The idea behind the concept is to bring up issues when they are small. Waiting allows the little things to grow into big things. It's like a cancer. Caught early, it can be treated and life continues. Unaddressed, the cancer grows, and it can be too late for my life to continue.

Thanks Jimmy! When my partner brings up something that is small. I take it serious and thank them for bringing it up when it's little, so that we can connect and repair this thing while it's little. I heard it from someone else, then I listened again, thinking about how to apply this in the moment where it's needed; I said aloud how I would respond, "thank you for letting me know how you felt. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way. You are my person, and I love you. Thank you for telling me how you feel. Let me reassure you that I did not have any negative thoughts in my mind about you. You are my favorite, forever and always, sweetheart." The act of saying it aloud helps cement the new pathway, paved for future use. The act of writing it, reading it aloud again, then a third time, that's running over the path a couple more times, making sure I know the way. Sounds hard, but that's actually quite easy in comparison.

The repetition of the concept is key. Once in the head is not enough. It is the typical story that I hear something, agree completely, then forget it the next day. This pattern has repeated, and it is especially pervasive for me with short-form content. I am guilty of mass consuming the short content, and it left my brain with an attention deficit and craving for more little dopamine hits. The craving for the next piece of content appears to have left my brain forgetting the previous piece of content. The goal was not to learn the stuff. The goal was to consume. I lied to myself and said I was learning, but truly I was simply distracting myself from the things in front of me. My addiction was apparent when I would take every spare moment to "catch up" on something. This was conveniently placed in front of me as less-than-1-minute clips. I could just dump all this negative stuff into my brain quickly, switch to a comedy, laugh, switch to something newsworthy, and get scared about the state of the world. The cycle repeated, and I would hide it from others. I would dislike this behavior of myself, but I didn't stop. The behavior got in my way of doing regular tasks. A few hours could be wasted watching videos in an app. This was a daily occurrence. This can be classified as the "easy way" that distracts from the real learning that is done over time and with sustained effort. The brain must engage, play with, and engage again for the ideas to become my own. The thoughts that once were quotes from another become my own. The quote is my own. I set myself on this path of incorporation and integration of knowledge into the fold of what is already known. The learning process is one of back and forth struggle. For me, this is how I learn. I sit with a concept, test its limits, and test the bounds of what is known against what might be known.

Should I discuss the old method, just to be sure I understand what it was and how it's invalidating, how it hurts both sides, and how it totally kills that feeling of safety. I'm hesitant to go through with outlining that part again because it is painful to write, and I'm sure to need a pause while I shake in a fit of crying so gripping that my body seizes upon itself, involuntary hugging, holding, curling up, shaking, snot and tears, and you get the idea. The ugliest of crying, pouring out from the heart and soul with the deep agony of regret, loneliness, sorrow, and all the while coming to terms with this being okay to feel this way, act this way, understand this way, and these are human emotions that are allowed. This is not being needy or overly emotional, this happens, and it takes different things for different people, but the feelings are felt, and they should be held and experienced instead of shunned and beaten down as weak and unnecessary. That's the old way of thinking. That didn't work, and it causes a lot of pain in the world. I strayed far from the beginning, as a distraction.

Let's take an example for science sake, and I will walk through old patterns vs. new patterns. Let's say I said something at dinner that could have been misconstrued as negative or hurtful, and this was brought up later. And old pattern might respond that, "I was just kidding, man, it was a joke, chill, why can't you ever give me the benefit of the doubt. Of course I didn't mean it that way. Sure I might could see it in a world where I meant things like that, but that's not this world, that's not me, I didn't mean it like that, why don't you believe me..."

In new pattern, I will respond, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I didn't know my words caused that, and I would never want to do that. I am so sorry. I see how what I said could be hurtful, and I'm so sorry. I never meant to hurt you, and I never want to. You are my favorite. I love you. Come here, sweetheart, let me hold you. You're safe with me."

I had it all backwards before. I thought that if they understood that I didn't mean it that way then they would stop feeling their feelings, and the feelings would go away, and that's the repair. I just needed to explain myself, and that would solve the problem. That's the context I previously thought was needed. This is one-dimensional, and it doesn't account for both sides of the relationship. It doesn't leave room for the other person's experience. It doesn't ask them how they are doing with it all. It tells them how they should be doing because once they understand the context then they have to change, that's math. People aren't the mathematical problem with a quick solution. There's not a magic formula that does that. Actually, I say there's not, and then I think about the new pattern formula. There might be that magic formula, and it's connecting with the person, giving space for their experience, listening to them, and just being, without the need for doing. That is the quick fix, and the only real fix that I'm seeing. That's the hard way coming through again. It's hard to sit with these difficult emotions.

The difficulty to sit with the emotions doesn't become so difficult when I know how to handle it. As we've discussed, the ability to sit with difficult emotions and have difficult conversations is the same ability that allows me to face difficult tasks. I see a different shade of the thing in different circumstances, but it's only a different color. The concept remains the same throughout.

It's the times where I let the things simmer in the background that have caused the most trouble. Everything else turns the 3 into a 9, and shit gets out of hand before I know it, and then I'm scrambling with the wrong programming and the wrong working theories, and a lot of the theories gotten proven to be falsely premised and faulty in their logic, and it's only now that we're seeing how new ways of behaving can lead to long term success.

That learning right there, that's the hard kind.