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  • Tips for improving your English speaking skills and pronunciation

    I’ve been blogging in the English language for more than three years now (one year full time). I wrote more than 1,000 pages in English, which equals more than 5 books. I’m not writing this to brag, but to tell you about my tough beginnings as a writer, since English is not my mother tongue and I’m not particularly talented for languages.

    I vividly remember when I decided to write my first English blog post. After writing a single page, my head hurt like hell. My brain was obviously overclocking. It took me a few months to train my brain to write one or two pages without feeling overwhelmed, constantly looking in a dictionary and rewriting sentences over and over again.

    Only now, after several years, can I write for a few hours straight without any struggle. With time, I improved my writing skills and the brain capacity to the point where I can write a well‑structured and quality blog post quite quickly. All my blog posts are still copyedited, since grammar is not my forte, but my overall improvement is colossal.

    Currently a new challenge awaits. I’m preparing my first online courses. And guess what, courses are based more on audio and video materials than text. I already have my courses outlined and several scripts ready but when I decided to practice the scripts, a big realization occurred to me.

    Learn English

    Your writing, reading and speaking skills are not all the same

    If you want to improve your writing, you need to write a lot. If you want to improve your reading and comprehension skills, you have to read a lot. But reading and writing don’t automatically lead to an improvement of your speaking and pronunciation skills. That was quite a hurtful realization for me.

    Guess what, after practicing one page of the transcript for the online courses, my head soon starts hurting badly; even though I wrote thousands of pages in the past and can write for hours straight. My tongue constantly gets entangled and my pronunciation feels quite terrible. I’m in a very similar position as I was when I decided to create my first text in a foreign language. And it sucks big time.

    If I want to produce the courses, there is only one thing for me to do – improve my English speaking and pronunciation skills. I got a pronunciation coach and did big research on how to get better at speaking in particular.

    In this blog post, I want to share everything that I learned about improving speaking and pronunciation skills, and my personal improvement plan. I’m going to focus on a few key techniques that I’ve chosen in order to progress as quickly as possible.

    We already got to the first lesson. Writing and reading definitely help improve your overall English skills, but if you want to get better specifically at speaking and pronouncing, you must do a lot of deliberate practice exclusively for speaking and pronouncing. Writing, speaking and reading skills engage different parts of your brain.

    Improve your English pronunciation

    Tips for improving your English speaking skills

    Let’s start with tips for improving English speaking skills in general, without any focus on pronunciation and then continue with that. There are several sub-skills that you want to master when it comes to speaking:

    1. Switching from one language to another without getting confused or needing warm-up
    2. Learning how to speak clearly and fluently without any stopgaps
    3. Using contextual standard expressions in everyday situations
    4. Speaking for hours without losing focus
    5. And then of course perfecting your pronunciation

    Let’s go to some very useful tips and tricks for achieving that.

    Find language buddies and do international work

    The first rule of improving your speaking skills is to speak English as much as possible. You must practice language at every single opportunity. Finding language buddies in your professional and personal life is a great way to achieve that. Your goal should be to find people who speak much better than you are.

    You won’t believe it, but I convinced several of my friends that we text and speak only in English, even though we share a mother tongue. I wish I could convince more people, but not many are that motivated to improve their language skills. Nevertheless, if you find a few buddies you can talk with in English on a daily or at least weekly basis, that’s a very good start.

    Open your e-mail or messenger and immediately ask a few of your close friends if they’re prepared to communicate only in English with you to practice.

    In business, the best way to practice English is to engage in international projects. That is also one of the reasons I decided to start with (a very limited) amount of international coaching sessions. Not only am I extremely good at coaching and can help people, it’s also a great opportunity for me to practice speaking English as much as possible.

    I’m sure there are many possibilities how you can seize a similar opportunity at the work you do. Propose new international projects at your company, join international business clubs or enroll to seminars in English, you can make new international business partnerships, and so on.

    The bottom line is: you must practice speaking English at every opportunity possible, on a daily basis.

    Start recording videos or audio podcasts

    I have a friend who commutes to work and back for 30 minutes every day. While driving, he records an audio file in English for his wife, explaining many different topics and thoughts.

    When he told me about this practice of his, I was really impressed. What an awesome idea. In 6 months of daily practice, he dramatically improved his English speaking skills.

    I’m going to do a very similar thing. For most of my articles, I will:

    • Prepare a summary in a short audio or video file
    • Read complete articles out loud
    • or prepare a few bullet points from an article and speak freely

    You can do pretty the same with any material you like. It makes me puke (mom’s spaghetti) to just think about it. But I have a very strong why to do it (I have to publish those online courses), and nothing is going to stop me.

    The plan is to make quite long audio files to train my brain to speak in English for long hours without getting tired. Much like I did with writing. Just please don’t laugh when listening to my podcasts. If you’re bold enough, start a podcast or a YouTube channel of your own.

    Practicing speaking English

    A list of standard phrases and thinking in English

    I struggle quite a lot with switching from one language to another when speaking. It also takes me some time to warm up when changing the language. I hate that. As help, I’m preparing a list of very standard phrases I use in most of my conversations – interrogatives, conversation openers, responses and personal presentations.

    The phrases should also serve as anchors for immediately switching from one language to another. The main idea behind it is to not understand only what a certain English word means, but to add phrases to my vocabulary.

    One more thing I will do is to think exclusively in English. No matter where I am and who I’m talking with, and especially when I’m alone talking to myself, only English will be present in my mind.

    Tips for improving English pronunciation

    You can be a fluent English speaker, but your accent can still be very strong and wrong. To improve such a drawback, you have to additionally focus your efforts on improving pronunciation.

    There are several sub-skills when it comes to pronunciation:

    • Pronunciation is not only a brain, but also a physical skill, thus you have to learn how to correctly move your jaw, lips and tongue
    • Pronouncing difficult sounds of the English language
    • Giving proper syllable stress within words and sentences
    • Avoiding error patterns common for different non-native English speakers
    • Practicing sounds that you personally find difficult to pronounce

    Get a pronunciation coach

    The best thing you can do is to get a pronunciation coach, at least in the beginning. Or you can even get an English tutor to help you improve your English on all levels. You can find many good English tuition services – global or local ones (here’s an example of a specialized English tuition service in Singapore. You can find a similar service in your own country).

    I just started working with a pronunciation coach and the lessons are really valuable. You get immediate feedback on your speaking and that allows you to avoid any reinforcement of the wrong pronunciation.

    A good pronunciation coach can push you to the limits of your abilities, prepare a good learning plan for you, and most importantly, you can repeat phrases and sentences after the coach several times until you get it right. Human see, human do. If you have the financial resources to hire a good pronunciation coach, you will absolutely progress the fastest.

    Frank is my English pronunciation coach and I highly recommend him:

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    The shadowing technique: Model the speakers you like by recording yourself

    The second-best way to learn proper pronunciation is to model native speakers who have a speaking style very similar to yours (in your mother tongue). Their overall speaking style must be something you believe you can also achieve.

    I analyzed several speakers to find the ones I can model. For example, Tony Robbins is way too energetic for my style. Tim Urban speaks too fast and in a very comic way, which is completely not in my character. Tai Lopez is too spontaneous and entertainment-oriented. I deeply respect all these speakers, but there’s no way I can model them.

    But there are two authorities that I find very close to something that I could achieve – Ramit Sethi (I will teach you to be rich) and Chris Goward (Wider Funnel). These are the two speakers I decided to model.

    When you find an appropriate model, make sure you’re copying them the right way. What I’m going to do is to take short paragraphs of the transcript from their online courses and record myself pronouncing the same transcript.

    Then I’m going to compare my speaking and pronunciation to theirs. Besides that, I’m going to watch all their video and audio material that I can find. It will also be very educational.

    I know, the shadowing technique might sound like weird stalking, but you have to see it more as the ultimate form of praise and compliment. You’re struggling and putting in the effort to master a skill on the same level as one of your role models.

    Demosthenes, one of the great orators of ancient Greece, brushed up on his speaking skills by putting stones in his mouth while talking to the waves during a storm. That forced him to work very hard on getting the right sounds out. That was incomparably more odd than modeling successful people is. Well, you can also try speaking to the waves.

    Listen to English materials

    There’s a quote saying that before you learn how to speak, you have to learn how to listen. Practicing listening skills can actually help more with improving your speaking skills than reading can. Thus, it makes sense to practice English listening skills at every possible opportunity.

    Here are a few ideas how you can practice listening skills:

    • Listen to podcasts – while you drive, walk, cook and at every other possible opportunity
    • Watch movies, TV series and online courses without any subtitles, English or otherwise
    • Mind the lyrics when you’re listening to music. Singing along can also help.
    • Watch interviews, TED talks, sometimes maybe even reality shows with native speakers

    When you’re listening to English materials, make sure you pay attention to word and sentence stresses, intonation and how the words are linked together into phrases or sentences.

    English pronunciation - Mouth Alphabet

    Practice your physical tongue skills

    There are many situations in life where the tongue plays an important role. For example, when it comes to food tasting. What else did you have in mind? ;) Proper pronunciation is no exception.

    As we said, proper pronunciation is a physical skill to some extent. You must know where to put your tongue to make the right sound (or phoneme). The science behind that is called phonetics. Interestingly there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, but 44 different sounds.

    Let me give you a few examples:

    • To properly pronounce “th” (as in “think”), you really have to put your tongue out
    • To make the proper “v” sound, you have to put your upper teeth lightly against the bottom lip
    • To make the “l” sound, your tongue must touch the back of your front teeth
    • To make the “r” sound, you must pull your tongue back and not touch the top

    The best way to practice proper physical pronunciation form is to exaggerate a little bit at the beginning. And you have to practice it daily.

    Practicing minimal pairs is a good exercise to better understand the different movements you have to make with the tongue. Minimal pairs are all the words that are different only by one sound and have two distinct meanings (it and eat for example).

    Phonemic Chart - 44 sounds

    The best pronunciation resources

    Last but not least, it’s worth it to follow the best pronunciation podcasts, videos and courses. If you are extremely motivated, buying a book with audio files might also be a good option. But when it comes to online resources, here are a few suggestions:

    Summary of the tips for improving English speaking skills and pronunciation

    Soon after I started writing this English blog and wanted to improve my writing skills fast, I wrote an article on how to improve your English skills. In the article, my main suggestions are:

    • Surround yourself with English: Your computer operating system, mobile phone, applications, TV, choose the English language wherever possible.
    • Read exclusively English texts: Subscribe to blogs, newsletters, buy English books etc. Mix light reading with heavier English literature that’s at the limit of your comprehension abilities.
    • Get speaking buddies: Agree with friends who are better in English than you are to speak and text exclusively in English. They might resist, but I’m sure you’ll find at least one speaking buddy.
    • Get dead serious: Buy yourself a book of grammar, vocabulary, idioms or any other part of the English language and start studying. Take a whole week off and instead of going on vacation, dedicate your free time to improving English.
    • Other recommendations: Join (online) courses or English debate clubs, travel to English‑speaking countries as many times as possible, listen to English audiobooks and podcasts, etc.

    Now that I’m focusing exclusively on improving my speaking skills and pronunciation, there are some additional recommendations that I decided to follow. I’m sure you’ll find several ideas how you can also improve you English speaking and pronunciation skills. I will …

    1. Start with international coaching sessions to actively speak English at least one to two hours every day.
    2. Record audio or video materials for my blog posts – reading them out loud or preparing shorter summaries. I will torture myself by listening to them and paying attention to the errors I make. And I’ll have to record materials for the online courses, of course.
    3. Prepare a list of standard phrases that can help me switch between languages faster or that I can use in pretty common everyday conversations. It’s about adding expressions to my vocabulary.
    4. Think exclusively in English.
    5. Shadow two selected speakers by modeling their pronunciation and style – comparing my recordings to theirs for the same text.
    6. Continue to work with my pronunciation coach to get additional guidance and immediate feedback on my pronunciation.
    7. Stop watching any videos with English subtitles and practice listening skills at every opportunity I get (podcasts, music etc.).
    8. Do all the tongue exercises, get to know 44 different English sounds, and practice word and sentence stresses and speaking fluently.

