Appreciating the Romantic Within

While jumping headfirst into ‘romance mode’ is fun and exciting, after a while it will start to become stale just like a relationship can. Being romantic can always be fresh and fun as long and the couple understands what the motives are behind the romance and the underlying intentions. Understanding romance is the most important part of being romantic.

 

When you decide that you want to begin being romantic, you usually take it slow and carefully consider what your partner likes and prefers when it comes to gifts, actions and gestures. Each romantic expression should have a significant meaning behind it. How you are going to be romantic is far more important that why you are going to be romantic. The process of how you are going to be romantic generally encompasses the ‘why’ in a much bigger way and is far more effective in conveying any message.

 

When you first met your spouse, you most likely experienced the ‘crush’ or ‘puppy love’ phase of your relationship. While you may experience moments of similar feelings, it is almost impossible to recreate that feeling after spending years together. However, you can always have passion with your spouse. Wouldn’t you agree that passion is much more desirable than ‘puppy love’?

 

When you hear people talking about relationships, you often hear them mention the word ‘chemistry’. Why is it that people value chemistry with another person over compatibility? If you think about it, compatibility coupled with romance equals passion. Would you prefer basic chemistry or passion in your relationship?

 

When you look at your partner and you consider being romantic, try not to look too deeply into his or her gender. Gender biasing can really deflate a wonderful intention, especially when it comes to romance. Respect your spouse as the unique individual that he or she is and never allow stereotypes to enter into your romantic intentions. Never point out what you are doing, though! It will be noticed on some level by your spouse. Not only will it be noticed, but it will also be greatly appreciated.

 

You need to remember that no one is perfect especially when it comes to matters of the heart- this includes romance. You are not and will never be an expert at any point! You will, however, learn and improve as time goes on. Your spouse will teach you through reactions and suggestions as long as you pay attention. It is all worth the time and effort, as life passes by too quickly not to be a hopeless romantic.

 

No matter how many years you’ve been living with the same person, you may think that they don’t want romance but it’s not the case. Everyone wants to have a tremendously rewarding and romantic relationship. It’s not an exaggeration to include every single person on the planet. The way in which romance is carried out is usually what makes each relationship unique and sometimes even a challenge! Everything worthwhile takes a little bit of work, but what is more worthwhile than a lasting romance with your spouse? You’ll discover that being a romantic makes both of you happier than most other people.

 

Battling Romance Myths

The institution of marriage is surrounded by a number of myths, stories and advice freely offered by people on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many people listen to and believe these pieces of so-called wisdom to the point where it doesn’t help their marriage and it only hinders its growth. Many of the myths regarding relationships are incredibly damaging and it is unfortunate that they are such common beliefs. Once you understand why certain bits of advice or information can be regarded as myths, you can break through what could be blocking the growth of your marriage. In fact, you may actually learn to appreciate your spouse and your role in your marriage even more.

 

Sensationalist television, magazines and talk radio have been key players when it comes to fueling any belief that there is a battle between the sexes happening. While there are definitively some physical and psychological differences, they are not enough to earn the term ‘battle’ as a description. When you allow yourself to consider any kind of battle between the sexes, you risk grouping all men or all women into a certain category and that leads to stereotyping. Once you recognize that your partner is a unique individual with a number of positive attributes, you can shed the thought that there should be any type of conflict between the two of you. Any thought of battle or conflict only leads to lack of communication, misunderstandings and discourages growth in any relationship.

 

Nice guys finish last is one of the worst possible sayings floating around today. Whoever thought of that and actually uttered those words must have been feeling truly low and full of self-pity because there simply cannot be any other explanation. Nice guys never finish last. They may have a longer and harder road sometimes, but it isn’t often that you see the bullies and jerks finishing first. If they aren’t, who is? It’s the nice guys, but they are so nice and gracious you don’t hear them bragging about it. It is also important to note that the word ‘nice’ doesn’t mean ‘weak’ or ‘effeminate’ in any way. Nice means socially or conventionally correct; refined or virtuous and not at all negative in any way. Nice is not another word for push over or spineless. Nice is as close to a ‘perfect’ man as you can come and they always end up first in line.

