Posts Tagged ‘Relationships’
Blog Topics, Relationships - Tuesday, April 16, 2013 9:00 - 4 Comments
Why We Are Like Earworms, and What to Do About It.
Earworms are the songs you can’t get out of your head. They crawl in when you hear them, or when you see a word or hear a phrase that makes you think of them, or in a moment of stress, or when you’re happy. The threat is constant.
For me it’s Everybody Dance Now by C & C Music Factory. (If you don’t know the song, do not do a search for it. You’ve been warned.) I heard a guy on the radio talk about how he rode his bike to work past a hospital every day, and there were two reserved parking spaces along the road, each with a sign saying ‘doctor’. Even though he tried to avoid the earworm, every day he arrived at work with Doctor Doctor by the Thompson Twins bopping in his head. Music psychologist Dr. Vicky Williamson talked in a BBC article last year about a woman who got the song Nathan Jones by Bananarama stuck in her head during a big exam when she was 16, and for whom it now resurfaces during every single stressful moment of her life.
So why are we like earworms? Because even when we try to avoid the behavioral patterns that drive us crazy, we still end up singing that same old tune.
- Salesman of the Year: Why Old School is Good Business
At the final sales meeting of their 2012 calendar year, a company CEO got up in front of his sales staff and announced that he was offering £500 (about US$800) of his own money to the salesman who could catch up with and surpass Brian by the end of the fiscal year, three months away. [...]
- Difficult Conversation? Try It Again, This Time with Feeling
There’s an assertiveness technique that’s known by many names, but I know it as The Three F’s. The letters stand for Fact, Feeling and Future, and the technique is useful when you’re feeling too anxious to deal with someone about a subject that’s bothering you. Let’s say it’s the boss you need to deal with. [...]
- Won’t You Be My Mentor?
How to Set Up a Mentoring Agreement We often have many mentors throughout our lives, some of them casual relationships and others more formal with specific goals. To get the most out of your mentorship, it’s helpful to create a mentorship agreement that clearly outlines expectations, says Neen James, productivity expert and speaker. In writing [...]
- You Can Be Right or Happy…
…Usually not both (particularly in your marriage).
It was Friday night (Date Night!) and I was flying home after a long exhausting week on the road. My wife, Georgia was picking me up from the airport and she had made reservations for us at this new restaurant in downtown San Diego we were excited to try.
To make it special, earlier in the week I called ahead to see if they stocked our favorite French champagne. They did not, so I arranged to have a bottle shipped to the sommelier at the restaurant to be presented at the table as a surprise (along with another small gift I picked up on the road).
Georgia had arranged a surprise as well, knowing I would be coming off a long flight she had bought me a new shirt, had it pressed and waiting in the car when she picked me up. Oh boy, this was going to…
- This Ain’t Your Parents’ Marriage
I have to admit, I am that little girl who adored her parents. While my friends’ parents were all getting divorced, my parents were still together and happy about it. I held them up as the standard for marriage. But after a year of marriage I can tell you with certainty, this ain’t my parents’ marriage. I have come to realize being a newlywed in the 21st century is significantly different than it was for my parents.
First, you should know that my husband and I met online, MySpace to be exact. Now, granted, we had a previous connection, having gone to the same high school, he graduated a year before me, but still our relationship was born from technology. And technology has since been a staple of our relationship, as it is for so many younger couples. Text, instant messenger and sites like Facebook or Twitter are often the main means of communication—certainly not the case for people like my parents. So how do you establish a meaningful, fulfilling and, most important, stable marriage, when texting is your primary means of communicating with your spouse?Honestly, it’s not easy, and I can’t say that I have completely succeeded. But with my husband working twelve-hour days, and me working five days a week at an office I drive an hour each way to get to, we have to “make it work” (as Tim Gunn would say).
First I think ground rules should be established. For example, you should both agree
- Popularizing Parenting
Speaking to the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) chapter in the British Isles, we came across this interesting quote on the cover of their 2011 “Family First” brochure:
“I’m a dad.
It’s what I’ve always wanted to be since I was very young.
It’s what I almost always love doing.
It is the only thing in my life that day in and day out makes me feel like a good man. A real man.”Richard O’Sullivan
Family First 2010-2011 Pennine YPO Chapter ChairYPO is an interesting organization, with membership restricted to people who have, before they turned 40, become presidents of midsized companies. They are, by definition, smart, driven, and burning the candle at both ends. They all want to prioritize better (don’t we all) and to do a better job of parenting and raising their families.
It is so interesting that wherever we go, we find parents, moms and dads both, who seem to realize more and more each day that their family is what counts, and that parenting is the most important part of their lives.
These young presidents understand that their companies, their golf games, and most of their other interests will come and go, but their children and families will, hopefully, outlast them all.
