Marriage doesn’t have to be all hard work, but unless you are committed to working at your marriage, it’s unlikely to last the long haul (or at least be one you enjoy being in.) As I reflect on the last twenty years of married life, here are seven ways to help keep love alive and your marriage strong.
Holding a grudge can be self-satisfying, but it always hurts us far more than the person we’re holding it against. At risk of sounding like a preacher, you must learnt to forgive. Doing so isn’t about them; it’s about you. It’s about deciding that you no longer want to carry negative emotions from an event in your past forward in to your future. You’ll take the learning, but you’ll leave the resentment behind.
The old adage “It’s not what you know, but who you know” no longer holds true. Nowadays, it’s not what you know, nor who you know – it’s who knows what you know.” Tooting your horn is about strategically building your ‘personal brand’ to ensure that those who can help you accomplish more in your career, know not just who you are, but the value you have (and want) to contribute. Failing to toot your horn – with the right people, in the right way, and at the right time – doesn’t serve anyone.
I realized this morning that I cannot let this month slip by without acknowledging the milestone that it represents. You see it was ten years ago, in August 2003, while I was living in Coppell (Dallas) Texas, when I officially began my second career and hung out the shingle out as an “executive life coach.”
It was a month before the phone rang. Two months before I had my first client.
While speaking at a conference in Shanghai recently, I got to meet many women from around the globe. Smart women. Hard-working women. Women aspiring to do more, be more and lead more. Women who also sometimes doubt whether they can.
BUT HERE’S THE DEAL: We women cannot achieve what we’re capable of doing by staying safe in our comfort zone. The common thread that binds the most powerful women is their willingness to take risks, to speak up and to take action in the presence of doubt and uncertainty, rather than stick to a safer path.
Resilience is crucial to our success in the bigger game of life. Not only does resilience help us to cope better with major crisis and traumatic experiences, but it helps us cope better with the smaller, more mundane, events and circumstances that often take the biggest toll on our health and happiness on a daily basis.
While the future may be looking very uncertain for Nigella, one thing is not. That the pain in her private life is now in the public domain and that millions are cheering her on to be the strong woman we’ve always seen her to be – not just in the kitchen, but in her life beyond it.
As our online networks have grown ever more expansive, our relationships offline have thinned, leaving many people feeling more alone with fewer confidents than they had in the era “B.F.” (Before Facebook.) As social media appeals to our vanity and vulnerability, we must be vigilant not to hide behind the technology in communicating with the people around us, escaping the ‘real work’ of addressing the issues which arise in real (and truly authentic) relationships.
we human beings are wired to be risk averse. In other words, we find it much easier to settle with the status quo, keep our mouths closed and our heads down rather than to make a change, take a chance or speak up and engage in what I call a “courageous conversation.” When weighing up whether to do something that makes us vulnerable to failing, losing face or some other form or loss, we have an innate tendency to over estimate the size of risks and under estimate our ability to handle them.
If Angelina Jolie’s bravery has a lesson for us all it is this: That sometimes life calls each of us to decisive amidst uncertainty; that sometimes after weighing in all the probabilities and measuring out the pro’s and con’s, we each need to tune out all the noise and opinions around us and turn inward to listen the voice within making whatever decision feels most right for us, even if we’re not 100% sure it’s 100% right. We then have to trust ourselves more deeply to meet whatever challenges those choices may give rise to.
Making changes to our regular schedule, much less our life, is not easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it. If it were, I wouldn’t be falling on my sword right now! But whether in our work, relationships or how we manage our daily lives, sometimes we are called to make a change, to let go the familiar, and say no to something that is “good” to open up the possibility for something better.
Courage is saying ‘Enough!’ to the fears that urge you to play safe, speak safe, love safe and live safe, knowing that becoming vulnerable to you fears lies at the heart of everything worthwhile.
When we surround ourselves with people who believe in our success, it makes success so much easier to achieve. And so if you want to achieve something exciting, or make a big change in your life, it’s crucial to deliberately surround yourself with people who will support you and cheer you on, particularly when the going get’s tough. (Sometimes they may also give you an equally much needed kick in the pants.)
By not taking a risk in our job or career – whether making a change or proactively trying to adapt to those going on around us – we run the bigger risk of being left behind. Professor Philip Bobbit from the University of Texas has even given a name to the human tendency to assume the present situation will remain the same. He called it Parmenides fallacy after the Greek philosopher who argued that the world was static and that all change was an illusion. So don’t kid yourself that choosing to do nothing isn’t a choice and doesn’t have consequences. As I wrote in Stop Playing Safe, “Usually things that aren’t working well only get worse.”
While writing my new book Stop Playing Safe, I approached numerous people who have been really courageous throughout their career and working lives. In between my fair share of “Thank you, but no thank you” responses (which were wonderful opportunities for building...
(Reprinted from my CourageWorks column in Forbes magazine) None of us are immune to the same temptations that Armstrong succumbed to. As self-serving, deceitful and cowardly as his behaviour has been, it’s also very human. The discovery of Lance Armstrong’s drug...
I talk a lot about living with courage. Let me just say, when it comes to the obsession millions of Americans have about guns, and more so, their right to carry one, it scares the hell out of me.
You can’t treat a problem properly unless you’ve diagnosed it properly. What lies at the heart of so many of the big problems we are facing around the world, and the smaller (though no less significant ones) we face in our own lives is our insistence that we are right and others are wrong. We are so busy insisting that we have the answer, we fail to accurately diagnose the root cause of what’s wrong, prescribe the wrong treatment, and then only perpetuate the problem.
Make sure that what you commit to aligns with what you are most committed too. When it does, then balance naturally sorts itself out.
Only when you are really clear about what it is that you most want to fit into your life, will you be able to find the clarity, confidence and guilt-free courage to say no to the many requests, invitations and opportunities that come your way.
When we judge others we are saying a lot more about ourselves than we are about them. Of course we need to be discerning and make judgments in order to be effective, but we can all benefit from being more mindful about what insecurities, unmet needs and fears may also be driving judgment. We should reflect on what our judgments saying about us and our need to judge. How are your judgements limiting your ability to connect, engage and build bridges rather than barriers?
We human beings are far more alike than we are different. I learnt that during my days in the West Bank. I learnt that living in Papua New Guinea. I learnt that living in America’s Bible Belt. And I was reminded of that again last week in Borneo. Sure, notice what makes you different to others. Notice what makes others different to you. But also notice the threads that link you – the insecurities, the dreams, the love of family, the anxieties, the things that you care about most deeply and the things that which makes you laugh most loudly. When we focus on the common ground, when we focus on our shared humanity, that’s when we can communicate, connect and create profound change both in our experience of life, and in the collective experience of humanity here on earth.
