Managing your personal relationship account

What does a successful relationship really mean to you? What does it take to build a successful relationship?  

Successful relationship means different things to different people. To some people, it is the ability to achieve individual personal goals within the relationship. To others, it is being able to achieve common goals in the relationship. Some people consider a successful relationship as the one in which all the parties in that relationship have the opportunities to contribute towards achieving common goals and at the same time able to pursue individual goals without conflict.

The most successful relationships, I belief, are the ones founded on shared values. To all intents and purposes, shared values are the implicit and explicit fundamental beliefs and principles that hold two or more people together. In a relationship based on shared values, some goals are for common good. Others are for the good of the individual in the relationship. In order words, each party in a shared-value relationship is free to pursue their individual goal provided it does not conflict with the common goal. 

You can express shared values in terms of individual’s attitudes towards the relationship itself. You can also express shared values in terms of attitude towards for example, finance, career, family, friends, love, kindness, creativity, abundance/scarcity mindset, home, travel, etc. Attitudes affect expectations. The more the number of these shared values in a relationship, the more the likelihood that people in that relationship would have similar expectations which are good for building successful relationship.

You can think of a relationship between two or more people as a joint bank account. Each party to the relationship has a stake in the account. Any member in the relationship can invest in the account. They can deposit fund into the account. They can also withdraw fund from the account. The money you deposit is your own stake in the joint account. Any time you withdraw from the account, you reduce the outstanding balance. As long as you are in credit, the account will be ok.

In a relationship, deposits are all the good deeds you do on a daily basis that enhance the quality of the relationship. They include the following among other various things:

·         focusing on what you like in your partners;

·         showing respect and kindness to your partners;

·         allowing your partners to be who they are;

·         appreciating little things they do;

·         making non-judgemental comments about your partners;

·         thinking of and understanding the need of your partners first

·         showing interest in what they do even when you are not interested;

·         understating any issue from their point of view;

·         being sensitive to their feelings, etc.

Whenever you do any of these good deeds, you add fund into the relationship account. Each deposit increases the amount of trust in your relationship. You can deplete the fund any time you fail to do any of these and other good acts. 

On the other hand, withdrawals are those things you do or fail to do that help to undermine the relationship.  They include the following among various others:

·         making negative comments about your partners

·         Carrying malicious rumours against them;

·         making false allegations against your partners;

·         focusing on what you do not like about your partners;

·         attempting to dominate them;

·         making judgemental or disparaging remarks;

·         always thinking of your own self interest first;

·         not showing any interest in what your partners do;

·         not showing sensitivity to their feelings;

·         not giving them their own space both physical and emotional;

·         one partner making decisions that are important to all partners;

·         not respecting the views of your partners, etc.

Each time you do any of the above, you withdrawn fund from your relationship trust account. If the relationship account was already in debit at the time of the last withdrawal, things could be begin to go wrong. If your relationship account were in credit at that time, there may not be much trouble depending on your past withdrawal records. 

Just like any accounting book, there is a relationship credit or debit balance. This happens when the frequency of your relationship withdrawals exceed the frequency of your relationship deposits. In this situation, you have a relationship debit balance. It is always nice to watch out for how long you can sustain such account imbalance. To sustain a happy and successful relationship, you must seek to be in credit balance most of the time. You can do this by frequently putting more funds into your relationship deposit account. Good deeds add to the fund. Bad deeds reduce the fund. Good deeds build up trust. Bad deeds undermine trust.

Some relationships can survive a couple of short-term debit balance. This happens when you have continually maintained credit balance over a long period. You can draw from the reserve trust you have built over a long time to overcome your short-term relationship challenges.

Before you enter into any relationship, always play what I call shared values game. Some people call it shared value analysis. Some call it shared value solicitation.  The purpose is to gain an awareness of what to expect prior to entering into a relationship.  If you want to know how to play this game, you are free to contact me at mam@valuelifebalance.com.  Once you know how to play shared value game, you could play it on your own, with a trusted friend, or with a life coach. It is good to have the knowledge you could gain from playing shared value game even when you fear such awareness could deter you from going into the relationship.