    If you also have a plan to improve your speaking and pronunciation skills, I wish you the best of luck. Well, you don’t need luck, just a lot of smart practice.

  • A simple trick to express negative emotions in a mature way

    I strongly believe that everybody needs a coach or a mentor as leverage to faster personal development and progress in different areas of life. Currently I am working hard with a fitness trainer to improve my posture, strengthen my core muscles and improve my general fitness.

    Before that, I had a coach for more than a year that helped me identify my main cognitive distortions and destructive relationship patterns. He was of tremendous help to me, a wise and calm man who could always show you a new, more positive perspective on life and where to make a move forward.

    The first time I met him, it was immediately obvious that he had gone through a lot in life, but somehow found his inner peace. In the span of the coaching, we had many heated discussions, but he always stayed calm and positive. I was the one who was mad that he didn’t always agree with me or who became more aggressive in communication.

    But then one time, the discussion got really heated. I could see that he almost lost his temper. He took a deep breath and respectfully asked me if we can end the session and continue next time.

    I agreed, of course, half-surprised about what happened and half-satisfied because I felt like I won the power struggle by realizing that he is also only human.

    I couldn’t wait for the next session to see how things would evolve. We started with small talk. Then he apologized for last time, and suggested we continue the discussion on the same topic if I wanted. But honestly I was more curious about what really happened and so I directly asked him.

    What he said changed my perspective on relationships forever. He explained to me that he had had a bad day. And then he shared something eye-opening:

    You know, I can’t guarantee you that I won’t get angry, sad or envious or feel any other negative emotions in our relationship and interaction. But what I can 100 % guarantee you is that my negative feelings won’t do any damage to you or to our relationship.

    Stop and think for a moment how powerful that is. The goal in relationships isn’t to completely eliminate negative feelings, since they are a completely normal human thing. That goal is to make sure negative feelings don’t do any damage to a relationship. That’s the trick.

    Express negative emotions

    It’s normal to feel negative emotions, the problem is when they cause damage

    Every single person on the planet has to deal with negative emotions. Your goal is neither to suppress them nor to completely wipe them out.

    Your ultimate goal is to learn to properly manage your emotions and make sure they aren’t doing the damage – that means (1) becoming aware of the negative emotions before reacting, (2) controlling your reactions and then (3) expressing them in the healthiest way possible.

    But here’s the trick. Even though everyone must deal with negative emotions, some people (including me) have a much tougher job managing them. The greater emotional challenge is experienced or seen in one (or several) of the following ways:

    1. You get upset by the smallest things other people don’t even notice and you have no idea why
    2. Your emotional reaction spikes out of any reasonable proportion, even if you don’t want it to
    3. The emotional explosion just happens, it’s like somebody else is controlling you at the moment
    4. You aren’t even aware that you are hurting the other person while expressing your emotions
    5. You don’t really care if other people are hurting because of your words and actions
    6. You learned to suppress your emotions until they pile up and explode
    7. You have no idea what to do with all the negative energy that takes control of you
    8. You easily feel threatened or humiliated in relationships

    These are all the symptoms that show a big gap between the intensity of negative emotions and a complex set of skills that you need for managing such strong emotions. Nevertheless, if we go further, a lack of emotional control gets expressed in four general ways, based on one of the 4F responses to danger:

    Fight Flight Freeze Fawn
    Explosiveness Worrying Isolation Martyrdom
    Aggressiveness Being busy Running away Slavery
    Bullying Obsessiveness Ignorance Pleasing others
    Teasing Criticism Silence Clingy
    Control Suspicion Poor listening Helpless
    Gossiping, lying, manipulating, cheating, betraying, hypocrisy etc.

    Now we know how the experience looks like and how negative emotions are expressed. Another thing that we are interested in is the cause. The emotional abuse itself is the cause behind the uncontrollable and disproportional response or, in other words, being emotionally abusive towards others.

    You act abusive towards others because you were abused in one way or another in the past.

    You have a corrupt blueprint for emotional attachment in relationships that you inherited and learned. Instead of a healthy secure attachment style, you follow an abusive attachment style.

    It can be an ambivalent (fight, flight) or avoidant (freeze, fawn) attachment style or even a disorganized attachment style which is the combination of both.

    It’s a vicious cycle of abuse that goes like this:

    1. You were abused in one way or another when growing up (or even later in life)
    2. You became abusive towards yourself
    3. Simultaneously, you also learned that being abusive is the safest way to deal with other people in relationships
    4. Other people are abusive back in return (usually just in a different way)
    5. You are even more abusive to others and yourself

    It’s a never-ending cycle that can be triggered hundreds of times a day. A situation that happens in the present reminds you of an abusive situation that you experienced in the past (or even a series of them). Naturally you want to protect yourself.

    You don’t know how to protect yourself in a healthy way, and thus you resort to an unhealthy 4F abusive response. It’s called an emotional flashback. In everyday life, you encounter small and big triggers that constantly kick you out of the center.

    Uday Hussein was one of the cruelest men who ever lived on this planet. He was abusive in the most disgusting ways possible. His psychological issues were far beyond the simple advice that an article like this can offer.

    But he was born to Saddam Hussein, how unluckier can you get in life? Think about that (not as an excuse, but as a never-ending vicious circle). He was born and died in the vicious cycle of abuse.

    Now, this is a very extreme case. But the point I am trying to make is that you were put in a vicious cycle of abuse (even if you are only verbally abusive or passive-aggressive in relationships) and that’s a very unlucky situation. Luckily, the things that you have learned, you can also unlearn.

    With hard work, you can step out of the vicious cycle and guarantee a better life to yourself and other people around you.

    Feeling negative emotions

    Stepping out of the vicious cycle of abuse

    Stepping out of the vicious cycle of abuse is not an easy job. If you have serious and severe problems, I suggest that you work things out with a professional therapist. In this blog post, I will only share a few pieces of advice that helped me become less controlling and verbally aggressive.

    As we discussed, there are three stages of processing feelings – awareness, control, expression. These are the three building blocks you can work on to develop emotional intelligence and consequently stop being so abusive in relationships. So let’s look at these three stages and what you can do about them to better control your emotions.

    It all starts with emotional awareness

    It all starts with awareness. Awareness means being consciously aware of what kind of mental and emotional processes are going on in you.

    It’s the capacity that enables you to say to yourself “Oh, I’m becoming angry, sad, depressed etc.” and “These are all the negative thoughts and emotions that this situation is triggering …” before you react to the situation in any way.

    There are two benefits to emotional and mental awareness:

    1. It’s a kind of alert that enables you to prepare and mobilize rational intervention as part of emotional control.
    2. It prevents you from suppressing emotions, which could later backfire.

    Let’s first focus on suppression. Before I started practicing emotional awareness, I would have said even to the best psychologist in the whole world that he is crazy if he told me that things like somebody being late, not replying to my email or looking at the phone several times when talking to me etc. upset me.

    On a conscious level, I was pretty sure that I don’t care, especially not about such small irrelevant “normal” behaviors. But that’s because I suppressed negative emotions. For me, they didn’t exist when these things happened. But they still got me angry on the unconscious level.

    They piled up and consequently I could be moody later that day, or lose temper the next time somebody did something I didn’t like. On the unconscious level, things were piling up, while on the conscious level, an anger burst seemed to come out of nowhere, time and time again.

    Three stages of emotional control

    A unique perspective that will help you be more aware of your negative emotions

    So I developed a new perspective on my emoting process that helps me have much greater emotional awareness. My old perspective was that small things simply can’t get me out of the center, since I’m a sharp strong man.

    Now in my new perspective, I assume that every small discomfort in a relationship causes some negative emotional process in me, and then I try to identify it. That will help you raise mental and emotional awareness.

    When you intentionally stop for a moment and listen to yourself, you become aware. And then there are only two possible outcomes: Oh, there’s nothing, I’m calm and happy. OR. Well, maybe it does irritate me …

    If I can 100 % confirm that it doesn’t bother me, life goes on. If I detect negative internal impulses, I gently express the negative feelings while the monster (negative feeling) is still small.

    And the second benefit of awareness is an increased buffer before you react to a situation. Awareness gives you an opportunity to be more proactive, to mobilize all your rational resources to make sure negative emotions are not being expressed in a toxic way.

    You can’t have control when you only react to a situation. You can only have control when you are aware of what is about to come.

    Negative emotions

    You are in control, not your emotions

    The control part of managing emotions leads us back to the wisdom that my mentor said. You can’t guarantee people that you won’t feel negative emotions and that things won’t upset you, but you absolutely can guarantee that you will not do any damage.

    Awareness gives you a great head start in this scenario. When you become aware that things are going in the wrong direction, you can:

    • Take the conversation in a new more positive direction
    • You can express your frustrations before the negativity escalates
    • You can take a timeout to calm down
    • You can explain your perspective
    • You can try to identify why you are experiencing an emotional flashback etc.

    There is usually an established process or pattern that leads to the point where you lose control. After that, you have zero chance of managing your emotions with pure willpower. When things explode, it’s too late for control.

    When you are one step ahead of your emotions, you can express them in a healthy way.

    But before that there are only two options. Either you control the process and the situation or the process and situation control and lead you towards the explosion.

    So take control of the process. When you start to sense negative emotions and see that things are escalating fast in the wrong direction, say to yourself:

    My job is to prevent hurting the other person and the relationship while dealing with my negative emotions. What is the best way to make sure my negative emotions don’t escalate?

    Then you must find a way to be one step ahead of your emotions. And when you are one step ahead of your emotions, you can express them in a healthy way.

    Finally, express your negative emotions in a healthy way

    Staying quiet about the things that upset you is not a healthy way to express emotions. That’s not what we are trying to achieve. Everything that you suppress escalates and backfires.

    Much like you don’t want to over-aggressively express your emotions, so you don’t want to suppress them either. Thus you have to find ways how to express your emotions in a healthy way.

    You have to experiment a little bit (use the search mode) and discover how you can express negative emotions in a healthier way. Here are a few suggestions:

    • Take a timeout, calm down and then reopen the discussion again
    • Explain to the other person why a certain behavior upsets you so much
    • Write down in a self-reflective journal why things are so hard
    • You are often only one exercise session away from a good mood, so visit a gym
    • You can also simply go for a walk or change your environment in any way
    • Take some time alone and scream in the pillow or just lay down and cry
    • Do emotional accounting or cognitive reframing
    • Get a massage, read jokes or watch a comedy
    • Take 10 deep breaths and then respond

    Usually, improving your communication skills and having courage to open up greatly helps with expressing your negative emotions. The important thing is that you reopen the conversation with the person after things calm down, and that you sort things out.

    The right solution might be explaining your point of view or how you are experiencing the situation, maybe asserting healthier boundaries or deciding on more productive relationship patterns. The key is to express your frustrations without hurting the relationship.

    Take the time out

    If you take a timeout, don’t let your mind take you to dark places

    The most common way to deal with negative feelings while not hurting the relationship is to take a timeout. The timeout doesn’t mean holding a grudge, punishing each other with silence or creating distance and enforcing isolation.

    Timeout is an agreement to take some time for things to calm down and then reopen the discussion with more positive energies.

    You agree upfront when to continue the discussion. That means both parties have to confirm and agree that they want to solve the problem and constructively continue the relationship when things calm down.

