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How To Tell If Your Relationship Is Fantastic

Do you want to have a fantastic relationship? Do you know how to tell if a relationship has what it takes to be great instead of somewhere between "okay" and "good enough"?

Relationships can seem like tricky things, but the basics really aren't that complex. There are certain things that any really good, great, or fantastic relationship will have. Some lesser relationships will still have some of these things, but often only on one side. In other words, one person possesses the quality, but not both. Other lesser relationships will feature both people showing some of the attributes listed below, but missing others. Sometimes these lesser relationships can turn into great relationships if effort is put into learning, and adopting, the other pieces.

There are many lists of things a relationship needs to be successful, but most of them are of a more mechanical nature. I've even posted a few of that kind myself, listing things like time together, communication, etc. This list, however, is not things you do, it's things you have.

If you want to know whether your relationship has what it takes to be great, and to last the test of time, then evaluate it based on the attributes of a fantastic relationship listed below.

You Both Know How To Love

Do you know how to love? To really love, not to like, or do things for, or get turned on by, your love? Do you feel that you are soul mates, that you have a connection so deep that it will be there forever, no matter what happens to the relationship?

Love takes more than buying someone flowers. It takes more than holding their hand when you're out… Love is when you take them by the hand and it reaches out and touches their soul, too. If you don't know what I'm talking about, or that sounds scary or too deep, then you may not be ready for love. That's okay… you don't have to be in love, and trying to force yourself when you aren't ready only backfires.

"Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offense. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and endurance. In a word, there are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of them all is love."

The Bible has some great pieces of wisdom concentrated down to their basics, and this is one of them. Love is patient and infinite… trials and tribulations can scratch the surface of it, but never damage its depths.
You Both Know The Complexities Love Contains

So you both know how to love, but do you know the complexities that love contains? Love can encompass and contain your whole awareness at one moment, and be rejected in pain the next. It never really goes away, not if you truly loved, but you can certainly bury it deeply. You can bury it so deeply that only you know it's what is causing you pain, or so deeply that even you don't know that's where the pain is coming from.

Love can have good days and bad days, but it never really goes away, and as soon as you let go of the walls you use to hold it back, it will come surging in again, often bringing with it whatever pain caused you to build those walls, but only temporarily. The flow of love washes away the pain, though the time required varies.

Love is complex, bringing both pain and healing, leaving you vulnerable but making you stronger. If you don't understand this, if you don't accept it, your relationship is going to be weaker than it could have been.
You Both Have Forgiving Hearts

There is one thing that is certain in any relationship: You are going to hurt each other. If you have a good relationship, it won't be intentional, but it will still happen. If you can't forgive each other when it happens, then your relationship is going to be very shallow.

If you can't forgive someone for hurting you unintentionally, you are building walls to keep love away, probably because you are scared of the way it makes you vulnerable. Those walls will keep the other person out and limit how deeply love can spread its roots. Shallow roots can still keep it alive, but when trouble comes along, its grip is weak, and it can be ripped away.

Learn to forgive, and relax those walls… getting rid of them can be scary, and usually hurts right at first, but it will make you a LOT happier in the long run, and the pain is only short-lived.
You Love The Other Person, Not The Attention They Are Giving You

When you are "falling in love", it's easy to mistake loving the attention you are getting for loving the other person. You are getting closer rapidly, you haven't hit your walls yet, and you're getting loads of attention. Attention is the universal currency by which you show that someone is important to you, and it's an awesome feeling to know that you are important to someone specific, especially if that person is someone you like. This is also what leads to a lot of affairs, unfortunately… people need to feel important, and if they feel that they aren't important to their spouse because they aren't getting attention from them, and someone else comes along and offers that attention and feeling of being important to someone… well, it's a bad situation.

There's a relatively easy test to see if you love the person or the attention, though. It works like this: close your eyes. Now bring up the other person in your mind. What is it about that person that comes to mind? If your answer is a part of their body (a la eyes… if it's certain other portions of their anatomy, don't kid yourself, you know it isn't love), or the fun you have together, you may be loving the attention. If what comes to mind is more of a complete concept, something that's hard to put into words but is a representation of them and what they mean to you, something that if you're really open to it nearly brings tears to your eyes… THAT is being in love with the person.
You Don't Have Any Walls Just For The Other Person

I've been thinking a lot about "walls" lately… if you've been reading my stuff, you may have noticed. If you have any walls that are for a specific person, it means that person is important in your life. You may have walls that only your mother can hit, created in response to some pain she caused at some point in your life. You may have walls for any specific person who has caused you pain, and that can include your significant other.

