Video Transcript: Relationship Building & Restoration

Well, we're back again and here we are at Session 8, and I'm very excited about the information we want to share with you today.  We're looking at relationship building and restoration.  And I'm suggesting that restoration is an ongoing, never ending process. 

If you look at a building that's not being cared for and tended on a regular basis, it'll fall apart. And I think that's true for all of us as well.  If we're not paying attention to how we are managing our lives and managing our health, how we are managing our nutrition, how we manage stress, all of those things we're becoming unkempt, and buildings that are not occupied are buildings that crumble and seem to just fall apart. 

And the same thing is true of relationships.  They're built and they need restoration.  They are built and the only reason they stayed built is when they're tended.  And so we want to talk about how to be able to do that and do that effectively. So if we look at Session 8, there are two paragraphs here that I want to focus on for just a minute, actually three.  And what we're going to do is have you do an exercise.  But what I'd also like to do is show you why these three paragraphs are here in total, and give you an example of how the entire handout is structured. 

Session 8 is Relationship Building and Restoration. Think about a situation you wish had turned out differently.  Hand writing it down allows you to manage it hands on, as you reflect on the incident or situation.  Now, that sentence, those two sentences right there give you an opportunity to afford those that you're teaching a way for them to get involved through this exercise.  And the verbiage is laid out here, and I would say it this way, but you can say it any way that you would choose to.  But if you choose to use the words that are here, the way you say them is going to make a difference as well. 

So make the words that you use come to life. And you do that by moving your voice up and down, changing it slightly, letting your enthusiasm - ethos is the Greek word that is the root word that was used to create our word enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is spirit within.  Enthusiasm is what you exude.  Enthusiasm is what you project out to others.  

And I spent some time when I first started teaching with the same monotone and everything I said and did and I asked a fellow student, a fellow teacher what he felt my students were hearing. And he said, “Well, they're hearing you use the same monotone all the time.” 

And so I'm leaving this slide up, because I want you to hear the tones in my voice and recognize the difference between the way I'm saying things, and the way I used to say them.  I'm going to read that first paragraph in its entirety and I'm going to read it the way I would have said it at one time. 

Think about a situation you wish had turned out differently.  And writing it down allows you to manage it hands on, as you reflect on the incident or situation.  Try to capture as much detail as possible by remembering how the incident started.  What did it look like as it progressed?  What was the actual outcome?  What do you wish could have been different? 

Now that's how I spent the first several years and my role as a teacher and presenter.  And sadly, there were a whole lot of people who experienced that.  Because when Arthur, my friend, said to me, “You're boring,” I said, “Oh,” and he said, “You need to use your voice the way it was designed.”  And so I said well how do I do that? Well, his suggestion to me was to take some singing lessons. So I did.  Now I still can't sing very well but my voice does do different things.  

I'm going to read the same paragraph again. And this is how I read it. Today. 

Think about a situation you wish had turned out differently.  Handwriting it down allows you to manage it hands on, as you reflect on the incident or situation.  Try to capture as much detail as possible by remembering how the incident started.  What did it look like as it progressed and what was the actual outcome?  What do you do, or what do you wish could have been different? 

Now, by giving you two examples of the very same verbiage, my hope is I've given you an opportunity to transform what you say and do when it comes to how you manage situations. 

And if I've been able to do that, then I'm thrilled that we're able to talk about building relationships and restoration because there's an enthusiasm that you need to take to relationships.  There’s an eagerness to be in a relationship with other people.  And by bringing that authentic you to the table, you're developing that relationship, or you're restoring relationship that needs to be restored.

A few weeks ago I called the gentleman that I worked for many years ago and he was very excited to take my telephone call.  And I could hear the enthusiasm in his voice, as he heard the enthusiasm in mine for us to restore those great conversations we'd had many years before.  I live in a different city, and he lives in and life happens and I just had not had any contact with him for a very long time. 

You see, our families were connected. And our parents were connected. And as little kids, we would see each other and then later on, I worked for this gentleman.  And it was a wonderful opportunity for me to revisit that time. And the opportunity gave me an opportunity to realize that life is about how enthusiastically we approach every single situation. 

So if you're looking at your handout, and you see the information that's here, using deep breath, slow rhythmic breaths from your diaphragm, recall the experience.  So we're asking you to do this; write down, with pen and paper this experience that you had that you wish had turned out differently.  And by doing it in as much detail as you can possibly do it, what you're going to be able to do is capture or recapture that and then this deliberate type of behavioral exercise is giving you permission to revisit it on your own terms.  And then return to the incident and manage the feelings associated with it. And as a result, you better understand the triggers that may have associated it with anger directed at you, or anger you projected on somebody else. 

See. I was raised in a good, solid Christian home. And we are a family of five. And my mom and dad argued a lot.  And their voices raised and they screamed and shouted.  And I remember some of those arguments growing up and I thought that that's how you handled anger; that you screamed and you shouted, and sometimes you threw things because my mother was a thrower. And she would throw things at my father and he would duck.

