Back to Article index To print this page, click on the Print icon in your browser.   A New Metaphor for Relationships   Last December I received a gift that is most special to me. It's a wonderfully colorful mobile with different sized film discs on the end of thin rods. It hangs in my office where I see it every day. I watch as each of the eight discs moves easily, in balance with all the others. On perfect spring days when the weather invites open windows, I watch my mobile moving with a totally different attitude. The breezes hit one of the discs just right and takes it out of balance with the rest. The other discs move in a more chaotic way anticipating their return to balance.   I use the mobile with my clients and in workshops as a metaphor for relationships. Think about it. It's perfect for describing what happens in relationships and systems involving people (families, offices, clubs, associations . . . any group). When every person in the system acts as expected, the group continues to function in some kind of balance. As soon as one of the people in the system does something different or unusual, the entire system goes out of balance for some period of time. It could take minutes or years for the system to return to balance.   This is an important concept in understanding dynamics of human relationships. Each one of us is part of many systems at the same time and have the power to create imbalance in any or all of them. I heard Deepak Chopra once say a butterfly who flaps her wings impacts events on the opposite side of the globe. While it may be true, for me it was too big a concept. The metaphor of the mobile is easier for me. It reminds me that every decision I make, every action I take, impacts more than just me. My family, my clients, my community all feel my changes.   How many systems can you identify in your own life? Let's take one most of us can relate to: the work environment. The system includes employees of the company, customers and vendors. (There are potentially hundreds of balancing discs on this mobile.)   Assume a company that is functional and healthy. Everybody gets along and works well together. The customers are happy and well-serviced and vendors are responsive to the company's needs. There is balance.   Now imagine what happens when the top salesperson, Linda, has a family crisis. She stops servicing her customers and becomes forgetful in the office. She is preoccupied by what's happening in her personal life. What happens to the system? It goes out of balance. Every person is affected. Sales (and profits) drop. There are complaints by customers. Employees feel stressed and become resentful.   What about Linda's personal life? Her family is a system in chaos dealing with the crisis. Nobody is sleeping. Meals are eaten in silence or disrupted by harsh words. Linda and her husband are short-tempered. Her children are confused and don't know what they're supposed to do or how to act.   How does either system return to balance and to being functional? In both cases, the office and the home, there are three possible scenarios:   1) The system will remain out of balance until Linda resolves her family crisis and allows the system to return to balance. This may be a matter of days, weeks or even years and requires a commitment from all members of the system to support Linda.   2) Linda's family crisis results in changes in her. The system assumes a new and different balance around Linda's new way of being.   3) In order for the system to return to balance, Linda must be excluded. The change that has happened for her is too great for the system to absorb. It cannot balance around the new Linda and she is "cut-off."   Coaching, the work I do with my clients, is about choice and change. All my clients make choices during the coaching process. I've seen choices resulting in change as drastic as divorce and as subtle as modifying daily habits. In all cases, my client was not the only one who felt the changes. I am an advocate of change. Change means growth and if we're not growing, we're dying. Being fully conscious of how change impacts more than just one person, I'm also an advocate for finding ways for establishing balance in systems quickly.   Like the butterfly flapping her wings, your potential to affect change in the world is immense. The mobile is a metaphor for your life. It's not always crisis causing imbalance. It's life and life happens! The goal is to keep the balance. When something occurs to create imbalance, the goal is to return to that place of equilibrium as quickly as possible, whatever it takes. Choose what is good for you, what is right for you. Live your life with awareness of how much a part of the system you are. Keeping your own systems in balance and moving with the grace of the mobile can move others to their own balance.   Imagine what is possible with your ability to impact people even on the other side of the world!    © Copyright May, 1997. Laura Hess, MCC 702.252.3657