Audio Book – BACK ON YOUR BIKE PART 1.

BACK ON YOUR BIKE!

We all fall off the bike at some stage in our life. Some recover and go on to fall off over and over again. Some never get back on properly. A couple get the top of a hill on a tandem bike. The woman on the front exclaims, “my goodness that was the hardest hill I’ve ever done” – the guy on the back says “yes, me too, I was so worried that we wouldn’t make it, I kept the brake on to make sure we didn’t roll backward.” Don’t be like that. Make sure you’ve cleared the past properly as you enter a new beautiful love. This book can help.

There’s a tension isn’t there? A tension between what we want and what we’ve got. There are periods when they line up. Some of those periods last longer than others, particularly in relationships. Like the last relationship you had. It started like a perfect download of your in the shower imaginary life movie and ended up like the steam, evaporating through the ceiling.

And now, it’s time for a second go, or third, or fourth and you probably don’t want to get your heart broken again.

So, I wrote this book for you.

About Your New Love and Relationship!

Love is a beautiful thing. We must be careful not to over-think it. Love and relationships are experiments and it’s wise to accept that right from the beginning. There are no secret formula that are going to prevent or immunise you against pain. If you don’t want pain, then you don’t want love.

If you have the courage to know that although you may have felt suicidal, drunk yourself into a stupor, betrayed your inner demons and or made an ass of yourself last time, that was a valuable experience and worthy of a second run. I mean, the only thing between you and that state of despair is your pride and surely love is better for one day than pride for a lifetime?

If you take any relationship that’s on offer and see where it goes, life is a real experiment and you will learn the old parable that “NOTHING IS IN THE WAY, ONLY ON THE WAY. Yes, that’s the way to think about relationships, you will not be a worse person for giving it a go. You will end up somewhere and if you keep trying to control every aspect of your humanity so you end up totally goal driven and master of your destiny, you may as well read about your life in a text book. I don’t think that’s living at all.

You can control 50% of your life. Choose which 50% carefully. All people can only control 50% of their life but they don’t know which 50% they are controlling. That’s a mess. It’s called half hearted living. Do you want half hearted life? I doubt it and if you do, get a refund on this book. It’s only for those who want to put their whole heart into what they do because there are no half hearted success stories.

The reason people get in a mess with love and relationships is that they think that a relationship is the be all and end all of life. Never was there a greater load of BS projected. Most people who admire love and relationships are depressed, like RUMI and Romeo. They weren’t happy. All their life was spent moaning that they couldn’t enjoy themselves without love and relationships. How dumb is that?

So, start your journey with the knowledge that relationships don’t solve problems. They actuarially make them worse. Relationships magnify problems. They feel like they will solve problems, they promise they will solve problems but they don’t. The closest a relationship gets to solving a problem is that it makes having a problem less intense because it feels like there’s a second person batting for you in life. Really there isn’t but it feels good to think it.

The other reason people get into a mess in relationships is that they put too much mush into them. If you divide life into seven equal parts like: career, money, health, intelligence, friends, self and relationship you get a rough idea about the real context of relationship. A relationship is not life, love is. And you can’t love one person and hate another. 99% of single people have an axe to grind on someone in their past, or their sister’s past or their brother’s past or their parent’s. They grind that axe and hold onto all sorts of distaste. It’s like sucking a dog poo lolly while kissing a prince. It’s going to make a difference. The taste alone of a judgement or hate that’s dragging itself through a person’s life becomes permanent. They taste crap even when they meet their soul mate. So, smart thing would be to put relationships in context, and use mouthwash.

So, here’s a story.

In my last relationship I met my partner in a park and was instantly attracted to her. On our first date I knew that there was very little chance of it working. And I knew full well, that if I went ahead it was really probable that I was going to get hurt. That immediately bought back memories of how it felt when my first marriage ended, when I felt like the gutter would have been a step up from where I was. So, I drew down and asked myself whether I wanted to walk away and save the pain, or take what nature had delivered and put my heart and soul into it and see where it took me. Well, six months later it did take me to a huge heartache. I’d even proposed marriage in that six months, I held nothing back, I never do because in nature, nothing is in the way of life, only on the way.

This is what makes the difference for me. I value that life is a journey and even pain is important to learn and guide us. My pain had a purpose so, when it ended, I rang my brother to get some TLC, then, I took a few days off work and dug into the pain to see what it would teach me. I let all the pain in and didn’t hold onto anything. I went through a ream of paper, 400 sheets of paper, listing the discard, (Simplified Demartini Process) opening my heart again to love. I passed the acid tests making sure there were no grudges or regrets about that last relationship. For what it’s worth I can share that I learnt more about myself, my work, my life, people, human nature, bi-polar and hormones in that six months than any university degree could have taught me. This was my eleventh full blown heartbreak.

They don’t get easier, but they do get shorter. My first smashed heart took 3 years to deal with, the last one, 3 days. I’m confident the next one will take 3 hours. Yes, there will be more.

Now you might say that the pain was not worth the gain, but in the six months since the inevitable ending of that experiment, I’ve lived more of my life purpose and helped at least 400 people I could not have helped as well before that last experience. People came to me who were suffering from the same struggles my ex partner was experiencing while I was with her. I learned so much about others and of course myself. That immersion really helped but I would not have known that at the start.

So, here’s the rub. You can’t go wrong. You can’t go wrong trying. You can only go wrong half trying. If you are in doubt pull out. If you are being safe, or self protective, or cautious in love, it’s over. There is no half. You and your baggage come into the relationship boots and all. Otherwise it’s a joke, and you’ll be the punch line. Give all and if it ends cop it sweet, right in the heart. You’ll get over that. I teach you how to get over a heartbreak in a day or two, even if it’s your long lost lover from 20 years and family, you can get over separation, affairs, cheating, lying and all that in 24 hours and meet your next lover if you choose. But remember, there’s an acid test. Do you love your ex, unconditionally?

A few hints on being confident in surviving a heartbreak and the same hints go for putting 100% of your heart into a relationship. Create a routine that works for you when you are single or as if you were single and do not change one molecule of it when you are double (except for the dating and sex with strangers). Compromise kills love and therefore relationships. You get to know yourself as a single person and you keep doing those things that make you a good single person when you are a double person. That means focussing on the other six areas of life as well as relationship. It’s the overloading of relationship with too much pressure to create happiness that causes their failure.

Seduction means “to please.”!

Happiness is, by the way, over rated. You’d be better to focus on fulfilment and be fulfilled when you enter a relationship than focus on happiness because happiness is like an Ogre, always hungry, never satisfied whereas fulfilment can last a lifetime. You’d also be wise to accept that the purpose of a relationship is not happiness.

If you are trying to please your partner you might be making a huge mistake. You might start looking for someone with the same values as you. Someone who is pleased by the same things as you. That notion is so self-destructive. That’s a bitter pill. No mouthwash can kill the flavour of being a disappointed lover. If you think the essence of a great relationship is finding someone who wants what you want and thinks like you think, you will be hurting forever. No need for that.

There’s only one person on earth who thinks like you, who wants what you want and who needs what you need in the quantities that you need it. And that person is you. If you think you found a like minded soul, this is possible but if you think that they will want what you want in the order you want it in, think again. Anyone who gives you the impression that they want what you want in the order you want it, is tricking, seducing and manipulating you by making things easy. They are just making you happy so you surrender to them. Once you surrender they will reveal something terrible, something devastating, that they do not want what you want, in fact, they probably want the opposite.

Trust nature, if two people are the same, one of them isn’t necessary. If you do find an exact replica, a person who thinks like you, resonates with you, walks and talks like you and wants what you want, then wear a hard hat because they will soon ask you to change, something about you is about to change, or the relationship will dissolve.

All relationships are based on differences. If there are seven areas of life, and your priorities are spiritual, mental and financial in that order, you can bet everything you own that their bottom three priorities will be financial, mental and spiritual in that order. This is how nature works. It’s not wrong. But in some societies on earth, some cultures, women are beaten until they submit to the authority of the male, and in countries like America, where there are some strong religious bias, the church can have a go at beating everyone into submission to their values. Still, deep down, the human spirit is non complaint. Only on the surface can we cause another person to subjugate their values. Deep down, intrinsically, we are all very powerful.

Seduction means “to please.” So we seduce each other by lying. You do what you can to seduce your new date, but really, it’s an act. Deeply, you want something and the best way to get it is by pleasing them, this is marketing at its best.

There is short term pleasing and there is long term. If you focus on what someone needs in the short term you will please them short term. But all short term pleasures open the gateway to the real driver, the long term. Satisfy an appetite and it gives birth to ten more, and eventually seducation gives way to truth. People want their long term needs met.

Seduce means to give others what they want, and it will be very different to what you’d want if you were them. Seduction is sales and marketing in perfection. So, yup, you might think you are the same, hope that you are the same, laugh at your similarities but if you know each other more than a

week, you’ll start to see there are as many differences in values and morals and ethics as there are similarities. And this is why relationships are so challenging. While you are getting seduced you dream that this getting, this satisfaction is going to last forever. But your needs will expand and their needs will expand and you’ll eventually feel that your needs are not being met in some area. And then there’s a test.

