Have you ever stopped to think of the purpose of the interactions you have with people? Like meeting a friend for coffee. Was the point to vent about your crummy job and car that is constantly braking down? How about that dinner with your spouse? The other night Margie and I were having dinner when we noticed a couple across the restaurant. The entire time they were out together, he was on his phone and she was reading a book. They scarcely knew each other was there.
I’m not saying we need a minute by minute plan for every personal interaction. Some organic development is what keeps life interesting. I’m reminded of a new project in working on with a friend of mine. We have a framework of what we would like to accomplish, but leave room for some magic to happen.
Life is much like that. When meeting a friend, think to yourself “While we are having coffee, I’d really like to make each other laugh.” Before heading out for that romantic dinner with your spouse, maybe plan to share how much they mean to you while enjoying a delicious meal. Have a positive purpose in your interactions. It will help you have an even more amazing life.
One thing that drives me slightly more crazy than I already am is the laziness in which we communicate these days. It is easier to understand how that can be helpful is texting or messaging someone. What is sad is when it starts to filter into real life conversation. Looking at the examples above can be helpful. Think of someone saying them to you. Can you imagine the difference in how they would make you feel?
Would you agree that to a great extent, the quality of our life is the quality of our relationships? Get in a fight with your spouse in the morning and how does your workday go? Have an argument with a coworker and what kind of mood do you come home in? The cause of most discord in relationships is communication. Either a lack of it, or the method in which it is delivered. Even if you are looking to take your relationship to the next level, mastering your communication is the key. Telling your spouse they “Look good” is nice. Saying something like, “The effort you put into that outfit really highlights your already attractive features.” creates a completely different feeling.
If you do not know how to communicate with skill, there are a million resources to help you in that area. Books on how to communicate. Reading poetry that makes you feel a certain way and thinking of how to work it into your speaking. Even reading greeting cards can help. Think about it. You pay $7 or more to deliver a folded piece of paper with often only a line or two. To get you to spend that kind of money those words have to be impactful. Want to be more romantic? Watch romantic movies, read romantic books and do so with the intent to learn. Want to learn how to genuine compliment someone? How about a boss or client?
Do you think this is not so important? Remember, people may forget what you say to them, but they will never forget how you make them feel. People are driven by emotion and they back up that emotion using logic. That is why your words must illicit a powerful emotional response. More to the point, a positive one. People give their attention, their time and their business and money to those who can make them feel important, valued and happy. You can do that by not sounding like a teenager sending a text. Do not be lazy with your communication. Learning how to properly communicate and convey your emotions will transform your life.
I have a friend who shares his thoughts online. Rather like a journal on social media if you will. Things he ponders, he tends to share with others. Not much different than what we do here. Recently, some of his ‘friends’ have disowned him over this practice. Mind you, nothing is posts is hateful or too over the top. They were merely offended that he was sharing what was in his head. How has it come to this? In a world where it would benefit us greatly if we knew more of what others were thinking, why is this so offensive to others?
He seemed rather unphased by the whole event. This is the right way to go about it. Certainly, those people have a right to stop being his friend. The actions themselves rather confused me. We are supposed to put an accent on mental health and creating an environment where people feel safe to express themselves. Even if you don’t always agree with someone, it is important to let them express their emotions. It would be a great tragedy if we all were forced to be repressed. It would lead to far greater anger.
The point of this post is a quick reminder to encourage everyone, be that friend, spouse or child, to express themselves. It not only is positive for the mental health of that person, but it will strengthen and help the relationship between the two of you. Lack of communication is one of the greatest causes of arguments, lose of friendship and loss of love. If there is one simple thing we can do, that is to listen to and respect one another.
Have you ever had something you really wanted to do, but life kept getting in the way? That is the story of this post. The idea came to me at work a few days ago. The more I let it bounce around in my head, the more I realized how important it was to living an amazing life. I could not wait to sit down behind the keyboard and put my thoughts together. Then, life happened. There was a DJ gig for elementary school children. That was two straight hours of screaming. There was checking in on someone’s cat in a snowstorm. FYI, I am not a fan of cats or snowstorms. It seemed like every time I wanted to sit down and write, something came up.
Today, I determined that after my 9 hour shift, I was going to stop at a coffee shop on the way home and get these words out today. Only to discover that the Wi-Fi at the coffee shop was not working with my computer. Ironically, this plays into the very subject that we are going to discuss today. As the title says, one word to make all of the other words better.
