Pay attention to your motivation.

Why did you just do what you did?

How often do we do things just to impress someone? How about to prove ourselves?

My challenge for you is this: Impress no one.

Be yourself, your full self and then you will impress others naturally and you won’t really care that they are impressed.
It will be irrelevant to you.
Impress no one with your clothes, your appearance, your possessions, your words or thoughts.

Relate to them honestly without needing to impress them.

Now, I challenge you to do this on Facebook, as well.

All the best,
Don

Letting go is one of the hardest things to do. I want things the way I want them. I have strong preferences and I assume that my way is what is best for me. When I let go of the control, there is no telling how things will work out.

Being out of control can be scary to people, very scary. This often depends on what happened in their past when they were not in control.

Please look at your life and when it is easiest to let go of control and when it is hardest. Do you believe that life works out and things are going to be okay? If you do, you allow them to unfold, to happen organically. If you have had the experience that sometimes life really hurts you, you are more likely to push or pull or somehow manipulate to get your way.

Do a quick inventory of what is challenging in terms of letting go for you.


Of what do I need to let go?

Here are some of the ones I hear the most. I have put them in the masculine form, though I hear the same trends from women:

Closure-issues from my past, hers, ours

Am I still hung up on what’s her name, my first girlfriend?
Am I comparing my wife with ________?
Am I still thinking about you-know-who at inopportune times?
Does my wife know I still have contact with what’s her name?

Can I let go of the difficulty we had when we were first dating, or the miscarriage, the affair, that porn thing, the thing she said about me to her family/friends?

Do I need closure about that guy she was dating before we met, or the time I thought she was having an affair and she denied it, or that time she was traveling and when she got back, she talked in her sleep.

Everyone lets go or else sleep could not happen. We have plenty of practice at letting go. Exercise your letting go muscle and be mindful of what it feels like each time you let go. There can be a freeing quality to it or a sweet surrender.

Here is to a week of experimenting with letting go.

All the best,
Don

I keep getting comments that go along this line-
Why does my husband/wife not have time for me? Why did we even get married, if he has to "fit me in?"

My quick reply is this and it may not be popular- If you have to "fit in" your spouse, your priorities are suspect. Whatever you think is important, you may need to revisit. If all your spouse is getting is leftovers, you may soon be an ex-spouse. If that happens, your priorities change rather quickly and sometimes not in your control. Obviously, I am oversimplifying to make a point.

Clarify what your values are and then live according to those values. If family is important to you, and you know the single most important thing in keeping the family together is your marriage, it stands to reason that you would work on your marriage proactively, before there were problems.

Instead, our ego gets in the way. "I am too important (busy) to do that," he thinks to himself. Then he rationalizes that it is more important to work that many hours than it is to spend quality time with his wife. When his wife starts cheating on him, or starts the divorce proceedings, he realizes that his logic stopped at a certain point.
Good luck working that many hours AND doing all the single parenting required when divorcing, oh yeah and the distractions that go along with divorce. Realistically, it is easier to stay married, spend time with your partner and reap the rewards of a good marriage. The price? Spend time with your spouse.

Look at your ego. When you are too busy, you are saying how important you are. When you are too busy for your spouse, the message is clear, "I am important and you are not." Try being on the receiving end of that message from your spouse and see how you respond.