Practical Magic

MAGICAL STATEMENT: The True Self is never damaged, is in every person, and can heal anything.

PRACTICAL STATEMENT: Richard Schwartz is at Harvard and has worked with the most challenging populations (from murders to child abusers). He’s found that every single person has a True Self.

The True self is the governing Self of a constellation of internal Parts.

Schwartz has scientifically validated Internal Family System Therapy. 

The True Self is the ‘how’ — how you can find self-compassion.

The True Self is magic because it is invisible and wonderful— like the love we want in our marriages.

Magic means it is beyond the imagination of our current cultural thinking. Magic means science can’t see or measure it.

And practical because it offers simple steps that work. Similar to the functionality we need in the daily life of a marriage.

Internal Family Systems (IFS), was created—discovered—in the 1980’s by Richard Schwartz. 

Why the name ‘Internal Family’? Schwartz was working in Family Therapy but found the True Self exists INSIDE each person — hence the name Internal Family Systems. 

An INNER ‘family’ of Parts in each person that can dialogue with each other.

The True Self, the governing part of this inner family — has the capacity to resolve…well…everything and anything.

Richard Schwartz writes “The idea that at your essence you are pure joy and peace, and that from that place you are able to manifest clusters of wonderful leadership and healing qualities and a sense of spiritual connectedness, runs counter to what you’ve learned about yourself.” 

The True Self harmonizes, resolves and empowers all the other parts of ourselves. 

This is the ‘how’ — how I teach self-compassion. In IFS there is a saying “All parts are welcome.” 

This is an invitation to self-compassion.

It is the compassionate Self. When we welcome all parts of our self with compassion, all parts are harmonized and empowered.

Why is self-compassion so essential? With self-compassion, all negative experiences become teachers and guides. We realize the necessary nature of what we call negative experiences. 

Why is self-compassion so essential to our intimate relationships? When we are not criticizing ourselves, when we have peace with our thoughts and feelings, then we are ready to give feedback and have a solution-oriented relationship.

The True Self is practical magic. 

I want to be very clear. Practical magic means that in spite of it being beyond our imagination, it works.

Is It Possible You'll Never Have a Fight Again?

Is it really possible to be a couple that NEVER fights?

(If you do fight—and you will, it’s a process— you know you are lapsing into old training.) 

But you know the futility of fighting with anyone —that it’s an inside job.

As our culture defines marriage is based on “love = sharing the other person’s point of view.” It’s an obligation.

“Love = agreeing to disagree” is going to create a more vibrant and resilient marriage.

For me, who stopped thinking I needed to share opinions about a decade ago, the way we are doing it looks like holding the other person hostage.

If they don’t have the same opinions, we argue.

It’s the basis of all marital arguments.

Couples go all through couple counseling with the goal in mind -- to be able to swap opinions (especially opinions about each other.)

Humans are transitioning out of top-down rules. People in our culture are becoming more self-defining and each more uniquely themselves.

Harvard developmental Psychologist Robert Kegan calls it the transition​ from Socialized State of Mind (“I follow the rules, others determine how I see myself”)​ to Self-Leadership ("I have an identity. I make choices"). 

I am suggesting that we value this in ourselves MORE and in our loved ones MORE. 

They have their point of view, you have yours.

You get to simply love someone with no need to agree.

You can be interested in their POV for fun, but it’s not what love is, or how arguments are solved.

Taking responsibility means you know that if you are reacting (rather than responding) that means you have an inside job to do.

I use Internal Family Systems Therapy ( which has a strong spiritual component) to teach people how to do the INSIDE work.

Once you see how much better the INSIDE information works—the download that comes from the True Self—how much better this works, then arguing is extinct.

Does that make sense? It's really that simple.

The key is developing the trust in the inside work, then arguing just falls away.

Feel Like You Did When You First Fell in Love

Do you think the honeymoon stage is like a dream and afterward, you have to settle down into 'reality?'

You imagine it's unrealistic to yearn for that mad love you once felt. Yet you never can stop longing for that feeling of unconditional love.