Now, that is how they understood anger.  They loved each other very much.  And that was apparent because most of the time, we had joy in our home. And we celebrated all the birthdays and all of the holidays and things were lovely. But there were times when this anger would arise and it was shouting and hollering and I just thought that's the way you operated. 

Well. I grew up and in my 20s and early 30s, I did the same thing, and then recognized that things needed to change.  And when I decided to change, it took some time to get from where I had been growing up, and that behavioral experience, and the one that I wanted to behave with. And over time, it helped me develop better rapport and relationships with others. 

And so I'm suggesting here that when we look at how we do this, let me give you an example of how we move this from where we are to where we want to go.  

Let's look at Eight Great Ideas.  Now this is in your handout.  We call it Eight Great Ideas.  And we're saying that generosity is being generous with your time, being generous with all of your resources, but we're defining this in the way that we can move from one behavioral model to another behavioral model, and having a generous mentality is a benefit to you and to others because it's the opposite of having a scarcity mentality. 

Now willingness to take risks.  How willing are you to take a risk?  How willing are you to make a change or a difference in how you approach things?  And by having written this out, this situation you wish it turned out differently, you're giving yourself permission to look at it with fresh eyes, and then take a risk.  And the risk might be picking up a telephone, and calling this person and having a conversation.  It might be writing them a note.  It might be just asking for forgiveness.  Maybe this person is completely out of your life but you recall the incident and it wasn't as pleasant as you wanted it to be.  And let's suppose it comes along again.  How do you plan to manage it?  Well, are you going to be willing to take a risk? 

And you'll find that when we make mistakes, the best thing we can do is admit them.   It's one of those great ideas.  Look, I made a mistake here, I really screwed this up.  I wish I had done that differently and I apologize.  By the way, the word apology, or apologize, is a verb, and it's an action that you're taking.  

So you want to be a bigger person with empathy expression.  Empathy is working through something and trying to see yourself in someone else's shoes.  And that's, that's a help to you. You put genuine effort into learning from others. 

What are you going to learn from others?  What are you going to learn from the mistake you made?  What are you going to learn from the relationship you had, and the one you wish you had with this person?  All of those things come into play.  

And so we have to be conscious of that and be clear on the fact that we're trying to regain or give birth to our sense of humor.  I have to say that I'm not surprised that many people just take themselves too seriously.  And some people say, “Well, you know, I don't have a sense of humor.”  And I'm not talking about telling jokes.  What I'm saying is the simple things in life that happened, that you catch, and you are able to reflect on them, and they bring a smile to your face or a chuckle to your thought process. 

And this isn't something that you just visit one time. This is something that you continue to reflect on and find the resources that you need from others so that you can better understand it all the time.  And by doing that, you regain your sense of joy and wonder.  And it allows you to take and participate more in your community.  It allows you to have that joy that comes with knowing that you're not perfect and never will be but what you are is a human being who has human frailties, and you're like everyone else.  And when you can laugh at yourself, it can make a difference. 

I remember pulling up with my daughter at a service station and putting gas in the car.  And I was in a hurry and drove off.  And I glanced back in the rearview mirror and the hose was going like this.  I had pulled the handle off, and there's gas shooting everyplace.  Oh, I was embarrassed.  I pulled around and went inside.  Of course, they turned off the pump.  But I can laugh about it now. 

Or the time I'm driving down the street and it's snowing. And I had put new windshield wipers on, they're going back and forth and all of a sudden, boom, the one windshield wiper goes off to the side of the road.  And the kids just cackled.  And I started laughing.  And I think about how silly and goofy I had done trying to put this on.  So those are mistakes I've made; goofy things that have happened. 

The first pilot light that I ever lit blew back on me.  And so my wife made a rule. If it has a plug on it, or it's a pilot light, I'm not allowed to touch it.  If it doesn't fit on the kitchen table, I'm not allowed to fix it.  And the reason I'm not is, I'm not very handy.  So all of those things caused me frustration and anger, aggravation, and I got angry and all of those things.  But when I gave them up, when I surrendered to the fact that I'm not a mechanically oriented, my life got better. 

So embrace the community spirit in full major by recognizing these great ideas can help you move from where you are to where you want to be.  

Now, we also have a couple of other slides here that I want to share with you.  So let me pull this next one up and, and get that queued up here, and let's look at this one. 

Trust Building Factors.  We are 100% responsible for our attitude.  Attitude communicates our mood to each other, and we guess at knowing someone else's attitude.

I want you to think about that for just a minute.  We guess at someone else's attitude and perception.  Perception and attitude go hand in hand.  Notice here the perception is how you see your world.  Each of us has our own unique perception.  And our goal is to align our perception with reality by discovering our communication style. 

And when we communicate, and when we attempt to communicate, we want to do that using our best style possible, and our best style is more precision.  So if you're an outgoing person, or you're more inward, if you're extroverted or introverted, that's a communication style. But in both of those instances, you can be more precise. 