Now what? Now that you find you’ve started dating someone who wants things you don’t want, what are you going to do? You know this is inevitable so do you stay single and just self-gratify, hoping to meet your perfect self in another person, or do you realise that by giving to your lover what they want they give to you what you want?

Are you one of the people who get into relationships with enthusiasm and then spend the rest of the time you are in it thinking about whether you made the right choice, looking around at other people going, “my God, they are perfect” or “wow – that person is flirting with me, if only I was single … etc I wish ……bla bla” If you are one of those people then please read the next chapter carefully.

Confusion or Clarity!

Western ideology means we want what we haven’t got, so, when you are with one person (relationship) you want to be with the many (single) and when you are with the many (single) you want one (relationship) … in other words when you are single being double looks brilliant and when you are double being single looks like nirvana. That’s the epitome of western ideology. We want what we haven’t got. It’s the driving force of the consumer society, our culture, our religions… simply we are conditioned to “want what we haven’t got.” And this presents an dilemma for those who love the commercial world of business. If business success comes from wanting what you haven’t got, then are you doomed to continual dissatisfaction in relationship?

The whole business and financial model of the world runs on “wanting what we haven’t got – consumerism” even in Maoist countries it’s what feeds people. But at home, in love and relationship maybe the opposite works better. Maybe in love “I need nothing, I want nothing and therefore I have everything” the Eastern model of want what you’ve got, is best.

I teach clients who have been in long term relationships a great game. Would you like to read about that? If so read on, otherwise skip to the next chapter – how to have sex without commitment (not really).

So, here’s the rub about Eastern thinking in a Western relationship. Lets say you are a woman, 29 and feel very beautiful in your clothes and body and work and life and you are dating a short fat man who has no money, smelly armpits, a hairy chest and eats like a pig on heat. So, you look up from your meal and there he is with food down his shirt, spaghetti on his bald head and snot dripping from his nose. He is making a grunting sound and his knife and fork haven’t left the napkin. His hands are up to their elbows in tomato sauce and he is on the phone talking to his ex. You look just past him and there is Brad Pitt. You slide off the chair in bliss. Your mind drifts and you are no longer at the table with short, fat, bald man you have left your body at the table and are sitting on Brad’s knee and he’s happy to see you if you know what I mean. So, now you want what you haven’t got right? And in Western life, that’s unhappiness, dissatisfaction, lost interest, doubt, unromantic, heart closed, argument coming, gee I wish I wasn’t stuck in this horrible relationship thinking. Yes?

Now the trick….. take a big paper bag and …. no only joking … here it is….

Imagine that there’s a competition and your child is in a race. Your kid is not the greatest runner, so they always lose. At the end they come up to you crying because they lost the race so what do you say to them? You find something to celebrate like “well, you didn’t come first but you were the best starter, or you didn’t win the running race but you went faster than you’ve done before or you looked great or tried hardest” Somehow you extract a take away from the event that proves an amazing universal truth. In every competition, everyone is a winner. That’s a universal law, not a platitude.

In nature, nothing is missing. So, although you might be looking across the table at Mr Piggy and looking past him to Brad Pitt, in nature’s eyes, they are equal. There is nothing Brad Pitt has got that your partner hasn’t. The only question is “what form?” Now, before we get into that I want to make a point clear. To compare your partner with other potential candidates is human. To have questions and see other attractive people is human. We compare, life is, nature is, competitive.

Apply that to business or sport and you are a winner. Apply it to relationship and you will be a loser. Don’t get messed up thinking you need to be Eastern in everything or you’ll end up half engaged in work and half engaged at home. You need to be diverse, open and have both. Apply the Western model of “I want what I haven’t got” to your work and sport and apply the Eastern model of “I want what I’ve got” to your relationship and health.

You can be Buddhist and Christian. How about that… if you be one or the other some area of your life is going to end up in the toilet. Now the Buddhists are sort of happy to include the Christians but just try bringing a Bhuddist statue into a Synagogue. Or, like me, with an Om tattoo on my shoulder sitting talking to some moslem radicals. So, you can evolve beyond that, you can own the diversity and be everything. Just choose where and when.

Lets get back to the “competition” between Mr Pig Man and Brad. So, we suggested that in nature nothing is missing, it just changes in form. You are looking at gorgeous Brad and comparing Mr Pig Man to him, well as far as appearances go, it’s a no brainer. But if you say, Brad is gorgeous and therefore my Mr Pig Man must be gorgeous somewhere you will find it. Your Mr Pigman (now his name) might be gorgeous in his emails or in his affection for flowers or in his reckless abandon when it comes to life. Look and find it and then ask yourself what’s the benefit of being gorgeous in that way and what’s the drawback of being gorgeous in Brad’s way. This should take you 4 seconds, and in that time, you put your Mr Pigman back on top and Brad down the bottom, or at the least, even.

The key is that in every competition you have with your partner against someone else, your partner must win. That’s called “the honeymoon that lasts forever” because that’s what you feel on your honeymoon. You feel like no one else on earth would be good enough or as good as this person you are with. But most honeymoons don’t last because of the “want what I haven’t got syndrome.” My suggestion: stay horny for who you are with by making them win every competition and don’t be afraid to say it.

You are NOT Superman or Superwoman – in real life!

Do you love the movies? Do you have a favourite cartoon character? There’s one character I’ve always admired, and that’s “Superman.” He flies around in a pair of Bonds Undies, saving people from distress. He’s bulletproof, handsome, has a significant probability of pleasing Lois Lane (unless she’s got Kryptonite stuck in her teeth) and never seems to have tiredness from over training in his ocean kayak like mine. Ahh … but it took me to the age of thirty four to realise “Superman” wasn’t real. I wasn’t bulletproof after all.

When I was 8 years old, I went to the second floor of my Nanna’s home, went to the open window and with a tea-towel as a cape, standing on the back of a chair, with nothing else but my undies on, jumped out the window. I flew horizontal, arms outstretched, but I didn’t make it out the window. I hit my nose fair and square on the sharp corner of the windowsill (the bridge of my nose is still missing). I bled good red human blood, which I’d never seen superman do, all over the light green felt of Nanna’s good chair. I woke in hospital bewildered but none the wiser. I went on to try to fly out of trees, off garage roofs, on water skis and well, you name it I tried to fly off it. Somewhere deep down, there was no separation between Chris and his alter ego, his own super-self. I really thought I was bulletproof and with that belief I put myself through university, won rowing championships, built businesses, travelled the world and created a wonderful family. Then, at the age of thirty four I found out something new.

My armour cracked for the first time in my life, I got divorced. I never imagined I could lose control of my life like this. I was a father and happy to be that way. I didn’t know how to be a thirty four year old single man. I was Superman, all I had done all my life was to apply myself to whatever I wanted and it usually happened. I had never had a dream shattered, a reality out of control. I became depressed, dysfunctional. Normal process didn’t work. The divorce stripped my cape, took away my powers. I lost control, I wasn’t bulletproof and there was nothing I could do, or at least there was nothing I knew how to do to fix it. I went down like a sack of potatoes. I had no idea how to live in that reality. It was, in classic language, an identity crisis.

The point I am trying to make here is that sometimes the benefit of a relationship is the pain it puts you through. This identity crisis I went through during my divorce opened my heart, took down years of barriers, gave me back my humanity. No other process could have given me this reward. I am forever thankful for it. I think, in spite of the pain, it was the most sacred and beautiful experience of my life. It proved that superman was my false self, and the real me, the vulnerable me, who wanted the dichotomy of success in business and love at home had every right to exist. Something I hadn’t understood before this time.

That identity had successfully built three multi million dollar business’, bought up a family, made wealth and won trophies in sport but like a snake that sheds its skin, it needed to drop away. The rewards of my life were many but the quality and inner turmoil were unbearable. It was time to expand, to grow bigger, to be East and West, to be successful and in love without compromise.

If you are worried that the future might bring you pain, or you might be making a mistake in a relationship, be content with the worst case scenario. You will expand, you will grow, you will find a bigger chunk of you if the whole thing does collapse. That’s the worst.

You are a lover. You are a hero, an amazing person, you can be resilient, be a leader, be intelligent and live spiritual if you want. You can be all powerful and wealthy, but at the end of the day, to be in love and have the courage to dive in 100% and face defeat in relationships, you need to accept yourself as a human being too. If this relationship fails, you will survive. You are not your relationship, so if it falls over and you go down the toilet emotionally, it just helps you realise that you are you, and relationships are not more than a part of you, not the whole.

No one can predict what will happen. So give the notion away that you can predict how long this will last. Surrender and just return to love as often as you can. Don’t let your humanity be buried just because you want to avoid some pain. Having the courage to be hurt is going to sustain you in relationships and keep you in love. Realistic expectations of yourself are the foundation of great love and care for others. That realism is that you are, emotionally at least, vulnerable. You will, even it it takes a few weeks or months, rebound to be a better person, a more inspired person, a more loving and productive person if you stop trying to work things out, or protect yourself and just trust you will be ok. And, besides, you know my email and web, I can help you if it hits the fan.

