Have The Relationship You Want

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I’m not listening. I’m acting like I am, I’m standing here. But my daughter’s face may as well be on a movie screen. It flickers in front of me.

There’s food on the stove. There’s a half-written article on the computer. My vitamins are waving to me from the kitchen counter. I’m all over the place. Every place but here.

And she can tell. My daughter has a nose for who’s really there and who’s not. But she’s still talking, and so I think, between the scattered words and phrases “and then he …” that I actually hear, I’m listening, I’m listening, she believes I’m listening!

Then she stops, looks at me. I’ve been found out. She breathes. I breathe. She goes on. I have a second chance.

I know what to do. I unfold my arms from in front of my body. Start a Rori Raye Body Dialogue – but wait. This isn’t the time for a Body Dialogue. This isn’t about me. It’s about her. Her experience. Nothing to do with me.

The stove, the computer, the vitamins are all calling, and still the only thing to do is…listen.

I throw myself Over There, to where she is. I move myself away from myself, and focus on her nose, her eyes, her words. I don’t remember anything more except that she was smiling, and pretty thrilled and breathless about her dream, what with the chase, the rollercoaster and the mistaken identities, and that I wasn’t even there.

When there’s someone else talking, you can bypass your brain and get instantly present by going to Level 2 Listening. Here’s how it works:

Level 1 Listening is It’s all about me. Level 2 is It’s all about you. Listening at Level 3 is a bit esoteric – It’s all about everything. Listening to someone and then feeling heard by them is an unbelievable experience – and it’s very rare.

Most of us are at Level 1 all the time. Most of the time, we aren’t really listening, we’re thinking about ourselves – what we’re going to say next, what we think about the other person, that our pants are too tight, we have a pimple on our chin, anything but the person right in front of us.

When we’re in a conversation with someone, and we’re thinking about how what that person is saying relates to us, we’re at Level 1. I may be sitting or standing here talking with you, but actually I’m all in my own head about me. Oh, that happened to me too! Or I wonder if he likes my hair or I wonder if he’ll ask me out. There is nothing wrong with Level 1 Listening – in other words, being all about ourselves – except that it limits our ability to really relate to others.

Level 2 Listening is the complete reverse of Level 1. Imagine how, when you’re utterly in love with someone, all you can see is their face, all you can hear is their voice, all you can smell is their breath and cologne. Their words and the feelings they express are, in that moment, the most important things in the world to you. In fact, the only things in the world.

When you listen to a man, really Listen at Level 2, you will change the moment, the interaction, the entire relationship. And as a result, he will change – almost overnight.

A man you think you’re not attracted to might suddenly open up and become really attractive to you once you find out about him. To do this, just relax. Relax completely and be over there, with him. Let yourself go as though you no longer exist.

Your thoughts are just passing through – you’re over there. You don’t have to talk, or smile, or do anything.

Just listen.

Here’s how to practice Level 2 Listening right now. When I used to do Have the Relationship You Want workshops, we’d work in partners. One person talks about themselves – what’s on their mind, what they did today, anything. The other person listens at Level 2. The talking person’s only job is to focus on herself, and the listening person’s only job is to focus on the talking person.

I say, Listeners, all you have to do is listen. Get comfortable. It doesn’t matter if you’re leaning forward or leaning back. Look at your partner. Look at their face, their eyes. Try to stay focused on their words. Really give yourself over to them completely. You are at Level 2 Listening, which is all about them – it’s over there.

If you notice your mind wandering back to – “Oh, that happened to me too,” or “Yeah, I agree” – which is Level 1 – shift back to them. When you’re really at Level 2, you’ll be completely immersed over there. Okay – go.

If you have a friend to work with, practice on each other. If you are working alone, let’s do the exercise differently:

Put yourself in front of a mirror. Imagine that you, in the mirror, are going to hang on every word you, in front of the mirror, say. Your mirror image will follow wherever your thoughts go, giving you total attention. Go ahead and talk about your day. Tell your image everything that happened to you today – the emotion of it, the detail of it, what was important about it. Laugh, cry, say whatever comes to mind. Pay little or no attention to your mirror image.