Walls are built to keep pain out, but they don't… they keep pain in, trapped inside of you. When you build walls that are just for one person, you are doing two things… you are shutting that person out of that part of you, and you are holding on to pain that they caused. Holding on to pain that someone specific caused you isn't really a good way to have that relationship grow stronger and deeper, and a real love is generally either growing deeper or becoming more shallow.

Holding on to walls at all limits the heights you can reach, but holding on to walls against just one person also limits your depth.
When You Close Your Eyes, You Know They're There

In any really good (fantastic, anyone?) relationship, you share a bond of a depth that anyone who has not been in such a relationship cannot imagine. This connection can be stronger or weaker at different times, but one thing should always remain: if you close your eyes, you should know that the other person is there. I'm not talking about any psychic phenomenon, like knowing exactly where they are even though you're hundreds or thousands of miles apart. I am talking about that unshakable certainty, that depth of connection, that unmovable mountain that says "I am here".

If you've been in a good relationship where there is real love, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I can't explain it any better than that. You might be able to guess, but when you feel the real thing you'll know that your guess wasn't even a shadow of the truth.

Does your relationship have these elements? If you're not in a relationship currently, then may I recommend that next time you find one, and you think it might be THE one, you pause the breakneck plunge for just a moment to come back to this list and see if it has the signs of what could be a fantastic, long-lasting relationship?

As I said, this is not a list of "mechanical" type attributes of a relationship, things that can be quantified. It's a list of… well, I don't know how to describe the common thread, but it's there.

Does your relationship have these things? Does it have more or less of any given thing? Do you think any of the points listed above are more important than the others? Let me know in the comments.

Author

October 1st

Awareness, Communication, Expectations, Fear, Feed Your Mind, Relationships

Discard Your Life And Find The Real You

What is the real you? What is it that makes up the true you, what belongs to you and only you? What do you get when you see past the surface, past the anger and fear, "love" and betrayal, hurt, pain, and even agony? The real you… the deep you, the you that is beyond what the surface you can even imagine.

When you are born, you have no concept of your "self". As you grow older, you build up a structure, a belief system, a framework of lenses and mental maps through which you see the world. You are told, and you believe, that this framework is you. The framework gets covered with experiences and emotions, and even the spaces between the beams of the support structure get filled up eventually. You go on about your life with the belief that this giant amalgamation is you.

Everyone else around you believes this, too. Only what they think of as you isn't even the structure you have built up… it's only the surface of that structure, a surface that changes constantly as new experiences, new emotions, and new everything else piles up, sometimes stripping off pieces of the old coverings, but more often simply piling over them, making them part of the inside, and making that structure ever harder to discard.

As you go about, identifying more and more with this framework that you've built, some of it intentional construction, most of it not, you build walls, walling off this portion from that portion. You do this to protect yourself, to keep yourself from getting hurt, but that's not what they do, it's only what you fool yourself into believing they do. Because those walls don't keep things out, they keep things in.

That's right… you're building yourself a prison. A prison inside a structure that is built of the giant ball of stuff that you call your life. And you not only build this prison, you voluntarily stick yourself inside of it, trapping yourself in with all the pain and injuries that you have suffered over the years. And to top it off, the prison that you build, and trap yourself inside, can't ever even fulfill the purpose for which you supposedly built it… it can't even keep out new pain!

That's right… you build up this structure of falsehoods, lies told to yourself, walling yourself in to keep out the pain, and it doesn't even work. The walls only function in one direction… they hold things in. They hold you in… they limit you to far, far below your true abilities. They keep the pain that you have experienced close to you, so that it can continually injure you and prevent you from healing. What do you do when the pain builds, when it gets harder and harder to deal with? You build more walls, and build the walls you have higher!

The walls that you build for yourself are a prison… but they're also an illusion. They are part of the framework that you have built up, an integral part as a matter of fact. But here's the thing: that framework isn't you.

That's right, all those lenses and perceptions and mental maps, all those experiences and emotions, those hatreds and angers and fears… they aren't you. They're a tiny little pimple that you've built up on the surface of the real you. All that stuff that you're trying to protect, the part that hurts, the part that knows pain and fear and suffering… that is only the very smallest fraction of you. It's like looking at a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, and calling that the ocean.