    Timeout is a great tool for regaining control over your negative emotions, but there is one problematic thing that I’ve noticed over and over again – it adds a feeling of abandonment to the situation and accelerates cognitive distortions.

    Your mind can always hurt you much worse than your strongest enemy. In the timeout period, there are two options your mind and thoughts can take.

    1. One is towards self-reflection, understanding why your feelings are so strong and finding a creative solution to the problem, making sure that the negative energy doesn’t escalate and the toxic relationship pattern don’t repeat.
    2. The other path is the dark one. Your negative emotions can escalate, your negative thoughts can pile up, you can find many new arguments why you are justifiably upset, and you might come back with even more negative energies, deeply caught in one of the 4F responses.

    So when taking a timeout, you must make sure you don’t let your mind wander in the negative direction. There are many ways to properly manage your mind. The main point is that on the emotional level, you mustn’t confuse a timeout with additional abandonment.

    Feeling calm

    The permanent solution to stop being emotionally abusive and express negative emotions in a mature way

    The biggest problem with all the approaches we talked about that deal with negative emotions is that they are never-ending work.

    Many small things constantly upset you in relationships, you have to pay attention to every detail and small process that erupts in you, and then manage your responses properly. It’s exhausting and it takes tons of willpower and discipline.

    The other, much more rewarding path and permanent solution is to develop a greater capacity for love, better self-esteem and self-confidence, and a healthier attachment style in relationships. Unfortunately, that’s not possible without a long period of therapy, which can which can be a rather big investment.

    But in the end, it is absolutely an investment that pays off great dividends in the form of a more quality life and healthier relationships.

    Thus, my final recommendation would be: if you have too many issues with expressing your emotions and you act abusively in relationships, get professional help. Going to therapy is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of a really strong character.

  • Relationships track – number one resource for extraordinary relationship management

    Relationship track – number one resource for extraordinary relationship management

    Hi and welcome to the relationships track. If you don’t know what tracks are, please read more about them here. In short, tracks are the recommended order of blog posts you should read to really master the topic you selected. Following a track will help you acquire knowledge step by step in the fastest possible way. Now let’s get started.

    Agileleanlife Logo - Relationships track

    If there is one single thing that has the biggest impact on your life, it is absolutely relationships. A single critique from your boss, a fight with your spouse or a friend not returning your calls can destroy your day or even weeks or months in a second. On the other hand, making love with the right person, going on a trip with close friends or creating something exciting with a team of people makes life priceless.

    You become who you spend time with. You think like the people who are close to you. You overtake other people’s emotions and behaviors (identification). Your key relationships can stifle you or encourage you, people close to you can push you towards the stars or make your life a mess.

    You have zero chances to thrive in life if you don’t have an encouraging environment, and people are right in the center of that. You can be on a dream island, but if you aren’t with the right people, it will be more like a horror island. Trust me, I’ve experienced that.

    Even though relationships are super important, it’s really hard to properly manage them and keep their quality and health in check. Usually most relationships turn into relationsh*ts sooner or later. Two former lovers become the biggest of enemies, friends start to gossip about each other and families get into big fights that last for months.

    You want to avoid that and all similar situations, because your life will turn to hell. Every second you have is too precious to waste on lousy relationships and unnecessary fights. You want to be extremely picky about the relationships in your life, you want to very carefully nurture the ones you choose, and on top of that, you want to become an extraordinary conflict solver.

    This track will teach you all that – how to establish, build and grow awesome connections with many different people. The relationships track is divided into four sections:

    Enjoy reading the relationships track and becoming a master of personal and business relationships.

    AgileLeanLife - Relationships track - quote

    General relationship management advice

    Healthy relationships are what matters most in life – Relationships are heaven or hell on Earth. Good relationships can make your life really worth living, but crappy people in your life can make you suffer, really suffer and drown in misery. So you must forge your relationships very carefully; and make sure you only have healthy relationships in your life.

    In this article, you will learn why relationships are heaven or hell on Earth, about different types of relationships and why they matter, what you should expect from them, how to choose who to spend time with, and how to find people who will support you in life.

    The best relationship advice ever – I’m sure that by now you’re convinced that relationships are one of the most important aspects of your life. So let’s continue with the nine best pieces of relationship advice ever.

    Implementing these will completely change how you see relationships and how you manage them. And here’s the thing, relationships aren’t really real, they are only a figment of your imagination.

    • Always have the center on yourself
    • Become the best version of yourself
    • There is no ice to break
    • There is no middle path, find your fit
    • No zombies and bozos
    • Diversity and the 1/3 rule of relationships
    • Build multiple dimensions with superior communication
    • Relationships are like bank accounts
    • No relationship is perfect, the glass is already broken

    Relationships are like glass – but the glass is already broken – There are many versions of the story that symbolizes how relationships are like glass. The stories claim that relationships are fragile and easily broken. That after the damage is done, you can pick up the pieces and put them back together, but you rarely find every piece and the glass never looks the same again.

    Well, these quotes are badly misleading. Because in real life, the glass is already broken. No relationship is perfect and there are always issues and challenges in every single relationship. If you want to have quality relationships in your life, you must have realistic expectations.

    The real secrets to outstanding communication – The only path to outstanding relationships in your personal and professional life is outstanding communication. Consequently, excelling in communicational skills is absolutely one of the most important skills you can possess, if not skill number one.

    In this blog post, you will learn these few core concepts that will make you a great communicator. Not only great, an outstanding communicator. If you decide to implement them in everyday life, your professional and personal relationships will start to blossom.

    A simple trick to express negative emotions in a mature way – Every single person on the planet has to deal with negative emotions. Your goal is neither to suppress them nor to completely wipe them out.

    Your ultimate goal is to learn to properly manage your emotions and make sure they aren’t doing the damage – that means (1) becoming aware of the negative emotions before reacting, (2) controlling your reactions and then (3) expressing them in the healthiest way possible. In this blog post you will learn how to achieve that.

    Why you criticize other people and how to stop doing it – It’s so easy to criticize other people, and so hard to give a single honest compliment. It’s so easy to see yourself in a good light and at the same time focus on imperfections of other people.

    But criticizing people is a complete lose-lose situation that only creates distance, spreads negative energies and causes tensions. Criticism is one of the worst kinds of negative thinking, talking and acting. In this blog post you will learn why you criticize other people and how to stop it once and for all.

    Healthy relationships

    Do not judge: observe, notice and learn – One extremely important skill in dealing with people is learning not to judge, but rather to love, observe, notice and learn. In psychology, there is a concept known as “the outer critic”, whose job is to criticize others to create distance and protect you from being hurt. That’s why we love to judge others.

    But it makes much more sense to enjoy diverse relationships than to get isolated in a homogenous group of people where everybody thinks alike. So you have to learn how to manage your outer critic, and you do that in four steps.

    • Let go of your ego
    • Practice empathy and tolerance
    • Have positive attitude towards people and operate on positive energies
    • Put data before rhetoric and stay flexible in your convictions

    When asking people for advice – Sharing advice is an important part of every relationship and communication. There’s one really important thing you should know when asking people for advice. In most cases, people will give you advice that justifies their past decisions or reflects their personal experience. It definitely makes sense to listen to what people have to say, but know that your experience will be different and you’ll have to find your own path.

    The second important thing regarding advice-giving is that people usually ask for advice just to get outside confirmation or comfort, not because they really want a piece of advice. Take these rules into consideration when you are giving or receiving advice.

    Personas – Know what you want – One thing in life is sure. The more exactly, accurately and the sooner you know what you want from life, the easier you will get it. Usually the most successful people in the world are the ones who know what they want to do from a very young age on, and have the talent to really do it.

    The best programmers, athletes, businessmen and so on, they all know that they were born to excel at exactly one thing. Knowing what you want in life allows you to focus on that thing only. The same rule applies to relationships. Know what you want, and then you can get it.

    Making personas is a technique where you make a prototype of different ideal relationships. You clarify what’s important to you and what isn’t, so you can more easily choose, select and go after the relationship you deserve.

    Relationship circles – If you’re proactive in relationships, you consciously decide who new you want to meet, with whom you want to spend more time, into which relationships you will put more effort and so on. A very good start to relationship proactivity is to map all the people who are present in your life.

    List all the 150 or so people that interact with on a regular basis and then arrange them in four categories; actually, in four different types of circles, based on how close they are to you: Circle of intimacy, friendship, participation or exchange.

    Without a mobile phone

    When things in relationships don’t go as expected

    How to successfully resolve conflicts – Every single relationship is a bit of a power struggle. Most often the struggle is very subtle and goes unnoticed. These are all the times when you are making small compromises, looking for common ground, gently testing the boundaries and exchanging superficial thoughts and opinions – selecting a place to eat, a movie to watch or gossiping about a third person. But from time to time the power struggle escalates.

    At the end of the day, you can’t agree with everyone on everything and you can’t always find common ground. The bigger the differences in goals, opinions, beliefs, interests, values, ideas, motivations or desires, especially the ones that are very important to you, the fiercer the conflict usually is. That’s when you need extremely good conflict resolution skills.

    Extremely good or bad times are real relationship tests – In normal, or even slightly good or bad times, anyone can be a good friend, a good business partner or a good spouse. Normal times never show the darkest part of a person’s character, unless the person is an asshole by default. Extremes do. Extremes show whose personality really is larger than life and whose character is lower than a snake’s belly.

    Well, everyone makes a mistake or breaks from time to time, but if you consistently see atypical behavior in extreme times when interacting with someone, you can see deep into their soul. Extremely good or bad times are real relationship tests that show what kind of people really surround you.

    How much relationship drama is just too much? – Every relationship is a dynamic mixture of two energies – positive and negative. Positive energies are the energies of connecting, sharing and loving. They bring people closer together. Negative energies (as the second dynamic) are thoughts, words and actions that bring distance and tension into relationships. Negative energies are the energies of disconnecting, excluding, hating and alienating.

    They’re present in every single relationship. Nevertheless, there is a limit to how much negative energy is too much. There is a point when too many negative energies make the relationship a toxic one. Then the relationship becomes abusive, destructive and life destroying. In this article, you will learn where to draw the limit when it comes to relationship drama.

    Emotional flashbacks: when your emotional response is out of proportion – Emotional flashbacks are one of the most frequent reasons why relationships get damaged. You experience an emotional flashback when a trigger in the environment (it can be talking to a person) reminds you of your childhood pain, suffering and traumatic situations. A subject, object, item, place, expression or any other kind of trigger reminds you of all the past events that caused you constant pain.

    From a psychological point of view, an emotional flashback happens as a delayed response to childhood abuse. They are direct messages from your painful past, alerting you to how unfairly you were treated and how much pain you had to suffer. Learn how to manage emotional flashbacks to enjoy deeper and healthier relationships.

    Haters Jelly

    How social pressure really looks like – I am extremely picky about the people I spend my time with. I value time the most. I want to spend my time with smart enthusiastic people, people who constantly improve, develop their talents and want to contribute to the world. I police my every decision very carefully so that I don’t spend time with zombies or people who drag me down.

    Because zombies and energy vampires have a devastating negative influence on your life. They can suck every single drop of optimism from you. Even with only carefully chosen relationships in my life, I interestingly still have to deal with social pressure a lot. And I also put a lot of social pressure on others. This article explains how social pressure really looks like and how to deal with it; and how not to do this stifling thing to others.

    Haters gonna hate – We all have to deal with haters at some point in our life. Whether you like it or not, haters are the consequence of you standing up for something and even more so of you being successful. The more successful and firm you are, the more haters you’ll have to face in your life.

    Crying about it won’t help, so let’s see why haters are gonna hate and what to do when you face irrational haters in your life. Because in the end, there will be haters, there will be doubters, there will be nonbelievers, and then there will be you, proving them wrong.

