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By Chris Walker - Advanced Awareness Course #27 22 Hints for Great Relationships You and I, we want love. We want it without all the headaches and heartaches. Either you want to lift your existing relationship to a new level or you want a relationship, full stop. You are not meant to be single. So, if you are, it’s time to deal with whatever is blocking the love of your life from walking right in the front door of your heart. You have the key, nobody else controls that door but you. You are not meant to be struggling in a relationship either. What you must know is that sometimes your partner is right but now isn’t. They get a bee in their ear and think the whole world has been plotting against them, led by you. If that’s the case you can also fix that. I’ll show you how. So, this book is written for busy people split into two groups .. those with a relationship wanting an upgrade and those without wanting a re-grade.
Chris Walker - Innerwealth - Coaching, Adventures, Retreats, Education, Consulting
XTREME SKILLS FOR BUSY PEOPLE ! Bridging the rift between work and play, spirit and matter, heart and soul in work and life.
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22 Skills For Great RELATION-SHIPS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! by
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Chris Walker http://www.chriswalker.com.au
Seven Short Stories About Love and Better Relationships !
You and I, we want love. We want it without all the headaches and heartaches. Either you want to lift your existing relationship to a new level or you want a relationship, full stop. You are not meant to be single. So, if you are, it’s time to deal with whatever is blocking the love of your life from walking right in the front door of your heart. You have the key, nobody else controls that door but you. You are not meant to be struggling in a relationship either. What you must know is that sometimes your partner is right but now isn’t. They get a bee in their ear and think the whole world has been plotting against them, led by you. If that’s the case you can also fix that. I’ll show you how. So, this book is written for busy people split into two groups .. those with a relationship wanting an upgrade and those without wanting a re-grade. Two different stories … one common solution. Nobody is going to treat you better than you treat yourself. If you are up yourself thinking you are so much better than your partner or your ex-partner or your expartner’s partner, then, you are going to be up in your head, thinking too much and making it hard to connect with you. That’s called living your life in your head. It also works in the opposite because nobody is going to treat you worse than you treat yourself. So, if you are down on yourself, feeling unworthy, not ready, uncommitted, being all critical and mean, getting all tied up in self-obsessive knots about your yoga or whatever - trying to fix what probably isn’t broken, then your partner or potential partner isn’t really going to enjoy being around. It’s very easy to become self-obsessed. We often take what happened to us in the past and secretly think we don’t want that to happen again. We become over cautious and that, in another language can mean, judgemental. So, lets cut to the chase and create the perfect relationship for you by working on you. 1. You can’t change you 2. You can’t change other people
3. People are attracted to you based on what you do for them 4. You are attracted to people based on what they do for you 5. There’s two sides to everything 6. If you want a relationship to last, don’t focus on the relationship 7. Deal with you - nobody is going to love you more than you…
Great relationships are about common sense wisdom. You need to feel good love inside of you towards people and towards animals and nature and pets and things, because nobody can take that away from you, nobody can fight you, nobody can really disturb you because if you keep love important in your life, you’re going to hold centre. That’s attractive. There’s a lot of turbulence in our lives and people can get really bent out of shape. That’s unattractive. Unreliable and repelling. Turbulence always comes from thinking small. If you worry about the small stuff then the big stuff builds up and then you’ll be AWOL. Absent without leave for a week trying to sort out the stuff that’s accumulated while you’ve been fretting over smaller things. That’s why routine is vital. If you set yourself a daily routine that’s like a “keep it tidy” headspace, small things get sorted and you have the time and energy for the big stuff. Big picture people are always more attractive than small picture people. You will also need to know how to deal with emotional disturbances. Like your partner or someone might download a whole bundle of baggage onto you and you feel totally abused. You don’t have to get bent out of shape because of that. If you do, two messed up people don’t make one good one. You just make things worse. Best to know how to draw lines in the sand, unemotional clarities that simply say, “that’s not acceptable - It’s not my stuff.” That’s how you disconnect from the emotional overload that gets sent your way. Lines in the sand … Of course if the roles are reversed, you’d hope your partner draws an unemotional line in their sand to tell you where to get off. But you’d be better to be a bit more selfreliant and catch yourself before you say or do anything that’s got a negative, nasty or cruel streak to it. Walk away, close the door and take time out, letting your partner know, you’re just doing a little self-processing. This is really important because how can you have a great relationship if you’re always flipping out and people are flipping you out at work or at home or wherever that is? I mean, stuff happens but if you are always up and down and around in