 

Romance is all you need in order to save your relationship is a wonderfully optimistic thought, but not quite accurate. If simple romance were enough to save a marriage, it would be running wonderfully rampant throughout the world today. Unfortunately, it takes more than simple romance. If you truly feel love for your spouse and you are expressing it through romance, then it will save your marriage. If you are trying to use romance to buy some time or to placate your spouse, then you are only buying time or placating your spouse. Your time as a married couple is most likely limited and should be attended to immediately by a professional.

 

Getting a Perfect Score for Your Relationship

You probably have a good idea of where you and your spouse are in your relationship or if you don’t, it’s time to find out. Consider thinking about your relationship, write down where you believe your relationship could use some improvement and talk to your spouse about what you have been thinking and feeling. Achieving an exceptional relationship is not easy, but it is an attainable goal. People who have wonderfully rewarding relationships are loving and giving people. This is a lifestyle that is available to every couple that is willing to work towards such a goal.

 

When you are looking to have an outstanding relationship with your spouse, you will benefit in more ways than you can imagine. You will be more able to understand you loving relationship in ways that you never thought possible and it helps you to act in ways that satisfy both you and your partner as well as nurture both of you as a couple. An exceptional relationship is one where you and your partner have the best intimate relationship possible, where you are both faithful, passionate, committed to growth, romantic and fascinating, you both consistently work at making your love grow and although not perfect, your relationship is one that you wouldn’t trade for anything else in the world.

 

So, how do you arrive at such an existence with your spouse? You must dedicate yourself to achieving excellence while you work hard, play hard and you both work on your relationship skills together. As simple as it sounds, you both have to live how you love each other each and every day. Great relationships don’t just happen. They arise as the result of work, work, and work! You need to be creative and work together at creating the relationship into one life you can both share together.

 

Your relationship with your spouse is very individual and only you both know what you want as far as a life together. You are in charge of making your rules and expectations for your individual relationship. This type of direction you can make for your marriage is a wonderful concept in the way people view relationships. You are able to make your relationship into exactly what you want it to be. You are in charge of your goals and in meeting your own standards.

 

You have the unique knowledge that allows you to create a relationship out of the values you treasure the most like honesty, faith, commitment, creativity, flexibility and equality. With this knowledge as well as the desire to create such a wonderfully romantic and loving desire, you can create a relationship that is not only fulfilling and rewarding but enviable as well.

 

When you can center your attention on the behaviors in your marriage and not on the personalities, you can focus you attention on setting goals instead of placing blame. This method helps you to set, reach and maintain your goals in order to have the marriage most couples only dream of.

 

Gifts for Building a Relationship

Every marriage experience spouses buying gifts for one another. Most of the time, the gifts are for what are considered to be ‘mandatory’ gift giving days like birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas and so on. Sometimes spouses use gifts as gestures to say that they are sorry or to earn forgiveness. These aren’t gifts at all - they are bribes and they don’t serve any purpose other than to be a Band Aid to wounds that require proper attention to heal. 

 

The best gifts given in any relationship are gifts that have only one intention and that intention is to let your spouse know that you are thinking of them, appreciate them and love them. These gifts are given without ulterior motives or expectations. These gifts only work when they are chosen with a great deal of thought, care and without anticipating anything in return. 

 

Begin by shopping all of the time. This doesn’t mean that you should just load up your shopping basket each time you head out. This doesn’t require much effort and you will most likely go broke doing this! Instead, each time you are in a store with or without your spouse, keep an eye out for items you think he or she would love to have or find touching. Pay attention when you are together either window shopping or looking for specific items. If he or she finds something that they have an interest in, either purchase it when they aren’t close by or come back later and buy it for them.

