AFFORMATIONS ON FAMILY AND RELATIONSHIPS
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?”
— MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
One of my first coaching clients was a home-based business owner named Barbara. Barbara was smart, hardworking, and had great people skills—but felt frustrated because she was holding herself back from the success she knew she was capable of. A friend told her about our SuccessClinic.com website, and she contacted me and asked me to coach her to break through her old barriers.
As we worked together through my transformational coaching method, Barbara started working through her fears of success. I suggested she write Afformations related to the outcome she wanted, like being more successful in business. She realized that she wanted her husband to be more supportive of her work, so one of the Afformations she wrote was, Why is my husband so supportive of me and my success?
On our coaching call the very next week, she told me, “Noah, it’s like a miracle!”
As she was getting ready for work and her husband was downstairs—doing the same routine they’d been doing for 20 years—she was afforming to herself her new, positive questions. Suddenly, something happened that had never happened in 20 years of marriage: her husband called up the stairs and said, “Have a great day, honey. I love you!”
She called the very next week and said: “Noah, it’s like a miracle!”
Then, later in the day, her husband called her after one of her sales meetings and asked, “How did your meeting go?” He had never done that before either!
She went on to have the best year of her career. Afformations not only improved her marriage, but they also helped her increase her self-confidence and grow her business.
How to Have Happy Relationships
Every human being you will ever meet is wearing two invisible signs. The first sign says: Please make me feel important. The second one says: Help me first.
That means all people are waiting for someone to make them feel important and to help them get the things they want. The problem is that everyone is waiting for everyone else to go first!
That’s why I encourage my coaching clients to be the ones who go first. The more you acknowledge, appreciate, and seek to help others—not from a position of “they’re better than me,” but from a position of “I have so much to give”—the more people will be magnetically drawn to you.
An ancient parable often told by Rabbi Haim of Romshishok illustrates this principle:
I once ascended to the firmaments. I first went to see Hell and the sight was horrifying. Row after row of tables were laden with platters of sumptuous food, yet the people seated around the tables were pale and emaciated, moaning in hunger. As I came closer, I understood their predicament.
Every person held a full spoon, but both arms were splinted with wooden slats so he could not bend either elbow to bring the food to his mouth. It broke my heart to hear the tortured groans of these poor people as they held their food so near but could not consume it.
Next I went to visit Heaven. I was surprised to see the same setting I had witnessed in Hell—row after row of long tables laden with food. But in contrast to Hell, the people here in Heaven were sitting contentedly talking with each other, obviously sated from their sumptuous meal.
As I came closer, I was amazed to discover that here, too, each person had his arms splinted on wooden slats that prevented him from bending his elbows. How, then, did they manage to eat?
As I watched, a man picked up his spoon and dug it into the dish before him. Then he stretched across the table and fed the person across from him! The recipient of this kindness thanked him and returned the favor by leaning across the table to feed his benefactor.
I suddenly understood. Heaven and Hell offer the same circumstances and conditions. The critical difference is in the way the people treat each other [emphasis mine].
I ran back to Hell to share this solution with the poor souls trapped there. I whispered in the ear of one starving man, “You do not have to go hungry. Use your spoon to feed your neighbor, and he will surely return the favor and feed you.”
“You expect me to feed the detestable man sitting across the table?” said the man angrily. “I would rather starve than give him the pleasure of eating!”
I then understood God’s wisdom in choosing who is worthy to go to Heaven and who deserves to go to Hell.
From Moshe Kranc,
“Heaven or Hell: A Corporate Parable,”
www.hodu.com/parable.shtml
The moral of this parable is that any one of us can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven. The difference lies in your answer to Dr. King’s question that opened this chapter: “What are you doing for others?”
As this book was going to press, I received the following story from one of my coaching clients. I told my publisher that this story was so moving and inspiring that we had to “stop the presses” so I could share it with you here:
Dear Noah,
My father became very ill early in 2009. My parents still lived in the Toronto area, about a five-hour drive between us. Things got beyond my Mom’s ability to handle, and soon I was heading back home every weekend or two. What we thought was Alzheimer’s turned out to be brain cancer. We lost my father on Father’s Day 2009.
My parents independently moved to Canada from Germany, and our family was pretty much our own, with little in terms of a support network. We did not have aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents in the area. By extension, many family functions, including funerals and weddings, were not as familiar as they were to others.
The eulogy was on my shoulders, as were many of the funeral arrangements. This was something I was not prepared for. We had about a week before what was announced for the memorial service.
I was getting a picture slide show assembled. This was pretty easy. Dig through albums, scan and organize the images in a logical order. It was kind of neat to go through the old snapshots in various evolutions of photography—black and white, early color, Polaroids, slides, and finally digital images.
But what to say? I simply did not know how to proceed.
I started to write a script and a eulogy. But I could not. It just came through in fragments, a mess. This went on for a day or so, in what was a short week and a half. I had no idea what to do.
Here is where Afformations performed miracles.
As Noah’s classes guided, I scribbled down, Why am I going to honor my father’s passing in a meaningful and inspirational way? It was all I could come up with. At that point, I was spent and went to bed.
The next day, Wednesday, there were a few more calls and administrative functions. That was as close as I came to functional. Still no inspiration on the words needed for a rapidly approaching Sunday memorial. I rewrote the Afformation, as I had done before, on a small piece of paper. Deep breath, write something, anything. A few bullet points and a fragmented paragraph took hours. At least it was a start.
I rewrote the Afformation on another piece of paper. I could do no more that day.
Thursday, I tried again. Afformation first. Rewrite of prior day’s efforts. More words came, a story came, a theme emerged. God, this was tough. How the heck was I was going to hold it together in front a roomful of friends and family?
Then, another breakthrough arrived. I realized that this was a celebration of a life well lived. Smile, enjoy this. Form the words, project the feeling. Smile, even though that was the last thing that felt right. Smile and focus on the words.
Amazingly, during the reading in my small home office, it worked. I could do this.
Friday morning. Re-afform. Another rewrite. This was coming together.
Saturday was a blur.
Sunday. Time was short. Memorial slideshow looked great. Re-afform. Now I needed to do another quiet read through of the eulogy. Man, it was tough—details to add, points to clarify. Stay calm, this will work out.
Sunday afternoon. People arrived, tears were shed, laughs were shared. The memorial started. Pieces fell into place. Time to speak.
The Afformation came back to me. I smiled and started. It turned out right. It was natural, heartfelt, and wonderful. It all worked out.
As tough as it was, I cannot imagine how I would have done it without Afformations.
Thank you, Noah.
If you’d like to improve your relationships—whether on the job, in the home, or with your family—use the Afformations that follow, and I’ll bet you’ll see miracles come true for you, too.