emotional turmoil, it’s really boring and your partner is going to cut you a lot of emotional and love space (lost intimacy). But there’s a need to feel. You might be totally cool emotionally but if that goes to the extent that you are like a robot from Sony, then you’ll be driving your partner to insanity from your seemingly concrete exterior. You and I know that this is just a facade, and you do have feelings, so make sure the good ones come out and across the divide otherwise you’ll be single or being quarrelled on again. People need affection. A lot of disturbance in our attraction to others comes because we don’t know where we’re going and we don’t know what the future holds. If you are 100% dependent on a partner to make those choices, they’re going to dry up and seek love elsewhere. Smothering your partner with “oooh, I don’t know, what would you like to do?” is just going to kill the romance. Be at least 60% independent in your life. Have a life. Have a life separate to your partnership. And if you are single have 60% of a life. If you are single and have 100% of a life, where’s the space for a relationship? You need control, but not control of everything in your life. Control 50% - make sure that 50% is what you call your top priorities. The rest leave space for out of control. If you’re not in control of your top priorities in your life, then that’s a pretty frightening experience both for you and your potential partner, it makes you look like a bit of loser. They’ll be sorry for you for about 10 minutes then, withdraw dependency. That’s really ugly. Don’t let that happen to you. Too often people come home and share what’s driving them nuts at work or in their money life or something. The whole idea they have is to “unload” on a loving partner. Unfortunately, telling a loving partner that your future finances are in question is like telling someone you have genital herpies on the first date. They’ll keep smiling but usually lose interest. And that rejection is going to make you pretty tense and stressed.
Love When your heart is open and you feel good, you feel rock solid, so available. It’s a natural experience for people who are totally absorbed by what they do. So say so. Say to people and your partner as often as you can “I love …. “ (insert tennis, football, work, tough meat, rotten apples) whatever. It doesn’t matter. But if you are talking about how bad the drug problem is, or how bad the traffic was, you are really going to feel creepy. There’s two sides to everything, be an optimist, focus on the good side. That means you can say things like, “I love my computer, and really mean it.” You can say, “I’ve got a new Mac and I really love it,” or “I’ve got a new book by Chris Walker and I really love it” or “I’ve got a cat and I really love my cat” or “gee, I live
near the waterfront and I really love looking out on the ocean.” you can say this to yourself or your partner or your dinner date. Don’t focus on “oh, me oh my, poor me and my life.” and certainly do the world a favour and don’t talk about your ex, your ex’s ex, your ex’s ex ex, or anything. Seriously, get over it or you’ll blow every relationship you have. It’s not the talking about it that’s the worst, it’s the fact that you’re not over it. Love for life is really important because it causes you to be relaxed. It’s an awareness of the goodness of life. People want to be around people who think life is good. Think of yourself as lucky for taking the next breath. And of course, if you’re in a relationship, you need to remind yourself that you have love with your partner. Even if things aren’t perfect, love is there. Just because there are some troubles in your relationship or if it isn’t quite what you want, you can still remind yourself you still have love for that person. Yes, sometimes you love someone but don’t like them. That’s ok, end it, but don’t pretend you don’t love them and won’t love them forever. It’s not romantic. Love is not romantic. Love is love. Romantic is complimentary. No compliments for the ex please. No romance for the ex. The thing that a lot of people misunderstand is that love can’t be exclusive. You can’t “hate those people over there” but “love these people over there.” That’s not love thats infatuation or obsession and resentment. Emotional rhetoric. It’s alienating. If you hear someone saying “I hate that” and then “I love you” your intuition will ping like a submarine depth sounder, “ping, ping, ping” run or torpedo will be the instruction. Everything’s worthy of love, even if you can’t see it right now, it’s worthy of love. The whole world of nature is worthy of love – The love is always there but you might be blind to it. So, trust yourself. Trust that you love life and don’t be waiting for a partner or lover to arrive to cause it to feel like that. This is one of the most important suggestions I’m going to make… Don’t change anything. Just love it.