Ok, I hope we’re off to a good start here. You would no doubt like a recap….

1. Pride is not worth dying for
2. Nothing is in the way only on the way
3. Sucking dog poo lollies leaves a bad taste in your mouth … clear the past.
4. Stay true to yourself at least 66.666% of your life. Merge the rest in relationship.
5. Seduction means “to please someone by giving them what they want”
6. Don’t look for common values … that’s deception
7. Be Eastern and Western in life approach but Eastern in Relationship wins
8. Be a human being not a comic book character

How to Have Sex Without Commitment (Not Really)!

Any book about love and relationship, new or old, must get to the sticky subject of sex. It’s not really complicated, but there’s a big danger making moral or ethical statements about it because what is acceptable to one person, isn’t to another.
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However, here goes.

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When men talk to me about relationships and I ask what they miss most about being with a partner, the answer is sex. And they do complain about the lack of it. Which proves a quote a friend once shared with me (she was a prostitute in her youth) “Most men are too lazy to masturbate.” I didn’t like it at first, but now, years later, and thousands of clients later, I can say, “its got some truth in it.” !

Sometimes these guys are driven into a relationship because they are lonely, horny and don’t like being single and they meet women who make sex quickly available and the emotional turmoil that follows is quite extraordinary. Sex is a pretty quick link to a relationship, an easy entry as they say, and the guys are suddenly faced with a dilemma. They love the intimacy but can’t deal with the complexity, “she wants more.” (Ok, it does work in the other way around too).

Sex and dating are like job interviews and employment. If sex is part of the interview and both parties agree, then it’s potentially a healthy part of getting to know someone. But if sex is a step on the way to commitment, then it’s being bloated to the equivalent of winning the lottery instead of a $2 scratchy.

You might be tempted to do sex because your partner is basically making that the “next step” on the journey. It’s not a step. It’s not next. It’s not even on the ladder. Put sex over there, over in the corner. Do it if you want, don’t if you don’t want. But if it becomes the process or the outcome, it’s being placed in a huge power play and will be accordingly screwed up (sorry about that pun).

Smart people get commitment before sex. Remember, most men are too lazy to masturbate so a lot of male testosterone is searching for a receptacle. It’s not love, and it certainly will not be exclusive. If a man can’t direct his “blue balls” into his work and life, then whenever his partner is pregnant or otherwise unavailable his options are going to lead to all sorts of bad places. Be aware that people who crave sex in a relationship have energy but maybe no creative outlet, no life, only a vagina to put it. That’s going to feel great at first, but will you sleep when they are away with work?

Love making on the other hand doesn’t require orgasm, ejaculation or nakedness. But I think if you are reading this, you already know that. So, lets move on.

God Isn’t In Your Pyjamas!

It’s a commonly held belief that the more you love somebody the longer the relationship will last. If you see a wedding and the couple are so in love you automatically think, “ahh they will last forever.” It’s so beautiful that thought. Love is divine and the God’s have blessed this union between man and woman “as long as yee both shall live.”

Within 7 years more than 50% of all those marriages fail and most of those in horrible, ugly, mean and cruel, vindictive circumstances. And a survey reveals that of the other 50% that do survive, 20% are doing so through affairs and disappointment.
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One commentator I heard say “the bigger the wedding the shorter the marriage.” Ever thought that through? It’s all about fantasy and false expectations and it isn’t always true. However, big expectations and too much pressure on a relationship to make either individual feel complete, does influence how long the relationship will last before cracks appear.

The whole thing comes not just from an inflated perspective on the value of love and relationship but more from the exclusivity of love and an underestimation of what is required at a personal level to maintain the magnetism of love in a relationship.
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Relationships do not cause happiness. Being single does not cause happiness. Marriage or being single do not cause sustainable happiness. Nothing causes sustainable happiness. So, it’s really wise if you approach love and relationships with that reality. An unhappy person does not get happy because they get into a relationship. That’s the thing you see. People love the idea of a bond between themselves and another person that fulfils the missing link in their life. But when this bond is derived from a relationship it puts an amazing amount of pressure on the relationship. It’s like turning up the dial on every possible good thing that can be had from relationships and consequently turning up the dial on everything bad too. People become hyper sensitive when they get into relationships that have fixed a problem in their life because they know, deep down, that if the relationship goes, the problem returns. It’s like living on egg shells, a facade that is just not liveable. Insecurity, jealousy, anger, frustration and more of those troubled emotions will dominate a relationship that has been created with the hope of fixing something, or making somebody happy.
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Even if troubles do start in a relationship, with the right tools a person can evolve and solve them.
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They can grow from all the confrontation they experience. But if they don’t have the right tools they will turn to control, trying to fix their partner, complaining and ultimately self-depreciating behaviours like compromise and the tools that sustain it, alcohol, drugs, spirituality and food.
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Paradise in a bedroom or home is like meditation!

Creating a cocoon from life and the world at large in a bed is spectacular. It relieves stress, it’s back in safety irrespective of the challenges of life, it feels like “God” is in your pyjamas. It’s brilliant, we all love that snuggle feeling, that warm wet morning where the world disappears and all that exists is skin, chocolate and wet kisses. No one is arguing that this isn’t brilliant paradise. All you need to know is that outside that room, when you do step back out into reality, it may not be as easy to maintain the space. There are two sides to everything and while you can dream about creating that paradise you may not be aware of it.

Lets look at this:

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Paradise in a bedroom or home is like meditation. It can make you feel like heaven has dropped into your lap. But what are the downsides, the consequences of bliss based bedrooms.
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1. You don’t want to leave it so it’s possible your whole values hierarchy gets turned upside downmaking you totally vulnerable to achieving great bliss in bed or head but in reality being totally depreciated. Remember, in the long term we ask “did I achieve my potential?” Which is another way of saying “was I true to my values?” A life full of blissful bedrooms combined with a values based existence out of the bedroom might just be the perfect existence.
2. You become needy. When you meet your new partner you have probably learned to be self- sufficient. You go to bed when it’s good for your health, you probably get up early, eat well, sleep deep and do the appropriate amount of rejuvenation to turn up in a strong place in your work. Now, enter a blissful bedroom that takes some if not all your sleep, makes it hard to get out of bed in the morning, takes you to romantic places rather than rejuvenating and you might start to see that while your bedroom bliss might be flying high, some other areas of your life might be sinking and stinking.
3. There are conditions. Your new lover isn’t Jesus or Buddha, nor Mother Terresa or some saint. They come with their baggage just like you do. So, they are not blessing out unconditionally. They want their values met outside the bedroom as well as inside. That can mean conflict. You might want to travel the world and they might agree but want a baby first. They might want to be hanging around with their ex partner and you might dream of isolation. The bedroom and the headroom can be in conflict and no matter how much bliss, no matter how romantic and sexy, no matter how many multiple orgasms you both have, outside the bedroom is going to be a challenge, even in the best of relationships.
4. Emotions exist. Emotions are not logical, even in the most spiritually adept, life mastery guru teacher, academic professor, emotionally intelligent individual. On the full moon, new moon, birthdays and anniversaries, emotions rule. And those emotions are irrational. Emotional intelligence is an oxymoron. What might be the most logical thing on earth will not satisfy an emotion. People commit suicide because of emotion, and have affairs. Logical, intelligent emotions simply don’t exist. (next chapters). So, if you think bliss in the bedroom and logic outside it will make your life sane, think again. What seems practical and priority to you will not be them. You can guarantee that if they do not challenge you emotionally you’ll soon be bored to death, and if they over challenge you emotionally you’ll burn out. It’s a fine line.
5. Novelty wears off. You can poke them in the bottom, put cream on their body and lick it off, you can shave them downstairs, and go from one end of the Karma Sutra to the other and back in sex positions. Eventually you will start repeating, and repeating, and repeating and you’ll start to wonder what else attracts you to this person and that might be a confronting question if the bedroom bliss has been the great attraction. 99% of all relationships end from this one crazy notion that good in bed, fun in head.

