I admit it…I can be an asshole sometimes. What about you?

“I can’t believe how rude she is,” I thought to myself. “How could someone be so inconsiderate of so many? She probably has no friends or loved ones who can stand her! Can’t she see all 50 of us are waiting in line for the cashiers?” “Jeez lady,” I continued to myself, “if it is that painful for you to stand here in line…maybe you just need to leave…go home and take a pill! Get a hold of yourself!”

It was the thought “get a hold of yourself” that shook me out of my own thoughts of assumption and judgment towards the woman who was standing in line in front of me. I reminisced about how many times had I said those same words to myself when I was emotionally falling apart and acting out. “Come on Stac! Get ahold of yourself!”

“Are you ok?” I asked the women as our eyes met. “Is there anything that I can do to support you right now, you seem to be having a challenge waiting in line,” I continued.

A look of surprise immediately took over the older woman’s face; so much so that it startled me. And I instantly wondered if I just should have kept my mouth shut and kept staring at the ground. I braced myself for the three-ring shit show I was sure was going to take place next.

“No, no, I am not ok,” she said as she looked away in embarrassment. Slowly glancing back at me she said, “My son died two weeks ago at the age of 41, and I have not been the same since. He left behind a wife and two girls ages 7 and 3.”

I told her, “You are a woman in need of some love.” And I immediately stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her as she began to cry on my shoulder.

The woman broke our embrace and said, “This is my first time out since it all happened…and the girls…how do I help them go on?

“My dad died when I was seven,” I reply, “I am that 7-year-old granddaughter of yours. After my dad’s funeral, the visits from family and friends, the cards and flowers…my mom said to my siblings and I ‘The sun will shine in this house, whether it is shining outside or not. We will go on, we will have birthdays, vacations, and celebrations. We will laugh and be happy again. We will live!’”

Oh the comfort this still gives me almost 50 years later.

“It was my incredible mom,” I continue, “she lead all five of her children out of the dark sadness of death and unfulfilled dreams. That is what your girls need from you.”

With that, she smiled and her face now had a look of relief. “Thank you,” she said, “I so needed to hear your words today. I can’t believe this is happening. Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to get home, to tell them and to let them know that we are going to live!” With tears streaming down both of our faces, we share one last embrace.

“Next,” the cashier announces.

As I get into my car, I think about how incredibly grateful I am for my shared moments with this stranger…all because I let go of what I thought I knew, stepped into the possibility of creating a new understanding, and gained the greatest gift of all as a result: human connection. 

“Let go of what you think you know and seek understanding. This will lead to the greatest experience of all…human connection!” -Staci Bartley

The truth is, we all can be assholes…admit it! And we all judge others and make assumptions as to why they are behaving the way they are, don’t we?

And guess what? I guarantee that 99.9% of the time you don’t have a clue, you just think you do!

Where are you making assumptions and judging others harshly just like I did? Are you doing it with your partner, your kids, or your co-workers?

I challenge you to let go of what you think you know…seek a new understanding by asking compassionate questions.

The connection that will happen as a result, I assure you, will feel fabulous!

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Are You Using The Meat Grinder In Your Relationship?

By Staci Welch-Bartley

When I was a kid, my mom would make mincemeat in the fall that she then bottled and later used to make pies.

I was fascinated by how my mom could put a piece of beef in the metal grinder, turn the handle, and it would come out...well, minced...in tiny little pieces.

After years of working with couples to create what I call “toe tingling love” in their lives, I have discovered that there is another type of meat grinder that we use consistently in our relationships. It's typically used when we feel out of control or insecure. The difference is: the small pieces that come out of this meat grinder are not beef. They are pieces of our emotional hearts which have been ground up into emotional bits and pieces.

When your heart is in pieces, it feels like there is no safety to express and share yourselves with your partner, and the trust you once had starts to fade away as you begin to question everything. You and your partner both emotionally shut down or rage in an attempt to endure the incredible pain and chaos that has become your relationship.

NOT GOOD!

Is the meat grinder being used in your relationship? Here is how to tell.

