much, or may gloss over it and assume they’re on the same page. Then, when they get into trouble in their daily relationship, they start looking for answers that don’t help.

That is, many couples spend a great deal of time, effort and money trying to improve their communication skills, listening skills, negotiation skills, their problem solving techniques and, in general, trying to learn how to make a marriage “work” for the long run. And yet, despite best intentions, the divorce rate continues to be about 50%. Increasing numbers choose to live together without marriage. And affairs appear to have entered the mainstream (Ashley Madison, the on-line site for people seeking affairs, now advertises on TV and has made a $25 million bid for naming rightsto the new Meadowlands stadium).

But the yearning for a relationship that sustains and deepens over time – even the desire for the elusive “soul mate” – remains strong. The continuing market for articles, books, blog posts and videos about how to make relationships work better is, in itself, evidence that none of these programs, strategies and techniques help very much. But it’s also confirmed by actual research. For example, social psychology researcher Bella DePaulo has documented the lack of evidence for the effectiveness of marriage skills programs in two recent Psychology Today blogs.

What’s Your Vision of Life?

I think the reason these programs don’t contribute much to building or sustaining intimacy and relationship “success” is that most of them focus on tweaking or modifying what I’ve described as a Functional Relationship. It’s what most couples descend into as they grapple with “balancing” work and life issues, raising children, paying bills, and so on. Their interaction becomes increasingly transactional, less energized and less interesting. Conflicts and power struggles begin to become part of daily life. As one spouse said to me, “I can’t remember why we got together in the first place.”

Couples will begin thinking that they’re seeing things differently, and if they can only learn how to adjust those differences – perhaps some creative compromises or better give-and-take – then they will have a successful future.

Not so. Not when the real problem is that you’re operating with different visions of life to begin with. Your vision includes:

• Your overall sense of purpose, of meaning.
• What you’re actually living and working for, or towards, in “real time.”
• What you’re strengthening or diminishing in your personality and values — knowingly or unknowingly — individually and as a couple, as you travel through life.

Here are some guides for you and your partner to help identify your life vision. Compare your answers to the questions and discuss what you discover

Seeing Your Current Life Path
First, set aside a block of time to talk with each other about your deepest desires and aspirations for your lives, individually and together. Listen to each other. Ask questions, but hold off commenting on or judging what you hear. Just learn from each other. Be as honest as you can.

Begin the dialogue with these questions:

• Why do you think you’re here, on this planet, at this moment in time?
• How did you come to do the kind of work you now do?
• Why do you continue to do it?
• What are your material goals vs. your spiritual, creative or relationship goals for your lifetime, as an individual and as a couple?
• What do the answers reveal about your desires, values, aspirations or fears?

Then, look at what you and your partner are aiming towards at this moment in your lives, in the context of your careers; your financial situation; your family, if you have growing children or ones already “launched;” or elderly parents who may need care and decision-making. For example:

• Children – Are you on the same page about what you want for your children, regarding education, summer enrichment programs, how you see their personalities, temperaments, interests, cognitive strengths, talents, etc.

• Financial – Describe each of your views of financial “needs” vs. “wants,” with respect to your desires for lifestyle, long-term security, use of assets over time, and the role of giving to others in your value system. Discuss where you and your partner mesh, where you don’t, and how to bridge the differences. Focus on the long-term, the decades ahead, and not just immediate circumstances.

• Geographic – To what extent are you both compatible with, and have a sense of connection with your geographic location? How important is this dimension to you? Where there are differences, how can you deal with them through compromise or adjustment over time?

Your Life Plan

• Do you serve anything larger than your own personal needs and wants? If not, where do you think that road will take you over time? If you do, what is it? Does what you serve or contribute to feel in synch with your true self, your talents, your values?

• Did you turn away from any passions or interests that pulled you when you were younger, and that you regret not having pursued? If so, how could you try to reclaim them?

• Make a list of any talents, experiences, unfulfilled creative needs, and challenges that you would like to incorporate into the next several years of your life.

• For each item on your list, write down what changes you would need to make in your career, personal life commitments or relationship, to make that occur.

• What are the resources you currently have; and what ones would you need to acquire to make those changes (education, financial, location, life-style, etc.)?

• How do these mesh with those of your partner? What do you do if they don’t?

Should Your Relationship Continue?

Now, the big one: Describe why you want to stay together, including the possibility that you don’t.

• Be open with each other about whether you want to continue your marriage or relationship as it currently exists. Is this the person you want to stay with the rest of your life? If so, explain why.

• If you have doubts, express them. Consider the possibility that the relationship you entered years ago, and within which you may have raised children, worked for that earlier purpose; but that it may no longer work for you today.

• If it doesn’t, how could the two of you reconstitute it to fit who each of you are at this point in your lives? Do you want to try? If not, can you end it respectfully?

Share with your partner what you come up with from all of the above exercises. Discuss where you’re in synch, and how to deal with where you’re not. Just asking these questions about your life vision will reveal important information about each other and about yourselves as a couple. That will tell you if you have a good foundation for a self-sustaining relationship — one that will be resilient in the face of the unknowns and changes that are waiting for you down the road….and you know there are going to be plenty of them!

That event triggered a memory of an event that occurred more than two decades earlier.  It made me reflect on what we do as parents that affect how our children will deal with uncertainties and unknowns that lie ahead in their lives.  But it also reminded me that children have some innate “adult” powers that we haven’t fully recognized.

It happened one morning in early spring.  We were sitting at the airport, waiting for the plane to begin boarding.  My daughter was going fly alone.  It wasn’t the first time she had flown, but on this trip she would be unaccompanied, and would meet her mother in another city.  She was excited about it, but was also scared about going alone.

We sat side-by-side in the airport lounge, where we could look through the large windows at the baggage loading and refueling activity outside.  She began peppering me with unnerving questions — like why planes crashed, how frequently, and whether I knew that this one would be safe.  Oddly, though, each time she asked I thought I detected a faint, sly grin, followed by a quick sideways glance with her twinkling blue eyes.  I sensed that she was feeling something she couldn’t quite express, beyond her fears.  Maybe was looking to me to affirm whatever that was, if  only I could tune into it.

Then suddenly, it was boarding time.  We rose together, and she hugged me tightly.  “I’m still scared, Daddy,” she murmured quietly.  Quickly reviewing my parental options, I thought of something: I reached into my pocket and found a quarter.  I told her that this was a Magic Quarter that I kept for situations like these.  As long as she held it in her hand, she would be completely safe.  Then, then she would feel free to have fun on the trip.

She gripped it tightly in her little fist, and with a solemn look, but still with that odd glint in her eye, marched down the boarding ramp. She continued looking back at me, waving until she was out of sight.

Driving along the Potomac River back into Washington, I kept thinking about what had happened.  I felt there was something meaningful in her sly grin.  Perhaps she sensed that the trip could be fun, a new adventure, and not just a bundle of fears.  At the time, I wasn’t sure, but if so, maybe the Magic Quarter provided the bridge.  Maybe she knew the real “magic” was the nascent power within her.

Today, I think that moment illuminated something that’s often unrecognized in our understanding of both children and adults:  That there are innate “adult” powers within the child that are the foundation for a psychologically healthy adulthood.  But the parenting the child receives, as well as the norms and rewards the culture provides, can deform those powers.

Let me explain.  Mental health practitioners and the general public alike often speak of a “wounded child” within the adult; that a healthy adulthood requires healing that “inner child” and building good coping skills and competencies. That’s certainly true, for many people.  But I think psychological health includes more than healing early damage and successfully adjusting to the conditions you’re in. Those enable you to be functional in society, but can also fuel one’s “default mode” of self-centeredness and self-absorption to an extreme degree. Just check out the daily news.

Missing from that picture are the capacities for embracing new possibilities and challenges in life.  A spirit of adventure, fun and confidence in the face of the unknowns that lie ahead in your life path. Going against the grain in decisions and values.  Creating positive, mutual connections with diverse people. And, knowing who you are inside — independent of the pressures to adapt to a “self” that may bring external reward but also feels alien and inauthentic.

In short, reverse the notion that there’s a child within the adult.  Consider that there is also an adult within the child.

Think of how the seeds of a flower contain everything that’s needed to sprout, grow and bloom into its full form.  Similarly, the infant isn’t a blank slate.  Here are three adult powers within the child:

You’re innately empathic

This is the rudimentary form of the adult capacity for mutuality and compassion.  Empathy is the basis for experiencing others’ feelings, desires and conflicts, and moving beyond your tendency to view the world only through your own lens.  Research shows you can observe empathy within the emotional experiences and behavior of infants and small children. In fact, we now know that empathy is hard-wired, in the mirror-neurons.

