The Seven Habits Of Highly Dramatic People

Relationship counselor Scott Kalchenstein wrote this essay and sent it out today in his newsletter. It's his playful and provocative parody of The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People. It could create a whole new category at bookstores, a Self-Helplessness section. (This isn't actually original -- there are 2600 hits for "Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective People" in Google - and a book has already been written with this title.)

But I like the way that turning this idea on it's head helps me see how my own negativity, self doubt, anxiety, fear and blame just backfires and destroys all of my relationships, most importantly the one with myself.

This year, on Valentine's Day, I decided to love myself and be my own Valentine. Thinking in a positive way is just the first step in exercising good self love. After all, if you don't have positive thoughts about yourself, who else will?

You can contact view Scott's website here.

The Seven Habits Of Highly Dramatic People

By Scott Kalechstein

Do gratitude, contentment, and inner peace sometimes creep up on you and undermine your ability to indulge your anxiety?

Here's a quick and handy two-step process to make sure you get your M.D.R. (minimum daily requirements) of worry and chaos.

1. Believe and act like your safety, security, and happiness are dependent on people and forces outside of you that you can't control.

2. Try to control them.

For those of you who prefer to keep it complex, here are seven habits to develop that will help you go deeper into your practice and guarantee a daily overdose of adrenaline. Allow me to be your drama director as we shout out the traditional opening words… "Lights! Camera!! RE-ACTION!!!

#1. Harness The Power Of Negative Thinking - Everybody accentuates the negative on occasion. What if I can't pay my bills? What if I lose my house? What if I get sick? What if I'm alone for life? What if I'm in this relationship for life? But as your drama coach, I want to inspire you to master 'The Secret' by focusing all of your attention on the most negative possible outcomes all of the time. When this discipline has been achieved, you can relax into the certainty that you will always find something to freak out about in any situation, and fear will never abandon you again.

#2. Be Busy Till You're Dizzy - Being too busy to still your mind and take good care of your body is essential on the path to drama-realization. Temptation is everywhere these days - health food stores, spas, gyms, yoga studios, meditation classes, and it takes courage to maintain abstinence while the whole world is stretching, sweating, chanting, and going organic. Remember, as our parents tried to warn us, engaging in meditation can lead to blindness, losing sight of all the things right in front of you to worry about. So wake up every morning painfully early, splash cold water on your face, brew up your caffeine, and go, speed racer, go! Have you answered all your emails? Who needs a shoulder to lean on? Is there something on TV? Always make sure your life and your mind are filled with clutter and free of those annoying empty spaces between your thoughts that can disturb your absence of peace.

#3. Have A Swinging Good Time - In the 60's and 70's, a swinger was a person who relieved the monotony of monogamy by attending a variety of extra-curricular relationships. Nowadays, the term swingers has broadened, and is often used to refer to drama majors when they are found swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to another, churning with the thrill of constant crises, skillfully sidestepping the boredom of emotional stability. Would you like to be able to create, at the snap your fingers, a soap opera drenched in drama anytime you want? All you need to do is to stuff your feelings till you can't hold them in any longer, and then explode without restraint or care for anyone, especially the ones you care most about. As a practice, try being 100% nice and sweet. Stretch yourself to accommodate someone as much and as long as you can, and then take the lid off and let the steam out, like Mt. Saint Helens does once in a while. There is nothing as satisfying as having a good eruption after being good and silent for a spell.

#4. Leave Your Inner Child Alone Without Parental Guidance - When the child inside the adult gets scared, some really juicy drama can happen, but only if we withhold our compassion, re-assurance, and loving boundaries. When we can resist such mushy self-help nonsense, our inner children will wreak havoc trying to get those things from others, usually through some very exciting acting out in the drama department. When two or more people abandon their little kids at the same time, oh boy, that's when the fun begins. The adults have left the vehicle, and you can guess who's in the front seat, banging on the horn, flooding the accelerator, yelling out the window, and playing extreme bumper cars. Yippee!

