The DNA of Relationships (12 page)

That’s why Bob can admit, “Not until my thirties did these ideas about taking personal responsibility start making sense to me. Only then did I start to make the transition to adulthood. All the way through my twenties, when my wife and I were having kids, I felt as if I was kidding everybody. I looked like an adult; I was doing adult work; but inside, I felt like an insecure little child.”

In many ways I too remained a child until I was in my forties. Until that time, I looked to my bosses and my churches to take care of me. I’d whine and complain if they didn’t care for me the way I wanted. I’d go home and tell my wife that they weren’t being sensitive to me. I depended on them for all areas of care—until I finally took personal responsibility for my life. Only then did I start to grow up and become an adult. I didn’t become an adult overnight. It was a slow process. I grew up more over the last two years than I have over the past fifteen years.

Does that make sense to you? Taking advantage of the Power of One really means accepting the job of being an adult.

So let’s ask the question again. When did
you
become an adult? When did
you
begin taking personal responsibility for your own care? When did
you
start experiencing the Power of One? If you still expect others to make you happy, then you’re still functioning like a child, regardless of your chronological age.

It’s never too late, however, to take up the mantle of personal responsibility. At the moment you assume that mantle, you become an adult. You could, of course, remain a child in an adult’s clothes for your entire life and never become a functioning adult. But why would you choose that?

Those who make the choice to leave childhood behind can expect to reap great rewards! Just as a reminder, I want to share again the following thoughts and choices that will determine your emotions, either positive or negative. These choices tend to lower stress and lead to more peace and joy.

1. Give up or give to God all your expectations that people, places, and things will bring you lasting happiness and fulfillment.
Nothing outside of God can bring you life, joy, and peace. He gives to those who ask. This one step alone will reduce your stress level to almost zero. It’s childish to think that something on this earth will bring lasting fulfillment and happiness. God is the source of life; people and things are overflow.

Stress is the gap between what we expect to happen and what is actually happening. Depending on the intensity of the expectation, we can be very or only slightly stressed. We again make that choice by placing value to our expectations. The more valuable an expectation, the more intense the stress. Just think about your own stress for a minute. The only time you get stressed is when an expectation is not being met as you had hoped. Whether it is driving, vacationing, working, studying, hiking, gardening, you name it, stress comes when things aren’t working out as we planned. Drop those expectations, and see what happens to your stress.

As if I needed practice with this, I faced a dashed expectation just a few hours ago. I finished this chapter and was ready to send it off to the editors. I decided to move the electronic file to a different location in my computer. When a little dialog box popped up, I didn’t bother to read it. (I know you know what’s coming. You’ve probably done the same thing.) I clicked on yes before I realized it, and my chapter was gone. I lost all of my work! I called a computer expert, but after he tried a few things, he said, “Gary, it looks like it’s gone.” Gone!

That’s when I had the choice: I could stew about the situation, or I could give up my expectation and move on. I chose to let go. In fact, I started laughing and thought,
Oh well, I’ll just redo it.
Norma and I had planned a date, but she suggested I stay home and she would go with a friend. I finished the chapter a little before midnight. Even though my initial stress level went up to about a five, when I finished the chapter, it was back down to a one. In the end I’m very glad I redid the chapter because I had missed several very important points and ideas.

2. Realize that everything negative that happens to us can be reframed into something positive.
I call this step “Treasure Hunting,” and it really makes life’s trials take on a different meaning. I have been learning that everything that happens to me can become a joy to me. That echoes what the New Testament says: “Whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy.”
⁸
I’ve seen the proof of this truth. I’ll list two. Today my
thoughts
about trials are very positive.

• I was a very slow student in school and almost didn’t make it to college. With low spelling and reading skills, I struggled my entire life at academics. These negative experiences became my greatest strengths and joy. Because I struggle in these areas, my books tend to be simple, practical, and easy to read. I hate reading boring books. People enjoy reading about my mistakes and the easy steps to follow. The steps have to be easy, or I wouldn’t be able to apply them.
  
• In the past few years, I’ve had a heart attack, kidney transplant, and now diabetes because of the kidney medicines. These experiences have given me more understanding and empathy for what other sick people go through. I love these people a lot more now than before my illnesses. I have more compassion for hurting people in general. My love for God is stronger because of my greater dependence on him. All trials bring more love for God and others if we allow the trials to train us.
  

The list goes on and on. The key to joy and peace is deciding that trials are good for us and that we grow after we grieve for a while.

6. Recruit Assistants
When I insist that you have to take personal responsibility for how you react to the challenges of life, I don’t mean that you’re in this battle all by yourself. I don’t mean that it’s you against the world, come what may. I do mean that you are responsible for how you choose to act and react to those who push your fear buttons. I do mean that you are the chief executive officer of yourself.

But all CEOs have assistants! And you should have a few too.

What do I mean by choosing assistants? It’s choosing people who agree to help you take care of yourself and stay responsible for yourself. But unless those people know what you need, they cannot help you appropriately.

Your need to take personal responsibility doesn’t mean that you do everything by yourself or for yourself. While you’ll never win by trying to manipulate others into doing what you want, you certainly can improve your relationships by recruiting willing assistants who, by their own conscious choice, partner with you in creating a stronger relationship.

In other words, unless you choose to tell your spouse what your buttons are, he or she might never know that part of you and can’t help you. For example, if you tell your spouse that your core fear is rejection or being controlled, then he or she may choose to be your assistant and try to limit behavior that would push your buttons. But remember, your spouse is only assisting you. You still must be ready to respond in ways that benefit you in the long run.

