Failure is an Option: Failing fast and safe is necessary

I stared in shock at my son. We were having one of those conversations where I kept to myself and created a safe space for my son to share. I had done this many times before with all my children. However, this son was particularly challenging for me to listen to. I had tried to learned the skill of listening from my husband. The revelations from my son at that moment were worth the sacrifice and cost of not expressing myself.

Do you have a friend who lifts you; who even at times pulls you or pushes you to become more. They seem to know a better you that you have not yet known. They stretch you mind and urge you to improve.

I grew up in a family of 10 children. We were friendly for siblings. As if I was among friends, I learned early on to assert myself. Interrupting an incompletely stated thought was OK because we all assumed that we understood each other. It was a learned pattern of behavior.

The problem was, when we got older and our experiences began to diverge, we began to fail to relate safely with each other. Our interrupted thoughts became dangerously unexpressed (suppressed) emotions. We did not know how to afford each other safe space.

We are a loving, caring family. My father spent hours in counseling with us on all matters so that we would feel that we had a voice. None of us intended to suppress each other. It was not our desire to create an unsafe place.

Each member of our family also understood that failure allowed us to move upward to a higher level of thinking. We just could not comprehend why the friendly coziness of our childhood was not continuing into our young adulthood. We had a basic foundation upon which to create understanding. We just were not successful building upon it.

Over time, even shared experiences were seen so differently in the light of our developing individual uniqueness, that it became impossible to relate. Eventually, we were scattered across the country, living separate beautiful, though disconnected lives.

In raising my own family, I was determined to change this pattern. The difficulty I faced was the pattern of behaviors I was trained to perpetuate. I will be forever grateful for my husband’s persistent refusal to conform to my repressive, repetitive behavior. He required me to honestly confront the source of our differences. He challenged me to find a better way for us to relate to each other.

This caused me to dig deeper and find greater meaning for my life and my purpose. I learned about several systems for getting along with people. The systems focused on the effort to improve communication among individuals. They just did not seem to be helping me connect with my family.

Connecting with my husband and children became a focus for me throughout my time working as a mother in my home. I wanted to understand what was behind the choices each person makes in relating with others, as well as creating their own reality. Without realizing, I was searching to understand how the subconscious worked.

As I found a way to create a safe place for each child in my immediate family, allowing them to fail and grow from failure, I learned practical applications and discovered the Relate Social Structure of the human mind. It worked pretty well…

Until this moment of revelation. Without realizing he had done so; my son had laid out before me how differently his brain worked than I had incorrectly perceived. I was the one who failed. The shock of that revelation reverberated over many painful years that have followed.

Hope prevailed. Failure became my proving ground. Love became even more empowering. The revelations of my son’s struggles with how I was relating to him; how our relationship was suppressing him; and how I had lost touch with his world took several years to unfold. As they did, I learned how to love him with greater empowerment. I learned how differently he needed to be loved than I had thought.

Have you ever considered that love can be oppressive? If love is given to you in terms that mean different things to you than was intended by the giver, will you understand? Have you ever thought you had made sure you had very clearly related your love to someone, only to have them betray that love because it felt unsafe to them?

What will it take to overcome this loss and betrayal? How will you return to a safe relationship; as if you had never harmed it; as if you had never been an unsafe person; as if you had known exactly how to honor the uniqueness of your friend, spouse or child?

The first step on the road back to a safe relationship is to recognize the how the other person relates differently from how you relate. This provides you a safe place to stand, where you can feel safe. Once you establish your safe place, you can break down your walls and be vulnerable from a safe place.

Being vulnerable from a safe place allows you to apologize for the offense, because you recognize the offense. And then, by showing that you recognize the offense, you can ask for assistance to understand the unique paradigm of this relationship you are building with the other person. With their guidance, you will be able to create a safe place for them.

Once you have created a safe place for that important person in your life, you can begin to heal the wounds and share with them your own uniqueness.