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You can’t change You! ! Violence against yourself is the opposite to attracting love. When you start judging yourself as being better or worse than other people you build up this sort of inner anger and it stinks. Negative emotions towards somebody else are unhealthy, but toward yourself, it’s toxic. A really relationship killer. Now, I’m not advocating that you run around like Mohammed Ali and shout “I am the greatest” but you need to see yourself in an optimistic way. Even speaking words about your inadequacies or your pain or your missing relationship or missing affection is a sort of self-gossip, this kills the love in your heart. and is a relationship repellant. The Mortein of Relationships. You can’t divide yourself up and say, “this is loveable and this is not.” Or “I’m going over here to make myself more loveable” and “I’m going to leave this other part of me out of my mind so I feel good.” A lot of people do that. They say, “I don’t want to watch the news and I don’t want to listen to this new information and I don’t want to own this part of me.” Like they have an idea about how they want the world to look and unfortunately for them, they have some of the qualities they’d like to see exterminated. My next door neighbour a few years back smiled at everyone on the street and was really sweet, and told us all how she believed in world peace and non violence, she even worked to protect women from violence but when she lost the plot on her daughter, and thought nobody could hear it, you’d think the Hells Angels were in town. She was very single too. And this is hard when you know there’s a part of you that you don’t like and wouldn’t like a partner to see. That’s why you need to love yourself as you are, warts and all. You can’t change you - so why try? You can change what you do, how you do it, when you do it and why you do it. You can change all that. You can change what you think about pink apples or orange pyjamas, but that’s not you. You are many things but underneath all that you have every human quality. Get used to it and embrace it. So, the best definition of good love is to try to like yourself, warts and all. Be happy and celebrate life rather than spend your life trying to work out what you can do to fix yourself.
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You can’t change Other People! Once you get the idea that liking yourself is important, it helps because then you recognise that any attempt to change, fix or mend your partner is going to end in disaster. You might be out to dinner and they are rude to someone and you think to yourself, “I owe it to the world to correct them” but that’s the worst thing you can do. The best is non participation, just be unemotional either way. You can still have love and respect for them even though they damage a dynamic in a dinner date. You can simply ask yourself “where do I act like that?” and you’ll find it in one of the seven areas of your life. For sure. Remind yourself self of what it feels like to be in good love. It’s the same as when you go into nature. You don’t complain that the tree has sticky bark. In nature you can love everything. It’s really strange but there’s nothing in nature, even a dead animal or a vicious tiger that eats an innocent deer, you can see good love going on. You understand nature because it’s in your DNA. So, use that as an example of how to be in a healthy relationship.
