Landon
I have to say almost at the beginning that relationships, sometimes I just say it as an absolute flat statement, they don't work. They just simply don't work.
Announcer
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Heartbeat the podcast featuring the insight and teaching of Landon Saunders.
On today's episode, we return to the community workshop, Feeling Good About Yourself, where Landon is exploring the challenges of making relationships work. Now here again is Landon Saunders.
Landon
I'd like to begin tonight with a story. This is one of my favorite stories, and it's one that I think gets us right into the heart of relationships quickly. It seems that there was a woman who came to see her rabbi one day and she was extremely distressed. She was distressed was hardly the word for it. She was apoplectic. She said, life is just awful, rabbi. Life is just awful. She said, I'm living out there with my husband and he's hard to get along with and I have my three children running around all over the house. She said, and then two weeks ago his parents moved in to our little old house and then last week my parents moved in. She said, life is just awful, life is awful.
And the rabbi listened and looked at her and he said, now, now, let me tell you what I'd like for you to do. I'd like for you to go home and go out to the barn and get the cow and bring the cow into the house and come back and see me next week. But rabbi! You just do as I tell you.
So she goes home and she gets the cow and she brings the cow into the house. Well, she comes back a week later and she's worse. She's just screaming how terrible, how awful life is that she has that husband who's not getting any better, and those three children running around, and his parents and her parents, and now that big old cow slopping around through the house. Life is just awful. And he says, now, now, let me tell you what I'd like you to do. I'd like for you to go home and go to the barn. Get the horse and bring the horse into the house and come back and see me next week. But don't protest, just do as I tell you.
So she goes by, she goes to the barn, she gets the horse, brings it into the house and she comes back and she almost can't speak the next week. It is just so pathetic. And she goes through the whole thing about what a terrible mess the whole house is and that big old cow and horse clomping around through it. Life is awful.
And the Rabbi said, now here's what I'd like for you to do. I'd like for you to go home and get that cow and that horse and put them back in the barn and come see me next week. Well, she goes home, she comes back the next week and she's all smiles. And she says, you know, Rabbi, life is so wonderful without the cow and the horse.
Now, there are a lot of cows and horses in our relationships.
And tonight, we're hopeful that we can begin to move some of those cows and horses out. You know, when you take hold of a relationship, you usually think that you're taking hold of something that's warm and cuddly.
But then somehow we wind up just stuck. We lose all of our flexibility, we lose all of our freedom, and instead of that relationship nurturing and encouraging us and making life richer, sometimes it can go the other way.
The Russian writer Pasternak said, human beings are moved in one of two ways. They're moved by the cudgel, by the big stick, or...
They're moved by the inner music.
In relationships, it seems that the big stick is applied more than inner music, because we may not know what the inner music of relationships really is. And not knowing that inner music, all we know to do is react. And so relationships may be one long series of negative reactions. Is there anything that can be done about that?
Well, it's helpful to remember kind of the nature of human beings, that human beings, my, a human being despite all the ways that we've gone wrong, a human being is really something. It's a mammal, not a crustacean.
And sometimes in our relationships we forget that we're mammals instead of crustaceans. Now, the mammal is soft on the outside and has the hard structure on the inside. But the crustacean is just the opposite. The crustacean has that real hard shell on the outside and they're soft on the inside. But if you've noticed, sometimes human beings in relationships behave more like the crustacean than the mammal.
We're more like the big old lobster. We have these long big arms that come out and on the pincers, one of them on a lobster is made for cutting. It's very sharp and is made for cutting. And the other is dull but strong and it's made for crushing. And that sometimes in our relationships, however inadvertently, however unintentional, that we reach out and we're skilled and deft at cutting and at crushing...when really we're made for touching. Human beings on the outside are soft. They're made for touching. They're made for this inner music on the inside to begin to find its way out of this touching, this soft exterior. Human beings are made to be touched.
