How to Repair a Broken Friendship

Photo by Arne Hendriks
Photo by Arne Hendriks

Last week I talked about friendships and what happens when they suddenly end. I have been pondering my friendships to understand what happens and what it will take for me to be a great friend as well as an incredible Life Coach in the area of Confidence and Self Esteem.

What I saw in myself and my friendships was shocking.  I’ve been being a bratty demanding friend and ending relationships with the Kiss of Death.  I want you to know, that I have been doing some powerful work in and around my friendships. I have taken  immediate action, cleaned up and have gotten rid of olds way of behaving that no longer work or serve me.

What I know is that I love my friends. My friends love me and love being with me.  However, what I saw about myself is that I do not have space for them to make mistakes in their friendship with me.  I want my friends to be perfect and not cause me any concerns or hurt me in any way that I deem unsuitable for a friendship. So the moment I experience an upset or cause for concern, real or imagined, I confront them. If they do not act the way I want them to, I end the relationship. I am gone.  They’re dead to me. This has cost me a lot of friends.

This is just a basic example of what I do:

I send them a text or email which is filled with love and the Kiss of Death.
I erase them from all my communications, Facebook, phone etc.,
When I see them around, I ignore them.
I don’t want to know anything about them ever because I’ll get upset.
Whenever I think about them and have unresolved emotions.

This is what I am left with:

Friends that I have ignored or mentally killed off.
Friends who even if they wanted to be in communication, cannot reach me they’re blocked or ignored.
I have am upset, angry and miss my friends.
I am left with longing with memories of great friends and times that are no long present in my life.
Continuous conversations and stories about what happened or did not happen.

What I’m already being is:

Stubborn – I’ll be dammed, l’ll no longer communicate with them.
Justified – They are wrong, I am right.
Angry and pissed off – To hell with them!
Sad and replaying memories– I’m stubborn and I will not surrender.  They have to say they are sorry first and confess the wrong they have done me.

In the end, what I discovered is that I need to accept my friends as humans. They are going to do and say things that I do not agree with.  Whatever happens in my friendships is not personal. I can accept them anyway they are and are not. I realize what was missing is: vulnerability, integrity, love, patience, kindness and graciousness.

I took on what was missing in my life and what I saw was the piles up upset feelings I created for myself and for my friends.  I realize that this way of being is not who I want to be in my life. I proceeded to call my friends and send email to them and one by one.  I put the integrity back in my life and my relationships by sharing my experiences and how I felt about our relationship.  I let them know I could be counted on going forward.

The response has been great. They got to share how it was for them being on the other end of my stuff (crap.) For those I spoke on the phone with, I have declared that I will clean up with them in person as well.  I shared with them what was there for me, what had me kill off the relationship and how the fear of being told what to do, of being wrong, judged and evaluated, actually impacted our friendship.  I had no compassion for my friends and was being a spoiled brat. The person who was being hard on me was me.

Going forward, my friends get to choose powerfully if they want to engage in a relationship with me from nothing.  I get to accept them as they are and as they are not. If I cannot accept them how they are, then I have no right calling myself a friend.  I don’t have to make them wrong and me right.  This approach does not work. I am a Life Coach and create transformation in other people’s lives.  It was a young conversation which caused me to get reactivated and where I did not have language.  Well, I have the language now and I will use it.

With all that said, I want my friends to know that I love them. I am transforming my old friendships into friendships where I have understanding and communication, where I will be being vulnerable, loving, gracious, and kind. They get to be however they are and choose powerfully if they wish to be friends with me. Together, we create relationships that work.  With that I no longer have to experience fear of loss, upset or some impending hurt.  Whatever way my friends choose to be is fine.

Where in your life are you willing to take action and reclaim your friendship with people you have killed off by giving them The Kiss of Death?

Love, Noreen Sumpter

You Can Become An Olympic Champian

“But right now, I have no goals; I’m just like a bum.” Usain Bolt.

They came, they conquered or were conquered.   They all achieved their goals, some will play again.  Some will never compete at this level again. Some will go onto to train others by giving away what they have accomplished becoming coaches or leaving the sport of their passion entirely.    However, all of them are winners in their own right.

Michael Phelps, is still the fastest man in water, and now to add to his list of accomplishments breaking the all-time Olympic Medal record.  The old record was 18.  The most medals were won on land by a gymnast, Larisa Latynina. Michael record was won in the water with 19 medals.  Her record took 70 years to win. Michael’s record, who knows where or when it will be broken?

