Building a Foundation for Success

We believe that the quality of our relationships creates the quality of our lives. If this is true then it’s vital to know how to effectively align your needs and desires with the needs and desires of the people in your life. Without this ability, it can be difficult to maintain the quality of relationships essential for creating the kind of life you truly want.

How can you know if someone in your life is on the same page as you? Are the same things important to both of you? Do you want similar results?

Establishing alignment is an essential ingredient for successful co-creation. In life, we often go about our own business trying to achieve our own goals, yet we are all still interconnected. These connections put limits on how far we can get in achieving our own results without cooperation.

The process of creating genuine co-operation starts with alignment. This is a process of getting clear about what is important to everyone involved at the deepest level of their core values. When you start building the alignment process on this foundation of shared values there’s less room for disconnection and disagreement.

This means making sure you establish alignment at a values level before you begin to create strategies for getting what you want.

When You Put the Cart Before the Horse

We often see people get stuck when they try to gain someone’s cooperation and they start the conversation by offering or asking for strategies. The trouble with this is that people usually have different ideas about which strategies would work best. It’s easy for disagreements about the strategies to end up sounding like judgments and justifications.

As an example, say you work in a very small office and a coworker at the next desk speaks louder than allows you to easily concentrate.

If you walked over to their desk with a strategy already in mind–such them keeping their voice down while they’re on the phone–the first thing you might hear is disagreement about how loud they are speaking or some kind of justification about why it’s important to speak with a confident tone of voice.

It’s possible to avoid the back-and-forth that is bound to ensue if you begin the conversation with a deeper level of understanding and connection. You can much more easily create the cooperation you want when you start by creating alignment around what you each value.

Why? Because at a core level we all share the same set of values and beginning a conversation by focusing our attention on these values stimulates our natural tendency for empathy and compassion.

Aligning with Success

Think about it. In this situation, wouldn’t each person want to experience consideration?

Would understanding be important to them?

Would they like to be free to make their own choices?

Do you think they’d like to be comfortable, relaxed, and free to express themselves?

Yes, of course they would, and so does everyone else.

So in this work situation, imagine having the intention to start your conversation:

• with no agenda other than cooperating so that everyone gets what’s most important to them,
• with an intention to first create understanding and alignment about what you each value in your ideal work situation,
• and without attachment to any particular strategies.

If this was your intention, you might start by letting them know there is something you’d like to get on the same page about.  Then request to have a conversation where you can discuss what’s most important to each of you about your work environment and relationships with your coworkers.

In that conversation, you might explore the value you place on being able to concentrate while working and their desire to be effective during their phone calls.

When Issues Become Opportunities

The volume they use while on the phone, and your desire for concentration, can become an opportunity to get more connected and aware of each other’s values.

This quality of sharing paves the way for you to co-create strategies for working together that ensure everyone experiences more of what they want.

This is how to begin co-creating a shared vision of success. Alignment paves the way for easy agreements and satisfying results that produces far greater enjoyment for everyone involved.

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A touching story we thought you would enjoy.

A little boy approached his mother in the kitchen one evening while she was washing dishes, and presented her a piece of paper. His mom dried her hands, took the paper from the boy and she read it very attentively, this is what it said:

Mowing the lawn: $5.00

Image by Marind is waiting for les tambours de la pluie via Flickr

Cleaning up my room: $5.00

Going to the store for you: $1.50

Baby-sitting while you went shopping: $3.50

Taking out the trash: $1.00

Getting an A in math: $5.00

Cleaning up the yard: $3.00

Total owed: $24.00

His mother took a moment, and the boy could almost see the memories flashing through his mother’s mind.

After some thought she picked up the pen off the counter, turned the paper over that he had handed her, and spent a few minutes writing some things down, then handed it back to the boy.

This is what she wrote:

• Nine months carrying you while you were growing inside me: No Charge
  
• For all the nights that I’ve sat up with you, doctored and prayed for you: No Charge
  
• For all the meals I’ve cooked, dishes I’ve washed, and clothes I’ve laundered through the years: No Charge
  
• For all the trips to the doctors, hospitals, and principles office: No Charge
  
• For the toys, clothes, and even for wiping your nose: No Charge
  
• Son, when you add it up, the cost of my love is: No Charge.

As the boy read what his mother had written, a big tear rolled down the side of his face. He looked straight into his mother’s eyes and said, “Mom, I love you.” And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: “PAID IN FULL”.

