In my previous post about Embracing Your Truth, I shared with you a personal story that inspired a revelation in my life. I would like to continue to build upon this notion however, to further discuss the concept of learning to focus on who you are, what you believe, and what you want. We spend a substantial amount of our lives focusing on others, what they think, how they react, and how their actions make us feel. It feels like we are being incredibly caring by letting them know how we believe they are getting it wrong for us.
While sharing your thoughts and feelings with those you love is an incredibly important aspect in developing a mutually sustaining relationship, it is also important to understand that harboring a belief that you have the power to control or change another’s behavior serves as an invitation to personal disappointment. What I mean is, you will likely be disappointed if they do not react or behave in the way that you desire. But it is simply a delusion we have been duped into believing; this notion that we have the power to control and change another’s thinking in order to make ourselves feel better. But what we can control is our way of thinking about their behavior and, in turn, we can modify our thoughts and behavior about the situation or the person. We can only control our portion of the relationship or the situation.
My dad, Dennis Miller, a philosopher, and retired philosophy professor, introduced me to this concept by calling it “The 50/50 Rule”. You are only responsible for “Your 50%” of the relationship. The other 50% is the responsibility of the other person. You might not like how they handle their 50%, but you have no control over that. So being upset about it is inevitable due to that lack of control. Not unlike what I discussed in Great Expectations, you are setting yourself up to expect something that you simply cannot alter or change in any way.
Here is an excerpt from some of the writing Dennis Miller has done on this topic:
The 50/50 Rule of relationships is a “mindfulness training” or practice designed to enhance our awareness of the nature of relationships and a deeper understanding of our role and function within the relationship. Attention to the Rule can change the way in which we relate to our partner which suggests that the only thing we can change in our relationship is our Self and the way we relate to our partner. [..]
The seed idea of the 50/50 Rule came from my own experience and I was facing divorce in a marriage of 27 years. Through much meditation and mindfulness practice, I discovered that I had failed to understand something about love and relationships, which presented an opportunity for self-growth and greater awareness of love as a mindfulness practice.
I discovered that I had not understood the 50/50 Rule of relationships because no one bothers to teach us the practice of learning to be in a relationship and so we often simply repeat the patterns and habits we absorbed from our environment. The Mantra that began to change my perspective about relationships was: “It’s never about that …” but rather the problem was always in my relation to “that”. This changed my perspective in realizing that problems in relationships arise when we step across the “/ mark” into our partner’s space. We blame, accuse, etc. our partner for making us feel this or that and declare that we would not be or feel this way as if our partner is the cause and we are powerless and incapable of relating in any other way to the situation.
The 50/50 Rule reminds us that we are responsible only for “our half” of the relationship, not that of our partner. When we cross the line we transgress the boundaries that define us as separate individuals and disrespect the space of our partner who is likewise responsible for only for his or her half. We can be responsible and change something only in our self and our relationship to our partner; we cannot and should not try to change something in our partner which intrudes upon his or her space and freedom also to choose to be responsible and change something within his or her self. This is respect for the one we love.
In this excerpt, Miller fleshes out the general premise of the 50/50 Rule and his personal experience of discovering it. I think his story beautifully illustrates the impact a lack of understanding of the 50/50 Rule can have on our lives and our personal well-being. Perhaps you are questioning why a discussion of how you interact in a relationship is relevant to your individual well-being. But the reality is that, as humans, we are social beings by nature. A simple anonymous interaction with another individual inhabits the same dynamics of a relationship despite its brevity. Imagine that, when you are buying coffee, the clerk insults you. You are likely to spend the remainder of the day complaining of their behavior and soliciting others to affirm your opinion on the interaction. Now imagine that the clerk compliments you. You will conduct yourself in a similar manner, telling others how kind the clerk was this morning. You don’t even know this person, but they have fully impacted your day!