#5. Set Huge Goals, Maintain Unrealistic Expectations -There is nothing more beneficial to your lifestyle than the habit of reaching for the stars, falling short of your lofty goals, and feeling like a colossal failure. Taking big leaps and falling flat on your face is paramount for maintaining healthy low self-esteem, which is the foundation of all good drama. Go for the mountaintop, and don't look down at your feet on your way. One step at a time is for people satisfied with proceeding at a snail's pace, always leaving behind a slime trail of serenity, gentleness, balance, and other dismal downers that drama kings and queens take royal pains to avoid. You can do better than that!

#6. Judge Your Judgments - Every human being judges, but only the ones who have learned the art of judging their own judgments excel in creating melodrama. Have you ever been known to shame and blame yourself for feeling afraid and stuck, telling yourself that there is something really wrong with you for not moving forward? Good! You are on the right track. Now, take your next step. Judge your judgments! Tell yourself that you should know better than to shame and blame yourself. Heap truckloads of guilt on yourself for stooping so low to the curb of self-criticism, yet again. This will make you quite an energetic downer that can't help but suck energy from those around you. You'll be the lifelessness of the party!

#7. Get Grounded In The 3 B's...Blame, Blame, & Blame! - Blaming yourself has already been covered. But don't rest there. Blame everyone else too. Life's not going the way you want? Blame, blame, blame! Blame first, ask questions and take responsibility later, if at all. Appropriate targets are Mom and Dad, friends (if you still have any), your mate (if they are still around), the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, big corporations, small minds, and, of course, God. Self-responsibility can lead to issues finding solutions, which flushes good drama right down the drain. Instead, be generous with the blame dispenser, letting it overflow on everyone, uncontained, uncensored, unedited. Blame, Blame, Blame!

Affirmations For Good Drama

Every day in every way I am stressing out over everything, real or imagined.

Everything is working together to conspire to bring the worst possible outcome to my doorstep.

Life is against me and I am doomed.

This, or something worse, is now manifesting for the highest cost to all concerned.

I no longer have to work to create drama. Drama happens effortlessly and naturally, all around me.

Whatever calamity I can conceive, I can achieve.

I always have everything I need to manifest everything I don't want, and all is hell in my world.


Copyright 2008 Scott Kalechstein, All Rights Reserved

Scott Kalechstein is an inspirational speaker, a transformational humorist, a life coach, and a modern day troubadour. He makes his home in Marin, California and loves presenting at conferences, giving talks, concerts and workshops. In his phone counseling practice, he is a relationship specialist, helping both individuals and couples heal, manifest, and awaken into conscious relationship. Call 415-721-2954 to schedule a session, or email him at scott@scottsongs.com. You can visit www.scottsongs.com to read more about his workshops, to hear his talks or to sample songs from his nine CD's. Sign up for his free muse-letters to receive writings like this one on a semi-occasional basis.

A lesson in humility on Valentine's Day

About 10 years ago, when I was a lot snottier than I am now, my then boyfriend, Don drove up from San Diego to meet me on a weeknight for Valentine's Day. He was horribly late, dressed badly, and like an idiot, didn't even book a reservation in a restaurant.

So here we are, it's like 9 pm, I'm grouchy and starving, my blood sugar has bottomed out so low that I'm almost dizzy, and we're driving all over Santa Monica trying to find a restaurant that will let us in. One after another, we're turned away.

This goes on for an hour and I'm getting increasingly annoyed with my boyfriend. We finally are allowed to sit at the bar in this cheezy, not terribly romantic seafood grill. The stools are packed up against each other. The guy next to me is eating alone, and nd is flagrantly hitting on me. The service is terrible and we wait again, 30 more minutes, just to catch the waiter's attention. When the food finally arrives, it's sloppily prepared -- the chef no doubt is in a bad mood himself by 11 pm on Valentine's Day.