Phelps came and accomplished everything he and his Coach Bob Bowman set out to accomplish.  His coach put him through many rigorous tasks.  His coach readied him to be able to swim blind only being able to count his strokes in previous last Olympics.  Who knew?

The fastest man in the world “All Day Everyday” Usain Bolt ran for 36.84 seconds for the 100 meters.  What makes Usain Bolt so amazing?  Well, he has all the physical skills possible to attain his goal.  Actually the bigger question is what makes anyone of these athletes so amazing and powerful?  Yes they have the drive.  They’ve developed the skill, and they have the passion.  There is one thing that they also have.  They have coaches. Their win is also their coaches win.   They have coaches that help them plan what’s next.  The coach is in the background.  Very rarely is the coach in the foreground.  However, the drills that get done, the practice over and over again are planted and take root in the athlete mind, bodies and action are planted there by their coaches.  The Coach,  who each and every one of the players love and respect.  Their coaches are the muscle behind the curtain.

A coach will go to any length to train you to be number on in your level of performance. A coach will stretch you in ways that you can never stretch yourself.  Your coach is able to have you be all and more of what you want to be; always in the background, knowing your game, making sure that you know your game.

Usain Bolt has conquered all his current goals.  He came to be a legend and he is now a legend.  He say’s pertaining to what’s next for him “Right now nothing. I’ve done what I wanted to do. My coach and I will discuss what we need to do. But right now, I have no goals; I’m just like a bum.”

“I’ve done something that no one has done before, which is defending my double title,” Bolt said. “Back to back for me, I would say I’m the greatest.”  So would say that kind of confidence is arrogant.  I would say that is a person that knows what he came to do and did it despite the media comments.  He fulfilled on the measure.  Confidence is something that gives you a sense triumph.  A Coach is someone that makes you triumphant.

What do all of these Athletes have in common?  Yes, they have coaches and they take the coaching. The coach keeps them out of their head and in the game.  Who keeps you out of your head and in your games in your life?  When things are not working, or working the way you want them to do?  What do you do? How do you win in the games that your create for your life?  Do you quit at the slightest incongruence? Or do you just give up at the mere thought of what you think will take place?   Who helps you build the weak muscle in areas of your life that you would like to transform?

Having a coach will help you transform old patterns and limiting behaviors.  Find out more and read my testimonials of the successes that I have helped my clients accomplish and more.
•    What area of life are you tired of recreating over and over again?
•    What is the result that you’re not getting?
•    Are you waking up exhausted at the mere thought of another day being unfulfilled?
•    What are the wants, needs or desire that are not being fulfilled?
•    Are you doing the same thing over and over again looking for a different result?

Take Action! Get a coach that can have you be accountable and have you develop the confidence to go after your very own personal Olympic dream.

Relationships Take Work

Thank God I can read. I am reading a wonderful little book called A Fine Romance, The passage of Courtship from Meeting to Marriage.  This book was written in the 80s, but it’s quite motivating. It describes how we experience life and relationships. 

Everything that is important takes work.  Your career, growing your money, your health, getting in shape, it all takes work. The book explains that you are conscious of all the work life takes, but are not aware of how much work it takes to be in a successful relationship. 

The writer is bloody right. When it comes to matters of the heart, I personally want my relationships to be thunder bolts and lightening.  I want it to be like a fantasy that happens in a Lifetime movie. My lover plants a gentle kiss on my mouth and my eyes shut and next minute, life cuts to me being married, living in the perfect house with the perfect life. The end.  Yeah!  Wake up.  Duh!  None of this is going to happen unless I work at it. 

Relationships takes work because the dating process takes effort. It is not just one step. You have to go through many steps: the dating process, the courting process, getting to know each other, being present with your feelings, thoughts and everything else in between.  Being confident enough go through the process of creating of partnership without getting aggravated requires you to discover what you really want in a relationship. In order to do that, you need to monitor your own behaviors.

What I discovered is there is a challenging universal structure to courtship.  In a nutshell, there are many experiences that can occur. You may one day feel ambivalent or you may have deaf stops where you only hear your own thoughts and ignore anything anyone else has to say. You also have the challenge of dealing with your own personal theories, worries, limiting beliefs and triggers, as well as a list of what your partner should and should not do. There are dramas within ourselves which relate to a complicated array of drives, feelings, expectations and assumptions. Each one determining our individual responses to love and relationships. All along the way, your self-esteem gets battered and bruised. Your confidence gets shattered and you wind up swimming in a world of unhappiness. Your feel like you are glowing one moment while in the next, you feel like an abandoned baby on the steps of a local church, not knowing what the hell happened.   

