Mark here.

At a workshop Lynetta and I attended, one of the facilitators shared: "If you're not in relationship now, get in relationship because it's your best teacher".

Sage advice.

When you're working on yourself, you need mirrors.  We need people who can look at us from the 'outside' and see what's really going on.  We might think we see the 'reality' of the world but really we are all looking out at the world through the lenses of our beliefs.

The proof?  How many times have you seen someone claiming to be stuck in a situation that you could clearly see a solution to?

We may have been taught that a friend is supposed to 'support you' no matter what.

But a real friend is someone who will tell you the truth about what they see, even if you might not want to hear it.

That's a mirror.

And the best mirror of all is a soulmate who is keen to work on themselves and supports you to do your work.

There's no criticism, no making wrong.  Just...

Mark here.  

Lynetta is quite active in a Facebook group that helps ex-Jehovah's Witnesses rebuild their lives.

Many of the moderators are great at helping ex-JW's release the dogmas they grew up with and deal with the pain of being shunned and having to leave family and friends behind.

But years or decades after leaving the religion, anger is still often detectable in ex-JW's.

There is a gratitude to being free of the dogmas, rules, fears, laws, restrictions.  But there is still a sadness and anger often expressed due to 'losing so many years of life'.

For Lynetta, only the Soul-View has fully released all of the anger and sadness and helped her fully reclaim her power.

The Soul-View, which we share in The Foundation Teachings, is the view of life we  get when we leave this world and reevaluate our life from the higher perspective of our soul.  From this vantage point, we achieve complete peace about everything...

Previously, we shared why we banned "Perfect" from our vocabulary.

Next on our not-helpful-words hit list is "Worthy".

You'll often hear 'worthy' in a lot of affirmations such as: "I am worthy of God's love", "I am worthy of receiving money" and so on. 

The reason we don't use worthy anymore is because worthy implies that we have to do something to be worthy.

And, our brilliant minds can always come up with 2 types of reasons why we are NOT worthy.  Either I'm not enough such as: "I'm not kind enough, supportive enough, charitable enough".  Or, I'm too much of something such as: "I'm too bossy, too controlling, too loud, too opinionated."

Our belief is that our Creator has fully empowered us to create anything we want in our life.  We don't have to earn it, deserve it, beg for it, plead for it.  We can have it just because we desire it.  In short, our creator 'wants' us to create desires...

Mark here.

True story.

Lynetta and I went to a restaurant for an after-the-movies snack.

They had lots of pies on the menu.  I read a list of the pies to Lynetta and asked what she wanted.  Internally, I was praying that she didn't say coconut cream because my intuition was telling me it wouldn't be good.

Sure enough, coconut cream it was!

When we started to eat the pie, we discovered it was not very good.

Not here comes the funny part.  Lynetta eventually admitted that she ordered it because she thought I would like it and I agreed to it only because I thought she would like it.

So we both ordered something we didn't want AND turned out not to be good!

Some call this 'people-pleasing'--doing what you think other people want rather than tuning in to what you really want.

For some of us, we had to learn people-pleasing because life was dangerous way back when if we didn't stay on the right side of those who could become violent.

But, now, decades...

You would agree that all people want to be loved, yes?

So would I.

Where it gets interesting is when we ask the question "HOW do I FEEL loved?"

The answer isn't as simple as we might think.

In The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman reveals that each of us may have a different way we FEEL loved.  For some of us it is words.  For others it's quality time spent together.  Some feel love through receiving gifts.  Others through acts of service.  And finally, some feel love though physical touch.

Where there is a problem in relationships is when we show our love to our partner through the way WE feel loved.  But if our partner feels loved through a different manner, both the giver and receiver feel unloved and frustrated.

For example, let's say your love language is words and your partner's is service,  If you continually offer praise to your partner when they really want your service (taking out the garbage, working on household...

As Souls, one of the archetypes we love to play in is the Victim.  Everyday we read about people who have been victimized by others.

When we take the Soul-View that we may actually have chosen to be victims (you'll have to ready Journey of Souls to really get this), we can find peace with our victimhood and eventually even find empowerment in it.

But harder than owning our victimhood is to own that we have also been the villain.  To put it in the Soul View, we have all been thiefs, rapists, murderers in past lives.

And we may also have done some victimizing of others even in this lifetime.  Owning all of this is often called embracing our shadow.

I learned this early in my first marriage.  I did not have good relationship tools at the time and had poor examples from my own family growing up.

I remember making agreements with my wife which I didn't keep.  When she would call me on it, instead of owning up to my failure...

This part 2 about the "Perfect" problem--what do we do about that voice in our head that constantly nags us about not being good enough, worthy enough--in short--not being perfect.

One answer is to go to the source of the 'problem'--all the way back to the belief that such a thing as perfect even exists.

To do this, let's talk about the Six basic human needs according to Tony Robbins.

One way we can look at ourselves as human beings is that we have certain 'attributes'.  Attributes are things like adventurous, timid, outgoing, shy, friendly, loud, persistent, giving, forceful, etc.

All human beings are a collection of different attributes.  I may be adventurous, loud, forceful, persistent. You may be soft-spoken, thoughtful, supportive, impatient.

All attributes have their opposite.  If I am adventurous, I'm not timid.  If I am forceful, I'm not quiet.  Graphically, I can illustrate this by putting human attributes on a 'yardstick' with an...

 Hi,  Mark here.  Lynetta and I have a list of words we've 'banned' from our vocabulary because we find them disempowering.

Over the next several emails, we're going to share them with you.

#1 on our list--the word "Perfect"

Why is Perfect a problem?  Perfection should be all dreamy and well, perfect, right?

Consider the following:

One of our biggest roadblocks to being completely at peace with ourselves is that deep down, we may think there is something wrong with us. 

This comes often from dysfunctional families that so many of us grew up in.  If there was discord or worse, abuse, we may believe deep down that we may have been at fault.

We may end up believing we are not good enough, lovable enough, acceptable enough. 

And we may end up with a list of 'shoulds'--way should be this way or that--more of this, less of that.

We should be more loving, giving, kind, understanding, patient, accepting.  We should be less judgmental, critical, loud,...

Mark again.  One more technique for dealing with someone else's emotional blowups. 

By-the-way, I'm assuming here that we are NOT talking about a situation where there is any possibility of real physical danger.  If there is, take proper care of your safety.

This technique goes back to the Soul View of people and who we are and why we are here.  If you haven't studied these questions yet, take a look at The Foundation Teachings or get Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls from Dr. Michael Newton.

To summarize the Soul View briefly, we all have our Soul Objectives for being in this world.  We want to have certain experiences.  We may actually want to experience challenging relationships.

To accomplish these Soul Goals, as Souls before we incarnate, we enlist each other to be 'actors' in each other's life play.

This may include treating each other in life in less than the highest ways.

If you've...

Mark again. More to share about dealing with other people's emotional issues.

It's great to get that someone else's blowup is all about them and some old trauma they are re-experiencing and has nothing to do with you.

Even if they are blaming you for whatever they are upset about, you are still just a 'stand-in' for whoever caused the original upset.

Now, knowing this is great BUT there's still the emotional 'blowback' to deal with.

One technique you may want to try on for these situations is the blast-fence technique.

Blast Fences which are also known as Jet blast Deflectors are commonly found at airports where a public road exists right at the beginning of an aircraft runway.  You may have seen them at San Jose airport in California or LaGuardia in New York.

When a jet plane is starting its takeoff, it directs powerful jet exhaust directly to its rear.  If there happen to be cars or people on the road right behind it, they can literally get...