Archive for the 'relationships' Category

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A happy woman and a man on a mission

Published on 28 August, 2007 in relationships. 4 Comments

On Sunday afternoon, I was discussing with a friend what we really love in a woman. Turns out that it wasn’t someone who cooked well or looks beautiful in a bikini (though we do appreciate such things!) but rather that we love being with a girl that is happy within herself. We love girls who radiate their happiness out to the world, so that when we walk along with them, we can bask in their beauty rather than being relied upon to “make them happy”.

I was just thinking about what women love in men and it occurred to me that there is a very similar dynamic. The best girls that I know (or at least my type!) don’t want to be with a man who constantly makes her happy: They want to be with a man on a mission. They want to be with a man who has a purpose in life, a reason for being and motivation for existence that is actually more than her… it’s almost like they want to be with a man who is going somewhere so that they can just focus on radiating their beauty while he looks after where they are going and how they are getting there.

Still, I’m not sure that all women really want to be with compassionate, non-needy yang men who love unconditionally and honour the paths that people choose for themselves… I’ve met a few women for whom such men would be frightening and confronting!

I haven’t always known this. And even when I have “thought” this to be the case, I haven’t always behaved accordingly. But it seems to fit to me for the moment…

You can call me old fashioned, but I want to find my soulmate

Published on 16 August, 2007 in relationships and Self-awareness. 0 Comments

SoulmateIt’s been 16 years since I first ‘had’ a girlfriend. Since then, I have had quite a few others… some for a few months, others for a few years. Sometimes the time that we shared was blissful and filled with love; other times was a passionate romantic adventure; still other times were learning experiences that tended to be painful in the moment.

I started with a criteria sheet – the twelve things that I wanted fulfilled. Being 17 at the time, I was too quick to “tick off” those criteria and too slow to realise or correct my mistake. Back then, I didn’t feel attractive or desirable, and was looking for someone else to ‘love me enough’ to make up for my own insecurities. That proved impossible.

For me, giving love was my next phase. I figured that if I gave enough love then I would get some back in return. But eventually (after being dumped six times within five months by the same girl – I’m a slow learner!) I realised that giving love to get love was similarly unsustainable.

I thought that I had “made it” when I realised that life is really about sharing love; that our part in this grand production of life is to share the light that lies within us. Yet, strangely enough to me at the time, not everybody wants to receive your love. To totally open your heart to another person is an amazing feeling – confronting and frightening and yet liberating… because it allows you to learn that you can be doing ‘your part’ in being loving and pure and giving, and it still not be enough if you’re not with the right person. Here, I learnt that part of sharing love is to honour others enough to permit them to follow their own path without judgment.

While my journey hasn’t ended, I’m back to where I started: criteria. My criteria are much the same as they were 16 years ago, yet the ‘judge’ is different. I don’t suggest that OHRoUL are for everybody… yet it is only when I went past just wanting to ‘receive’ or ‘give’ and beyond ‘sharing’ that I could finally know that to share an Open-Hearted Relationship of Unconditional Love requires you to embody love: Then you can choose others who can reflect back that love whilst radiating their own with whom to share your experience of life.

SoulmateIt’s not about judging others – it’s about knowing yourself and consciously choosing with whom you will share yourself. Thanks for helping me understand, Wendy.

Upcoming speaking sessions

Published on 16 August, 2007 in High performance and relationships. 0 Comments

My training calendar is starting to fill up! Here are some of my working titles…

  • 18 August: “Alignment, Part 2″
  • 21 August: “Intrapersonal Communication Skills: Talking to yourself doesn’t always make you crazy”
  • 29 August: “Getting things done: Roles, Outcomes and Contexts”

Chris Howard rocks – and it’s free!!!

Published on 9 April, 2007 in Business, Creativity and genius, High performance, relationships and Social development. 0 Comments

I’ve seen a lot of great speakers and been made a heap of great offers. But having just spent a weekend with Chris Howard, the standard has been reset entirely. If you are in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth or the UK, you need to go here and register for their next event… for FREE.

Much of the material is based on basic NLP methods and techniques, but what I found astounding about the 30 or so hours of training that Chris delivered was that the 2000 people in Brisbane weren’t just learning about the topic, they were experiencing some of the most beautiful and artful language patterns that you’re likely to come across to help install the techniques and learnings, rather than just knowing about the topic.

BTS offers some great experiences for creating a propulsion system, letting go of limitations and focusing upon the world that you really want to experience. If you want to know more, email me through the contact page.

I want all my friends and family to take advantage of the offer that they are making… that allows me to give you two tickets absolutely for free!!! Just click here and register right now - even if you can’t get there in the end, register for your place now… it’s going to be huge!!!

eHarmony

Published on 2 March, 2007 in Business, relationships and Self-awareness. 0 Comments

While I was listening to a podcast from Stanford’s technology school, I came across a dating website that gets 200 people married each day! What I especially like about it is that they give you a personality test that actually seems to have some sort of potential validity. While they’ll try to find a match for you, if you’re into that kinda thing, it seems to have been created as a science experiment – I think the personality test makes it worthwhile… eHarmony.com

My life as a goldfish…

Published on 25 December, 2006 in Creativity and genius, relationships and Self-awareness. 0 Comments

For me, clocks sometimes stop. Particularly on Sundays, time used to have no meaning at all – if I’ve arranged to meet with you (especially on a Sunday!), you might have noticed just how loose can be my concept of time!