6. Other people exist. Ok, so in bedroom bliss it’s just you two. You can open your heart, it’s safe.Yup, this room, house or hotel room is sacred. Or so you thought. And then there are three. Your partner has friends, and little by little they are asked to form approval scores on you. Even thought the stories of your sexual prowess precede you, it’s the smelly armpit you forgot to wash or the terrible coffee you made one day or the night you drank too much to perform that make up the data base that this approval rating is going to be calculated on. You can know this one amazing fact, that because nature runs your universe, and you can’t escape, 50% of the scores will be positive and 50% will be negative. Everything in nature seeks balance. Including options about you. You … you … animal you..
7. History. So, in bedroom bliss by its very definition you are in the moment. Many people say this is where you are meant to live your whole life and if you can, then bedroom bliss will last forever. To achieve this you need to find someone with alzheimer’s disease. Someone who has no memory of their history and no real interest in their future. A Japanese Kamikaze pilot for example. Or a suicide bomber. But if you meet a human human being, then you are going to have to deal with, outside the bedroom at least, their baggage. It’ll include memories of an ex parter who cheated, abused them, hurt them, lied to them or was just plain stupid. And it will include visions and hopes for the future because that’s the human spirit. You can’t believe how sexually excited and engaged people become when they lose hope for the future. Sex is an incredible substitute for vitality that comes from a great vision. Even when President’s have moments of great achievement (vision complete) and before the next grand plan is hatched, they get horny, and addicted to sex for a while. However, once the vision is back, probably thanks to you giving up yours, they will be more interested in getting into that than bed.
8. The old slip of the tongue syndrome. So you are lying in bed, dripping in perspiration. You’ve done everything to make them happy, even given up your meeting this morning, missed the bus, pissed off a client and possibly your boss, and there’s love in each other’s eyes and you say “bla bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, and they say “how could you say that?” and three hours of sex, five missed appointments and all that effort is for zero. Ahh how unsatisfying and then after three or four of those you think to yourself, “what in the hell am I doing here?” Great question.
9. I can’t get no, satisfaction… In the science of human satisfaction there is a well known fact. The more you have the more it takes to cause it. So, day one in bedroom bliss you merge for the first time and irrespective of the experience, you’re satisfied. Day two, that same level of satisfaction is going to take more than plain old first date merging. You’re going to have to up the anti a bit. Then day three and you’re looking at porn trying to get some ideas and then you think about doing what you did on day one, day two and day three and it’s all starting to push you to the realisation “I want more.” You try with sex but ultimately, more leads you to want more human, You want more contact. More emails. More romance. Then, your values kick in and start defining more by what you actually want in life, like more security, more time off, more bigger home, more trips to France and suddenly, there’s not enough. So, you make a baby.

This list can go on. Every lover has been to each if not all those places and more with bedroom bliss. But we keep doing it. It’s the easy way to make us think that we’ve snaffled a partner and because there’s sex, there’s an increased probability of it going somewhere good. I’d be inclined to suggest that sex and going somewhere good are really not linked, but I’m not going to change a culture overnight. You can sort that minefield out.

Finding the Glue in Human Nature!

There’s a wonderful freedom that comes from thinking that the happier and more in-love we are, the less we have to worry about in a relationship. This is totally supported by any poetry book you might read on romance and love. And we love poetry books on love. Because in those poems good people make happy couples and the more passion they have, the longer they last. It turns out that it’s a little more complicated than that.

The power of love is amazing. It can bind people together forever. It just might not be in the same house or a physical relationship forever. Love is not bound by “you and me” relationships. So, yes, the more you love someone the longer it can last, but not always in a relationship.

48 years ago I met my first wife. We are divorced but I still love her. I don’t want to be married to her or live with her or have sex with her but I love her. That sentence took me a lot of therapy so please read it twice.

For longevity of a relationship, it’s wiser not to place so much responsibility on love as the glue. Instead, trust human nature.

1. There’s two sides to everyone and you will be continually surprised that the wonderful personyou met has the other side to that wonderful and that surprise never stops. Don’t run from those surprises, grow to embrace humanity rather than reject or try to change certain character traits in them. Every human being has every human trait. They’re just hidden during the honeymoon.
2. Love is always changing. You think you know what love is because you feel love, but when you are 20 love feels different to when you are 30. If you don’t evolve your definition of love then you will be stuck, unhappy, always wanting the last version of love you felt. Try this comparison: everyone thinks they know what love is but love is like chocolate, you only know what it tastes like from your own taste buds, you don’t know what it tastes like to me, we can only share emotions like “yummy” or “delicious” – so for a relationship to last, you need to continually ask your partner what their love feels like to them. It’s really interesting to find out.
3. Human nature worries endlessly about the future. Even a billionaire worries about the future. A Zen monk worries about the future. All human nature is focussed on the future. Things like great sex, meditation and a fine wine knock that worry about the future on the head and bring us into the moment but that’s not home, it’s not where the heart is. The human heart is in the future and when that looks rosy and fits our dreams, we say “I am in love.” strange isn’t it?
4. You can’t love one person and hate another. What stops relationships growing is the hate, judgement and anger people have for those people they have known or get to know. When you hear a person say “I’m over them” or “I’m over it” you know they are stuck. The only way to love your current partner is to love your ex. The only way to love your ex is to love your parents and the only way to love your parents is to see them reflected in you. (See Dr John Demartini Process if you are stuck in that journey somewhere) and if you hear your potential partner criticise their ex, their parents, themselves or whoever – run because you are next. That’s human nature evolving itself.
5. Vision. Big vision big love. Little vision, big sex. The size of your vision determines the size of your life (no not your penis although there is a correlation between vision and libido for men and women alike). Human nature, finds substitutes (no not prostitutes although … ) when vision is lost. Human nature can’t exist without hope and food, alcohol, sex, drugs, spirituality and greed are great substitutes when vision – dreams and hopes turn to mud. So, if you ask your potential partner what their vision is and they say “be with you” then you would be wise to understand that this isn’t going to last once they get their act together again.
6. Loneliness is not solved by a relationship. One of the great motives we have to find love is to overcome that awful feeling of loneliness.. nobody loves me .. type of feeling. That ingredient of human nature is a strange one because we are never alone but the more we engage in emotion, the stronger our drive for independence, the more isolated we feel, even from those who love us. Loneliness stems, not from the lack of companionship or the lack of love in someone’s life, but from the sense of not feeling loveable and that sense does not evaporate when in a relationship. In fact, it amplifies. So, maybe a good barometer on your personal wellbeing could be any sense of loneliness which will come from judgement of self, self- depreciation and or self aggrandisement. Either way, humility and thankfulness overcomes loneliness and frees you to be in a relationship for a more sustainable result.

The Soul Mate Myth!

Until menopause, an emotionally vulnerable woman doesn’t have 100% control of her feelings around child birth. It’s not her fault. Planets, moons, weather and so much more impact the emotional chemistry of our body and never more so, than in relation to the emotions around childbirth. Especially if that woman has not had children.

Now, if you are a bloke and you think you heard a pre menopausal woman say “I don’t want any more children” please hear what she’s really saying “to the best of my knowledge, right now, under the current circumstances, given all the variables, including what my friends, family, ex partner and the local cafe owner think and endorse, I am quite almost positive, nearly definite almost, that I don’t want another child.” The more she engages in another form of creation, such as her work, her sport or interests, the more solid will be her emotional state and the less the fluctuations.

Reproduction is nature’s reason, the higher order, for relationships happening. So, if a couple are limited in their range of options, i.e. the only form of common intellectual and artistic connection they have is physical, then babies are the form of reproduction. But nature isn’t obsessed with babies, human’s at a relatively primal level of communication are. At the gut level of human love, babies are the outcome. But two people can reproduce a lawn mower and feel like they are on track. They can reproduce cats. Not through the uterus, of course, but through creativity. So, a couple might make babies, then make children, then make family and then make divorce when they run out of common creative ground. Nature doesn’t care what you create together as long as it’s not just wooppie.

Sex is not creating something unless there’s a baby involved. Sex, when a baby is not the mission, is a human pleasure which of course is balanced by human pain. No one on earth is having only sex. They are having pleasure and if a person is experiencing pleasure they are also, even if they don’t recognise it, having pain.

Making a baby is a pleasure that comes from sex. The pain might be financial, personal or physical but the pleasure is worth it. But lets say you are having pleasure from sex and the pain is no baby or ridicule by your friends or something like that. Then bit by bit as the pleasure of the sex starts to become less fantastic, the pain will become unbearable. And that’s probably what caused the break up of your last relationship.

So, lets summarise this: Emotionally two people engage in relationships to get pleasure, to be cared for and nurtured. That’s the human aspect of relationships and it’s unsustainable. So, if that’s your motive in merging with Mr or Mrs Right, just accept that impermanence is a Buddhist word for “watch your arse you are going to get heart break sometime in the future.” Inspirationally, which is way way above emotional engagement, you will come together to create, produce and reproduce. It does not have to be a baby. It can be a book, a business, a song, a tennis ball but it must have commercial value and it must drag you both, kicking and screaming to the top of your game, your profession, your vision, inspiration and purpose. This is sustainable as long as you know how to negotiate with respect. See chapter Sexy Negotiation

Raving and Craving!

So if trusting love is not the key to attracting and sustaining your next relationship, what is?

I’d suggest that you trust raving and craving. When your partner is raving and craving for you – and you are raving and craving for them, out of bed, then it’s all good in bed. You can trust that. You can trust that they will look to get their needs met out of bed as much as in bed and you will do the same, even if you think you are self-sufficient and just need sex. If two people meet and get their needs met out of bed, at the same time, they might even call that love and enjoy being in bed.

What makes you rave and crave and what makes someone else rave and crave will be different. That used to be the engagement period. It used to be what people explored before they had sex. It’s very simple math to work out what makes someone’s clock tick. What’s not so simple can be working out their priorities. You see, what makes our world go round includes all seven areas of our life but if we didn’t prioritise those seven areas, we’d be continually confused, we couldn’t make decisions, we’d be in a state of overwhelm. So, human nature prioritises a list of values and makes them important and less important. What’s important to you and what’s important to your potential partner must be different.