The power of understanding the Relate Social Structure of the subconscious mind is that we can use that understanding to train our minds to function unconsciously with greater empathy. It is a life changing experience to learn to train your subconscious to do the work necessary to avoid damaging our relationships.

It is our subconscious that keeps track of our actions and sends us signals of ‘all clear’ or the red flags of danger. Paying attention to those signals, we can learn to navigate the waters of our relationships with greater aplomb than we have ever before conceived as possible.

Here are the training steps for the Relate Social Structure:

1. Recognize that each individual regulates their connection to the world around them through a system of laws that are in the subconscious. The laws form an essential piece of foundation for a healthy, well balanced society. We all know the laws, but we struggle to understand the structure of those laws. The structure helps our brains prioritize principles of behavior. Each person’s structure is unique and identifiable.
2. Identify the structure of the law system established in your subconscious. When you know that structure, you are able to create a safe place for you to stand. Relate Social Structure defines the foundational principles of a law system.
3. Allow yourself to be vulnerable from the safe place you have established for yourself. This is accomplished through training. It involves understanding of how people subconsciously connect to each other.
4. Apologize for your insensitive behavior and ask for assistance. Understanding the law system of the person you are striving to relate to only comes with study. Focus on learning by asking questions which reveal their priorities. Relate Social Structure training simplifies this process.
5. Through meaningful dialog, come to understand the structure of the law system of the person you are trying to relate to. Those trained in the Relate Social Structure are able to do this very efficiently. The rules of ‘reasonable doubt’ apply. It is only possible to establish a law system ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ by interacting with the individual.
6. Create a safe place for your relationship with each other. Once that safety, void of guile, is established, it will crystallize into a fast friendship. That friendship will exist in the family, community or the work place. It will cross all social structures and economic divides.
7. Healing happens as events which created misunderstanding or offense are replaced by experiences created in the safe place of a relationship. s common goals are understood, misunderstandings will be seen as petty; forgiveness will be given as it is asked for. And the request will be immediate, as needed.

As instant forgiveness or intolerance are set aside, disappointment will be replaced with empowerment.

For each person you empower, anger will become the ‘power to change’. When the energy of anger is given a safe channel of action, it ceases to be insanity and becomes empowerment. Together, you will become the change you want to see.

An amazing example of this is the story of Jackie Robinson, as told in the movie “42, The True Story of an American Legend”. At about an hour and 14 minutes into the movie, Jackie faces a choice of whether he will go forward or stop his career by fighting with the Philly Manager Ben Chapman who was verbally beating up on him.  It was his “guts to not fight” that brought change to the game of baseball. So many people were backing him, believing in him, wanting him to succeed. With the help of Branch Rickie, he chose to not let them down.

President and General Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey, had hired Jackie. He had connected with Robinson and built a relationship with him. He created the safe place in their relationship where they could both work through the historical events they were part of. Between them, they worked out how to be the change they both wanted to see. The actual relationship was something far more powerful than what we see on the screen.

The seven steps of training listed above are possible. Many people have learned them and live by them. By doing so they have become the change they want to be. From single mothers on welfare to wealthy business owners, each has found something useful in the Relate Social System. Once you learn the actual structure, you find life never again looks the same. I have experienced that change of perspective, as have many others.

I have failed as a mother. I have suffered from my poor choices. But I have also found forgiveness, hope. I have found there is a way to heal. I have learned the value of failure. I am confident as a mother because I and my family have healed and continue to heal. I am on friendly terms with my children. My son and I are building a relationship that is supportive. I succeed as a mother faster than I fail.

Failure is something we all face and struggle with. If we understand the structure inside our subconscious, we can make it safe to fail. And we can give others a safe place to fail. When we lift and push and pull each other up to the next level of achievement, each effort to climb up makes us stronger, strengthening our friendships. We find ourselves as we serve others. Failure that is fast and safe is necessary. Failure is the opposition that creates value for our successes.