Transformation (Episode 54)

Developing good self awareness to help you recognize areas in your personality that need growth and healthy habits to help you grow and thrive! 

The Life & Love Nuggets podcast will help you learn valuable insights into relationships, life, and love. Brent and Janis have been empowering couples through pre-marriage and marriage therapy in their private practice, Life Connection Counseling, since 1982. They recently retired after forty years of pastoral ministry and are continuing to help individuals, marriages and families in their private practice.

This podcast should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

[Brent]: Today we're going to talk about transformation. You know, one of the reasons we started this podcast in the first place and one of the things we try to do it every week, is to help us live our fullest best life as individuals and in our relationships, which requires that we allow ourselves to be growing, that we'd be moving towards strengthening our life and maturing and healing from difficult things from the past and so, we're going to continue that today and talk about what is this journey look like? What are we trying to do here?

[Brent]: We believe that all of us have been designed, been created in the image of God. Actually, each and every one of you are kind of a unique reflection of part of God. It says in the scriptural story that we've been made in his image in his likeness and that we are a reflection. We're like a mirror reflecting part of him into the world, that that's our purpose in life and so, the goal is that we be the best reflection, the best expression of him.

[Brent]: And I believe that just as every human person is different and unique. I'm always fascinated with the idea that we have a unique thumbprint, a unique eye impression, that every single person that's ever been has those uniquenesses about them, which is just mind-boggling to think, that we all have some unique part of us that is a new thing in the world that's really never been seen, never will be seen again and so, God's desire is that we be that expression, the fullest expression possible of his nature in the world.

[Brent]: And so, we've been born into that and I've got a little visual here now. If you're just listening, you're not gonna able to see this, but for those of you that are watching, we believe that how this works, if you can see this, is kind of got a circle here and there's four quadrants and if you can envision if you're just listening to this, the upper right quadrant is what we would consider the original self. This is kind of who we've been born to be and the full expression of what our nature was to be expressed in the world.

[Brent]: And then the bottom right quadrant says “original wound”. We also have some kind of a wound, something that kind of came against us. Some influence in our lives, something that said “the way that you are, this original way that you've been designed is not quite acceptable. You're not quite okay to be that way, so you need to be more like this” and we develop what's called a false self, trying to please the environment that we're in, trying to mold ourselves more into what our environment wants us to be.

[Brent]: And then the bottom left quadrant is the coping cell. So, we develop kind of a lifestyle of coping with this and putting on certain qualities and characteristics that we think are more acceptable in the world. Whether that's from parents or coaches or teachers or just general culture, wherever those influences come from, and we'll go back and touch on those in just a moment. But the whole idea is that we would then move into the upper left quadrant, which is transformation. That we would be made, would be formed back into grow and mature, back into that original design.

[Brent]: And so, we think that this is kind of what our life is made up, that this is the journey that we're on trying to reclaim in essence that original design and deal with those coping strategies that we have developed.

[Brent]: Now, for some, that original wound is very obvious that it's some kind of a real trauma that has been experienced and for some of you, that's-- You know, some of you have been abused, neglected, there's real-- When we think about trauma, we think about those kinds of things. But many of us, it hasn't been quite that obvious, but it's been by example or it's been not as dominance of an influence. But we've we got the point and we kind of have picked it up.

[Brent]: If Janice where here today, she would kind of share the story that, you know, her personality is very vibrant, very alive. You know, she walks in the room and kind of lights the place up and it's always one of the things that attracted me to her in the very first place. I'm kind of steady. Calm, steady and boring. But she's very fun-loving and always looking for kind of the next adventure in life and I just love that. But as a child, she would say that she wasn't-- That was really not acceptable in her family, it was really not okay to be that way. That that somehow was being kind of put on or that was over the top kind of an expression and so, I would say that her experience during childhood was subdued.

[Brent]: Probably wasn't until she got off to college, that she was able to kind of step into a little bit more of her real self there. I've shared a little bit about my own experience, I think I was born a pretty structured personality and that that's kind of the way that I was designed, but I also-- My wonderful dad, who's passed now, but he was a colonel in the Army and I was always so proud of him and he lived with such Integrity, but he was very specific and particular about things and probably a little bit OCD, which is kind of where I live in in my world.

[Brent]: I still remember days-- We had this closet in the hallway, we kept all of our sundries all of the-- You know, the soap and shampoos and toilet paper and all these kinds of things, and I still remember the image of him standing in the hallway just organizing it.

