Relationships & Love

What It Takes to Stay

what it takes to stay

I’ve been thinking lately about how there is a lot of interest in “finding” in our culture: finding the right mate, finding the right job, finding the right pair of shoes. There are endless articles, techniques, and ideas about how to find that right thing.

Much less attention is paid to staying, how to sustain the goodness of what you’ve found. How do we help good things continue to be good, over the long haul?

Staying with lots of resentments, with the feeling that you’ve settled, with a litany of complaints…all of that is easy, and it’s common.

What It Takes to Stay Read More »

You Can’t Force Other People to Change – But You Can Help Them

help people change

Do you have a teen who just won’t get off his backside and do anything? Is your brother deeply in debt? Have you got a friend whose romantic life is a series of disasters which she never seems to learn from? Are your parents severely overweight? Is your partner a smoker?

The chances are, there’s someone in your life who you believe is in need of change … but they’re not making any progress. If you’ve devoted yourself to change, perhaps making great strides in your personal and professional life, then it can be frustrating to see others – friends and loved ones – remaining stagnant.

So what can you do about it?

You Can’t Force Other People to Change – But You Can Help Them Read More »

Breaking Open: How to Fix a Broken Heart

how to fix a broken heart

In Baron Baptiste’s book 40 Days To Personal Revolution, he explains his Twelve Laws of Transformation. Law 2 is “Be Willing to Come Apart.” He uses the example of a mustard seed that must first break apart before it can grow to be a majestic tree.

Looking around the classroom that is Nature, we are given so many examples of this very transformation. A seed must crack its exterior to grow into a mighty oak tree. A baby bird struggles to break free of its life-sustaining shell. A beautiful butterfly must tear away at its chrysalis in order to fly for the first time. The crystallized array of colors in a geode must have its exterior broken open before it can shimmer.

Nature gives us these gifts so that we can understand that we also must break through our hardened shell in order to release our greatest potential.

Breaking Open: How to Fix a Broken Heart Read More »

What Advice Would You Offer a Friend?

advice for friends

Are you great at giving advice … but bad at taking it? Often, we’re great at seeing a solution for a friend, and we can easily spot the patterns and habits that friends fall into. It’s harder to get the same perspective on our own lives.

I know that I’ll often write blog posts of great advice which I’m not so good at following myself! Whether it’s about the importance of regular exercise, or the need for simplification, I don’t have a problem knowing what I should be doing … but it can be much harder to actually do it.

Perhaps you always feel that you are always an exception or a special case. You have no problem telling your friends that they should take time for themselves, or that they should love their body just the way it is … but somehow, you find it a lot harder to convince yourself of that.

What Advice Would You Offer a Friend? Read More »

Why You Struggle to Connect With Others

train station

In this day and age, it’s quite apparent that people are connecting everywhere. From the local pub to the cafe across the street, from the stands at the little league baseball field to one of the seemingly infinite number of online chat rooms, people are constantly connecting with each other.

Gone are the days of never talking to strangers. Gone are the days when people proclaimed that all chat rooms are dangerous. Gone are the days when your social circle was limited to your coworkers around the water cooler.

Thanks to our advances in communication, we can connect with whomever we want from wherever we want. If you so choose, you can have friends from all over the world while never stepping foot outside your front door (editor’s note: not recommended).

Why You Struggle to Connect With Others Read More »

How Re-Structuring Routine Interactions With Others Can Promote Positive Growth

meeting

Imagine waking up, greeting one positive person, receiving an e-mail from a person passionate about what they are doing, then sending an e-mail to a person about something you are passionate about, before you go about your other activities. A daily experience like this is not out of the realm of your potential routine. Getting to a point like this involves adjusting who you interact with, and approaching the people you don’t want to interact with, but have to, through a new mindset.

First, I want to preface this by saying this isn’t meant to create a pseudo-reality that is separate from the one others are in. At the same time, there are some who are in a state of growth who are positive to be around, and promote your good health and low stress, and there are some who have a negative demeanor, with little to no concern for you, who will likely only end up raising your blood pressure and stress levels. I often point out that personalities are fairly fixed in place, so the same person that causes you unnecessary stress today is very likely the one who will do so at some time in the future.

