Our relationship with our intimate partner or spouse is the most important relationship of our lives.
It is the centerpiece around which everything else in our lives revolves. Or at least it should be.
This significant other, our love relationship, can define our happiness and well-being, our sense of security, and even our self-confidence and self-esteem.
You check the balance in your bank account and see you don’t have enough to cover this month’s bills.
Your boss hands you yet another project to complete by the end of the week, on top of the stack already piled on your desk.
Your spouse has just announced he’s going out-of-town and all three kids are sick.
You are late for a doctor’s appointment for those concerning symptoms, and traffic is bumper to bumper.
“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
There’s nothing like good old-fashioned failure to send your self-confidence into a nose dive.
I’m not talking about the little flubs and foibles of life.
I’m talking big, fat, fall-on-your-face failure.
Failure like . . .
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” ~Mahatma Gandhi
Just over a year ago, I heard author Susan Cain speak at the World Domination Summit in Portland, Oregon.
She had recently published her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
, and was discussing how introverts operate in a world that favors extroversion and why the internally-driven should be more highly-valued in society and the workplace.
Have you ever experienced difficult times in your life — those times when you felt lost and had no idea how to keep moving forward?
Perhaps it was in a relationship or a business or maybe even a life and death situation.
How would you like to develop grit and resilience that could help you in overcoming challenges with anything that comes your way?
Do you ever catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror as you’re coming out of the shower or getting dressed — and your eyes zero in on “that part?” You know the one that’s shape-shifting and so obediently obeying the laws of gravity?
That wasn’t there last week was it? Or last year? You KNOW it wasn’t there five years ago. ARGHHHHH!!! What’s happening here?
Even with the most devoted couples, it seems that once-common conversations in bed have been replaced with endless scrolling through social media apps or funny image-based sites – individually.
Is the internet putting up a barrier between people, even in bed?
We often confuse perception with reality.
That is, we mistake how we understand things for the way that they really are. Our thoughts and feelings seem real to us, so we conclude that they must be true.
But what if they weren’t – including even our most deeply held ideas and beliefs about ourselves, about others and the world?