We are using the meat grinder when:

• We make demands instead of requests attempting to control our partner physically, mentally, verbally, or all three;
• We Interrogate with an onslaught of questions like the secret service does with a suspected terrorist;
• We dish out shame and guilt when mistakes and disappointments happen. Thinking that if we can discover who was right and wrong in the situation, our problems will be solved, and then we can move on.

We truly don’t mean any harm to anyone while using the meat grinder; it is simply our desperate attempt to manage the emotional pain and chaos that is going on inside of us.

We truly just want to feel better and feel a connection again.

We have been taught that controlling and managing someone else is the same as controlling and managing ourselves. We essentially USE someone to get what we think we need without realizing what is truly needed is RELIEF from our own internal pain and struggle.

When we reach for the meat grinder for much-needed relief; unfortunately, it only drains the precious life out of our relationships until one day, our hearts are broken into such tiny pieces there is nothing left of them to continue.

Instead of the meat grinder, let’s develop the "love finder approach" by doing this one...well actually four things:

1. Learn how to self-soothe the emotional chaos and fear that is running the show. What calms you down? A few ideas: Do something physical, retreat to a private place for some reflective alone time, journal, meditate. Get calm enough to move on to step two.
    
2. Shift your focus. Focus on what you love or appreciate about the person you are with.  There is a reason you find yourself in a relationship with this person in this moment. Take a moment and remember.
    
3. Now tell them. Tell them what you love about them. I know that this seems counter-intuitive but just try it. If love is too strong of a word for you in the current moment, use… this: "What I appreciate about you is…"
    
4. Ask specifically for what you want and need and allow your partner to do the same. This will lead you to understand each other, which is the place of ultimate solution. Most of us have never been taught how to ask for what we want. Which has a lot to do with why we reach for the meat grinder. Download a free worksheet on how to ask for what you want at 100% here.

It is through understanding that new seeds of love and intimacy can grow. Let’s keep the meat grinder for beef only.

And remember...we all need love and understanding when we deserve it the least.

The Need To Be RIGHT In Your Relationship Means You’re Headed Towards Alone!

By Staci Welch-Bartley

Feeling free to express our thoughts, feelings, opinions, and perspectives is vital to creating and building great relationships. The more we feel safe to express ourselves, the better we feel, and the better the relationship becomes.  But what happens when you or your partner feels the need to be right? You find yourselves fighting for those magic two words “YOU’RE RIGHT” when it comes to your feelings, opinions, and decisions. You just can’t seem to let go of your need for others to see things your way.  

Consider this…

How bad do you want to be right? I mean, do you want to be right so bad in your relationship that you will sacrifice the relationship all together?

Fight for what is right till the death…and then what?

When we become attached to our partner admitting that we are right, unknowingly, we begin to build an emotional prison around ourselves, which causes separation and loneliness. This happens because we become so focused and committed to what we think is RIGHT that we reject any additional input.

Greater understanding and new possibilities for yourself and your relationship cannot be achieved when this occurs. Most of us believe that the solution for getting out of this prison is to demand and provide undeniable evidence to others so they can see that we are right and they are wrong. We follow up our demands with words and body language that inform those around us that we will reengage in our relationship when they get it through their head that I AM right. We say, “I will be right over here waiting…”

This never works…

Nobody will continue to share with another person when they sense the person they are sharing with is not truly listening, doesn’t care about what is being said, or feels judged for what is being shared. And, the saddest part of all is we don’t give many second chances to share ourselves once we have been shut down. We turn away from our partner filled with feelings of rejection and attempt to carry on in the relationship on our own.

Now both partners are going at it alone in the relationship.

When you find yourself fighting to be RIGHT, do these three things instead:

1.     Take a breath and remember that hearing what your partner has to say is not the same as agreeing with their point of view. Open yourself up to allowing them to share their thoughts and opinions, just as you enjoy sharing yours.

2.     Truly listen! Don’t pretend that you are just so you can say you did and go back to your opinion of what you think is RIGHT. If we allow ourselves to truly listen, oft times our opinion about what is right will change and expand to include parts of your partners input and everybody wins.

