Everyone has been in more than one lose-lose scenario. Many of us are in a lose-lose scenario now, or many of them. At this juncture in time, they are a staple of the construct of our time space reality. So you can get an idea about what I mean by a lose-lose scenario, I’ve got a small list of examples:
It’s the 1700s and Great Britain has decided that Scotland belongs to the crown. The Scottish are now in a lose-lose. They rebel and are in war and die or they submit and they lose their country and they are taxed and oppressed and lose the highlander way of life.
A mother dies. Her son is gay. The family disapproves of him being gay and says he can’t bring his husband. He doesn’t go to the funeral and now he’s the family scapegoat who is blamed for increasing the family’s pain. He does and he has to deny his own authenticity as well as his support system during his time of grief and damage the partnership he has with his husband.
A son is born to a sports oriented father. When this boy is sensitive and wants to read, he is shamed for it and punished. He only receives approval when he plays sports. He plays sports, which he hates and he’s terrible at and he’s bullied by the team because he plays poorly. He doesn’t play and his father rejects him and wont spend any time with him at all.
A woman is married to a man who expects her to take responsibility for the kids and be a mom 24 hours a day. She does this and is completely depleted and feels like a terrible mom because she resents the kids because she’s self sacrificing. She takes time for herself and he tells her she’s a terrible mother and person, withdraws from connection with her and sleeps on the couch.
A friend puts you into a zero sum game. If you don’t fight for your own best interests, you lose. If you do, you might win but even if you win, you will get hurt in the process and lose the relationship with that friend.
Lose-lose scenarios also called no-win scenarios, catch 22s, double binds or damned if you do damned if you don’t scenarios, make us feel powerless. They also make us feel stuck. What we aren’t aware of is that we are choosing not to move and choosing to stay stuck because we perceive that movement in either direction will cause us pain.
Universal consciousness in and of itself is concerned with self-awareness. This is what expansion within the universe actually is. To use terms that you might understand better, expansion is the increase in Source or God’s self awareness. The thing is, Source or God, what I’m calling universal consciousness is in a state of fragmentation. This means that the overall self-awareness of itself is created by the self awareness of each of its parts. Universal consciousness is inherently imbued with free will. In a state of fragmentation (where the whole is segmented) free will belongs to each segment. A win-lose and a lose-lose can only happen when freewill is segmented because it is only when it is in a state of fragmentation that there can be multiple free wills and the potential for the opposition or alignment of those wills.
The lose-lose scenario is currently one of the best designs for the increase of self-awareness and therefore expansion within the universe. It is in essence an authenticity construct. At first this may seem strange because a lose-lose scenario tends to make people choose to not move and stay stuck instead. But that is only temporary. Because the rest of the universe does not choose to stop with you, the negative on both sides of the lose-lose will escalate until a person is forced to choose between two consequences. And nothing whatsoever tells you more about yourself and your desires and your needs and your priorities better than being forced to choose between two unwanted things. It is easy to choose between a wanted and unwanted thing. That tells you less about yourself. Therefore, what a lose-lose scenario is doing universally speaking, is forcing you into your personal authenticity and therefore your personal expansion; which is what causes universal expansion. This is why nothing will reveal someone’s true colors more precisely than a lose-lose scenario.
The way that a lose-lose scenario looks from universal perspective is like a trap that is meant to teach true freedom to the person that is caught in it. It is perceived as the pressure that creates transformation. The best visual for this is the pressure that turns coal into a diamond. And there is currently a belief within universal consciousness that beings would not move or evolve without pressure.
When we find ourselves in a lose-lose scenario, we waste a lot of time resisting the lose-lose itself. We don’t accept the situation at hand. We focus on getting it to change into a different scenario or the person creating the lose-lose to change, instead of turning inwards towards ourself and finding our highest and best option and our personal choice given the external circumstance. In other words, if the lose-lose is like rock, we become like rock too and crash up against it in a dead lock, instead of becoming like water or willow and bending in response to it. When you find yourself in a lose-lose situation, you have three options:
- Find a creative way out of the lose-lose scenario
- Choose to not move and to stay stuck between the options
- Consciously choose the consequence that is the lesser of the two options.