When two people have the same hierarchy of values, one isn’t necessary. There’s more about this later in the book but for now you can know that when you do something for somebody you will value the gift based on your values hierarchy and they will value the gift based on their values hierarchy. Lets say it’s their birthday. They value health, work and financial security as their top three values. You value relationship, spirituality and social engagement. So, for their birthday you take what you don’t value – Money, and spend a lot of it on a magnificent romantic dinner at the Bondi Trattoria. First cross against your name is that you’ve blown some financial security, they value the storage of money, not the spending of it. Second, a big dinner makes going for a run in the morning impossible, that’s another cross against your delivery and finally, they have a work issue which they had to leave in order to get to your romantic dinner, third cross against your name. Now you’ve delivered what you value, you value relationship, spirituality and social life and you feel that your birthday gift is worth $100,000 of kisses and sex. They receive your gift based on their values and for them, it’s a crappy birthday present, worth about $5 of kisses and sex.

This raving and craving thing makes you cry. You give at your values and yet they get resentful. It’s because you might need to reconsider what you know about them. You might be so infatuated that you think that what you value – they value. But that can’t be. Really getting to know someone is to find out their values. This used to be easy in the far distant future when sexism determined that the wife would adopt the husband’s values, and so, that’s how misery was born. Now, thank goodness each individual is respected for their own values and the role of the romantic in us all, is to satisfy those values in their order of priority.

So, lets go back to the Birthday party. Instead of dinner, because they are health prioritised, lunch would be better because they can process that and still get up in the morning. You could do the lunch near their work so not too much work time was lost. And you could talk over lunch about value and wealth creation. Yes, you don’t always get to talk about what’s important to you, relationship, if you are out to please them, talk about their priorities even on a romantic date. It doesn’t sound sexy, but it is. (for them)

Raves and craves can change too. What might be their priorities at the start of a relationship can easily change. For example: they might value babies, home and security and suddenly the kids grow up and they value travel, spiritual and health. Values change based on what drama and emotion has been introduced into their life.

Values are also impacted by education. I had a partner who attended a seminar and they changed their values (or so they thought) overnight. I became the devil because my values were the antithesis of what their guru said they “should” be living.

This is a hard call in a relationship. Should based values are not authentic and can really mask the true nature of your partner. If a person has been stressed at work and some guru says “you should be more relaxed” that person can go from being a really 100% heart driven business executive to a “should driven peacemaker” and you, their partner might be completely left in the dark.

When values change, even temporarily, people change. We are motivated by values, we make decisions on values. If you know your real values you will find many of the self-help guru’s around the world repulsive. Their attempt to seduce you into their values will be repugnant. Why would their values be better than yours?

But this values shifting process is epidemic. People give their power to the internet, to guru’s, to yogis, to meditation teachers without a blink and with that giving of power goes values, hand in hand. The person you married or started dating last week isn’t the same person this week. You can easily ask a person about their values and whether those values are stable. If they’ve been consistent in their life, more likely than not their values are steady and will remain so, but if they’ve been in or are in some sort of therapy or self-help, you need to be cautious. They can change in a blink and therefore so can the basis on which you commit to a relationship.

Sometimes values look the same at first. Maybe when you first meet all you both want is a wet juicy kiss, however, it could end up with one of you wanting a Maserati and the other a holiday in Paris. That just meant that it’s possible to play compatibility games at first and leave the real you at home until there’s a hook firmly gaffed in their throat. This is good as long as you know how to shape shift and deal with their endless suspicion that you aren’t the real think.

You currently might be dating someone and are wondering whether to take it to the next level or you may be single and wishing there was any level or you may be double and wondering whether there is any level left. So, the first step before working on getting to know someone’s values, and meeting those changing needs and keeping the honeymoon mood alive, is to meet someone. So, lets backtrack a bit and get involved in magnetising a partner that’s going to be a good fit.

Staying Horny – Two Different Routes (sorry) !

1. You don’t meet people while talking to friends on the phone about meeting people.
2. You don’t meet people while looking at Youtube videos about African wild life safari’s
3. You don’t meet people when you are pissed, tired or angry (or if you do, they’re probablydesperate)
4. You don’t meet people while sitting in your office chair at 11pm doing a report.

After working with thousands of business people in both a private and public capacity I can say the following with authority. People love sex.

The only reason people don’t like sex is if the rest of their life is so mundane, so boring, so repetitive they could live it blindfolded. Ground hog day over and over and over. That’s when people become stuck, unable to get an erection and disinterested all dried up. My friend says that she “lost so much interest in sex that her vagina dried up and fell off.” I don’t wish to know more about that, but she was talking about her whole life, not just her sex life.

Either side of mundane, is sexual.

The lower side of mundane, is failure. When a person is faced with impending failure or dealing with it, they get horny. It seems that the same chemical mix that comes from success and fulfilment can be temporarily generated during sex. So, in the most poverty stricken places, in the most violent environments where security and safety are never reliable, sex is most frequent. And, from studies we know even more.

Sex that comes from the failure side of mundane is extremely physical. It’s often short, orgasm based and random. It happens in cars, forests and beaches. This sex is what is commonly called, “Animal instinct” and therefore doggy style is often preferred. It reminds me of a quote I heard which was of a couple making love “darling, darling, have you come yet” and the reply “give me a break, I haven’t even thought of anyone yet.” Ahhh the animal within us.

The upper side of mundane is success. Success also drives libido and in movies such as “The Wolf of Wall Street” you see power and success mix to create a ridiculous amount of testosterone in both men and women. I can name 20 of the world’s most powerful women whose sex drive is legendary but whose public persona is media protected. It hard to sell newspapers and magazines with photographs of a woman labelled as a sex addict. People don’t buy that. But success and power influence women as much as men in the sex drive it creates.

So, again, in summary. Mundane life is like driving in neutral in the car. You’re not going to go far and the engine is not connected to the wheels. No sex drive is the result. Failure is like putting one foot flat on the brake and the other on the accelerator, lots of screeching, lots of smoke, plenty of noise, and a sex drive to match but at the end of it, nothing really went very far. Finally, success, that’s just pure accelerator and there is no brake. It’s go, go and go and the love is mixed with the sex to make a great and beautiful romantic connection. You feel satisfied after you’ve made love with a person who feels like they are successful. And here’s an amazing fact, they don’t have to be successful in order to feel successful.

Who defined success? I didn’t. I mean I have my definition of it, but it’s not the generic definition. Success that’s defined as business or sport or whatever has a benchmark set by others. And no matter how many trophies and dollars and first prizes you win for cake baking, someone is always nibbling at your heals to make you not a success. So, the perception of not being a success and having to become a success leads to failure. The perception of not being a success makes us motivated to become successful but unfortunately the premise of the chase, spoils the reward.

If you think you are not a success then when you achieve success you will perceive that you are not a success even when you over achieve. You will predicate your success on the not enough thinking that drove you. So, you’ll always be the lower side of mundane, pushing, struggling, wanting to do better to prove you are successful. But you can’t. It’s the same for the new age hippies who are trying to become enlightened. They are trying to achieve something that they already are. So, no matter how “enlightened” they get, (substitute Stoned off their face for enlightened) they never feel enlightened because their whole strategy is based on chasing something they’ve already got.

Success is the same. You are a success. You don’t need to become something. You are a success. You exist. That’s pretty amazing. You feel, wow, that’s damn awesome. And to top it off you are reading, shit, you are a phenomenon. So, wTF, success is life. You don’t need to be putting great mountains of cream on top of your ice cream. It’s all good, you got it. But how does this work? !

If you can give yourself that same beautiful feeling you get when you win the leg of ham at the pub raffle without the win and the leg of ham, you can give yourself the feeling of being a success even if, by conventional means, you look like a loser. Remember the movie “Meet the Fockers” when Robert DeNiro criticises Dustin Hoffmann for celebrating mediocrity? Well that’s what I’m talking about. You can celebrate life without winning the Olympics. I think if you can celebrate life and success and mediocrity that’s the fastest way to win the Olympics. You gotta try and love the game and from there success comes.

However, in bed, in relationship one other variable around success comes into it. Equality. It’s really important to compare apples with apples here. If you made $2.0 million last year and your partner believes in equality and measures it in good old material wealth, then they need to earn $2.0 million in order to be your “upper side of mundane” lover. If they feel that you are “way more successful than them” then they are on the “lower side of mundane” and are playing catchup through sex. It’s all perception, but it’s real perception. Just try changing people’s perception like my job. Cripes, you’d think, the way people hold their perceptions they were Indiana Jones swinging across a crocodile infested river.

In nature’s eyes, we are all successful. Sometimes we feel like failures and that’s a good thing because it drives us away from mundane, the black hold of complacency, and it’s bed mate, depression. Either be a loser wanting to be a winner or be a winner and thankful for it, but don’t take the middle road of mundane. That’s singled for life. (the only way to stay single and comfortable with lack of sex is to organise your life into mundane).

So, before you dive in and bite the forbidden fruit, make sure you know how to position yourself on the high side of mundane and make that equal to any person you meet and irrespective of your reality. You are a success if you can be thankful for not being in a worse position.