Living in a peaceful world

During the cold war between the East and West, people used to talk about a kind of war strategy that effectively guaranteed the total annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. They called it M.A.D war.  MAD is an acronym for Mutual Assured Destruction. It meant that by mutual understanding both sides in a war would resort to the use of full-scale nuclear weapons in the event of an outbreak of war. They called it mad war because that is just what it was.

What does this type of war strategy teach us about the nature of human being in dispute resolution? What can we learn from this type of war in personal problem resolution?

The irony of it all is that many of us have experienced one form of MAD war or another in our lives. Think of a row between two people in which no side lives to tell the story. Think of a dispute between husband and wife, which leads to an acrimonious and expensive divorce proceedings and both sides including the children lose out in the end. When two elephants fight, the grass suffers. However, in a MAD fight, even the two elephants suffer.

There is another way in which many people engage in MAD wars on a daily basis.  Think of the war between the inner you and the outer you. This is the war between the visible you and the invisible you.  This is the war between the human you and the spirit you.  This is the war neither of ‘you’ can win. Yet as we live our lives moment by moment, many of us engage in various forms of self-destructive wars without knowing.

Think of the number of times your body has refused to respond to what your mind was telling you to do which had led you to make decisions that caused you pain and sorrow. Think of the number of times your gut feeling told you to act in certain way but your body said no way, which led you to make a choice that you later regretted. Think of how many times you refused to act according to your instinct and later found out it was to your peril.  Think of the amount of times you once spent debating a thought in your mind without the gut to make a decision one way or another. Think of the stress, the distress and the dis-eases that you invited into your body simply because you did not act according to what your mind was telling you to do. The list is endless.

These are spiritual wars. A spiritual war is a war between your human being and your spirit being. It is a war between your visible physical being and your invisible non-physical being. Many of us fight this war because we fail to allow the spirit being to take control of the human being. In this kind of war, the ultimate loser is the human being. Once the war is over, the spirit being goes back to where it belongs, the Source. It originates from the Source and it therefore returns to the Source. The spirit being has life far beyond the human being. It transcends the human physical being. It will live forever. Therefore waging a war against the spirit being is tantamount to waging a war again oneself. It is a step toward self-destruction. That is what I call MAD war.

Waging a war against another person is waging a war against two beings: the spirit being and the human being. Waging a war against another community is waging a war against two communities: the spirit community and the human community. Waging a war against another nation is waging war against two nations: the spirit of the nation and the nation of the humans. Waging a war against your spouse is waging war against four beings: your spirit being and your human being. At the same time, you are waging a war against your spouse’s spirit being and the human being.

Do you get my drift? This may sound daft to your ears but think of it this way. Why is it that human beings find it easier and more convenient to relate to only the things we can see, touch, hear, smell or taste? Is it because we are ignorant of the role of space in the universe? We think of space as a place of emptiness, void, vacant. Is that the reason we think we are alone in the universe? Is that the reason we tend to act alone?

Imagine the difference it would make in the world today when more and more people are becoming aware of the reality of our universe: we are not alone. There is much more to the person next to you than his or her physical appearance. The moment we have this basic understanding and gain this simple knowledge of human existence, we will start to align our human desires with our spirit desires.

The concept of Value life balance is all about alignment between the desires of our two beings. It is all about aligning our human beings with our spirit beings. It is all about letting go of the MAD wars we wage every day against oneself and against one another. It is all about sowing the seed of peace inside of you and allowing the seed to germinate and grow within your inside. It is all about letting that matured inner peace become part of the way you live your life moment by moment. It is all about sharing the peace that reside inside of you with members of your immediate and extended family, with your friends, with your neigbhours, with members of your community and with people around the world. That is what I call M.A.P.  Mutual Assured Peace is the peace that lets each human being to become a present help for a person in need. That inner peace lets every human being to see the beauty and graciousness in every other human being and what he or she has created. It allows everyone to sow just a seed of peace inside his or her heart. That peace makes the world to be a truly global village. Let us think about this type of peace.

Measuring your happiness level

David Cameron has launched a consultation to explore a new way of measuring Britain’s happiness level. This is an acknowledgment that there is much more to life than just the pursuit for financial successes. This is an admission that gross domestic product (GDP) used to carry out economic health check of a country may no longer be adequate.