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People are attracted to you based on what you can do for them! The key awareness in a relationship is that you are not there for you. You are there to make someone else, feel good. Now if you don’t feel good when you wake up, then it’s nearly impossible to remember why you are in a relationship other than to have someone make you feel good. That’s why many relationships fail. People forget to look after themselves, they don’t “feel good” and as a result, they start depending on the relationship to make them feel good. That’s when things go “pear shaped.” Giving, or generosity in a relationship is not guarantee that you will make a person feel good. Unless your generosity and kindness leads them to a state of inner gratitude, inner humbleness. So, you can give your ass away, you can slave night and day, you can bend over backward for someone but if they don’t feel inner gratitude and inner humbleness for your giving, then it’s worthless to them. This is important. Sometimes we give and think “wow aren’t I amazing, look what I am giving them. Aren’t I just a wonderful lover” but we are giving for the pleasure of giving. That’s really nice but you need to remember that if the other person isn’t thankful, grateful and humble, then, really we’re just making ourselves happy and we need to remember that when they sit up one day and say “you didn’t give me what I wanted” Sometimes we miss the target on giving. We give a lot but it’s not really what our partner wants, it’s what we want. I remember being with a partner and she gave me so much mothering and caring and I didn’t really want mothering and caring, it was smothering and constrictive in that volume. Really, what she wanted from me was fathering, and she thought that’s how she got it. She gave what she valued to get what she valued. It doesn’t work like that. To create attraction in a relationship you have to give someone what makes inner gratitude, inner humbleness in them. So, it’s got to be seriously something they really, really want. Now, we all have short term gratification needs so, sometimes we can give pleasure, but when short term needs are met, it just reveals the real long term needs.
That’s why honeymoons are so great. We naturally want to feed pleasure (short term) to our partner and we naturally fantasise about satisfying each other’s long term needs too. So there’s inner gratitude, inner humbleness. But the honeymoon can soon die out when people forget that the reason their partner was so full of inner gratitude and inner humbleness on the honeymoon was that they were getting their short and long term needs met. People forget that. So when they get home, instead of saying “hey, what do you want” they start adding up a list of “this is what I want you to do for me.” It flips and then inner gratitude, inner humbleness is gone. I live in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. I meet many people who are building or buying a new home around the area. It’s affluent around here and it’s hard for people to hold inner gratitude or inner humbleness. The new renovation or new house construction is often relegated to a necessity, rather than a real privilege. When I get back from Nepal where orphans can be cared for on about $10 a week, I can’t help but see these multimillion dollar investments as amazing privilege. It’s hard to maintain a great relationship with someone who starts to take what they have for granted. Life becomes a continuous list of expectations rather than a humble, thankful state. The new car is a necessity. The new boobs are a necessity. Nothing, it seems creates that essential sense of humility and inner gratitude. It’s all just one expectation after the other. Then I see couples amping up the spend on holidays, or even swinging with other couples trying to get the vitality and attraction back into their life when really, a quick trip to a Nepalese orphanage for a week or two would create the humility to be thankful for the next breath, let alone the next Porsche. When your partner starts to take you for granted then there is no inner gratitude or inner humbleness in them for what you do, no matter how much you comply with their demands. But this problem is self-generated. You can’t blame them for taking you for granted. If you infatuate your partner and think you are so lucky to have them, then they will take you for granted because your infatuation with them reveals that you are taking you for granted. You can only get infatuated with a partner or potential partner if you resent yourself. If you think you aren’t good enough for them at some level. When a guy infatuates a woman for example, or even their potential partner who is still in their head, they are using that relationship to make themselves feel good against a backdrop of self depreciation. It means, in this example, the guy is putting himself down, seeing themselves as super vulnerable with this partner because if they stop being generous, in this relationship, the partner would leave. That’s why people
get taken for granted. They are afraid of losing their partner because they just don’t feel worthy. So you’re really wise to not infatuate your partner or potential partner. To see that you are a beautiful human and nothing is missing in your life. This is the foundation of a great relationship and the lack of it is why relationships fail. Ironic isn’t it that what many people do out of fear of losing a relationship is really what causes them to end. When you have inner gratitude, inner humbleness for yourself you turn up in a relationship thankful, mostly thankful for you, your life, your vision. And from that place you can share your love and generosity, rather than work your arse off to earn it. Sharing love and generosity is different to giving it. Sharing means you have plenty. The key here is to make sure all seven areas of your life are balanced. Most trouble starts in relationships when people get out of balance in one or two areas of life. They might hate their job, or be frightened of their wealth being lost, or be resentful about their loss of social freedom. Whatever the imbalance it ends up torturing the relationship because people bring their imbalances home and into the house and into the space where love was meant to exist and suddenly it’s like a swamp of emotions and regrets, and sadness and exhaustion instead of a love nest. If we have resentment for one or two areas of life that are out of balance then we might try to get the balance back at home, demanding more, hoping for more, wishing for a quiet home because we have a demanding job or wishing for an exciting home because we have a boring job. That’s a disaster. When we get out of balance in one or two areas of life we might start to give too little. We might start withdrawing affection, kindness, gifts, compliments trying to create some sense of gratitude and humility in our partner to appreciate us because we don’t feel appreciation in our work or social life. But you can’t change imbalance in one are of life by messing with the dynamics in another area. It’s just naive. So, here’s the rub: If your partner or the people you meet are ungrateful and not thankful to meet you, to be humble about your generosity, you aren’t going to change that dynamic by playing games with give and take. The real problem is not generosity. The real problem here is when you start giving in order to get something it’s transparent and shallow and you just don’t like yourself for doing it at some level. If you give to take, then it’s really not generosity, it’s tricks and you’ve been there done that and you know it leads to bad choices. It’s manipulation and people can differentiate between what you do out of love and what you do out of manipulation. They even test you sometimes.