Just then, I see this gorgeous, radiant couple walking out of the restaurant -- his hair is long and blonde. His smile is angelic. She has transparent, luminous skin, and long flowing golden hair. He's wearing jeans. She's in a simple, almost frumpy navy blue sundress. They're holding hands and shyly exiting.

It's at that moment I suddenly realize it's Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow.
At first my inner snob was thinking: "Wait a minute. These people are wealthy celebrities. They can go anywhere. Why aren't they eating at a five star restaurant, or the Hotel Bel Air, or perhaps the Beverly Hills Hotel on Valentine's Day?

But then the beauty of this moment hit me: "If it's good enough for Brad Pitt to take Gwyneth Paltrow here on Valentine's Day, it's certainly good enough for me." It was one of life's great humbling moments.

That experience taught me a lot about how it's the experience that matters, the thought and the caring, and not the material frills. Where you are is not as important as who you're with. Every year since then, I've been grateful if I even have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day, if he gives me a simple card with a heartfelt inscription, that expression of love alone is enough to make me happy.

Though I am quite sure of one thing: Reservation or not, Brad and Gwynneth certainly got a table that night.

I still hate Valentine's Day!

Ugh. It's almost that time again. Valentine's Day is a Halmark holiday, and one of those days that you can never live up to. There's just too much pressure to be happy. My best Valentine's Day ever was the time we decided to avoid the hype altogether. My partner and I made dinner at home, and took a walk on the beach in Malibu Colony. As we walked at night, two dolphins danced in the waves. He gave me a simple card with a mushy inscription. This was the most magical Valentine's Day ever for me--and it didn't contribute more than $4 to the retail economy. Last year, I went on a great Valentine's Day dinner date with a guy who wasn't even my boyfriend. (His partner was living in a foreign country so he was alone for the night and took me out for dinner.) Since we were just platonic buddies and not lovers, it took the pressure off and we actually had fun!

This year, I'm single on Valentine's Day, so I'm planning to spend it at a big party which will hopefully be devoid of loving couples smooching and holding hands.

Here are a few anti-Valentines I found for you to shower your single friends with.

(His) relationship commitments

Six months into it is the time when couples start examining a relationship and trying to decide if it's time to move forward into a deeper commitment -- or give it up.

I was on the edge of giving up this week, when my partner sent me his list of Relationship Commitments. I was touched, but I have to admit, he failed to live up to a lot of the commitments on this list, which he wrote a year ago. Revisiting them, we realized that the biggest mistake we made was not voicing and clarifying our needs and expectations. Our expectations were based on assumptions -- not clear agreements.

After a blizzard of emails and two weeks of tense, hurt conversations, retreat and withdrawal, he coaxed me back inside with this list.

For many of us, plunging deeper into intimacy and risking the loss of someone you love is a terrifying thought, and it can be easier to not take that risk and simply run away and never go there.

If I live in the moment and stay present, have faith that there are no mistakes in life, that everything is a process and nothing lasts forever, maybe I can go there.

My Relationship Commitments

Take care of all my relationships, don’t begin or continue ones where that isn't possible. (Figure out if it’s possible as soon as I can.)

Communicate fully and honestly.

Don't allow the old pattern of making sexual relationships into love relationships automatically, including by telling people that it's my pattern up front.

Clarify expectations to death and in detail.

Make all agreements as explicit as possible.

Face the difficulties and reactions in the moment rather than putting them off and hoping for a positive outcome later.

Be aware that timeliness and my manner of communicating sensitive stuff is also really important.

Try try try to look at things from the other person's point of view BEFORE taking action.

Men, here's what you need to do when you take your girl to a party

Some men are utterly clueless when it comes to respecting their date or girlfriend when they are out in public. Their innocent flirting with other women can end up creating explosive consequences. And yet, flirting is a natural part of life, and there needs to be space for it when a couple goes out together.

