"Really, Everything is Just Fine."

Have you opened up your Facebook Newsfeed, clicked on a video you’re really interested in, and then right smack dab in the middle of the best part it it stops, buffers, and says “Your video will continue after this ad?”

And then you have to watch some inane ad about deodorant or Nissan’s latest SUV?

This is disruptive.

To the max.

There are two things that happen right at that moment.

One, your interest in the video is immediately cut.

Like an invisible umbilical cord.

BAM.

When that line is cut you feel an immediate antagonism towards the disruption. It’s instantaneous.

You’re like, “This is bullshit!”

Right?

I mean it may just be Ariana Grande impersonating Celine Dion. It’s not like the end of the world.

But you have a communication line or interest in something where you “get into it” and then your interest is cut or interrupted and you experience something like emotional robbery.

It’s weird. But it happens.

And there’s a difference between an interruption and disruption.

Here is the definition of disrupt:

“To destroy, usually temporarily, the normal continuance or unity of.”

You are watching a movie with your spouse and your daughter walks in and says, “Scuse me Mom, can I interrupt you for a second?”

See, you are asked if you can be interrupted.

You can press “Pause,” and pay attention to your daughter.

You’re watching the Game of Thrones or whatever and you are totally INTO THE MOVIE. Your daughter walks into the kitchen talking loudly on her cellphone to her boyfriend. She bangs around the kitchen making a bowl of cereal.

That would be disruptive.

It destroys, usually temporarily, the normal continuance or unity of.

Body and Mind Disruption

Upon waking up you walk into the bathroom, look in the bathroom mirror, and there’s a red spot or small rash on your face that wasn’t there last night.

You’re like, “Seriously?!”

If you’re a woman and you’re showering you notice a tiny lump under your breast.

You’re like WTF???

Or as a guy you come back from the gym and notice a crushing pain in your chest where your heart seems like someone put your heart in a vice.

You stop because momentarily you cannot breathe.

WTF is this?

In each of these scenarios and hundreds just like them are a disruption that can occur as you’re going about your normal day.

You were just going along the “...normal continuance and unity” of your life.

And then there is this disruption.

And it’s not just the lump or heart pain.

Yes, that is disruptive.

Often frighteningly disruptive.

But now the lump or heart pain is known.

That’s your daughter banging around in the kitchen.

That’s first stage disruption, if you will.

It’s known.

Then it’s like:

“Crap. What is this lump?”

“Fuck. This better not be a friggin’ heart attack coming on!”

Second stage disruption is the unknown.

As the woman steps out of the shower and feels the lump again, from that moment forward her attention is riveted on the unknown about it.

Same with the man.

It is shocking to have excruciating chest pain such that you momentarily you cannot breathe.

The pain passes.

But not where his attention is now focused.

Conditions:

Here is the definition of the word condition:

The state of something, especially with regard to its appearance, quality, or working order.

It comes from Latin, from con ‘with’ + dicere ‘say.’

In essence your condition is “with you” and “saying” “this is the way that it is.”

Usually when you have a condition that presents to you an unknown, your first analytical decision is to go have it checked out. Go see your doctor.

I say analytical, because many times we all can have a condition, a toothache that turns on, a back pain, a rash, etc, and “We wait to see if just goes away.”

Sometimes the chest pain was momentary.

Sometimes not.

So you go to your doctor.

And after telling your doctor or nurse about the condition, what is uniformly their response?

“We’ll need to take some x-rays to make sure.”

Right.

Because an x-ray is a piece of technology that can see where the human eye cannot.

And when you “wait for your x-rays to come back” there is always a certain amount of anxiety because in truth the disruptive condition could be (or may not be) something worse.  

And when you get your results what happens is this:

YOU SEE THE TRUTH OF YOUR CONDITION.

GOOD, BAD, OR INDIFFERENT.

We all cross our fingers the lump is benign. The heart condition an anomaly.

This is human nature.

But in the back of our minds we also have carried forward a certain amount of cached wisdom that tells us in a silent voice that it is often prudent to be prepared for something worse.

So we call brace for this too.

“Your x-rays showed you will need a stint in one of your arteries.” 