It’s this kind of prioritization—this kind of “popularizing”—that we think is making families… CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
- Five Tips for Building Better Business Relationships
We’ve all heard that it’s not what you know but who you know that determines your success. But sales coach Jim Cathcart asks this: “Who is glad they know you?” That’s why people do business with others they know and trust. When you offer value to another person, then they have a reason to care [...]
- Are You Connecting or Just Communicating?
It seems the networking series really seemed to connect with many of you. To continue the discussion and to introduce you to our May issue of SUCCESS with the social network star Mark Zuckerberg on the cover, below is my Publisher's Letter from the issue. They key point is, you don't need 1,000 'friends' or even 100… see how many below…
I communicate a lot—on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. I also process around 300-400 emails a day and who knows how many text messages.
But recently I spent some time sorting and categorizing my database of more than 10,000 "contacts," and I had a startling realization. While I might be communicating with tens of thousands of people every day, outside of encounters with my immediate family and business team, I am not really connecting or fostering very many real relationships at all. I'm what's called a mile wide and an inch deep, and that's not how you strike oil! I've been mistaking communication for connection.
Since having this epiphany, I've noticed how many other people suffer from this same affliction, mistaking the time they spend transmitting and receiving information with time spent making meaningful connections. Don't get me wrong—both communication and connection are essential today, but one simply does not equate to the other.
With the pace of business and life today, it's so easy to fall victim to this way of thinking; we must move quickly and convey as much information as quickly as possible to stay competitive, or so we think. With all the opportunities technology provides—enabling us to work from just about anywhere and to expand our reach, quite literally, around the globe—it also has become a crutch in some ways. I think true connection happens… CLICK HERE TO READ REST OF POST
- Eyre: Bursting “The Bubble”
For years, we had the stress of trying to fulfill the holiday and birthday wish lists of nine children. I remember one particularly stressful Christmas was spent standing in a long line for the desire of our 7-year-old daughter Shawni’s heart: A Baby Alive doll. Just as I got to the front of the line, much to my chagrin, the woman in front of me got the very last doll. I was devastated trying to figure out how to tell Shawni that Baby Alive was dead!
Then there was the time when we discovered at about 2 a.m. on early Christmas morning that the “Santa gift” for our little 6-year-old Jonah was gone. The gift, which was a little robot that could sweep the floor (six inches at a time), had been stored in the garage in a black garbage bag for several weeks, and had somehow apparently been inadvertently thrown away. Great idea to put it in a garbage bag… in the garage, right?
One year when our house was full of teenagers and kids down to age 10, we decided that enough was enough. The last thing we needed was a bunch more “stuff.” We knew that our kids were living in a bubble with no realization of the real world or the situation that many living in poverty faced every day of their lives.
After careful deliberation we took a deep breath and told the kids that what they would be getting for Christmas that year, in lieu of all the gifts and paraphernalia that previously permeated Christmas, was a ticket to Bolivia, for a project sponsored by a great humanitarian group in Salt Lake City called CHOICE Humanitarian.
On Christmas morning…
- Eyre: No One Ever Said Raising a Family Was Easy
We have been writing about families all over this country; now let us introduce you to our family. I (Linda) remember days when I rolled over at 6 a.m. with a groan wondering how in the world I was going to survive the day. There were mouths to feed, music lessons to practice, homework to finish, myriads of sports events to cheer for and the never-ending orthodontist appointments. (I think our funds to correct those genetic buckteeth built our orthodontist a very nice house.)
But the family traditions made life so fun! Days like burying Richard in a ton of leaves on his birthday every year at Liberty Park and writing on adding machine tape a list of things we were thankful for on Thanksgiving morning made all the hard stuff a blur in the background. Our life was full of mayhem and a lot of minutiae, along with some moments of pure magic…
- Eyres: The Beauty of “Just Enough”
One day each year, preferably in early November, we ride horses down the incomparable Kolob Canyon of Zion National Park in southern Utah. We enter at the park station close to the wonderful little town of New Harmony, and ride along the base of the Five Fingers—massive, sheer, monolithic red cliffs that jut up straight and impossibly high from the golden cottonwoods that grow along the clear, babbling La Verkin Creek.
Eyre blogIt occurred to me (Richard) this year that one reason I love it so much down in that canyon is that it is the desert. The dry, crisp, still warm air is part of it, but it’s also the sparseness of the desert. There aren’t that many trees, so you can spend a moment just focusing on one single tree, standing starkly in its autumn glory, with a huge red cliff as its backdrop.
It was back in college when I first started to appreciate the desert. I read Edward Abbey’s Deseret Solitaire and loved his descriptions of a single flower, or a cactus with one bloom, or a few blades of grass emerging from the sand—appreciated because they were so sparse and so stark and so unique.
- Eyres: Do Your Kids Live Too Far Away, or Too Close?
If you’re an empty-nester now, or if you will become one soon, do you want your grown children to live right next to you? Or would you like some space?
