How Relationships Reveal Us — Relationships Series #1

09/02/22 • 46 min

What can we learn about ourselves from the way we engage in relationships?

Brett and Joe address curiosities from listeners about how to approach relationships in a healthy way, riffing on the observation that we find ourselves attracted to the people who most perfectly hook into our triggers, traumas, and projections. Seeing this pattern as a feature rather than a bug, relationships become a vessel for deep healing and personal growth.

Examine how an agreement that “we’re together to make each other happy” leads to resentment and kills a relationship. Consider a relationship built on each partner finding their own freedom while being kind and supportive to one another.

Learn how relationships involve a continuous grieving process for our identity and bring us into contact with the helplessness of loving another without trying to change them.

How can we welcome one another’s needs without neglecting parts of ourselves to make them happy?
What does it look like to be authentic and open-hearted in the face of an attack?
When a relationship ends, how do we not close down and repeat the same pattern next time?

We’ll be following this episode up with others in a new series on relationships.

Learn more about our free workshops and online courses at artofaccomplishment.com

We invite you to experience our work. Reserve your spot at view.life/explore

What can we learn about ourselves from the way we engage in relationships?

Learn how relationships involve a continuous grieving process for our identity and bring us into contact with the helplessness of loving another without trying to change them.

How can we welcome one another’s needs without neglecting parts of ourselves to make them happy?
What does it look like to be authentic and open-hearted in the face of an attack?
When a relationship ends, how do we not close down and repeat the same pattern next time?

We’ll be following this episode up with others in a new series on relationships.

Learn more about our free workshops and online courses at artofaccomplishment.com

We invite you to experience our work. Reserve your spot at view.life/explore

Previous Episode

The Beauty of Grief — Emotion Series #9

Anthropologist and coach Alexa Anderson joins the podcast again for a deep dive with Joe into the emotional and practical value of grieving fully.

They examine several forms in which grief can arise, the relationship between grief and identity, various mysteries of the way grief moves, and how unfelt grief underlies interpersonal and societal conflict.

Alexa and Joe discuss the tools they’ve used to help them move their grief in the wake of painful losses and to pre-grieve losses that haven’t yet occurred. They share examples of deep transformation that followed the processing of grief all the way through.

Tune in to deepen your relationship with grief as an intimate experience of love and care, and a doorway to the freedom available on the other side.

“Without the grief, we recreate the cycle.
Without the grief, we relive the trauma.
Without the grief, we don’t find the freedom on the other side of the limited identity.”

References:

Stages of Grief
Alexa's coaching practice: flourishment.life

Learn more about our free workshops and online courses at artofaccomplishment.com

We invite you to experience our work. Reserve your spot at view.life/explore

Next Episode

Seeing Identity for What It Is

Our sense of identity is composed of the ideas and emotional states — even the gut reactions — that we identify as who we are. Identity is how we recognize ourselves. It guides the structure of our thoughts, emotions, and visceral responses.

Most people don’t spend their lives learning how to make their identities more transparent. We often think it’s hard to change aspects of ourselves. The reality is that transforming our identity isn't inherently difficult — it's just that a large part of it is allowing the unfelt emotional experience that our beliefs about ourselves hold in place. It’s hard to change identity from our head, and it's hard to change aspects of identity that we aren't even aware of.

If you're running a business or team, it's absolutely being influenced by your identity. Identity limits the emotions we're willing to feel, the information we're willing to receive, and the actions we'll consider taking. These patterns propagate from leadership into a company.

In this episode, Joe and Brett share perspectives and tools to see and feel through the limits of identity on the intellectual, emotional, and physical levels. They explore how bringing awareness and transparency to our unconscious structures of identity can reduce rigidity and cultivate a healthy, adaptive sense of self.

"Having a fight with your identity is only more identity — it makes it stick harder. The object isn’t to get away from identity, kick it, or beat it into submission: it’s to love it and see what it is."

Which aspects of your identity have recently been brought to your awareness?
- What emotional or visceral experience came along with these insights?

Learn more about our free workshops and online courses at artofaccomplishment.com

We invite you to experience our work. Reserve your spot at view.life/explore