You can rebound from adversity

The child has the capacity to bounce back from loss, trauma, or abuse.  Research confirms this, even for abused and emotionally damaged children.  What helps is when a child has or seeks out a role model who provides inspiration to carry him or her through the damaging experience.  The child who heals was able to construct a vision of hope and change, beyond the damaging experience.  That’s the basis for the adult capacity for creative flexibility and proactive behavior in the face of change, whether positive or negative.  That’s what I’ve described in previous posts as the proactive “new resiliency” needed in our current world.

You know your ‘true’ self

This is the child’s capacity to recognize the differences or boundaries between his or her emotional states, needs, and desires, and those of others.  That’s the foundation for the adult capacity for self-definition, for being the “author” who’s writing the “story” of your life.  That self-definition helps you let go of the social conditioning that tends to shape your values and beliefs, and that also underlies the choices at work and in relationships that often result in pain and conflict.  It’s the basis for defining your own goals and values, independent of the pull from social pressures or rewards.

Of course, these adult capacities can and do become deformed, arrested or squashed, depending on parenting, inherited temperamental and other circumstances.  For example, empathy can be short-circuited by abusive experiences or extreme reward. (see some celebrities or sports stars).  Resilience can turn into hopelessness and despair if the child is unable to visualize a hopeful possibility for the future.  And your true self can be deformed by an increasing gap between your socially-adapted false self and your more authentic “secret self,” especially if the child is pressured or rewarded to comply too much or too easily with life situations that are stifling or disappointing.

In fact, the latter underlies many of the feelings of meaningless and lifelessness that often erupt in the form of the “midlife crisis.” It also underlies the recent, seemingly contradictory findings that the mature adult years show an increase in reported happiness, on the one hand, and depression – including suicide – on the other.

The parents’ behavior is crucial to whether the adult-within-the-child flourishes, deforms or becomes arrested.  Some parents are more able than others to support growth. Some are indifferent, or affirm the wrong things because of their own unconscious, unresolved conflicts. As Jung once wrote, “Nothing has a greater impact on children than the unlived lives of their parents.”  Research confirms this.  Children report that being subjected to humiliation and disrespect, not listened to, and put in embarrassing situations have the most significant impact on them.

Looking back to that event at the airport, I think my daughter was trying to let me know – perhaps with only dim awareness — that she wanted to experience this new adventure as fun; not just cope with her anxiety about it.  As her father, my challenge was to recognize and affirm that.  The worst affirmation would have been to give her the message that her fears should be her main focus, or imply that life is just one long series of anxieties. Or, that her task was to endure the fears and sadness, but without any spirit of fun or adventure to trump them.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t so aware of any of that at the time.  But maybe the Magic Quarter help ease her anxieties, and  — if she was “on” to it, as I suspected — opened the door to her drawing on her own budding “adult” capacities.

Alfred North Whitehead once wrote that youth is “life as yet untouched by tragedy.”  Well, youth seems to end awfully early these days, in our world.  Like many, my daughter has traversed her own ups and downs as she moved into her adult years.  But her medical crisis did resolve…without any “magic.”

She did keep that Magic Quarter for several years, in a little box along with other coins and items accumulated through childhood and adolescence.  As in Chris Van Allstein’s classic children’s book, The Polar Express, when the child eventually became unable to hear the Christmas bell that only children could hear, eventually she could no longer tell – or cared — which quarter had once been the “magic” one.

Just as it should be.

That memory came to mind recently, while reading two recent New York Times articles about loss and love.  They appeared on the same day, and reflected two very different kinds of life events. Yet I think they go together, in a way.

One was the “Modern Love” column in Sunday Styles, titled “Affirmation, Etched in Vinyl,” by Connie May Fowler.  It was about the loss of her father from a heart attack, when she was six years old. Both parents appear flawed, apparently alcoholic.  But Fowler describes her mother as having been intent on portraying her father as malignant.  She writes that

“…most of what I knew of him came from my mother, who considered him the embodiment of evil.”

And most significantly,

“…My father’s death stole many things from me, including the sound of his voice.”

Ever since, she had longed to be able to know and hear what his voice sounded like.  Well, it turns out that her father had somewhat of a career as a country and western singer.

“The lack of any memory of my father’s true living voice was all the more perplexing to me because before my birth, my father, Henry May, had enjoyed a reasonably successful run as a country-western musician. He had a television show in Jacksonville, Fla. He and his band, Henry May and his Rhythm Ramblers, were a major draw all along Florida’s northeast coast.”

In her essay, Fowler describes her search for a record that he had made along the way, as she looked in old record bins and on e-bay, over the years.  Then, one day, she received a message from a stranger who had learned of her search and, in fact, had a copy of her father’s record in his possession. At last, she might be able to hear his voice.  Here’s Fowler’s full story.

The other essay is “First Love, Once Removed,” by Lee Montgomery.  It describes a drop-in visit by the son of her first lover, with whom she had many romantic and adventurous experiences in her early youth, during the 1970s.

“When I think of Ian, I think of endless days hanging out in the woods and fields around our New England prep schools, sucking dope out of a metal chamber pipe. Ian showed me the world and taught me to live in it. New York City. The Great West. And Europe, where we lived for several months during his first college year abroad. He was socially connected and wealthy, two things I was not. For a long time, it didn’t matter.”

Eventually, their relationship ended.  No surprise, for two 18 year-olds.  She went on with her life, married, began a career.  He inherited money, married

“… had no career that I knew of and shot himself when he was in his 30s.”

The son, quite young at the time his father committed suicide, was now about the age Montgomery when she and his father were lovers.  He had dropped by her office hoping to hear some stories of what his father was like.  Montgomery’s essay describes how fresh and alive the memories felt to her, as she drew into them and spoke with her young lover’s son about his father:

“Sitting across a booth studying this young man, I was overwhelmed. So many years later, I was stunned to find the feeling of first love still there.”

The full article is here.

To me, these two essays read like bookends.  Both portray the enduring loss of love and connection and how it affects us, permanently.  No matter whether it comes from a child’s loss of a parent, from the ending of an adult love relationship at any age; or from an unexpected death.  Or, for that matter, if the loss results from something you did that harmed or damaged a relationship that was important to you. None of those experiences can be undone.  Their legacy becomes woven into the larger tapestry of your life, where it remains, even as that tapestry expands over time.

And that’s what brought to mind the old tree trunk.  Damaged where the lightning had struck, I noticed that the trunk had continued to grow around it and gradually encompassed the damaged part within it.  It was like ourselves: Even if we continue to grow and change, learn from our experiences and continue on with our lives, our losses nevertheless remains part of us…. always there, a visible, enduring part of our lives.

A great deal of the criticism is justified, and it’s coming from both right and left. It includes not only his personal leadership but more broadly, the role and response of the federal government.

But I think there’s another, additional basis for the criticism:  The psychology of people’s fears when they’re confronted with such disasters, and how that shapes what they look for in a leader.

That is, the psychology of the criticism directed at Obama reflects something deeper than questions about BP’s performance and/or untrustworthiness, given the cozy relationship big oil has had with the federal government.  It’s also deeper than debate over what government’s proper role should be in dealing with this or other man-made disasters.

To explain, let’s take a look at some criticisms coming from both the left and the right:  On May 17, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews erupted in anger at the oil disaster. He railed about the profits BP reaps as it fails to fix it, but also criticized the Obama administration for letting BP control the disaster response.  Calling this “disaster capitalism,” (from Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine) he questioned why the President doesn’t just “nationalize that industry and get the job done,” adding that in China, “they execute people for this.”

That’s typical of Matthews’ sometimes over-the-top passion, but he’s been making solid criticism of the President for, in essence, looking like an observer, standing on the sidelines, instead of getting in there and doing something.

Similarly, other critics have openly wondered why Obama hasn’t shown more passion, like pounding the table, showing outrage; perhaps shouting.

Some conservative critics have implied the same, but link their criticism with an attack on Obama’s entire presidency, as you might expct.  For example, the title of Peggy Noonan’s May 29^th op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, stakes out her position: “He Was Supposed to Be Competent: The spill is a disaster for the president and his political philosophy.”

Noonan makes the connection crystal clear, in case you didn’t get the message from the title.  She calls this “…his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president’s political judgment and instincts.”

She adds that Obama has been “…chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen.  How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing?”

Getting to the emotions of the issue, Noonan says that Obama “…attempted to act out passionate engagement through the use of heightened language—”catastrophe,” etc.—but repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae. His staff probably thought this demonstrated his command of even the most obscure facts. Instead it made him seem like someone who won’t see the big picture.”

