In the 1930’s Napoleon Hill, author of the all time bestseller, “Think and Grow Rich” wrote, “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” It had a catchy ring to it when I first read it but I always thought there were limits to the veracity of this statement. Could we really achieve anything we thought of if we believed we could?

Maybe we can. Today I got an e-mail from my sister with a link to a YouTube video about a copy machine that copies objects in 3-D. That means that after it scans a 3-D object, it quickly produces an exact fully operational three-dimensional color replica of the scanned item. The whole process takes about 90 minutes.

This blew my mind. The printer not only re-creates the item fully assembled but it also recreates its complete functionality. In the demo, a guy brings a large adjustable steel crescent wrench and asks the folks at Z-Corp to replicate it. They place the wrench inside the printer and Voila! — out comes a fully functional sturdy adjustable wrench.

They can handle any complexity that someone can imagine. Check out the video below.

If inventions like this are possible, the only hang-up seems to be believing that our creations can manifest. An idea without a belief in it’s possibility is dead in the water.

Imagine how many incredible things never have manifested not because they couldn’t be imagined but because someone, after the idea was hatched said, “Naaaaah! It’ll never happen” and someone else agreed.

People creating and sustaining their houses and cars on clean energy that they produce at home, politicians acting in the best interest of the country without worrying about raising money for their re-election, people in the middle east (or in our congress, for that matter) deciding that peaceful negotiation was in their best interest, workers trusting management and vice versa so that the whole company was aligned on winning business, satisfying customers, and providing abundance for all. Have you heard yourself say, “Naaah” or “Not likely,” yet?

One way to get past our own doubts and cynicism is to imagine what it would feel like if some of our ideas really did happen. That’s part of the creation process — to set aside any judgments about probability and allow yourself to experience how you’d feel if it really were possible.

I’d love to hear what you’ve conceived of that would make the world a better place and how you’d feel if what you imagined came to be.

Please comment below.

Thanks,

-Jim

Many folks can and do make the case for being single, the most famous of which is probably the controversial comedian, Bill Maher.  He sees no point in ever getting married or living with someone even though he now has a steady girlfriend.

Let me make the case for the value of a committed partner. There is something amazing about being with a person who knows who you really are. Living with you, they, of course, know your shortcomings and annoying idiosyncrasies.  But they also know who you are apart from your personality quirks and habits.  If they can forgive you for the other stuff, the person you really are is more present to them. This has tremendous advantages.

When you see beneath a person’s foibles or insecurities, you become more aware of their fears as well as their basic innocence and goodness. It allows you to replace judgment with compassion and understanding.

By far, the greatest gift a partner gives is when they continue to see your highest self in the face of appearances to the contrary.  I had such an experience the other night.

I had made a mistake that I was sure had cost me an important business relationship and I was being especially hard on myself about it.  The “would have, should have, could have” conversation was playing non-stop in my head and I felt unable to stop “corkscrewing” myself into the ground with recriminations.

When I expressed my concerns and doubts to my wife, Lauren, she refused to see anything but my highest self.  She continued to express her confidence in me, her knowledge of my worth and her faith that I would come out of this experience stronger,  wiser and better able to serve my clients in the future.

In the garden of her loving perspective, my seeds of self doubt were unable to take root and grow.  Once again, I got to see what a blessing she is to me and what a gift it is to have someone who takes an unflappable stand for your value and worth.  In her reflection I felt restored to my true self again and was able to find more charitable and useful interpretations of the upsetting incident.

Love is a wonderful thing.

I’d love to hear about the person (partner, parent, child, friend or pet) who is like a rock for you–someone who stands for your highest self.  Please comment below.

Talk to you soon,

-Jim

In 1991, at the end of George Bush Sr.’s first term, I remember him being criticized for not having a vision or a purpose for being president.  The story being written was that he just wanted to be president, not necessarily take the country anywhere once he achieved that position.  Whether or not this was true about him, I think that perception hurt him as a leader and probably influenced the election results that year (he lost to Bill Clinton).

As it turns out, people expect their leaders not just to listen but to lead. More often than not, that means doing something—making a decision, implementing a plan and/or articulating a vision.  If these things don’t happen, it isn’t long before folks become disenfranchised and look around for someone else to lead them.

In many of the companies for which I have consulted, one of the things that keeps employees engaged is knowing that the person in charge is looking down the road and thinking about how to keep the company relevant, profitable and competitive as the market changes.