    Proven ways to stop taking things personally – Sooner or later, somebody in your life will say something to you that you will take personally and you’ll have to deal with it somehow. Taking things personally is about emotions, not logic. When you take things personally, you’re emotionally hurt and offended.

    What you have to do when such a situation happens is to dig a little bit deeper into your emotions and personality to uncover the source of why you’re really taking that specific situation personally. Only then can you detach yourself from the negative situation. Usually there are five main reasons why you take things personally. When you become aware of what’s really happening behind the scenes, you can stop taking things personally. Here are the five main reasons:

    • Deep down, you agree with the critique
    • You experience an emotional flashback
    • You perceive being treated unfairly in the situation
    • You may feel excluded
    • You have unrealistic expectations

    More than 100 signs of power – The more power you have in life, the bigger capacity you have for acting or doing something in a particular way that you want. You have greater control over your destiny and the people who surround you. With more power also comes greater ability to influence crowds as well as key relationships in your life., but with greater power also comes greater responsibility.

    In this blog post you will find a list of more than 100 signs of power that might help you maximize your status. It’s okay to show how powerful you are, just make sure you’re using your power to do good – in relationships and in general to make the world a better place to live for all of us.

    Outstanding communication

    Family and intimate relationships

    You need to love yourself first before you can truly love others – There’s a cliché saying that you have to love yourself first before you can deeply love other people, be it your spouse, family or friends. It’s a lovely saying for sure, but let’s try to analyze it and find the answer to why it’s so important to love yourself first, from a very practical point of view. Because no matter how cliché the saying is, loving yourself matters a lot in building quality relationships.

    Multidimensional relationships – Relationships are always multidimensional and the more dimensions are present, the richer and more varied they are. You often experience or build relationships only on a few of the easiest and most obvious dimensions. But why stop at a certain point if life is offering so much more.

    Only a greater awareness and a bigger investment into relationships can help you build newer and newer dimensions and thus an even stronger bond with someone over time. Learn how to build multidimensional relationships.

    Models: Attract Women Through Honesty – The four most important life areas for the majority of people are love, health, wealth and general happiness. If any of these life pillars collapse, the quality of life dramatically decreases. Out of these four, love is probably the trickiest one, since many factors are beyond your influence.

    But here’s the thing. You can’t force somebody to fall in love with you, but you can definitely improve your odds. The book to go to if you want to improve your odds as a man dating women is Models: Attract Women Through Honesty written by Mark Manson. This article is the books summary.

    No More Mr. Nice Guy – Why women don’t like nice guys (Book Summary) – There is a healthy form of being nice (something we should all do) and a very toxic one (fawning). And the toxic form is the one that backfires almost every time, because it’s nothing but a manipulation strategy.

    Being a nice guy (the toxic form we’ll talk about from now on) is more or less only about seeking approval. What happens in the end is that a nice guy tries to please everyone, but he pleases nobody, not even himself.

    All the possible theories why people fall in love with you – There are more than 7 billion people in the world, and then you insanely fall in love with one single person. It seems like a miracle. Several theories exist why that happens, and knowing them might give you a good idea of what are all the factors that have an influence on the attraction spark.

    All the theories can definitely help you a lot in forming better and deeper relationships, become more attractive on the dating floor and to better understand yourself and your feelings.

    The best sex of your life – Sex is, at the end of the day, one of the most important areas of life, for men as well as women. In this article, you will learn how to have the best sex of your life by applying lean and agile methodologies to your bed skills. I know it sounds crazy, but it works. The article might be a bit biased towards the male perspective, but overall I promise that there will be many new ideas and useful insights for both genders.

    How not to raise a child – I have no idea how to raise children the right way. I don’t have them yet and I never write or preach about things I haven’t experienced on my own skin or somehow succeeded at. But I definitely know how not to raise a child. It always surprises me how parents most often don’t read even a single book about raising children. I don’t have a child and I read a few books on how to raise a child, just out of curiosity.

    At the end, it’s not about being a perfect parent. It’s about not repeating mistakes and knowing how to say sorry. In this blog post, you will find 30+ toxic behaviors that can cause big damage to a child. One big thing or a repeating small toxic behavior, they can both have very devastating effects.

    Meetings

    Relationships in business

    How to find a mentor who will accelerate your success – I’ve seen it over and over again in professional and personal life – finding an outstanding mentor can save you years of hard work, of trying to figure out how things work, what to focus on and how you can achieve your goals as quickly as possible, hoping to enjoy success in younger years.

    Many times, having a mentor makes all the difference between making it in life or not. Learn how to find yourself an outstanding mentor who will accelerate your success.

    Kaizen rules for teams – Today, teams are the ones winning the most important battles in life, not individuals. Members of outstanding families have an outstanding emotional life, outstanding teams in the workplace achieve the best results in business, and so on.

    You simply can’t succeed alone today, you need a team of people around you, supplementing your weaknesses and supporting you through tough times. But in order to have an outstanding team in an outstanding organization, be it company or family, you need to nurture outstanding culture. By following these Kaizen rules, you will definitely build yourself a dream team at work and home.

    The next steps

    This is the end of the relationship track. I’m sure you’ve acquired many ideas and insights into how to manage relationships better. But learning is never enough, you also have to apply the knowledge. Really apply it. It’s better to know one single concept and apply it than to know ten of them and apply none.

    So I encourage you, take action. When you improve relationships, there are many other life areas where you can grow and shine. Check out the other tracks on this site and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter, so you’ll be the first to receive new quality blog posts; including new epiphanies and eye‑opening content on how to successfully manage relationships.

  • Please don’t criticize people – instead understand, love or mentor them

    It’s so easy to criticize other people, and so hard to give a single honest compliment. It’s so easy to see yourself in a good light and at the same time focus on imperfections of other people.

    But criticizing people is a complete lose-lose situation that only creates distance, spreads negative energies and causes tensions. Criticism is one of the worst kinds of negative thinking, talking and acting.

    If positive thoughts are creative thoughts of connecting, including, sharing and loving, then negative thinking is composed of thoughts and words (and consequently actions) that disconnect, exclude and spread hate.

    Since it’s impossible to live a positive life with a negative mind, it’s obvious why criticizing others is so unproductive and irrational. So let’s put a stop to it.

    Why do you love to criticize people?

    On a logical level, we probably all know that criticizing people brings no good to anybody. And yet we still do it. If you do it, that means it must bring you some kind of value or benefit. Well, it does in the short term. The benefits are of emotional nature, and emotions are most often stronger than logic.

    That means you must understand criticizing other people on an emotional level, to deal with it once and for all. So let’s analyze the most frequent reasons why we all love to criticize other people so much and have a hard time resisting it.

    There is no rational benefits in criticizing other people. But emotional short-term benefits (that quickly backfire) are always present.

    Criticism is not good

    You criticize people to create emotional distance

    We are often more kind to strangers than we are to our loved ones. Many couples, parents or siblings are very critical towards each other. Most often the emotional reason for that is to create distance in a relationship. Criticism is a great way to emotionally distance yourself from another person.

    Now, why would you want to do that? Well, because on the subconscious level you are afraid to be hurt or disappointed. Kids leave their nests, siblings can be more successful than you, your spouse might break your heart, and so on.

    By criticizing others and focusing on their imperfections, you can emotionally protect yourself at least a little bit (they’re sour grapes – more about that later).

    Understanding that leads us to only one important conclusion. It’s ridiculous to create distance by criticizing others. By criticizing you are ironically forcing them to hurt you sooner or later.

    Nobody likes to be criticized; and obviously nobody can hurt you more than your negative untamed mind can. Thus, there is no need to create distance, only to improve your thoughts, feeling of self-worth and turn critiques into praise.

    On the other hand, sometimes we even use criticism to create connections and closeness with other people. That is in cases when we look for a common enemy to consequently find common ground with somebody we like or can benefit from.

    But starting a relationship based on hate is absolutely not a good start. We’re only showing off what we are prepared to do to other people, just to get a little bit of attention and love. Negative energies always somehow escalate and backfire.

    You probably love to criticize other people because you were criticized a lot as a young person.

    You criticize people to feel better about yourself

    The second most frequent reason why people criticize others is to feel better about themselves. If someone’s success or personality is too shiny, it’s easy to throw dirt at it, and the shininess instantly loses its brightness. At least a little bit; in our eyes. What a relief. Not.

    It’s been statistically proven that we are very indulgent towards ourselves and much harsher and judging towards others. We have double standards to protect our egos.

    If somebody is better in something important to us or owns something we want or outruns us in a competition, we must quickly find all the reasons why they aren’t as good as they appear; otherwise we feel humiliated.

    You criticize other people because you envy them

    Criticizing others to feel better about yourself and criticizing out of envy are closely connected motives. They are a slightly different tones of the same voice. Let me explain.

    It’s in our genes to hate unfairness. And when somebody gets something we want in a very unfair way, or when we feel life was unfair to us and kind to others, brutally strong feelings of envy arise.

    Examples of situations that usually make us envious, because life is unfair:

    • A friend gets lucky and earns much more money, much more easily than we do
    • A parent shows more attention to a sibling than to us
    • A coworker gets promoted, but we obviously deserve the promotion more
    • A colleague is talented and doesn’t have to work so hard to be good at a certain sport
    • We offer much better support to our kids than we had, but it seems they don’t appreciate it
    • We can find many similar situations

    All these situations are very unfair. Well, life can be extremely unfair sometimes and that hurts. We protect ourselves with many different rationalization mechanisms. We protect ourselves with self‑delusion.

    “Sour grapes” and “sweet lemons” are two very frequent rationalization mechanisms. With self-deception, you make things that you want but don’t have less desirable (sour grapes) and things that you do have but are not that important to you more desirable (sweet lemons).

    Criticizing others is absolutely a way to make grapes less sweet – to make other people’s accomplishments less worthy, to make relationships less important, and what other people have irrelevant.

    In a way, we could say that criticizing others is often an easy way to express frustrations and other negative emotions. But criticizing other people or complaining won’t help. Only a superior life strategy and going into action to improve your life will.

    Keep a positive attitude, make a lemonade out of lemons

    You don’t accept that people have different levels of capabilities

    Very capable and highly organized people usually have zero tolerance towards less capable people. They very strictly judge and criticize others when they do something wrong or don’t meet their standards. I used to be one of them (and still am a little bit).

    The reason behind that is that usually these people were severely judged in their upbringing. Consequently, they set extremely high demands for themselves and others. It’s an internalized judging voice of parents that haunts you (inner critic) and is also directed towards others (outer critic).

    In such a mental model, we don’t realize that people have different capabilities. We don’t take into account that people have different levels of experience, competence and that maybe not all were raised to high perfectionist standards.

    That doesn’t mean you must lower your standards, but criticizing others is rarely the way that leads to improved performance of other people. It sooner leads to hate than improvement.

    Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting. – Emmet Fox

    A complete lose-lose situation

    Nobody gains anything from criticizing. The other person feels devaluated. It creates distance and decreases capacity for love. With criticism, you easily spread the negative energy around and destroy other people’s days.

    People rarely listen to criticism, even if it’s justified, and they don’t try to improve themselves. Instead they take it personally and then avoid you, cut you out of their lives or criticize you back.

    With criticism, you might feel a little bit better about yourself and your ego might feel a bit safer, but at what price? You are doing damage to relationships, your mental health (negative thoughts) and you are trampling the other person’s potential and provoke their inner peace.

    You are pushing people away from your life. You are depriving yourself and others of love. That is a huge price to pay for feeling a little better about yourself in the short term.

    Sometimes you criticize people to help them, sometimes to hurt them. In both cases, you are doing damage to yourself and other people. There are better ways to help others or your ego and feeling of self-worth.

