LET’S DANCE!

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers“Isn’t This A Lovely Day”

from the movie “Top Hat” (1935)

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

•“It takes two to tango”

•In dancing, the “chemistry” between the dancers/partners is of prime importance

•Boils down to the “relationship” between the dancers/partners

•So it is with everything else in life

Life is Relationships;The rest is just details.

Everything in life that truly matters can be

boiled down to Relationships

We are constantly involved with people.

There is no escaping relationships.

Unfortunately, we have developed patterns, cycles and

behaviour that lead to a “destructive dance”.

Relationship Crisis• Lifelong friendship goes sour

• Teenager runs away from home

• Co-workers quarrel, one leaves the company

• Girlfriend and boyfriend split up

• Newlyweds have their first fight

• Adult siblings stop talking to each other - for years

• Marriage of 15 years shatters in separation or divorce

• Lonely teenager commits suicide

• Pastor’s marital infidelity splits church

• 2 students, estranged from friends and society, gun down their schoolmates and then end their own lives

• 19 terrorists set off bombs in public facilities killing hundreds of innocent people

Practically all individual, familial, societal,

communal, national, and global crises, small or

large, can be reduced to one thing -

the breakdown of relationships

The DNA of Relationships

•The genetic relationship code with which we are created

•Our relational “hardwiring”

•The unalterable, immutable relationship truths that is true for all people, for all time. There is essentially no exception

The Relational DNA Code

•You are made for relationships

•You are made with the capacity to choose

•You are made to take responsibility for yourself

•Understanding these simple yet profound truths could revolutionize your life and your relationships

1. You are made for relationships

•Made to need relationships even when they are hard, difficult or just plain frustrating

•We can choose HOW we will participate in relationships. We have no choice about WHETHER we will participate.

•Critical point: Your only real choice is whether you will work to make your relationships healthy; whether you will do things that hinder or enhance relationships.

•Relationships are NOT an option

You are made for 3 kinds of relationships

•With others

•With yourself

•With God

•The greatest commandment - Matthew 22: 36-40

•If one relationship is out of balance, the others will be affected

You have a relationship with others

•Question: Are your relationships strong, satisfying, nurturing, respectful, exciting? OR Are your relationships disappointing, strained, distant, painful, frustrating?

•Are your relationships healthy or unhealthy?

•Relationships require a lifetime of necessary but satisfying work

•The main cause of most, if not all, of our relationship problems: The Blame Dance

•IT’S NEVER JUST ABOUT THE OTHER PERSON.

•THE PROBLEM YOU HAVE WITH ANOTHER PERSON IS OFTEN A PROBLEM YOU HAVE WITH YOURSELF

•Fear / Insecurity (a personal illustration)

•It’s not what we hear that is important. It’s how we react to what we hear that really matters.

•Any picture of a real relationship problem never focuses on the other person. The picture must also include YOU.

•When we play the blame game, we are actually placing the responsibility for the real problem on the other person. It is only when you recognize your own responsibility that you will begin to find the solution.

•Remember: IT’S NEVER JUST ABOUT THE OTHER PERSON

•Understanding this profound truth is critical to healthy and successful relationships

•Loving oneself = Self-centeredness / Selfishness ?

•The key is balance - selfishness vs selfhood

•How to do this: Stand apart from yourself. View yourself objectively

•Put yourself in the picture!

•Those who have a healthy relationship with themselves, care for themselves (physically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, and spiritually)

•Put yourself in the picture. But be warned, you might not like what you see!

•The best lens is God’s lens

You have a relationship with yourself

You have a relationship with God

•This is the most important relationship

•We all have a relationship with God whether or not we like it

•French philosopher Blaise Pascal: “Each person is created with a lifelong, deep desire for something more, and that longing is filled only by knowing God.”

•God is very serious and passionate about his relationship with you. (Exodus 34:14)

•If this relationship is out of balance, then all of your other relationships will be out of balance.

•How do we know if our relationship with God is healthy? View it with God’s lens

When you have a healthy relationship with God, you are in the best position to see yourself as He

sees you, which will result in a healthier relationship with yourself. When it is not healthy, you cannot see yourself properly and you lack the power to change or enjoy life as He intended. It gets more complicated when the other person also has an unhealthy relationship with God. Then neither of you is seeing yourself clearly.