One of the results of traveling so much with our children when they were young is that they now think they can live anywhere they want in the world.
When our second son Jonah and his wife Aja moved to New Zealand, we complained about taking our grandkids so far away. “Just fall asleep on the plane Dad,” Jonah told me, “and when you wake up, you will be here.” (Yeah, sure, if flights were only free!) Aja added, “Besides, you will probably Skype us more often now.”
- Entitlement: The Biggest Parenting Problem of This Generation
We are sending in this post from Mexico City, where we are meeting with a wonderful group of parents. Over the last couple of years, we have spoken to parents in 50 countries on five continents, and wherever we go, the common concern is the sense of ENTITLEMENT that our children are growing up with.
It is a problem of major proportions, because feeling entitled to whatever they want, whatever their friends have, and all without conditions or consequences or any price to pay or effort on their part is robbing our children of the joy of work and of delayed gratification, and of the chance to develop initiative, motivation and a sense of personal responsibility…
- Eyres: Live By a Family Mission Statement
Let me tell you about one of the most valuable and important things we have ever done as a family. When our older kids were teenagers, we had dinner with our friend Stephen Covey and his wife Sandra just after they wrote a book together called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. They live near us and have been friends for 40 years. During the course of our conversation they discovered that we had not yet created a family mission statement and they encouraged us to get going! They assured us that it was important enough to warrant a weekend away with the kids for the sole purpose of creating a mission statement together.
So we did, never imagining the impact it would have on our family! We rented a conference center at a weekend discount, and that weekend will always stand out in our children’s memory as not only fun but as one they will never forget. We had short “working meetings” broken up by visits to the hotel game room and pool…
- Eyres: Creating Family Meetings That Work
Linda Eyre here writing this week. Thanks for being part of our blog! I want to use the next two posts here to talk about two of the things that I personally think have been hugely important in our own family and in our personal parenting of our children. The two things are regular family meetings and the creation of a family mission statement.
In our terrific opportunities to speak to families in so many cultures in the world we often begin by telling them the importance of a family “infrastructure.” We liken having family systems that your kids understand and can depend on to an infrastructure not unlike the roads and bridges that make a city workable, easy to navigate and reliable.
On a recent trip to India we felt we were taking our lives in our hands every time we…
- Eyres: Help Your Children “Own” Their Money
“Chosen and earned ownership” is the antidote to entitlement. When one chooses to earn and own something, it can bring a kind of pride, independence and initiative that overcomes the laziness and boredom of entitlement. To rescue our children from entitlement we must give them opportunities for true ownership.
Last blog, we discussed the profound problem of indulgence and laziness among our children (click here to read that post).
And, predictably, the question that came in over and over from readers like you was: How do I overcome their sense of entitlement?
The answer almost sounds too simple: We must find a way to replace entitlement with a sense of chosen and earned ownership.
- Overcoming Children’s Sense of Entitlement with Responsibility
Never before has there been a generation with such a sense of entitlement as our kids today. Their tendency to think they should have whatever they want and do whatever they want whenever they want lies at the root of most of their problems (and most of our parenting problems).
As we travel the world, speaking to parents in audiences large and small, the questions and concerns we get from them are always the same:
Why do my kids sometimes make such obviously bad and foolish choices?
Why don’t they put in the effort at school to reach their full potential?
Why won’t they pick up their clothes or put away their toys?
Why do they think they need to have everything their friends have?
Why is it so hard for me to influence my kids… and so easy for their friends to influence them?
Why can’t I get them to set some goals and to start feeling responsible for their lives?
Why can’t I get them to work and why won’t they follow through on their tasks?The cause for each of these problems—for every one of them—is one word… and the word is entitlement…
- Getting Rid of the ‘Gimmes’: How to Establish a Family Economy
It is a day I remember well, because it was the first day that I realized that “allowances” were working against us and that money was helping me spoil my kids much more than it was helping me teach them anything. It was a Saturday morning, and I was trying to catch up a little on sleep. I was awakened by loud knocking on the locked bedroom door. Groggily, I got up and opened it to find three little kids with their hands out saying “Gimme my money, gimme my money, its allowance day.” To my sleepy eyes, it all looked a bit like a welfare line. I had just opened the window, and here were the people with their hands out, collecting the dole!
We had created an economy in our house all right, but it was an entitlement economy! My kids, I realized in that brief epiphany, saw no connection between performance and reward, they perceived no real ownership in the money we gave them or the things they bought with it, and they were learning the antithesis of initiative and responsibility rather than the essence of it.
Over the next several months, we worked with some other parents who had some of the same concerns, and developed…
- Hardy: The Means and the End in Life
What is the most important thing in your life?
If you and I were face to face right now and I asked you that question, you’d probably promptly reply with “my family” or “my children” or “my spouse.”