Fuck.

“The lump is benign.”

Whew.

The Human Condition vs. The Physical Condition

That’s the physical.

What about the condition of your mind?

What about the condition of your personal well being?

What about the condition of your marriage?

The definition of condition would still apply.

I ask couples individually all the time,“On a scale of 1-10, 10 best, how would you rate your marriage?”

Many give me 5’s and 6’s.

I will also ask, “How would your wife or husband rate it?”

Interesting to hear your partner’s assessment of what they think.

And it often varies widely.

Just the other day I was having dinner with a very good friend who’s very successful in life. Married, beautiful wife, and a beautiful family.

I asked him directly how his wife would answer the above question. He said, “Probably a 5.”

Even though I know his wife and have seen their success, when you ask questions of close friends who respect you enough not to “PR” you, you get real answers.

And yes, it’s his opinion.

But it is a comment on the condition.

That’s why I ask the question.

“Do you get these heart murmurs often?”

“Well, you know this is just part of getting older. Didn’t pay too much attention to it. I’m in great shape you know.”

Yes, I see.

“But do you get these heart murmurs often?”

He turns red.

The question makes him look and confront the disruptive part.

No one likes looking at the disruptive part.

Because why?

Because you are having to confront the momentarily destructive part of life that is normally continuing along just fine.

“Honey, you should get that cough checked out. You’ve been coughing like that for the last two days.”

“I know...I know...it’s probably something in the air. I’ll be fine.”

We are a stubborn lot, we are.

“When you touch the lump to you wince at all from any pain?”

Fuck.

See, it’s the question that needs to be asked that you don’t want asked because it forces you to look at the truth of the condition.

Goddamnit it does make me wince.

Asking The Questions that Matter:

The questions that most matter are the questions that direct your attention to the truth about the disruptive condition.

It’s an interesting parallel, yes?

When questions are directed at the truth of the condition you then prepare yourself for what the truth is.

And that is not always easy.

It’s why we put things off in “hopes it will go away.”

You are aware of certain disruptive conditions in your personal life.

But they too are often just “put on the back burner” of life because you know, “they are not that bad.”

Like when you find yourself yelling at your kid and “sounding like your Mom” and you absolutely hate when you do this.

You swore you never wanted to yell at your kids like she did with you.

That’s a tad disruptive, no?

Should I ask your daughter?

Or, you have one too many beers while playing poker with your buddies and you get a bit surly with your wife when you come home.

Your wife actually uses some choice words that are not as benevolent as the word “disruptive” to describe your behavior, but hey, it’s not that bad, right?

And speaking of your relationship, what is the condition of your marriage, really?

How would you rate it?

How would your partner rate it?

Many of the couples I speak with say that they love their partner and that these conditions in their marriage are “Just what comes with being married for 15 years.”

No, that is not the truth.

That’s resignation.

That is agreement with the condition as it has become.

So, people have marriages that are fives and sixes.

I just don’t agree.

No one should.

But you know, it often takes a Herculean amount of courage to insist your marriage or relationship starts getting those Olympic judges holding up those cards with 8.6 - 8.0 - 9.0 and 9.5 and making the home crowd roar.

You can have a 7, 8, 9 or 10 marriage.

You don’t have to carry around a surly temperament or your Mom’s cynical nature.

You don’t.

You don’t need to live with any condition that is not you.

An X-ray of Your Mind & Life

If I told you I have a test that will show you EXACTLY what is going on with you and your marriage or relationships just as clear as your doctors x-ray, does it make you anxious or interested?

I’ll bet anxious.

In the back of your mind you already know what it is that you have difficulty with in your life. Be it your temper, your self worth issues, your marriage, your sex life, or any fears or inhibitions you have quietly stored in a shoebox in your mental attic.

But to open up that shoe box?

To see an actual graph just like your doctor would show you an x-ray of your chest but instead it shows the condition of your marriage?

Your personal insecurities?

Heaven forbid, it shows your temper?

And the betrayal issues you have?

Oh, and the graph tells me how long you’ve had these problems, too.

Yes, I can see where your marriage began to decline.

I can see from the graph where the betrayal started.