I like to be with a man who is capable of respecting me and who is conscious of my feelings. How can you say you love someone and not protect their feelings?


Things that will make me feel liked, respected, adored and loved when we
are out in public:

- Walk into the event together. For the first ten minutes or so, introduce me to people. Make it clear that I am your guest by putting your arm around me. (Make me feel like I am valued and that you are proud of me.) After these initial introductions, we can start wandering separately, and maybe come back together from time to time to check in.

- Dance with me at least once during the night. Make me feel like you are actually enjoying this -- not doing it grudgingly just because you "have to." I don't want to spend the whole time with you either, but some time feels good and you're so fun to dance with.

- Make me feel as if you are proud to be seen with me in public. It feels fantastic to hold hands when entering a room, or walk hand in hand down the street together. I love that.

- Put your arm around me once in a while. Touch me subtly. Do something romantic or caring once in a while. Doesn't have to be constantly. It's ok to flirt and interact with others. Just remind me that you still like me and find me attractive, too.

- If we are away from each other for a long time, check in with each other once in a while and ask how we're doing. Are we having fun? Is the party boring? Do we want to leave?

- Try spend as time talking to, dancing and being seen with me and not just other women. (At least 25% of the time--doesn't have to be all the time.) Just remind me that we have an attraction and a spark.

- If you are touching, flirting with me a lot, and also paying attention to others, then I still feel attractive and valued. If you are being really flirtatious, touching other women but you are NOT touching me AT ALL at this event, this makes me feel rejected.

- If exes of yours are at the party, let me know who they are, point them out to me in advance so I know who they are and can navigate the minefield. Introduce me to them to help ease the tension. Maybe I will like them and we'll get to be friends.

- If you are talking to a bunch of people, try to include me too. I want to feel included, not excluded. It feels good to be part of the group and to belong.

- Toss me a compliment once in a while. Or just a smile from across the room. A wink. A glance. This feels great.

- Find ways to make these public interactions hot and juicy for us. Why not nibble my ear, whisper a suggestion or caress me subtly but in a very sexy way -- or pull me off into a dark corner for ....hmmmm?

- If you are going to disappear to go off to have a private conversation with an ex girlfriend, please let me know in advance first and explain why you need to have this discussion right now. Ask why are you having this conversation, which might be tense or emotional, or explosive, at a party, publicly, instead of later, privately. What is the outcome you're trying to create? Be honest with me (and her!) about your intentions.

- Why are you even interacting with exes anyway? Move on. Be present. You're with me now.

- Keep things light and playful, flirtatious and friendly in your interactions...not too overtly sexual. Being subtle is always sexier anyway!

- If my parents, a boss, or an influential person is in the room, be very conscious of how your behavior might be interpreted. For example, if my conventional, Catholic East Coast family is at a party, it would be very rude for you to be seen flirting with another woman or cuddling with her. It will be seen as disrespectful to me. Best to project a very conventional appearance if family / coworkers are present.

- When introduced to my family or friends, make an attempt to impress them and be interested in them.

- Introduce me to exes, when we run into them socially, to help clear tension between them and anyone you are now dating (It's harder to dislike someone you know and see as a human being.)

- If we run into o0her friends or ex lovers socially, find a way to create a conversation where we can all be included. This can help ease the tension between everyone and create friendship. It's hard for me to be friends with others if I am not given the chance.

- If you are alone at a party, event or dance, and I'm not there, be conscious of the fact that people who know us might be there and
observing you. What kind of image are you projecting? What impression are people getting about your relationship with me and your respect for my feelings? We have to take care of each others feelings even when the other is not present. Taking care of your lover's feelings is a deep act of conscious love.

- Live in the present moment, not the past. Meet new people, have fresh new experiences, don't be stuck in old patterns and be open to change.

- Do you really want to be my date at this party -- or would you rather be alone? Be honest with me about your desires and intentions. Don't take me to a party if you're going to ignore me all night. I have better things to do.