Now, when you finish up, think about how it felt to completely unload your mind and heart while your mirror image did nothing but listen. She did not interject, offer advice, even go uh-huh. If you imagine that you in the mirror were listening intently and compassionately, you may feel as heard, as light and unburdened as you would practicing with a partner. Now, in order to reverse it, we’ll do without words altogether.

Look at yourself in the mirror, and become completely absorbed in your image’s eyes, hair, nose, mouth, smile – with this important agreement: You must pretend that this mirror image is someone else. In this way, you can look at the mirror image’s hair and notice that it has gray in it, or curl, or a highlight, without thinking about it. In other words, as soon as you say to yourself Oh, I have to color my roots, you’ve moved back to Level 1 Listening.

Your job is to observe with attention and compassion the qualities of the face in front of you, and to commune instinctively with the emotions conveyed by the face and the person in front of you. You are to forget that the image in the mirror is you.

Try this for a few minutes and see what it feels like. It may feel like a mental vacation. A moment to observe and feel without thinking. Without bringing your observations back to yourself.

Now take what you’ve experienced and practice it out in the world.

I encourage you to practice, practice, practice. Practice with the busboy, the clerk, your blind date, your boyfriend or your husband, your children, your friends, your relatives, your pet, the birds outside, and total strangers. Practice and notice when you go back to Level 1. The more you do it, the more natural it will become to listen at Level 2.

Once thing I do remember, and try not to forget, is my daughter stopping abruptly at the end of her dream-telling and hugging me before she danced off, back to her room, back to her computer, back to her books and her music, back to her life.

Let me know how Listening changes things for you, too.  Love, Rori

This is a quick post that will take you through the process of Circular Dating when you’re actually still seeing a man you love, feeling heartbreak, and where “dating” is the last thing you feel like doing.   Ellen is going about this step by step, and making some mistakes I correct so you don’t have to make them!:

“Rori, Okay I am much better today.. much better. I made a pact with myself prior to going to bed last night that I would have no more bad bad days… I would feel it and let it go . It worked wonderfully/ I still get pangs here and there some of them are mine and I know some of them are his. When I recognize a feeling that is not my own, I just let it go… when I “know” it is him I just say… No Don… this is yours not mine” and it leaves me.

So I received the Reconnect Your Relationship CDs and they are great. I had to drive for work today so I was able to listen to nearly the whole program. It is my favorite of the 3 I have.

I have a dinner date tonight which I am looking forward to the practice. I will try to use a lot of feeling messages but don’t guys think … weird she is saying “feeling” allot??  I have been asked out for a couple more coffee dates and I will accept one for this week. I cannot be dating every day… number one I am still learning and number 2, I have my daughter who I want to spend time with too.  Ellen”

Here was my answer to her:

Ellen – you are doing great! I’m totally impressed with what you’re doing here, and so happy you’re feeling better. It may take you a few days to feel natural with the new language – that’s why the boring, toady men come in handy, you won’t care how the practice goes…I think you’ll be surprised how quickly you catch on, and then all we have to do is “tweak” – you go girl!

It’s all free therapy – so do as much of it as you logistically can. Remember to write down what you felt, the Tools you used – so that it FEELs like therapy and all about YOU and not about any dating success thing…Love, Rori

Ellen wrote me again, to update me:

“Thank you for the support, Rori. The date went well… and I did use a few of the tools which made me feel powerful and wow… he really stepped up to the plate. It was amazing… he kinda fell all over himself.  Listening to your Reconnect series… wow… I did EVERYTHING wrong with Don… I mean EVERYTHING.

This guy last night… he did stay overnight, but I told him no to naked and no to sex that I just did not feel comfortable with that since I don’t know him that well.  I am not sure it was a good idea to let him stay, he may of been a little distant this AM so I may or may not hear from him again. Overall the date was a success though. I think I have had enough for this week.. if I get asked out for the weekend, I will accept. I need to spend some time with my daughter, Ellen”

Here’s what I wrote back:

Ellen – you ROCK!!

Now – okay, you had a long date that lasted overnight. Please don’t do that again.

I want you to focus on SHORT dates- no longer than ½ hour for the first – a coffee meeting or a walk with the coffee, a speed dating evening so you get a bunch of 5 minute experiences – let’s see how fast you can “connect” emotionally – while all the other women are doing “get-to-know-standard-stuff” – you’ll be Feeling Message and authentically speaking the truth in the moment and practicing… (okay – special occasions, or you can experiment with longer dates…but those will not do the job for you here as well as a LOT of short ones.)