Feel Successful for Better Loving!

You know how you feel successful when that one thing—a promotion or a new job, a new house, a new relationship, a Jaguar or a Chanel bag— drifts into your grasp. Well, it will for a time but then you’ll get used to whatever it is and so, in a matter of time, the promotion just becomes your job, your lover is lovely but familiar, the Jag becomes the car in the driveway, and so on.

Add in the fact that human beings are notoriously lousy at predicting what will make them feel successful and so it’s not hard to see why hanging on to the feeling of being a success isn’t easy. !
You control how successful you feel

I know that no less an authority than Abraham Lincoln (I changed this quote as I often do to suit this occasion and he’s dead so can’t complain) said “Most folks feel about as successful as they make up their minds to be.” The fact is that a piece of the feeling of being a success pie is in your control and, well ok, a piece isn’t.

About 40% of anyone’s feeling of being a success is governed by the “success set point” which is sometimes genetically determined. Your temperament and personality are a part of the set point. About 10% of the set point has to do with circumstances—although, anecdotally at least, most of us focus on our circumstances when we think about being successful. (you’ve heard the “if only” and “when I” excuses a thousand times). Circumstances include gender, life events, job, security, and income. Part of the small effect circumstances have on the feeling of being a success has to do with the comparative perception of ourselves versus others we measure ourselves against. This is referred to as hedonic adaptation.

Now, the good news. Some 40% of the feeling of being a success is attributable to intentional activity—what people do for themselves. The real problem is that most of us aren’t focusing on either the right things or approaches that might make us feel successful regardless of our circumstances.

Myth – Counting your blessings will make you feel more successful.

This is a big and very popular trope because it’s so positive and spiritual, and there are doubtless millions of magnets stuck to fridges all over the world exhorting us to tally up gratitude and be happy. It sounds great and pretty easy but the science on whether counting your blessings actually works is a very mixed bag. In fact, the grand-Daddy of these studies, conducted by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough yielded inconsistent results when comparing the “gratitude” outlook with the control group. The preponderance of studies show that gratitude doesn’t help at all, in fact; in fairness, there are only two that show that people’s sense of feeling successful or happy was increased.

So what to do? Fall on your success sword and give it up? Are there ways of making yourself feel like more of a success than you are at this very second? It turns out there are:

1. Work on maximising your the feeling of being a success

When I was a kid, I loved sweets. I loved chocolate, and junk and anything with any form or sugar or chemical colour attached to it. So, as a consequence I’d eat my bag of junk sweets and easter eggs in a flash. My brother on the other hand was not so keen. He’d eat one or two of his collection and store the rest. This made me a kleptomaniac – it’s my brother’s fault. If he’d eaten his junk as fast as I did there would be no theft. But alas, I learned the fine art of pilfering at a young age and have suffered from chocoholism since. While I pigged out, my brother enjoyed the sweets to a maximum and became a scrupulous storer of things edible in the most frustratingly unfindable hiding places.

The psychological term for maximising is “savouring,” and the studies are revelatory. One, conducted by Jordi Quidbach and Elizabeth Dunn suggests that an abundance of something pleasurable may make it harder to savour it. They used chocolate (see I told you so) in their studies (of course!) and found that participants in the study who gave up chocolate for a week were made happier by eating it than those who were given unlimited access to it or those in the control condition who just continued to eat their usual allotment of the candy. Making the good things in your life more of a “treat” or a rarity may actually make you feel successful for longer. In other words rather than try to feel generically always everyday successful, accept that you screwed up, didn’t do great yesterday and celebrate the stuff you do well today. Even on a daily basis it’s wise to include your failures (balanced with your success) in your assessment of your life. Those who want to be on top 24/7 never are.

2. Realise that less is more when it comes to material things

I say this as someone who loves his things as much as the next person but it turns out that when it comes to feeling successful by owning things that cost money —be they possessions or vacations or other satisfying experiences—the very fact that you can get them actually cuts down on your ability to savour them. According to studies conducted by Fred Bryant, the playing field isn’t precisely level when it comes to being able to savour; some of us are better at it than others. If you can answer “yes” to the following questions, the chances are that you’re good at savouring: Do you get pleasure out of looking forward? Can you enjoy something before it happens? Do you find it easy to hang on to a good feeling? Do you store up happy memories so you can revisit them? But if, on the other hand, you are uncomfortable anticipating things, find it hard to get excited ahead of time, don’t like looking back or tend to feel disappointed when you reminisce, you’re not very good at savouring.

3. Take action to be happier

This part takes a bit of self-knowledge and reflection because the action or goal has to be suited to your talents and abilities. If I were to embark on taking ballet lessons as a way of making myself happier, for example, I can guarantee that my the feeling of being a success would decrease and my unhappiness would increase. Setting impossible or unattainable goals for yourself won’t increase your sense of well-being one iota.

My own take-away lesson —is that much of the work you need to do to make yourself feel more successful has to do with reflecting on and knowing what you should be persisting at and what you need to quit and let go of. Know yourself intimately and you’re more likely to focus on things that feel rewarding to do. If you’re an extrovert, then being an artist alone in a studio all day long will not make you feel successful even if you are a world renowned artist and no matter how much you love making art. And while the goal of getting in better shape is a terrific one, if you’re inclined both not to follow through and beat yourself up about it, that’s not going to make you feel. successful either. Set goals that are attainable; break them down into baby steps, if you need to. Fitting your talents to your goals is also key to achieving “flow.”

4. Take a leaf from the George Bailey Playbook

What if, instead of counting your blessings, you subtracted them? In a study that examined romantic relationships (and all the participants were in relationships they considered satisfying), participants were asked to either write about how they met, how they started dating and the like or write about how they might not have met or ended up together. It’s the second—the exercise of subtraction— that yielded the increase in positive affect.

So, if you want to feel better about someone or something in your life, journal or think about your life without that person or that experience. Ironically, the pain of loss is greater than the pleasure of gain. This breeds a feel of success.

5. Work on managing your negative emotions

While positive and negative affect are governed by different behavioural systems, there’s no question that being on a more even emotional keel will actually make your feeling of being a success last longer, especially if you’re given to ruminating or worrying. As you know from the laws of nature, a winning strategy requires two steps to help you manage the fallout from a bad experience. First, you have to step away, choosing a distanced perspective, almost as if you are seeing the experience happen to someone else in your mind’s eye. In corporate seminars I call this the “helicopter mindset.” (Many of us tend to “relive” the experience, which only immerses us in it again, and inevitably stirs up the same negative emotions.) Then, instead of focusing on “what” you were feeling —which, again, thrusts you back into the moment and is likely to make you re- experience the anger, frustration, hurt or whatever emotion you felt initially—you need to focus on “why” you were feeling it. In combination with the distanced perspective, this is a more analytical and hence “cooler” (as opposed to emotionally “hot”) response.

Understanding why— takes us into heart of our feelings and helps us deal with them. This way, we don’t sabotage our feelings of success.

6. Focus on getting into “Flow”

In the Universal Laws of nature one core premise is that deep involvement and connection are the way into enjoyment and feeling of being a success. “Flow” is what a writer feels when the work is going well, when a runner hits his or her stride, when an artist knows that the sketch just finished is the great sketch. Flow can be experienced by anyone in any line of work or any activity.

Flow means doing something for which you are well-suited (in other words, your gifts and talents are equal to the challenges of the activity), that the activity provide immediate feedback (you can see that you are making progress or that what you’re doing is good), and that you get so involved as to be able to remove yourself from the worries and frustrations of life. Choosing your activities with flow in mind will increase your sense of well-being.

There is much in the digital age that removes us from flow, especially the constant interruption of texts, messages, and email. I notice it in my own life and I wonder about people who, faced with constant distraction at work, may actually have jobs that should put them in flow but don’t experience it anyway. The feeling of success and enjoyment, according to The Laws of Nature, requires immersion.

So, do what you can to hang on to feeling of being a success.

Promise Small – Deliver Big!

Try to avoid starting a date or relationship with such a fake explosion of goodness and promises that you just can’t sustain it. If you can’t keep giving at the rate that you used seduce your partner then it’s going to lead to all manner of problems. If you are going to start off in a relationship at 100 mph which is pretty fast and furious in order to make them rave and crave you, then you have to sustain that level of intensity (generosity) or the relationship is going to sink in the mud of complacency. I think instead of all the wedding video’s we’d be better spending money on a camera person to film our generosity during the days and weeks before the ceremony and force us to play it back years later.

Relationships are a lifestyle choice – Inconvenience is the Best Solution

Remember that complacency is the cause of relationship breakdown. So it feeds from the first comment that if I am raving and craving in love with my partner in the first months than I have to do things to keep that raving and craving completely awake. It’s easy to fall into the mundane day- to-day existence of living conveniently. Convenient living is the bane of relationships. If you live conveniently you’ll wake at the time that’s convenient, you go to bed at the time it is convenient, you will prioritise is your partner based on convenience, and you will be romantic when it’s convenient. This is complacency at its worst. Convenience is the beginning of the end of a great relationship. So, the antidote to convenience is not inconvenience it’s generosity.