How Re-Structuring Routine Interactions With Others Can Promote Positive Growth Read More »

How to Change for the Sake of Your Relationship: Why it’s Not as Taboo as You Think

relationship change

We’ve been taught that changing for the sake of another person is in direct conflict to the preservation of our own identities. Changing to make someone else happy won’t make you happy, just as you can never truly change someone else to make yourself happy. But to sustain a mature, productive, long-term relationship with someone, both parties need to grow. Pride and stubbornness often get in the way of a relationship that still needs to develop in order to last, and if you’re unwilling to make a few changes in order to keep your loved ones close, you may end up losing them altogether.

The following are some tips on analyzing your personal development for the sake of your relationship, and reasons why making small changes for someone else isn’t as bad as you think.

How to Change for the Sake of Your Relationship: Why it’s Not as Taboo as You Think Read More »

Become a Person People Want to be Around

person people want to be around

I knew this guy in college who had a magnetic personality. Actually, I still know him. He’s a good friend of mine. But, I first got to know him well in college. He attracted people everywhere he went, like moths to a flame. It was amazing to me how easily he started conversations with unfamiliar people about everyday topics, and within minutes, was joking and chatting with them like they were old friends. I was a bit on the shy side, and didn’t really get too talkative with people until I got to know them well. Of course, since I didn’t chat too often with people, it made it hard to get to know them. I envied my friend’s ability to be so free from self-consciousness and wanted very much to be like him. I began to watch him closely (without being too creepy) to try to figure out what it was that he did that made him so irresistible to other people.

In my pursuit of this magical ability to attract people to me, I began to read a lot of self-help books about positive self-image and people skills. As I was doing this, and observing my friend, I began to understand what it was that set him apart from others.

Why is it that some people just seem to attract others? What are they doing that is different than everyone else? Is it something you’re born with, or can this ability be learned? I believe that anyone can become this type of attractive individual.

Become a Person People Want to be Around Read More »

Love Changes Everything

love heart

“Love, love changes everything … Nothing in the world will ever be the same.” ~ from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Aspects of Love”

The black jeep drives out of the Denny’s parking lot in Gallup, New Mexico, my daughter Guinevere waving from the back seat. It turns south on Muñoz Drive, then west on I-40 on its way back to Sedona, Arizona.

For ten minutes, I sit numbly in my car, unable to turn the key in the ignition and follow Muñoz to I-40’s eastbound ramp, for the two-and-a-half-hour trip home to Albuquerque. When I do, it’s a long time before I can turn on the radio or call a friend, the two distractions that often ease long drives for me.

Love Changes Everything Read More »

Building Positive Friendships: Modern Tools and Old-Fashioned Self-Understanding

positive friendships

“How can someone you’ve never met possibly be considered a friend?” This challenge was posed to an old friend of mine, one who has “been there” for me in person in years past and now stays in touch via the internet. But can it actually work the other way round? Can we make “real friends” through technology, meeting them in person only later, if at all? Are the friends we make through non-traditional means actually “real friends”?

Modern technology has changed almost every aspect of life, and so it’s no small thing to consider: What exactly is a friend? What types of friends do I want? Who are my real friends? The answers deserve careful thought and reflection. No two people are going to come up with exactly the same definitions, filters and requirements. Whether we consciously know it or not, we all have a set of rules and definitions for friendship.

These rules are so much a part of us that we may get knocked for a loop when our “friends” do things that violate our rules—which may or may not be *their* rules. So how do you sort out it all out? In building a positive life, friendship can be one of the best parts of our world. It’s worth taking the time to understand our own minds and hearts. The best place to start is by taking the time to get to know what the terms “friend” and “friendship” mean to each of us.

Building Positive Friendships: Modern Tools and Old-Fashioned Self-Understanding Read More »