The point is the “therapy,” the practice…not whether it goes well, but what you’re learning.

Sometimes it’s going to go “icky” – and that may be the MOST powerful lesson…so don’t judge the experience…just experience it! – and practice. It will take ALL the pressure off you, and then things can HAPPEN without you TRYING to make them happen.

There are some very specific instructions here for Circular Dating when you are actually “dating.”  The same principle goes for simply saying “Thank You” to a strange man who does something chivalrous who opens the door for you at the coffee house, or smiling at a man who’s looking at you, or responding with Feeling Messages to a man who starts talking to you in the middle of a line at the dry cleaners.

(Also – I left in Ellen’s references to my Reconnect your Relationship program.  Each of you will have your own favorite, the one that sings to you most in the situation you’re in right now.  There’s so much in Reconnect that’s unbelievably powerful and nowhere else in my programs…I’d love to know how each program you have works for you in different ways…)

It’s all just “Practice.”  Circular Dating is designed to take the pressure off yourself, so you can focus on just doing the Tools and letting them do the work FOR you.

Let me know how your specific moments are going with Circular Dating, and we’ll put together a faq on it together!

Love, Rori

So…Being is feminine, Doing is masculine.

Feeling is feminine, Thinking is masculine.

Expressing is feminine, Telling is masculine

Receiving is feminine, Giving is masculine

Listening is feminine, Teaching is masculine

That makes me pretty much a boy here, with feminine flights as I write.

Much of Coaching is masculine because much of teaching and coaching involves a transfer of knowledge. Involves using your brain.

Now, Coaching and Teaching can be done in ways that are judgmental – I know something you don’t know, or compassionate (we can call this a bunch of other things, too) – I know this one thing that will help you, and I see you as another human like me, with strengths and weaknesses and knowledge and no knowledge around different things, and perhaps you can teach me something sometime, too.

It can be done in a lecturing way or a sharing way….all kinds of things. That’s where the subtleties are, and where the vibe is and where the skill and intention is. Those are things that those who teach need to learn to communicate in the optimum way for the student. And being a student requires deciding to take that position. There are all kinds of “aha” moments in life, EVERYTHING is a lesson, but if we don’t wish to hear and see, it will float right by us.

You can teach by example and not even know you’re doing it, or you can stand in front of a classroom or website and teach on purpose. It is not possible to be in masculine mode and use feeling messages. That’s why we struggle with this.  And it’s uncomfortable to hear each other struggle with it, to, because so much of the time what we want to do is teach.

Being a teacher is a whole different calling than being a woman.  It’s a whole different arena from an intimate relationship. Marianne Williamson is VERY confrontive and in-your-face. She once called herself “the bitch for God.”

When you are a teacher by profession (I’ve worked with many grade-school teachers as clients – and it’s VERY difficult for them to switch hats…they sort of LIVE in that mode, and I come up with pretty wild ideas to reverse what comes naturally to them). So learning to both teach like a boy and experience and express like a girl is a huge undertaking.We fight the valiant fight to somehow incorporate it all in every aspect of our lives.  And it doesn’t work that way.  You can’t “blend.”  You can’t “balance.”  You have to “switch hats.”

The truth is – we are ALL – ALL that – masculine AND feminine!  And each has it’s place, it’s function, where it flies and where it founders.  Where it most is at home, most belongs.  When your feminine is active in a situation that requires brain power…it’s hard to be around you. When your masculine is active inside an intimate relationship, it’s hard to hear.

If you work for someone, it’s very, very shocking to all of a sudden hear a feminine, Feeling Message voice when all you’re used to is masculine decision-making from her.

If you’re around someone who’s feminine and feeling, and all of a sudden they tell you what you should do – it’s weird.  It’s triggering.

And this is the situation we’re ALL in, day-in-and-day-out with men.

If what you really want to do in the moment with a man is TEACH him — how can you authentically deliver a feminine Feeling Message?  And what if you don’t feel like switching hats because you really want to go with one or the other?

The hat switching thing can be a burden or a blast. I know that I’m in a different place here with myself than I am with my husband – and you are different running a business than you are on a date. That’s one element of what we’re trying to manage, here.