It began with a text conversation I was having with this lovely lady right here. Margie and I have a really great relationship, but just like everyone else’s, it needs looking after and requires a lot of work and effort on both of our behalf. This particular morning, I was mentioning that we could stand to focus more on a certain area that was getting slightly neglected. Margie agreed, and we began to come up with solutions to do just that. I began to think of what are the aspects of a relationship. You have friendship. You must be able to be your partner’s best friend and all that goes with that. There is romance. You must find ways in which to capture their heart and make them feel like they are floating. Lastly, there is sensuality. That is what separates a romantic relationship from a platonic one.
The crazy part of having a successful relationship is that one of these areas always seems to need a little attention. If you have been supporting your partner, trying to places for dinner and exploring new museums together, the friendship side feels pretty strong. Then your partner asks if you still love them? Your first thought may be, “What the —–?” Before you realize that all of those things, while enjoyable, were quite platonic. So, you become diligent with expressing your loving feelings, maybe even brought home some flowers and spent hours walking in the park holding hands. You are starting to feel confident when you partner asks, “Are you still attracted to me?” You realize that although you have been loving, you need to be more sensual. You plan a weekend a weekend getaway, a nice bottle of wine and some alone time in bed with the two of you. After a pleasurably exhausting weekend, you partner asks if the two of you should spend more time working on your connection, by say exploring new places to eat or museums together.
It occurred to me how much an ideal relationship is a balancing act. Yes, balance is the word that makes every word better. When you pay attention to one aspect of your relationship, another gets less attention. When you start to pay more attention to the one that is being neglected, then a third pops up, and so it continues. We need to discover what are the important areas of our relationship and work on providing balance to them. Often, when one person in a relationship feels unhappy or even unsatisfied, it is not that anything is wrong, it may often just be unbalanced.
You could literally go through the dictionary and pick out a word and discover the important balance needed in a relationship. Let us take communication. To me, that is one of, if not the, most important aspects of a relationship. There must be many balances in communication. You must communicate your love in both verbal and not verbal ways. You must balance what kind of communication you are giving your partner. Is it loving? Is it supportive? Is it encouraging? I think we could all agree a little of all of those would make a great relationship.
While reading this, and even while I was thinking of it, the fact that there is a lot of work involved here did not escape me. Do you know what that means? There is also a lot of opportunity to make your relationship better! Even if it is great right now, there are ways in which you could use a little more balance. In what areas could your relationship use a little more balance? Can you imagine how much more loving and strong your relationship would be if you worked on creating that balance?
The month of October is filled with scary stories, decorations and Halloween parties. In this blog, I want to discuss something even scarier than your favorite horror movie – continuing the issues that plague generation after generation. What is even scarier is that these issues can be silent killers that are very hard to spot. Why? Simply put, that is how things always were. If you were raised in a family that always said “Children are to be seen and not heard.” It may be very difficult to give time to and respect for the emotional wants and needs of your own children. Grew up in a family where your parents, and perhaps even your aunts and uncles fought and got divorced? It may be more difficult to know the ingredients that make the recipe for a successful relationship. Recognizing these situations for what they are can make them seem a lot less intimidating. They are great opportunities for both growth and ending generations of communication failures.
As if these challenges were not scary enough, there may be lessons we are not even aware that we can improve upon. Perhaps you grew up as an only child, you may have a little more difficult time learning to compromise in a relationship. If that childhood included a single parent as well, it may be even more difficult. Did you grow up in a tough neighborhood? You may feel great for having made it out, and congratulations are in order to be sure, but realize you may have lingering issues trusting the motives of others or have difficulty letting your guard down. What served you in situations past, may hinder you moving forward. Discovering and healing these issues is not easy, but doing so will help you live a fuller, richer and more rewarding life going forward.
Solving these issues can be as tricky as the issues are, but they don’t have to be. Often, just realizing we have them and being aware of them can go a long way. Knowing you have and issue and admitting you have an issue does not solve an issue. Telling someone “I have trust issues because my last partner cheated on me.” can be helpful. It can help your partner understand some of your behavior and even adjust some of their behavior to account for that issue. Telling another party in a relationship that you have ‘communication issues’ and expecting them to just be understanding while you do nothing to change those issues is not only unfair, but it is unhealthy. Admitting a struggle we may have but doing nothing to address that challenge places the onus entirely on the other party. Any relationship involves two or more parties and so should any solution for a challenge in that relationship.