 

You can find all kinds of wonderful treasures in a variety of shops. Try browsing shops you don’t enter on a regular basis for ideas and many times, rare finds. Some of these types of shops include antique stores, new and used bookstores, second-hand shops, toy stores, video stores, sporting goods stores, nostalgia shops, natural health food stores, card shops and more.

 

When you go shopping, head out without any preconceived ideas. Use your intuition to shop for your partner. In other words, don’t find your gift - let your gift find you! If your spouse has a favorite store that he or she loves, get to know the manager and other employees. Stop in on a regular basis to see if he or she has been in and shown any interest in a particular item. Buy it!

 

Always be ready to buy something while you are out. Keep a ‘gift buying’ fund tucked safely in the back of your wallet so that you are never without funds. Try to pay cash, as your partner shouldn’t be able to find out what you spend through credit card receipts or statements. Because you will most likely be accumulating gifts faster than you are giving them, make sure you have a safe hiding spot in which you can store your gifts.

 

As with any romantic gesture, don’t overdo the gift giving. If he or she receives gifts all of the time, it isn’t special. Pace yourself, put thought into everything you do and always consider your spouse before taking any action.

What Do You Do with Your Thoughts?

Did you know your thoughts could be powerful propellants to understanding who you are and creating a strong sense of self-confidence and self-esteem in you? We often think of our thought life in a negative way, as something that holds us back from experiencing our dreams, but our thoughts can be a picture of our soul and can show us new things about ourselves we didn’t know before.

 

As we focus on our thoughts as a means of self-discovery, we can create life goals and have allies to keep us focused when self-doubt inevitable creeps in. Sit down today with a journal and write down one thing you would like to achieve by the end of the year. 

 

Perhaps for example, you would love to open your own small business online, but your self-doubt tells you that this is not something that could be successful. Collect around yourself pictures of successful people working from home doing small business. As you read about their successes list the common traits you share with them. Perhaps they are described as being “people friendly” or “passionate about their products.” Maybe they are good organizers or great sales people. 

 

List all the descriptions of these people that you believe you can relate to. These will become your inspirations. Now build up a picture of yourself and don’t be afraid to ask others what they think are your character strengths as well. Affirm these characteristics daily by reading them regularly and reminding yourself that you are good at organization. You do have vision and drive that motivates you to see something to its conclusion. Work on this for a two-week period. 

 

Having created a goal for yourself, these characteristics become your supporting evidence to yourself that you can achieve that goal. Seek some financial planning advice and discuss the viability of the business you want to start. Collect all the information you have assembled in one place and spend a day visualizing yourself as a small business owner using the information you have collected. 

 

As you do this, you gain vital information about yourself, your strengths and abilities, practical information about the business you want to start and the resources you need for it to be successful. Your thoughts can be indicators of your dreams as well as things that hold you back. So, harness the power of your thoughts and do something with them. 

You Are the Author of Your Own Life Story

We travel through life and it passes us so quickly, we often give little thought to the things we are doing, or the contact we have with other people. We are the author of our own life story and an old song used to point out that we are writing a chapter of our life every day. A fun way of experiencing a self-discovery trip is to ask ourselves what we wrote in our book today, this week or this month?

 

A well-written story has a beginning, a middle that usually contains a couple of defining moments, resolutions and a conclusion. Is your life experiencing resolutions and conclusions or is it always about new beginnings and defining moments? When we seek resolution to our problems, we can find completion and this is where our life growth comes from. When we move on without resolution, it’s a little like tipping soil onto the weeds rather than removing them. They eventually grow back and often with stronger roots than when they had superficial and weak roots. 

 

Take the time today to ask yourself what pages you are writing in your book today. Are you writing pages that have defining moments and resolutions and seek ways to resolve the issues? Are you finding yourself unable to cope with something happening in your life so you keep burying it in the hope it will go away?