I went into a deep conversation with a friend a couple of days ago. That was shortly before the recent announcement. The topic that dominated our frank discussion was happiness. What makes people to be happy? We started by outlining what we thought were key indicators for determining level of happiness. We talked about financial security. We talked about security of life and property. We talked about family cohesion.  We talked about the availability of basic infrastructural facilities such as electricity, drinkable water, road network, health services, education, telecommunication, etc. We talked about employment opportunities for young adults. We talked about virtually every aspect of human life that we thought could impact  the level of happiness of an individual.

We considered the case of Nigeria. We recalled a recent report that indicated that the happiest people on earth inhabit the country. We also recalled that this country lacks virtually all the happiness-enabling indicators outlined above. We thought that there seems to be a contradiction. If they were the real indicators of happiness, then Nigerian should have been populated by the most unhappy people on earth. We both agreed that whilst access to any of these facilities may provide an enabling environment for people to live better lifestyle, whatever makes an individual to be happy goes far deeper.

We however noted something else. We noted the role of feelings. We talked about the feeling we all have as human beings when we know that our lives and properties are safe where we live. We talked about the feeling we all have when we know that a nationally funded health care system is there to look after us whenever we fall sick. We talked about the reassuring look in the faces of parents whenever their academically able children bring home their university admission letters knowing that whatever happens, their children would complete their education with or without financial support from parents. We talked about the relative feeling of safety whenever we are in the comfort of our homes. We talked about the feeling we get when we leave work returning home in the evening knowing that there is a guaranteed uninterrupted supply of electricity to our homes 24/7. We noted how we often take this for granted. I told my friend the only once in ten years did I ever experience interruption and that was just for an hour. It came with a 24 hours notice.

We both agreed that, yes, these things are good for living quality of life. They are great for helping people to reduce the pains and hardship of living. They are fantastic for enriching one’s life. However, we could not agree whether their absence or presence necessarily affect the level of happiness.

We talked about all of this and much more. One thing became clear from our conversation. Happiness is a feeling. Our feelings come from our thoughts. Our thoughts come from the way we respond to our external stimulus.  When we hear, see, touch, taste or smell something, our response can produce either positive or negative feelings. The stimuli did not produce the feeling. The way you responded to it did. In order words, whilst you cannot control the stimuli, you can control your response to it. You can manage your response. As Eleanor Roosevelt rightly said, “no one can make you feel inferior without your permission”.  You must have embedded the feeling of inferiority in your thought process before someone comes to make you become of aware of it. In the same token, no one can make you feel unhappy without your permission. You must have embedded the feeling of unhappiness in your thought process before someone comes around and did something that gives you the feeling of unhappiness. The person has only come to help you bring to the surface, what you already have inside you.

We concluded that happiness or sadness is not something one person can bestow on another person. It is not something that depends on the environment in which you live. It all depends on who you are. It all depends of what lies inside you. Whether you live, in Nigeria, in China, in America, or elsewhere, you take whatever you are inside with you. You are what you think about all the time. You are the product of your thoughts. It is not about your bank balance. It is not about the number of cars in your garage. It is not about the number of houses you have. It is all about the way you live your life moment by moment. It is about the way you respond to your entire external stimulus. It is about the feeling you get when you have done something that adds a meaning to your life.

Coaching in focus

Coaching is all about human search for the ultimate meaning of life through living it moment by moment. That is why more and more people are learning how they could use it to transform their lives either through self-coaching or by hiring the services of a coach.

However, coaching still remains one of the social services that are only available to the rich, the famous and some few lucky ones who are in comparatively senior management positions in public and private sectors.  The poor, hard-to-reach and socially excluded members of the community have little or no access to coaching.

One could argue that the poor already have free access to similar services through other social intervention agencies such as counselling, therapy, teaching, mentoring, etc. The fact of the matter is that these professionals provide services that are uniquely different from coaching. However, I consider the services of a coach to be complementary to the services other professional provide to their clients.  Coaching starts where counselling or therapy stops.    

Consequently, I belief the existing network of social service intervention agencies can be further expanded and developed to incorporate life coaching. This should provide a comprehensive system that helps to improve the quality of life of local people. Such integrated system would be made available free of charge at the point of use to support people to achieve social inclusion within the community. Such a system would provide proactive, holistic and client focused support-based personal services that prevent hard to reach people from becoming socially excluded, assisting them to integrate into the community, helping them to believe in themselves and thus able to achieve their full potential in life.