The first option, to find a creative way out of the lose-lose scenario is not always available in every lose-lose scenario. But it is the best option by far. For example, people often manipulate in order to get their needs met by putting you in a lose-lose scenario so that you will make a choice that suits their need. Sometimes if you figure out what that need is, you can figure out another way to meet it other than making the choice they are trying to force you to make. This also works for you. If you are in a lose-lose, both options suggest that a need wont be met. If you figure out what this need is, you may be able to meet that need directly and in an alternative way so the situation on either side doesn’t feel like a loss or as painful to choose. This is usually the path of least resistance.
A great many times, our black or white thinking and narrow mindedness causes us to think we must choose between black or white when in fact there is a blue option or a red option or a whole range of grey. Essentially anywhere from one to a plethora of alternative and better choices we could make in the situation at hand. The other alternative is to put the person who is putting us in a lose-lose scenario in a lose-lose scenario in return, hoping that under the pressure, they will remove the trap they have put us in. This is still war and therefore will not improve the overall emotional conditions of the world, yet it is a creative strategy nonetheless.
The second option, to choose to not move and to stay stuck between the options is healthy only for a short period of time and only if that time is a conscious evaluation period. The healthy form of this is a pause. Some scenarios, such as emergency situations don’t allow for this. But if the situation does allow for this, we need to pause long enough to consciously evaluate the situation and whether there are alternatives. We need to not make a decision until we know which decision to make and commit to. However people often choose this option as a method of avoidance, not conscious evaluation. They simply go into denial or refuse to make a choice so someone else will make it for them because they imagine that this absolves them of responsibility or accountability for that choice. It also allows them to stay in the lesser discomfort than making either choice. This will not last long because choosing this option in a lose-lose is like choosing to stay in a pot of water that is slowly being brought to boil. Because of universal expansion, there will be a point where the heat is so extreme; it will no longer be less uncomfortable than making a choice between the two unwanted options in front of you. The universe will continue to expand and move and therefore escalate until the choice that is the most in alignment with your authentic truth will present itself as obvious.
The third option, consciously choosing the consequence that is the lesser evil of the two options, is the choice that will tell you the very most about yourself. We have to become consciously aware of specifically what the lose-lose is. Then, what we have to avoid is falling into the trap of powerlessness in this scenario. The fact that a lose-lose scenario makes you feel powerless and victimized is perfectly understandable and normal. But if you chose an unsatisfactory option, you still have ways to ‘gain’ in doing so. The first gain is awareness of your free will. Part of taking your power back in a lose-lose scenario is to consciously see your free will within the scenario. When most people are caught in a lose-lose scenario, they say they have no choice. If they make a decision, they say they made it because they had no choice but to make it. This is especially true if they are being manipulated by someone into making a choice that benefits that person. But if you are in a lose-lose situation, you still have choice. It’s just between two unwanted things. Or a choice to let other people make the choice for you. This awareness of your free will is going to give you a sense of autonomy and agency, which will decrease the pain of making that choice.
You can also change the way you are thinking about the choice. A lot of the pain we experience is the result of the perspective we hold about the choice we are making. Any change in how we perceive something, will change the way we feel about it. Some examples of this are: We can alter the meaning that we assign to the experience. To understand more about this, watch my video titled: Meaning, The Self Destruct Button. We can focus on the lesson inherent in the situation. This will help us to feel as if the experience will add to our future success and wellbeing as well as help us to avoid the circumstances that put the cause and effect into action, which ultimately led us to the situation we are in. We can find ways to think about the consequence that makes us feel good or at least better about it. We can also recognize that all pain is in fact separation. If I perceive two options as both being painful, it means that both options imply I will be separated from something. The question is what is that something. When I discover what that something is, I can question whether making that choice does in fact separate me from that thing. I can also find alternative ways to keep that thing or get that thing.
One way to change the way you are thinking about lose-lose scenarios is to realize that in every loss scenario is the seed of a win. The ‘win’ within the loss is usually only obvious in retrospect. For example, the world lost when Hitler came into power. But if you look from objective perspective at what contributed the very most to the collective desire within humanity for peace over the course of the entire human history, it was in fact Hitler. Perhaps the most obvious example of this ‘win within the loss’ scenario is when someone chooses to end a relationship and years down the line (once they have found another partner that is more compatible) they now see the ending of that relationship as the greatest choice they made and the reason why they are now so much happier.