    Transforming criticism into more constructive thoughts, words and actions

    Now that you know the real problems and cause of criticism, let’s look at a few solutions for transforming criticism into more constructive thoughts, words and actions. There is the long-term, harder way to deal with the desire to criticize people, and a few short-term shortcuts and hacks.

    The long-term way is all about developing better self-esteem and self-worth, and a greater capacity for love. When you love yourself more, you can truly start loving others; and consequently you can stop criticizing them at every step they make. If you don’t feel threatened, there is no need to criticize.

    With higher self-esteem, there is no need to create so much distance in relationships or trample others. Because you know your high worth and you know you will survive and be fine (maybe even thrive), it doesn’t matter if somebody is better than you or that they might emotionally hurt you some day in the future.

    The best short-term way to deal with criticism is to use the “switch” approach. You switch from a bad habit (criticism) to a good one (praise).

    In practical terms, that means that every time you want to criticize a person, you bite your tongue (really hard) and do the following – mentor the person, find something to compliment, try to understand why the person is acting as they are, or make a conscious decision to mind your own business.Transform criticism

    Rather than criticize, show people how to do things

    Every time you want to criticize somebody because they didn’t meet your standards, show them how to do things better – mentor them. Just say, you did an excellent job (or parts of it); I have several additional ideas, let me show you …

    Or use the sandwich technique. Find something to compliment in their work, then show them what and how to do better, and end your talk by praising the person again. And if you roll your eyes while showing other people how to improve, you’re doing it wrong.

    Besides that, be careful when showing people how to do things. Make sure that your way really is more efficient, effective, profitable or better in a certain important standard. There are many ways how to achieve the same goal, and who says your way really is the best.

    If you don’t have data or metrics as a proof that your way is the right one or if you aren’t sharing small tricks of industry masters, maybe you are the one who can learn something from the other person.

    Rather than criticize, show respect or mind your own business

    Every time you want to criticize others with the goal of dirtying their shiny success or luck, bite your tongue and instead find a way to even deepen the relationship with that person. Find a way to develop a new dimension.

    If their success is based on hard work, just think of what you can learn from them. Ask them if they are prepared to mentor you or give you some tips to be more successful.

    If you envy them their (unjust) luck, well, it won’t help you with your luck in life in any way. Rather than drowning in envy and criticism, brainstorm how you can get luckier in life. Do it based on the quote: the harder and smarter I work, the luckier I get. As an alternative, you can also think of all the things that you have and are grateful for.

    Other people’s luck doesn’t mean your misfortune, if you have the abundance mindset. Life is not a zero sum game. Wealth and luck can always be created. With the abundance mindset, you know that sooner or later, you will also get lucky, as long as you stay proactive and positive enough.

    Be happy when other people are struck by luck, and while you are happy, mind your own business and mind your own luck.

    Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. – Dale Carnegie

    Praise or show empathy rather than criticize

    Last but not least, every time you want to criticize someone’s personality, instead find something to praise. If you manage to achieve 7 compliments for every critique, you will dramatically improve your relationships with others and with yourself.

    The same millisecond you think of a critique make sure you don’t say it and start searching for something to praise.

    • If a person’s extroversion bothers you, find something they’re wearing that you can compliment
    • If a person’s negativity bothers you, find something that they did well and tell them
    • If a person’s pimple in the middle of their face bothers you, find a body part you like on them and focus on that

    Physical traits, character, competences, there are so many different things you can compliment – if you just invest a little bit of effort. Remember, you are criticizing others to create distance, protect your ego, and because you are a hard judge towards yourself.

    Once you stop being hard on others and focus on their positive traits, you will also focus on positive things on yourself. Consequently, you will develop greater self-confidence and capacity for love. You will become more tolerant towards yourself and towards others. What a blessing.

    One more extremely powerful weapon against criticism is empathy. First, let’s define what empathy is. You mustn’t confuse it with sympathy or support. Sympathy means having the capacity to feel the same way as somebody else. Acting in a tender, understanding manner and standing by their side is a form of support. They are both useful, but not as powerful as empathy.

    Empathy means being able to precisely understand other people’s thoughts and actions, and where their actions and behaviors are coming from. When you deeply understand the context, you know the motives and what is really going on in a certain life situation. Then there is no need to criticize, only to forgive, understand or find a way to fix things.

    By developing empathy, you become more tolerant and respect the diversity that life has to offer. Maybe you would be or act the same if you had the exact same life circumstances. Understand, mentor, or develop new relationship dimensions and forget about criticizing.

    When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself. – Earl Nightingale

    Don't criticize people

    Concluding thoughts on criticism

    Openly criticizing anyone, or even doing it behind their back, is very destructive behavior that spreads misery in your life and the life of people who surround you. It’s impossible to live a happy and successful life with a negative mind and by spreading negative energies.

    There are better ways to operate in relationships than criticizing. There are ways to transform the desire for criticism into subtler energies and more constructive actions.

    You transform criticism into more positive energies, words and actions, by making sure that:

    • You understand there are many ways to achieve the same thing, and maybe yours is not the best.
    • If you know a better way, show people how to do it, don’t criticize them.
    • If something bothers you on a person, it’s usually something you don’t like about yourself; or you need to understand their context and life circumstances better.
    • With self-delusion of how you are better than others, you won’t get far in improving your life situation. Only with self-improvement, by minding your own business and working hard you can become luckier and happier.
    • You have to be little to belittle others. Thus criticizing others only shows you have to work on your feeling of self-worth and self-esteem.
    • Severely criticizing others means you are creating distance in relationships and that you have a low capacity for love. Ironically, you are forcing people into behavior that you’re afraid will happen to you. Stop it.

    The moment you start excluding others, creating distance and spreading negative energies, switch your thinking and acting to a more positive one. The same millisecond you want to criticize, switch to and ignite thoughts of connecting, sharing, love, praise, tolerance, compassion and empathy.

    That’s how you will deal with your inner and outer critics once and for all. Because when you develop tolerance towards others, you will develop tolerance towards yourself.

  • The best tools for successful conflict resolution in personal relationships

    Every single relationship is also a bit of a power struggle. Most often the struggle is very subtle and goes unnoticed. These are all the times when you’re making small compromises, looking for common ground, gently testing the boundaries and exchanging superficial thoughts and opinions – selecting a place to eat, a movie to watch or gossiping about a third person.

    But from time to time, the power struggle escalates. At the end of the day, you can’t agree with everyone on everything and you can’t always find common ground. The bigger the differences in goals, opinions, beliefs, interests, values, ideas, motivations or desires, especially the ones that are very important to you, the fiercer the conflict usually is. Conflicts become especially strong when you take something personally or when relationship boundaries are seriously breached.

    If that happens to you often, don’t assume you are the unlucky exception. Conflicts, big or small, are a normal part of every healthy relationship. If there are no (properly managed) conflicts in a relationship, the relationship is definitely a superficial or toxic one.

    So thinking about how to avoid or run away from every single conflict isn’t the right strategy. It not only prevents a relationship from developing more dimensions, it also hinders your relationship assertiveness and proactivity. It makes you a coward.

    The right direction is to develop superior conflict resolution skills instead. It’s one of the best skills to have to enjoy healthy relationships. If you have no such skills, a conflict can quickly be mismanaged, and a relationship can get seriously damaged.

    On the other hand, if you develop good conflict resolutions skills, every conflict becomes an opportunity for strengthening the bond between two people and making the relationship even deeper; because you open up. Think about how unique and deep make-up sex can be.

    My whole life has been spinning around conflicts and power struggle. In my family home, when I was managing a VC fund, dealing with politicians and in numerous cases when I decided to kick things out of the status quo a little bit (I love to do that a lot).

    So I’ve learned a lot about conflict resolution and in this blog post, I want to share with you my thoughts and experiences that may help you improve your conflict resolution skills as well and consequently develop deeper bonds with the key people in your life. Because I may deal with conflicts a lot, but I also always enjoyed really deep relationships in my life.

    Conflict resolution stratagies

    Your options after a fight are quite limited

    After a big fight, you don’t have many options. Actually, there are only five options to choose from:

    1. You can decide to terminate the relationship or at least put it on hold (termination)
    2. You can pretend that there is no conflict and become more and more passive-aggressive (lying to yourself and others)
    3. You can openly punish the person and pour gasoline on fire (competition, fight, avoidance, ignorance)
    4. You can fawn and yield to the other person and betray yourself
    5. You can try to fix the relationship as soon as possible (collaboration, compromise, negotiation)

    If the fight was too big, if someone violated the relationship boundaries really bad, you have every right to terminate the relationship. Sometimes that’s the best thing to do, especially in cases of toxic relationships where the same damaging patterns are repeating themselves.

    You have every right to terminate a relationship that isn’t working. If you do that, there is no need for conflict resolution. Just don’t confuse avoidance and ignorance with terminating a relationship and letting things go.

    The second thing you can do is to fight. You can decide to compete, to overpower and go for a win-lose situation. Sometimes that is necessary. Sometimes going for a fight is what you have to do.

    I saw that numerous times when the second or third employee in a business left the company and started a competing business. Again in such cases, there is no need for conflict resolution, you just have to make sure that you win. It’s kind of a similar situation if you decide to yield and kneel, you just don’t fight but submit and so there is no need for conflict resolution.

    But cases where terminations, submissions and fights are the only options are quite rare. They do happen, people can do all kinds of unbelievably damaging things, like cheating, stealing, being abusive etc. (actually, we all behave stupid from time to time), but they aren’t a part of everyday life; as long as you aren’t living in a war-zone, prison, toxic family or any other kind of hostile environment and if your relationships are healthy at least to a certain extent.

    The most often scenario in interpersonal conflicts is the one, where you should successfully solve the conflict as soon as possible, but you rather play power struggle games. Punishment games.

    That’s when conflict resolution skills are really needed, because any kind of punishment destroys trust in relationships. It’s the opposite of successful conflict resolution. It’s a big waste of time, energy and it destroys the relationship’s “wealth” or value. So the best option you have, when there is no need to fight or terminate a relationship, is to try to resolve the conflict as soon as possible.

    Ignoring each other

    Any kind of punishment destroys everything you’ve built in a relationship

    Every relationship is like a mutual bank account. By doing something good for a relationship, you put money into the bank account. By doing something bad for a relationship, you withdraw money from the relationship bank account.

    Every relationship bank account can be full of money, barely above water, in negative numbers or even bankrupt. A lot of “money” or “wealth” means relationship happiness, low numbers lead to low quality of the relationship.

    Examples of investments in the relationship bank account are spending time with somebody, going on a nice trip together, doing somebody a favor etc. Examples of withdrawals from the relationship bank account are all the things like cheating, lying, not keeping your promises etc.

    Even if it might seem so on the first glance, conflicts aren’t withdrawals yet. Mismanaged conflicts turn into withdrawals from the relationship bank account. Properly managed conflicts can be an investment, assuming that relationship boundaries weren’t seriously breached.

    That’s because properly managed conflicts can deepen the relationship bond. They present an opportunity to open up and forge a deeper bond. And conflicts that get out of hand (aka when severe punishment is happening) always cause destruction in relationships.

    Here are examples of the most frequent punishments that lead to mishandled conflicts:

    • Aggressive reactions – physical or verbal abuse, explosiveness, loss of temper
    • Passive-aggressive reactions – silence, creating distance, becoming unreliable, rejection, isolation
    • Devaluing relationship – sarcasm, cynicism, criticizing, shaming, focusing only on the negative
    • Revenge, eye-for-an-eye thinking and similar destructive behaviors

    Here is the thing. In the relationship bank account, the same rule applies as it does to the money one – it’s so easy to spend money and it’s so hard to save it. It’s so easy to punish someone or lose temper and so hard to invest energy into successful conflict resolution. But at the end of the day, that’s what makes the difference between wealthy and poor people in whichever context, the money or the relationship one. Wealthy people do the hard things.

