Have The Relationship You Want

Thank you all, so much for your comments, and I noticed a theme here. About RAGE.

Here’s how I want you to frame this Rage thing in your mind: I don’t want you going back in your life, re-imagining, trying to connect your Rage up with some event or events.

That’s the way some therapy proceeds – and I don’t think it works all that well. I think trying to heal yourself that way can actually result in MORE trauma – more resistance, more energy mobilized as the wound is reopened, rather than soothed.

Rage can come out of traumatic events that you actually can’t recall without some effort – and though some folks say the recalling of those events contributes to healing – it has to be done the right way.

Trauma is all about being helpless – actually helpless.  You may have tried to fight or flee, but you simply were not actually able to.  This resulted in a FREEZING response – which is what’s going on for each of us to some degree.

All your feelings at that moment froze into the cells of your body – and every time anything triggers you – the frozen emotions and the NEED to STOP them from unfreezing becomes overwhelming.

The Rage, then, is only the life force that was trying to free you from being helpless.  And it’s STILL trying to free you.

That means – the Rage can be healed WITHOUT being connected literally to the event.  It can be healed every single time it gets triggered. Bit by bit. Rage is your friend, your ally – not your enemy.

And this is what you’re doing when you choose to FEEL the Rage.

You don’t have to DO anything with it – you just have to feel what you can of it, and then feel the back and forth feelings that will happen around it – the feelings that the RAGE triggers.

This is how and why the RIFF works so brilliantly to shift things.  You are ALLOWING that back-and-forth, fight and flight and freeze impulses to flow through you and be acknowledged.

Just doing this slowly unfreezes you.

So – don’t try to find the SOURCE of your rage – instead, FEEL how it plays out in your life, and when it comes up – sink into it.

Feel how the emotions move around – and especially notice when you blank out, numb out, or feel your emotions freezing.  This is your clue that you’re getting close to even more frightening feelings.

If you just keep doing this, and acknowledging and loving all the stuff that comes up – you’ll slowly unfreeze.

You are slowly making the unknown known inside you – your energy field will shift.

You’ll stop ACTING OUT – DOING something to prevent the feelings from coming up.

You’ll stop being angry at a man who’s just being himself – but who triggered your feelings of helplessness.

Right now – you are NOT helpless.  It just feels like it.  And the Rage comes up around it

Explore and experiment and see if you can discover a pattern for yourself – and rejoice!

This is a great adventure – healing yourself, and you can do it.  Slowly and surely – gently, kindly, easily, step-by-step, no pressure, all discovery.

Love, Rori

I feel like a just got run over by a truck – on my feet and onstage for 8 hours at my Targeting Mr. Right seminar and product taping yesterday (it will be out in March)…I wanted to answer more and more questions – so you’ll be seeing a lot of talk about Circular Dating here -

I want to be in the business of motivating you and exciting you, and keeping you motivated and excited to get what you want through Circular Dating – even if you’re married (you’ll understand how and why in the product, and we’ll talk more and more about it here…) – and those 8 hours (to produce 6 1/2 hours of DVD and CD for you, with all the stops and starts) were some of the most thrilling I’ve ever experienced.

I could feel the concept behind Circular Dating sinking in – and how it’s so different from the way we usually think of “dating.”

It made the whole concept of “getting Mr. Right” seem like a walk in the park, a slam dunk.  And it is.

I’m going to turn my attention to posting now – I wanted to give you this one to start – it’s one of my favorite pieces, and it kicks off the New Year for me.  It’s called Soft In The Kitchen:

I was thinking about softness, and how it changes your vibe.

We’re all very smart, very clever, very defended. We don’t want anyone to see how films about animals make us cry, or our scrap booking, or all the mistakes we made and continue to make around everything in life.

We don’t want anyone to see that we’re lonely, or frightened, or exuberant about the simplest things. We don’t want anyone to see us being childlike and hopeful. So we cultivate our intellect, our opinions, our thoughts on where we’ve been and where we’re going.

Today I was in the kitchen eating what I’d cooked, when my husband walked in. I have a horrible history of burning food. There was the time several months ago when I retreated to the microwave, defeated, afraid my absent-mindedness would burn the house down (talk about repressed rage).

In the last few weeks I’ve been trying the stove again – scheduling cooking time, staying put in the kitchen, turning on the timer, sharpening my attention, and not burning anything! I’m cured! I’m a cook! I’m not a menace, I can do this! And the ground turkey I cooked in the pan smelled very nice on my plate.

And he says, alarm and accusation in his voice, “Did you burn something?”

“No!” I look up at him in shock.