 

Resolve to take steps today to remove it from your life, because you know that if you face it every day it is not going to go away without you actively removing it. Are you in a situation where you know you should change jobs but you keep going back to the same job because you haven’t had the courage to follow your dreams? Maybe today is the day to write an adventure story and clear your mind of the excuses and create the story you want. The one with the happy ending to your story that you choose and not the one someone else is choosing for you.

 

Sit with your journal and a coffee today and ask yourself what happy endings do I want? Ask yourself “what stories in my life need a resolution.” Work on actively resolving them and set about writing your own best seller. With a little reflection and some active actions, you can become the hero or hero of your own life story life story. 

 

What Are Your Excuses?

All of us have something we really want to do but keep finding excuses not too. Maybe you want to start on a walking routine each day but there is always housework to do that “must come first.” Maybe you plan to take up golf, but there is always one more report to write for work. We are so good at making excuses about why some things are more important than other things, but in truth, life balance means that prioritizing time for the things we want to do is as important as doing the things we know we must do. 

 

We all know how important a diary is and the importance of scheduling our time and planning to achieve the things need to accomplish. We have heard of the need to schedule the things we want to into our day. In theory, it all makes sense and we would love to do it, and perhaps we do write those things into our schedule. Yet still we make excuses at the end of the day when we don’t do them. 

 

Write down the last five things you intended to do but didn’t accomplish and then write beside them the reasons why you didn’t do them. Be honest with yourself about the excuses you made to justify why you didn’t do them. Maybe you felt too tired, or maybe you were fearful of walking that track alone. Maybe you decided to cook a nice dinner for your family instead of going to the movies.

 

Remember, excuses don’t have to be negative. Excuses are really choices we make. Sometimes we make choices that are good and valid choices, other times; our choices are a reflection of other things going on in our lives. Therefore, writing down our excuses, is really about writing down our choices. Why did we choose not to do something? Did we replace it with something else? Perhaps we were able to modify a choice to make it more achievable. 

 

Once we know why we make the choices we do, we are in a position to change our actions, attitudes or behaviors if necessary to make different choices. Understanding why we make the choices we do is the first step to holistic inner health. Our choices are the essential key to how well we prioritize looking after our body and nurturing its wellbeing.

 

When Was the Last Time You Experienced Joy?

Most of us have moments where we feel happy. We look at our children and their laughs make us smile. We go and enjoy a holiday in exotic parts of the world with friends and family. Maybe we read a good book and enjoy a picnic with our spouse. However, when was the last time you experienced pure joy? 

 

Pure joy is that feeling your felt as a child when you were anticipating opening the presents under the Christmas tree as you woke up on Christmas Morning. It is the feeling you felt as a child when you were faced with what seemed to be the biggest ice cream you had ever seen. Do you remember feeling excitement as you waited for the gates to open at a favorite theme park? 

 

As we grow older, we lose the sense of pure joy that captivates a child’s mind. We rarely let ourselves enjoy our activities with the reckless abandon we did as children. Perhaps the closest we come to that joy is the moment we gaze in awe at our newly born baby or look at the glowing face of our child on their wedding day.

 

In your journal write down 5 child hood memories that you remember gave you feelings of deep joy and excitement, both as you anticipated them, and later as you experienced them. If for example, eating an ice cream on the beach was a special child hood memory that made you skip with joy and anticipation, then take your family or your friends and enjoy ice creams on the beach with them. If you enjoyed going on family caravan holidays, then hire a caravan and in abandonment of the pressures of life, take time to go and explore and relive the adventures with your own family.

 

As adults the responsibilities of our lives, rob us of simple pleasures that give us joy. No journey of self-discovery is complete without looking at the person we were as a child and comparing the person we are now as an adult. The experiences that shaped our personalities have their roots in our childhood and spending time reflecting on them is an excellent way to guide our thinking as we try to rediscover the inner self. 