It’s the best feeling in the world.

Remember when you first fell in love with him?

Isn’t falling in love fun? Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.

 You feel so alive!

 It’s the closest to pure bliss there is in human experience.

 You may not have noticed you were feeling unconditional love for yourself .

 It’s your own inner experience that is so awesome.

 Actually, you feel like you are amazingly special.

 You’re thinking you’ve found the most adorable, sexy, brilliant, wonderful, genius the universe ever created.

 But what you’re really feeling is that YOU are adorable, sexy, brilliant, and special.

 He’s mirroring all those qualities back to you and, bottom-line, that’s what actually feels so damn good.

Guess what? You can have unconditional love—all you have to do is stop believing the conditions.

How not to Apologize

There’s a distinction between a true apology verses an apology meant to simply tidy up the external world.

Apologizing because you’ve truly realized something new as opposed to apologizing so your partner will stop being mad.

When you have the capacity for self-compassion, doing something ‘wrong’ isn’t to be avoided at all costs. Then you’re able to truly hear something new, something that you wish you had done differently. You hear it so deeply that you're likely not do it again. Certainly not in the exact same way, at any rate.

With self-compassion the clarity of understanding happens organically. You don’t have to memorize or promise anything. Genuine learning and transformation occurs spontaneously.

Totally different than apologizing to make somebody feel better so they will like you again. Or to make yourself feel less guilty or embarrassed.

These efforts to rearrange how things seem in the external world, these are not going to be learning experiences. Little or nothing is accomplished. It’s simply to avoid feeling uncomfortable in that moment.

The first one is for your evolution. You are participating in evolving our species, doing the good work on behalf of all of us. You bring all of us forward.

The other way is you are avoiding a momentary discomfort. Because you don’t have the capacity to love yourself in spite of the discomfort learning can create. You are stuck in the mud, spinning your wheels but going no where. 

What Expectations Do You Have of a Life Partner?

You want your marriage to be a great team. Life partners — partners for the business of creating a life.

A great team so you can get the most out of life. Not a partnership that is dragging your life down, rather one that is moving your life upward. 

Some people prioritize other things in a marriage—examples are money, looks or status.

But since what I want is a life of service, I want a marriage that will support that.

Not a marriage that creates more ‘stuff’ or more pleasure, but to do something useful while I am here.

Actually the ‘being the love’ part is easy. It’s our nature to love.

If once upon a time, you fell so in love that you chose to spend the rest of your life with this person, then that strong love is there, ready to blossom again. 

You actually know this. You know you love this person. That’s why you’re confused when you feel you don’t like them.

Do you imagine love should easy like it was when you first fell in love?

Love is easy when all the clutter and mess of arguments, spoken or silent grudges, is cleared away. 

And it can be that easy when you become clear on what to expect from the other person. It just happens naturally when you have accurate expectations. 

The secret is to stop having any expectations of the other person. Just appreciate them.

Martha Beck says “Try allowing other people to be exactly as they are. They are going to do it anyway.”

We aren’t trained to do this—we’re taught that the purpose of a marriage is to make us happy. And when we aren’t happy, we are taught to rearrange the spouse or the marriage.

When you are feeling low, it’s so easy to imagine the problem is the other person.

We are taught to have expectations — if s/he did xyz, then I’d be happy. 

But when you have a whole set of expectations that the other person never even agreed to, or didn’t know that they agreed to, you are going to be disappointed and angry. 

So there are two levels of expectations to get clear on:

1) what do you expect out your marriage?

2) what are your expectation of your partner?

The Species Saving Distinction: Power-With or Power-Over

Who would have thought, the place where we are interconnected, the place where argument disappears, were we all agree, is inside?

My inner knowing is found inside me. And it is my inner knowing that can find solutions that work for everyone.

When we are having an argument with our intimate partner, we think it's extremely important to get our point across.

A radical assertion: making choices that serve the benefit of everyone in the situation is very possible.

Then we have a relationship where everyone is a winner. All arguments become an opportunity for rich intimacy.