The operative word here is, I think – Professional.  When you are a professional, you are really being asked to model.  To model masculine behavior by teaching, feminine behavior through intuition and asking curious questions.  And mostly – you’re being asked to model AUTHORITY.  Not authority over another person, but Personal Authority.  The ultimate masculine energy of carrying certainty around with you that you know something.

As a professional, personal authority is crucial. You can switch into girl mode at all kinds of moments, but you are being asked to primarily be a boy.  To LEAD.  To guide the expedition wherever it’s going,  To ask the important questions.  To be the one holding the space.  To be the one holding the lamp.  To be the one who’s seen the road before and can anticipate some of the bumps. To be the one who knows how far you can go and who’s brave enough to be in your presence when you go there.

There’s an issue of COMPETENCE.  Training can get you there, experience can get you there.  You don’t have to be competent to coach and help people, but it sure adds to the odds over and above getting lucky. Beyond intuition and psychic abilities, knowing what to do with information and how things work is important, and it’s all masculine.

You really need to be clear and pick one.  And sometimes you have to pick one every few minutes.  That’s switching hats.

I really want to help you “get” what a girl voice and a boy voice sound and feel like – not so we can label them and put down one or the other in certain circumstances (you know I have absolutely NO interest in what’s “right” — I only care what “works”) – but just so we can, as Erika put it so well, in one of her recent comments – be in “noticing.”

(Notice that “noticing” is a place to BE, not a place to DO — so I don’t call “noticing” – whether you call it “witnessing” or “observing” -  “neutral,”  or any kind of “blend” – I call it feminine.  However, the moment you “meditate” with a mantra, or a technique, you’re Doing – and that’s masculine.) This way we can do the first step in shifting anything – awareness.

So — if there is NEVER a “neutral” – how does this work? I believe you are either in one space or another, and that you can’t straddle, or be two places at once.  You are either thinking or feeling, expressing or telling, being or doing.  So – let’s practice switching hats.  In order to be able to surrender as a girl to yourself, you have to have a strong boy.

You have to be able to manage the logistics of your life – financial, shelter, food and clothing, schedule, work, schooling, responsibilities to family and friends – in order to let go within your life.  We’re not looking to shut down our boy and replace him with our girl.  We’re looking to EXPAND in both directions.  To make our boy bigger, smarter, stronger, more powerful, more active….and allow our girl to sink deeper and deeper into beingness.

See if you can keep processing. As long as you’re being triggered, there’s more to work through. Getting through the processing and no longer feeling triggered might suddenly feel like compassion, or humor, or boredom…and you might experience this same exact process with a man!

What we’re trying to do here is pull this apart — go further out in both directions – boy and girl expanding and differentiating. We’re trying to make this very black-and-white, no matter how gray it may seem, or actually be…what counts is that seeing it in black-and-white will help you tremendously. As boy – you spring into action, as girl, you sink into feeling. Very, very different.

To let you know how I manage it…my husband and I are around each other all day long.  I work all day long.  I write, I coach, I take care of things.  I’ll be in boy mode, and then he’ll walk up to me and engage me.

I can either hang onto my boy space and completely miss the opportunity to connect with him, or I can switch hats instantly and allow him to effect me — him Tarzan, me Jane. Him boy, me girl.

(I love my Science Fiction – all the heroines are powerful, and yet the moment the hero touches them, they melt.  Then they go back to saving the universe.)

So – let’s get some structure to this switching hats thing:

* 1. Notice where you are. Are you swinging wildly between wanting to DO something and wanting to FEEL something?
* 2. Stand still. Listen to your breathing. Listen to your heart beating.
* 3. Drop down. sink into your tummy, your pelvis, your vagina. Your only job is to surrender to yourself.
* 4. Now, put words to what you’re experiencing. Something simple, a simple Feeling Message to the air.
* 5. Say – this is what it feels like to be a girl.
* 6. Now – walk around. Walk purposefully from one place to another, then to another.
* 7. Go into your head at the first thought you think. Stop moving. Say the thought out loud.
* 8. Now DO the first thing you thought of doing…pick up a dish and clean it, move a piece of paper, look at your email…
* 9. Say — this is what it feels like to be a boy.
* 10. Now – practice going back and forth between the two.

