What happens when men and women embrace their natural strengths
This week’s show is with Alison Armstrong, Alison’s exploration of human behavior began in 1991, with her decision to study men, “To find out how I was bringing out the worst in them. And hopefully, how to bring out the best.” Her success in understanding men naturally led to studying women’s behavior and making vital connections between the two.
Armstrong distinguishes human instincts that compel both men and women to behave in ways that contradict and undermine our own purposes, goals, values, needs and relationships. She offers partnership-based alternatives giving millions of people access to more fulfilling lives, loving relationships, stronger families and productive organizations.
Armstrong is a sought-after speaker and thought-leader amongst people with the desire to live empowered lives. Alison’s philosophy and approach is frequently referenced and taught by other authors, speakers, business consultants and therapists.
In this conversation, Alison and I explored what inspired her work in studying men to understand them better. We spoke about how we can live in a way that honours our natural strengths and allows men and women to complement each other instead of being in conflict or competition with each other. This show went far deeper than I expected! Alison talked about our evolutionary instincts, how simply asking better questions can change our perception, and our growth in consciousness. This truly was a corker of a show!
I’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment below.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
I love Alison’s questions: What if men are responding to women? What if there’s a good reason for that? What if no-one’s misbehaving? These are all great questions that can guide how we perceive and respond to other people and especially the opposite sex.
Alison believes that our behaviour and perception are 70% about us being human, 25% about our gender, and only 5% personal. It’s funny how much emphasis we put on the personal given most of how we are is also true for many other people on the planet. That’s not to say understanding that 5% isn’t also useful – our unique essence is the gift we bring to the world.
In order of priority, humans are wired to focus on procreating, protecting, and providing. That’s something we’re naturally focused on so there’s no ‘enough’ switch for human instinct. We can only shift that through conscious choice focused on quality of being – that allows us to enjoy the fruits of the marriage of the human and the spiritual.
For so much of our history, physical strength ruled. Now physical strength is much less important, women can do anything men can do but at what cost? We women can push ourselves to do everything or we can also choose to do the things that allow us to be most in our power.
What’s next for humans? Alison sees it’s about partnership… men and women honouring and celebrating our different strengths (or in other words, what comes naturally to us)
Resources and stuff that we spoke about:
Thank you for listening!
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Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan