Coming to grips with what you can and can’t control opens the door to true emotional freedom and personal power. I frequently receive questions about what to do in situations where someone is behaving in an unloving way, or a way that’s painful for them. For example:

• My co-worker never answers emails, making it very hard for me to do my work, as I need his input.
• My wife never wants to make love.
• People often ask me intrusive questions that I don’t want to answer.
• My husband is often late and never calls to let me know he is going to be late for dinner.
• My friend got together with a bunch of our friends for lunch and didn’t invite me.
• My parents are forever criticizing me.
• I often feel invaded and demanded of by family and friends.
• My husband sits at the table when we go out to dinner absorbed with his phone instead of talking with me.
• My children are disrespectful toward me.
• My wife has a male friend whom she talks with all the time and sometimes meets for lunch, even though I’ve told her I’m uncomfortable with their relationship.
• My wife often wants to talk about what I’m doing wrong. 

Two Healthy Choices in Conflict

It is important to remember that we have only two healthy ways of dealing with conflict – two loving responses when another is behaving in a way that is upsetting or hurtful to us.

There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential – fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness (a favorite from the Archives).

Note – This talk is dedicated to Tim Ferriss, who turned me on to the phrase FOMO. Tim exemplifies the creative aliveness of FOMO energy when it’s living through someone who’s dedicated to being awake, caring and real. Check out his podcasted interview with Tara at: https://youtu.be/pXNEM4wjSmE​ and his podcast at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast/.

Do you believe you are responsible for causing others’ anger, hurt, sadness or anxiety? Is this causing you to feel guilty?

“My wife is so upset that I have to travel more on my new job,” Chuck told me in our phone counseling session. “She feels so alone and lost when I’m gone. When I talk with her she is either crying or angry. I feel so badly and guilty but I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you feel responsible for her feelings?” I asked him. “Do you feel that you are the cause of her feelings?”

“Yes.”

* * * * *

“I’m just starting to date again after my divorce and I’m having a hard time with it,” Jeanette told me. “I just don’t know how to let a man know that I’m not interested in dating him any more, or in pursuing a sexual relationship with him. It feels like such a sticky situation.”

“Is it sticky because you are worried about his feelings?”

“Yes. The last man I dated hung his head and looked so distressed when I asked him to leave. I know that he was really attracted to me and I wasn’t at all attracted to him. I felt so awful that he was so hurt.”

“Did you feel responsible for his feelings?”

“Yes.”

It’s through our relationships with those close to us that we get to work out our spiritual growth — and I am no exception! 

My relationship with my mother was a container in which I received some of my deepest hurts and also have experienced the redemptive power of forgiveness, which is our Fourth Energy, Love. 

From my earliest days, I had such a love-hate relationship with my mom. She was a very complicated, confusing woman. She was absolutely riddled with contradictions. Like, if someone rang the doorbell and we weren’t expecting company, we had to immediately get away from the windows so no one could see us. But at the same time, she loved to show us off and have us look a certain way, dressed up like little dolls with curled hair and perfect clothing. 

She wanted to control everything — and me being me, I wanted to rebel, so we’d butt heads constantly. I was supposed to behave according to her rules. But at the same time, she’d be totally lenient in other ways. 

I remember wanting to skip school because I hadn’t studied for a test. She made up an illness for me and let me stay home. She was both my friend and tormentor — the definition of “frenemy.” 

When our family finances fell apart, the whole family fell apart. We were all a mess, emotionally and financially and spiritually. I was deep in my addiction to drugs and alcohol, and nearly lost my life to my addiction. I was out of control and out of balance in so many ways, including in respect to my fourth energy center, where love, compassion, and forgiveness reside. 

Creating a Balance of Love and Compassion

When it comes to healing and how to heal, we often have so many questions. As we explore this, let’s start with a concept, which may be new to you—

There is nothing to heal, because there is nothing broken.