Then, there are the remarks of conservative columnist George Will.  Appearing on ABC’s This Week, he placed himself somewhere in the middle…sort of, saying that President Obama “is being unfairly blamed” for oil spill response, “and it sort of serves him right,” he added.  He’s apparently defending the President’s leadership and “lack” of passion, while arguing that it just goes to show that big government can’t do the job, so, one assumes, it’s better to leave it in the hands of private enterprise – which created the problem to begin with.

I think that one strong thread weaving together these critiques is not just that President Obama and the government have not responded quickly enough, but that Obama himself has not shown the emotional outrage and arm-waving that are so important for doing….well, what, exactly?  That’s the question they don’t address.  What’s the outcome they’re looking for? Or do they just want to be reassured by what looks and sounds “passonate?”

I think many of the complaints about Obama’s coolness, his being too cerebral, too measured and reasoned in his responses are fueled by this: A wish for a strong “Big Daddy.”  A commanding, strong-sounding, protective figure who will somehow “take command” and “do something” to fix things and make us safe again.

That kind of wish is largely unconscious.  It’s likely driven by unacknowledged, terrifying  feelings of helplessness, similar to what lies behind much of the denial about climate change.  Then, the emotions of fear and longing for safety trump your ability to stop and ask what, exactly, do you want a display of more “passion” and pounding the table to result in, with respect to solving the problem?

When you realize that the best minds and technologies are working on this – even with the criticism that corporate greed and government collusion with the oil companies have created this disaster – that realization should point you towards supporting all efforts to create the best solutions asap.

That is, it would steer you towards crying out for fact-based, results-oriented leadership, which is what Pres. Obama is now, apparently, trying to deliver.  That requires being focused on the reality of the situation, mobilizing the means we have to achieve the results, and creating a strategy that works.

That’s where reasoned criticism is important.  Unlike the flailing of those who psychologically long for a Commanding Father to make you feel secure, some are actually proposing constructive critiques.

For example, David Gergen, a truly bi-partisan figure who’s served both Republican and Democratic administrations, has posted both a strong critique of Obama’s leadership as well as specific, strategic actions by the Feds to take over the strategy and structure of the whole operation.

He writes:

It’s time for the White House to get in the driver’s seat and get us to safety – fast ….Even if BP were reliable, the problem has clearly become too big for it to handle… (and)…this catastrophe is increasingly threatening the nation’s welfare.

Gergen proposes 10 actions.  For example:

• Set up a daily command center in Washington where a presidentially-appointed leader runs the show, calls the shots, coordinates the overall effort, briefs the president and briefs the country.
• Have two deputies, one to direct the leak-stoppage and the other to direct the clean-up. Ex-CEOs and generals would be excellent candidates.
• Provide the country with the kind of daily briefings that the military has mastered for wartime – bring in people who are smart, straight and tough.

Gergen’s 10-point list is well worth reading.  His critique and proposals are the kind that are sorely needed in our polarized, self-serving political culture.  If the President embraced them it would be consistent with the strong, rational leadership that many people believed him capable of to begin with.  And that’s a psychologically positive wish for a leader!

Well, OK, but take it back from what? And to what?

Well first, I think that many of those drawn to the Tea Party are genuinely concerned about the rising scope and size of government and want lower taxes.  Some have become fired up with rage about that (while also, of course, wanting to keep all the benefits and support that Big Government provides, as Louisiana Gov.Jindel recently discovered).

And some are so fired up that they just want to get rid of everybody on the Hill and the inhabitant of the White House – all those who are taking our country in the “wrong” direction.

But let’s take a look at what the Tea Party’s dominant ideology includes, with respect to what it thinks is the wrong course; what they advocate it it’s place; and, especially, what the Republican party is embracing as it bends over backwards to drink from the Tea Party’s cup (sorry for the mixed metaphors.)

Take Utah Republicans.  There’s a movement afoot to repeal the 17^th Amendment.  Having trouble remembering which one that is?  Well, it’s the one that gives people the right to vote for and select their Senators.  That’s right – elect their Senators.  Taking away that right is a favorite of Tea Party supporters, and they’re getting Republicans to join with them.

It gets better.  On the other side of the country, the Republican Party of Maine has adopted some Tea Party proposals of its own. It’s official platform calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve; demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth;” insists that “healthcare is not a right;” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty;” and says we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.”  There’s more.  If you’re interested, here’s the whole thing.

The Maine Politics blog calls the official platform for the Republican Party of Maine “a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.” It quotes Dan Billings, who’s served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, describing the new platform as “wack job pablum” and “nutcase stuff.”

In contrast to the claims of Tea Partiers around the country, Washington Post columnist E.J.Dionne has pointed out some actual facts.  He writes:

“…there was evidence on Tuesday that there are limits to the anti-government mood that is supposedly sweeping the country.  In Arizona — nobody’s idea of a liberal state — voters supported a temporary increase in the sales tax from 5.6 to 6.6 cents on the dollar, to raise $1 billion annually. This, coupled with a large tax increase on businesses and high-income earners endorsed by voters in Oregon earlier this year, suggests a pragmatic electorate that is far less reflexively opposed to taxes or government than Tea Party cheerleaders would have us believe.

He also points out that:

The most significant result for the fall was the Democrats’ success in holding the western Pennsylvania House seat left vacant by the death of John Murtha. Democrat Mark Critz won an impressive nine-point victory over Republican Tim Burns by distancing himself from Obama and liberal positions on guns and abortion, but also by running a relentlessly economic populist message on jobs and outsourcing.

Circling back to the rising star Rand Paul, the new candidate has also made it clear that he opposes the Civil Rights Act.  That’s the Act that most of the then-Republicans voted for, back in the days when Republicans were strong supporters of civil rights, back before the party morphed into a bastion of right-wing mostly southern white men.  Paul emphasizes that opposing the Civil Rights Act is not racist.  Go figure.

If you look at some hard data about what is, in fact, transforming our society, in contrast with what the Tea Party sees, it’s hard not to conclude that their appeal is to a small number of people and will remain a fringe movement.

Sometimes we become so convinced of our own convictions, when they are shared by others, that we seduce ourselves into seeing a movement that will transform the world.  There’s a long history to such delusions.

The sad consequence for our two-party system is that the Republican Party is allowing itself to upend it’s own principles and ideals as it tries to capture this “movement,” and thus risks marching into oblivion.

In a previous post, I wrote that your inner life is usually neglected, in contrast to your outer life.  I gave some guidelines for identifying and reducing the gaps between your inner and outer life.  That’s an important step towards building psychological health and resiliency that works in today’s 21^st Century world of heightened interconnection and instability.

Here, I’ll describe some specific steps you can take to strengthen your inner life and make it the driver of your decisions, choices, and actions within your outer life.

Think of your inner life as something you develop through practice, similar to building stronger muscles, or developing skill in a sport or play a musical instrument. Below are some inner life practices most anyone can do. The more you do, the better, because they reinforce each other.

Fill Your “Inner Reservoir”

• Sit quietly, without distraction. Observe your breaths as you breathe slowly, in and out. Count each breath as you exhale, from one to 10; then repeat. Twenty minutes daily is ideal, but if you do only five, that’s a good start.

An “entry-level” meditation-breathing practice, this one builds an emotional shock absorber.  It helps maintain centeredness and focus when dealing with your outer life demands and conflicts.

Some forms of meditation are rooted in Eastern and Western religious-philosophical traditions; others in current medical and scientific knowledge about effective stress-reduction. All provide a range of physical and emotional benefits that strengthen your inner life. Ongoing research supported jointly by the Dalai Lama and the U.S.-based Mind And Life Institute shows that meditation produces changes within specific regions of the brain associated with greater internal calm, resilience to stress, and focused concentration.

Amazingly, one study found that the sound of a shotgun going off near an advanced meditator’s head produced virtually no change of brain activity in response to it. Want to test out how steadily you can hold your own concentration? Go to this web site.

Advanced meditators were able to hold their visual focus in this experiment for its entire duration.

Meditation heightens your consciousness and mental control.  It also contributes to a stronger immune system and a more robust cardio-vascular system. It helps you awaken to what the real “drivers” are in your outer life — where you may be acting unconsciously or with illusions and rationalizations you’ve acquired from dealing with your outer life demands.

Counting your breaths (you could also focus on an object) not only increases your concentration, but also loosens your entanglement in the “flotsam” and “jetsam” of your outer life. This helps increase your attunement to your inner life; to your true self that lies beneath all the layers of accommodation and adaptation you’re acquired through immersion in the outer world.

This practice shifts your perspective towards just observing the ebb and flow of your emotional states with less knee-jerk reactivity to them. It’s like filling an inner reservoir with clarity and mindfulness that you can carry with you in each moment within your outer life.

A fringe benefit: Reducing your total number of breaths per minute to 10 or less, for 15 minutes twice per day (each inhale/exhale counting as one) has been found to lower blood pressure, according to recent research.

