Trust Me

I have spent the last couple of years since I separated from my ex-wife learning again what it means to truely trust someone again. Trust is a little word that means so much more than anything else. Think about all of your relationships and you will easily find that the best ones all happened while you were able to trust someone else. Trust is something that you give to some and others have to earn. Without trust you cannot have a good relationship with another person.

I will admit I have trust issues...wow big secret huh...Those issues have put a huge damper on my relationship with the woman I've been dating for the last few years. She is great, she is open and honest with me and she is everything I really ever wantedin a woman. The problem is that when I'm not around her the jaded side of me gets the better side. The first thing that we have to accept is that we all have our own lives.

If you are living your life simply trying to make someone else happy, YOU WILL FAIL!!! Most of us do this because of trust. I tried to do this with my ex-wife as our marriage was crumbling, and when the split finally happened, I was miserable, until I started to learn how to live life for myself again. That was only one scenario though. When we start dating a person, we don't spend a lot of time worried about what they are doing, we trust them. Some where along the line we change that way of thinking. Be very careful of this.

I have watched some very successful relationships in my life and one thing I have found is that those successful couples have a fairly common theme, they share their lives together. They have three sets of friends his friends, her friends, and their friends. They have the oppertunity to get away from one another to breathe, but they love spending time with each other. Without it being this way one partner or the other will end up smothering the other one and this could lead to a disaster. Honestly I can admit at times I am guilty as charged.

There are many benefits to this situation in your relationship, if you do everything together all the time there isn't anything to talk about, which leads to a lack of conversation which leads to the break down of a main component of a great relationship and that is communication. So you have room to breathe, you continue having a network of friends who can support you when things go wrong(believe me this is very helpful), you have solid communication, and you have oppertunities to do things that your partner may not appreciate having to do with you. For this to all happen there has to be trust.

Trust is what keeps you out of your partners cell phone, diary, purse, whatever. I have a theory, the second you feel like you have to go through your partners stuff, is the very second that that relationship should be over!!! If you want to have a great life then do not be in a relationship where there isn't that level of trust. Without trust there is no intimacy, there is only the oppertunity for bad feelings to arise. What happens when you do find something? You get heartbroken, or hurt, you are ready to fight. There isn't anything good that comes of it. I will never be flexible on this point ever again, I will not let a relationship continue if there is that level of mistrust.

I have to trust my friends to be there when I need them, I am very fortunate that my freinds are there. I also have a very loving and supportive family, we have our issues, but it doesn't mean that when worse comes to worse that we turn our backs on each other. Trust is a very difficult thing for many people to give away, and deservedly so. I will trust most people until they giveme a reason not to. Real friends will not cross that line, and your family...well you can't just get rid of them so you have to decide what you are going to do about that.

Without trust there isn't love, and without love there isn't trust. Remeber that when you are trying to decide how to really have a great life.

The best things in life

I know that I sound like someone who likes instant gratification. I've mentioned going after what you want and making things happen, but the reality is not everything that makes a great life is something that just happens over night.

I remember when I was a kid saving my money from my birthday and mowing yards and tossing papers to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System. It was the first time I really waited and saved for anything. The funny part of it was that I hid the money from myself so I wouldn't spend it. I ended up losing over one hundred dollars for quite a while, in fact it was a couple of months until the year ended and I pulled my calender down and the money that I had lost fell out.

I went and bought my NES and I felt really good about the fact that I had bought it, it quickly became my most prized possesion and I spent a lot of time playing it, making sure that I beat every game that I could lay my hands on. I tell you that to make this point, some things in life are worth waiting for.

Love is one of those things. You cannot just jump in to the relationships that you would truly want by jumping in to them. You have to take your time finding that right person, someone who will enhance your life, not that you have to live for, someone you want to do anything for. Real love is something that cannot be faked, and it is something that is very true.

When you work hard to accomplish something if feels good to finally get it. The relationship that you wait for, will be something that you will cherish and enjoy when you finally have it. Sometimes it is worth the wait.

