Solemate
Page 1
Solemate
Also by Lauren Mackler
Speaking of Success:
World Class Experts Share Their Secrets,
featuring Jack Canfield, Stephen Covey,
Lauren Mackler, and Ken Blanchard;
edited by Insight Publishing
Solemate
Master the Art of Aloneness &
Transform Your Life
Lauren Mackler
HAY HOUSE, INC.
Carlsbad, California • New York City
London • Sydney • Johannesburg
Vancouver • Hong Kong • New Delhi
Copyright © 2009 by Lauren Mackler
Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com • Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au • Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk • Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za • Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast:www.raincoast.com • Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India:www.hayhouse.co.in
Design: Tricia Breidenthal • Index: Bonnie Hanks
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.
Author’s note: All of the cases described in this book are composites or clients whose names and details have been changed to protect their rights of confidentiality and privacy.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mackler, Lauren.
Solemate : master the art of aloneness and transform your life / Lauren Mackler. -- 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4019-2143-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Maturation (Psychology) 2. Depression, Mental. I. Title.
BF710.M314 2009
158.1--dc22
2008043307
ISBN: 978-1-4019-2143-9
12 11 10 09 4 3 2 1
1st edition, April 2009
Printed in the United States of America
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MY HERO
AND FATHER, EDWARD D. MACKLER, M.D.
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I: UNCOVERING YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF
Chapter 1: Beginning the Journey
Chapter 2: Embracing Your Aloneness
Chapter 3: Uncovering Your Conditioned Self
Chapter 4: Managing Fear So It Doesn't Manage You
Chapter 5: Living Deliberately Versus by Default . .
PART II: LIBERATING YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF
Chapter 6: Reclaiming Your Innate Wholeness
Chapter 7: Becoming the Partner You Seek
Chapter 8: Creating Your Life Vision
Chapter 9: Building an Inner and Outer Support System
Chapter 10: Bringing Your Vision to Life
Chapter 11: Sustaining Your Commitment
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Sample Action Plans
Notes
Glossary
Inner and Outer Support Resources
About the Author
Note to the Reader
Index
INTRODUCTION
This book is about you. Mastering the art of aloneness is about having a good relationship with yourself. It’s about becoming the person you were meant to be, treating yourself well, and shedding the old beliefs and behaviors that limit your ability to live a healthy, happy, satisfying life—with or without a partner.
When we are born, we are whole, integrated human beings filled with tremendous potential. We feel good about ourselves and are able to experience and express the full range of human emotions. As we grow up, we adapt to the peculiarities—and even pathologies—of our own families by adopting patterns of thought and behavior, some of which erode our innate wholeness. We carry these patterns into adulthood, and they shape our lives, our feelings about ourselves, and our relationships with others.
Mastering the art of aloneness is about reclaiming your innate wholeness, rather than seeking an ideal partner—an outer soul mate—to give you a sense of completeness and well-being. It’s a gradual, step-by-step process that involves understanding where your self-defeating patterns come from and how to move beyond them. That means uncovering and retrieving your authentic self—the person you really are beneath the layers of your life conditioning—and living in a conscious and deliberate way so you can achieve the results that you want from life and feel complete and happy on your own.
I first developed the Mastering the Art of Aloneness workshop in 1998—initially as a 12-week series, to allow people ample time to go through the process while receiving ongoing support. When I discovered that a lot of people found it difficult to take time out of their busy schedules to commit to a 12-week program, I began holding intensive weekend workshops. Those early 12-week sessions were particularly gratifying, because not only was I able to give people the tools they needed to begin to make changes in their lives, but as they each went off and used these tools, I could actually witness the dramatic transformations they were experiencing in their own lives from week to week. It’s exciting to watch, and just as exciting to experience. This book gives you the same tools I use in my private coaching practice and in my workshops, all of which are designed to help you transform your life.
Throughout Solemate, I share my own personal stories as well as those of some of the clients with whom I’ve worked. I’ve concealed the identity of my clients, in some cases changing details of their lives to protect their identities while staying true to their underlying experiences. I’ve made a conscious effort to avoid sexist language, as well as the tedium of referring to all these imaginary people as “he or she” throughout the text. So I’ve randomly used the word “he” or the word “she” when I provide examples, trying to alternate between them when I’m not referring to particular clients. Other than that, please don’t infer anything from where or how I’ve used these particular pronouns.