Announcer
Landon will be right back, but we want to invite you to visit thisishartbeat .com where you can sign up to receive the joyful jumpstart email in your inbox every few days. Now back to Landon.
Landon
Now all these centuries we've been moving along and talking about working on relationships and we've got to make this relationships work. But the truth is that so far the things just don't work.
They don't work very well. And so I want to start there tonight that they don't work so well. Now, one of the reasons that I want to start there is to try to get some of the assumptions back. We take relationships for granted. And if we could move that back just a little bit tonight, we would have made real progress in the matter of relationships. I was working with a media consultant once.
And he said, you know, I was in this marriage of, I don't know, 12 or 15 years, and it was pure hell. And we divorced. Now he said, I've lived with this woman for four years. And it was marvelous. It was a wonderful relationship. And then a year and a half ago, we got married. And it's just been hell ever since.
And he said, now, why do you think it's that way? Well, if I could answer that, I'd be the wisest person on earth. All it underscores is that relationship is not easy, and we wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't so important. We're just made to be together. One of our objectives tonight, because they can be so toxic,
And because there may be one or two individuals in this audience tonight who are in relationships that are extremely difficult. They may be extremely toxic. They may be abusive. Or there could be one or two in this audience who's in a relationship that's basically dead. It's been dead for years. And for reasons that may be known to you. And they may be very good reasons...You have chosen to continue in that relationship. There are others who are in relationships that are just difficult. They're difficult every day and they require lots of energy and lots of thought and lots of patience. But you have chosen and perhaps for very good reasons to stay in those relationships.
And so one of the things that I hope that we can do tonight is to show you how perhaps you could keep on enjoying your own life even if the relationship you're in isn't the best.
Or put another way, how does an individual keep from losing one's life in the midst of a dreadful relationship? On the one hand, I know that relationship can be the cause of a lot of unhappiness. And if it is, on the other hand, how can I somehow be happy even in this relationship that is not quite what I want it to be.
That's our work, so let's get on with it. As W .C. Fields once said, it's time to take the bull by the tail and squarely face the situation.
Now, as we squarely face this situation of relationships tonight, I think the best way through this is to give you some undeniable right off the reel. I gave you a list of undeniable last night about self-esteem. Tonight I want to give you some undeniable about relationship. These are things that are absolutely, completely and totally, undeniably true about relationships. And because it is so complex and can get so complicated, I think that if we have a list of things that are true no matter what, that perhaps it'll help get us through some rough spots. Because our real objective, of course, is to find ways to deepen and enrich and heal our relationships.
The first thing that is undeniably true about relationships is this, any relationship can change because of you. Any relationship can change because of you. Now, the simplest way out of that one is if you change, the relationship is changed.
And so it's not simply a matter of getting another individual to change. This is more about you, maybe, than about the other person, which is often the way through difficult relationships.
Any relationship can change because of you. Now, that can happen on the simplest of scales. A real estate woman told me recently about her mother -in -law who is 80 -some years old and still drives. And she drives a white Mustang convertible. And she loves to go fast.
And so she's barreling off down the road one day, and a trooper spots her, this speeding car, and pulls her over. Now, the relationship between a speeding driver and a state trooper can be tense, to say the least. The trooper pulls her over, lights flashing. He walks up, tops down. He looks in, and here's this wonderful, sweet person who looks up, smiling at him.
And he's a little nonplussed and taken aback. And he said, finally, lady, weren't you going a little fast? She said, yes, sir, it's hard to keep this baby down.
Do you think that relationship probably changed? I suspect it did. Now, the point is that somehow in these relationships, the question is how can we get something different in these things? How can we keep just from being locked in to these situations? How can I make the relationship grow? And somehow, if I remember not to get so up tight that I lose all my resiliency so that all I can do is one thing, then I may not get very far either in that relationship or I may not get very far.
Human beings are not crustaceans. They're mammals. And they can think. Any relationship can change because of you.
The second thing that is absolutely undeniably true about relationships is you can fail in a relationship without failing as a person.
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