This is possible once we know how, once we’ve learned to have relationships based on the benefit of everyone.

We were taught wrong - our whole society, our parents, everything we've always known, has taught us to have relationships with the goal of serving ourselves. Or serving the other.

Either/or, either I ‘win’ or you ‘win.’

Win-win is the only possible way to win. With win-lose everyone loses.

Until we learn there is a solution that serves everyone, we really don’t know any other way.

This is very a radical assertion.

But as it transforms our intimate relationships, we grow more and more confident that it’s true.

This is totally doable and key to harmonious relationships. We see more and more that this distinction is a choice in each moment.

We have a choice during a conflict—power-with or power-over. Do we aim to empower everyone in the circumstance or do we aim to have control and win?

This is a crucial distinction.

Figuring it Out Never Worked, Even More So for Your Intimate Partner

Guess what? You don't have to understand him. You can’t figure him out.

Even if you think you can, stop it. It’s not nice. It’s actually violent to ‘figure’ someone out.

It’s not nice to reduce a complex human being into something you can write on a piece of paper.

And I am a psychologist for 30+ years now. So I certainly have tried.

Big sigh of relief. You're never going to understand. So stop trying.

You could write a doctoral thesis on him but still not really understand why he does some things he does. Or actually anything. Understanding is over. It never worked.

It’s not helpful. When we ask ourselves or our intimate partner "Why?" there is an implied criticism there. We might not notice the criticism because this quest to figure ourselves out is so pervasively accepted in our culture. To figure it out and improve it.

But 'figuring it' out means it needs to change. It's wrong. Everything we do has an unknowable but good, logical purpose.

Wrong includes the violence of criticism.

Did self-criticism ever help you, or stop or change anything? Did it ever stop your own 'weird' behaviors? For more than temporarily? And then the behavior most likely popped up again harder, or a replacement behavior popped up in its place?

Did trying to understand motivations ever really help? Dredging up past interpretations and reinterpretations? All the years of psychotherapy?

So why try to understand him? Using our minds in this way was a false idea in the first place. It was an idea we learned growing up in a culture where we were taught we could dominate our environment rather than taught to listen to it.

What is actually finally, functionally helpful is simply knowing what to do in a certain situation. Our own natural knowing is instinctive, spontaneous and brilliant.

Very simple. Don't be mystified by being in the 'now.’ Simply stop trying to ‘figure it out.’ Your knowing is your nature.

Always trying to understand is blocking us, confusing us. We're not using our natural human brilliance. Always trying to be smart and figure stuff out is actually making us more stupid. Or more confused. Or more depressed. More helpless.

Our own knowing is helpful, is sturdy. Simply knowing what to do in a particular moment.

Simplify, get back to basics. Using our own native intelligence makes us stronger and more empowered. Or native intelligence is not complicated.

Knowing what to do in a particular situation always comes from paying attention to what's best for everyone in the circumstance, in that moment. What suits that moment, and everyone involved, is what is most true in that moment.

There are way too many factors in each situation for rules or for analyzing. Systems Theory, the Butterfly Effect, Choas Theory—these all clearly demonstrate how impossible it is to do the math of 'why?' Of the origin of anything.

Listening to our hearts, listening to our knowing is useful. Turning the ‘now’ into a useful practice. We can listen when we decide to stop 'figuring out.'

We can't pay attention to what’s actually happening when we have a bunch of ideas about what is supposed to be happening. We've lost touch with our brilliant knowing by following rules and trying to analyze everything.

Our intimate relationships are suffering because we are trying to know what others should be doing. And we've exhausted ourselves with relentlessly self-analyzation.

Trying to understand ourselves, to "figure it out,' is simply an attempt to control what we can't control anyway.

We can stop now. What a relief.

Eight Billion Humans Inside Me

Richard Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems, says the Self has these characteristics: calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness.

He calls them the 8 Cs of self-leadership.

I can affect my situation, infect my life partnership, with these qualities.

I can spread these qualities in my connection and commitment to my 8 Cs. I ignite them in my marriage, by igniting them within me.