If you're a very organized person and very orderly in how you communicate, that's wonderful, but the precision of it still has implications.  And sometimes, we're one of those people that can't put thoughts together, we bounce all over the place, we go down rabbit holes all the time in our communication, so our perception of communication is different.  But in that same breath, it's the precision of your communication that makes a difference.  And we covered that one of the last sessions.  We know and want to remember that. 

Let's go back to attitude and look at how that applies to we guess at knowing someone else's attitude.  That's all you can do.  The only attitude you have any management of is your own.  And we're 100% responsible for our attitude.  Attitudes are mental habits.  And we've said this before, I repeat it here.  And we're 100% responsible for that.  And the exercise that we did when we said hard work and we said knowledge were not enough, but that attitude really plays a huge part in how we operate. 

So these trust building factors that we have covered in the other sessions, in some of the other sessions, are equally as important to this session as it is, and it's important for ourselves as well as it is for others.   

See, when all of that was going on when I was growing up, and all the hollering and screaming, I heard I also saw my mom and dad loved each other very much. They had disagreements, and they operated the way their families had operated. And that's what they passed on.  So then generationally, if I was going to do something different, I had to make a decision that I didn't want to do that; I didn't want to throw things, and I stopped throwing things, but I had to make a conscious decision to do it.  

So my attitude about how to manage anger changed.  And when it changed for me, it changed for the people around me because your sphere of influence is impacted by how you take your attitude to the task of changing your behaviors.  So behaviors are choices that lead to decisions, and we're going to get into decisions in one of the next few sessions.  

And all of this will start really making some sense because we want to connect the dots to each one of these sessions, going all the way back to cause and effects of anger, all the way up to where we are now, where we're saying, how do you build trust?  You build trust by being trustworthy?  How do you do that?  By having integrity.  What's integrity?  Integrity is being honest with yourself so you can be honest with other people.  That's how you build trust in yourself.  

And you build it through prayer.  You build it through connection with God.  And having that trust, and the download you're getting through Holy Spirit to operate in this world, you're building on these separate steps, factors that help you build relationships.  And what is a relationship?  An interaction between two people.  And some of them surprise you.  Some of them come naturally. And some of them you have to go out and find.

I was doing a little program.  And I asked everyone, there was a small group, I asked everyone to introduce themselves.  And in the course of introducing themselves one gentleman said, “Well,” and he named himself, his name is Daines, and he said, “My wife and I have raised 62 foster children.” And that really was a wow, for me.  Whoa, this guy is serious about giving back. 

So I sought him out at the end of the program and introduced myself to him.  And I pursued him. And for 25 years, we've been dear friends.  And we're dear friends because that moment when he introduced himself, introduced himself in a way that was very invitational and I accepted the invitation.  I don't know how many other people commented or sought him out but I know that it transformed the relationship I have with him and his wife, and my wife and I have with them, and it's transformed my life in many ways, because he mentored and guided and directed me. 

And we never know when that's going to happen. Attitude communicates our mood to each other.  And there are a whole lot of people who are positive, a whole lot of people who are negative, a whole lot of people who are in between.  And guess what.  We get to decide where we want to fall on that continuum.  And I suggest that it's better to fall on the positive side, more than the negative side.  

And guess what.  Some morning you’re going to wake up you're going to feel disappointed or down on the dumps, or discouraged. I don't know if it's barometric pressure.  I don't know what it is.  I don't know if it's hormones.  All I know is you get to decide to change that.  And you cannot think yourself into right acting…you have to act yourself into right thinking.  You have to make a decision; you have to act yourself into thinking right.  And when you do, it will make a difference in your life. 

So when we start looking at building and restoring relationships, think of that building.  And think of the fact that when the building is vacant, it has this aura about it, and it crumbles over time.  You'll see the concrete started to crumble.  But when a building is occupied, and there's interaction going on and it's being maintained, it makes us recognize that we, on this earth, need to maintain relationships, and the relationship we have with our Heavenly Father helps us maintain the relationship we need with ourselves to take care of us well enough to take care of other people.  

When we do that, we're doing all the right things.  And all the right things are all the right things at the time because as we go through life, we’ll recognize that there are still things that we need to adjust; still things we need to change.  And when we decide to make those changes, it will make big differences in our lives. 

I'm really excited about Session 10, which we're going to get into the next time we meet, because you're going to see something that I have been a student of for 20 plus years.  And it's something I put together a very long time ago and people like yourselves have helped me just continue to refine this until it's about what you're going to see when you get in Session 10.  And it will help you tremendously in building relationships, and restoring those that need to be restored.  It will help you with your anger management.  It will help you teach anger management to others.  And that's really what we want you to do.  

We share this information so that it becomes ingrained in you.  And you'll be someplace and someone will walk up to you and they'll say, “I remember I was in a class that you taught.  And I remember you said…” and they'll tell you something that you said that is so ingrained in you that it came out for them and transformed something they were doing that made a big difference in their life.  That's going to happen for you.  It's going to happen for you because of the genuineness you take to every role you have.

See you next time.