My interest in the field of personal development began in the early ’80s in California when I attended a series of Insight Seminars. Those personal-development workshops, combined with a growing interest in holistic healing, laid the foundation for my later education in the field. In the years that followed, I underwent training as a workshop facilitator and collaborated with my then-husband, a German physician, on a series of holistic healing workshops in Europe. Inspired in part by a seminar I attended led by Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of Love, Medicine & Miracles and a pioneer in integrating emotional and spiritual approaches into the healing of life-threatening illnesses, I created a workshop for can-cer patients called Cancer as a Chance to Live. I studied breath therapy in India, completed a psychotherapeutic counseling program in Germany, and trained in mind-body modalities such as bioenergetics, voice dialogue, emotional release, and craniosacral therapy. But it wasn’t until I returned to the United States in 1995, began a new course
of personal-development work, and completed my American degree in psychology that the underpinnings of my approach first began to take shape.
The catalyst was my own struggle with loneliness and depression in the wake of a devastating divorce. That, in turn, led me to begin the personal-development work that helped me transform my life. I had to dig deep into my past to understand my family of origin and the roots of my own dysfunction. Through that process, I came to understand the crucial connection between our life conditioning, the self-defeating patterns that diminish the quality of our lives, and the steps we can take to change those limiting patterns. I’ve developed what I believe is a unique method for helping others uncover their authentic selves and reclaim their innate wholeness so they can live a fuller, richer life on their own—or with someone else. My hope, in writing this book, is to give you the road map to achieving that life—a road map that I, like most people, never had.
Now, a few notes before you begin. Mastering the art of aloneness is a process. As its name suggests, this is not something that happens overnight. You can’t just snap your fingers and make it happen. Here are the three fundamental keys, the must-haves for mastering this art: focus, strategy, and commitment.
First, you need a focus. Mastering the art of aloneness is about living in alignment with your life’s purpose and your authentic self—what you were meant to do and who you were meant to be. That’s your focus. Finding your focus is central to this entire process. Throughout this book, I’ll be giving you the tools you need to define and clarify the life you want and to identify and understand what areas of your life you need and want to focus on. Ultimately, you’ll be aligning everything you do—your thoughts, your behaviors, and your actions—in a conscious and deliberate manner to create that life.
Second, you need a strategy. This book is your road map. It’s designed to enable you to develop a specific strategy of your own to get where you want to go, a step-by- step action plan that meets your individual needs. It includes a series of exercises that will help you understand who you are—under all those layers of conditioning—and where you want to go. You’ll be exploring your own family of origin to identify the specific thought and behavior patterns that are holding you back from achieving your full potential and the specific steps you need to take to change those deeply ingrained patterns. In addition, I’ll provide you with guidance on develop-ing a set of skills that are essential for achieving mastery over your own life and improving your relationship with yourself—and with others.
Finally, this process requires a commitment. It involves creating an ideal relationship with yourself. To be fully committed to this process, you have to feel deserving of it and you have to love yourself. After all, you’re not going to feel compelled to invest your time and energy in somebody you don’t like very much. That’s a central theme of this book: providing the guidance you need to build a healthy, constructive, and loving relationship with yourself.
As you take the first steps toward mastering aloneness, recognize that you’ll slip up. Imagine how a typical smoker quits smoking. He throws away that first pack of cigarettes. Then he might weaken and buy another pack, then just smoke a few cigarettes, then give it up for another few days or weeks, then start up again. And then, one day, he’s just done with it. He’s tried to quit, and finally he just stops. That back-and-forth is part of the process. Like quitting smoking, mastering aloneness is about changing your habitual patterns of behavior. As you begin the process, it’s important to be supportive and gentle with yourself. When you slip up, think of it as simply getting more information about what doesn’t work for you.
Making a commitment to mastering the art of aloneness means accepting the fact that you will slip up; treating yourself with love and compassion when you do, and then moving forward. That’s the commitment I hope you will make to yourself before you turn the next page.
PART I
UNCOVERING YOUR
AUTHENTIC SELF
CHAPTER 1
BEGINNING
THE JOURNEY
Following the end of my marriage in 1993, I began a profound journey that—combined with my professional training, my experience as a therapist and coach, and my extensive personal-development work—led me to a new approach to recovering the authentic self and mastering aloneness. To help you understand the process and the experiences that inspired it, I’ll begin with my own journey and the things I discovered along the way.