3.     Don’t fight to be right, fight to understand, and to be understood. To do this, one must take down their defenses, ask questions, and listen to what is being shared. There is no RIGHT, there is just what works.

Listen

When I ask you to listen to me
and you start giving me advice,
you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you begin to tell me why
I shouldn’t feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you feel you have to do something
to solve my problem,
you have failed me,
strange as that may seem.

…

Perhaps that’s why prayer works, sometimes,
for some people – because God is mute,
and he doesn’t give advice or try
to fix things.
God just listens and lets you work
it out for yourself.

So please listen, and just hear me.
And if you want to talk, wait a minute
for your turn – and I will listen to you.

- Author Unknown

Let go of your need to be right; don’t create a relationship of being alone! I invite you to instead seek connection sharing, and understanding even though it may be frustrating at first.

Most of all…seek to LOVE and be loved, for nothing else really matters.

7 Reasons To Stop Avoiding Pain And Dive Into It!

By Staci Welch-Bartley

Looking back on my life, the first time I truly felt the sting of deep soul crushing pain, I was at the ripe old age of 7. My father had just died of cancer at the age of 39. I was the youngest of five children that had been left in the good care and loving arms of my mom.

As you can imagine, there were many things for my mom to navigate through during the final days of my father’s death. The management of small child with needs of her own, as well as a desire to protect me from the harsh realities of life, lead to my mother’s decision to send me to my aunt’s house. I actually went with several of my aunts for the last weeks before my father’s passing. 

During this time, not only did I lose my father, I lost my mom and my siblings. All of the familiar arms I was accustomed to running to for comfort were gone. Intuitively, I sought the outdoors and a long roped swing with a wooden seat, which hung from a grand tree in Aunt Pauline’s front yard.

The tree provided a protective canopy over the swing and from the spread of its beautiful branches, it created a replacement for me of the feeling of being held in my mother’s arms. I spent many hours in that swing which became a way for me to manage my internal pain. Looking back, this was the beginnings of me of discovering how you can feel intense pain and fear, and still be able to create a sense that everything is going to be alright. I began to learn and practice how to reap its benefits.

I am not as afraid of pain today as I once was, simply because pain and I have had a long-standing relationship and I’ve experienced many opportunities to practice being in its company. I now know that pain shows up for reasons that are all designed to benefit me. Pain has been my most profound teacher and attention getter for improving my life and more importantly the creation of me!

The greatest overall lesson that pain has shared with me it that pain is not a bad thing and it serves us best if we don’t avoid feeling it.

Here are 7 ways that pain has served me throughout my life, and I suspect pain will serve you in the same way too, if you let it.

1.    Pain will get your attention fast! When things become exceptionally painful in our lives, we will finally stop what we have been busy doing to relieve the pain. We are finally willing to pay attention to the situation that needs to be attended to. Oh sure, we could address these things and situations needing our attention much sooner, but us humans like to wait until it hurts!      

2.    Pain is a universal signal that says to us, “Go in a different direction and stop doing what you are doing immediately.” We relate and understand this voice of pain much better when the pain is physical. For example, when we have a sliver in our finger or a broken bone, the injured area immediately receives our full and undivided attention. Heck, entire rooms, stadiums, and roadways abruptly halt when someone has become physically injured and we all stop to watch. We are all willing to do whatever is necessary to eliminate the pain and suffering immediately. When it comes to our emotional pain, we respond to it very differently – “run from it for as long as we can” is the mantra!

What if you treated emotional pain like you do your physical pain?

3.    Pain encourages us to consider solutions and activities that we would otherwise ignore and put off. Pain helps us to become vulnerable and teachable. In painful moments, we are finally willing to open to up to new learning, new behavior and skills, and new ways of doing things. It’s a place of finally accepting the love and assistance of others, and perhaps hearing the sharing from the heart of a loved one for the first time. This is also a time when we stop to hear and respond to the cries of our own internal voice.

What are you hearing and seeing now?

4.    Pain helps us to create clarity in our lives. It is in times of pain that we ponder and dive deep into important questions. Questions arise about who we are, what we want to become, what is important to us, and how we want to move forward.

