Learning to Yield

I don't Yield well.

I was noticing that as I was driving home from my friend's house last night. Actually, I've been noticing it for longer than that. When I could see Alyssa's boyfriend, Josh, cringing in my rearview mirror as I was changing lanes, it was clear something was amiss. Why I was looking at him and his reaction anyway, instead of the lane I was merging into…well, that's part of the problem, isn't it? So it seems that I look into my rearview mirror, and sometimes look at my driver side mirror, but seldom do I actually turn my head to see if someone is in my blind spot. I just turn on my blinker, do a quick check in those two places, and start slowing but steadily moving into my new lane. Occasionally, I encounter someone who doesn't want to give me space, they honk and I move back.  But most of the time, people seem to accommodate me.

As I drove home, I thought about the past weekend. We did lots of introspective work. And one of the things we talked about was personality types. You've heard various takes on the personality type categorization, but for this workshop, there were four: Controller, Pleaser, Isolator, and Distractor.  The more we talked about it, the more it became clear to me that I  fall into the Controller category.  My fellow workshop attendees were somewhat surprised to find me in this category.  I don't come across as a bully or as an authoritarian-type.  And, I'm neither of those things.    But I do control *situations*. I create containers for people to be able to have experiences that I think should happen.  I clearly want to get my way, and most of the time I do.  While I don't think I do it consciously, my Controller type often looks like a Pleaser, but I'm really still just trying to get things to go the way I want them to go.  Maybe it's just a Southern Thing. 

Because I often have a kind of "flight of ideas" when I'm on the road,  I started to think about how this affects people's driving. My driving habits seemed to line up with these personality patterns. I was just just rolling over into the lane I wanted, without a lot of checking as to whether it was already occupied. My turning signal AS I WAS MERGING was really just a token nod to appear as a Pleaser. But all the while, definitely a Controller. Pleasers were all over the road, carefully driving, merging safely, motioning for someone else to go ahead of them. Isolators are represented on the highway as well - at least those who actually left their house. They're the ones driving with their music loud or headphones on. They tune out the rest of the world, and just drive their isolated bubble down the road. The Distractors are mainly on the service road. There are so many stops along the way, they just never make it onto the interstate.

Controllers, Pleasers, Distractors, and Isolators...all over the place! And there's nothing inherently right or wrong about any of these descriptors. There are positive and negative aspects of each of these categories. The key is to recognize what your dominant response is, and try to choose your actions with that in mind. Make more conscious decisions instead of "knee jerk" decisions.  Look more compassionately at those with other dominant traits. Everyone is really just trying to cope with the world.

Maybe I'll start with just learning to "Yield" a little better...on and off the road. 

The 4 Agreements

A small book with a huge ripple effect!

My friend, Cydney, and I came across this book written by Don Miguel Ruiz a few years ago. We had a lot of drama in our lives as our kids were in the midst of serious teenage angst. We read the books and thought it would be great to have them read the books as well. The principles were so simple and it would be so helpful for them to get control of some of the reactions they were having to circumstances that presented themselves.  Cydney bought several books and strategically placed them throughout their house.  I don't know if her children read them. In my house, Michael read it and loved it. (Of course)  Katie skimmed it, but wasn't interested really. And Alyssa let me read pieces of it to her. She often could see how it applied to others, but was having a hard time applying it to herself.

So Cydney and I decided we would simply try to learn more about it for ourselves. We read articles on line, listened to podcasts, and even attended a workshop focusing on an overview of The Four Agreements. We were hooked! We signed up for some more intensive study and began taking a Thursday night class. If we were going to see this work in our families, perhaps we simply needed to start with ourselves.

The 4 Agreements are simple:
1. Be Impeccable with your word means to speak the truth to yourself and to others. Avoid gossip.
2. Don't Take Anything Personally is understanding that it's not really about you. What others do or say tells about them, and their projections. When you recognize this, you can avoid so much pain and drama.
3. Don't Make Assumptions is all about communicating clearly. Check and double check if you are understanding what someone is saying or doing before you spin off weaving some story in your mind that may not be accurate at all.
4. Always Do Your Best, and this varies from day to day depending on how healthy we are that day. But strive to be the best we can be and avoid self-judgement and self-hatred if we fall short. Simply continue to do your best each day.

So today we're off to a weekend workshop on some of these principles. We discovered that it wasn't just the teens that needed to clean up some of the negative self-talk going on. We needed it too!