“It smells like you burned something. Something’s burned.” and he walks into the kitchen.

“No, no!” I defend, going for the pan, picking it up to show him, feeling five years old and incompetent. “It’s just nicely brown, see?” I say forcefully, totally righteously. It’s his nose that’s wrong.

“Well, it smells like something’s burned.”

All of a sudden I get what I really feel. Yes, I’m five. I screw up my face and do big time mock crying and whining. “But I didn’t burn it!” I wail. “I didn’t….” and I go all gooey, pan in my hand, miserable.

And in that second, my husband does a 180. His eyes go deep and very blue-green, he smiles so fast I’m taken aback, and he comes towards me, arms around me, “Ohhhhhhh,” he says. And that’s the end of it.

“So, how’s your day?” he skips right to his next thought, and he’s standing right up against me, and we’re connected, and I leap from five-year-old to grownup, from lump to goddess.

Long ago, whenever this happened, I used to think it was because he was competitive and didn’t want me to be big. I thought he liked me girly and the loser at chess and gin rummy. I thought he was scared of my fortitude. Now I know that’s not it at all.

He just likes me better soft. He likes me better where I am than where I wish I was. He likes me better human than mistake-proof. And by liking me better this way, he encourages me to rise to the ultimate test of any relationship: He inspires me to say that I like myself best when I’m with him.

***I wrote this at a stage in my marriage when we were just beginning to communicate on a deeper level – where we were getting past using our daughter and the amount of our focus we reserved for her in a subtle way to KEEP DISTANCE between US.

Intimacy is scary.  The dynamics of a family are somehow orchestrated to keep a balance, a status quo.  The idea is- underneath, subconsciously, where we can’t even get at our motives – to keep things the same.

We do as much to KEEP from Rocking the Boat of ourselves as we do to stay connected within the family.

Everyone triggers everyone else, and no one likes to be triggered.  So we try to avoid doing anything different from what we feel comfortable with.

But that’s a path of STUCK.

It’s not even a path.

It’s some kind of going in circles designed to make sure you always end everything that happens at the beginning.

That things inside us NEVER CHANGE.

And when I wrote this – I WANTED things to change.

Not because they were bad – because they WEREN’T.  We had a TERRIFIC relationship – exactly as I talk about and write about and teach about.

But I wanted to go FURTHER.

I wanted to shake myself up. I wanted to have all the adventure, intimacy, excitment, scariness of love and life that I’d missed out on my whole life by always trying to keep things the same.  I wanted NEW.

I wanted to explore myself – and I knew the way to do that was through our relationship.

So I experimented.  I talked.  WE talked.

And this was at the beginning of that – when I started talking.  When I started letting myself hang out – even when it looked BAD to me.

I always prized myself for keeping myself together – no matter what.  I “could handle anything.”  I could “make lemonade out of any lemon thrown at me.”

And I didn’t want to do that anymore. I wanted to be SEEN.  And it was my husband who was going to be SEEING me.

Since then, we’ve slowly worked with each other in this way – making sure that we don’t bust through each other’s walls (though they are so much shorter and more transparent these days) – but just feel our way through, and – well, it’s kind of magical.

You can do this every day of your life.

Circular Dating will give you an opportunity to interact with man after man after man – to slowly allow them to peer through your walls, and for you to practice actually letting those walls down a bit at a time.

You can do this – and even the men out there who you are not attracted to – or who seem unable to even hold a conversation with you – even those men can be “practice partners” for you.

Wishing you love, practice, and magic – and blowing them your way.

Love, Rori

If you’ve been following Bethany, you know her man got a text from another girl, and when he told her about it – he did it in a way that made her feel awful, horrible – the whole “freak -out.”

We talked about how she could share her feelings, and tell him the TRUTH – so they could deepen their relationship, and she could start feeling stronger inside…and here’s what happened (you can hear how insecure Bethany feels, just like we all do when we’re afraid of doing ANYTHING…and it’s great to hear the process put into words):

“Rori, Tonight, after leaning back all day and almost ignoring Carl, he asked me to go listen to a band downtown tonight. I said yes, and we had fun!

Then when he dropped me off at my place, I said “I felt weird when I got that text from you the other day about that girl…”

And then he asked why and I said “Because she’s pretty”…and that “I didn’t know what he meant,” and then he said that he felt like “…maybe he shouldn’t have sent the text because he didn’t want to sound like he was conceited”…and he said “No! I don’t think she’s pretty.”

So I felt pretty silly…but he didn’t freak out or anything, and I said “I don’t want to make a big deal, so thanks for listening…” and he said “Yeah, tell me anytime how you feel.”