Now I’m going to tell you something that will change your level of pain and powerlessness in lose-lose scenarios forever. When you are stuck in a lose-lose scenario, the severity of the pain of the decision is actually being caused by the parts of yourself that are caught in a needs conflict. If you resolve the needs conflict between those two parts of yourself, you will find alignment and be able to either see different options than you originally saw or make a clear choice between two unwanted options without suffering.
For example, I am in a lose-lose scenario as a spiritual teacher. If I only show people my ‘spiritual master side’ and never show them anything human like my emotions or needs or day-to-day life or eat or use the bathroom in front of them, they don’t see my physical needs or limitations as well as reject their own humanity and do not integrate their divinity with their humanity. If I do show them my humanity, they discredit my ‘spiritual master side’ and use my humanity as proof to demolish their perception of my divinity and as a result, do not recognize hierarchy and do not seriously consider what I am teaching. The reason this puts me in pain is there is a part of me that wants to make the choice to show my humanity and a part that doesn’t want to so that people will listen to and value what I am saying. These two parts are at odds. If I can find alignment with these two parts of myself, the situation will not cause me so much pain and I will be able to make a decision about what to do about the situation in a way where both parts that are now currently opposed, will instead be in alignment. If you make a choice from an in-alignment state of being instead of an opposed state of being, it doesn’t feel like a lose-lose. To understand more about this idea, watch my video titled: Fragmentation, The Worldwide Disease.
People often do not consciously recognize their needs. This makes them very, very vulnerable to lose-lose scenarios. Everyone has an Achilles heel. What most people don’t know is that the flip side of that Achilles heel is a desperate need. For example, if someone’s Achilles heel is isolation, their deep need might be for secure/available connection or closeness. This desperate need is what people will capitalize on if they are putting you in a lose-lose scenario. They will use your point of greatest weakness and therefore greatest need. If you are in a lose-lose scenario with someone, you need to become aware of this need and find ways to meet that need so that the deprivation of this need is not something the person can use against you. For example, Person A will use Person B’s Achilles heel for belonging to force him to be there so person A can lean on him. Person B’s option is to find other places and ways to belong so that it is no longer a point of pain that Person A can use so that Person B will meet his needs.
Face your Achilles’ heel and the needs inherent in that Achilles heel. If you don’t recognize the need you have so you can find more direct ways of meeting it, all alternative options you can come up with will feel like losses because it will seem like all of them don’t lead to getting that need met. As a result, you will be forced to turn to manipulation to get it instead of meeting that need directly. For this reason, you would benefit by watching my video titled: Meet Your Needs.
The universe is currently on a path back towards oneness, but oneness as a conscious choice. This means integration is its desire. This can only be accomplished through a commitment to the win-win instead of the win-lose or lose-lose scenario. It may be of interest to note that as far as species evolution goes within universal consciousness, predators will all go extinct eventually. And scavengers (those beings that most people ascribe the lowest status to) are in fact an evolutionary step beyond predators and are more in-alignment with universal desire itself.
The people who end up in big lose-lose scenarios are those who refuse their authenticity. They make choices and thus build lives that are the most out of alignment with their authenticity. They don’t notice the small universal promptings into their personal truth and so it escalates. These are the people who for example suppress and deny their internal guidance system and external signs and continue forward and now years later it is clear that their truth is they are incompatible to their partner, but they have kids with him or her so they are stuck together for life. This is a lose-lose because they stay in the relationship and are miserable or don’t and the kids now have a broken home. The way to avoid a big lose-lose is to make changes in response to a little bit of discomfort. Notice the heat and make changes before the universe turns up the heat. For more information about this, watch my video titled: How To Be Authentic.
A lose-lose scenario shows you what really matters to you. It shows you what you really need and want. It is prodding you into personal truth and integrity. But the best thing you can do to stop being put in lose-lose situations is to commit to internal integration, and with this, external integration. The time space reality that you operate in, is managed by the law of mirroring (what many call the law of attraction) and as such if you stop putting yourself and putting other people in lose-lose scenarios, you will stop finding yourself in them.