Grow Your Positive Emotions And Human Connection

• Focus your consciousness on emotions of compassion, empathy, and connection towards people around you, especially those who suffer or with whom you’re in conflict. Imagine those emotions occupying the main window on your computer screen. Deal with negative or indifferent emotions by visualizing them within a smaller, background window, or hidden in a file

This practice strengthens your inner life by attuning you to our shared human condition. It builds respect and tolerance for others, especially in the face of external differences, which may dominate your field of vision.

Cultivating positive emotions cultivates your inner life and also heals something most of us suffer from in our outer world-dominated lives: “Empathy Deficit Disorder,” which I’ve written about in a previous post. In a culture in which we define virtually every variation of human emotion and experience as a “disorder,” we’ve overlooked one of the most harmful. It results from being so overdeveloped in your outer life that you lose touch with your own heart; with the reality of your interconnection and interdependence with other humans.

Research shows that you can practice and strengthen positive emotions with practice. People who practice this through meditation show heightened brain activity in regions linked with positive emotions like joy and humor; and with feelings of compassion towards people who suffer. They also show diminished activity in brain regions associated with negative or destructive emotions like anger, resentment, depression, or self-pity. In short, practicing certain emotional states strengthen patterns within the brain associated with them.

This means that your brain is capable of being trained and physically modified through conscious practices. As you make efforts to change your feelings and thoughts in ways that build your inner life, you reinforce brain activity in regions associated with it. In effect, you can learn to change your brain activity, which reinforces changes you make in your thoughts, attitudes, and behavior.

The upshot is that you can actually learn to “grow” compassion, tolerance, and cheerfulness. You can physically modify your brain through conscious practice. In effect, what you think and feel is what you become.

This practice for growing positive emotions also helps builds awareness of your commonality and connection with other people, through recognizing them as fellow humans who suffer and struggle as you do. You might try picking a particular situation or encounter with a stranger as a target for practicing compassion and empathy. For example, when you’re dealing with the checkout person at the grocery store, try to generate positive emotions towards that person, as an experiment. Try to see that stranger as someone who shares, along with you, a desire for love; who’s experienced some kind of loss or disappointment along the way; or who has hopes and dreams to fulfill. In other words, a stranger who’s different from you but also like yourself, beneath those differences.

This practice is especially helpful when, say, a particular co-worker makes you want to reach for a blunt object. Or when you find yourself having malevolent fantasies about your kids the third time they start fighting with each other in the same evening.

But probably more challenging is feeling compassion and empathy towards someone you actively dislike, or with whom you’ve had big-time conflicts – perhaps an ex-spouse, or someone at work. Here, try seeing that person through the eyes of your inner self rather than through your outer self. The latter is where you experience your differences. Instead, imagine how and why that person might experience his world as he or she does; why that person might have the negative attitudes or feelings he shows towards you. Try to do that without judging.

Practicing compassion and empathy in these ways strengthens your inner life by attuning you to our shared human condition. It builds respect and recognition for others, even where there are conflicts. You become a more balanced, broadened and tolerant human being. Notice that when empathy and compassion are awakened, you tend to respond with a changed outlook or new action directed towards others, with less concern about your own self. Look at the spontaneous outpouring of help that usually occurs to the victims of natural disasters like earthquakes or tornado.  At such times, you’re letting go of your usual hyper-focus on getting and achieving things in your outer world.

A good source for practices that support compassion and empathy are the guided visualization and meditative practices developed by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916-2004), an internationally recognized meditation teacher and scholar. Head of the Sufi Order International, his teachings reflected a universalist perspective, based on the common core of Hindu, Buddhist, Judeao-Christian, and Islamic meditative practices. The site also includes multi-media visual and musical models that accompany specific meditative practices.

Increase Your Mind-Body Health

Incorporate aerobic exercise or virtually any kind of physical activity into your schedule.

• Try a class in Yoga, Qi Gong, or Tai Qi
• Commit yourself to healthy diet and nutritional practices

Aerobic activity releases chemicals that enhance positive mental states and well-being. Research finds that it also has robust antidepressant effects.

Sustained aerobic exercise or virtually any kind of physical activity are important practices because a healthy mind-body is the infrastructure for your inner life. Aerobic activity releases chemicals that enhance positive mental states and well-being. Research shows that it has robust anti-depressant effects, equal or superior to medication, over the long run.

Another benefit for your inner life: Many kinds of physical activity require internal discipline, focus, and a desire to sustain the activity necessary for to reach a level of sufficient level of skill. Research shows that activities as diverse as mountain climbing, dancing, bike riding, or swimming contribute to a sense of internal mastery and self-control.

Moreover, aerobic activity expresses your physical energy within the larger environment. That, itself, enlarges your perspective about where your individual life fits in relation to the forces and features of the natural world and the cosmos. Your preoccupations and absorption in outer life tend to recede when you’re within the larger context of the natural world and the physical challenges you face within it. A friend who trekked to the base camp of Mt. Everest told me how the physical challenge, combined with being surrounded by the majesty of the mountains and their “indifference” to human desires, shifted her perspective about her entire life. It caused her to rethink everything she had held important.

Eastern practices like Yoga, Qi Gong, and Tai Qi blend flexibility, balance, and rhythmic motion with mental discipline and concentration These activities increase your attention to your inner world by integrating physical flexibility, balance, and rhythmic motion, on the one hand, with mental discipline and concentration on the other. Practicing that integration also diminishes the stress hormone cortisol, according to several research studies.

Good sources for state-of-the-art information about mind-body health include the web site of Andrew Weil, M.D.; The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine; and the Center for Mind-Body Medicine.

Open Yourself to Sensual and Sexual Experiences

• During your workday, take a brief walk outdoors, or visit a museum or art gallery. Write down how it affected you when you return to your workplace.
• Set aside time with your partner for slow, mutual physical stroking or massage, without thinking of intercourse or orgasm as the goal. Light candles, play music and agree to talk intimately – but not about outer life stresses.

Sensuous pleasures and beauty through art, music, or the natural world springboard you out of overimmersion in your outer life by “speaking” directly to your inner life. These nonverbal mediums evoke emotions, mental and even physical states that otherwise remain asleep when you’re too immersed in work and home activities.

Many people whose inner life is out of balance with their outer don’t realize that healthy sexual activity can help build greater balance between them. When mutuality, openness, and non-exploitativeness are part of the fabric of your whole relationship, emotional and sexual, then sexual/physical pleasure becomes an inner, not just outer experience – what some researchers call “spiritual sexuality.” That is, some individuals report a transcendent experience that combines heightened, whole-body sensations with intense emotional-spiritual connection, in which you lose yet retain a sense of your individual self at the same time. That’s the experience of two inner lives connecting.

Serve Something Larger Than Yourself

• Find a way to serve people or causes in need of help.

Giving to others strengthens your inner life by stimulating a “soul-to-soul” connection. It awakens your realization that we’re all global citizens. In fact, a common theme among people who create true balance between their inner and outer lives is that they feel pulled to giving, in some way, to the larger human community, through some kind of service. Some do this as a result of a natural evolution towards wanting to volunteer their time talents; others, from a sudden awakening.

Scott Harrison is an example of the latter. He had become a successful, well-known event promoter in New York City by his late 20s. In the spring of 2004 something awakened in him, he told me, which caused him to see that he had been living primarily to gratify himself. “I realized that I could either live selfishly, or for others,” he said. He decided to volunteer with Mercy Ships, an international organization that provides volunteer medical services to impoverished people, such as in West Africa.

Using his original training as a photojournalist, Scott began chronicling the work of the Mercy Ship and its medical volunteers through photos and stories posted on a web site/blog and in newspaper articles. He originally intended to spend just a month on the ship, but it was such a powerful experience that he remained with it. On a brief return visit to New York in the summer of 2005 he told me of the impact it had -aboard the ship, in a tiny compartment with cockroaches; working with health care workers who treat people who have nothing at all, not even drinking water; and who were afflicted with the most horrendous medical conditions and diseases. “It totally changed my world view,” he told me. “It was like looking through a different pair of glasses.”

Subsequently, he founded a highly successful international charity focused on creating fresh water wells in impoverished countries.

A good source of information about volunteer organizations  is Idealist.org.

Your Work and Life Balance Revisited….

Strengthening your inner life can change how you behave in both parts of that old work-life equation.

In the work realm, you might reexamine what you’re doing – whom you work for and with, and what your work contributes to the things you value. At the most radical end, you might change employers or careers, or go out on your own to pursue a dream. Or you can seek new assignments with your current employer that align with your personal values and goals.