…I feel pretty shaky right now, like maybe I shouldn’t have said that, and that I ruined the mood?

But at least it’s out there, right? And maybe it’s good so that the next time something might trigger my jealousy, the open path of communication has been laid. He didn’t seem like he wanted to run away, I just feel embarrassed for looking weak. But maybe I look strong, do you think?

Even if he’s taken aback, I didn’t attack him and I didn’t tell him he had to do anything or not do anything, so hopefully it will be okay?”

Here was my answer to her:

“Bethany, This was totally brilliant! Can you see? – read your letter as if it were someone else – can you see how you used feeling messages and he responded so well?

Can you see how leaning back all day and forgetting about him brought him close? I know it sounds mystical – but that’s exactly the way it works.

I believe a man can feel your energy even from far away. So you work on yourself, and he follows.

He LIKED the way you spoke to him, and he invited you to talk to him about this stuff – you just got closer!

Now – don’t take the backwards step of “maybe I shouldn’t have said that, and that I ruined the mood?” or “But maybe I look strong, do you think? “ – can you see how you’re doubting yourself, analyzing – getting into your head?

When this happens – use all my Tools that come to you to get OUT of your head, and back into your feelings and most of all – your BODY.

Please pat yourself on the back and give yourself the biggest hug for coming this far so fast! Love, Rori”

Here’s how Bethany’s process can help you:  I’m all about the truth – and all about helping YOU tell the truth, no matter how scary it feels.

The first time you try it – let it be about Little things – things that don’t make you feel terrified, but give you a little buzz of excitement in your tummy just thinking about SAYING anything about them – even the weather qualifies sometimes – if we’ve been sitting on our feelings for a long, long time.

Try it, and let me know how it unfolds for you.

Love, Rori

Oh, my – it’s all getting away from me. Holidays, and now I’m jamming to get ready for the filming of my newest program around Circular Dating – I still don’t have a title for the program – but it’s all around being a “Diva” and so I’m renaming Circular Dating (and expanding what it’s all about) to  “Diva Dating.”

(Perhaps you’re planning to come to the filming, and I’ll get to meet you and work with you onstage.)

Hope your holidays were brilliant and – even if they were disappointing in some ways – I know we’re going to tease out the lessons and the diamonds in your experiences.

I’ve wanted to  reprint this article I wrote some time ago – it’s always been one of my favorites – called “Highway of Love” – and so here it is:

I’m stuck again. Not sick, not tired, just going backwards in my mind.

A psychic practitioner stopped me at the end of a party yesterday, and told me I was about to have a detour. Today. I don’t quite remember the exact words she used, but it was something along the lines of “Right now you’re going down the 405, and you’re about to take a detour, and then you’ll have to decide what you want to do with your life.”

And then she disappeared.

Okay. So one part of me sees only possibilities in that scenario -Wow, choices, new things, new roads, new…. And then another part -Gremlin Voice soaked for sure -screams Other shoe dropping! Any minute now! Watch out for falling shoes! And I look around me, furtively, searching each car that passes by, each person who passes by, each word that passes by, for a clue. For a sign. For impending disaster.

I have three choices. One, I can call up this practitioner and ask for clarification. But, I realize, nothing she says will change the fact that I must make one of the other two choices.

Two, I can wallow in fear and try to be very careful and watchful and vigilant, analyze everything that shows up in my life at every minute, and forget I’m actually alive and living.

Three, I can choose the choice of possibilities. I can – regardless of what the psychic has seen or knows, regardless of what she says or what she thinks, or even more profoundly, regardless of what I think -see every car that passes by, every person who passes by, each word that passes by as a “detour” into a new possibility.

And, if I make choice Number Three, I’d better know what I’m getting myself into -this new possibility might lead to another detour, to another possibility, to another, and another, where the choices are endless.

Am I more afraid of being stuck or of getting lost?

Is it that I’m really so certain I can’t choose right every time, or does it really matter if I choose right every time?

Lots of questions, and sometimes the answer is “I don’t know,” or “None of the Above.” So how do I know what to do and where to go and what to think? And how do I stop; my mind from racing to fear instead of flowing to possibilities?

Well, first off, just because I investigate another road doesn’t mean I’ve left the Highway of Love. In fact, what if I’m not even on it at all!

What if, even though I think I’ve been on the Highway of Love all this time, I’m really only on a side road? What if I’m not even on a road? What if I’ve been going in circles?

So, what if I want to continue down this so-called detour of a new possibility? What then? What if the detour leads to a bigger Highway? What if I’ve been on the Highway of Where I’ve Always Been and What I’ve Always Done, and the detour will lead me smack to the Highway of Love?