Let’s look at this interaction under the scope of the 50/50 rule. In this scenario, as it has currently been depicted, the actions of “their 50%” have full control over your emotional state. They insult you, you’re upset. They compliment you, you’re elated. Now let’s locate “your 50%”. They insulted you, did you do anything to them? Let me interject here as I feel the anger rising, this is not about blaming you and indicating you “deserve” anything. The truth is, that is not how the universe works. That is part of the myth. No one deserves anything, including happiness. Our personal state of mind is earned and created only by our own interaction with “our 50%”. What I mean is, if you review all of your behavior and you believe that you interacted appropriately and they insulted you, then let it go. It simply does not matter. You have no control over their behavior. You are pointlessly rallying an army to make yourself feel better when all you had to do was determine within yourself that it was not merited and therefore disregard their comment and go on with your life. If you determine that your actions may have been less than desirable by your own standards, you have discovered an opportunity to learn, grow and move forward more the wiser.
So why does our 50% matter if they compliment us? That’s simple. While their personal choice to compliment you reflects well on “their 50%”, it still has little to do with you. How do you think about yourself? If you were down on yourself and needed to hear that, why were you down on yourself? I hear your point, why do that matter? It matters because you are not guaranteed to receive a compliment from someone else’s 50%. So were you just going to have a bad day if they hadn’t complimented you? This is why your focus on your 50%, defined by your actions and your thoughts, is all that really matters to bring you peace of mind.
I say peace of mind because, while happiness is typically what we seek, you cannot be happy all the time. The universe also works on 50%’s: Happiness and Sadness, Joy and Anger, Yin and Yang. We can discuss this further in another entry. I bring it up now simply to highlight that, in focusing on your 50%, I am not promising happiness. I am promising clarity about how you feel, how you can understand it, and how you can control it. I am giving you the key to understanding your feelings and how to gain control over something that we were told was controlled by everyone else. I am introducing you to your power over you. Learning to master this concept is the key to learning to attract what you want into your life and not latch onto the things that you do not want to by lending them your attention.
I would like to end this piece with another anecdote from Dennis Miller that further demonstrates the game-changing power of the 50/50 Rule:
Driving a school bus for many years in addition to teaching philosophy at the university a young 12 year old schoolboy, I will call him Tom, before he was about to get off the bus at his stop said to me, “Hippy, [that’s what the kids called me] I’m afraid to go home!” I asked him why? He told me that he got into some trouble at school that day and was afraid when his Dad found out and had to sign the “form” to take back to school the next day, that as he said, “my Dad will kill me and I am afraid” [not literally, of course, it was an emotional fear].
So I asked Tom what usually happens at home when you get in trouble at school? He said that since he is afraid of his Dad he usually goes to his Mom first and tells her. In response, his Mom sends him to his room and gives him some romantic novel to read as punishment and then quizzes him later to make sure he read it.
Having heard the usual routine, I challenged Tom to “change the conditions of his usual behavior”. He didn’t understand what I meant (he’s only 12 years old) so I explained to him. I told him that I see his Dad’s truck in the driveway and that his Dad is home now so instead of avoiding his Dad (and running from his fear, as usual) I challenged him to change the conditions and instead go straight to his Dad and tell him what happened at school. His first response was “I can’t do this, he will be so angry at me!”
The challenge for Tom was to change his usual routine and habit of avoiding his fears and instead face his fear and go to his Dad and explain. I told him he to apologize to his Dad and tell him that he got into trouble at school today and that he knows he disappointed his Dad and feels disappointed in himself for his behavior. He then got off the bus saying “I can’t do this!”
It was a Friday and on Monday morning when he got on the bus I asked him what happened when he got home on Friday? With a look of amazement he said in an exuberant voice, “Hippy, I can’t believe it, nothing happened to me. I did what you said. I was so scared. I told my Dad what you suggested and you know what he said to me? He said, thank you for being honest with me. I see you understand your misbehavior so I do not see any need to punish you.”. He was elated and shocked not realizing that the whole time he had within himself the power to change his relationship with his Dad by changing something within himself. He took responsibility for his half (50%) of the relationship and changed the dynamics of his relationship with his Dad.
I hope you have enjoyed this entry! I encourage you to give it a try! Remember, this is a complex concept that is meant to be practiced and the truth discovered, not an overnight revelation. I promise it will bring you closer to becoming your best self and living your best life! Until next time my friends!