Chapter 14: Smooth Running below Decks 225
✓ Capabilities and skills: You may have a mix of great skills and abilities
and yet you can’t find a way to use them all in a way that satisfies you.
So perhaps you struggle to find a job that satisfies your desire to build
or make things with your own hands at the same time as employing your
skills at managing a team of other people in order to pay the mortgage.
You may be a great musician and also a qualified medic, but have to
make a choice of where to put your energy.
✓ Behaviour: You can find yourself engaging in behaviour that doesn’t
seem to help you to achieve your goals. For example, have you ever had
an important piece of work to do and spent hours tidying out your desk
or a cupboard instead? Or maybe you wanted to diet and found that a
piece of buttered toast somehow ended up in your mouth without you
noticing how it got there.
✓ Environment: At times you may find yourself in a dilemma about the
places where you hang out or the people with whom you spend time.
Maybe you’re mixing with the wrong sort of people – people who don’t
seem to have your best interests at heart or that your family disap-
proves of. Maybe part of you wants to move away from home and set up
on your own; or perhaps part of you wants to live in the country of your
birth while another part of you yearns to explore the world. You want to
be in two places simultaneously and can’t settle in either one.
As soon as you hear yourself or others say phrases such as ‘part of me
wants... and yet another part of me wants.. .’, you can be sure that an inter-
nal conflict’s going on that defies logical reasoning.You’re in total harmony with yourself when each of your logical levels is
aligned with the others. Personal conflict occurs when what you’re trying to
achieve, or what you believe, or perhaps what you’re doing is out of kilter
with other levels in the hierarchy. So if you want to satisfy a goal to earn a
high salary, this aim may conflict with your identity of ‘I’m a good husband
and father’, because you don’t get to spend time with your loved ones.
Conflict resolution is achieved by brainstorming and asking questions of
yourself and the people affected by your decisions about how you can come
up with novel ways that may allow you to fulfil your goal and align your logi-
cal levels.Drifting from Wholeness to Parts
Your memories are arranged into a pattern, or Gestalt, that’s an association
of related memories. A Gestalt may start when you experience an event that
first triggers an emotional response, a Significant Emotional Event (SEE).