The key to attraction is giving people what THEY want. But the key to giving people what they want without getting walked on and have your generosity abused is to come from a place of abundance. If you can create a self-awareness that is based on inner gratitude, inner humbleness for what you’ve got, what you are, what you do, what you give, for where you are going, where you have been, why you are here and the person you are, then, from that, there can be no abuse or taking for granted. Call it spiritual stuff or just plain common sense, but ultimately, you can’t give what you haven’t got, and what people want from you is to feel good, and it’s hard to do good, give good if you don’t feel good in yourself.
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You are attracted to people based on what they do for you! ! All human eyes are turned to the future. Short, medium and long term future. Noise, fear and emotions might make awareness of the short term future stand out more and that’s what we call the “chemistry” between two people. But lurking behind every date, every partner’s orgasm, every BBQ is the question: “Is this relationship going to help me get what I want in the medium and long term?” Those questions are innate. They are welded into your DNA. You don’t have an option. You can be aware of them, or wish not to deal with them, but those questions and the answers to them will impact your libido more than any other topic in a relationship. You might be dating a partner and you say “I’m going to the world sailing champs in London in June” and your partner gets a chance to show their colours. They could say “well, that’s bloody great, what about me when you are gone” or “well, maybe I’ll be here when you get back” and you would deeply ask yourself, “does this added worry about how this ambition of mine increase or decrease my chances of success in the world champs?” The answer to your own question (albeit subconscious) will affect your libido, generosity and thankfulness immediately. And what if their answer was “brilliant, would you like me to come and be support crew?” or “brilliant, is there anything I can do to help.” You’ll be as horny as a cat on a hot tin roof. These micro questions are running around in our head in the car, over dinner, on holidays, while making love. All human eyes are turned to the future and the success or failure of the relationship will depend on how that association works out in every encounter.I know it sounds callous, but it’s human nature. You’d best know your seven visions so you can articulate this process and increase the probability of a sustainable love affair with your partner.
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Sustainability
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Sure, when you meet somebody and feel attracted it easy. Either short-term pleasure or long-term connection makes you feel attracted and engaged. But as time goes on values change, ambitions become fulfilled, the desired results might be different. So the question is “how do you sustain a great quality of relationship?” 1.
Keep expanding the size of your vision and never become complacent in your own growth
2. Treat your relationship as a competition that must win at all cost 3. know your values but don’t impose them on others
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! 1. Keep expanding the size of your vision and never become complacent in your own growth!
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I work with human vision setting all over the world and I have rarely seen anything impact a vision more than a relationship. Many people think it's the opposite. That relationship is impacted by a vision. But the fact that the matter is many people compromise their vision in order to maintain a relationship with someone who has lost their vision. We are extremely empathetic in this way.
! When we lose our vision, it's not purely because something's gone wrong. It's more likely to happen because something's gone right.