When I was the executive coach to the Chief of the Army Reserve, one of the things that people admired  about Major General Baratz  was that he was a futurist. He was always 5 chess moves ahead of everyone else.  At a time where the Reserve soldiers were often referred to as “weekend warriors,” he was determined to position the Reserve in such a way as to make this branch of the Armed Services organic to the Army’s ability to fight a war.  All of his actions were in line with this purpose and he very quickly achieved his objective. US Reserves  (including the National Guard) now make up 40% of US Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the hardest things to do as a leader is making a decision.  As it turns out, you are usually better off making a decision even if it is the wrong one rather than doing nothing. But what if doing nothing is the wisest thing?

Here is where communication is vital to being able to lead.  When people expect certain things to happen and don’t see or hear anything being done, they tend to make up very uncharitable interpretations for this lack of action.  One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is in not sharing their reasoning and their vision with the people they are leading.

Rather than let a gap of time pass, it is best to let people know that you understand and share their concerns and that you are waiting for the best time to act at which time, you’ll “pull the trigger.” This kind of communication makes people feel heard, valued and connected.  It also makes them much more likely to follow your lead when action is needed.

Please let me know your experience with decisions makers in your life and with your own experience of decision making and communication in leadership.

One of the most interesting divorce statistics concerns couples who never seem to argue. They are the ones with the higher incidence of divorce. It seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?  You would think that couples who don’t fight are in better shape than ones who do.  As a psychologist, I can’t tell you how many times people would tell me how unprepared they were when their parents sat them down in the living room one day and calmly told them, “Your father and I are getting divorced.”  Their first thought was, “But why?”  There was no evidence that things were falling apart and thus the break-up came as a disorienting shock.

As it turns out, fighting isn’t the best antidote to divorce.  Battling it out every night doesn’t ensure a long marriage. The key is to fight and forgive.  The ability to recover from an upsetting conversation is a skill for which couples have little training.

In my experience, arguments are never pleasant.  It doesn’t feel good to know that someone you love is upset with you.  When one finally erupts and hurtful things are said, it becomes that much harder to reconnect. Consequently, when an unpleasant conversation doesn’t resolve itself in forgiveness, there may be a tacit agreement not to disagree anymore. That’s understandable but not healthy for the relationship in the long run.

So, how can you survive occasional unpleasant disagreements and not have it diminish your chances of staying together?

Make a lot of deposits in your partner’s emotional bank account. Do loving,  thoughtful, kind things every day. Give hugs, do things together regularly, be completely present when your partner speaks and express gratitude often.  This makes your marriage resilient. You reach a steady state of enduring love with your partner.

The other day, my wife said something that hurt my feelings (not her intention I realized later).  But, in a nano-second, I responded reflexively with an angry retort which she was not at all willing to accept. In the middle of this spat, I thought, “This is terrible.”  Two minutes later it was like nothing had happened. We were back on the same team and I actually felt closer to her than before the spat. I realized that over time we have created a kind of homeostatic emotional set point that is pretty high.  It’s this, more than our ability to communicate (which is now pretty good), that allows us the freedom to go off track once in a while and recover quickly.

What has been your experience with fighting and forgiving?  How were disagreements handled in your home when you were growing up?  I’d love to hear your comments.

Talk to you soon,

-Jim

When couples first come to see me, I often get this image of their relationship as this fantastic airplane that is unable to take off anymore. There is really nothing wrong with the airplane.  Unfortunately it never gets a chance to soar due to what I see as the rubble on the runway. The rubble is the left over arguments and hurts that were never resolved or forgiven.  Some of the pieces of rubble are small and others are quite substantial in size.  This debris is blocking the plane’s ability to fly.

The plane has learned to maneuver around these pieces of rubble but can only taxi.  The couple often wonders if the flying they did earlier in the relationship was even real.   How did this happen?

When couples first fall in love, it feels as if all they have to do is hold hands and they go soaring into the air. It feels like something that just happens to them over which they have no control.  Many love songs are inspired by the flood of emotions that we first feel in this state.

After many interactions, it is inevitable that our partner will  violate a boundary, disappoint us in some way or fail to live up to our expectations. These first “glitches” represent a critical time in every relationship.

Each little disappointment has the potential of pulling us out of love with our partner.  If handled correctly, however, glitches have the potential of bringing us much closer. Glitches that are forgiven help us to know our partner’s boundaries better as well as our own and enable us to build a solid foundation of love that grows deeper over time.