    So when you want to do additional damage in a relationship with punishment after a fight, ask yourself, why would you further destroy something you’ve been building (for months or years), why would you destroy the key wealth and value you have in your life? Relationships are one important part of the wealth you have, so chose the hard path, the asap resolution path.

    You don’t just throw the computer out of the window when an error occurs; because you know it has value. The most important relationships in your life are even more valuable. So do the opposite from any kind of punishment. Decide to resolve a conflict as quickly as possible.

    Well, fast doesn’t necessary means too fast. Resolving a conflict as quickly as possible has certain limitations, because you don’t want to do it superficially. Here are the exact steps to follow, which will absolutely lead you to successfully resolving a conflict:

    1. Avoid all-or-nothing thinking
    2. Wait for the emotional charge to neutralize
    3. Really understand what’s happening behind the scenes
    4. Forget mind reading, honest communication is the key
    5. Decide to show respect to the other person
    6. Don’t preach and make sure that the conversation is balanced
    7. Focus on a specific behavior that bothers you and your feelings
    8. Take a timeout if things get heated again
    9. Sometimes you have to agree to disagree
    10. Some conflicts simply can’t be resolved

    Avoid all-or-nothing thinking at all costs

    My personal biggest obstacle in successful conflict resolution in close relationships was always all‑or‑nothing thinking. For me, relationships were either perfect or nothing.

    I was so happy and thankful for having someone in my life when things were perfect, and then after a small quarrel, the value of the relationship went straight to zero. Then things went back to perfect again after the conflict passed and soon back to zero, and so I was oscillating on an emotionally heavy roller coaster.

    It took me quite a while to understand that life is never black and white. That all-or-nothing thinking is a very toxic cognitive distortion. There is no perfect relationship. If you want to have a healthy relationship with anyone, you have to accept turbulent times as well as happy times.

    There is, of course, a line to draw where there is no going back or when there is just too much drama, but you still have to make sure that your emotional reaction in a quarrel is not out of proportion and that it doesn’t lead you to damaging the relationship even further.

    Therefore, before we even go to successful conflict resolution, have realistic expectations regarding relationships. You can’t properly manage conflicts if every disagreement you have in life takes a relationship from everything to nothing.

    Neutralize the emotional charge

    If you want to successfully resolve a conflict, you have to first neutralize the emotional charge – on your side. Actually, it has to be neutralized on both sides. Take your time to calm down. Go for a walk. Take a few deep breaths. But that doesn’t mean you can’t immediately mitigate potential damage.

    Agree with the other person to take time for emotions to calm down, but also agree to meet and resolve the conflict as soon as possible. Show your good intentions that you want to keep the relationship alive and that everything will be okay, things just need to calm down and then you’ll talk about it.

    Humor is a good way to neutralize the emotional charge. Try to squeeze a small smile out of yourself, even though you are drowning in negative feelings, and explain the plan – let’s take a day or two for things to calm down and then we’ll have an honest talk. If you don’t do that, mind reading will come into play on both sides, and mind reading usually makes things much worse.

    Mind reading

    Forget about any mind reading

    If you don’t immediately agree that you will both put the energy into resolving a conflict, mind reading games will take place. And trust me, your mind can take you to some very dark places – from fantasies about worst case scenarios and exaggerating about how the other person is feeling, to dreaming about potential revenge options and magnifying all the negatives and minimizing the positive aspects of the relationship.

    You don’t know how the other person feels and what the other person thinks. Don’t try to be a fortuneteller and read minds. It doesn’t work. You are only assuming and you can be assuming wrong.

    So you want to open honest communication as soon as possible, not base your actions purely on your assumptions. Wrong assumptions are the mother of all fuckups and if you act based on them, you can only make everything worse.

    When you immediately agree to resolve the conflict somewhere in the nearby future, there is nothing to fantasize about, because you already know what the next step will be – finding a solution and getting back on good terms. If you manage to do that (and it does take some guts) the conflict already hit the bottom and things can only go upwards after that.

    Really understand what’s happening behind the scenes

    There are two types of conflicts –intellectual and emotional. Intellectual conflicts almost always have an obvious root cause. One person thinks A and the other person thinks the opposite or sees things differently in some way. Then you have to make compromises, find out-of-the-box win-win scenarios and new solutions, or at least develop empathy towards different opinions.

    Emotional conflicts almost always have a deeper meaning. Usually you are fighting about one thing, but the root cause of the problem is something completely else. For example, in an intimate relationship you are fighting over whether the toilet seat should be up or down, but that is rarely the true reason for the conflict. Usually the real reason is that somebody feels neglected or some other deeper needs aren’t being met.

    You can analyze with 5 Whys what really upset you or the other person so much, and make sure that you really understand what’s happening behind the curtains of the conflict. Look for changes in relationship patterns, like:

    • What could be the person afraid of or angry about?
    • Is there any big change that is causing stress (moving to a new place or offices, changing a job, illnesses, changes in market trends etc.)?
    • Which things are different in a relationship than they were a week or month ago and how (how much quality time you spend together, are there new people present in social circles, are there new interests and desires that you are aware of etc.)?
    • Are there changes in how much you or the other person is investing into the relationship?
    • Were there any wrong assumptions present in the relationship from one side or the other or was something not communicated clearly?
    • Is there a transference, projection or emotional flashback happening?

    The first step is to take the time for an emotional charge to lose its power. Then you analyze what could be the real issue and what the fight is all about, while you avoid any mind reading. Please be careful about the difference. Mind reading is your mind going crazy and acting purely out of your ego assumptions.

    A thorough analysis is something completely different. It’s a reflection about potential issues that are causing the conflict, while being aware of which parts of the analysis are only your assumptions and what are the facts. And even more, an analysis is about finding the right starting points for an honest talk. Following up on the honest talk should be your next step. But there are a few rules of how to have an honest talk.

    Dont fight

    Always show respect to the other person

    The emotional charge should be gone by now, but you still might be a little bit angry, sorrowful, upset or hostile. Thus you have to consciously agree with yourself that you will show respect to the other person no matter what.

    You must have an active constructive approach to the honest talk. That means no name‑calling, sarcasm, cynicism or labeling. You have to follow the basic rules of good communication. There is no quality relationship without mutual respect. That’s your start.

    Always respect basic human rights. Everybody has the right to be treated with respect, to make autonomous decisions and to not listen to your advice or overtake your values. Everyone has the right to their own beliefs, values, opinions, preferences and feelings. As do you. Be tolerant and respect that.

    Challenge yourself to find the good and beautiful thing inside of everyone. It’s there. It’s your job to find it. Not their job to show you. Mark Manson

    Don’t preach, let the conversation be balanced

    I love to preach. I love to judge, aggressively explain my convictions for hours and argue how I am right (fortunately, I’m doing that less and less). But here’s the thing. Nobody likes to be preached to. Even if people pretend that they are listening and agreeing with you, they are usually not. That was a big epiphany for me one day, and you won’t believe where – in a church.

    I was raised as a catholic. And I always loved reading and listening to different views and opinions. So I always listened to priests preaching and then thought about what they were saying, why they were saying it and if it made any sense.

    After the mass, I always wanted to debate with people what was the sermon all about. And I figured out that nobody really listened. Nobody had a clue or they had at most a vague idea of what the priest was talking about. I provoked dozens of people, young and old. Same response. Huh?

    People don’t like to be preached to. So explain your view, emphasize especially how you feel and why you feel like you do (explain your values), make sure you are understood and then listen. The conversation must always be balanced. Don’t preach and don’t interrupt the other person.

    When solving a conflict, focus on behaviors, feelings, values and solutions

    During the honest recovery talk, don’t criticize the person and avoid “you” statements. Successful conflict resolution is not about playing the blame game, but about directing energy towards potential solutions. So focus on a specific behavior that bothers you and explain your feelings and experience connected to it.

    Show your vulnerability. That’s how you create a safe zone for an honest talk. Explain your view through values and have radical candor. Suggest a few solutions and keep your mind open. That is the recipe for having a successful and honest talk that leads to conflict resolution.

    It’s hard to achieve that. You have to open up and constantly keep your feelings in check. Your mind will try to slip back into the blame game, protecting your ego and minimize the value of the relationship. But you are stronger, you are smarter.

    • You can turn anytime again against the other person (expressing your feelings in an unhealthy way)
    • You can turn anytime against yourself (stifling your negative feelings)
    • You can express your feelings in a healthy way and find a solution. Which one will it be?

    Timeout

    The timeout

    Since it’s not easy to always keep your feelings in check, there is one more tool you need. The timeout. In case a discussion gets too heated, agree that anyone can call a timeout. When someone calls the timeout, you just have to agree when to continue with the conversation.

    My girlfriend and I always use the timeout strategy when the negative emotional charge gets too strong. When one of us calls a timeout, we immediately stop with any kind of action, words or unproductive non-verbal communication. We wait for things to calm down and then we continue with conflict resolution.

    If every sports game has a timeout to cool down the heat, you deserve to have a timeout in your relationships when communication isn’t going in the right direction.

    Sometimes it’s okay to agree to disagree

    Much like you shouldn’t have unrealistic expectations that relationships are only a bed of roses, so you shouldn’t have wrong expectations that after a conflict, you always have to find a position where you both completely agree with the new common perspective.

    Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree. If that’s emotionally okay with both parties, it can be a “win-win” situation.

    It’s not like one person is always right and the other person is wrong. You can both be right, or you can even both be wrong. Thus it’s sometimes completely okay to agree to disagree. The main point of conflict resolution is that the trust doesn’t get damaged and that there are no heavy emotional knots in the relationship, growing into big emotional balloons that burst sooner or later.

    Some conflicts simply can’t be resolved

    Last but not least, some relationship conflicts can’t be resolved; or it doesn’t make sense to resolve them. It takes around 90 – 120 days for a relationship culture to get established; assuming that two individuals spend enough time together in person. After that, every relationship unfolds more or less by specific patterns.

    The longer a certain pattern lasts, the harder it is to change it. And in every relationship, there are healthy and unhealthy patterns. We can further divide unhealthy patterns into tolerable and intolerable ones. The main idea of a pattern is its repetition. So if an intolerable pattern starts to occur and can’t be stopped, any further investment in a relationship is probably futile or leads to even more damage.

    Cheating, physical violence, verbal abuse, threats, drugs and many similar extreme toxic behaviors have a tendency to repeat themselves (much like good relationship patterns do). So you must be extremely careful to set very straight and strict boundaries in relationships.

    Once they are crossed, or the second time they happen at most, think twice before resolving the conflict and repeating the same scenario again from the beginning. You aren’t here to save people in relationships, you are here to enjoy relationships.

    Successful conflict resolution

    Your toolbox for successful conflict resolution

    Now you have the toolbox to successfully resolve conflicts. I’m completely sure that you already intuitively knew 90 % of the things discussed in this article; or even more. But it’s not about knowing it, it’s about practicing it.

    If you are currently in the middle of a conflict with anyone, you know what to do. Send a message, drop an e-mail or call the person to set a date to have an honest resolution talk. Assuming that deep down, you hope to resolve the conflict.

    And if you aren’t currently in any conflict, you know what to do the next time you encounter one. Commit yourself to handle a conflict at least a bit differently, slightly more constructive than how you usually handle it.