! When I met Paul his relationship was in tatters. Paul explained his vision which sounded more like a maintenance programme on his existing life. He had held the vision of being an entrepreneur since the age of five years old and had achieved everything he set out to achieve. Now Paul was faced with a new dilemma, he had it all except, a vision of something greater than he had ever drained off before. As a result Paul had turned toward his relationship to stimulate what normally comes from an inspired vision. He had smothered his partner, become dependent on his partners approval and surrendered his independence and aspiration. Instead of focusing on the problems in his relationship which had occurred from all his dependency, we focused
on rebuilding a vision. The challenge for Paul was that his vision had come naturally to him ever since he was five years old and had seen the hardship of his family from the lack of resources. So now, for the first time in his life Paul had to reach beyond reacting to his own past to create a vision. Such visions can’t be constructed and yet Paul’s only habit was to create a goal list that he could take off, like a bucket list, and go to work on it. But a real vision comes to us not from us and to achieve this Paul had to trust something greater than himself. After some time Paul got his vision for the future and within a few months his relationship strengthened and became romantic again.
! Jenny had the opposite problem. She had built a small business that had gone bankrupt and had as a result given up on her vision to bring her beautiful designs to the world. She taken a job in a florist and was enjoying her work trying to pay off money she’d borrowed from friends to get through the struggle. Jenny’s relationship had also gone at the same time as her business. Her partner just didn’t want the stress and anxiety she bought home during this phase of her life. Now Jenny was looking for a new relationship and was asking my advice as she was finding it quite difficult. The solution for Jenny was not a new relationship but to create a new vision of the future and to let go the past and learn from it. Without a vision Jenny was hoping that a relationship would fulfil her life where her business and ambition had fulfilled her before. This doesn’t work. There are seven areas of life and relationship is only one of them. We resonate at a certain level of vision in the world and usually attract a partner that resonates with the same level. Without a vision Jennie wasn’t resonating at all, she was more desperate than inspired. After we created a vision, Jenny became inspired by the idea of learning from her past and teaching others about business startups. She created a global brand, wrote a book and attracted a beautiful partner into life. The thing he was that she resonated with her vision and so did he.
! Sometimes your partner lacks a vision in their life and you feel obligated to change your vision inspiration or purpose down a gear to suit their emotional reality. You might do this with the idea that this is what will create a beautiful loving home but nothing could be more from the truth. When your partner loses their vision in life it’s time for you to put your pedal to the metal and sustain your own vision while cutting them the space to wallow for a while in their own journey. If you adjust your vision because your partner has lost theirs, eventually they will resent you. And that’s not the outcome you want.
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2. Treat your relationship as a competition that must win at all cost When you up with the one you want the many, when you are with the many you want the one. It’s hard to be satisfied in a relationship because when you are single you wish you had the perfect relationship, and then when you're in a relationship and realise that they are not perfect you wish you are single and going out with the many. The key here is to overcome this crazy cycle by recognising that your relationship is a competition that you must always win. Let me explain: When you look out on the world you see what people want you to see. It is therefore easy to see people who might be better looking, wealthier, smarter, more generous, better lovers, more friendly, more spiritual or more sexy than your partner. Television is the perfect medium to display this. We look at some attractive person on television and think that it’s real. The problem comes when you really do think that it’s real. To sustain the beauty of a relationship this comparison, which is absolutely natural and automatic, must result in your partner winning against all competitors in all areas of life. Simply use nature as a guide. In nature nothing is missing it just changes in form. So when we see somebody who looks better we can say that nothing is missing either in our partner or in that person we are looking at and therefore negate any sense of envy. If that person looks better we can say that our partner looks better but in a different form may be their heart. If that part person we see looks better we can also say that nothing is missing we just can’t see their ugly. It’s really easy to start thinking that there is better out there than what we've got. But the moment you start thinking that you will find evidence to prove it to be true. Really it’s just the illusion of the mind becoming complacent and un-thankful. You don't need that trauma.
