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Be Happy!
Ccontinued
When I first understood this pattern, I was confident I had solved a major hurdle. I shared my insight with Christine. She smiled.
A year later I had a brief relationship with an outgoing woman. She liked my attention, but was unable to give me what I wanted. I talked about this incident with Christine and saw I had repeated the pattern I had "solved" the year before.
Later, when I was with my girl friend, Jane, in San Francisco, we worked on our relationship with Christine in couples counseling. I complained that Jane did not meet my needs. I met hers--or so I thought--why could she not meet mine? I felt mistreated. Christine led me again to my old insight and I again faced rewinning this step.
Another personal awareness I gained concerned talking about people. During the summer after I met Jane she visited me often at a hot springs north of San Francisco, where I lived and cooked. For the month of September, she lived there with me in an old cabin near the hot baths
I had been careful to stay clear of the politics and personal gossiping which seeped through the small population at the hot springs. A week after Jane joined me I realized we were talking about people in unflattering terms. At first I wanted to blame her. Luckily I did not, for soon I realized I was the source of our gossip. I knew from experience that talking about another couple's problems could bring their troubles into our relationship and I did not want to do this.
Looking deeper into my motivations, I saw I had been using other people's problems to reinforce our emotional bond.
We talked about what we were doing and decided to eliminate gossip from our conversation. The decision was easy, but required constant awareness. On some days, we had to rewin our new attitude every hour.
Six months later in Mexico we faced some unpleasant results of my careless and negative comments about people we liked. Again I had to rewin my growth in this area.
Each day some personal growth needs to be rewon. The cycles of our patterns and life circumstances vary the rhythm of when and how often different issues surface. But each day old challenges surface in new ways. Knowing growth is a spiral path will help dampen some of the frustration of this repetition. Developing the patience and persistence to solve the same problem, or its offspring, repeatedly until it finally dissolves will help you Be Happy!
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