In Powerful Partnerships® I use two methods to get people flying again and both work very well.  One involves an effective way of clearing away old hurts.  I show people how to dissolve the rubble so that the runway is clear again.  The other involves a refocusing on love i.e., being loving and doing things together that increase the experience of love regardless of the current state of the relationship.  When used in combination, the runway is restored, the plane can fly again and the access to love returns.  But now, love is not something that just happens to you.  It’s something that you’ve learned to create.

Please let me know your experience with falling in love and generating love by commenting below.
Thanks,

-Jim

Have you ever tried counting your blessings?  An interesting phenomenon occurs when you do.  With most things we can count or name, the more of them we list, the harder it is to add to the list. Not so with blessings.  Once you start counting them you begin to realize how much more blessings there are that you never even realized you had.

When we start listing the things we are grateful for, many things, of course, come to mind.  They will generally fall into the categories of health, relationships, money and forms of self-expression.

There is another kind of gratitude, however.  This kind doesn’t require us to search our mind for things or people or events.  It is self-generative.  It is a place we are coming from rather than an exercise of cataloging things in our life that please us.

When you live in a state of gratitude, it changes all your perceptions.  Coming from that place, everything you focus on seems like a wondrous gift.  You feel like you are part of a conspiracy designed by the universe to make you happy in ways you couldn’t have dreamed of.

In this state, whatever you are going through, even the hard times, seems like just the perfect thing to teach you what you need to know about yourself.  Everyone and everything in your life feels like a blessing. Generative gratitude colors all your perceptions, judgments and interpretations and allows you to create a life that is less circumstantial and situation-specific.

Life is gratifying not because it fulfills some picture that you’ve always wanted but because of who you are being and what you are bringing forth right now.

How does one generate this state?  It’s easier than you might expect.  Just decide to.  Before you fall asleep and before you get out of bed in the morning choose to generate a state of gratitude. Allow yourself to feel how you would feel if your life were going perfectly.  Then,  watch how  differently things start to feel and look through your senses.  It takes practice but the payoffs are significant.  Self generative gratitude opens up possibilities and opportunities that wouldn’t otherwise arise.  Everyone around you benefits from what you are generating as well.

Please let me know your experience with generating a state of gratitude by commenting below.

Thanks,

-Jim

After I got my Ph.D., I started teaching psychology at a small college on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I liked teaching but was not well suited to long, contentious faculty meetings, inter-departmental politics and gossip that are part of a small campus.  I wanted to do something else.

My father, knowing that I was good at one-on-one conversations with most people, urged me to open a private therapy practice.  I resisted his suggestion vigorously.  I had my reasons at the time but looking back, I think I just didn’t want him telling me what I should do (even if it was a good idea).

During the next several years, I did everything but what he suggested.  I sold exercise equipment, played in a rock band and got involved with several unsuccessful multi-level marketing companies, much to the chagrin of my friends and family.  In the end, I did as my dad suggested and started my private practice. Each year was more successful than the last. I probably should have listened to him sooner, but I just couldn’t.

Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Not long ago, I called in a favor to get my 23 year old son an interview with a great company in which he could have a lucrative career. He didn’t ask me to do this, of course.  I volunteered my help and then stayed on top of the process all the way.

My friend called to say that the regional manager was having trouble reaching my son for an interview.  At first I thought there was a miscommunication somewhere but I later learned that my son just never called him back. Hmm.

After a conversation with him, I realized he was feeling exactly what I felt years ago with my Dad.  My son wanted to find a job himself and didn’t want or need my help. He told me that he especially didn’t like having to answer my questions  e.g., “Did you call them back yet?”

Worse, he felt that my helping him was a vote of no confidence in his ability to manage his own life. Ouch! It was a very painful realization for me. I have apparently joined the ranks of the “helicopter parent” generation. We tend to hover over our kids beyond childhood. Not good.

My son and I have since redrawn the boundaries of our relationship.  I now get to deal with whatever feelings I might have about his career without acting on them and thus I can avoid creating resistance.

I can see what the folks in Al-Anon have known for years:  Even good advice and help, when unsolicited, isn’t helpful and can diminish a person.

How have you reacted to parental advice?  How have your kids reacted to yours? I’d love to hear your experience in this area.  Please comment below.

Thanks,

-Jim

I’ve always been curious about the relationship we have with our pets and the effect they have on us. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “Lord, help me to be the person my dog thinks I am” and I could easily relate to that sentiment.

We live in an extremely judgmental world.  Everyone has an opinion on everything and most people don’t mind sharing theirs as if it were the truth.  We regularly diminish people with withering criticism and put others on a pedestal with fawning praise.  We can live with a partner whom we ostensibly love for years while harboring old resentments, refusing to forgive or trust them again despite their contrition or the passage of time.

