February 9, 2023 5 min 36 sec read/listen

Recently a relationship I had with a company I hired for some marketing work fell apart.

The signs had been there from the beginning but I kept ignoring them.

Do you do that? Feel that niggle in your gut that tells you something isn’t working out quite like you thought it would or could but you keep trying. You keep on rejigging things, maybe your approach to communication, you try harder to figure out how to make things smoother but things don’t really seem to shift.

And let me ask you, when said relationship(s) “falls apart” – personal or business, where do you go? Inside yourself. Your thoughts? Your feelings? Where do you go?

Do you go to “what did I do?” or maybe “what’s wrong with me?” Or do you go to vilifying the other person – “It’s their fault, they didn’t do this, say this, be this”…of course I’m speaking in broad terms but its worth noticing where we go when things fall apart.

Most of us – me included – have a habit of personalizing the situation. We can’t help it really, it’s in our nervous systems if we come from trauma that leads to us feeling like we’re responsible for what falls apart. I mean, coming from there, sure we make it mean that it’s us. Our fault. Even if we are pointing fingers at the other person, we make it personal.

I did that for about three days as I worked through my emotions – hey, I am an advocate for honouring whatever you are experiencing, even if – or perhaps especially if - it’s coming from a reactive old trauma response, it needs to be given the space. Ignoring the old stuff never works. It makes it stronger and I’m interested in understanding these things about myself so I can move in a new way with myself in my life. Maybe you are too?

The next step, the step that moves us out of a victim/villain posture is to then look deeply and calmly at the way we are thinking about the situation, about the other person(s) involved and about ourselves.

Because nothing happens in a vacuum, we are all a part of the dances in relationships we have.

Me, I wanted to understand what went sideways and to start it off, I realized through that inward assessing of the whole thing, that I didn’t listen to my intuition that was telling me things were not working out from early on.

Okay check – “Jenn, listen to your gut. There’s that lesson again".”

But here’s something else that I found immeasurably helpful. A practice of perspective I’ve been playing with for a few years that helps me move right off the emotion and making (and taking) things personally.

I think of the situation as either harmonious or disharmonious and more often than not, both exist. Let me explain:

Instead of villainizing the whole situation or the players, I move to looking at what was in harmony and what was not.

The harmony I could see in my latest situation was that the way the person I was dealing with communicated – was sometimes scattered, reactive, defensive, at times frenetic was completely in harmony with an older version of myself and older interactions I’ve had throughout my life. It’s a pattern. Familiar territory. Not territory I was interested in living in anymore. It was also in harmony with a story that I had that I needed them and their skills and I couldn’t succeed without them because I didn’t know business skills.

Of course that’s bullshit but this is what I mean about old stories and meaning that we infuse into our lives now. But this way of looking at things, as I’m sharing here, really supports us to move off the old stories and create new meaning that actually serves us and our growth - and could even serve the others involved.

The disharmony was that the same style of communication was completely out of harmony with the woman I’ve become. My practice as an actor, as a writer, as a coach and guide for self-love and frankly, as an entrepreneur is to learn and implement skills in communication, appreciation, clarity of ideas in a way that is calm, focused and…well…works.

You see how we can have both? Harmony and Disharmony.

When I looked at the situation from that vantage point, I could release making it personal.

I could make a decision. Stay with the old stuff this company was in harmony with in me, old me, and keep jamming up against the disharmony OR I could step out and seek the harmony I desire that is a match for who I am and how I want to move in the world.

Any situation can be viewed this way. What is this in harmony with in me? What is this in disharmony with?

It may sound like I’m simplifying the perspective but try it. It’s like stepping back and saying to yourself, “Hold on, let me take a good look here” and then seeing, “Ahhhhhh, I see what is working and I see what isn’t” and from there, you make your next choice.

We do enough villainizing and victimizing in this world, don’t you think? Maybe this can help a little – help free ourselves and even free the others from icky energetic ties and let our thoughts and energy move toward more and more harmony to what we want for our lives, to who we want to be and how we want to move.

Out with the old and in with the Truest You.

I'm Jenn. I'm a professional actor, writer, creator and self-love coach. Always learning, always growing. Just another Spiritual Being on the Human path alongside you.

To your highest harmony