3. Know your values but don’t impose them on others You may have heard the advice “know yourself” or “look after yourself” and you may also have asked yourself the question, “what self are they talking about?” Really, when it all boiled down, there is no self. We just make it up out of beliefs, feelings and experiences. It's a more authentic statement to say “follow your values” because if you feel that you are achieving your highest values then you will feel good about “yourself.” If you know your values you know yourself. If you work on your highest values you will feel self-worth. If you work on somebody else’s values you will feel low self worth.
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In a relationship to people typically have different values, most often completely opposite. So how do we live with somebody who has different values to ours without giving up our own values or imposing our values on them? And the simple answer is, you care. The best way for you to get your values met in a relationship is to care about fulfilling your partners values. This is no different to a sales campaign were you present your product that you want to sell to a client in the language of benefits to them not to you. So let’s say you are selling ice cream. It's impossible to sell ice cream to someone unless you know their values. If their values are super health and you start talking about how incredibly great eating dairy and super fat filled delicious chemically riddled ice cream is then you are talking in terms of your values and the benefits to you rather than their values and you won’t sell any ice creams. But if you talk about ice cream as an incredible source of carbohydrate for recuperation after training, a great source of digestible proteins for muscle replenishment and a powerful digestive product for good health then, provided that you are believable and have evidence to back your statements, you will sell ice cream to healthy people. It's the same in a relationship. You want to do whatever it is that helps you fulfil your values. If you come out and just say what you want you are talking in your own values about what you want and your partner will become disengaged. Instead you need to sell your values in the values of your partner. In this way, if you’re top value is your career then you wouldn’t be saying I’m going to work because I love it. You’d be saying I go to work because you love “travel” and I want to do whatever I can to create the opportunity for travel. This skill is really important. In business it is called leadership and in relationship it’s called romance and care.
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Be Very Flexible! Emotions connect us to sensitivity and life, and therefore, they are a positive thing. However, emotions are based on the senses of the body: vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Therefore emotions are, in a sense, very personal judgments, because the eyes, ears, the nose, the mouth and the fingers are really our personal perspective on the world. We think they are telling the truth but it is really only a personal truth. So, all of these judgements are relative and relativity is important because it gives us a sense of identity. The most important thing here is to acknowledge that it isn’t the truth. You can be flexible in life if you go around experiencing emotions but acknowledging their nebulous nature. Instead of thinking “my feelings and expectations are real” it’s wiser to say “my feelings and expectations are flexible and adaptable” Look for the two sides of every coin. It’s an opportunity to remain flexible in life. Flexibility on the outside (emotions and communications) come when inner certainty is strong. Inner certainty comes from a sense that no matter what goes on around you that it’s all good, there’s a good reason for it. It’s not always as easy as it sounds because there are things that come along and make us feel not confident. Those things can make us stiff and resistant. The second part of flexibility is letting go. It’s a is confidence thing. You have to believe and trust that if you let go of what you’ve got, or think, or do that you will be ok. Letting go is so important. If you hold onto your partner like there is no tomorrow, it might feel like so romantic at first but they will react to your lack of confidence and start to push you away. Are they going to have an affair if you let go? Are they going to find a new love if you let go? Are they going to want you if you don't hold onto them? What will happen if you stop controlling them, fixing them, helping them? That’s flexibility. Answering those questions wisely. Flexibility means that if you let go, then the world around you is going to be better. Either they leave and find what they want in someone else or they stay. But either way, your world is better for it. So, there’s a sense of relative calm. This is called confidence.