Now there is a point that needs to be said, it is one thing to wait on someone, and another to put your life on hold for someone. Live life while waiting on those things that are worth waiting, never stop moving forward. This is the thing I m really trying to point out that when you don't live your life you can't enjoy the gift you are given. If you don't live your life then you are doomed to ruin the things that you are waiting for. Things can be great, but you will be let down if you have all of your eggs in one basket.

I am not a patient person, but I do know the value in holding on to someone who is really worth it. Just make sure that it is worth it, don't wait for something that you like, wait for something that you love. Never try to change a person, the only thing that you can change is yourself.

Go for it‏

I've been thinking for a while about what I should really say. There are so many things I want to accomplish and there are so many things that seem to stand in the way. Well its time that I stop allowing things to stop me from accomplishing what I want to do. Too many people let little things stop them from doing the big things they want to accomplish or do. When thinking of this I think of the movie the bucket list. A man on his death bed makes a list of all the things he wants to do before he dies. Why do we have to wait until we are dying before we try to get all that stuff done. That is why so many things that I have mentioned on this blog are so important.

When my daughter was born I fell in love with that little girl, it facinated me that I was a father, and she didn't have to do anything to earn my love. This is a beutiful statement, but the matter of the fact is that I started putting off things after she was born. She wasn't in the way, she didn't stop me, I just didn't do them. Yes there is a thing called priorities, the problem that I had was that I never made myself a priority, I wanted to make everyone else happy and quietly on the inside I started resenting everyone that was in the way. It wasn't anyone but myself who was really in the way.

How often do we get in the way of ourselves. What makes it worse is that we blame it on other people. My ex-wife really took a beating on this subject. I spent too much time saying no to things that I wanted to do when in reality I needed to just talk with her about these things. I'm not saying over do it and spite everything else, I am saying just don't let it stop you from at least trying. For years I have said that I wanted to study a new martial art. I wouldn't do it because I was always making excuses of why I couldn't, I was too fat, I was too old, I was too busy. These statements were just excuses to my reality. To say that my ex-wife didn't want me to do it may have been true, but I never talked to her about it, she may have loved me doing it, the excersize that I would have gotten and the health benefits would have done wonders for my body and my self esteem, just like it is doing for me now.

Another example of just going for it that I have seen in my life is when a guy is interested in a girl or vice versa. Many times nothing happens between the two people, but not because there isn't any chemistry, but because there isn't even a chance for chemistry to happen. How are you supposed to find your perfect match if you don't try. Many people are afraid of rejection, but the reality is that you won't always be rejected. I know it hurts to ask a girl out for dinner and she says no, it like she says to you, that she finds you so vile she won't even have a free meal with you, I know thats messed up. But I do know that I never took a girl out without approaching her and at least saying hi.

But that is so common across the board that it is painful. So many people give up because they are afraid of rejection. Rejection is something that happens to even the best of us. But it is part of life. There are some levels of rejection that are tougher than others, divorce is a big pill to swallow, when you are going through a divorce often times you feel like the person who promised never to turn their back on you, to be by your side for the remainder of your lives, is giving you the ultimate form of rejection. I know this feeling, but I don't live with this feeling. I believe that marriage is a very serious commitment, something that no one should ever take lightly, but the reality is you never know the circumstances that cause a divorce until you go through it yourself. The reality is that it doesn't matter how much game you have or if you are good looking, or have a lot of money, the thing that really matters is that you are just being you.

Being you is very hard if you aren't trying to do the things for yourself that you need to do. You can't love yourself, or appreciate life if you don't do these things. It even makes it hard to find out what you want if you don't go after it. You will never know what you are good at or what you love if you never do it. How often times I have met people who sit there and say I wish I had done this or that and carry the regret their whole life because they weren't willing to try. Live life because we only get one shot at it,

It reminds me of a poem I once read on a sign, about how the man never drank, never smoked, and he really didn't do anything, and when he died his insurance wouldn't pay because he never really lived. If you want to have a great life then you have to live, just sitting on the couch and living through the screen in front of you isn't really living. Do something with yourself, don't wait on everything else to fall into place make it happen. One of my favorite movie quotes is spoken by Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) in The Shawshank Redemption is "Get busy living, or get busy dying".