Make them Feel Good

It’s hard, it takes effort, its sacrificial, it means making somebody else right more often than wrong, it means doing things that are not convenient for you but make somebody else’s life more comfortable. It means risking being taken for granted. Sometimes they might value being elsewhere and not with you. They might value being alone or with other people that threaten your security. You can’t moan. You can’t complain. You have to process your stuff and be enthusiastic for them to do whatever they feel good doing. The more good they feel around you, even if it’s by default you not complaining, the better things will be. They are in a relationship to feel better with you than without you. The only thing stopping that happening is you.

So, in summary, you need to know what your partner values. Be careful fulfilling short term needs and wants thinking that this will make them happy. It does, temporarily but long term, it does the opposite. The more we get our needs and wants fulfilled by someone, the more needs and wants we get and the unhappier we become. A person is best to learn how to fill their own needs and then focus on the fulfilment and values of their partner.

Give Up Being Single!

Now if you’ve had a trauma in a relationship in the past you might be in one of those “I’m healing the past – getting to know myself again” phases. It means that you will eat what you want to eat, sleep when you want to sleep, go to yoga when it’s convenient and in general, do for yourself what you fail to do in your last relationship. Now this might seem like a fabulous way to exist. And compared to your last relationship and the way you let yourself go in that relationship this might be absolutely true but it will not sustain a new relationship. You have to get over the idea that the recovery phase from a past relationship is any indication of how you can exit in a new relationship. !

If you accidentally carry the “getting my feet back on the ground phase” to develop the skill of being an incredibly great single person and very clever at looking after yourself and doing whatever it is that you want for yourself so that you feel fantastic then you’ve created the perfect single life. And that needs to be given up, when or before, you find new love.

There may be some people who are attracted by the pleasure of the first couple of weeks of being with you as a great single person but not many will enjoy staying with a person who is fantastic at being single. There are many negative words for being fantastic at being single which include “healing, self absorbed, self-indulgent, spiritual, conscious, driven”. Each one of them has incredible benefits especially if you perceive that they had passed has been sacrificial. My suggestion is that you explore a little further as to whether the real cause of your past relationship failure was that you were sacrificial. My experience has been that being sacrificial in a relationship is not the primary cause of relationship failure.

Is it Wise to Trust Your Intuition or Not?!

There are many levels of intuition and I will explain a few of them here so that you can get some clarity on the depth and therefore trustability of your intuitions.

There are four levels of intuition. They often feel the same but they range in trustability from zero to 100%.

The first and lowest intuition in relationships is called gut feel which is a sense in your lower abdomen that something is right or wrong, black or white, on or off, good for you or bad. Business people use this all the time, I don’t encourage it. When it comes to the layers of intuition it really is very primal and unsophisticated. Gut feel is helpful for those who use their brain excessively, are highly intellectual and have no real connection to their emotion. At least gut feel is a healthy step away from the cold logic of intellect. Let’s call this the bottom line of intuitions and if you have a gut feel about a person, ignore it. That gut feel can be, at best, 50% correct.

The second intuition is called emotional intelligence. It’s an oxymoron. Emotion and Intelligence should never be used in the same sentence. There are over 3000 emotional states that you can experience as a result of any single event in your life. Every single emotion is a lopsided perception. Every single emotion is therefore an out of balance observation. Nature seeks balance, emotions seek imbalance. So, when we say we have free will, we really mean we have the freedom to experience emotions, even though they are not in harmony with nature.

If you take 3000 people from 3000 different cultures around the world and give them one event they will have 3000 different emotional intuitions about that experience. So to rely on this sort of thing is better than gut feel but it is a far cry from anything you would want to stake the farm on. People who spend their life becoming emotionally sensitive are blessed with the gift of feeling every breeze, and can be wonderful artists, but that same sensitivity can be a nightmare when it comes to intuition about relationships.

The next level of intuition comes from the heart. Now this heart is not the thing in the middle of your chest that pumps blood but it is located about the same place in your body. It’s the intersection of where heaven and earth collide within you. and this is starting to get more accurate in approximating accurate intuition in a great relationship.

You will have heard of the trilogy, body, mind, and spirit. Body is interested in experiencing life with pleasure, this is Gut feel. Mind is interested in experiencing life by being right, safe and secure and this is called emotional unintelligence. Spirit is interested in experiencing life through higher awareness and this begins in your heart. It is still an emotion but it is limited to gratitude, gentleness, kindness and compassion. When these things are felt, the heart automatically opens and we become intuitive.

Absolute unconditional love is another level of intuition and it is called inspiration.

You can have inspiration sitting on a toilet or taking a shower. You can have them in the midst of making love or while standing in a queue waiting for an ice cream. Intuitions can come at any time. They are truly absent of emotion because to have them, you’ll need to be in the moment, in the Now.

Intuitions do not come from you they come through you. When mind, body and heart feel safe, intuition is awakened. People meditate for a lifetime to achieve this state of awareness. But you can do it anytime you choose.

So, your gut might be saying “go into this new relationship” and your emotional intuition might be saying “it feels right” and your heart might be warm intuitively open … you’ve lined up the ducks and all looks good, and yet, something can still be wrong. This inspiration doesn’t respond to your needs, your physical, emotional and mental needs, inspirations guide you to the future and this relationship, even if it’s as sexy and wonderful as all hell, might be toxic for your future.

Don’t go against your inspirations… They are very important.

The Audition!

“People who find, live in and sustain a great relationship continually challenge themselves to improve but are grateful for what they’ve got.

A relationship is a journey. If you choose well at the beginning of the journey it will be beneficial for both of you. If you choose poorly at the beginning of the relationship it will still be beneficial but “ouch.” Either way, you learn something from a journey in a relationship no matter how long it lasts but it’s better to learn something new, rather than to repeat old patterns. So, let’s see if we can write a few notes in this chapter about helping you get back on the bike, and choose, at least new mistakes, preferably none.

When you meet somebody they will put their best foot forward. Take everything you see, reverse it 100%, and you will know the person you will meet after six months. If, with that realisation your heart still flatters and you feel a sense of destiny with this individual then, a relationship that stands the test of time is possible and probable.

The whole conversation about meeting the right person and entering the right relationship is a time based issue. When you are 20 years old the right person will have very different characteristics to the person you would be interested in meeting when you are 50 years old. This reveals something really profound about relationships. The odds of two people meeting each other when their 20 and growing together at the same rate and being happy with each other when their 50 is small. It’s possible. But the odds are small especially when in the current climate, people search for pleasure instantaneously and not so willing to work through the years of hard work but our grandparents used to seem to enjoy or survive through.

A global survey has recently revealed that more than 50% of people in relationship have had affairs and of the remaining 50% 20% would be willing to have one. This shows one thing and one thing clearly, and that is: people do not know how to maintain the romance within the relationship. It seems we can all get started, but growing together over a period extending much more than 5 to 7 years seems to be a science few people understand. From statistics on relationships, the first two years are easy, the next three just seem to happen, and then people get itchy feet. Is this because people start taking each other for granted after a few years? Is it because they chose each other based on an infatuation? Is it because people don’t know how to deal with conflict? Or, because we start taking ourselves for granted, relaxing and becoming complacent in our relationship?

Most people do act differently at the start of a relationship. They’re more diligent about everything. They turn up, they leave work on time, they’re polite enough to be horny, they don’t talk about their ex, or their unfinished business with their Dad or Mum. But, bit by bit, the sox get left on the floor, the skid marks appear on the undies, farts seem to become a family fashion and respect, both for self and other, seems to be replaced by a familiarity that assumes that partner, because they love you, will be happy living below the relationship poverty line.

I believe it’s important to set the benchmark for how we act in a relationship pretty much by what it takes to get into one. How we act during the honeymoon period really does provide some great insight as to how we can act, after it.

Hold Your Horses!

Delaying getting into a relationship is wisdom. Spontaneity and that urgent, oh my god I’ve met the one, rarely aligns with the objective of a long-term journey together. However, it can be enormous fun. If you choose fun please don’t cry when it doesn’t end the way you expected.

The purpose of delaying getting into a relationship is not to make it more likely to succeed. The probability of failure and success in a relationship does not change with time, self-help, wealth, or any other proposed suggestion about getting your shit together. The probability of success in a relationship is determined purely by the willingness of two people to enter into a growth contract together and to maintain a learning environment.

I’ve written long and hard about the purpose of life. The one thing I’ve emphasised is that the purpose of life is not a relationship, nor a family, nor work nor anything else you can put your finger on. However, each of us has a purpose and when you can link your relationship to that purpose the odds of sustainability become massive. Of course, it takes 2 to tango. So if your partner’s highest value is sex then once you are conquered, you don’t have to be Houdini to work out what’s going to happen next.

This is one of the most difficult topics to write about. We all love great sex and it’s important but when it becomes the single most important thing, or even the dominant thing that attracts you to another person or attracts them to you, you have just gone down a path that millions of people have gone down before you, and that you’ve probably already gone down yourself, that ends in heart- ache.

Honing That Secret Weapon – The Power of Attraction!