Having been playing with NLP for more than a decade now, I found it really refreshing to give myself a quick review of some of the concepts that I hadn’t explored for a while: Timelines.

As I was listening to part of the NLP Practitioner CDs, I noticed that I had become intensely focused on the present moment… almost to the point that the past and future were irrelevant. This makes for intense and wonderful experiences, though has its risks!

And as I elicited my timeline, I realised that my timeline went almost straight up at the front for the future, and straight down at the back for the past, so that I had very little concept of the future and very little care about the past! One of the cool things is that you can put your timeline wherever you might like it to be… so I’m going to play with it some more!

When I’ve been in time – living in the moment – I’ve often been late without a care in the world… heck, it’s a wonderfully intense experience of life! The challenge is ensuring that you have the flexibility to adopt the appropriate attitude towards time that the situation demands.

When we’re setting goals, we need to be able to be aware of the timelines that are involved rather than being immersed in the experience. Under the MBTI system, Perceivers tend to be “in time” whereas Judgers tend to be “through time”; planning demands that you are a judger; being a focused, goal-directed achiever demands that you be a judger.

In a sense, being totally in the moment – a total perceiver – provides an amazing subjective experience of life! Maybe we need to choose the appropriate frame of reference for the circumstances…

What if you had a trigger to switch into a more useful way of looking at time?

Style guide and healing broken hearts

Published on 17 October, 2006 in Business, Overcoming, relationships and Self-awareness. 0 Comments

I’ve just finished creating the first version of the new style guide on Shirts and Suits.com and would love your thoughts.

In the past few days, I’ve been thinking about relationships. I’ve seen some interesting relationships, and been in a few that could probably give enough material for several soap operas. The following proposition just occurred to me last night:

There are no broken hearts – only closed ones.

Only your ego can actually get hurt. The heart or higher self knows only love, compassion and acceptance, but we can sometimes deal with our emotions in such a way that we close our hearts as a defence mechanism against our ego getting hurt. Closing the heart will hurt us the most by blocking wisdom, killing our self esteem and attracting the wrong people.

There is a fear of totally opening, accepting and allowing… if you’re going to be hurt, it doesn’t matter if your heart is open or closed – you’re going to be hurt!

It’s not that it is ‘wrong’ to close your heart… it’s just that it doesn’t work!

Thanks to my friend Stephane for helping me finally get this!

Priorities

Published on 2 October, 2006 in relationships and Self-awareness. 3 Comments

Our priorities can often get out of balance. I was just offered the following priority hierarchy:

  1. Health
  2. Integrity (honesty, trust and respect)
  3. Purpose (mission in life – some way to make a difference while serving the greater good)
  4. Relationships

This requires us to have a purpose of course…

What do you really want?

Published on 1 October, 2006 in relationships and Self-awareness. 3 Comments

Love without attachment?

Wonder without confusion?

Passion without limits?

Life for its own sake?

What if we could actually choose to live our own life? What if we could live deliberately with the intention that we made ourselves happy? What if we could really let go of living through the eyes of those around us – our friends, the media and our families – and choose to live with the purpose of enjoying living a fulfilling life? While the virtue of selfishness continues to be derided in the modern world, what if we could let go of the opinions of others and embrace our individuality and deliberately choose to be happy?

Staying in a relationship as a martyr makes neither you nor them happy. Being loving is not about surrounding others in cotton wool is it? We all have our path to follow, and it serves no purpose for us to stop others from learning the lessons that they need to grow. What is needed is for each of us to put ourselves first… We’re a long way off as a culture, but I wonder what would happen.

Bad boys, Nice guys and Wimps

Published on 2 September, 2006 in Overcoming, relationships and Self-awareness. 8 Comments

Kim Kiyosaki’s new book is awesome. Anyone interested in Rich Dad’s ideas should check it out. Not only is it more informative than any of her husband’s books, it’s also just as fun to read.

One of the chapters contrasts types of men. Apparently there are three types: Bad boys, nice guys and wimps. While this is obviously a gross generalisation, it seems that there is some truth (or at least value) there. I’d first qualify it as descriptive of behaviours exhibited by men rather than being linked with an individual’s traits. But even then…

How many women want bad boys? Sure, as 21st century men, we’ve been taught by our parents to be ‘nice‘, but how many women really like what they see? My London-based female friends lament the dearth of good men just like my Hong Kong-based friends, and it’s an epidemic amongst professional women – that’s why (I’m told) so many female lawyers date tradesmen.

There is a little-known but easily felt difference between being a strong man and being a nasty piece of work. It’s the difference between seduction and surrender. To lead without dominating… Serve without supplicating.

Much of this comes back to intimacy. To be open and honest with another requires us to share part of ourselves. This leaves us vulnerable to being rejected… And most of us would rather anything but that! The ‘bad boy’ is an architype and we all possess and demonstrate different aspects to varying degrees. Denial grants power; integrity – true strength – is the benefit of facing and reconciling the truth.

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