Cleaning out the Closet‏

When you are trying to live the great life that you desire you have to pay attention to the relationships that you keep. There are two types of negative relationships that you really need to shed if you are to be able to take your life to the next level. Sometimes it is very hard to get rid of relationships that you have already invested a lot of yourself into.

As I look back into my past there have been a lot of relationships that I've dealt with as being one sided. This is a relationship that is beneficial to one party and not to the other. These people aren't bad people, they just don't give back to the relationship. These relationships can be very hard to identify because most of the time these are people who have been around along time and may have never done anything wrong to you. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you." Words to live by when you are one of these people. Some times they do things that is beneficial to them, but describe it as something that they did for you.

I personally had difficulty realizing how much these relationships were effecting me. I would make the attempt over and over to get them to realize that the door needed to swing both ways and it wouldn't happen. I would spend a lot of time being frustrated because things wouldn't change. You CAN NOT change a person, if you are spending a lot of time anyone, a friend, a significant other, or a relative, you have to remember this just isn't possible. That is why you have to sever the tie so they don't have the ability to drag you down.

I know it is hard to sever the tie with family, that is why you have to minimize the damage by removing other negative relationships completely. You can reduce the situation by limiting your exposure to those people. I'm not saying that you just don't care about these people, you just create distance so you can move forward.

The other type is the relationships you have with people who are always negative. Sometimes it is good for a friend to help you look at both sides of a situation when you are making choices, but there are times when they should just be supportive. Some people are just negative all the time and these people can really drag you down. This can be a touchy subject, because all of us have times that this happens to us. Here again I'm not saying don't not care about those people but create distance from them. You don't need someone always telling you that you can't do something that you want to do.

The negativity that can be brought from these two types of relationships can be very difficult to cope with. Don't let other people bring you down, frankly I asked people to just get on board with the things that I am doing or get off the train. That is where the title of this blog came from, I personally am not going to let people hold me back. Good friends are something that we need to gather around us and the others we need to at least hold at arms distance.

The next post I will talk about those friends, but for now it is time to just clean out the closet.

Why men arn't men

My instructor at Premier Martial Arts said that a fighter who wasn't afraid isn't a good fighter. The matter of the fact is I've been talking about doing what you would do if you weren't afraid that doesn't mean don't be afraid. That is the first thing that hinders a man from being a man. So often times we as men are expected to not have emotions. This is a tremendous fallacy in our thinking.

Part of being a man is actually being able to have emotion. The difference is what we do with them. We have a choice as we go through life to decide what we do about our emotions. It isn't a feminine trait to love. In my life my friend and family are the most important people to me. They are the one that have helped me through my dilemmas in life.

Love is the thing that inspires passion, and passion is what truly drives a revolution. Men who aren't afraid to be passionate are the one who are leaders. Think of the men who we see as real men. The thing about passion is that it brings out the primeval traits in us as men. Men are willing to fight for women, they are willing to fight for those who can't do it for themselves, and they are willing to fight for what they believe.

Braveheart is a good portrayal of a man, William Wallace, who started a revolution based on his love of his wife and then his belief that all men should be free. When he was making the decision to be a farmer before his wife was killed did that make him any less of a man? No it showed him standing up for what he believed in. When I think back to the men who went to war, especially in World War on and Two I think of men who were willing to give everything to something that they believed. This doesn't mean that we have to fight to be men.

When we choose to just go with the flow as opposed to standing on our own personal beliefs we actually effeminate ourselves. The value of a real man is standing by those we love in times of crisis, and allowing ourselves to truly believe in our own abilities. When I lost my passion and my drive I found myself looking in the mirror and not actually recognizing myself. I hated my life and I knew that I had to do something to change it.