“People who find, live in and sustain a great relationship, are inspired to follow their inner calling. They are without competition, because nothing compares to an inspiration. Bringing out inspiration is simply following nature’s guide.”!

Every single day shit happens. Stress and worry and anxiety are not the privilege of the few they are life. If you meet somebody who says they don’t have stress or worry or anxiety give them some because a person without stress or worry or anxiety is dead. And, the longer you live the more their will somebody might tell you that if you practice your yoga and do your meditation you will get less anxiety and stress. That’s rubbish it defies the laws of nature and it defies the experience of billions of people who have come and gone on this planet before you.

You might think at this point that I am just trying to sell the laws of nature to you and contradict your wonderful paradigms that you’ve read in books and heard in seminars about how you can be stress free worry free and anxiety free. But I have proof. Unlike most people who have engaged in the world of spirituality and inspiration I’ve actually gone and lived with the gurus who teach this stuff from the traditions thousands of years old. I haven’t read many books on the topic but I have studied for 35 years with those people who’s taught those people who taught those other people who wrote the books. So I want to give the facts to you from the horses mouth direct. I mean there is no real need to take the long road if it’s not necessary. Now I could just share the laws of nature but that could be argued as my interpretation of something, so let me go back and share some short stories.

Shri K Pattabhi Jois

Pattabhi Jois was my guru but more than that he was my close friend. For those of you not familiar with the yoga world, Guruji (as we affectionately called him) bought Ashtanga Yoga to the world. He started Yoga when he was a child, became a disciple of a great teacher and eventually started his own school 50 years later. He was professor of Sanskrit at Mysore University. When yoga finally became global do you think that he had less or more stress? He was travelling throughout the world teaching classes in cultures he didn’t understand, being written about in Time magazine with some less than pleasant accusations, and his wife passed away. He went from 20 students to over 500 students a day within 10 years. The stresses involved in this were huge. Yoga gave him the capacity to handle those stresses. So rather than avoid stress he headed straight into it but with the skill and capacity to handle it.

Nawang Tenzing Jangpo – Ringpoche Tengboche Monastery, Khumbu Nepal.!

Tengboche is a magnificent, peaceful, loving, Buddhist place. A crown jewel in the Himalayas, the maintenance, care and service of the monastery is the responsibility of Ringpoche. First built in simple terms in the 1800’s when there were no tourists. it was destroyed by earthquake in 1934 and again by fire in 1989. Once there were no tourists now there are thousands each day. Once, no one climbed Mt Everest, now, 400-500 climb it each season and all must pass Tengboche and most ask for a blessing from Ringpoche. His legs are hurt from touring those mountains daily so he now goes about doing his duty being carried. Do you think his stress is less or more? The enormous burden on his shoulders has escalated exponentially over the past 20 years. But Ringpoche, who has become a friend of mine, always has a smile. His study of Buddhism was not about reducing the stress of his life, it was the opposite, to increase the burden of his responsibility to the world but use his borders and practice to handle the stress better.!

Dr John Demartini!

John and I met more than 20 years ago when I flew to Texas to undertake one of his training programs, the breakthrough process. We became friends and soon after I arranged for his first visit to Australia to present that seminar. We went on to present thousands of seminars throughout Australia. In that seminar we were lucky to get 15 people. Now, thousands attend John’s programs throughout the world. We are great friends and I know personally the challenges John’s faces as he expands his reach and shares his message with more and more people. What would have inhibited Johns growth would have been shying away from stress. Instead John knew his vision and used his own practices, taught in his seminars, to handle the increased stress.!

So every single day stuff happens. Uncomfortable stuff, stressful stuff, and good stuff. But that means every single day shift must happen if you are going to sustain a healthy quality of life and relationship. If you want to know your life purpose just go in the direction of the most stress. If you want to know where your best relationship will be just go in the direction of the most stress. I know this sounds ridiculous but most single people and people whose relationships are failing have gone in the opposite direction. They have looked for a person to be their partner who doesn’t stress them and this is certainly not the recipe for a long happy and fulfilled relationship.

The longer a relationship lasts the more stress it will have an like my colleagues above, you need to be able to use your skills not to alleviate the stress source but to handle the increased pressure. For example you might birth children and take a mortgage, or you might book a holiday or choose to work in a different country all of which will cause you increased stress. If your paradigms is to avoid stress and try and live life in “peace” you will avoid life itself and subsequently avoid the most precious beautiful relationship you could possibly have. There is a radical difference between violence and stress. But really violence only comes when stress is not handled well in its minor form. The ability to handle increased stress is absolutely concurrent with the ability to handle a long-term relationship.

The place to practice stress management is in your relationship not in your work. Your work is born to challenge you to take you to bigger places where there is more stress and automatically you will look for better ways to deal with the stress unless your hippy or a new age deluded individual who tries to eliminate the source of stress. Eliminating the source of stress like, changing jobs, complaining about the boss, reducing the work hours or taking a pay cut is devolving. Now given that nature has only one objective for all of its laws and that is to cause you to evolve can’t you see that by avoiding the stresses and using old techniques to handle stress in your life you might well be in one of the worst fights that could possibly be had, a fight with nature.

There are many contradictions to the laws of nature that people try in the interests of freedom to implement in their relationship. Those contradictions come in the ambition to create convenience and in the ambition to reduce stress in their relationship. This would be the equivalent of Dr John Demartini or Sri K Pattabhi Jois, or Ringpoche from Tengboche deciding to limit the number of people they work with, limit the number of tourists, limit the number of seminars they present and therefore reduce their stress to maintain it underneath the radar of their existing skill base.

Most stress is emotional stress. It’s emotional because it attacks your emotional intelligence. If you consider your emotional intelligence to be the highest form of thinking possible in your life you have automatically put a pair of handcuffs and a straitjacket on yourself because this is the highest level of thinking you can cope with and therefore it will restrict you in your ability to handle stress. There are, as we’ve noted before much higher levels of thinking than emotional intelligence but at this level stress is destructive. When it comes to the heart stress is a gift that triggers transformation and evolution. Do you know how to turn a stress into an inspiration?

One Step at a Time At the Start!

You will be supported and challenged in your relationships. If you are looking for only support you will be single. If you are getting only challenge then you are stuck in your stress management process. The way to change both has been illustrated above. If you welcome a challenging person into your life the likelihood is, provided that you can evolve your intuition past gut feel and physical pleasure, that you will have a long relationship provided that you maintain the maintenance requirement nature dictates that you see two sides to everything that stresses you.

When I work with people who have split and they are going through enormous pain one of the most common awareness people get is that they didn’t see the good side to their partner until the relationship finished or that they didn’t see the bad side to their partner until the relationship finished. In other words people strive to be extraordinarily naive and operate by gut feel or at the best, emotional unintelligence in their relationship. It’s very simple to understand that we might enter a relationship based on gut feel because that’s very physical and sometimes it’s the physical attraction that draws us towards somebody. However, very soon after the relationship enjoys its physical engagement there is a quest for the mental engagement and a rising up from gut feel too emotional intelligence and this is often where surprises happen.

There are two sides to everything, there are also two sides to every one. Gut feel can’t see two sides to anything. that’s why it’s called gut feel, because it sees one thing better than another. That perspective is really fantastic when you first meet somebody and all you want is a great erotic and wonderful physical connection that we call sometimes chemistry. It’s chemistry all right. It’s hormones rushing around the body wanting to make babies. But gut feel is blind and indirect argument with nature’s law and therefore you’re going to be challenged to evolve from that place to at least your emotional intelligence and eventually your heart to sustain a relationship because the sex won’t do it. Not forever. You may have heard a lot about movie stars and famous people having short lived relationships and it’s because they are great mirrors of people who work in high places with relatively low emotional intelligence, reliant 100% on gut feel in their industry which may be acting or performing. Intuition, inspiration are more reliable and trustworthy friends if you want a long-term relationship.

THE POWER OF ATTRACTION!

“People who find, live in and sustain a great relationship are people doing what they do with intensity, drive, urgency and inspiration.”!

If you are single you want to attract a great partner. If you’re in a relationship you want to keep one. So the secrets of maintaining attraction to another person must be profoundly important to us all. I’m going to present natures perspective on this power of attraction and try and separate it from much of the rhetoric that has been written about such as “what you think about you bring about.”

If you’ve been single for any period of time you will know that what you think about you didn’t bring about. You will know that there is a vast gap between what you want and what you got. You will know that just thinking about a great relationship and a beautiful partner doesn’t cause them to magically appear even if they are on the Internet quite attractive. If you’ve been in a relationship and been hurt you will know that looking good, being subservient, providing wealth, giving great sex, holidays, children, houses, cars and even tolerance do not guarantee loyalty.

I’m going to get here a few words of advice that may require some clarification at a later date. But I will do my best to be as clear as possible. Even when I speak these words to a client face-to-face there is a 50-50 chance that they will look at me confused and I’m far better speaker than I am a writer. But I’ll do my best.

There are two simple steps to being attractive.

The first step is to be attractive.
The second step is to have something that somebody else wants. !
Now it gets complicated.