Even as adults we sometimes forget how much our parents did for us and it’s not until we have children of our own that we truly realize the love a parent has for a child.

So if by reading this you are reminded of your mother’s love, stop for a moment and, if she’s alive and lives near you,  give her a big kiss and tell her how much you love and appreciate her.

If she is far away, call her. If she has passed away, think of her fondly and enjoy the memories.

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One Simple Step for Creating Intimacy in All Your Relationships

Everyone has the desire to connect honestly and authentically with themselves and others, but often this is one of the most challenging things to do in our intimate relationships, never mind our more casual ones. If small talk is not your thing and you’re ready for deeper more satisfying connections in your relationships, here’s a quick tip to help create the honesty and authenticity you desire.

Think Before You Ask

One of the fastest, easiest ways we know of to improve the quality of your connections is by asking conscious questions. By conscious we mean questions that will result in answers that will be meaningful to you. If you’re looking for deeper connection, never ask questions about trivial issues or ones that you don’t really care about the answer.

To come up with conscious, meaningful questions ask yourself some questions first, such as:

• “What kind of connection do I want with this person?”
• “What kind of conversation would bring us closer together?”
• “What would be interesting for me to learn about this person?”

Knowing clearly what you want is the surest way to get it.

Ask Like You Care and Listen Like It’s Important

Whether you are talking to your mother, best friend, significant other, business customers, your boss, interviewing job candidates, or even talking to strangers at a party, it helps to take the initiative in creating the quality of connection you want and to draw the other person out in ways that are meaningful to you.

So try it today… What do you have to lose? What do you really want to know about the person you’re with? Get conscious. Be honest. Be authentic. Ask questions from your heart and listen with a sincere desire to know more about the person you’re with.

Photo courtesy of  darin11111

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Of Course You want more Love and Intimacy in Your Relationship

We’re starting this post with the assumption that you want a satisfying and deeply intimate relationship with your spouse or significant other. If so, then it’s important to remember that the most successful relationships start with people who love themselves. The sooner you start giving yourself the kind of love that you’d like to experience in your relationship, the more fulfilling and intimate your relationship will become.

But do you ever wonder what the phrases “self-love” or “loving yourself” really mean, or what they have to do with creating a deeper sense of marriage intimacy? Even if you see the connection, do you wonder how to go about learning to truly love yourself?

Self Love Starts Here

Here’s the very first step: start noticing all the wonderful things about you! We know this might sounds simplistic, but you might be surprised how many people there are who, on a regular basis, simply ignore or don’t notice all the wonderful things about themselves.

“You must first love yourself before you can fully love another…” ~ Jennifer Good

How often do you stop and take the time to acknowledge yourself — to notice the things you enjoy about yourself? The best way to do this is to begin a practice of consciously focusing your attention on the wonderful things about you. Each morning make a conscious intention to notice and write down at least 10 things you enjoy about yourself during the day. When you go to bed at night, take time to review the list and appreciate yourself for these things.

Try It and Then Decide

This might sound a little silly, but when you start practicing this regularly you’ll be amazed how much better you feel about yourself, and how quickly loving yourself at a deeper level will follow. Once you feel this sense of self love and acceptance we guarantee it can’t help but stimulate more love, acceptance and intimacy in your relationship.

So now you know you know how to fill in the blank in the title of this post: Marriage Intimacy Begin With YOU.

So get out there and start consciously loving yourself–no one else can do this for you.

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What’s new in the area motivation?

Daniel Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation

www.ted.com Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t — Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for some illuminating examples.

Self Help Motivation Challenges

Self motivation can sometimes be challenging. Here are a few posts and a great picture we found surfing around the web.  We hope they’ll support you to stay motivated and create the life you truly want.

• The Willpower Paradox (scientificamerican.com)

• How are you doing it? (mytotalmoneymakeover.com)

• The Psychology of Motivation (helpingpsychology.com)

• Motivation on Tap (lifescript.com)

Motivational Self Improvement | Self Help to Calm Yourself and Be less Stressed

Being calm in life, and having mental and emotional calmness when you make important decisions, is a basic self help skill that we all need to master.

Spiritual Thinking & Tapping — Faster EFT

ETF to help you to live your dreams life.  Whether you’re looking for financial freedom, personal freedom,  self-esteem or • self-help motivation tapping can help.

Don’t Miss These 7 Self Help Motivation – Personal Success Factors

Feed Your Brain! Success Factors for Self-Help Motivation and Personal Growth Development.