In your home and personal life, a stronger inner life might lead you to give some time to help others, say through volunteer work. Or get involved with a social or political cause you believe in. You might decide to take that music appreciation course you’ve considered for years, or finally build that backyard garden you’ve seen in your imagination.

A rising theme among people who create true balance between their inner and outer lives is that they feel drawn to serving the larger human community in some way through their work, their values, and way of life. Both younger and older people express this. It’s reflected in the steady rise of volunteerism, and also in a  MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Survey that found that rising numbers of people want the work they do to contribute to the greater good and improve other’s lives, not just their own. They want to have impact. This shift reflects a broader rise in our culture that I described in a previous post as the “4.0” career.

Some people make significant changes in their work and personal lives when their inner life is awakened, like Scott did. Most people are unlikely to make a radical change. But examples of those who do can help stimulate your own thinking about how you might want to shift or redirect your own life, to build greater inner-outer balance. Like a woman who owned a high-end restaurant who sold her business and opened an orphanage after a chance encounter with some abandoned children while visiting another country; a man who took a “lesser” position at a smaller company in a part of the country where he and his family found a better quality of life; a lawyer who left Washington and became a Park Ranger. Or a senior vice president of a major corporation who resigned and bought a small business in order to have more time for parenting his two sons.

Such examples can help you focus on what would create better attunement between your own inner and outer life. They can point you to answer questions like these:

• Which of your current career goals, relationships and commitments are truly in harmony with your inner life?
• Is this the job or career you truly feel in synch with, despite the money it may pay or what people tell you that you should want?
• Are you and your partner devoting enough attention and effort to keeping your relationship positive and energized?
• Do you know why your son or daughter seems troubled or depressed? Have you even noticed?
• How can you become more transparent in both your public and private life?

As you develop your inner life and balance it with your outer, you’ll be likely to find that the old conflicts of work vs. life don’t cause you stress or even dominate your thoughts anymore.

In fact, you may find they disappear.

But gradually, we’re paying attention. I’m not  referring to us in the mental health professions here — In fact, we’ve been asleep at the wheel  in that respect, and are now, finally, coming around to recognize that climate change and other disasters are more than interesting academic subjects for discussion and research; that we have a responsibility for direct action.

Ironically, awareness of such mental health consequences has been addressed by broader groups of scientists; non-psychologists or psychiatrists  Here’s a good, very recent example:  Joe Romm, whose blog Climate Progress is consistently the best source of information and clarity about climate issues, has just put up a guest blog post on the human dimensions of oil spills, written by Drs. Thomas Webler, Seth Tuler, and Kirstin Dow.  They write:

In the past two years, we have studied how oil spills have impacted every aspect of human society—from individuals’ psychological and physical health to the practices and beliefs of cultures and everything in between.

Among the areas they focus on in their guest blog post are the mental health impacts and the social, cultural and social justice impacts of previous oil spills.  Regarding the mental health impacts:

Oil spills and spill responses can cause high levels of stress and psychological trauma, including post-traumatic stress. The economic impacts on livelihood and family aspirations, anxieties associated with exposure to toxic chemicals, the stress of engaging in a large scale court battle, and the loss of valued landscape and ecological systems all contribute to stress on coastal residents and clean up workers.

And,

In Prince William Sound, people talked about feeling that a part of them died when the Exxon Valdez oil inundated the area.  Dangerous levels of post-traumatic stress were reported among cleanup workers and residents in Alaska.  The news talk shows today are already replete with people expressing sadness and anger about this event.

Their entire piece is well-worth reading – it’s sobering and informative, as is another substantive report by The Interagency Working Group on Climate Change and Health.  It presented findings regarding a wide range of health effects of climate change, including mental health and stress-related disorders:

Climate change may result in geographic displacement of populations, damage to property, loss of loved ones, and chronic stress, all of which can negatively affect mental health….

The most common mental health conditions associated with extreme events range from acute traumatic stress to more chronic stress-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated grief, depression, anxiety disorders, somatic complaints, poor concentration, sleep difficulties, sexual dysfunction, social avoidance, irritability, and drug or alcohol abuse.  The chronic stress-related conditions and disorders resulting from severe weather or other climate change-related events may lead to additional negative health effects.

It’s a hopeful sign that some professional, advocacy organizations have begun addressing this issue.  For example, both Physicians for Social Responsibility and  Psychologists for Social Responsibility have described mental health risks from climate change to including increase in violent behavior, panic, group hysteria, depression, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, hopelessness and other symptoms.

Of course, the deniers will continue to disparage and, well…deny.  Actually, when they are compelled to do that it may be a good indicator that public awareness of the mental health effects of climate disasters is growing.  For example, Fox’s Sean Hannity’s recent ridicule of the mental health issues described in the Interagency Working Group’s report  For a slightly humorous take on psychology of climate change deniers and the consequences, see this piece that I wrote with Ev Ehrlich for the Huffington Post.

Needless to say, denying reality is never a good coping strategy, for the present or the future.  And yes, that’s a mental illness symptom.

Meet Linda and Jim, who consulted me for psychotherapy.  Linda is a lawyer with a large firm; Jim heads a major trade association.  They told me they’re totally committed to their marriage and to being good parents.  But they also said it’s pretty hectic juggling all their responsibilities at work and at home They have two children of their own plus a child from her former marriage. Dealing with the logistics of daily life, to say nothing of the emotional challenges, makes it “hard just to come up for air,” Linda said.  Sound familiar?

Or listen to Bill, a 43-year-old who initially consulted me for help with some career challenges.  Before long, he acknowledged that he’s worried about the “other side” of life. He’s raising two teenage daughters and a younger son by himself – one of the rising numbers of single fathers.  He’s constantly worried about things like whether a late meeting might keep him at work. He tries to have some time for himself, but “it’s hard enough just staying in good physical health, let alone being able to have more of a ‘life,’ ” he said. Recently, he learned he has hypertension.

It’s no surprise that these people, like many I see both in my psychotherapy practice and my workplace consulting, feel pummeled by stresses in their work and home lives. Most are aware, at least dimly, that this is unhealthy – that stress damages the body, mind and spirit. Ten years ago, a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that 70 percent of all illness, physical and mental, is linked to stress of some kind.  And that number has probably increased over the last decade.  Much of this stress comes from struggling with the pressures of work and home – and trying to “balance” both. The problem seems nearly universal, whether in two-worker, single-parent or childless households.

I think these conflicts are so common because people have learned to frame the problem incorrectly to begin with. That is, there’s no way to balance work life and home life, because both exist on the same side of the scale – what I call your “outer” life. On the other side of the scale is your personal, private life – your “inner” life. Instead of thinking about how to balance work life and home life, try, instead, to balance your outer life and inner life.

The Other Balancing Act

Let me explain. On the outer side of the scale you have the complex logistics and daily stresses of life at both work and home – the e-mails to respond to, the errands, family obligations, phone calls, to-do lists and responsibilities that fill your days. Your outer life is the realm of the external, material world. It’s where you use your energies to deal with tangible, often essential things. Paying your bills, building a career, dealing with people, raising kids, doing household chores, and so on. Your outer life is on your iPhone, BlackBerry, or your e-calender.

On the other side of the scale is your internal self.  It’s the realm of your private thoughts and values.  Your emotions, fantasies, spiritual or religious practices.  Your capacity to love, your secret desires, and your deeper sense of purpose.  In short, it embodies who you are, on the inside.  A “successful” inner life is defined by how well you deal with your emotions, your degree of self-awareness , and your sense of clarity about your values and life purpose.  It includes your level of mental repose:  your capacity for calm, focused action and resiliency that you need in the face of  your frenetic, multitasking outer life.

If the realm of the inner life sounds unfamiliar or uncomfortable to you, this only emphasizes how much you – like most peple – have lost touch with your inner self.  You can become so depleted and stretched by dealing with your outer life that there’s little time to tend to your mind, spirit or body. Then, you identify your “self” mostly with who you are in that outer realm. And when there’s little on the inner side of the scale, the outer part weighs you down. You are unbalanced, unhappy and often sick.

When your inner life is out of balance with your outer, you become more vulnerable to stress, and that’s related to a wide range of physical damage.  Research shows that heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, a weakened immune system, skin disorders, asthma, migraine, musculoskeletal problems – all are linked to stress.

More broadly, when your inner and outer lives become unbalanced, your daily functioning is affected in a range of ways, both subtle and overt. When operating in the outer world – at work, for example, or in dealings with your spouse or partner – you may struggle with unjustified feelings of insecurity and fear. You may find yourself at the mercy of anger or greed whose source you don’t understand. You may be plagued with indecisiveness or revert to emotional “default” positions forged during childhood, such as submissiveness, rebellion or self-undermining behavior.

