rethink PERFECT

I was talking to a woman recently and I told her about a poem that I wrote some 30 years ago when I was 21, and it went something like this:

My knowledge of women is but a speck,
and that’s because they’re extraterrestrials I expect.
My fear of them is something I don’t lack,
and that’s because of their habit to attack.
…….

She questioned my line about women’s “habit to attack” and I asked her if she knew any women that did not get aggressive? She replied with if I knew any men that did not get aggressive? I agreed but that we all knew that a man’s aggression was not acceptable. That most women seemed to freely justified their aggression by blaming the men.

I think it is time for us to get an agreement that all aggression from men or women is not acceptable. Understandable maybe but not acceptable. That we cannot blame our choice to get aggressive on the other person. It’s time to rethink our habit to attack.

A true entrepreneur knows when to give up as well as what to start up

What are the 3 most influential books that you have read in your life that have added to the way you think today?
Please include yours in the comments below and share.

My 3 are:

1. The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham:
Teaching me that learning can be a personal journey which continues for life.

2. Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
I learned that one needs to me careful what we ask for and to seek out
the middle ground between dichotomy thinking (black and White)

3. Black Swan by by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
Basically teaches never to say never.

It seems that the latest weapon by the right to allow their rants and right wing diatribe is to claim the
that anyone that complains about their behaviour are eroding their rights to free speech. Andrew Bolt is the latest right wing tabloid journalist to do so when he was found guilty of misrepresenting the truth with 9 fair skinned Australian aboriginals.

This claim for free speech by these same people surely applies then to Wikileaks. But somehow I can’t see Andrew Bolt supporting the free speech of this organisation. Looks like a double standard to me.

Andrew Bolt wages war against Wikileaks

When I tell people about Rethink Perfect, Why Relationships Fail, their first reaction seems to be that people and their relationships are too complicated to work out why their relationship fail and because “we are all different”. Well here is my reply to their concerns.

In the book I refer to relationships being like an aeroplane and it possibly has a flight box recorder like a plane. And that we can investigate each and every failed relationships if we so desired.

Well, maybe we are even more than a machine, more than a simple recorder. But for now let’s look at two simple parts of a person and see what we get.

Our Ears
How many people do you know that enjoy being shouted at or demanded of in a tone that is laced with expectations? None that I know of.

Our Mouth
How many people do you know that could claim that they had never raised their voice or tone in anger to try coerce someone to acquiesce to their demands? None that I know of.

But wait! These two parts of people are not compatible and when put together are likely to put stress on the workings of the relationship.

As you can see this is not rocket science and you do not have to be Sherlock to realise that aggression and demands do not work well with people in relationships. That is, all people in all uses. Or at least all the people that I know and all the people that I can think of.

It is understandable that demands and aggressions occur because of our mouth but not acceptable because of our ears.

Rethink Perfect, Why Relationships Fail, is simply built around these two parts of a person and has a series of rules, tools and agreements to prepare for these two mismatched parts when put to use in a relationship. And has been put together by the investigation of what I call our Black Box Recorder that we all have and when investigated by an “independent” source, can reveal a mountain of information, useful for exposing the common problems that occur in failed relationships and allow for the common solutions to be proposed.

Even on a battle field there are basic rules of engagement.

Pat Benatar Lyrics to Love is a Battlefield

Chorus: We are young, heartache to heartache we stand
No promises, no demands
Love Is A Battlefield
We are strong, no one can tell us we’re wrong
Searchin’ our hearts for so long, both of us knowing
Love Is A Battlefield

You’re beggin’ me to go, you’re makin’ me stay
Why do you hurt me so bad?
It would help me to know
Do I stand in your way, or am I the best thing you’ve had?
Believe me, believe me, I can’t tell you why
But I’m trapped by your love, and I’m chained to your side

Chorus

We’re losing control
Will you turn me away or touch me deep inside?
And before this gets old, will it still feel the same?
There’s no way this will die
But if we get much closer, I could lose control
And if your heart surrenders, you’ll need me to hold

Chorus

Why Relationships Fail
“… and how to prepare for the failure”

Maybe relationships fail because we ask ourselves again:
(Rethink) “have I chosen the ‘right’ partner?” (Perfect)
And then we continue down this train of thinking and ask ourselves, “how do I know that I have?”

We then find some bee in our bonnet and see if we can convince our partner to change direction in the relationship. We think to ourselves if we cannot convince them to change with us then that is it. You were right. You have chosen the “wrong” person to be your partner and it is time to move on. Or they just blindly follow, moving with you, hoping to tag along for the ride while you do all the directional work, in a bid to convince yourself you have chosen the “right” partner.

Surely this crazy type of thinking could not exist! Or it may well explain why the failure rate of relationships are so devastatingly high.

So how do we curb such destructive thinking? Where, it is the thinking itself that is resulting in the failure? A sort of feedback loop in our thinking, designed to cause a failure. Maybe we can prepare for it, that is, if it actually exists. That we first actually agree that this thinking could exist by either one of us in our relationship, at any time.

How to Prepare for the Failure
Get agreements on the following:

1. Then we could first remove this idea of “commitment” and need to chose Mr or Mrs right. Maybe we could form agreements that were flexible and that only existed for as long as they stood to reason and could be renegotiated at any time in the future.

2. We could also agree to remove this idea of “convincing” the other. That we are not here to convince our partner but to convince or convert ourselves. If our partner is not in agreement, it is our own thinking is up for questioning not their “rightness”.

3. All aggression is agreed to come from this ‘testing” form of thinking and that although understandable it is not acceptable. Understandable, in that the fear and frustration we can feel at the thought of either the fear of losing ourselves by hanging around the “wrong” person. Or fear losing the other and the time I may have already spent with them.

4. That we agree to deal with all “bees in our bonnet” in a detailed and structured process using the Six A framework, DFMs, or what other method we come up with.

You would have to be nuts to make a commitment or compromise

Let’s make it clear that I think that any form of aggression is inappropiate and unacceptable. Understandable yes, acceptable no!

There is nothing “Free” about Andrew Bolt! He is paid by “professional” newspaper publishers to write what they happily serve up to their readers daily so that they can “sell” more papers.

It is the publishers’ “job” to make sure that they responsibly do this and “employing” yet another tabloid writer to pander to the ignorant masses that read his diatribe, to me, reeks of the same disease that the English newspapers have been suffering form for years.

Mr Bolt is “paid” to get his, so called, facts right. He failed and has paid the price for his errors. He will have to rethink when he launches his next assault on mere civilians in the community that he uses for his fodder to make “money”.

A community without the access to the “power” and “money” that he wields by being so sensationalising and inaccurate in his “paid” job.

Read what the professional David Marr has to say on Andrew Bolt
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/in-black-and-white-andrew-bolt-trifled-with-the-facts-20110928-1kxba.html