The real you is vast. It is deep, and strong, and powerful. It cannot be hurt by the vagaries of this life, because it is only the tiniest fraction of it that is involved with this life. Your physical presence, and the structure that you have built up, are merely the tiny portion of it paying attention to what you perceive as your whole life. And when you identify yourself as that tiny portion, you are giving up the vastness of the real you, like identifying yourself as your pinky.

Your walls you have created are illusions, but they are self-maintained illusions, given the power that you are drawing through your connection to the real you. Want evidence that what I'm saying is right? It's very easy to obtain… all you have to do is let down one, just one, of your walls. You will immediately feel closer to that vastness that is the real you. And with each wall that you release, you will find yourself closer to that reality.

When you get close, you may be scared by the openness, the sheer open expanse that you feel drawing nearer. After all, for all of your life that you can remember, you have lived inside your walls. You may never have even had a moment's clarity, an opening of the mind's eye to see the vastness around you. If you HAVE had one of those moments, you may be even more scared, because you have an inkling of what it's like.

It's not an empty vastness, though… you aren't alone. In fact, when you reach that vastness, you'll find that you are connected to everyone and everything else, with a deepness of connection that the very word connection doesn't seem strong enough to convey the reality of what you feel. You are a part of everything, and everything is a part of you.

It's sometimes hard to keep this connection to the real you… it's easy to forget and focus back on the surface structure, identifying with that structure that you've built up. Once you've let the feeling go long enough, in fact, it's hard to remember what it was like… until something triggers it again, and then it all comes rushing back.

There is an old movie called Dune. They made a newer version of it, too, but I'm talking about the original. In it, there is a phrase that is repeated a few times: "The sleeper must awaken." I have always identified with this phrase… I've always felt like it meant something to me, something more. I've felt like there was something bigger slumbering inside me.

Lately, as I have read, and learned, and written, and looked inside of me, my awareness has gradually expanded, and the phrase has changed, in my mind, to "The sleeper is awakening." I felt that bigger thing inside of me stirring from its slumber, starting to uncoil.

Tonight, as I was talking to my wife to help her relax, something clicked. Sometimes the greatest words of wisdom come when the conscious mind gets the hell out of the way and lets things flow from far deeper inside. Suddenly, that thing that had slowly been awakening came aware. The sleeper has awoken.

This connection, this deeper you, is your connection to God, to the awareness that created, and contains, and in a way is, the universe. But it is being "consciously" (too small a term, I think) aware of that connection, not in some sort of vague "God created the Heavens and the Earth" kind of way. It is an intimate and strong connection, a direct connection. It is deep, wordless communication flowing back and forth, much of which, to this point at least, seems to be more of an "I am here" message and an "I know" response flowing from each direction.

This vastness is inside each of us… in fact, it IS each of us. We are not the limited lives reflected in the world we live in, we are not even the conscious part of our minds… we are far more than that. But in order to find our true selves, we must first give up the structure that have built up, that we have defined as "us"… and that's probably the hardest thing in the world to do. That last wall, the one that separates us from our true selves, the one that is the foundation of support for our whole framework of our lives, is really, really hard to let go. It is giving up the "you" that you have always known, for a great unknown.

Do not be afraid. The whole world will change before your eyes, leaving nothing unaltered. Once you let go of that last wall, and the fear, there will be no doubt, however.

It's worth it.

Author

September 28th

Awareness, Beliefs, Body/Mind Relationship, Communication, Conscience, Energy, Expectations, Fear, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Growth, Healing, Internal Quiet, Learning, Motivation, Patterns, Relationships

5 Reasons Why Companies Fail To Find Good Leaders

Board Room

When you look at any large company from the inside, it's easy to see that they usually have at least some people in leadership positions for which they are quite simply unqualified. Why does this happen? Why is it so consistent?

I'm glad you asked… I've been thinking about this issue for a long time. There are a few reasons behind this phenomenon that all tie together to make it almost inevitable once a company reaches a certain size.

Promotion Based On Skill In Current Job

I'm really not sure how this one got started, but there is a very strong, almost universal, tendency to promote someone who is very good at their current job to a different job, without regards to the different skill set that is needed. The best salesman that a company has is likely to be promoted to sales manager, should that position come open, for example. This in spite of the fact that a manager needs an entirely different skill set AND the fact that you're taking the best salesman away from directly selling.