Stopping your addiction

When discussing addiction, the things that people talk about most often include alcohol, heroin, etc. Most people think about these traditional addictions. Other popularly known addictions are sex, gambling, work, shopping, food, etc. There are other modern addictions too. They include the internet, computer games, mobile phones, television, etc.

Addiction is another form of enslavement. There is nothing wrong in doing any of these things listed above provided you do them in moderation. According to the old saying, “too much of everything is bad”.

When does your action become an addiction? Only you can answer this question. Sometimes, people whose lives are affected by your action can answer. They include your spouse, your children, your parents, your friends, your colleagues or even your neighbours. These are the people that will be picking up the emotional and financial consequences of your action.

What makes people become addicted? A person can inherit an addiction from the family. A person can also suffer addiction due to inability to cope with stress. Stress can come in various forms or shapes. It could be due to pressure from work, from family, from peers. It could be due to acute financial problem. A jilted lover could find temporary comfort in excessive drinking of alcohol. Over a period, he or she becomes totally depended on it. It becomes an addiction.

Stopping an addiction is not about making yourself feeling guilty of your addiction.  It is not about developing a negative attitude toward your addiction. It is not about trying to wage a war against your addiction. It is not even about being hostile to other addicts around you. It is not about blaming yourself or anyone else about your addictive behaviour. It is all about recognising that you have the addiction. It is about accepting that a habit has now become an addiction. It is about making a decision that you want to change the habit that has become your addiction.

Once you have acknowledged the addiction, you begin to find a reason or reasons for stopping it. This starts with a deep search for the answers to the following personal questions. What is this addiction doing in your life? What does it feel to be addicted to this thing? What effect is this addiction having in the lives the people you love? What is the meaning of your life? What would happen to you in five years time if you continue with this addiction? What would happen to the person you love in five years time if you continue with this addiction? What would my life look like in five years times if I can stop this addiction today?

Never approach addiction with a view to fighting it. You cannot win. Whatever you fight will fight you back. That is the law of nature. The more you fight your addiction, the more it will hit you back. My advice is to befriend the addiction. Treat it with care and kindness. Think of it as a human being who wants your attention. You can do this well once you have found an inner reason or reasons for stopping the addiction. Once you have found a new meaning for your life and you are unable to align it with any form of addiction, the rest is simple. You just treat the relationship between you and your addiction as two jolly fellows going on a journey. You have come to a junction. That junction is the end of the journey together as friends. You have to go your different ways.

At that junction, you have mutually agreed to part ways. You are therefore not departing from each other in acrimony. You are moving to a new direction. Your addiction is moving to a new direction. You can simply say good-bye to one another and you can even give it a good handshake. You are parting on a good note. As you have not fought any battle with it, so it cannot fight you back. If you love your enemy, your enemy cannot harm you. Love is your defence against your foes. If the addiction is your enemy and you decide to love it, it can no longer hurt you. Whatever you hate, hates you and whatever you love loves you.

As you will be going to your separate ways because you have discovered a new purpose, your life will never be the same again. Your new life will be different from the old. In this new life, addiction has no role to play. You are a new creation. You are like a newly born baby. As a newborn baby, you will need to learn new habits to replace old ones. You will need to learn new habits to help nurture you toward the new direction. You will need to learn new habits to provide yourself with nourishments for growth. You will need to learn new habits to prevent reversion to old habits. You will however be in control of the new habits. None of them will control you. You will be on the driving seat totally in charge of your life.

Stopping your addiction is not as difficult you as may think. It is about finding a reason to stop. It is about discerning a new meaning for your life. It is about thinking of how your addiction is destroying the lives of the people you love. It is about thinking in terms of what you have for live instead of thinking about what life has for you. It is about looking really deed inside of you to discover who you are and who you want to be. No one can force you to stop your addiction. Only you can do that. You have the power to do it. All you need is the reason for stopping and that reason will give you the will to stop.

DIY Coaching Workbook

This self-coaching workbook enables individuals to carry out their personal performance health check on a regular basis in the comfort and privacy of their home or office. You can carry out the check anywhere, anytime. Working through the entire workbook, you will be able to:

·         identify any problem in any area of life;

·         analyse its underlying cause(s);

·         put in place action plans to resolve the problem;

·         devise a way to monitor progress of change;

·         design a framework to measure future performance in that area;

·         create a template to help resolve similar problem in future

If you want to know more about this innovative way of carrying out your life balance health check on a regular basis, and how to obtain your own copy, feel free to telephone 07956033915 or you can send an e-mail to mam@valuelifebalance.com

What makes them stand out in the crowd?