    Homework

    There are many options how you can do that. To repeat them:

    • Do the opposite from the aggressive, passive-aggressive or any other type of toxic action after a conflict occurs.
    • Immediately agree to solve the conflict somewhere in the nearby future (it takes guts to do that, but it feels good) and take time for the negative emotional charge to pass.
    • Don’t let your mind take you into dark places with all-or-nothing thinking or fortunetelling.
    • Practice empathy and try to analyze what’s happening behind the scenes. Use the 5 Whys technique, self-reflection, and analyze if you or the other person might be in an emotional flashback.
    • Always show respect. That is your starting point. In intimate relationships, love is lust and respect.
    • Let the conversation be balanced, don’t preach, and focus on behaviors, values and solutions.
    • If the conversation gets too heated, call a timeout. Also use the same tool the first time a conflict occurs, if things are going completely in the wrong direction.
    • Look for win-win solutions, find new creative standpoints. If you don’t find any of that, agree to disagree and continue to enjoy the relationship. The key thing is not to damage the trust, to open yourself, show your vulnerability and see a conflict as an opportunity to deepen any relationship.

  • Healthy relationships are what matters most in life

    Do you have big plans and big goals for your life? Do you want to live the good life, the dream life and are prepared to fight for it? Excellent. If you really want to reach the stars, there is one very important fact you must know.

    The culture of the environment you function in eats your visions, goals and strategy for breakfast. How you act and consequently also the potential you can achieve in life is always the result of your personality and your environment. So you must constantly improve yourself, but you must also make sure you choose the right environment for you to thrive.

    Your success = the best version of you + the right environment (markets, relationships)

    To prosper in life, you need to be a part of something that feels like home and natural to you, and enables you to flourish, develop and grow. You need an environment with ideal conditions for you go after the big goals you have in life.

    You need an environment that supports you in achieving your goals, an environment where you fit in perfectly and that shoots you right among the stars.

    There are many parts of your environment that have an influence on you, like your country, political stability, demographic trends, dominating religion, access to healthcare etc. (here are all of them listed) but there are two environmental factors with the strongest influence:

    • the markets you choose and
    • the relationships you form.

    Markets always win. Markets can make you or break you. And people you let close in your life can make you or break you. Who knows what happens after death, but people can make your life heaven or hell on Earth for sure.

    Relationships are heaven or hell on Earth. Good relationships can make your life really worth living, and crappy people in your life can make you suffer, really suffer and drown in misery. Thus you must forge your relationships very carefully; and make sure you only have healthy relationships in your life.

    Good relationships can make your life really worth living, and crappy people in your life can make you suffer and drown in misery.

    In this article you will learn:

    • Why relationships are heaven or hell on Earth
    • Different types of relationships and why they matter
    • What you should expect from different relationships
    • How to choose who to spend time with
    • How to find people who will support you in life

    What are healthy relationships

    Let’s start with defining what a healthy relationship is. First of all, mistakes happen in every relationship, there is no such thing as a perfect relationship.

    Nevertheless, a relationship can be deep and strong, or shallow and superficial. And even more importantly, a relationship can be a healthy or a toxic one.

    Here are the signs of a healthy relationship:

    1. Both people have the center on themselves and only then is a relationship formed
    2. You share similar values and interests and you create, have fun and experience things together
    3. There is a high level of tolerance, transparency, trust and respect
    4. You listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs
    5. There are always more dimensions present in a relationship
    6. You encourage each other to constantly improve and achieve personal goals
    7. The investment into the relationship is close to 1:1 from both sides
    8. You communicate with active constructive responses 80 % of the time and you communicate a lot about the important things
    9. You hold each other up when tough times come
    10. In intimate relationships, there must be love and sexual attraction

    Ways of respondingDon’t just read the statements and agree with them. Ask yourself the right questions for every relationship you have in your life.

    What kind of activities are you doing together? Are you treated as an equal and with dignity? Are you asked for your opinion about important life decisions that influence both parties? Are you being constantly criticized? Is there a high level of trust?

    As mentioned, there are always errors in relationships. No relationship is perfect. But there is a limit when too many repeating errors make a relationship toxic.

    If there are patterns like severe criticism, contempt, rudeness, meanness, jealousy, insulting, degrading, blaming, guilt-tripping, criticizing, physically acting out, the person constantly repeating themselves, a relationship is definitely toxic.

    Now, a toxic or abusive relationship has many negative consequences. It can literately suck the soul out of you. It can make you a zombie. Misery loves company!

    First of all, it takes a lot of energy, then it hinders your self-confidence, in abusive relationships there is always an absence of strong foundations of love and support to go after your goals, you become depressed, bitter, you start doubting yourself and sooner or later you start drowning in the victim mindset.

    On the other hand, healthy relationships provide you with strong foundations and roots to go after your goals. With a healthy relationship, you know you have a place to go when things go wrong, you are always encouraged and supported.

    With many healthy relationships, you feel strong, grateful and alive. It’s definitely the best thing you can have in life.

    healthy relationships

    Different types of relationships

    Now that we know what a healthy relationship is, let’s look at the most important relationships you will forge in your life. Love and work, that’s all there is. Consequently, we have personal and professional relationships.

    There are, of course, also different levels of intimacy in every relationship, from professional, to being only acquaintances, to being friends, friends with benefits all the way to real intimate relationships. You can experience different types and levels of a relationship with the same person.

    But you probably already know that from your own experience. All in all, what’s more important is that there are six relationships that shape your life the most:

    Personal relationships

    • Spouse
    • Family (primary/secondary)
    • Friends

    Professional relationships

    • Boss
    • Coworkers / Co-founders
    • Mentor / Mastermind group

    The more ambitious you are, the more you need the right environment that supports your ambitions – professional and personal one; besides market trends supporting you (financial, job markets etc.), you especially need a lot of healthy relationships.

    A person in a healthy environment and with healthy relationships flourishes, a person in a bad environment withers like an unwatered flower.

    When it comes to personal relationships, you must always be aware of your personal power. You can choose most of these relationships in your life. You choose who you’ll spend time with and who doesn’t deserve a spot in your life. Only if you are proactive enough. Actually, you must be superproactive.

    But at the end of the day, relationships are your choice. It’s not love’s fault or the HR department’s to reply to your job application or whoever. You should never blame anyone else for having crappy people in your life (authority figures in your youth are an exception, but more about that later).

    You want to be in a position to know exactly what kind of relationships you want in life and then going after them. Making a persona of ideal relationships might help you with that. Now let’s do a deep dive into the six most important relationships in your life.

    Personal relationships

    In your personal life, there are three pillars of love and nurture that you need: love from your spouse, your family (primary, secondary) and your friends (community). To be happy, especially in the mature ages of life, you need all three pillars, building them as strong as possible, at least in some form.

    healthy relationships - your spouse

    Spouse

    You may be single at the moment (and fool around), but you will end up in a serious relationship sooner or later. If not, you’re probably quite emotionally damaged and need to develop a deeper capacity for love and commitment.

    It’s hard to get real value out of intimate relationships if you are unable to commit. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

    Now, the intimate partner you choose (they’re not brought to you by love or a greater force, you choose them) for the long-term relationship, will have one of the biggest influences on your life. Right after your parents. And I mean a really big influence on your life.

    Your spouse can make you or break you. There is no third option. If you constantly fight, if you feel insecure and share no similar hobbies or values, your relationship will drain the energy out of you day by day before you eat breakfast.

    Being in an abusive, boring or toxic intimate relationship is one of the most frequent ways to become a zombie (next to having an abusive boss).

    So choose your spouse very carefully. Make sure you have similar values, but that there is also an opportunity to grow together. Make sure you have common hobbies and activities you both like, but also different perspectives that enrich you both.

    Remember that couples who do things together, stay together. Make sure there is a physical fit, intellectual fit, emotional fit and spiritual fit. It must feel right. Make sure you encourage each other and provide emotional security when things go tough. And know that you have to constantly put effort into a relationship to develop a deeper and deeper bond.

    We are all people; we all make mistakes in relationships. That’s normal. It’s not about the mistakes, it’s about a relationship being toxic or not; and whether you’re becoming a better version of yourself because of the intimate relationship you have.

    It’s not easy to end a long-term relationship, but it’s often necessary for further personal development and happiness in life.

    First of all, make sure your intimate relationship isn’t toxic and that you’re growing together all the time. If you have a hard time deciding whether you should stay together or not, there is a great book called Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay, written by Mira Kirshenbaum.

    You may not choose who you fall in love with, but you can definitely choose with whom you will stay.

    There are 36 questions in the book that should help you decide if you should end a relationship or not. Here are the top questions from the mentioned book that I find important and may help you decide on the quality of your relationship:

    1. Do you currently share goals and dreams for your life together?
    2. Have you made a commitment to pursue a course of action or lifestyle that definitely excludes your partner?
    3. Do you and your partner have even one positively pleasurable activity or interest (besides children) that you currently share and look forward to sharing in the future?
    4. Does your relationship support your having fun together?
    5. Would you say that to you, your partner is basically nice, reasonable intelligent, not too neurotic, okay to look at, and most of the time smells alright?
    6. Do both you and your partner want to touch each other and look forward to touching each other and make efforts to touch each other?
    7. Do you feel a unique sexual attraction to your partner?
    8. Does your partner bombard you with difficulties when you try to get even the littlest thing you want; and is it your experience that almost any need you have gets obliterated?
    9. Do you have a basic, recurring, never-completely-going-away feeling of humiliation or invisibility in your relationship?
    10. Have you got to the point, when your partner says something, that you usually feel it’s more likely that he’s lying than that he’s telling the truth?
    11. Do you genuinely like your partner, and does your partner seem to like you?
    12. Is there something your partner does that makes your relationship too bad to stay in and that they acknowledge but they’re unwilling to do anything about?
    13. In spite of all the ways you’re different, would you say that deep down your partner is someone just like you in a way you feel good about?
    14. Do you feel that your partner, overall and more often than not, shows concrete support for and genuine interest in the things you’re trying to do that are important to you?
    15. Would you lose anything important in your life if your partner were no longer your partner?
    16. Is there a demonstrated capacity and mechanism for forgiveness in your relationship?
    17. Has your partner violated what for you is a bottom line?
    18. If God or some omniscient being said it was okay to leave, would you feel tremendously relieved and have a strong sense that finally you could end your relationship?

    These are definitely tough and to-the-point questions that should help you to make the right decision. If you decide to break a long term-relationship or if you are single and want to really find the partner of your life, start building up your sexual market value (after taking time for recovery).

    Go to the gym, eat healthy, develop social skills, read a lot and become an interesting person, improve your bed skills, learn how to approach, and so on. Don’t expect “love at first sight” to do it instead of you.

    healthy relationships - family

    Family

    This is a very easy one, if you were raised in a healthy family environment, and a very tricky one if you were raised in a toxic family and you don’t have a deep connection and shared values with your family members.

    In any case, family is important and no matter how difficult the situation is, you have to maximize the love you can get from your family ties.

    Family is important for many reasons. The early relationships with your mother, father and other authority figures in your youth become blueprints for all your relationships later in life.

    Family also gives you the framework for your values; how well you were nurtured influences whether you developed hope, strong will, purpose and industry in life or you’ll be hindered by negative emotions as an emotional midget. Your upbringing also greatly influences your happiness levels.

    You can never truly understand yourself without understanding your family roots.

    Family should be the one that’s there for you in tragic situations, family should be the one helping you the most financially (inheritance) and it should be the greatest support you have in life.

    Healthy relationships with the family

    Healthy family presents foundations and roots in your life, so that you can fly high. Family is legacy handed over to you, and you are the one handing legacy down to your offspring, enriched or impoverished.

    Now, errors are made in every family, there are always disagreements and differences in values. But there is a limit, where errors are normal and when the environment becomes toxic.

    If you have a healthy family, it’s your duty make this pillar of love even stronger, by nurturing good relations with family members and enriching the legacy you will pass on. You have to be grateful, because being born in a healthy family is the greatest security and given advantage in life.

    Toxic family

    One of the hardest questions in life is what you should do if your family was (or is) toxic. Many of the following blog posts will be dedicated to this topic, but in summary it makes sense to put at least some effort into making things better.