That's not to say that the person who is the best at their current job is NOT the best qualified for the promotion… they may very well be the best. But whether they are the best choice for a promotion has nothing to do with their skill at their current job… only with the qualities they have that apply to the new job.
Promotion Based On Longevity

This is even stronger than #1. This tendency is almost universal, and it most likely derives from the valued trait of loyalty… they have given the most time to your company, so you reward their loyalty with a promotion. This tendency at least has an advantage over #1, in that it doesn't automatically take the best person away from the job where they excel, but it is just as random about finding good leaders. The person who has been there longest is no more or less likely to be the best choice for the promotion purely based on longevity.
Stigma Attached To Being Passed Over For Promotion

And that leads us to number 3… if you would be up for promotion based on either of the two tendencies above, and someone else is promoted that is NOT based on one of those tendencies, it carries a strong social stigma. So strong, in fact, that it can often lead to someone quitting an otherwise satisfying, well-paying job. If you get passed over, and other people know it (and they will), it makes them think lower of you because they think there must be something wrong with you that caused you to be passed over… even if it's only slightly, it's still noticeable, and unpleasant.
No Demotions

Another major reason why leadership tends to grow progressively worse is that people are never demoted. If you are promoted to a new job, and you can't do it, you should be demoted back to where you were before. Unfortunately, that basically never happens… the stigma attached to demotion is so strong that demoting someone not merely tarnishes their reputation, it tarnishes the reputation of the one who demotes them, as well. Nobody wants to work for someone who demotes people… even though if you're good at your job, working for someone who does that is actually GOOD for you. It also basically guarantees that the person who is demoted will leave the company.
Strong Stigma Attached To Not Accepting Promotion

There is also a stigma attached to not accepting a promotion. While this one is not as strong as the previous two, it still certainly exists. Anyone who knows you turned down a promotion will assume that there is something wrong… and if they can't find out what it is, they will start speculating, potentially leading to new and potentially harmful rumors. Nobody wants that, so they feel strong pressure to accept any promotion that is offered, even if they don't really want it.

All of those factors combine to cause people to be promoted until they hit a point where they can't do the job they have reached. Then the higher-ups don't want to cause problems by demoting the person back to a previous job where he was more qualified, and if they did, that person would feel obligated to leave the company… even if he liked the old job better AND made more money! The social stigma is that strong.

Since that leaves people promoted past their level of expertise, and often times even past their level of competency, it causes the leadership at the company to deteriorate, and that leads to even worse choices for leaders, as having someone who is not a good leader pick the leaders under them is not a good idea. This extremely strong tendency toward lowering standards of leadership as a company grows and ages is one of the primary reasons why new companies CAN come in and compete and become the new big companies… their execution of ideas and strategies is generally better, due to less of the above causes having had a chance to set in, thereby balancing the leverage of existing companies due to strong branding and established presence.

PS – This article was inspired by John McKenna in his leadership challenge.

Author

September 5th

Communication, Expectations, Fear, Leadership

Four Steps To Boosting Your Creativity (And Confidence!)

Some people, it seems, are born so full of creativity that it comes out of their ears. Others feel dull and lifeless. What is the difference between the two? Is creativity something you can learn?

The answer is both yes and no. The truth is that everyone has creativity in their soul and that you cannot actually teach creativity. What can be taught, however, is how to awaken the creativity that is already inside you.

First of all, let's consider what creativity is. Some people are creative with regards to formal art, like painting. Some are creative when it comes to writing. Still others are creative when it comes to music. And, of course, some people are creative in other ways.

The first thing to understand when you are seeking to ignite the creative fire inside of you is that creativity is NOT limited to what are traditionally considered creative activities. While some may be creative in music, art, or writing, others may be creative in seeing new uses for existing tools, in seeing what would make a good photograph, or coming up with new dishes.

If you want to see an example of someone who took their creative urge in a direction that is not generally considered a "respectable" form of creative expression, look at the art of Julian Beever. He took sidewalk chalk to a level that most people would never even imagine, and is famous worldwide for it. So don't worry that your particular form of choice is one that isn't generally associated with creativity.

There is one thing that all creative people have in common. They are all passionate about what they are creating, about the very act of creating. That passion is one of the very things that scares off people who don't feel they are creative. When you are uncertain of your talent, you may be hesitant, and that hesitancy can make you kill your own creative impulses.