The happiest people are those who do not take themselves too seriously.  When things are not going their way, they change their mind and look for other ways forward. They know that one road does not lead to a market place. Instead of thinking about a problem, they think about its solution.  They are quick to accept their mistakes and never blame anyone self. They take their responsibility very seriously and are not afraid of making mistakes. They just laugh at them and take quick corrective measures. 

What differentiates such people from the rest of us is their ability to find a reason to be smiling when others are crying. It is their capacity to find a reason to be silent when others are talking.  They see an opportunity when everyone else sees only problems. They do not keep malice against anyone. When they are criticised, they do not take it personally. They accept criticism with equanimity.  At team meetings, they are great listeners. You can spot them in the way they nod their heads when someone is speaking even when they do not share that person’s point of view. They will never comment directly on any issue they disagree with; but only offer their own opinion instead. When they find themselves holding the minority opinions, they do not seek to impose their own opinions on others. They have no ego whatsoever. They are great team worker. They do not attract publicity to themselves. They do not seek people to praise them. They do not seek other people’s approval to do what they want to do for themselves and for others.

Happy people are known to be highly receptive to new ideas no matter how stupid they may initially appear to be. They ask open-ended questions to clarify any aspect of a new idea that appeared blurred to them at first. They are non-judgemental and detest labelling people. Their open-mindedness gives them the ability to seek other people’s point of view and helps them to build close rapport with everyone.  They know who they are. They have strongly held values that sustain them in all circumstances. They know what they belief. They believe in who they are and in what they do. They are not afraid of letting others know what they belief in even though they will never impose what they belief on others. They respect other people but do not necessarily expect others to respect them.

They love living creatively. Because they know that the nature of the Creator is to keep creating and recreating, they are never short of creating and recreating something new. They see and appreciate the beauty of creation. That is why such people love creative art. That is where they express their creative genius. They find expression in the art. This reflects in everything they do. They see the food on their dining table from the point of view of the Source of all the various ingredients that make up the dish. Through their power of imagination, they are able to express thanksgiving to the person that had put all the various ingredients together and bring them to the dining table. Most importantly, they are able to express thanksgiving to the Source that made it possible to produce all the ingredients.

 They are naturally kind-hearted to people. They are not pretentious. To such people, what you see is what you get. Their appearances brighten to the environment. Whenever they go, they bring peace along with them. They are extremely good at making peace between people. They will however never take credit for anything they achieve. They are quick at giving the credit to other people.

They detest hearsay. When a colleague gives them a negative report about another colleague, they never act on such information.  When a report is capable of causing serious disaffection among colleagues, they are quick at seeking the approval of the person making the report to bring the issues to the attention of all the parties involved. This avoids rumour mongering.

Happy people have no scarcity mentality. They live in abundance. That does not necessarily mean in terms of physical material acquisitions. Even at that, they know that as their Source does not lack anything, they too do not lack anything. They are aware that there is constant flow of supplies from the creative Source, which they know will continue to flow in their direction. They know that in all situations they will be looked after. Because they have aligned their will with the will of the Source of abundance, they live their lives abundantly. They hardly ever complain of anything. Hence, people think they are rich financially and flow to them for help. Because they allow whatever flows into their lives to flow out to other people, there is an uninterrupted flow into their lives. Because they look after the welfare of other people, the forces of nature also look after their own welfare. These are people with the wisdom for living. Their lives are happiness. They enjoy living their lives and they intend for others to enjoy theirs also.

What does it take to be a happy person? How much does it cost to smile to the person next to you? How much does it cost to say thank you to the supermarket cashier who has just served you with a smile. What does it cost you to say “I love you” to your partner? How much does it cost to say, “I am sorry, darling? This is not a sign of capitulation but a sign of your desire to be happy and to share your happiness to the person you love. This is probably all it takes to bring your life to balance. Remember, the happiest people in the world are those who do not take themselves too seriously. This is what makes such people stand out in the crowd. Would you join them?