I needed to reevaluate the things that drive me. I found that I had lost passion, inspiration, or whatever because I has buried the negative feelings so much that I couldn't allow myself to keep anything positive from doing much more than just bouncing off the surface. The first thing that I did was I decided that I was going to move forward in life and I would shed off anything that wasn't going to help me get to the life that I wanted (more about that later). I knew that I had to allow my emotions to work for me and I had to get rid of the negative.

I have actually had people that I've cared about tell me to be thicker skinned and go with the flow, but that isn't being a man. Being a man means that you have a self identity, you react upon your emotions in the best way you can and you always move forward trying to get to the life that you want. I can tell you that every persons goals are different and there is value in every ones goals. The sad thing is that I know a lot of women who are more manly than some men that I know.

See what you want and go after it. The hardest things in life to get are the things that we value the most. The thing that a real man does is that he doesn't give up on anything that he is passionate about. A real man has passion for his children, for his family and for his friends. My friends are people that I will do anything in my power to get them through a situation, whether I agree with them going through it or not. I will give them my opinion. If I am not willing to offer you advice I probably don't care, or I've already offered it and I feel as though I am wasting my breath.

A real man should want to be free. Starting a fight that has no purpose is useless and it isn't being a man. Pick your battles, save your fight for what you actually are passionate about, not just a whim. I remember back in high school when there would be fights break out over some girl. The funny thing is that neither of those guys ended up with the girl. People will hurt us and that is why it isn't worth fighting those fights. On the other hand, just lay a hand on one of my children and see what happens. Great men can recognize this.

The things that make a real man are the passion in their heart and the willingness to fight for what they believe in. As quoted in the Gambler 'You gotta know when to hold em and know when to fold them'. Let your emotions drive you not to do the things that are negative, but the things that will make you great and that is how you become a real man.

There is passion inside of every man the question is what is it and what do you do with it. And there is a very real fact that is underlying in this, every man wants to leave their mark in this world, you can only do this by being passionate and then doing something with this passion. That is the first step in becoming a real man.

Fear

Fear, it is a word that many of us don't consider unless we are talking about our own personal safety. But it is one of those things that can stop us from reaching greatness. Fear can cause us paralysis. The definition of that word is "the loss of muscle function for one or more muscles". The difference between this definition and the meaning I'm placing behind it is the question of how permanent it is.

Our emotions can get in the way of what we are trying to do. Of course the result of this is negative. While talking to a friend of mine he mentioned that he wasn't happy in his current relationship. I asked him why he stayed if he felt that it wasn't right for him. He told me in essence he didn't want to be alone. This feeling was very familiar to me, several years ago I wasn't happy in my marriage, of course neither was my wife. In fact she was so unhappy with the situation, the first man she allowed to show her any attention she ended up stepping out on me with. It's not like I didn't show her any attention, but I resented her because I had lost who I was, I had tried too long to be someone I wasn't. I should have left at this point but I couldn't, I was afraid of being alone, I was afraid of losing my identity as a husband, I was afraid of everything else I would lose.

I tried to convince myself that the best thing to do was to be a better husband, mind you I didn't say a better me. in my mind I wasn't being a good enough husband and that is the reason she stepped out. This has been a thought that haunted me for years. I tried harder and harder to be the best husband I could be. The deeper I got into the situation the more I lost myself. The more time went by and the harder I tried I was less in a relationship and more the relationship. Now this may not make sense to everyone, but be assured it will. I gave and gave to the situation, and I started giving up all of the activities that made me who I was. I litterally became a shell of the man I was when I was graduating from college.

I started doing everything I thought that she wanted me to do, remember it was what I thought. I did that so she didn't have to ask for anything, and in reality when she was asking she was asking for me to be who I was, but that didn't compute. Fear was really driving me in this, I was afraid that I wasn't going to be good enough for anyone if I wasn't good enough for this woman who had pledged her life to me.