So you've made the decision that you want to light the fire of creativity within you, that you want it to burn bright and high. Here are four steps to lead you in that direction.

Find Your Creative Calling

If you want to awaken the creativity within you, you have to find something that you enjoy, something you resonate with, something where you have the kernel of a flame of passion. This doesn't have to be an "approved" form of creative expression, it can be anything. There are even creative criminals, though I would advise against that path.
Make Small Changes

The second step is to start pushing your creativity in the area you have chosen. Take a step off the beaten path, and do something differently. Do it differently than you have done it before. Do it differently than the official "prescribed" way. Change it and make it your own. It doesn't have to be anything big, even small steps will help build up your courage for bigger steps later.
Build On Those Changes

The third step is to take encouragement from your small experiments and take a bigger step. Change a major component of something, whether it's the process for doing something, or changing the actual end product. You can't grow without change, so if you want to grow in creativity, if you want to light that fire inside you, you have to feed it, and it runs on pieces of old routine and "safe" ways of doing things.
Evaluate What You've Built

The fourth step, and the last one that I can guide you toward, is to look back and evaluate the changes you have made. Did things improve? Did they grow worse? How did it make you feel to make those changes… did it make you feel uncertain but more alive? Look back and learn… learn which changes were beneficial and which ones weren't, but most of all, learn that change is the only path for growth.

Some people are blessed with creativity burning bright from the time they are small children. Some people are not… some even have those flames of creativity intentionally doused by parents or teachers who think they are being "realistic". Even those who are born with the fire inside, however, sometimes find that the fire has burned low, and they need to re-ignite it.

Whether you are building the fire of creativity for the first time, or simply trying to build it back up to where it used to be, always remember what that fire burns as fuel: routine, "safe" places (where you are not mentally or emotionally challenged), and fear of failure. So break pieces of those things off and feed them to the fire! You'll be happier, more creative, and more confident in no time.

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Author

August 22nd

Fear, Feed Your Mind, Growth

Which One Runs Your Life – Love Or Fear?

Polarity

Steve Pavlina recently wrote an article on Achieving Peak Motivation through use of polarity.

In it, he writes:

                    Love polarization means you adopt the mindset of unconditional love                    for everything that exists.  You center your life around serving the                    highest good of all.  This commitment stems naturally from the decision                    to align yourself with the polarity of unconditional love.  Think of                    this as an outward flow of energy.  Your focus is on giving and on                    making a contribution.

                    Fear polarization means you become unconditionally self-centered,                    driven by greed, power, and lust.  Your commitment is to make your life                    the best it can possibly be, purely for your own self-gratification.                     Think of this as an inward flow of energy.  Your focus is on acquiring                    and absorbing all that life has to offer you.

While I don't disagree with his two types of motivation, I disagree with his labels. I think that what he is really describing is a positive (what he calls love) and negative (what he calls fear) aspect of the love polarity. I think the real love and fear polarities go deeper than that, that they have a more fundamental difference than whether you love yourself most or all people equally.

When you orient yourself toward the love polarity, you look at things from the perspective of wanting to bring certain things INTO your life, whether it be love, money, or something else. You are seeking an inflow of energy, of life, bringing things into yourself. Your focus is on bringing the good things to you.

When you orient yourself toward the fear polarity, on the other hand, you are looking at things from the perspective of wanting to keep something OUT of your life. This can be loneliness, or poverty, or any number of other things. You are expending your energy outward, pushing things away (though you may be doing it by trying to bring certain other things into your life, your focus is on keeping the bad things away).

As Steve says when talking about polarities, love and fear can both be incredibly powerful motivators. If you understand them, and use the power of conscious choice to make one a cornerstone of who you are, it can provide sustained high motivation in a way that little or nothing else can. Choosing the one that conflicts with your natural tendencies (read subconsciously learned tendencies) is one of the most difficult decisions to make stick, but it can still be done, you just have to keep at it.

If you choose the love polarity, you can then choose within that polarity from the two aspects Steve presents. If you choose the fear polarity, though I'm not certain that anyone would ever make that choice consciously, then there are probably similar positive and negative aspects, though I have chosen love, so I can't be certain. Either way, make the choice consciously… don't leave it up to your subconscious, or you may not like the results.

I have created a new contest! One lucky subscriber will win a free copy of The Secret.

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