"The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their "Love" lives by altering their attitudes of mind."
 

My Grampa Vetter

 Attitude is Everything when it comes to Relationship!

Dear Internet Friend,

Here is an except from the New Training Manual

"LOVER'S LEAP, The Training Manual For Happy Relationships"

(You can save $50 + S/H by purchasing this Training Manual in e-Manual form. You also will receive another Training e-Manual designed to improve Self-Image and Self Esteem. See bottom of the page for more information.)

Before I have a happy relationship with…!

True or False

Please circle T for True and F for False

 T          F          The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

 T          F          Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.

 T          F          It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.

 T          F          It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.

 T          F          It will make or break a company, a church, a home, a friendship, a relationship.

 T          F          The remarkable thing is I have a choice every day regarding the attitude I will embrace for that day.

 T          F          I cannot change my past.

 T          F          I cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.

 T          F          I cannot change the inevitable.

 T          F          The only thing I can do is play and work with the one thing that will change the evitable and that is my attitude.

 T          F          I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.       

     Before we get completely started let's, make a few distinctions so that we can better understand and get a clearer picture so we can get a good grip on this elusive thing called "Relationship".  How good does that sound?

      In dealing with Relationships, probably the first thing to begin to understand is that normally we attempt to deal objectively with something that is subjectively experienced.  This is not good or bad, but it does help explain why a happy relationship is so illusive for many people.

      The very concept of a "Happy" relationship presupposes there is an opposite an "unhappy" relationship available.  What is the difference between the two relationships?  As we discover these differences, which are subjective differences and we look at them objectively we can learn what makes up a "happy" relationship for us and how to create it for ourselves.

      Most people have been brought up in the western mindset that says something like, "For best results take objectivity over subjectivity."  You see objectivity lets us make educated guesses as to how something works, outside of the experience.  While subjectivity, on the other hand, is inside the experience and really involves the feelings and emotions of the experience.

      In other words, objectivity is external or outside, while subjectivity is internal or inside.  The truth of the matter even if we view something objectively, (externally/outside) the way we know, accept or believe the objective results is with an internal feeling.  Until we allow ourselves to have a certain feeling about our objective results they can still be in question.

      Since most of us have learned to view things objectively, why don't we view subjectivity objectively?  Naturally to do that it is helpful to realize that subjectivity, as most other things is an ongoing process, not static. 

       Even if it seems like things just happen there was a process or pattern we went through to have the thing that just happened just happen.  The reason it seems like it just happen and did not involve a process is that the part of us that does the process or pattern works so fast, outside of our conscious awareness.  We will discuss this later.

Relationships are always moving in a direction!

     Therefore, relationships, which are subjectively oriented, are an ongoing process.  Processes have beginnings, middles and end or getting ready for the next beginning.  Then the process is repeated or even continued.

     Obviously, to better understand how to have a happy relationship it would be advantageous to objectively understand the process of subjectivity.  What is a good model or useful theory of the subjective process?  There are many models of the subjective process.  Some are good and some are not so good.

     I don't really know if any are right or wrong models.  One thing that we can count on is any useful model will deal with communication and how it works.  Right now, for our purposes here, all we want to look for are models that are useful in getting us what we want and deserve, a happy relationship.

     The word "happy" describes a state of mind that is experienced in the body.  "Happy" brings a sense of empowerment, a sense of lightness, even a sense of control.  For some people it is a sense of being carried along and they think it is outside of their control.  In other words, it just happens.  What if we learn we are more at cause than we think we are?

     As an example, when was the last time you said something with a certain intention in mind and the person you were talking to took it just the opposite of how you intended it?  For the average person this happens frequently in relationships.

     First, lets look at why this happens, since many people want to understand why something happens.  Here is a concept that will help us to better understand what happens with communication in a relationship.

