• 1. We can only control our own behavior
• 2. All we can give another person is information
• 3. All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems
• 4. The problem relationship is part of our present life
• 5. What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to continue satisfying them in the future
• 6. We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our Quality World
• 7. All we can do is behave
• 8. All behavior is Total Behavior and is made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology
• 9. All Total Behavior is chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components. We can only control our feeling and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think
• 10. All Total Behavior is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognizable

craftylistening.blogspot.com

A Book

In the fierce midday sunshine
Of a midsummer memory
I flinch at the recollection
Of a pointless argument

In the cold shadow of a winter night
I recall the warmth of a cold embrace
The reverberations of a silent clock
Mirror your frowning face

You're still here
In the afterglow of lightning
Is the warmth of your laughter
In the soft centre of a cloud
Is the steely determination of your will

Thunder's echo shadows the lilt of your sighs
The blinding brilliance of a sunlit snowdrift recalls you
Welcoming against the background of a sheet

The gentle kiss of a spring shower
Reminds me that, once, I wondered why you cried

The fading lines of a post-card
Entombed in a once loved, dusty book
Remind me of the chances we took
Although it seemed we had no choice

It touched us both, that book
It touched us both.
I hear the echo of your voice
In the spaces between words
In the peace that follows rage
The silences between sounds
The eternity between moments
In the memories between forgetting
In and on each line on this page
I remember.

MJM

www.craftylistening.co.uk

The Hands of Time

The hands of time are waving me goodbye
I can tell it by the sad look in your eye
There's a sorrow in your smiling
As you try to hide your crying
Without a doubt the sands are running out

Oh, I tried to make you happy
And succeeded for a while
You showed it in the gentle of your smile
But a new love kept on calling
'till your love for me just died
And left me with this hurting deep inside

The hands of time are beating on a drum
I can hear the tune of goodbyes yet to come
We get closer to a parting
Though the pain is only starting
Without a doubt the sands are running out

You can get tied to a habit
'cos a habit's hard to break
And love is partly giving part mistake
So I'll try to make it easy
And pretend that I don't mind
Because we've loved I can't be less than kind

The hands of time are waving me goodbye
If you have to go you have no need to lie
Though I don't think I can stand it
I can try to understand it
Without a doubt the sands are running out

MJM (PRS)

www.craftylistening.co.uk

Five Elements of A Healthy Relationship

1. It's important to have a partner who helps at home, who cooks from time to time, cleans up and has a job.
2. It's important to have a partner who can make you laugh.
3. It's important to have a partner who you can trust and who doesn't lie to you.
4. It's important to have a partner who is good in bed and who likes to be with you.
5. It's very, very important that these four partners don't know each other.

Balls to that man of mine!

Very clever and quite amusing!

LIVING BETWEEN THE LINES

This was written during a meeting chaired by a manipulative bully!


Words irrupt into the silver silence
Flowing molten. Viscous, honeyed gold
Sticky, sudden sentences soar, sink, and stumble.

Horrid old slights reverberate in the aftermath of heated debate.
Velvet, vicious verbs. Turgid and torrid Phrases
Totter, teem, tower, topple, and tumble.
Falling, they are picked up again, carried forward
To challenge, charm, chop, and change minds,
Becoming shields against poison darts.

Sentence parts become barricades. Beginnings, endings.
Hues, and cries of blacks and whites, old and young.
The Future's perfect; the Present tense.

In the past, I could have bitten off my tongue - yet,
When the voice is spent, we have but poor choice and less sense.
Bending the light, words glimmer, glow, burn.
Illuminating dark corners, they burn Iridescent,

Etiolating the light of love in eyes once warm.
They bedim the sun and the crescent moon.
Outliving the deed, echoing forever. Uttered too soon.

Still spinning yarns in the eye of the storm.
Resounding, well rounded, we follow the thread.
"You're dead! Right?" Truth lies.
Whether light or gravely said
Words delay caresses, pose questions. Who cares!

Who cares? Dangerous intimacy for those who dare silence.
Silence, pregnant with pauses. Words unborn
Still born promises. Love aborted. Hope bleeds
With every hurt unheard, every unmet need.
Moments hammered into memory, meaning shoehorned,
Stammered into effects without causes.

Juggernauted tenderness trundles into velvet violence.
Hugger-mugger, juggling, jostling jocular clauses
Better unuttered. Can we escape the prison sentences
And come home to the still freedom of a momentary silence?