But are you actually living that way? We say our family and relationships are most important, but our values are demonstrated not by our words, but by our deeds—not by what we say, but what we do.
I have found if you want to know what someone really values most, simply look at their calendar and their checkbook. How a person spends their time and money reveals what they really value most.
Well, no more lip service! It’s time to…
- Eyres: Family Laws and the Development of Discipline
All great and lasting institutions have a legal system, and a good family is no exception. When there are clear and simple laws in a family, parents can be less emotional and more matter-of-fact, and obedience becomes more about keeping laws and less about a power struggle and parents trying to get kids to obey them rather than laws. Give your children the chance to have inputs as to what your family laws are and what punishment goes with the violation of each law.
With hindsight, we can see that our own first effort to set up family laws was rather comical. As young parents with our three young children, we tried to create a list of family rules by nomination. (I think, back then, we still thought a family was a democracy!) The kids chimed in with everything from “Don’t hit anyone,” to “Never plug in plugs—you could get shocked.” We dutifully listed every one on a big chart and we soon had 37 “family laws.” No one really remembered them or paid much attention to them, and one day our 7-year-old complained, “Dad, even in the Bible there’s only ten rules!”
Over the years we figured it out. We needed…
- Family Traditions: Why They’re the Glue of Great Families
Everyone, particularly every child, needs an identity larger than himself—something he or she belongs to, feels part of, and gains security and protection from. It is kids who do not get this identity from their families who are drawn to the rituals, “colors,” and traditions of gangs or other identity substitutes for families.
Strong traditions exist in every lasting institution—in schools, in fraternities, and certainly in families. Traditions are the glue that holds families together. Kids love and cling to family traditions because they are predictable and stable in an unpredictable world.
Almost all families have traditions, at least subconscious ones, often centering on holidays or the special occasions. But some parents come to realize the importance of traditions and the ability of good traditions to teach values to improve communication, to give security to kids, and to hold families together. Such parents can refine and redefine their family traditions and give them true and lasting bonding power.
Review and Re-evaluate Your Traditions
Start by assessing and analyzing your own family traditions. What do you do on each holiday? Each family birthday?
- Eyres: How to Create a Strong Family Culture
Hello and welcome to our blog! Over the next six weeks, we have the opportunity to think together about our families, our children, and our marriages—the most important and lasting parts of success! We hope, in a cyberspace sort of way, that we get to know each other and trust each other.
Family Culture and Infrastructure
To begin, let’s realize and acknowledge that our families exist and our kids are growing up in the midst of some strong and often negative cultures—the Media culture, the Peer culture, the Techno/computer/gadget culture, the Celebrity culture…. If we want our kids to survive and thrive amongst all the noise, we have to create a family culture that is stronger than all of the competing cultures—a family culture with our values and our standards that can supersede all the others!
A family culture involves turning our homes into solid, predictable, lasting institutions that give confidence and identity to its members. Like any institution that is intended to last and to give esteem, a family must have a…
- Set Your Relationship Goals with Richard and Linda Eyre
Richard and Linda Eyre have focused on families as the key unit of society, marriage as the key commitment of life, children as the key element of happiness, parenting as the key skill of personal growth, family-prioritizing as the key to life-balance, and family relationships as the key component of success. The Eyres are thrilled to share some of their “keys” in this blog series which will run twice a week for six weeks.
So that you can anticipate and implement, here is the line up…
- Fake It Till You Make It
Please don’t.
I just finished writing my commentary for our forthcoming SUCCESS Audio Series issue that is based on developing professional and other relationships. I thought you might enjoy the insight of these thoughts as well. Here are six ways to give you the relationship edge in business and in life.
Here is tip No. 1 and maybe the most important one of all…
- You are part of our family.
Ever wonder what it takes to get SUCCESS magazine into your hands each month? Well, welcome to the first edition of the Editor’s Blog, where I’ll be giving you a peek at what goes on behind the scenes and into each issue. Our editors, writers, copy editors, photographers, designers and production artists work hard to [...]
- Even the Most Fearsome are Fearful
Ever wonder what drives people to be mean, vicious, violent and cruel? Is it a lack of humanity, “bad genes” or the “the devil” at work? There is a simpler answer: FEAR. I saw the documentary Tyson this weekend. Mike Tyson was once the most feared human being on the planet. What was behind his ferociousness? His own inexorable fear.Tyson grew up on the meanest streets of Brooklyn, where he was robbed, bullied and humiliated by older boys. At the time, he was too scared to fight back, and as he later candidly admitted, “I’m afraid of being that way again.”When a thug gratuitously killed one of his pet pigeons, Tyson went wild and beat the kid up. Once he learned to fight, he was never going to let himself be “bullied” again, “because if anyone tried to humiliate me again, I would kill them.”The director of the film explained in an interview, “Fear was CONTINUED HERE
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