[Brent]: And I learned real quick that that's the right way to be and live, and I remember after school. Again, very-- Even though he was a colonel in the Army, which is kind of a rough place to live in the world, he was always a unique person in that setting and he was very kind and I remember him at the end of the day, I'd be in my room and he'd come into my room and he wasn't “Brent, could pick this room up?” or “get this straight” or whatever. He just started straightening and I kind of just naturally got up and started straightening with him and so, I developed this kind of way of being that I need everything to be in order. I didn't feel at peace if things weren’t in order and I think that kind of sent my natural orderliness into hyperdrive.

[Brent]: And so, I had a hard time relaxing if things weren't perfectly in order and so, that was kind of my wound. Again, it wasn't obvious, it wasn't traumatic in that way, but it formed me into being-- To live in a certain kind of way and that it was not necessarily that original design and so, I've kind of been working very consistently in my life, to try to push against that. You know what? Many would say is that that all of our personalities have strengths and weaknesses.

[Brent]: There's certainly a lot of strengths that come from being structured and orderly and organized and I can kind of manage our finances in my sleep. I mean, it's just there's some things that go well with that personality, but there's a shadow-- We all have a shadow, we would call it a shadow side, which is kind of a weak spot that is kind of the extreme of the good, but it's going to be something that trips us up a bit and our life-- The challenge in our life is, how do we recognize, first of all, the shadow and realize that that doesn't mean that I'm a bad person or there's no shame in that? It just means [Unintelligible] okay with my way that I live in the world, this is going to be the struggle that I'm going to face.

[Brent]: And how do I move against that? How do I purposely begin to mitigate the negative of that, that steals-- In my experience, in my world, it steals joy. I don't relax very well, I don't know how to play and I've had to really work at those things and not just be a worker bee and so, the more we can recognize that and see that in our life, and then purposely push against that and move and develop different kinds of ways of living that balance that, if we could say.

[Brent]: And so, one of the things is we need to be self-aware. If we are not self-aware, if we aren't able to be okay with the fact that “hey, I've got some weaknesses in me”. I think our greatest strength is being aware of our greatest weakness. So, if we can be aware of weaknesses or shadows that limit our life, then we can actually do something about that. If we're not aware of that, then we're going to be blind to it and we're not actually going to be able to change.

[Brent]: And so, many of you are aware of the Enneagram. We found it to be a helpful tool. It's been around for centuries; it was used a lot in spiritual direction in many faith traditions. But it's kind of taken a resurgence.

[Brent]: Some of you may know of Ian Cron, who's written a book called “The Road Back to You” and he's written a new book called-- About the stories that we live in and he has kind of-- He has a podcast called “Typology” and it's just really helpful. Where he interviews different types and if you're not familiar with the Enneagram, there's-- It kind of expresses personality structure as nine different types, one through nine, and it suggests it's like a story that we live in.

[Brent]: Where my wife Janis lives is kind of a seven, which is she's kind of looking for that next fun adventure and there are certain things that she has to do to kind of manage that, the shadow of that. Well, I live in kind of a one world and we all have a wing, which is kind of the one that's next to us generally and so, I'm also a peacemaker, which is a nine. But my one is the reformer and I just spend my life trying to make things better.

[Brent]: Now, I've been a counselor, a pastor for 40 years and so, it kind of fits in those roles to help people grow and mature and become alive and be transformed in their life and yet, everything in my life kind of lives in that story.

[Brent]: And so, one of the challenges that my shadow deals with is, I need things to be just right, that I'm not very comfortable if things aren't just right and it's been a challenge for me to live in that story for all of these years and so, I can walk in a room and everything be in order and everything be wonderful except for one thing. That's what I see. I grab ahold of that and it's like “how can I fix that? How can I make that better?”.

[Brent]: Some of you are going “oh, bless his heart”. Yes, in some ways. It's a challenge and so, I don't-- I'm not able to enjoy the majority of what I see, it's those things that I see that aren't quite right. So, at our office complex here, I walk onto the property and the first thing I see is a piece of paper over here that shouldn't be there or a limb that's fallen over here or whatever. Now, again, that's not all evil, that's not bad, it’s-- There's some good things about that. I make sure that our properties always look really nice and there's good in that, but I have a hard time relaxing and I struggle with joy and finding things that I really appreciate and being focused on things that I appreciate.

[Brent]: And so, as an example of this, a couple years ago Janis and I decided that we-- A home that we've been living in for 25 years now, well, all of our kids are gone and we still have bedrooms for all of them, but they're gone and married and have their own children now and we wanted to kind of keep our family home, but we also wanted to do some stuff to it and so, we did kind of a post-empty nest remodel and I like to kind of do this work. It's the one thing in my life that actually I can do and it gets finished. As a pastor and a counselor, people are never finished and so, there's always that-- That continual undoness in all of us.