What happens then is that you begin to react to each other for the wrong reasons - sometimes

with an inflated sense of who you are, and sometimes with a deflated sense of who you are. If neither of you can see yourself accurately, how on earth do you expect the relationship to work?

Our relationship with God is the first and greatest relationship, and our ability to love others is directly related to our ability to

love ourselves.

All three relationships must be in balance.

2. You are made with the capacity to choose

•God gave you the capacity and the power to choose

•You can’t always choose your relationships but you CAN choose how you will act in those relationships

•“I have no choice” is a lie. The truth is, you DO have a choice. In fact, you have several choices.

•CHOICE EQUALS CHANGE

•You have to take control of your life. Stop being a victim of your past and start moving on to something new. You have to make a choice. You have to change. Even when the change is scary.

•NOT CHOOSING IS, IN ITSELF, A CHOICE

•We fail to understand that by not making critical choices we are, in fact, choosing. By not doing anything, we force change to be done to us.

•Stephen Covey: Act or be acted upon

•The choice you make will affect everything about your life

•CHOICE = CHANGE. If nothing changes, nothing change

Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot

change; courage to change the things

I can;and wisdom to know the

difference.

3. You are made to take responsibility for yourself

•Adam and Eve. Their story is our story

•When we find ourselves in a relationship difficulty, it is almost always our tendency to point the finger at the other person. It’s him; it’s her; them...

•We blame people, places, institutions, circumstances...

•Stephen Covey: responsible = “response - able”

•When we exercise responsibility, we exercise our ability to respond. And we all have that ability

The dance that destroys relationships

•THE EXTERNAL PROBLEM IS RARELY THE REAL PROBLEM

•What appears to be the problem is often not the problem

•Many of us dance a destructive dance. This is the Dance of Fear

•The core problem of and in unhealthy relationships stems from our core FEAR

•Without identifying your own core fear and understanding how you tend to react when your fear button gets pushed, your relationships will suffer

•Most common core fears are all related to 2 main primary fears: the fear of being controlled (losing power - most common in men); and the fear of being disconnected (separation from people and being alone - most common in women)

The Dance of Fear Steps•1. You hurt. What does your hurt look like?

•2. You want. When you hurt, you want a solution. What will make you feel better? In all probability, you will expect the other person to be your solution. DON’T EXPECT THE OTHER PERSON TO BE YOUR SOLUTION

•- misplaced expectations -

•3. You fear. When you feel your wants (expectations) won’t be fulfilled, you experience fear

•4. You react. With well-worn and learned patters of behaviour. You’ll do anything to soothe your hurt, to calm your fear.

The Damaging Fear Dance

When someone pushes your fear button, you tend to react with

unhealthy words or actions calculated to motivate the other

person to change and give you what you want. Often your reaction

triggers the core fear of the other person, who then reacts with

unhealthy words or actions to try to get you to fulfill his or her wants.

And suddenly the two of you end up in a full-blown Fear Dance.

•The Fear Dance is “functionally dysfunctional”

•Functional: Some sort of interaction is allowed to continue even if that interaction consistently hurts. It functions in a painful, crazy kind of way

•Dysfunctional: The relationship the dance creates brings tremendous pain

•The dance allows the people involved to continue some sort of relationship but it has no power to create the kind of relationship they really want.

•One of the worst things about the Fear Dance is that, eventually, it makes us dependent on other people for our happiness and fullfillment. We look to our friends or family or spouses to fullfill our wants. There is something functionally dysfunctional about such a dependency.

•God created us to depend on Him, and as human beings we naturally gravitate toward being dependent. But there’s a problem - such dependency was designed and reserved for God alone, not for our spouses, friends, family, boyfriends or girlfriends. So, although the Fear Dance “works” in a certain way, it cannot bring us to where we want to be.

•So, if you want different results, you have to break the rhythm of the Fear Dance and learn a NEW Dance.

We can break the rhythm of the Fear Dance

By identifying our core fears and by understanding that the other person isn’t the problem nor the solution, we can begin to learn new dance steps to healthier

relationships

We need to learn new dance steps

How?

Attend kayo ng next >2 episode...