This may not be how a typical conversation about healing begins, so let’s tie it all together with an explanation about how our body and our life collaborate with each other. We live in a quantum reality and that quantum reality is what you’re truly interested in becoming masterful at. 

Whether you are aware of this or not, there is a deep, true part of each of us that desires to walk and talk awake in this quantum reality as the creator and the healer that we truly are. 

Everyone is capable of transforming their lives from victimized “reactorship” to empowered creatorship, because creativity is what we’re made of. It’s what we are here to do. 

We are all capable of making this Quantum Flip® from victimhood to creatorship. No exceptions. Because we are made of creative energy itself and we are here to learn how to express and reveal that fully.

Remember those days when we used to travel? (I miss being in the room with all of you!) Back then, I’d meet people live and in-person who’d studied The Energy Codes® coursework for years. It was so inspiring to me, and still is, albeit virtually, that we’re reaching people all over the world because that is how we establish a different reality. We’ve created a new reality, despite, and because of, the circumstances. 

The biggest epidemic in the world today is loneliness. That feeling of being unloved, unloveable, alone… 

Technology has created a world that continues to become more connected... more crowded...  

and yet increasingly lonely for so many.

This persistent feeling is not just emotionally painful, it can damage your relationships, career and even your health. Lonely people tend to sleep poorly, experience depression and anxiety and have reduced immune and cardiovascular health. 

Research also tells us that chronic loneliness makes you increasingly sensitive to rejection and hostility. In uncertain social and work related situations, lonely people immediately think the worst.  

Lonely people also pay more attention to negative social information like disagreements or criticism. They tend to remember more of the negative things that happen and fewer positive things. 

You must know that as a soul, as a sacred being, as a Divine entity, you are placing yourself in certain circumstances, situations, and conditions in every given moment of your life for a particular purpose and reason.

It’s also important to understand that pain (both physical and emotional) can, in fact, be bidden. It actually can be wanted. It’s hard to believe, I know, but it is, in fact, true that it can be welcomed for any one of a number of reasons.

Yet if the Mind thinks that a particular pain is “unwanted,” it will not abide it. It will violently or strenuously fight against it, and that’s precisely what creates the experience of struggle and suffering in one’s life.

Underneath this truth lies a deeper one: Nothing that ever happens is “bad” for you.  If it were bad for you, it wouldn’t be happening. Life is incapable of producing an event or condition that does not carry you to the next place in your evolution or that is not designed for your next expression of Divinity. Since the expression of Divinity is the reason you are here, you can be sure that everything is placed before you to serve this Divine purpose; in other words, to serve your purpose because your purpose is the Divine purpose.

Life offers you repeated chances—literally millions of chances —to respond differently to conditions and events should you choose to, and by that process to re-create yourself anew.  Indeed, it is the nature of life to seek greater and greater expressions and experiences of what life is and how it is when it flows through you, in you, as you as a means of evolution.

And yet, there has to be way to evolve, to expand, to grow without the suffering and struggle.

The past year has been full of hardship for Americans as the pandemic caused widespread illness, deaths, business closings and job losses. Even those who have not experienced illness and economic hardship have had to deal with an increased sense of isolation and loneliness.

The emotional toll has been particularly hard on young people who have lost the chance to learn and socialize in school, healthcare workers facing trauma and burnout, nursing home residents and those who live alone. But no one has been untouched.

It’s hard to gauge at this point just what the overall, long-term impact will be, but many people will face long-term emotional scars from the loss, trauma, and struggles they have endured.

When we have an intensely difficult experience, the emotions we feel should fade with time. But sometimes they’re just too much for us to handle. In these cases, our bodies may hold onto those negative energies in the form of what many call “emotional baggage.”

We call these emotional energies Trapped Emotions, unresolved feelings from difficult and traumatic life experiences. These lingering emotional energies can damage our mental and physical health, relationships, and overall sense of well-being. Their harmful effects can be exacerbated during difficult times like those we have faced since the pandemic begin.