I can see the emotional footprints left from the suppression early in your life before you ever slid down your first slide as a kid.

Remember:

The scariest part about disruption is the unknown.

When couples start thinking of separation or decide to divorce, they waited too long. They allowed the early disruptions to grow like a silent cancer in their marriage until their only “solution” was to part.

That’s not a solution.

That’s the last stage of disruption.

And understand that something disruptive is often momentary.

Even the lump on your breast.

How many women have you heard say they were just really glad as hell they “caught it in time.”

See?

How do you catch your temperament in time?

How do you catch the subtle decline of your relationship when you have it all justified that “it isn’t that bad” and “we love each other anyway.”

Wait until you say it’s a 3?

We eventually give in to the chronic pain of the tooth and go see our dentist.

We walk into the bathroom and hope that those award winning editors at Disney have somehow visited us during the middle of the night and made that red rash or spot disappear.

Shit. It’s still there.

I better call my dermatologist.

Right.

Unfortunately our innate stubbornness coupled with our positive Norman Vincent Peale mindset we “cross our fingers” that these disruptive conditions are momentary and will hopefully disappear.

Listen, I can be as stubborn as the next guy.

And I’m also a big believer in the power of positive postulates and a positive mindset.

But I have learned a really tough lesson when it comes to conditions that are non-optimum.

They never just disappear.

Like leaving your plants unwatered for a week, the plants themselves tend to hold a rally on your back porch and tell you with their own plant placards, “WE NEED WATER...WE NEED WATER.”

It’s not just me, you hear ‘em too, don’t you?

Yeah.

Because plants are life and you are life and life to life we’re good.

But when Life gets disrupted by a lump or a pain or not enough water, Life objects.

The lump is the objection.

The pain in your chest is standing before Congress saying, “This is excruciating pain does not belong here.”

And the scorecard for your marriage?

Depending on your confront and honesty, usually I find even in the best marriages there’s an oil light on.

And you can drive for some time without changing it.

But that red light is simply telling you as one single protester at the rally:

“Your marriage is about to blow a gasket, do not drive another mile.”

The Test

The test I administer will show you exactly where the red light went on miles back.

It will show you in truth how far down the road you have burned out the pistons and what lies ahead.

And yes, you will see it clear as day.

But most will opt not to look at it.

And the reason is frighteningly simple.

“It’s not that bad.” “Really, things are fine.”

Nicole Simpson held onto that idea about her relationship with O.J. just a tad too long.

And listen.

The condition of your own personal life or your marriage has nothing to do with whether it’s good or bad.

Good or bad are viewpoints.

The oil light doesn’t admonish you if you don’t change it.

But it does do its job.

It does warns you.

Your plants will turn yellow at first then brown before they die.

If you’ve ever tried to revive a plant that is dying there’s this eerie sense of “Why did I wait?” that echos in your soul.

Right?

Yellow wasn’t enough of a warning?

All of Life has built in signals to warn us that even if temporarily, that there is a disruption occurring.

And why do you think that is?

Because Life’s purpose is to live!

Simple, yes?

When something gets in the way of Life and its purpose, Mother Nature as Mothers’ often do, put something in our life-lunch boxes to tell us if things go wrong, do something before it’s too late.

Mothers always want to ensure everything is okay with their kids.

The test I administer tells you your entire history to date about you, your relationships, and work.

I can tell in 5 minutes just like any good doctor, where you’re doing well and where it’s breaking down.

But it’s not about what I can see from your test results.

It’s about whether you can confront the fact that there may be disruption occurring in your life.

The kicker is, disruption has this repelling effect. Like craning your neck out your car window to see that car accident up ahead and then looking away quickly when there was a bit more disruption than you care to look at.

Confronting is not easy.

But hey, there’s always crossing your fingers, right?

I offer a free comprehensive online questionnaire and a 45 minute no-charge consultation to discuss in any issues you have that you might be blocking your personal or business success.

There is no pitch. There is no sale. There is no obligation to do anything else. This is my way of letting you know what I do, and hopefully creating a long term relationship. Click on the link below if you would like a free consultation.

Free Phone Consultation with Dave Worthen