At times you feel ambivalent. One minute you dig the person and the next minute you wonder what you ever saw in them. Then back again.  Either you’re dumped or you’re dumping them out of exasperation and frustration.  One of the things to be excited about and to know is this is all a part of the relationship experience. It is normal. The important thing to remember is to build a solid foundation within yourself that is separate from the relationship. This will allow you to be like a rock that won’t be swayed by every step of the courting process. If not,  the fears of your past relationships will leach into your new relationships, whether your aware of it or not.

I had the liberty of dating a man I thought was wonderful. In the end, we did not work out. The main reason is because his old relationship filtered into my relationship with him. He may have left his last relationship but it did not leave him. How do I know that he did not truly get rid of his last relationship? He said he had the utmost disdain for his ex-live-in-girlfriend. As time went on, the same concerns and worries from his old relationship filtered into the relationship I was having with him. He had a fear of entrapment. His language was about me trapping him in a cage. He did not want to be in that same type of situation again so all relationships were scary to him. There was no opportunity for me in our relationship as his unconscious behavior made him behave as though all relationships were going to end in the same way. 

The book describes this as the fear of entrapment.  I made his anxiety worse. He feared being locked in an emotional cage. He thought when he was with a woman, he’d lose his freedom.  No matter what I said, it made no real difference.  It was over before it was even allowed to begin.

I could have felt bad about it. I could have blamed myself. But because of a healthy amount of confidence and self-esteem, I know that the end of our relationship does not mark me as a failure or a bad person. I know I can give and receive love. The end of a relationship is not a rejection of me and my worth as a person. It is not personal. It is a personal relationship but the behavior is not personal. The thing that is personal is the love I share in any relationship which I will continue to give freely.

Looking Back on Your Past

This morning, I started my Vision for 2012, and I thought about all of you. Do you create a Vision for the new year? And how do you do it?

We often look back on the year and go over all the ways we failed. I wanted to do this but I failed. I was supposed to do this but I’m not good enough. Stop it! Would you put your best friend down like this. No! If you did, what type of friend would you be. Instead, think about what you accomplished in the different areas of your life. Write about it like you are getting an award. The idea is to look at your life as a review that would look like your own life commercial review. To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s mine:

Photo courtesy of motone

Personal Development

I have fully reorganized my business. I have registered into the Landmark Forum and am doing a program called ‘Introduction Leaders Program’. It is a developmental program where I get to develop myself as a leader. In this program I get to look at myself from a place of power and create possibilities that I can live into. I look at what is missing in my life not what is wrong and create a possibility that calls to me into action and has me transform areas of my life that are important to me.

Relationships and Dating

I am seeing a man. After not dating for nearly 2 years unaware of the length of time I had not been intimate. I am seeing an amazing man who is sexy, powerful, open, honest, smart, and generous who has a stand for mankind where fairness on the planet and in his homeland is important. I am having a level of intimacy, I have never known. I am sharing myself openly and honestly.

I am asking for support in my life. Support is full circle for me. I give. Now, I allow others to give to me.

I have allowed my nurturing qualities to unfold and I love it. It is no longer exclusive to children. It is open to everyone.

I am trusting that everything that I choose will and can contribute to my life and there are no accidents on the planet.

I have lost a few friends this year that I love and will always love. However, it was far too much work to continue to play with them. So I released them with love. I have reached out to my brothers, one of which is up to starting a relationship with me where we are family. The other is mad at me and wants nothing to do with me. I will continue to reach out. He is my brother my blood and I love him. I don’t have to agree with anything he does or does not do. I can agree to disagree and not make him wrong.

Photo Courtesy of Jeditrilobite

Business and Career Development

I am growing my business; I have reorganized my business from the inside out and updated and upgraded all my prices. I have upgraded my skills and I am more in love with my business than ever before.
I continue to love the clients I have and I am ready to attract new clients.

Health and Well-Being

I have lost 25 lb.. and lost 2 dress sizes with the help of Gregg Barthelemy AKA Dr. Evil. Dr. Evil is one of the best things that have happened to me in 2011. He has not stood for any of my whining about the pushups that I could not do. I can now do 20 pushups, yes with struggle but I can do them. I am now a size 12. My goal is health and well-being is great and I am working toward being a size 10.

I am in great physical and emotional health. I am happy, I have been eating well. I still need to integrate water into my diet. I juice every day and I love it.

I have chosen vulnerability and I am in love with myself and love every part of who I am. I am looking throughout my life and ridding myself of old stagnant conversations that will be upgraded and ways of being that no longer serve my me or my life.
Looking back at the past year, you will see what you have accomplished and how far you have come.