Even when you’re successful in parts of your outer life, neglecting the inner remains hazardous to your psychological and physical health. Without a developed inner life, you lose the capacity to regulate, channel and focus your energies with awareness, self-direction and judgment.  Personal relationships can suffer, your health may deteriorate and you become vulnerable to looking for new stimulation from the outer-world sources you know best – maybe a new “win,” a new lover, drugs or alcohol.

And that pulls you even more off-balance, possibly to the point of no return. The extreme examples are people who destroy their outward success with behavior that reflects a complete disengagement from their inner lives – corporate executives led away in handcuffs for indulging in ill-gotten gains, self-destructive sports stars overcome by the trappings of their outer-life successes, political leaders whose flawed personal lives destroy their credibility, clerics who are staunch moralists at the pulpit but sexual predators or adulterers behind closed doors.

These are our modern-day counterparts of Shakespearian characters like Macbeth or Coriolanus, whose “outer” lives are toppled over by unconscious aims, destructive arrogance or personal corruption.

Of course, most people want to function well in the outer, material world.  Doing so is part of a successful adult life.  But what you choose to go after in work and life often reflects values and behavior that you’ve been socially conditioned into through your family and society.  Much of that can be hard to see because you’re immersed in it.  What gets lost along the way is what your inner life might tell you about the consequences and value of what you pursue in your outer life.

But there’s good news: Reframing your challenge from trying to balance work and home to balancing your inner and outer lives will help you build overall health, internal well-being and resilience in your pursuit of outer life success.

That is, servicing your inner life builds  healthy, positive control over your life —  mastery and self-directed action, not suppression or rationalization.   A stronger inner life creates a solid moral core and harmonizes your inner and outer selves.  It informs your choices and actions by providing the calm and centeredness essential for knowing what demands or allures of the outer world you want to go after, or let pass; and how to deal with the consequences of either.

For example, clarifying which of the personal commitments, career goals and relationships you want or don’t want.   Whether this job or career is what you really desire, despite the money it pays or what people tell you that you should want.  And, whether you believe that your  relationship gives you and your partner the kind of positive, energized connection you want and need.

In short, a strengthened inner live brings your “private self” and your “public self” into greater harmony. That’s the foundation you need for dealing with the stress-potential of outer world choices and conflicts; for knowing how and why you’re living and using your energies out there in the ways that you do. With a robust inner life you feel grounded and anchored.  You know who you are and what you’re truly living for. Your inner life builds a state of heightened self-awareness and wholeness; a “heart that listens,” as King Solomon asked for.

Finding The Gaps

Brad was a financial consultant, noticeably underdeveloped in his inner life.  One day he came face-to-face with a classic inner-vs.-outer dilemma. For him, that triggered an important awakening.  He was debating whether to leave an out-of-town meeting early, which would create some difficulties, in order to be at home for his daughter’s 18th birthday.

I asked him the simplest question: Which choice would he be more likely to feel good about at the end of his life? Tears came to his eyes as he said that he knew in his heart that it was being at his daughter’s birthday. He told me that he felt enormously troubled by the fact that he’d been trying to rationalize away what he knew he valued more deeply.

At that moment Brad was able to see the gap between his inner life values – his true self — and the choice he was about to make based on his outer life conditioning – his false self.

His awakening to his inner-outer gaps is instructive.  A good initial step toward awakening your inner life is to identify the gaps between what you believe in, on the inside, and what you do on the outside.  Everyone has those gaps.  Here’s an exercise that can help you awaken to them:

• First, make a list of what you believe to be your core, internal values or ideals (5- 10 entries).  Perhaps it includes raising a strong, creative child; close friendships; expressing a creative talent that’s important to you. It might include your spiritual life; an intimate marriage or partnership; or contributing your talents, energies or success to the society in some way.

• Next, make a parallel list for each item on your list, describing your daily actions relative to those values: How much time and energy do you spend on them in real time? What are your specific behaviors regarding each? Be detailed in your answers – note the last time you took an action aimed at nurturing that creative child, building your marriage or giving some meaningful help to the less fortunate. Don’t be surprised or ashamed if you find that very few of your daily activities reflect those key values.

• Assign a number from 1 to 5 measuring the gap between each value and your behavior – 1 representing a minimal gap; 5, the maximum.

• Identify the largest gaps. Now think about how your inner values could redirect your outer-life choices in those areas. What would you have to do to bring the inner you in synch with the outer you? What can you commit yourself to doing?

• Write it all down and set a reasonable time frame for reducing your gaps.

Developing your inner life is a practice, like building a muscle or developing skill in a sport or musical instrument.  Look for future posts, in which  I’ll describe some practices most anyone can do to build a stronger inner life.  They involve your mind, body, spirit and actions in daily life.  You will see that the more you do, the better, because they reinforce each other.  And they contribute to building greater psychological health and resilience in today’s world.

Last June, I wrote here about why I thought he should keep on using the word empathy, not back away from it.  I have a particular interest in the subject, having written about our national “empathy deficit disorder” in The Washington Post a few years ago — and which I recently updated on my Psychology Today blog.  During last year’s Supreme Court nomination process, critics distorted what empathy is.  It’s  actually the capacity to experience what another person experiences.  It’s what gives you the capacity for wisdom, perspective and sound judgment; not bias or distortion or being bamboozled into the other’s point of view.

Nevertheless, as Obama decides who to nominate as Justice Stevens’ replacement, it’s like Yogi Berra said: “It’s déjà vu, all over again.”

To wit: A recent article in  The New York Times asks if  Obama is looking for empathy “by another name.”  The piece, by Peter Baker, points out that

A year after Mr. Obama made “empathy” one of his main criteria in picking his first Supreme Court justice, he is avoiding the word, which became radioactive, as he picks his second nominee. Instead, he says he wants someone with “a keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people.”

Baker goes on to say,

The issue is more than semantic. …The president emphasizes that while adhering to the rule of law, judges should also be able to see life through the eyes of those who come before the bench. His critics call that a prescription for twisting decisions to reach a desired outcome…..

The dispute became so contentious last year that even Mr. Obama’s nominee for the court, Sonia Sotomayor, disavowed the notion of empathy during hearings before her confirmation, saying that “judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart.”

In the same vein, Lee Epstein, a constitutional scholar at the Northwestern University School of Law, said in the Times piece, “You hear ‘empathy’ and you don’t think impartiality, judicial temperament.”

And getting right to the “heart” (whoops, sorry!) of the matter,

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “It seems to be calling again for judges to be less committed to fidelity to the law and calling for them to reach decisions that somehow endeavor to decide who ought to win.”

All of this posturing should be exposed for the ignorance and manipulation it contains, and presented in hopes that the public will buy it.  We need to emphasize why empathy is a plus, an inborn capacity, and the basis of healing the serious wounds in our global society, as Jeremy Rifkin has written in The Empathic Civilization.  But as far as the relevance of empathy to the Supreme Court issue, The Nation’s  Katrina vanden Heuvel, writing in The Washington Post, put it in proper context:

Is it better to have a corporate stooge on the bench than someone capable of understanding how his or her decisions will affect 300 million fellow citizens? Better to have a biased judge than a humane one, a dishonest justice instead of one who’s insightful?  It… goes to show how hysterical those critics have become about empathy.

It’s sad and discouraging to witness fear-fueled distortions coming from elected officials and others.  I hope that President Obama returns to his well-founded support for empathy as a criteria.  It’s especially important at this time in our history when we need more, not less empathy, not only in a Supreme Court justice, but in our society at large, to help face and solve major problems that confront us – economically, socially, psychologically.  As I wrote previously, in the Bible King Solomon asked God for “a heart that listens.” Notice that he didn’t ask for “a head that thinks.” There’s a reason: The head – repository of the mind – is more akin to a processor of information within a logical framework and sequence; like a computer program. It uses reason without context or “real world” judgment.

In contrast, the heart symbolizes the repository of wisdom; of judgment. And that’s based on the accumulation of life experience, broadened perspectives, and tested values, including the consequences of the behavior they generate. Overall, it derives from a leavened character.

Empathy is central to judgment and wisdom. It’s the capacity to step outside of yourself and experience the world of the other from the inside, so to speak. It’s different from sympathy, which is based on identifying with something another person experiences; that is, relating it to your own self. For example, “I feel sympathetic to her situation because that’s what I felt when it happened to me.”

But suppose you can’t relate it to your own experience? That’s where empathy is critical, because it means stepping inside the mindset and emotional experience of the other person. With that immersion, you can make more judicious, fair, and wise assessments in relation to your actions — whether towards friend, foe, or someone who’s neither.

In the Bible, God grants Solomon’s request, in the form of “wisdom in your heart.” Note He didn’t say, “wisdom in your head.” He gave him “discernment in administering justice.” Further, it was said that the whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom that God had put in his heart.

