Tag: Relationships

You can’t be trusted…

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“I’ve always gone for the ‘bad boy’ in my relationships, and it has never worked out. I want to find a healthy relationship and settle down”.

“Good for her!” I thought. Self-awareness is the key to helping us create the life that we want.

I rarely watch reality tv. I have caught glimpses over the years, but I never thought that anything about it was actually real, until one day I happened upon a bachelorette type franchise where a well-known female was the object of many a male’s affection. Not groundbreaking by any stretch.

What did stand out was this insight she had about herself.

Fast forward to the end of the series and the final two males that she could choose from represented her two options in life. Choose the new, unknown, probably healthy relationship with a nice guy who cared for her, or the same relationship she has had over and over, which she said she didn’t want.

She chose the second option, the ‘bad boy’ she said she didn’t want, and a few months later it all fell apart, like it always did.

I couldn’t believe it, she had happiness and contentment right in front of her and she threw it aside to chase after something that seemed fun but in the end was damaging. Why would she do that?

But when you think about it, we all do that. We all have some idea about what is good for us, what is healthy, what will probably make us happy, when faced with a choice between those things and what looks fun in the moment, how many times do we choose the thing that will hurt us in the long term? Why can’t we just make good, healthy decisions?

It’s one thing to know what is good for us, what we need, and what will create the best scenario for us down the track, it’s another thing to do it.

Generosity is like that. We could give some money away, or some time, or do something thoughtful for someone else, or we could buy another pair of shoes, or start the next episode of whatever we are streaming at the moment. I know which of those things will make me happier long term, but often I choose the other things.

What on earth do we do? Be generous to yourself and know that this isn’t how it always has to be. You can make a change, by starting small. Take $5, 5 minutes or 5 messages and use them to act generously towards others. Then go back to your shoes and shows. If you do this consistently, over time you will require less shoes and shows and enjoy more generosity and more of life.

Who knows, you may even find yourself making more good, healthy decisions in other areas of your life too.

Nobody has any idea…

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If event A happens right before event B, does that mean that A caused B? It’s hard to say that it doesn’t.

That’s why so many professional athletes have ‘lucky’ items of clothing that they wear – they played a great game once and decided that it was partly because they were wearing a specific pair of underwear. Now it makes up part of their pre-game ritual, even though it stinks and has holes in it.

This philosophy has birthed thousands of ‘experts’ who can share the ‘secrets of their success’, and if it has worked for them, you can do it too and it will work for you, guaranteed*. But somehow their secrets seem to fall short for most people.

At best, the greatest advice anyone can give you is, “Here’s what I have done that has worked for me…so far.”

But luck, timing, and other things outside of our control make up about 90% of all success.

Where you were born, your access to education, meeting the right person at the right time, being the in the right place and the right time, none of these things have anything to do with your ability.

Sometimes success comes in spite of what we did and who we are, and looking back we are not sure how it happened because we did everything ‘wrong’.

I’ve often heard it said, ‘no one has any idea what they are doing, they are just making it up as the go along.’

If that is true, it’s an uncomfortable reality because surely someone knows what is going on and how to do this life thing, someone must be in charge of it all? Maybe not.

Does this mean there is nothing we can learn outside of our own experience? Of course not, but it is important to have the perspective that nothing is guaranteed, and what we think is the ‘silver bullet’ may not be.

It is possible that right now, the thing that you are most sure about in life is based on an incorrect assumption. Whilst that seems unlikely, what is more likely is that the thing you are most sure about in life is based on a partial truth.

So, what do we do with this, seemingly, pessimistic perspective?

I always bring it back to the knowledge that some things are always good for us. Sleep. Eating well. Family/relationships. Generosity. Spiritual endeavours. If we do those things we know that if everything else if life falls over because of something outside of your control, you will still have everything you need.

*not a guarantee

Fade

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I am amazed by the sheer amount of people that are alive in this moment. Over 7.9 billion people is impossible to imagine. It is extraordinary, and overwhelming and humbling.

Out of that 7.9 billion, how many people will know me? Dunbar’s number suggests that we don’t really have the capacity to have more than 150 meaningful relationships.

Out of that 150, how many will really do life with me? Jim Rohn said that you are the average of the 5 people that you spend the most time with.

So, not many.

How many will remember me?

Of the people who lived 100 years ago, (about 2 billion of them), I have heard of, maybe, a handful. A dozen at most, and probably the same names that you may know. The rest of them, well they might have influenced how I live but I don’t know their names or their story.

So, logic would suggest that in 100 years no one will remember me, and no one will remember you. (Sorry).

I will fade.

That’s okay.

However, what I do will have a lasting effect. Every act will create an impact.