    Nevertheless, you have to accept that many things are out of your control and may hurt while giving you no positive outcome. It all depends on whether family members are prepared to see the damage they’ve done at least to some extent or not.

    If you had a painful childhood, you first have to work hard on becoming more self-centered, assertive, letting go of the responsibility for painful events from your youth, and you have to work hard on your own life vision and goals and take full responsibility for your life. You must work hard on your autonomy and make sure you aren’t an extension of your parents.

    Then, if you want to make your family relationships a little less toxic, setting some strict boundaries and a gentle confrontation are usually necessary. The purpose of the confrontation is not to punish family members and dump negative feelings on them, but to tell them the truth, face them and set relationship rules that are acceptable to you.

    Many parents don’t even realize what they’ve done, because they were raised in a pretty similar way. Being honest with them may be a fresh start of the relationship. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. If it doesn’t, you don’t have to forgive. You have to work hard on making sure that your past stops controlling you and that you can focus on the positive things from your upbringing. In many cases, it even makes sense to go to therapy.

    I suggest you read the book Toxic parents for more insights what you can do.

    And usually there are at least some family members you have good relations with. Maybe you can enrich your relationship with them. If not, you can focus your positive efforts into making a much greater legacy for your secondary family, your kids and your grandkids.

    If you manage to change negative behaviors that were transferred from generation to generation in your family, you’ll do a very important and noble job, and you will definitely positively influence the future.

    I encourage you to find a way to build strong family foundations. Family is different than friends. It’s a circle where people really deeply care for one another, especially in tough situations, no matter the differences and misunderstandings.

    And if you had a toxic family, work hard on improving yourself, read a lot about how to deal with your past and how you can maybe make things better. At the end of the day, you aren’t doing it for them, you’re doing it for yourself.

    healthy relationships - friends

    Friends (community)

    The third pillar of love in your personal life are your friends. When we’re talking about friends, we must have quality and quantity in mind. Quality always comes first when we talk about relationships.

    If you want to be happy in life, you need a few close friends you share interests with, the ones you can really trust and help each other go through life.

    Isolation leads to depression and bitterness, so enough socialization with people you care about must be an important priority in your life.

    Now, a very important fact is that your friends are a source of great joy in life, but they can also be the source of social pressure. You tend to spend time with people who have similar values and interests as you. When you grow and change, your friends may get scared of losing you and thus put pressure on you.

    I’ve seen it many times. For example, you start to eat a healthy diet and they mock you because you don’t want to eat pizza with them. The same can happen if you decide to become a vegetarian or stop drinking alcohol. They may not believe in you if you want to start your own business, because they even don’t know how, being only employees all their life.

    So make sure you surround yourself with friends who support you, encourage you, with whom you do productive activities and not just kill time and have fun together.

    Fun is an important part of every relationship, but you should also have the privilege of growing when spending time with your friends. And if they are blocking you when you’re making changes in life, make sure you calm down their fears and negative feelings. If they still block you after that, it’s maybe time to find new friends.

    Besides quality, quantity also somehow matters. I especially mean always meeting new people, spending time with completely different groups and types of individuals, so your relationships can really be varied and rich.

    Remember you can learn from anyone, and more different types of people in your life only mean that they’ll enrich your personality. To achieve that, the number one relationship value you must have is tolerance.

    Business relationships

    We’ve covered love, so let’s now move to work. You spend almost 1/3 of your time at the job. There is a zero chance of you being successful and happy in life if you work a job you hate with people you despise.

    In business relationships, you have even more room to choose than in personal ones, the only thing you really need is a high enough level of competences.

    The three pillars of healthy business relationships that lead to success are an outstanding relationship with your boss, great relationship with your coworkers, and finding yourself a mentor or a mastermind group that helps you achieve your career goals faster.

    You should consider which business environments would allow you to deliver the most value, develop your competences to the full in the long run, achieve the position and the renown you want and, of course, achieve your financial goals.

    If your business environment doesn’t enable you that, you’ll have to either change it or lower your ambitions. And you don’t want to do the latter in the most cases.

    Like a boss

    Boss

    Your boss can either skyrocket your career or make your life miserable. Thus there is an important rule that you should never work for a boss you don’t respect. With an abundance mindset, you must be aware that there are many jobs and many good bosses. You don’t want to work for an asshole or a bozo.

    Never work for a boss you don’t respect.

    If you’re constantly scared of your boss, if you’re being abused, stressed out and treated unfairly, you will never be happy in life; even more, your life will be a living hell.

    If something like that is happening to you, analyze very clearly if you don’t choose to be abused because it’s something familiar to you (one of your parents was abusive towards you).

    If the answer is yes, start working on yourself, develop your competences, set some boundaries and start looking for a new job if necessary.

    Never assume and hope that things will get better by themselves. If you were in an abusive relationship with your parents, you will almost always attract bosses and partners who will somehow be abusive to you, until you set some boundaries and put the center on yourself.

    On the other hand, a great boss can give you so much. They make sure your potential is being developed, they mentor you and coach you, they make sure you get promoted frequently for your hard work, you get paid fairly, they help you to develop your social network, and so on.

    A great boss can really help you to thrive and develop your career potential to the maximum. So make sure you find someone you’ll be proud to work for and with.

    The boss should sometimes be tough on you to get the best out of you, but make sure it’s tough love, not abuse. As mentioned many times before, deep down you know very well if a relationship is abusive or not and why you cling to it.

    If you are self-employed or a business owner, your customers are your boss; and sometimes other stakeholders. Again, relationships are extremely important, only in a little bit different way – you have to make sure you provide enough value to the markets, you work for customers you really understand and respect, and that you constantly improve and develop together with markets. Everyone has their own boss.

    Relationships with coworkers

    Coworkers or cofounders

    Much like your friends are important in your personal life, so are your coworkers in your professional life. Again, there is a simple rule. Work in a dream team.

    Work with people you respect, admire, can learn from, and about whom you can really say “we are a f*cking dream team, we can achieve anything.” A dream team will elevate you to the stars, a bad team will make you into a zombie.

    There are probably fewer than 20 % good teams, and fewer than 4 % of dream teams. It’s hard to find or build the dream team. But if you aren’t in one, bitching, whining or complaining won’t help. There are only two options you have. Either find the dream team and join it, or help build one where you currently are and work.

    It’s often a tough decision whether you should help build a dream team or join a new one. It depends on your visions, mission, life goals and how much you are willing to invest into a company you work for.

    Changing team culture is a tough and demanding process, it usually lasts years, but it’s also a rewarding one, and it definitely enables you to develop superior people skills. I think in most cases, it makes sense to give it a shot, but if there is no progress after a while, it’s probably better to move on.

    Become an A-player

    Anyway, the first rule of being a member of a dream team is that you are an A-player. Only A-players (or people who work like hell to become A-players) work with other A-players. If you aren’t one yet, start working on it.

    Become a role model for others, mentor others and start fueling your team with positive emotions and constructive thoughts together with your boss. If you want to work in a dream team, your competence level must be high and you must know how to be a good team player and, if necessary, show that to others.

    Psychological safety is the key factor in healthy relationships

    Now, this is the most important part of what makes a team a dream team (even in personal life) – Google did big research on the best performing teams, and their data indicated that psychological safety was critical to making a team work, more than anything else.

    In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.

    There were two indicators of that. Firstly, members of the team spoke in roughly the same proportion, in other words there was equality in the distribution of conversational turn-taking.

    Secondly, all the good teams have high social sensitivity, meaning team members were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, facial expressions and other nonverbal cues. Now ask yourself if you are that kind of a team member and if you work in such a team.

    I worked in an outstanding team and in a bad team. I know that working in a bad team made me depressed, people were doing everything but work, they were gossiping, blocking each other, feeling nothing but anger, envy, disrespect and other negative feelings. After eight to ten hours of that kind of bullshit, you can’t come home with positive energies.

    You’re always also a product of your environment, so make sure you choose people you work with very carefully. And make sure you’re a productive and constructive team player. It’s easy to criticize others, but we are usually very forgiving towards ourselves.

    Start changing your work environment by changing yourself.

    How to find a mentor

    Mentor and mastermind group

    The last really important type of a business relationship is having a mentor; or even more of them, a whole mastermind group. Having a mentor often makes all the difference between making it in life or not.

    The best athletes and businessmen in the world have mentors. Why wouldn’t you?

    Good mentors can help you develop different competences quickly, like business skills, life skills, understanding market insights, they can help you with their social networks, wisdom, by believing in you, showing you the way and bringing out the best in you.

    You should know that doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will, and that mentors are by far the best doubt killers. You can find a mentor at your job, hire professional coaches, write directly to people you admire and ask if they are prepared to mentor you, or you can even hire specialists who help you advance in certain areas of life (therapists, personal trainers, etc.).

    If there is one way to accelerate you career success, it’s by finding a mentor. So make sure you do that. Some people even take a step further and build themselves a group of people who challenge them, push them and support them in every way.

    The concept is called a mastermind group. If you’re really ambitious, build yourself a group like that, and I guarantee you that your career will start to flourish at a much faster pace.

    Homework

    Start building healthy relationships today

    Now it’s time to do your homework. It’s time that you change your life strategy from relationships “just happening” to you tactically forging relationships that will help you flourish and prosper in life. And ending those that only make your life miserable.

    Make personas of your ideal relationship

    The first step is to clarify what kind of relationships you really want in life. So make a persona of your ideal spouse, a few different friends, your boss, your mentor and coworkers.

    While doing this fun exercise, also make a persona of your ideal self. For your primary family relationships, brainstorm 5 – 10 things you can realistically do to make them better, instead of outlining a persona.

    Assess your current relationships

    Now you know what kind of relationships you want in your life. In the next step, it’s time to make an assessment of how close your current relationships really are to what you want in life. Take a big piece of paper and:

    • Horizontally, write numbers from 1 to 10.
    • Vertically, list 5 – 10 important relationships in your life.
    • Rate every relationship from 1 to 10.
    • If you rated some relationships between 4 and 7, it means that you can’t decide if they work or not, and that tells you nothing.
    • Rate them again, now only with 1, 2, 3 and 8, 9, 10 marks. This will show you whether a relationship really works or not.
    • All the relationships marked with 1 – 3 clearly don’t work.

    Decide what to do with current relationships

    For the relationships that work (got 8,9, or 10), great. Enrich them even more, nurture them and be grateful for them. On the other hand, when it comes to the relationships that don’t work, there are only three options why.

    1. A relationship isn’t your fit. Irreconcilable differences or whatever.
    2. It may be that it’s time to let go, it’s time for the relationship to end.
    3. Your partner, you or both aren’t investing enough into a relationship and you should start doing that.

    Based on the analysis, you’ll have to decide which relationships do work and which ones don’t. There’s nothing wrong about ending a relationship in a decent and human way.

    Only a few relationships are lifelong relationships. All things come to an end, and there is always the point where you have to move on. So don’t be burdened with guilt and shame when it’s time to move on.

    Now you should know which relationships in your life work, which don’t, which to terminate and which to try to improve. Start working actively on that. And simultaneously start forging new relationships.

    Start forging new relationships

    Prepare a list of your potential mentors. Prepare a list of companies you want to work for. Join different clubs, hobby gatherings, meetups, and so on. Look at your personas and go where people you want in your life are going.

    Brush up on your social skills, meet new people, open yourself up to opportunities. You can find people and form relationships that will make your life heaven on Earth. Constantly add new people in your life and always stay open to healthy relationships that can bring so much into your life.

    And never forget that at the end of the day, you deserve to have only healthy relationships in your life. Even one toxic relationship is definitely too much. But if you have it in your life, it’s probably your choice. If that’s the case, try to figure out why.