What is your pain helping you understand about yourself and your circumstances?

5.    Pain motivates us to take action and do things differently. It is in times of pain that we are finally willing to make difficult decisions that have been put off for a long time. It supports us to take a stand for ourselves which is most likely long overdue, or eliminate things from our lives that no longer contribute to our wellbeing. At last, we become willing to explore our mistakes, and say YES to living once again.

What do you need to do to now?

6.    Pain gives us the opportunity to practice emotional weight lifting. Just like physical weight lifting, it is necessary to build strength and endurance for emotional wellbeing.  Emotional weightlifting happens when we spend time with our emotions instead of running from them or reacting and becoming a slave to them. Instead we need to hold them long enough for our thoughts to catch up to our feelings before taking action. By doing this, we can learn to understand our feelings, learn from them, and begin to experience the ability to create balance between our emotions and our thoughts, which in the end will enable us to create more of what we truly desire with a sense of inner-peace and confidence.  

The space between the notes makes the music, so does holding the weight of our feelings while our thoughts catch up.

7.    Pain teaches us compassion and grace for ourselves and others. I am so grateful for the many opportunities that I have in my work to share my journey of love and relationships with others so as to ease their pain and burden from shame, guilt, and a sense of failure.  Pain brings us together and I get to witness the shedding of painful shackles and choosing love once again because of it.

How have you been able to contribute compassion and grace to others because of your pain?

Create a relationship with pain and dive into it! Embrace it, and let it teach you.  Pain will show you the way home to yourself just like it did for me as I sat on the swing.

Death Of A Good Thing

By Staci Welch-Bartley

A man died from a hernia operation, leaving his wife and five children to carry on without him. For those of you who do not know what a hernia is, allow me to provide you a brief description. A hernia occurs when an organ pushes through an opening in the muscle or tissue that holds the organ in place. This man’s hernia was caused from the intestines breaking through a weakened area in his abdominal wall. 

Now this man was not a wealthy man but it was not his lack of medical attention that caused his death. He received exceptional medical care, and five days earlier, a surgery was performed to repair the improper opening in his abdomen. He was also not a lazy man. He worked tirelessly to provide and sustain his wife and children to the best of his abilities. 

The family’s needs were met. They had a modest but comfortable home furnished with all the accessories necessary to be comfortable. The man was even able to create a family staycation every year in spite of their tight finances. Yes, they stayed in their own hometown, and the hotel was their very own home, but they created some incredible adventures, and above all else they were together! Yes they did live paycheck to paycheck, but they had grown accustomed to living with little, and still living much.

And then came the hernia…

When he was first struck with the pain of the hernia he thought it was just something that would go away like a stomachache. This quickly progressed into missing several days at work because of his non-stop vomiting. He finally sought medical attention when he realized that he did not have the ability to will his pain away.

The emergency room doctor told him that immediate surgery was necessary. He was going to require some reconstruction as well because he had let this go on for far too long. The man began complaining and pleading for a different remedy; because he knew that this surgery would be financially devastating for his family. No staycation this year, and Christmas was looking starting to look shaky.

The surgery and the necessary reconstruction were performed six hours later, followed by a day in the hospital. By all accounts everything went well. Until four days later he was found deceased in his bed.

How did this happen we ask? The man did not follow the instructions to take some time off of work to heal and recover. Instead, the next day he went back to work thinking that was his better option for his family’s finances. 

The man was so worried about his family and their wellbeing. His desire to keep things as they were was all he could think about. Now his family must carry on without him at all. 

Do you see how this relates to us in our relationships? When we have a problem or challenge welling up inside of us that needs to be expressed, or something is taking place that needs to be given some time and some nurturing care, we often choose to ignore it.

Instead of tending to our internal cry for help, we push it to the bottom of our priority list because we make it up that this is the way to keep the relationship alive and thriving. We don’t say anything, we won’t mention what we have an issue with, or share what we long for to feel happy and fulfilled. Instead we let our pain lie dormant after words of caution, and simply get back to work.

In the end, our relationship will die because of our choice, and we will be left to carry on.

Are you like the man in the story?