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Tag: relationships

Ask yourself tough questions daily

The questions you ask yourself dictate your experiences. Often the most uncomfortable questions are the ones you most need to answer, and the issues that cause some emotional reaction are the ones you need to consider. Shying away from tough subjects creates boundaries between you and life’s rich complexities.

Am I where I want to be? Am I who I want to be?
Are my closest relationships fulfilling and supportive?
When I wake up in the mornings, am I excited to start the day?
Do I pause to appreciate what is good in my life?
How have I changed over the past year? Am I heading in a direction I am proud of?
Are my decisions fully representative of me, my values, and my goals?
What do I worry most about?
What am I most proud of?
Who has helped me get where I am today?

Find time to answer; your answers could change your tomorrow.

When you’ve been hurt

Your heart is broken. Maybe for the first time, maybe for the fifth. You have two choices now.

You can allow pain and anger to seep through your being and go about shielding yourself from any scenario that might cause these feelings again. This will undoubtedly result in limited encounters with the world, stifled relationships, and a blunted emotional experience.

OR

You can look for the lessons. You can dive into the pain and see if you can find greater understanding, more peace, more authenticity, and more focus than ever before. Instead of running, you can sit with the experience and breathe into it, knowing that eventually, slowly, it will pass. That in time small ripples of joy will wash healing currents through your life.

Past failures and disappointments only dictate your future if you let them. Seek out daily moments of magic and wonder. Flashes of lightening in a night sky. The impish smirk of a young child. The rustle of leaves at dusk. Kindness between strangers.

This is how you go on.

Top 10 posts from Project Exponential

1. 12 questions to turn small talk into real talk
2. 5 rules of hustling
3. What brings people together?
4. A coffee riddle
5. 10 questions to ask at a dinner party (instead of “What do you do?”)
6. The people in your life will make or break you
7. 19 things you can do instead of grad school
8. Stop trying to find your purpose
9. 7 sins of crowdfunding
10. Figure out what you want to learn and go do it

To fall in love, do this:

A few years ago, a NYTimes piece lured readers with the secret to relational bliss. The author detailed her personal experience based on psychological research claiming to make two strangers fall in love. By asking intimate questions and demanding two individuals spend quality time together — even holding each other’s gaze for four minutes — the pair were believed to cement a relationship.

Of course, relationships take time and care and persistent, almost stubborn commitment. But at the heart of two people choosing to share life and love is curiosity. Curiosity about your partner’s preferences and dreams. Questions that dare to journey beyond the superficial: goals and fears and heartache and hopes.

Not sure where to begin? These 36 questions can help you get started. Or listen to the original NYTimes piece on the Modern Love podcast.

What if dinner could change your life?

The dinner table is one of the few places we have left to connect. To set down our phones and listen. To talk about topics that matter and work through problems that require attention, care, and focus to solve. To learn from another’s perspective and to consider a viewpoint that might be much different than our own. To share not only plates of food, but passions, desires, challenges and frustrations.

Holidays place emphasis on this ability to slow down and remember what life is really about. Yes, you could send an email. Yes, you could even make a phone call. But when you invite people to sit around a dining table, you also invite magic into the room. Serendipity, empathy, creativity, and generosity often arrive unannounced.

Use this guide to help you cherish the sacredness of bringing together friends and colleagues over food, or consider hosting a themed dinner on topics such as climate change, addiction, and health care.

Something in your world may shift, all because of dinner.

The two most important words you can say today

Praise good work, hard work, reliable work, consistency and creativity — all of the things you’d like to see more of.

Compliment someone’s effort and acknowledge how they are making the world a better place.

Thank a friend, a colleague, a partner, a parent for the contributions they make.

And don’t hesitate to ask for the praise you need, either.

Dr. Laura Trice recommends you say these words more often: thank you.