My marriage began as a storybook romance, and in the wake of that romance, I started a new life with my husband that lasted for 13 years. We shared an adventurous spirit, a passion for learning, and, ultimately, two beautiful children. A German physician with a penchant for travel, he was vacationing in California in the spring of 1980 when we met. At the time, I was singing in a popular group called Tuxedo Junction—struggling financially, working part-time as a cocktail waitress to supplement my singing income, and involved in negotiations for a new record contract. Looking back from where I am today, I see that I was an emotional wreck. Trying to make it in Hollywood as a singer and actress and finding it hard to pay the bills, I was flirting with depression and carrying around a lot of unresolved baggage and pain from my youth. I was drinking too much and jumping from relationship to relationship. I was restless and unsettled. Then along came this stunningly handsome man—smart, sophisticated, and a good ten years older than me—my Prince Charming. I was attracted to the fact that he was a physician like my father, but with a twist that made him particularly intriguing—he was a true adventurer with an exciting lifestyle; he would work for a while and then travel for months at a time.
By the end of that summer, I had dropped everything to return to Germany with him. Inseparable and ecstatically happy, we became engaged at a little pub in Hamburg the evening of my 22nd birthday. We’d known each other only six months. I see now that I was a “damsel in distress” and he was my rescuer. I was seduced by the travel, by his attention, by the idea of being taken care of.
Not long after the night of our engagement, my new fiancé and I left Germany to set up house together in California. He secured a fellowship at a clinic in Los Angeles, while I enrolled in The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute as a full-time student. We married on June 27, 1981, only one year after becoming a couple. From the secure vantage point of my marriage, I began exploring the field of personal development. I’d always been a natural “seeker,” searching for the deeper meaning I felt was missing from my life. And I was something of a rebel, raging against the system and the status quo. During our early months in California, I became drawn to Buddhism and enamored with the idea of replacing the anger and rebellion inside me with love and compassion. I went on a health-food kick and stopped drinking alcohol and caffeine. I swore off refined sugar and white flour. For the first time in my life, my mood stabilized and I felt emotionally balanced. When I attended my first personal-development workshop, it opened a new door for me. This makes sense, I said to myself. This is what I want to do with my life. A few days after attending that first workshop, I decided to quit show business. Disillusioned with the superficiality of Hollywood and longing to be near my family, I convinced my husband to move back with me to my hometown on the East Coast. I knew I wanted to pursue the personal-development path, but, in truth, it would be years before I realized that I would have to fix what was going on inside of me before I would be able to be truly productive in any field.
My husband was a brilliant physician, a pioneer in his field, and after the move, his career really took off. But I was floundering. I was certain that I wanted a career of my own, but I’d never attended college and had no qualifications to speak of. Lacking experience outside the performing arts, I was lucky to find a job appearing on a weekly segment of a TV show called PM Magazine. Yet, within a few months, I decided I wanted a baby. At the age of 26, I got pregnant and quit my job. Happier than I’d ever been in my life, I immersed myself in having the healthiest pregnancy possible and plan
ned to be the best mother I could be. My daughter was born in 1983, followed two years later by my son. I threw myself into motherhood. Both my husband and I were determined that our children would receive the time and attention that our own parents had been unable to give to us. We shifted our focus off each other and entirely onto our children—to the detriment of our marriage.
Looking back on the gradual demise of our relationship, there were plenty of red flags. Our way of handling them was, for the most part, to simply ignore them. I remember being panic-stricken one day when my husband expressed the fact that he was unhappy in our marriage. Instead of responding to his feelings and dealing with the increasing distance between us, I remember denying that anything was wrong between us and pointing out that all couples with little children face these same issues. Acknowledging that we had real problems as a couple terrified me—probably because, for years, I’d seen my own parents sweep their problems under the rug.
Instead of dealing with our eroding marriage, I immersed myself deeper in living the American dream. We purchased our first home and then moved on to another, bigger one. I became a full-time mother and homemaker. As a young woman, I’d been fearless and independent. I had grand dreams of becoming a famous singer and actress. But, instead, I ended up doing exactly what my own mother had done. She, too, had given up her career to marry and raise a family. I see now that I was unconsciously following in her footsteps. And, as much as I loved my children, I was starved for adult connection. I felt extremely lonely in my big house in the suburbs. It was as if Betty Friedan had never existed or the ’60s and ’70s had passed me by.