Too many men do this in relationships, the resentment that is caused by fear can make us be people that we really arn't. We arn't happy, but we are too afraid to do anything different so we settle. This happens many times to people in jobs as well. We get overly comfortable in the place we are at and we don't actually do the things that we really want to do. The other side of this coin is that we don't feel like we are good enough to do the things we really want. This economy sucks, many people say that they want to do this or that, but they don't. It is safer to stay at a job you don't like than it is to try something new or risky. The logic is sound, but have you ever heard of someone doing something great without making a few risky decisions.

Every person should have some sort of goal to love what they do and go after it. That is a real career, and that is how you become great at doing something. Jobs are meant to be the vehicle to get us to that point, no one who starts working in fast food has any real intention of making a career out of it. Some people are just built to do that kind of work and others arn't. It is a matter of being able to manage your situation and not being afraid of what the future might hold.

The book Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr. Spencer Johnson was very pivital in allowing me to realize that I needed to move passed my fears and be the man that I am. The question, "What would I do if I wasn't afraid?" is a question that all of us should consider when becoming the people that we need to be. FDR once said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." This is really true in everything that we do. We can't be afraid to dream or go after those dreams. Sure at times there is a lot to risk, but the reality is without the downs you don't get the ups, and that is why so many of us don't feel good about ourselves.

This weekend I'm going to write a post that should interest many people, especially men.

The Beginning

To so many people there has become a lack of understanding of who we are. In my own personal examination I see somethings that I can change and others I won't change. The real question is who am I? To have an identity is important, it is more important to have self identity. We are a product of our own lives and the experiences that we live through are what make us who we are. The reality is, that too often we try to become what someone else wants us to be.

This is where my downfall starts, when I got married I was a man who didn't let any part of life (within my control) not pass me by. I tried everything that I possibly could. I had just graduated from college, and some of the greatest experiences of my life were had while I was there. In college I was in a band, I joined a fraternity, I was in student Government and other organizations, I worked a lot of different job, went on road trips, etc. I did everything I could, I didn't want to have any regrets based on not doing something. Then I got married and soon after my oldest daughter was conceived. I was a man among boys and living a life that I thought was normal.

I won't ever regret the birth of any of my children, but what I do regret, was losing myself identity. I started basing my pride on who I was to other people. I was a Dad and a husband, but to myself I didn't see what I was. I took pride in being those things. When I started putting my pride in being those two things I started trying to make myself into someone that those sets of people would be proud of.

We all have titles in out relationships, whether spoken or not. but our relationships though they provide an identity do not define us. I always heard my father say that "you have to find happiness within yourself." That statement is very true, but in retrospect I didn't hear those words for what they really meant.

"Just be yourself" that is the hardest thing in the world to accomplish when you don't know who that is. One of the things that attracted my now ex wife and so many former flames is that I knew exactly who that was and I was that person. The reason that so many of those relationships ended was because I quickly forgot who that was. I will mention often the difference between mediocre and great, because my goal is to help others while I myself work towards having that great life that we dream about as we are going through our young lives.

Right now I will tell you there is an easy way to have a mediocre life, SETTLE!!! If all you want is to have the same mundane life as millions of other people that is all you have to do. I know I have done it too often. To have a great life is a bit more difficult but is far more worth it. My life in the last five years has been mediocre at best, there have been great things happen, but there has been a lot of bad.

The first step to figuring out who you are is to determine what you want. If I had a dollar for every time I said that I want to do this or I wish I had done that over the last several years I would be a rich man. The first thing I had to realize was something very simple and it came in a conversation with my friend Bryan. The thing I said was that I didn't want to end up a bitter old man because of the things I didn't do.

Not doing the things we want creates a very negative and stagnate environment. It causes bitterness and hatred, often times being something that effects what goes on inside of us. I am all too aware of how this works. What made me, me when I was in college was that I made decisions based on what I wanted to do. College was filled with opportunities and I tried everything I could.

I guess the advice that I am offering is identify what you want and at least try it. Without the try you will never know. This is easier said than done, but that is what leads me into tomorrows topic of fear.