Hey all you Yangers, it’s Yinner time!

See if you can relate to this situation:

You want to get something done or help someone, perhaps because they sought your help. They’re taking too long to get what you’re trying to communicate. You’re patient at first but you have to remember to be patient. Over the next few minutes or longer, it’s clear this person isn’t keeping pace with you or isn’t rising to the challenge. Instead, that person is withdrawing, looking more worn out, and perhaps gets closer to wanting to leave the situation. You get a little angry, annoyed, or judgement, or even a little of all. Geez, this person should just try harder and get with it, it’s easy! You might think.

And it’s downhill from there.

Does this sound familiar? This happens to me quite a lot, especially with my wife. Her energy drains away the more I try to help.

What’s happening and what can you do about it?

You’re in your yang relative to your friend’s yin. What that means is that you’re more interested in the what, the how, the interaction, the systems, the parts, the wholes. But that person cannot deal with ideas and forms and creating and understanding thoughts until he or she feels supported enough. The cool thing is this is a dynamic process, and it’s just necessary for the person to feel safe and supported, abundanct and connected, enough. With enough healthy yin in the moment, you can bring that person up to your yang.

So it’s a balance.

Now here’s a catch. You can’t ask that person what she needs. Because if she’s not able to interact and play with ideas, she’ll feel lost for words. Literally, her mind will be blank. What she needs at that moment is space and connection, resonance, feeling.

Don’t worry warriors, you don’t need to get all hippie on your friend. Just recognize that

Now let’s deal with your challenge, yangers. You’re naturally in your yang if you’re trying to help or fix anything, even if you’ve been asked for help. This naturally means you’re more prone to ideas and forms and systems thinking than you are to connecting. And if you’re not connecting and actively creating safe space for the other, you will also be judging.

Here’s the bottom line:

Yin needs space and safety and a feeling of abundance and connection to act, create, think, and learn. Otherwise she’ll collapse and drain away.

Yang wants to create, so to relate, must create a that feeling of safety, abundance and connection if he wants to co-operately get anything accomplished without seeming to be a brutish tyrant. In any moment where you’re more yang than the other, you’re creating more of the situation. If you’re annoyed or judging, you’re actively perhaps subconsciously creating separation and preventing communcation.

It really is up to you to lead the way. You must lead of course. That’s yang. You must come from, and create, yin.

I could go on.

But it’s your turn.

Can you relate?