Specifically, generous acts multiply. They grow over time as they encourage others to be generous and create ripple effects to people that you will never know in places that you will never travel to. Generosity will not fade. It will last forever.

Leave a legacy. Be generous.

5 Simple Acts Proven to Promote Wellbeing

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The conversation about emotional wellbeing is stronger now than it has ever been. We are all conscious of what wellbeing means to us and our community, but we are still a work in progress when it comes to putting good practices in place.

I came across some research from the New Economics Foundation about the things that we can do which promote wellbeing in our lives, guaranteed. It’s a bold statement, but here are five proven things you can do right now…

  1. Connect to the people around us – building relationships with people
  2. Being active in our bodies – looking after our physical health
  3. Take notice of the world – connecting with nature, seeing beauty in the things that have become normal.
  4. Learn New Skills – trying something new and challenging ourselves
  5. Give to others – being generous.

All five are about looking beyond our current situation and seeking to change the place we are currently in. Generosity really rounds this list out.

Generosity is good for whatever ails you because it shifts your focus from you. Instead of being trapped in your own mind, ruminating on your own thoughts and challenges, it pushes you to reach out to someone else who may be in the exact same situation. A generous act of checking in on someone to see how they are going, buying them a coffee, giving some time and attention to them, is an incredible gift…to you.  

Give yourself a gift by giving to someone else.

Do You Want to Hear a Secret?

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Do you want to hear a secret?

I can’t even remember the last time I heard someone ask that. Maybe when I was a kid, but as you grow, sharing secrets happens less and less. Not because we no longer have secrets as adults, but we just don’t share them as much.

These hidden truths about ourselves and our past create a hefty burden that we carry, and they disconnect us from the people we do life with. Often they don’t seem appropriate to share with anyone, lest we be judged and rejected, so we keep them to ourselves and pretend they are not there. After a while, life with secrets becomes normal to us as the hefty burden becomes part of us and we get used to the disconnection.

A great way to be generous to yourself, is to share those secrets that you carry, with someone else. Someone you trust, someone who loves you.

James, a great spiritual leader and a brother to Jesus, encouraged his followers to confess their sins, or the secrets that they carried, to each other to remove the disconnection they caused and restore relationships. Such is the power of sharing a secret. It brings healing.

It’s a gift to you. It gets rid of the burden and brings the people you love closer.

The Generosity of Perspective

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We know that other people see things differently from us. There are many different opinions about food, weather, raising children, pets, politics, movies, clothes, ice cream – everything.

We have no control over someone else’s perspective on life. We are unable to change their perspective, no matter how much we might want to.

What we do have control over is how we respond to their perspective and opinion.

We can do this well by asking one question – where do my own opinions come from?

As we begin to unpack that question and realise that our perspectives and opinions grow out of every single life experience we have ever had, then we can start to understand a little of how someone else can be so different from us. Their life journey has taken them down different paths, they have different values, they see things through different filters.

What is more challenging is when someone we know shares many of the same opinions that we do, except for one or two major issues in life. This can lead to strained relationships because ‘how can someone that is so much like me, think like this?’.

Someone once told me that the best way to approach marriage is to find the most optimistic reason why your spouse does the things that they do. In doing so, you don’t end up creating a mystical, negative narrative about someone you love, and it gives you the opportunity to discover more about them. This philosophy is not just for marriage relationships – it is helpful for all human interaction.

Just because people think or behave (or vote) differently to us, it doesn’t mean that they are evil, it means we don’t understand them yet.

We don’t have to agree with someone’s opinion to understand them.

In the Absence of Data…

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I used to love writing stories when I was little. Tales about forest dwelling people and stories of weird animals, and bizarre worlds. I think I was quite a creative little guy. But I grew out of that, or so I thought. I discovered recently that I am still strongly involved in creating stories – about people mostly, and their motives and thinking.

Studies suggest that we spend up to 80% or our time each day in some form of communication. Only a small part of that is via speaking. Most of our communication is non-verbal and even when we do communicate verbally we can’t possibly say everything that is going on in our mind. So, for the majority of the time, people around us don’t actually have any idea what we are thinking or feeling.

Brene Brown, the well-known researcher and speaker, says that ‘in the absence of data, we always make up stories’. Meaning that if we don’t know what someone is thinking or feeling about us, we create a story around that – we make up what they might be thinking or feeling. Most of the time what we make up is much worse than reality. But until we get the real story confirmed, we live in a make believe world where our made up version is non-fiction.

One of the greatest acts of generosity to ourselves and those around us is choosing to assume the best. Notice when we are making up stories about what others are thinking and feeling, and seek out the data. Seek to find out what the truth of the matter is. If we must make up a story because we don’t have the data, let’s make up positive ones.