Yet, some of the harshest people in the world manifest a completely different part of their personality when it comes to their pet.  In this unique relationship, they are surprisingly capable of kindness, patience, forbearance, generosity and joy.  A pet’s mischief is quickly forgiven and is often interpreted as adorable.  Why is that?  I think it comes from the experience of unconditional love that animals provide combined with a kind of childlike innocence that pets bring to the relationship.

Many of the things to which I aspire, my pets already have achieved. They live in the here and now. As far as I can tell they don’t ruminate about the past or worry about the future.  They fall asleep anywhere and wake up refreshed.  For the most part, when their basic needs are met, they don’t complain.  They are quick to forgive, loyal, always happy to see us and take pleasure in simple things.  Someone once wrote out a humorous collection of his dog’s thoughts and each sentence started with “Oh boy!” e.g., “Oh boy, breakfast! My favorite!”  “Oh boy, a walk! My favorite!”  “Oh boy, a bone!  My favorite!”

Even cats, which aren’t usually as demonstrative as dogs, bring out a sense of caring from their owners and just as deep a love. Rabbit, horse and bird owners will tell you it is no different with them. And when our pets die, their passing let’s us experience a deep grief that we may not access in our human relationships.

The way I see it, anything that draws love out of us, stirs it up in us or has us express it assists us in the development toward our highest selves. In this way, our pets help us to grow into who we really are.

I’d love to hear how your pets have affected you. Please comment below.

Thanks,

-Jim

The natural tendency of life is to increase and expand. Whatever there is becomes more and more over time.  Everything we observe seems to grow and move in the direction of increase.  That impulse is in us as well.  It is what sparks our desire, what makes us want to express ourselves as fully as we can.

As Wallace Wattles, an early writer about the law of attraction, wrote in 1910, “The desire for increase is inherent in all nature; it is the fundamental impulse of the universe. All human activities are based on the desire for increase; people are seeking more food, more clothes, better shelter, more luxury, more beauty, more knowledge, more pleasure– increase in something, more life.”

We naturally want our businesses to grow and our families to grow as well as our income, our wisdom, our love  and our understanding.

Rather than resist life’s tendency or try to make it happen faster than it wants to, what if we could align ourselves with it? If we are to be in harmony with the flow of life, one thing we can decide to do is to leave everything and everyone we meet with more life than before they encountered us.  That means that every interaction is an opportunity to leave an employee, a  customer, a friend or a loved one elevated, inspired, larger, more able  and better off than they were before our contact with them. We can contribute to everyone’s life by the conscious intention  we bring to the interaction.

Imagine what your life and everyone’s life would be like if you made sure that every person or thing with which you came into contact was left a little better off, a little farther along in their development because of their interaction with you. Suppose everyone who came in contact with you knew that they would become more successful as a result of your interaction?  Imagine the customers and clientele you would create.

When people leave your office or finish a conversation with you, do they feel better for the experience?  If so, you are contributing not only to their advancement but to the advancement of all of life. You are in harmony with the flow of nature.  I know it may sound corny or hokey but it seems like a good guiding principle in our interactions with our world.  Just thinking about it, I feel inspired to act accordingly.

How about you?  I’d love  to hear your comments.

Thanks,

-Jim

In my many conversations with married couples, often, after laying out the issues they are grappling with, one of the partners will turn to me and say “Do you think our marriage can be saved?”  I’ve been tempted at times to give them the odds of things working out based on the hundreds of other couples I’ve coached over 25 years. This would be a huge mistake. The truth is, I couldn’t possibly know the answer to that question.  The only people who can say whether or not their marriage can be saved are the people in the marriage.

I’ve  been amazed by couples’ decisions on both extremes.  I’ve seen couples, presenting issues that seemed fairly easy to remedy, decide not to work things out and get divorced.  I’ve also seen couples dealing with huge violations of trust e.g., multiple infidelities, major financial mismanagement by one party bordering on fraud, etc., who decide to work it out.  And guess what, against all odds—they do!

The most inspiring thing to me is that at any time, someone can decide to change their ways and change the dance they have been in for years with their partner.  As I’ve shown in previous blog posts, it only takes one to change the dance.  If both parties decide to start being different with each other, the change happens that much faster. Free will is a wonderful thing.  We can turn on a dime if we choose to.  Once we make that choice, anything is possible.

Let me hear what you think about whether things can turn around.

Talk to you soon,

-Jim