     Here is a concept from the field of Linguistics called normalization that will help us understand why people sometimes take our communication in a way other than what we intended.  Instead of getting into the technical definition of a normalized word or communication, lets simply contrast it with its opposite type of word, a concrete word or communication. 

     If I were to say to you, look at my car and you knew what my car looked like, you would understand what I was saying.  Because a car can be, verify with our external-see, hear, feel, touch and taste senses.  (Concrete/objective)

     If I wanted to be more concrete, I would say look at my red convertible BMW right in front of you.  Then I am giving you information that is even more precise.  That you can easily verify using your external-see, hear, feel, touch and taste senses.  This we consider a concrete communication.

     If I were to say to you, "I respect you".  You are unable to verify that with your external-see, hear, feel senses.  You go inside and use your internal-see, hear, feel senses by placing your meaning of respect on my communication. 

     Naturally, we believe that both of us mean the same thing when we use the word respect because we both know what the word respect means, don't we or do we?  We would consider this a normalization communication.  Unverifiable by our external-see, hear, feel senses.

     What if, like a friend of mine, your definition of respect was, "Don't hurt my feelings"?  Maybe, your definition of respect is like mine, "Tell me everything regardless of whether it will hurt my feelings or not".  Easily, you may even have a different definition of the word respect.

     Therefore, when I say, "I respect you."  You think you understand what I am saying and yet in actuality you think I mean what you call respect and not what I mean by respect.  We naturally put our meaning to what someone else says unless we realize it is a normalization communication and ask for clarification.

     On the level that controls how I think about communication, the belief level and we have different levels of beliefs that color other beliefs, a useful belief to hold about communicating is, THE MEANING OF MY COMMUNICATION IS THE RESPONSE I GET.  The reason this is a more useful belief is it places the center or control of power, not with the other person but with me.

     By taking on this belief that regardless of what I intended to communicate, the meaning you or they place on my communication is what I really communicated, it places me in a position of responsibility and power.  If I don't like the way someone takes my communication I simply change my communication until they are responding the way I intended my original communication to convey or I simply change my communication to the point where I leave them in their world and I move on to other more important issues. 

     This brings up another area of subjectivity vs. objectivity that we want to consider.  When is a belief not true?  We like to think that our beliefs are true.  Now if we knew everything there is to know and understood everything, then our beliefs could possible be absolutely true.  Like my Grampa Vetter said, "You can't have everything, where would you put it."

     However, a truth is that we don't know everything yet.  Moreover, as we learn more things they have a tendency to color, reshape, reframe and/or include our previous held belief in the new belief.  A simple example would be there once was a shared belief and everyone thought it was true, that the earth is flat.

     Notice how you feel about the last sentence.  We all feel comfortable with the thought that people used to believe that the earth was flat but, when we read or hear the earth is flat we get that feeling in our stomach or chest that says "whoa" or no.

    That belief was changed when more information was gathered.  Was that belief wrong?  From one point of view, you're right and if we were living during the time when this belief was held to be true, we would have considered it right.  Think about it.

     Beliefs by their very nature have tremendous difficulty being absolutely right or wrong, true or false.  Depending on the context we are applying them to they are useful or less useful.  The 'earth is flat' belief can be useful when explaining the law of gravity and less useful when explaining navigation for exploration.

     When we carry this further it brings up the question, are there no absolutes?  For me, I don't really know, I believe there are.  There's that word "belief/believe" again.  Someone once said, "We are an outline of limitations and a treasure of possibilities".

     For this writer the limitations are the absolutes but I'm not to quick to say something is an absolute because there seems to be exceptions.  Are there always exceptions?  I don't know that's the beauty of each of us being a treasure of possibilities. 

     I think there are absolutes but because the very nature of a belief, which takes information in and must delete, distort and generalize that information to make sense of it, it is sometimes difficult to see an absolute.  So how else can we look at this to make sense of it?

     Since we are talking about a way of having a happy relationship, over the belief of right or wrong and good or bad, what if we applied the belief of usefulness verse less useful?  Maybe a good analogy would be useful here.  Consider our beliefs as a map that helps us navigate through life. 