How do we overcome relationship challenges that may have existed in our family long before we were even born? The answer is many faceted as the challenge itself. The first step is always to come to terms with the fact that we have this challenge in the first place. This can take long time of reflection, discussions with our partner or every therapy in some cases. People can be very sensitive when it comes to discovering this. It takes suspending our egos and viewing it as a growth opportunity and not as discovering a fault. This can be easy to understand intellectually, but another to grasp emotionally. It also requires an understanding that fault and responsibility are completely unrelated. Although it may not be our fault that we picked up the bad habits of our parents or friends, it is our responsibility to address those issues.
It is no secret to anyone who follows this website and my work in general that I have spent over 20 years in the field of self-improvement. One thing that I must remind myself of every so often is the fact that not everyone else has. This may sound silly and an obvious point, but it can be a fact that gets away from me.
When I hear someone constantly complaining about how unfair life is or how terrible their life is, I am tempted to remind them how they do a great deal to create their own reality. We all have challenges great and small. That is part of life. It is really how we respond to life’s challenges that does a great deal to determine how life treats us. There are a lot of people who are ignorant to even that basic equation. I was fortunate enough to be raised in an environment where reading and thinking where encouraged. In the course of reading hundreds of books, listening to just as many CDs and videos as well as attending seminars and listening to as many people as I can I have learned a great deal.
One of the greatest challenges to me is having the patience and understanding to realize although most people have the opportunity to do the same, many have not. When I speak to people about ways they can reduce stress, increase joy and become the best version of themselves, I am often met with resistance and sarcasm. On a rare occasion even violent resistance. It would be easy to come off as condescending, but it serves as a great reminder of many things for me. First off, I am so grateful for all I have been given and all I have learned. My life is far from perfect, but I am constantly discovering new ways to reduce stress and have more happiness in my life. I am also grateful that I do have the life I do. I have friends who love me, a beautiful and loving lady, and supporters from over 100 countries who read what I write.
The second thing I am reminded of is everyone is working towards becoming the best version of themselves. If you don’t believe me, just walk into a gym shortly after the first of the year. Not everyone has the tools to successfully accomplish all they desire. That would be evident by visiting that same gym 30 days after the first of the year and noticing how many less people are there. Still, everyone is giving it their best shot. There are very few people I know who are not interested in improving their lives. Some do not understand the only way to do that is by improving themselves. That is the main focus of my second book.
Some really wish to improve themselves and their lot in life, but lack the necessary tools. Some do not even know where to look for those tools. That is why I am always happy to share what I learn and am still learning. There are those as mentioned earlier who even when given the tools will refuse to believe them. This could be because they have been raised in a negative environment or are so cynical that they are getting in their own way. Those are people I still try to help. Whether that is leaving a card for them when they are ready, or being an example of what it looks like to live life using the tools I put forth.
Let us all do our best to understand everyone is working towards a better life. Even those seemingly following the wrong path may just be misdirected or lacking hope and direction. When we understand that we are all doing the best we can it is far easier to approach others with compassion and a genuine desire to help.
Really? You are going to tell us there is even a third way to effortlessly have motivation handed to us on a silver platter? You bet I am! So we have a calendar daily, we check our email daily. What is one other thing we do on a daily basis? Ok, before you get to far off the subject or share things with me I do not want to know, let me just give you the answer I am looking for. Check our phones. A majority of the people reading this blog have smart phones. I am even told some of you read this blog on your smart phone. Besides complimenting you are your great choices let me tell you that you are knocking on the door to even more inspiration that you know. In addition to the amazing and sometimes even entertaining secret2anamazinglife.com website you are now reading there are lots of other great things you can receive on your phone. I find it funny a great deal of you probably have the game angry birds on your phone, but no inspirational apps. Yes, such a thing really does exist. Imagine waking up to a beautiful quote and picture first thing in the morning? Would that change your outlook on the day? Would it make the morning commute a little easier to take? It would certainly plant the seed of something great to think about as the boss is yelling at you in the middle of the day. Just don’t let him catch you looking at it or the situation could become very un inspirational. The point here is this, there are lots of apps one can find simply by checking out your phone’s browser. Some I found looking right now are ‘inspirational picture quotes’, ‘inspirational quotes to live by’ and ‘inspirational bible verses’. Now do understand I do not endorse any specific one of these. They just happen to be the first three that came up when I typed in the word inspiration into my app browser on my phone. just another tool that can feed you motivation with little or no effort on your part. For those of you without a smart phone, do not fear, the former two posts will provide you some good alternatives. So one time a day put down the angry bird and pick up some inspiration.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 