A Little Push

“The only person that can really push you that little bit further in life is yourself.”

Author: stephaniedan

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Want Happiness?

Each of us shares these same basic desires–to be happy and avoid suffering. We spend our whole lives pursuing this end. In this pursuit we mainly focus on improving our external conditions with the hope that doing so will help us increase our happiness, or at else trying to solve the problems that seem to prevent it.

But how much does this focus on improving our external circumstances actually help?

Create Happiness from the Inside Out

We believe one of the most valuable self help methods for pursuing happiness is to focus on improving our internal landscape–learning to shift the way we see ourselves and the world. This shift in perspective has helped more than anything else to improve our lives, increase our happiness, and to help solve any problems that crop up along the way.

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind. ~Buddha

The next time you feel tense, upset or uncomfortable in any way, remember this Buddha quote and then use your feelings of discomfort as an alarm bell signaling that it’s time to shift your attention from “out there” to “in here”.

Then ask yourself: “How can I relate to this situation in a way that will help me feel better than I do right now? What perspective can I adopt that will help me see the best in what’s going on?”

Be the Change You want to See in the World

The thoughts you choose will create the happiness you seek–from the inside out. As you practice the art of focused attention we guarantee your outer circumstances will begin to reflect the happiness you seek more and more often.

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The No. 1 Obstacle

Many people say that the No. 1 obstacle when attempting to maintain marriage intimacy and create a healthy, happy relationship is the lack of good communication skills.

What do you think? Are you in an intimate relationship? Do you believe it’s essential to have good communication in your relationship in order to create the kind of closeness and connection you want?

If so, here’s a tip that we guarantee will help you do just that.

Start by truly understanding the other person’s point of view. Very often when couples start communicating about a problem or dissatisfaction the first thing they hear from their partner sounds like a criticism or a complaint. This is a critical point in the conversation and very often where the communication begins to break down.

This happens as often as it does because most people think in terms of strategies–what they want and the most effective way they think they can get it. This strategy often takes the form of a complaint–how you could change to help them get what they want or a criticism–what your doing “wrong” that is keeping them from getting what they want.

It’s Not About You

Understanding what someone deeply values or the need they’re trying to meet underneath the criticism or complaint is critical to creating genuinely satisfying relationships. Taking the lead in this area is something that you can do immediately to help improve the quality of your communication and in turn, your entire relationship.

Certainly, one way to find out what’s under their complaint is simply to ask them. It’s a place to start, but it’s not always the most effective way of getting to the truth about what a person really values. As we pointed out above, people often think in terms of their strategies as opposed the value or need that is stimulating the strategy.

If you began a conversation by talking about a problem in the relationship and you ask them what they want about the problem you may hear things like, “I want you to _____” (fill in the blank).

• Spend more time with me
• Stop being such a know-it-all
• Listen when I’m talking, etc

Dig Deep

Clearly, these statements just tell you what they want you to do, not what they value, not what need they’re trying to meet. Getting to the underlying values hidden in these statements may require a little detective work on your part. Don’t just take their answers at face value; dig down beneath the surface to find out what values are at the base of what they want.

As an example, let’s dig under these statements and discover what the person might value that had them say what they did.

• Spend more time with me, is probably stimulated by the longing for more connection or intimacy.
• Stop being such a know-it-all, could be a desire for acknowledgment or appreciation for what they know.
• Listen when I’m talking, might be coming from a wish to be understood clearly.

Once you have an idea about what the other person values and what’s most important to them, many other strategies will become obvious for helping them experience these essential qualities.

And for you, it will be much easier to relate them and want to support them then it would be if all you continue to hear was the criticism or complaints.

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Success is an Inside Job

Have you ever heard thoughts rattling around in your head such as these?

• “I’m not good enough to ____”
• “They don’t really care about me”
• “I just don’t have what it takes.”

This kind of thinking feeds on the belief that success in the world is measured by who’s doing what or getting what, and how we’re not measuring up. This thinking vibrates with an underlying sense of fear and unworthiness.

What if, every time you heard yourself thinking something like this, you asked yourself a question that radiated joy? Benjamin Zander describes these kinds of questions in his book, The Art of Possibility. They include questions like: “How can I contribute today?” and “What can I do in this situation to make a difference?”

Would You like to Make a Difference?

Try this on for a day. Instead of judging yourself by what you believe to be other people’s standards, start your day believing that you are a gift just the way you are.