The fact is, your relationships likely
would
give you a great deal more satisfaction if others didn’t constantly put their sticky fingers all over your fear buttons. Life
would
feel better without the belittling and accusing and demeaning and abandoning. That’s a no-brainer.

I recently got a reminder of the importance of recruiting assistants rather than trying to manipulate people into doing what I wanted. When I first called together some coworkers to discuss the content for this book, I felt as if certain family members weren’t “doing” the message of this book. I wanted them to treat me a certain way, and they weren’t doing it. But instead of taking personal responsibility, instead of realizing that I couldn’t “make” anybody change, instead of going directly to my family members involved and asking them to be my assistants, I decided to go through the back door and make it look as if it were a staff meeting.

So I sent an e-mail to everyone in my family, instructing them to watch a three-hour video of Bob Paul teaching the material I’m teaching you right now. I hoped that by watching it, they would understand what I needed from them. Then I called together a big meeting, all the time saying, “We need to learn this new material. I don’t feel like I understand it quite right yet.”

During the meeting Michael finally called me on it. “You know,” he said, “it’s interesting. You’re saying that you don’t feel as if you quite understand this, and yet you’re trying to make me and everyone else watch the videos and be here in a meeting to hear Bob explain the material. It seems to me that if you don’t understand it, then you need to be having this meeting by yourself.”

While Michael’s comments irritated me, I finally admitted the truth: I felt certain family members hadn’t been treating me right, and this was my attempt to manipulate them into doing what I wanted. The whole time I was not being honest. I was not taking personal responsibility. I had not tried to recruit any assistants. And my actions got us into conflict.

Things didn’t calm down until I finally said, “All right, that’s fair. I need to do the changing, and I can’t make anybody else change.” I also realized that when I feel hurt, I have to go directly to the people involved and be up front with them. In other words, I had to tap into the Power of One. And part of that involves recruiting willing assistants—not manipulated ones.

Here’s what I could have done. My goal was to have my daughter, Kari, and her husband, Roger, learn about the DNA of relationships. Roger is one of the key staff members who will be presenting the material in this book to schools, churches, and businesses all over the world. So I wanted him to learn the material in his own life so he would be more effective in explaining the material to those he was recruiting to partner with us. I didn’t feel as if I could be direct with them. I reasoned that Bob Paul’s new teaching video on the subject would be just the ticket. I hid my intentions by inviting everyone in our family to watch the video. I should have just gone to Roger and Kari and discussed it with them, asking them to help me share this new message and suggesting that they watch the video with Norma and me. They would have gladly assisted me. Instead, they felt confused and manipulated.

You are the CEO of yourself. If you’re smart, however, you’ll openly recruit others as your assistants. These assistants, of course, are also the CEOs of themselves and therefore may ask you, in turn, to become their willing assistants. Is this manipulation? Far from it! It’s cooperation, and there’s a world of difference between the two.

I find it helps to work through a few important questions:

• For what things am I fully responsible?
  
• In what areas do I have a shared responsibility?
  
• In what areas do I have no responsibility?
  
• How can I learn to take the appropriate level of responsibility in any given situation?
  

I’m reminded of a few things as I work through the questions:

• I am fully responsible for my thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behavior.
  
• I am not responsible for your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, or behavior.
  
• In a relationship I can influence—but not control—the thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behavior of another.
  

When I’m the assistant, I have the privilege of helping my loved ones as they request (or as I see the opportunity). All the while, they remain the CEO of themselves. I’m not responsible for how they act or react; they remain responsible for themselves. But I can certainly do what I can to improve our mutual environment! Norma recently asked me to help her with an illness she is suffering from at the moment. She wanted me to call a doctor and find out some information for her. I responded, “My privilege.” After I got the information, I passed it on to her. Now what do I do if she doesn’t follow through with the information I gave her? It’s not my responsibility to hound her about it. It’s not my place to get angry if she doesn’t use the information. It’s her responsibility to do with it as she wishes and at her pace and on her conditions. She’s the CEO of this situation; I’m her assistant.

As an assistant, you have the power to influence the environment in which your relationships grow, whether for good or ill. Your assistants have the same kind of power. They never take the job of CEO from you, and you never take the job of CEO from them.

But oh, what a difference a competent assistant can make!

The Power of Choosing Forgiveness
A big part of tapping into the Power of One involves forgiveness, both giving it and asking for it. It’s not easy to do, but adults who want their relationships to flourish must become good at it.

Michael’s wife, Amy, leads a small group of high school girls from her church. One night the girls started complaining that their pastor, Ted, never addressed the young people during his Sunday sermons. The fact especially upset them because their church has no Sunday-morning class for high school students. “We’re not important to the church,” they indignantly told Amy, “and to top it off, Pastor Ted doesn’t even think about us when he writes his sermons.”

Amy soon jumped on the bandwagon and unintentionally fanned the flame. When her students returned home, they got their parents all upset and cranky about Ted. The next thing you know, Ted got a few angry e-mails and phone calls from parents. It became a big mess, and then Ted found out about Amy’s involvement. The two of them soon got into a conflict.

One day Ted—Michael and Amy’s close friend—called Michael and said, “I don’t know what to do about this situation with your wife.”

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Michael replied, “but you probably need to call her.”

“Well,” Ted answered, “if she’d just call and apologize, everything would be okay.” They talked a little while longer and then hung up.

No more than ten minutes later, Amy called Michael. “I don’t know what to do about this thing with Ted,” she declared.