          Now a map, to be useful, must be a model and not the actual thing.  If you had a map of the United States that was actual size, not only would it be less useful, but also it would take you a long time to fold it and according to my Grampa Vetter you have to be a rocket scientist to be able to fold a regular size map properly, imagine one the size of the U.S.

     We also use different maps for different projects.  Road maps for travel by road.  We use geological maps for finding oil and or minerals in the ground.  We would use weather map to determine the weather.  It would not be as useful to use a geological map of the US to drive from New York to Los Angeles as it would a road map.  In fact, it would be very, very difficult.

     The interesting thing is that these maps have to be continually updated because of new discoveries and changes that are found.  The update maps are more useful than the older maps because they take into account more specific information.  The older maps are not wrong or bad.  They had their usefulness at the time and because of updating of the maps, they are replaced or incorporated within the new map.  In the same way, beliefs need to be updated.

     Sometimes we become attached to our beliefs, which are normalizations, and we try to make them concrete by forgetting they are just maps we are using to navigate life.  We mistakenly think our beliefs are real and true.  There is also a good change, since we have more than one map in our heads; we may have map or belief conflicts from time to time. 

     As we look at subjectivity objectively so we can have happy relationships, it may be very useful to ask certain questions in regards to things like our beliefs. 

     1) Does this thought, belief, emotion, state or feeling, attitude, etc. serve (you) me well?

     2) Does it enhance (your) my life, bring out (your) my best, put (you) me in a resourceful state, and empower (you) me in reaching (your) my goals?

     3) Will it limit (you) me, reduce (your) my effectiveness and put (you) me at odds with (your) my own highest values and beliefs?

     4) Will it enable (you) me to act in a way true to (your) my values? 

     By their very nature these question presuppose certain things that we may not normally consider and yet these things are important as to whether we will have a happy relationship or not.  Things like goals, values, resourceful states, highest values and beliefs, etc. 

     Most of us don't know where we got the ones we have, what they are or if the ones we have work for us in the end.  We know even less, how to change the less than useful one for more useful ones.

When was the last time you updated your maps?

     Since we now have come to the understanding that our maps (beliefs) may need to be updated to allow them to be more useful, and before we look at belief formation and some of the consequences (Chapter 3) go on to the relationship before the relationship (Chapter 4) and see if we can't design a really useful map, let's learn a very fast way to clear out some of our less than useful beliefs that detour us. 

Table of Contents

Lover's Leap, The Training Manual For Happy Relationships

 Acknowledgements  ……………………………..

Chapter 1    Before I have a Happy Relationship with …..............…. Pg  1

Chapter 2    Rewiring our Ability to Relate by Resetting ….............…Pg 15

Chapter 3    I Form my Beliefs How?  ………………………….................... Pg 32

Chapter 4   The Relationship with before… The Relationship with  ...................................................................………...............…… Pg 49

Chapter 5  More Useful Beliefs abut the Relationship with ME, MYSELF and I… ....................................................................................................Pg 64

Chapter 6  Everyone is and there is no such thing as …..............…  Pg 78

Chapter 7   The "CORE 4" guiding principle to getting anything you want …..................................................................................................…  Pg 89

 Chapter 8   The Golden Triangle and the 3 levels……..…............... Pg 105

 References  …………………………………………..

Two ways to order:

#1)

Hard Copy cost $100 plus Shipping and Handling email Dr.Houston@ev1.net for payment instructions and S/H cost.

#2)

Downloadable e-training manual                                          cost $49.95

"Lover's Leap, The Training Manual For Happy Relationships"

FREE Bonus with #2

Another downloadable e-training manual

"Get Rid of The Pressure, Foundation for Building Self-Esteem, Self Image" (designed for the Kid in all of us.)

Buy the Lover's Leap Training eManual at ClickBank