 

These experiences are not only important for self-discovery, but equally as a means of self-rediscovery.

When Knowledge Knocks, How Do You Answer the Door?

A proverb aptly written said, “Knowledge knocks at the door of action. If it receives a reply it stays, if it doesn’t it departs.” When was the last time you answered the door to knowledge and put it into action in your life? 

 

We are bombarded every day with knowledge. Most of it is beneficial or useful and we read it and appreciate its wisdom. Often however, our busy lives drown out the useful information we learn and we forget it before we have time to put it into action in our life. We miss many useful like skills when we fail to action our knowledge and its worth taking a few minutes to think about knowledge that is beneficial and can even improve our quality of life.

 

In your journal, take time to think about ten concepts or ideas that have recently captivated your imagination and interest. It can be something fictional or non-fictional, something current or something from history. As your curiosity is excited when you think or write about these things, take time to explore them and dig deeper into learning about them. Don’t waste the spark interest, but let it ignite thirst for knowledge and personal growth. 

 

The potential for gaining benefit in doing this extends much further than just in identifying what interests you. If you believe that what you are learning would benefit you or your family, and then try to put them into action immediately in some way in your life. 

 

In your journal, consider exploring the things that interest you in a broader way. Identify any common concepts that might connect each area that interests you. Are they health related, or are they parenting related? As you look for the common connection, you will discover where your natural interests lie, and these may guide you to explore courses or other options to turn your interests into something that may turn out to be financially useful. 

 

Don’t forget to review what you are learning regularly so you don’t forget what you have read and what you have learned. Add to it regularly and keep records of what you do with that knowledge. Share the knowledge you gain with friends, even if you choose not to formally study it. Wisdom is described as applied knowledge. Knowledge that is not applied is wisdom lost and is wasted knowledge. 

 

Blogger Forums - A Great Place To Advertise Your Blog

No matter what type of blog that you have, one of the best places that you can advertise your blog is to join a blogger forum. After all, everyone who posts there has a blog and that’s the main subject.

 

It’s a great place to meet other bloggers and to advertise your blog.

 

There are quite a few blogger forums that you can sign up for on the Internet. One is known as Bloggeries, where you can show off your blog, get your blog reviewed or review other blogs, and find lots of tools that you can use for your own blog.

 

Another good place to go is to Blog Forum.

 

Blog Forum, like Bloggeries, has spots for you to market and show off your blog,

 

Blogger forums are a great place to advertise because everyone in them are of the same mind and want to make certain that their blogs get noticed and read.

 

If you use your blog to advertise something that you are selling, or you want to get a lot of traffic to your blog in order to make money, you want to go someplace where it can get exposure.

 

When you advertise on a blog forum, you know that you are placing your advertisement in a place where blogging is something that people enjoy.

 

Just remember when you are posting to a forum to read the rules and abide by them. That way you’ll get your blog noticed and you will know that you are doing the right thing.

Getting The Message Across

If you are someone who uses chat programs such as AIM, ICQ, Yahoo messenger, MSN, or Googletalk and have a lot of online friends, it can be a great way to get people to read your blog and to leave comments on it.

 

As it is with your signature on your email, you don’t want to just send an instant message to people every time you update your blog. You also don’t want to simply send a message to someone asking to read your blog.

 

For someone who has been on your friends list for a while, you can be less formal of course, but you want to be polite when you talk to people who you may have not talked to in a while or someone who is new.

 

Use your own judgement when you are chatting with people about your blog. If it’s someone that you haven’t talked to in a while, and someone asks you what you have been up to, you can point them to your blog so that they know what is going on with you.

 

Some blogs, like LiveJournal, have their own messaging program, so that’s also another good way to advertise your blog.

 

Be certain that you don’t send someone a message though only to advertise your blog. It’s more polite to say something about their blog first, and then tell them about your blog.

 

If you have a common interest, it’s a good ice breaker and it will give you something to talk about.