[Brent]: But if I remodel a bathroom, it's like finished and I go “wow. I did that and I love it and it's done” and if I finish the bathroom and walk in and the tile doesn't complain to me, doesn't go “I don't want to be in this bathroom anymore, I want to be someplace else in the house”, it's satisfying and so, I've always kind of enjoyed doing that kind of work, but I don't have a lot of time, a lot of margin in my life. So, I haven't had-- I don't have lots of hours in my days to do this, but we decided to do a top to bottom remodel and because I don't have a lot of time to do this, it took almost a year to really finish it and we were coming up to where we just about had it finished and I would say 95%, I would say 98%, but only a one would say 98%. So, let's say 95% I was finished and I had this punch list of things that just weren't quite done yet.

[Brent]: And so, I thought “oh my gosh, I just need to get this finished” and every night it was a busy season in my world and every night I came home and I was like “this isn't done yet, I need this to be finished. Because if it's finished, then I can really relax and I can enjoy what we've done here and it'll be awesome”.

[Brent]: But again, it wasn't quite finished and-- But I could tell that I was losing joy, I was getting irritable and anxious and I really felt impressed. Now, at first, I knew that this had to come from the dark side, but I felt impressed that I needed to do something purposely to push against that shadow, that part of me that just can't relax and enjoy and appreciate. So, I felt led to take 30 days and not finish it.

[Brent]: Now, again, the very first time I thought that I-- That had to come from the dark side and I felt impressed to just come home every night and take about five minutes and walk into one of the different spaces and just sit there and look around and even though my eyes were going to go to the part that wasn't finished, I forced myself to look at the rest of the room and just be thankful. Thankful that we were able to do this, thankful for how it looked. To be able to look at the new doors we put to the outside in the back and how it opens up the whole house and how much I appreciated that.

[Brent]: Now, at first, I tell you, the first few days of this were rough. I had a hard time leaning into this and relaxing. But eventually as I was focused on appreciating and being thankful and-- I started to experience some joy that “This is awesome. I'm so happy with what we've done here and we're going to enjoy the rest of our life here. This is amazing”. Little by little I was-- Joy began to come alive in me by that practice of focusing on what was good, focusing on the part that I liked and that has been kind of a discipline that I have to work into my life.

[Brent]: Again, every morning I come to our building complex here and there's something that-- The next project that needs to be done or something that needs to be fixed and I've just learned to be able to say “it's okay”; which is another practice that I have to work on. “It's. okay. It's fine. We’ll get to it. I don't have time to do it right now, but it's okay”.

[Brent]: I have to practice that over and over and over again and then, even at our offices here I think “what do I like about what we've done here?”, because we kind of remodeled a lot of this space, you know, here also and “I like this. I appreciate this” and “I think it's more welcoming to people and I love the atmosphere that we've created here” and so, when I think about that and focus on that and do that as a discipline, it moves, it mitigates the shadow in me that can't relax, that can't stop and smell the roses, that can't find joy and peace.

[Brent]: Each of us, I believe, can find some practices that can help us. First of all, we've got to kind of be open and self-aware and kind of own our stuff. I've had to own this is not “the right way to live. The way I live”. Because I live in a very right way world, that's what one's do. Is they try to do everything the right way and don't like to make mistakes and I've had to realize in life I'm going to make mistakes, I'm going to fail sometimes and it's okay. You know, it's okay that things aren't perfect and if-- But if I can just own that, that that's going to be something I'm going to struggle with, be able to not only own it to myself, to acknowledge it and realize that that's not-- That my way of living, everybody doesn't have to live that way.

[Brent]: Thank the Lord or nobody would find joy in life and I realize that that's not the only or right way to live, that there's eight other stories that people live in that are just as appropriate to live in and I have to also recognize where that limits me. Being able to open that up to my wife, open that up to God and begin to work purposely at habits or rhythms, because we are formed by our habits.

[Brent]: The kinds of things that we do each day form us into being a certain kind of person. If I live or I walk in and see something that's not right and I just go attend to that and try to fix it and try to keep ahead of everything and try to make the world perfect, I will drive myself crazy and everybody else crazy. It will form me into being an anxious stressed-out workaholic and many years ago, I decided I don't want to live that way, I want to live more balanced than that and so, by being aware of it, opening that up and developing practices, we can find balance and healing and wholeness in our life and we can begin to live more into that original self or true self that we've been designed to be.

[Brent]: So, next time we're going to talk about some practices, some of the other stories that people might live in that you might find yourself in and what are some rhythms or practices that might be helpful for you, to be able to walk that out and find health and balance in your life.

[Brent]: So, for today, go in peace. I just believe Janis is going to be with us next time, so it'll be a lot better next time. It's going to be awesome next time. So, but in the meantime, go in peace. Bless you as you go.