-g

When we lie, we destroy relationships

Two weeks ago, I took my first workshop with the Human Awareness Institute, an organization devoted to helping people have more loving and effective relationships. The workshop turned my life upside down. Tucked in the back of our handouts was this essay by the organization's founder, the late Stan Dale, on the effect of truth on our relationships.

"When we lie, we destroy relationships - both the one we have with ourselves and those we have with others," he says. "The only true foundation a relationship can be built on is trust. So many relationships are falling apart because trust - if it was ever there - is being eroded."

After so many experiences where my dishonesty -- or my partner's lack of honesty -- has destroyed my intimate relationships, I now feel that there is only one way to relate, truthfully, and with blunt, radical honesty.

Trusting And Truthing

An honest look at the effects of dishonesty

by Stan Dale

One of the articles in Friends & Lovers (IC#10)
Summer 1985, Page 25

Copyright (c)1985, 1997 by Context Institute

WHETHER WE'RE AWARE of it or not, we human beings communicate 24 hours a day. Even in dreams we communicate. Even when we don't say anything we communicate. Our relationships are built or destroyed by communication - and there's virtually nothing else involved in a personal relationship except one form of communication or another.

Throughout my life as a husband, lover, father, friend and therapist, I have both experienced and observed the destructive power of dishonest communication. When we lie, we destroy relationships - both the one we have with ourselves and those we have with others. Lying is counter communication. It erodes the very foundation of a relationship. It is a time bomb that will eventually destroy the relationship.

To tell a lie weakens the already weak esteem of the lie-teller. The person to whom the lie is told, whether that person finds out the truth or not, feels the lie's effects. Why? Because lies are negative communications. They take away what is attempting to be built. The only true foundation a relationship can be built on is trust. So many relationships are falling apart because trust - if it was ever there - is being eroded. One more lie; one more time bomb.

Then one day, ka-BOOM! Why? Because communication finally broke down beyond the point of no return. If relationships are communication with trust as their foundations, then honesty is the cornerstone. Dishonesty is a protective device. Lies are protective devices. Lies are told because the person telling them believes that he/she has no other choice.

However, we're being two-faced if we tell someone that we love them - and then also lie to them. There can be no real love without trust. We'd be protecting ourselves from the very person we need never fear. If we don't trust the person we say we love, how can we ever be intimate? How can we ever be vulnerable? And if we can't be intimate and vulnerable, what do we have but a lie?

Lies are protective devices. We think we are protecting the other person when we lie, but in reality we are protecting ourselves. When we lie, we set the time bomb ticking, and the explosion will rip through the delicate fabric we attempt to weave between ourselves and someone else.

There are two basic lies - the overt and the covert. The overt lie is usually spoken. It's a falsehood. Even a little white one.

The covert lie is more subtle, and the most often used. Its telltale signs are usually seen in body language - such as darting eyes, downcast eyes, side-glancing eyes, twitching of some part of our extremities, falre smiles, a deadpan face and so on. In other words, it's something that needs to be said, but isn't. The covert lie is usually more damaging than the bald-faced lie because the other person may never perceive that something is wrong. Reading body language takes quite a bit of experience. If covert lying can be detected, however, we can defuse the time bombs before they explode.

Envision a gorge. The only thing connecting the two land masses is a bridge built by the hands of those who dare to risk. Isn't that the process two people take when they try to establish a friendship? Here are two entities wishing to connect. They put out furtive feelers at first. Then they get slightly bolder the more they feel they can trust.

Each communication, no matter how conveyed, is one more plank in that bridge. The more honestly we communicate, the more we get to know one another, and the stronger the bridge gets. The more we get to know each other, the sooner we can lower the barriers of self protection. We almost always approach the others like knights in armor. Slowly we shake their hand, "checking for weapons" as in the days of old. Then slower yet, we raise the visor to get to "see" the other person.