Well, how’s this for a job description: Adventurer!

Lots of men and women are making thrilling, actual lives out there being Indiana Jones -finding lost civilizations, solving ancient riddles, leading teams through the jungles of the world.

Everyone has a different tolerance for risk and a different idea of what’s in the pot of gold at the end of the Quest, and some of us quake at even the thought of stepping a foot into the unknown.

So many of us are traveling up and down a dead end wash we call “love” in the middle of something we only know of as “familiarity.”

Sometimes we ride it in souped-up all-terrain vehicles, and sometimes we crawl along it, but we hardly ever fly over it, and actually see, with our own eyes, that it’s been a dead-end all along.

So, what if the Highway of Love is truly a super-highway leading to…who knows where?

And, what if it’s really not all that hard to navigate? What if the only problem with it is it’s just not a dead-end wash? What if the only hard thing about it is it’s not “familiar”?

So I bless the psychic. Not for giving me a clue to what’s next, but for giving me a clue to my fear. Perhaps the 405 isn’t all there is.

Now I have to deal with myself. If I’m so afraid of detours, how will I handle the Highway of Love when I’m on it? Will I run back to my dead-end? Will I swear off detours? Will I swear off possibilities? Will I choose “Familiar” over “Better”?

Will I choose “Safely Stuck” over “Scary What I Really Want”?

Will I stay in worry and doubt and fear and not leave my house, or will I move out and about with abandon? Will I keep my eyes open for danger, or will I allow in possibilities?

The choice is mine. The choice is yours.

Try this way of choosing:

When you find yourself stuck, or afraid, ask yourself what road you’re on.

You may answer – I’m in love! I couldn’t be happier! Or I’m safe and fine, I don’t need a relationship, I don’t need someone else to love me, I love myself just plenty. Or I don’t have time for all this. I’m busy, I’m tooling down my road just fine, and, Rori, what do you know about it anyway?

Okay, so you know what’s up. You’ve made your choice, and it feels good, and here you are, and you’re right – you don’t need me.

And if you answer I’m tired of the same-old-same-old. I’m tired of the souped-up cars and the dry runs and the circles, then, maybe, you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by choosing “Better” and “Scary What I Really Want,” than “Safe” and “Familiar.”

So, put on your new hat. The one marked “Adventurer!”

Imagine that your emotions, your instincts, your heart rhythms, are a beautiful, powerful Horse you can ride across the landscape of your life. Your Horse knows the way, clean and clear, to where you want to go. And if you should ever steer it wrong, it knows the way back.

Now, sit your Horse tall and proud. You are about to let the whole world see you shake from fear, thrill from excitement, breathe hard from anticipation, tense up from the knot in your throat and shimmer from the hope in your eyes.

You are about to let go. The Horse of your emotions, your instincts, your connection to life, your heart, is feeling feisty. You’re about to let your Horse run free.

Imagine doing it. Imagine tolerating the fear, the excitement, the heavy breathing, the tension, the shimmer. Imagine riding the Horse somewhere new and feeling everything you’re feeling.

Believe that anytime you want, you can stop. Yes, you can stop. You can say No, turn back, go forward, take a rest. You can. You can say No when it doesn’t feel right, and you can say Yes when it feels right.

Sometimes it can feel right, but it’s just a little (okay, a lot) scary. Don’t let that stop you! Fear feels way different when you’re out there riding the Horse than it does when you’re stuck stock still. Fear is many things, and it wears many faces, and we build all kinds of defenses on top of it to pretend it isn’t there or hide it away, or fight it.

If you don’t believe Adventurers feel fear, you’ve been sitting in the safe dead-end too long. Fear is part of the Highway of Love. Bring yours along with you for the ride. Soon, it’ll get tired and old, and you’ll be too busy having fun to even notice if it’s there or not.

So, wear your Adventurer hat (yes, you have one!), take along all your baggage, and imagine the exhilaration of having what you want.

Then, kiss your Horse, and let it take you somewhere new – to the Highway of Love.

Love, Rori

This is one of my favorites because I can REMEMBER how I was feeling when I wrote it – I was swept up in the possibilities, I was feeling adventurous, I was working my way out of the bad feeling I got the moment the psychic spoke to me.

It’s so easy to get “bummed out.”  And it seems easiest to “distract” ourselves from the feeling.  But that’s just not the cure.

The cure for bad feelings is to live in them a bit.  Just enough to taste them fully.

And then you get on your Horse and ride…and you’re FREER than you were before.

Hope this inspires you the way it did me as I wrote it…

Love, Rori