Everyone has a Self, including the 8 Cs, which is at the core of their being. At essence, we all mean well. We all, in essence, embody calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness.

Remarkably, amazingly, we ALL mean well. This is the revolution that is Internal Family Systems. A complete revolution when we realize that everyone means well.

Not everyone who means well can also “do well.”

When you are able to also “do well,” you are able to hold all points of view (in a specific situation) and chose the most optimal solution for everyone involved. Not though mind. Not through thinking. Not through figuring it out.

It happens spontaneously.

We go inside to find the place where we are able to make an actionable, solution-oriented, beneficial choice in that moment. 'Everyone' in a particular moment, in a specific situation.

Because everyone has the 8 Cs, in challenging moments, when I connect to my 8 Cs, I connect to my intimate partner's 8 Cs.

Because I am included in 'everyone' self-compassion is the essence. Self-compassion is the starting place.

Absolutely, compassion without self-compassion isn't sustainable, spontaneous, genuine compassion.

Compassion without going inside first isn't compassionate at all. It's sticky sweet and contrived.

So somehow magically and counter-intuitively, the place that I can connect to everyone is inside me. Inside me is a connection to 8 billion humans. Every single one of 8 billion humans has a True Self. Is this the meaning of the spiritual principle 'we are all interconnected?'

What is Power, Really?

Donald Trump thinks power is domination -- being the biggest bully on the playground.

But there is another kind of power which can surprise and defy domination— standing for something you believe in and being inner-directed.

Tony Schwartz, author of Trump: The Art of the Deal, spent a year with Trump watching him very closely.

Talking to Ari Melber, on MSNBC, about a confrontation between President Trump and Nancy Pelosi, Tony Schwartz says Trump is “cowed'“ by a person who is “tough with civility” and “tough with decorum.”

He said all this:

"But really the issue here is—underneath this is—are you someone who is outer-directed or are you inner-directed?

So outer-directed means you are looking outside yourself for what the response is going to be and you're making all your choices expediently based on that feedback you're getting from the outside world.

Inner-directed means you have a true North inside. You have actually a set of values that are immutable that you stand by.

And I do think that Pelosi has a consistent record of suggesting that she does stand for something.

And she knows that when she wants to make a choice, she can look inside, she can sense what she feels and act on it.

Trump has no idea. He's like a tree blowing in the wind with no roots. So the wind comes this way, and Trump goes this way. The wind comes this way and he goes this way.

He knows he's up against one tall tree with a lot of roots. She may be short in height but she is tall in stature."

Boom. He said it perfectly. I have nothing to add.

The Courage for Boundaries

Where does the courage for boundaries come from? It’s necessary to love ourselves in order to have courage to risk disappointing others.

When we have a self-compassion practice, even when things feel terrible, even when we feel shame, we gain courage. Then the courage grows by itself. We become fearless.

This courage comes slowly, not all at once. When we see that we are able to hang in there with ourselves, continue our self-care regardless, our self-compassion, our radical self-love—that is when the courage grows.

We've been taught to fear our bad feelings, by the self-esteem culture all around us. A culture that values self-esteem but does not teach self-compassion.

Self-esteem is conditional. As opposed to Self-compassion which teaches us to love ourselves unconditionally.

When self-esteem is held in the highest regard, we are required to feel positive about ourselves at all costs.

Self-esteem becomes self-criticism when we aren't measuring up to our self-imposed harsh standards. The inner critic emerges when the standards we set aren't met.

Disappointing ourselves is the worst of all. We fear ourselves, that is where courage is the hardest.

When we experience rejection or anger in an effort to set boundaries with others, then we add our self-criticism to the original bad feeling. Nothing is so scary than losing our own self-regard.

Our self-criticism is what truly stops us in our tracks—our fear of ourselves, of our own self-judgment.

But with self-compassion, we love ourselves unconditionally.

When we love ourselves regardless, unconditionally, we dare to risk rejection of others. We have the willingness to set the boundaries Brene Brown is suggesting.