The Right is trying to redefine empathy to mean — at best — personal emotional preferences; at worst, irrational emotion that drives behavior. Using this shift, they then advocate “fact-based” judgments, devoid of anything “emotional.” They are wrong in both efforts.

If an important matter in your life was being adjudicated, would you rather come before someone with a developed capacity for empathy, and who can access it in the service of administering justice; or, someone following a flow-chart of logical sequence as the basis for deciding the proper administration of justice?

In Part III of “becoming sane….” I wrote that our prevailing model of psychological health needs revision for today’s world – for outward success in a changing world, and for internal well-being.  I concluded by saying that a key to emotional resiliency and, more broadly, psychological health, in current times is learning to “forget yourself.”

So what does that mean?  Not thinking about your own needs?  Not looking out for yourself?  Not quite.  I’m using the phrase “forget yourself” to highlight an important capacity for health, survival, and “happiness” in today’s tumultuous, interconnected environment: the capacity to focus more on problems, needs, and solutions beyond just your own.  That is, the person who is too absorbed in his or her own self, own conflicts, own disappointments, and the like is much less able to engage the larger dilemmas and issues in positive, solution-oriented ways.  And that deficiency circles back to create dysfunction, damaged relationships, and career downturns.

Along the way I’ll be writing more about specific ways you can learn to “forget yourself” in your work, your relationships and your role as a global citizen. Here are some guidelines that help lay the foundation.

Three Responsibilities:

Think about your responsibilities as a human being living in today’s world, and on this planet.  Specifically, consider the following three responsibilities. They can serve as helpful guidelines for moving through and beyond the tendency we all share — to focus too much on our own selves.

Responsibility for your own mind-body-spirit

Recognize that it’s your job, alone, to continue learning and developing your emotional, mental, creative and physical capacities. Enlarging these capacities helps provide the flexibility and adaptability you need to deal with changes, good or bad. Don’t become like the character John Marcher in Henry James’ “The Beast In The Jungle,” who waited passively, believing that something significant was going to happen…and ended up with a failed life.

Responsibility for those less able

Part of the new criteria for psychological health include this awareness:  You grow through your efforts to help and support others, less able than yourself, to find and follow a healthy path in this world. Find someone who needs and would welcome your aid, whether your children or family member. But stretch further, to include a stranger or those within the extended world community who suffer from lack of clean water, from famine, disease or torture. Organizations and individuals who could use your help are a click away on the Internet.

Responsibility for the planet

Reflect on the fact that your actions at home or in your community can help maintain a healthy, sustainable planet for future inhabitants, including your own descendants. Or, they can further jeopardize the environment they will live in. Look at your own actions in your home, your community, and at work. Ask yourself, are you becoming a “good ancestor?”

Some Steps You Can Take:

Loosen the grip of self-interest

Use self-awareness to observe – and contain – your self-serving tendencies. It’s human to have them; healthy, to keep them at bay. Your emotional well-being and success in today’s world is interwoven with how well you engage and connect with something larger than your own needs and desires. Don’t neglect them, but when they dominate your field of vision, your heart shuts down. You can’t build the tolerance and proactive behavior that you need to keep “evolving.” An old saying goes, “If you want to see into your future, look into a mirror.” Everything you think, say, and do, steadily molds who you’re becoming down the road. What do you see in that mirror?

Practice connection and engagement

The metaphor of Google that I used in the previous post is a good guide for stretching yourself towards actions and attitudes that promote positive engagement.  Seek out ways to engage in and demonstrate greater collaboration, non-defensiveness, informality, a creative mindset, flexibility, and nimbleness. Assess yourself along these criteria — in your life as a worker, in your relationships, and as a member of the larger human community. Identify which of those criteria you could strengthen, and begin to do it.

Identify your commonalities with others

Focus on what you have in common with others rather than on the surface differences between you. That builds empathy, especially important for success within an increasingly diverse society. Research shows that you can train your brain to do this. Begin by stepping outside your own mental and emotional perspectives and visualize entering another person’s inner world. Seek to understand it, no matter how different from your own. Remember, what’s “right” from one perspective may be “wrong” from another.  As I wrote in a previous post, empathy is a core ingredient of adult psychological health. It helps expand your mental and emotional perspectives to more fully understand those with whom you have differences – without having to abandon your own views.

Reduce the gaps between your public and private life

Politicians aren’t the only people whose public image is sometimes at odds with their private actions: We all have gaps between our motives or values and how we present ourselves in pubic. Aim for transparency in your interactions and transactions. Better it comes from you than from discovering it’s been posted on Google or YouTube. More deeply, reflect on unconscious attitudes that might drive your behavior. As the philosopher and mathematician Pascal wrote, “The heart has reasons of its own, which Reason itself is unaware of.” Seek help when you suspect you’re being pulled by emotions or behavior you don’t understand or just can’t deal with. But find a mental health practitioner who’s tuned in to a more evolved, integrated picture of adult health.

Shift your perspective in difficult life situations

Too often, we personalize negative experiences and react with resentment or self-undermining actions. That’s another form of self-centeredness. Healthy adult behavior here means recognizing those tendencies in yourself but not indulging in them. In short, aim towards not taking things personally. Be “indifferent” to those reactions by focusing your energies instead on creating a pro-active, realistic strategy that either improves your situation or changes it. “Indifference” in this sense activates your creative problem-solving capacity for dealing with conflicts at home or at work, as I wrote in a previous post about intimate relationships.

Define your “life footprint.”

Imagine you have one or two years left to live. An unpleasant thought, for sure, but it can help in this way: Make a list of what you would want to contribute to the world through your emotional, intellectual and creative powers during your remaining time. This focuses you on thinking about what kind of “footprint” you want to leave on the larger community and the planet. What does that require of you, from this point forward? As an aid, write down how you currently apply your mental and emotional capacities, and what that means long-term. Think of your life as a work of art that you’re creating along the way. When you envision reaching the end-point, what will the picture look like that reveals your purpose for having been here? Do you want to make any changes, starting now?

There are people who illustrate some of the above themes as they shift towards healthier lives. For example, a corporate executive who stepped back and identified new business opportunities through sustainable, “green” practices, and initiated them throughout the company.  Inspired by Bono’s (Product) Red campaign, he created a company project that supported a philanthropic goal. “It was time to bring my personal values into alignment with my business perspectives,” he said. Like others who are beginning to think in similar directions, he sees business success as interwoven with serving the common good.

Or the couple who revamped their relationship by reviewing what they wanted their “life footprint” to be. They realized they wanted a greater sense of connection and mutuality between themselves, but also through what they did with their talents and energies. One began a business that had been a longtime dream; the other moved to a company that provided more opportunity for growth and creative expression, but less money. “Sure, there are trade-offs,” one of them told me, “but the bottom line is better for our lives. We feel more integrated, more engaged.”

So – all that’s a start.  More to come!

There’s nothing “wrong” with it, exactly. But the excitement and energy, the feelings of connection and passion that were once there have gradually faded over the years.  “The old feelings haven’t exactly disappeared,” Nora says. “Now and then it feels something like it used to. But mostly it feels like our relationship has ‘flatlined.’”

Another person, David, recently celebrated the eleventh anniversary of his second marriage.  He describes a similar shift a bit more sardonically, saying that his relationship has settled into a state of “depressing comfortableness.”  He’s thought about having an affair.

If these laments sound familiar to you, it’s likely because most men and women find that their long-term marriages (I’m defining “marriage” to describe all committed relationships, straight or gay) tend to head south over time.

Gradually, they descend into what I call the Functional Relationship.

Most people think it’s inevitable, but there’s a unique way to liberate yourself from it.  It’s learning to “leave” your relationship in order to transform it.  You do that through becoming “indifferent.”

First, let’s look at what typically happens in the Functional Relationship.  The relationship continues to “work” fairly well, but mostly in a transactional way, around the logistics of daily life: “I thought you were taking the car in for repair.” “Whose turn is it to take the kids to soccer practice on Saturday?”

Sometimes, it becomes more adversarial: “Why did you schedule the plumber for tomorrow when you knew you couldn’t be here? I told you that I have a meeting I can’t miss.”

But even when “functioning” goes fairly smoothly, feelings of passion or even fun just hanging out together diminish, especially in contrast to how it felt early on in the relationship.  As I’ve studied contemporary marriages in our post-9-11/post-economic meltdown-world of the 21st Century, I find that couples experience this diminishment in three main ways:

• Decreased emotional intimacy and sharing of feelings.
• Less equality in decisions and daily interactions, which are often tinged by power-struggles and silent maneuvering for the “upper hand.”
• And dampened sexuality, both in quantity and quality.

