Each of us has three limited entities–time, energy, and money.  And one boundless entity–love.  Love we can afford to splatter around and we’ll never run out.

How we “use up”  our time, our energy, and our money…is another matter.  How much of your time, your energy, and your money…is thrown away in the service of your Emotional Guidance System?  How much of your time, energy, and money is sacrificed in efforts to rid yourself of anxiety?  (See ‘What Would You Give Not to Feel?)

‘Worrying’ is the king thief of time.  Saying ‘yes’ when we mean ‘no’ and ending up on projects we don’t value takes lots of energy.  And money?  Well, someone’s buying that tape that you place over your chubby spots and it sucks the fat away while you sleep.  Someone’s out there renting a storage locker to escape the anxiety of making decisions.  And, “Yes”  the reason my name is listed with five stars next to it on every company that makes downloadable emergency disk rescue software…is because when my computer crashes in the middle of the night…I thrash around like a big, desperate fish on a sidewalk, clicking “Buy Now” on every rescue offer popping up and promising to save me.    The ‘Water Tower Place Incident’ provides an example of FUSION (when the functioning of one person is determined by the functioning of another person) and how the breakdown of boundaries led to one person (me) almost spending some of my life ‘time’ doing something I had no desire to do.

Dateline: Chicago, a while back, still in graduate school and attending a downtown conference.  Mental state: google-eyed impressed with the opportunity to have my expenses paid in a wonderful, sophisticated city I’d never visited.

Exact place:  I am on the escalator of Water Tower Place, a multi-storied shopping complex with all the best stores…when I realize my physical self has been invaded by the Body Snatchers.  “How did I get here?” I’m asking myself.  “How did I end up on this escalator in a monster shopping mall?”  “This couldn’t be me.  I don’t even like shopping at home, how could I have chosen this place for the afternoon?”  

The fusion:  Earlier that week back in Austin, I’d remarked to a professor–a world-travelled, highly respected researcher and writer, who I greatly over-valued as I did most of my teachers– that I was going to Chicago.  With my excited annoucement, Over-valued World Traveler said, “Oh, you are going to have a great time.  You want to put shopping at Water Tower Place at the very top of your ‘must do’ list!”

I said something like, “Oh, that sounds perfect!  I can’t wait!”  Then it was: fly to Chicago, check into the hotel, and take the first opportunity to check out Water Tower Place.  Had I consulted my Thinking Guidance System, I’d have asked myself, “How did things turn out the last time someone (at least she had been with me, not just in my imagination) talked you into going to a shopping mall?  And I wouldn’t have woken up standing on a crowded escalator wondering how in the hecko I’d gotten there. 

Okay, this example is kind of ‘fusion-lite’, but it’s still fusion.  Fusion of this sort–when you agree with someone because you value them as a person without thinking for yourself–is common.   Careful now, I’m not saying that the ‘self-defined’ move…when the professor says ‘you must go shopping at Water Tower Place–is to pop back with “Well, I don’t really don’t enjoy shopping, so I won’t be going to Water Tower Place.”  To respond with an unsolicited negative response is just as much having behavior determined by the other person… as was the ‘unconcious’ following of her advice.