See if you can really move back and forth smoothly, if you can make the differences very clear in your body and the way the energy feels – is it high? Is it low? Is it sharp? Is it an ache? Is it a sense of ease? Or of accomplishment?

Practice going in and out of just being Present with an object. Just be with it as a girl, and then move it or do something with it as a boy…Try this with a useful object like a pen. As a girl, just be with it, doing nothing, experiencing the weight, the color. As a boy – think about what you could do with it. Actually write with it. Go back and forth.

* 11. Now try all this with words. Speak about the experience as you’re going along.

For most of you, that’s enough, even for running a business. But if what your business is is TEACHING? If you’re a teacher and want to learn how to switch hats more easily, let me know in a comment here, and I’ll reply or write another post. Let me know how this works…

Love, Rori

It’s possible that most of us have never known true intimacy from the moment we came into the world.

We’ve been labelled, taught, cajoled and prodded, been threatened by all forms of authority, told what’s true and what isn’t, and disrespected for everything from our feelings to our thoughts. Our relationships have been more about pleasing others than pleasing ourselves.

More about struggling and using our wits to get what we need and what we think we want than discovering what it is we really want.

Sometimes we need someone else to tell us that it’s okay to want what we want.

Sometimes we only accidentally discover that the person we really are, warts and all, underneath all the masks and games we’ve learned to put between ourselves and others, is truly loveable. It can change our lives forever, or remain a lost opportunity forever.

Someone sees us — really sees us — in a moment of accidental abandon and their heart fills up with love for us. We deny this possibility and push that someone away because we so don’t believe we are loveable.

Does this sound like you? It’s most all of us.

We can’t, or won’t get close enough to someone who may very well be a great partner for us because we’ve never done it.

We don’t know how.

When I was an actor, I did not have access to my emotions (pretty big skill limitation for an actor).

I could pretend fairly well, and it got me far –I could laugh nearly anytime, but I was completely detached from my anger and pain. An actor friend told me — “fake it til you make it.” Meaning, if I pounded the table hard enough and long enough with my fist, I’d feel angry. If I hit my hand with a hammer over and over again, I’d feel pain. I’d probably cry.

I use some of this “fake it til you make it” philosophy in teaching you how to express yourselves (and sharing all the techniques I discovered to find my feelings and dig deeper into the feelings and learn to express them no matter what) — because we’ve all already been pounding the table and hitting ourselves with hammers to feel bad, instead of finding and using new things to do that make us feel good.

Sometimes, just not saying or doing something can trigger the real stuff. Sometimes, just not saying or doing something you’ve always said or done in the same situation will change the pattern of your life forever.  Change the dynamic in a relationship you may already be in — forever.

Trust creeps in, in small ways.

Intimacy takes hold in the spaces between words.

Not speaking not from your heart leaves room for speaking from your heart.

The next time you’re tempted to tell a man what to do, even though you know how to do it better than he does, or to even just tell him what you think — stop yourself. Stop talking. See what happens.

So what do you do when you’ve stopped talking?

How do you communicate anything? The simple answer is to use an “I feel” message. This sounds easy. But it’s probably something you don’t really have words for. Starting with “I feel” is the perfect start, but what then?

Go with what’s really there. Feel the floor under your feet. Feel the table in front of you. Feel your heart beat, your stomach gurgle, the tightness in your chest that’s there because you’re mad, or upset, or frustrated, or giddy, and you don’t know what to say.

Feel the most concrete, real, simple thing you can, and say that. Just saying, “I’m hungry” is better than “Let’s go to that little Italian place, okay?”

This is a game, you say. No, it isn’t. It’s the missing link. The missing piece that we never learned as children. We learned how to get along, how to influence others, how to look and do good, but we never learned how to even make contact with what we really feel, much less ever said it simply.

A woman who can say what she feels, simply, directly, passionately, with energy and conviction or matter-of-factness will find her man in record time. And there will be nothing to stop him from grabbing her and running with it.

Remember the public display Tom Cruise did over Katie Holmes?  Well, that wasn’t bad, or weird, or bizarre. It’s the way men are supposed to behave when they’re in love — only we’ve all forgotten. They’re supposed to turn cartwheels.  And they DO. But we’re all embarrassed. We’re all afraid of intimacy. What would happen if we behaved as if we weren’t?

Love, Rori