A note about that third item: Even when arousal is jacked up by Viagra or the new products purporting to enhance women’s desire, your libido — desire for the person you’re with — remains diminished.  That’s no surprise, because the latter is relationship-dependent. It remains unaffected even if you’re physiologically able to become aroused.

Overall, couples in a Functional Relationship report a diminished sense of connection with each other.  Sometimes it’s a feeling of not being on the same wave-length.

Most people assume that the Functional Relationship is completely “normal;” just a sad reality of adult life. Some are resigned to it as just one more part of the “long slide home,” as one 47-year-old journalist described his experience of midlife. Of course, not everyone feels so bleak, but many would agree with this woman’s lament about her 18-year relationship: “What was once a bright flame has turned into a pilot light.”

You, too probably assume that romantic and sexual connections are supposed to fade over time. Common sense seems to tell you so. After all, you’re seeing the same person day-in and day-out, not just when he or she is most attractive.  And like the majority of couples today, you’re probably dealing with the impact of multitasking, dual-career lives. Raising children in addition absorbs enormous time and energy.  Just trying to carry on in this uncertain, unpredictable world adds another huge layer of stress.

If everyday experience doesn’t convince you that the Functional Relationship is inevitable, there are the pronouncements of various experts. For example, some researchers claim that brain chemicals such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and phenylethylamine, associated with sexual excitement or desire, decline with familiarity. At the same time, oxytocin and endorphins, which generate feelings of quiet comfort and calm, rise. Therefore, they say, you are going to feel diminished desire for your partner over time.

Many marriage and relationship experts advocate just accepting this decline and learning to be happy with it. For example, in her  book Surrendering to Marriage Iris Krasnow advocates learning to appreciate and live with the security and comfort that come along with the “inevitable” decline — unless, of course, you want to go down the slippery slope of an affair, or dumping your partner altogether and look for a new one.   It’s easy to think it’s best to stop complaining about what you don’t have and learn to live with lowered expectations.

If all of the above is really true, then you’d better resign yourself to the fact that a “passionate marriage” is an oxymoron.

But before you do that, consider this: Descending into the Functional Relationship is neither natural nor inevitable.  True, the experience is widespread. But most people descend into the Functional Relationship because it’s the natural outcome of how you learn to engage in love relationships to begin with.  As I wrote in a previous post, it’s a version of adolescent romance. Its features — like intense arousal by a new person; infatuation, often followed by deflation; manipulating and game-playing, are part of normal adolescent development. But we carry them into our adult experience. And  that model of love can’t sustain long-term connection and vitality.

Becoming “Indifferent”

Through my research and clinical work I’ve been discovering how and why some people defy the norm and generate new energy and vitality within their long-term relationships. I’m convinced that there’s a way out of the Functional Relationship. There’s even a way to avoid it altogether.  I call it the art of Creative Indifference.

It’s the alternative to constantly trying make your relationship work better through finding the latest  technique; the alternative to responding and reacting to your partner in ways that have become habitual or frustratingly repetitive, convinced that you are “right.” All of those kinds of behavior drain energy and keep you locked within the Functional Relationship.

Through Creative Indifference you learn to disengage from your relationship in ways that circle back to  revitalize it.   It doesn’t mean you stop caring about your partner or your relationship. To the contrary, Creative Indifference is a way to become less reactive to your own and your partner’s behavior. It opens the door to positive change.  Ultimately it helps you care in a deeper, more genuine way.

The indifference you build is towards your own internal emotional reactions and habitual responses, especially in situations in which you typically feel disappointed, defensive or critical towards your partner.  That is, most tend to see things through the lens of your own needs, hurts, or conviction that you’re “right.” This reflects the narrowest part of the self, your ego-self.  It’s the narrow vantage point that tends to predominate in your perceptions and actions.

For example, maintaining resentments and disappointments in your partner’s “failure” to provide you with what you want. Or, negative emotions resulting from the conviction that you’re “right” and your partner is “wrong” regarding some issue of disagreement or difference.

With Creative Indifference you observe your internal reactions – recognizing them as learned, conditioned responses — but without acting upon them. You observe your partner’s behavior in the same way.  And you step back from both.

That is, you separate who you are — what you think, feel, and believe — from who your partner is.  You separate your own internal “reality” from that of your partner’s. This begins to fuel greater respect for each of you as separate, individual people.

Mary and Joe

An example: One night after dinner Joe’s wife, Mary’s brought him a list of some domestic things that had piled up and required some decisions and logistical arrangements. She wanted to resolve all of the items — right then and right there.  That’s her style.

In fact, Mary tends to become anxious about things that feel  “out of control.” On his part, Joe tends to react defensively and passive-aggressively when Mary reminds him about things he had agreed to do but keeps putting off. This becomes their dance, in which Joe sees Mary as always nagging; and Mary fumes at Joe’s unreliability.

For example, Joe might make promises, but fail to “remember” to take care of them. Mary then becomes angry and distrusting.  She shows it, very clearly.  In response, Joe withdraws and sees more evidence that she’s a constant nag.  Each of their individual issues reinforces the other’s through this little minuet.

But this time something different occurred. Using Creative Indifference Joe first observed his usual internal response to Mary – resentment, feelings of being controlled, that she’s a shrew, and so forth. He then stepped outside of this perspective — he didn’t deny it to himself;  just acknowledged it as a part of his own individual conditioning, the residue of old childhood issues, and so on.

He then imagined looking at himself from Mary’s perspective, and then from an even broader perspective of watching the two of them together, like in a movie.  This enabled him to see her anxiety, without his own reactivity. He saw that her reactions were simply her issues. With Creative Indifference to his old emotions and behavior, he refrained from engaging in those old ways.

From that perspective Joe could feel some empathy for Mary’s experience.  He recognized that his own tendency to put things off triggered her issues, her vulnerabilities.  This enabled him to create a more positive response. He told her that he understood how frustrating it is for her to not know when these items will be taken care of.  This acknowledged her anxiety and need without agreeing with their “validity.” Then, he gave her a time-frame that he could commit to, within the context of his own needs and schedule.   He observed but didn’t react to his old feelings that he would have to  “give in.”

He knew that Mary might not like his response, but, maintaining indifference to her reactivity, he stayed consistent with who he wanted to be in that moment — respectful of her issues, but very clear about himself. No anger, no retaliation, no submission.

“OK, I’m glad you told me,” Mary replied. “Now I feel we’re making progress.”

With Creative Indifference you’re not trying to get a particular response from your partner; nor acting with self-righteousness about yourself. This keeps the ball in your partner’s court because you’re not defending yourself, attacking, or trying to persuade him or her that you are “right.”

From that position of indifference you then demonstrate the kind of person you wish to be, at that moment, regardless of how your partner is behaving.  That is, envision  qualities in your relationship that you’d like to see grow — such as openness, warmth, or eroticism; closeness and respect, rather than distance or annoyance.  Start demonstrating those qualities yourself.  Inject them into your relationship, unilaterally.

Here are a few practices for building indifference in your relationship:

Expand your perception: Practice looking at yourself and your relationship from the “outside,” as though you’re watching the two of you interact in a movie or play. Use creative thinking to imagine ways you might interpret the “action” from a larger perspective.

Step outside your own ego-focus: You may be convinced that your own perception of reality is the correct one.   But that keeps you locked inside your head.  Consider, instead, that you may be only partially right; or even wrong, altogether. What would a broader understanding of your situation look like?

Step into your partner’s point of view: Use your imagination to view things from your partner’s perspective, even though you may totally disagree with it, or believe it’s “wrong.” Think of your partner as simply being him/herself; just as you are. Envision yourself from your partner’s viewpoint, without feeling you have to change your own. What new information does that give you?

Practicing Creative Indifference helps you let go of your focus on your own self — on getting your “needs” met; your resentments or disappointments about how your partner behaves; your own reactivity to what he or she is reactive to. All of those are products of your “ego-self,” which is distorted and narrow, by definition.

Disengaging from your ego-self while expand your perceptions — emotionally and cognitively — activates the realization that both you and your partner share legitimate concerns, desires and vulnerabilities.  They are part of your common humanness.  That, in turn, allows you to hone in on what best serves the relationship between the two of you, rather than the ego-driven needs of either one of you.

Couples find it Creative Indifference revitalizing because it disrupts the entrenched pattern.  It enables you to see your partner more as he or she really is — a whole being, not just a source of providing  – or withholding  – your needs.  It helps you realize that differences between you can be stimulating rather than frightening or disappointing.

You can never make your partner change or be different. You can only change how you deal with, respond to, and conduct yourself towards him or her. That’s what I meant at the beginning of this post about “leaving” your relationship in order to transform it.