Now you might be asking yourself, “How could I make a difference? What could I do to contribute?”

If you find yourself entertaining these doubts, this story–also from The Art of Possibility–may speak well to them.

Strolling along the edge of the sea, a man catches sight of a young woman who appears to be engaged in a ritual dance. Drawing closer, he sees that the beach around her is littered with starfish cast up by a storm from the previous night. She is throwing them one by one back into the sea.

He lightly mocks her: “There are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see. What difference can saving a few of them possibly make?”

Smiling, she bends down and once again picks up another starfish to toss back into the surf, saying serenely, “It certainly makes a difference to this one.”

Seeing the World through Contribution-Colored Glasses

In a world seen through the lens of lack, limitation and fear, thoughts might easily focus on, “too many starfish, not good enough, not enough time, what did they ever do for me?” etc.

But as the story reveals, it’s not a matter of the “success or failure” of the rescue mission, or what proportion of the starfish survived or perished. Absent also are the familiar concerns with fairness, progress, or ability.

Instead, life is revealed as a place where you have something to contribute. Where there is always some small good you have to offer.

Listed under the category of Contribution on our Core Values List we include: Assist. Facilitate, Serve, Provide, Strengthen, and Improve.

Impossible to I’m Possible

Your Mission Possible, if you choose to accept it, is to define your success in terms of contribution, and to use that same lens to witness the actions of others, looking also for the contribution they are attempting to make through their actions. By doing so you redefine the meaning of success, and with this change will come a renewed sense of personal power.

This week start each day with the following questions:

How will I contribute today?

What form will my contribution take?

How can I recognize the contribution other people in my life make to me?

And remember, the shortest path to a happy life is found through conscious choice.

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Which posts should I read first?

A lot of people have asked us which of our self help posts we would suggest they read first.  We usually answer that it all depends on what they’re looking for. Then we start asking them questions about their life, what they’re satisfied and dissatisfied with, what brought them to us in the first place, what they want most in relation to these things, and what they see as their mission in life. This helps us direct them to our resources that we believe would be most supportive.

The frequency of this question got us thinking, in general which of our posts do we believes would support a shift in consciousness from US versus THEM and a power-over mindset, to a more power-with / WE perspective? Which posts would we suggest people read first in order to start enjoying their lives more?

Here’s the short list of our picks:

Personal Values Education – Knowing What You Need and How to Get It

The Games People Play: Being Right vs. Being Happy – Part One

The Games People Play: Being Right vs. Being Happy – Part Two

Is It Really True? New Rules for the Game of Life Quiz ~ Motivate by Fear?

10 Steps that Lead to Better Relationships and a Happier Life Part One

10 Steps that Lead to Better Relationships and a Happier Life Part Two

Turn Your Limiting Beliefs into Powerful Self Help Motivation – Part 1

Turn Your Limiting Beliefs into Powerful Self Help Motivation – Part 2

Finding Self Help Motivation — Connecting with Your Higher Purpose – Part 3

Don’t Worry, Be Happy?

After reading a few of these we’d enjoy hearing from you (as a comment to this post) which of them were most supportive to you and why. We guess that other readers will enjoy your insights as well.

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Why Do You Do What You Do?

Do you ever stop to think about why you do the things you do? Are you making conscious choices, or are you just retracing the same patterns of behavior you learned a long time ago. Do you think you might make better choices, or be a happier person, if you knew the reasons behind your actions?

Most people learn how to “behave” at a very young age. In fact, there is a self help book by author Robert Fulghum called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. The point of the book is that the things we learned in kindergarten–share, play fair, clean up your own mess, etc.–are still applicable in our adult lives. Seems pretty simple, right?

Not exactly…

The problem is that, although we learned these lessons, we were never taught the reasons why these things are important. For example, instead of being asked how we feel when someone shares with us, we’re told to share or else we’ll get in trouble. Because we learned to see the world through the perception of right and wrong or good and bad, we have problems as adults identifying the values that motivate our actions and behaviors. Not knowing what we value makes us vulnerable to the fear of judgment and to acting judgmentally toward others.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Consciously identifying the values we hold makes it easier for us to understand where we are coming from and allows us to behave in harmony with those values.

This week, identify one thing you can do in relation to this awareness and take action. If you need support figuring out what actions you can take, click the link below.

Remember, the shortest path to a happy life is found through conscious choice.

Until next time…

Beth and Neill

To discover more about consciously identifying your core values, begin by downloading our complimentary values exercise.

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