Why are we so armored? Probably because intimacy is so frightening to us. In reality, it is probably the single most frightening thing we face. The effect of being totally intimate is being totally naked - emotionally, psychically, and possibly even physically. It is to let every part of me connect or touch with every part of you.

It is total vulnerability. Now I am totally defenseless. When we are defenseless, we fear that "now you will walk all over my unprotected guts with your cleats. You will hurt me in ways no other person could."

It seems that what we cherish most, we chase away in so many creative, fearful ways. For every time we lie, hiding our "nakedness," we are telling the other person, "I don't trust you!" Not in so many words, of course, and that's another contributing cause to the downfall of that painstakingly built bridge between two people. After all, who trusts a bridge with loose or missing planks?

We are so afraid of hurting others and of being hurt that we do the very thing that is guaranteed to destroy what we cherish. Every time we lie, overtly or covertly, we drive another nail into the coffin that will hold our dead relationship.

The paradox of being totally naked, vulnerable and intimate is that we are also totally potent. In reality, we cannot hurt or be hurt unless we choose it. Being naked, vulnerable and intimate with someone else is first to say that we are totally naked, vulnerable and intimate with ourselves.

That's the ultimate question: Do we trust ourselves or not? Do we trust that we can handle whatever comes up; or will we run scared, hiding in the tunnel of darkness that is laden with ignorance and fear?

The decision, of course, is up to each one of us. How long are we willing to live the lie? Or will we defuse the time bomb that would otherwise destroy us and those we love?

The sinking relation dinghy

Dear ____,

Why are you so armored? Probably because intimacy is so frightening to you. It is probably the single most frightening thing you face.

Why do you lie, constantly to yourself and other people? Because the truth is so frightening to you. Telling the truth means facing the truth of who and what you are.

There can be no real love without trust. We'd be protecting ourselves from the very person we need never fear.

Truth = reality.

Lie = untruth.

False reality. Illusion. Building an Impression. Spin control. Artifice. Creating a story that pleases other people. Making yourself look good in another's eyes.

Our relationship started with untruth. And I just went deeper into denial in order to accept you.


Lying to others ultimately shows that you are not being honest with yourself. I'm untruthing to myself all the time in order to be with you. You are untruthing to me all the time in order to convince me to go deeper.

We are building a relationship (it' s more of a relation dingy or an inflatable raft with a leak in it than a ship) on this really weak foundation of continual deceit.

You untruth to yourself as you create this illusion. Because every time you pretend, to other people, that you and I are less, you are making us less. You are creating that reality -- less intimacy, less closeness -- with your words and your actions.

Why do you lie? You think it is to protect me, but it is really to protect yourself. The truth, you fear, might make me like you less. The untruth, on the other hand, might trick me into liking you more, supporting you, standing up for you--even loving you.

But is that relation-dingy floating on spin control and platitudes seaworthy-- or just an illusion built on a shaky foundation of illusion?

I trusted you. This was the impression I had--the untruth. The spin. I put that spin in our relation dingy and denied it.

And now the relation dingy has another leak in it, and it's sinking.

This story was created by Brain Dancer in her mind, with the very limited facts that you revealed to me, to make her happy so she would be tricked into going deeper into intimacy with you.

I was totally in denial when I created this story to please myself, instead of looking at the truth. I lied to myself and looked the other way. I created a fantasy that enabled me to continue with the illusion that makes me happy and put that fantasy in my little relation dingy.

"Right now, I'm only sometimes happy with ____, because he is constantly abandoning me for other women/people/priorities/experiences, but he is going to surrender to me, take care of me, and nurture me, and make me happy someday. So I will tolerate all kinds of behaviors that hurt me and make me feel unworthy and abandoned as I wait for him to change and start to give me what I want."

Is there anything you can do for me that will heal this and enable us to get closer again? Or is it time for me to put an end to this painful ride and jump off the "love dingy" and go find a real Love Boat?