Remember that people become as you treat them. If you are afraid that your world will not be a better place with whatever happens when you let go, then you are treating yourself as a loser. That means you’ll become as you treat yourself. If you treat your partner like something you can’t live without you are treating them like a possession and they will become as you treat them, boring. If you treat people as the genius they are, no matter how they’ve applied it, then they become the genius. Go out in the world and practice, practice, practice and become a legend at flexibility. Become a learner, always adapting, always adding. Go out there in the world and celebrate what you do, even if it’s not good enough yet. The world is ready for you. It will welcome you and you’ll grow as a result. Practice trusting that nature never moves in straight lines and that a mix of what you want and what is happening will always lead to a better result. If you want to be a great lover, love. Love and learn, fail. learn, love, learn, fail, learn, love. And keep going along those flexible pathways that you find. That’s how you develop flexibility. You learn to love life, not beat it. You know the outcome you want and you learn to adapt and flex about how and when you get there.
! Letting Go Control
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Control in personal relationships comes from being comfortable with the vulnerability of trust. To create a strong relationship it is very important to become comfortable with being vulnerable. Trusting yourself. When we don’t trust ourselves, we start setting boundaries. Can’t do this and can’t do that. But there’s no boundary to protect you from vulnerability. Your laws and rules about preventing your partner from doing things that you don’t like, just encourages them to lie. They love you, and don’t want to hurt you but rules won’t stop them doing things. You’re far wiser in relationships to say, I cause stuff to happen. If you can accept yourself as the cause of all your relationship problems right back to being a child, you can empower yourself to change what happens. And that’s what the book I wrote, Sacred Love, is all about. It is just understanding the five principles that keep couples glued together. And when I say, glued, I really, sincerely mean glued. A couple that are living in sacred love cannot come apart. There’s no way either of them can walk away from it. They might try or they might
pretend, but they can’t walk away from it. That relationship is sacred and it’s just completely magnetised those two people together. But I don’t see too many people really implementing the process, the five steps of sacred love. They take pieces of it, or bits of it and say, this is what I’m doing but it’s the whole package of five steps of sacred love. Finding stillness, which is what we’re talking about. Dealing with appreciation and romance, growing through the challenges, getting some common dreams together and the fifth one is making sure love is a lifestyle.
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Connect to Something Bigger Than You! Connection to something bigger than yourself is the ultimate relationship. If you get that right, your relationship will flow smoothly, and if you are single, you won’t be single for long. Whether it is a God or Nature, or the Universe, it doesn’t matter. Connectedness puts life in a big picture context and makes you available for love. If that connection to something bigger than yourself shrinks then it makes trouble. The more that sense of connection to something bigger than you shrinks, the more parasitic you can become on people around you. An energy sucker. Connection to something bigger than you gives you context for your life and therefore is the essence of healthy relationships. The more expanded your context of connectedness, the more connections you can feel and the less turbulent your relationships will be, even in difficult conditions. The more disconnected we feel, the smaller our ego must become. And with small ego comes hyper sensitivity, and that ugly friend we all know, high maintenance, self obsession. There’s something more universal than that, a connection to nature and the earth. Connection to nature can be to the flowers, to the birds, to the volcanoes, to the water, to the fish, a sense of place that can’t be taken away. We can connect to the power that created those things by connecting through those things. It can’t be diminished by some circumstance. A sense of connection to the earth is a great relationship booster. It’s something that we, from time to time, forget the importance of. When you connect to the earth it’s really kind of like understanding what life is and what you owe your life to. This keeps you plugged in to the source, rather than through a partner. What a magnificent opportunity this is, to witness the beauty of life, celebrate the stars, celebrate the earth, celebrate the water droplets and connect yourself back into the earth.
! A few moments of connectedness, sitting or standing out in nature, celebrating the early morning light, (light is love) in the average life can be transformational for relationships. And sometimes that connection is the first thing to be sacrificed when
people get into relationships so you need to value and protect that ritual, whether you are single or double. Life exists in connectedness, because here the dependency does not exist. That in fact in connectedness, there is life, in that connectedness there is love. Love unconditional and this is the real experience of relationship, of your whole existence connectedness. You may want to change cities, move somewhere else, live in another country, find a new job, get over some issue, change the world, transform a social norm, fight against global warming protect the children, defeat evil, stop the war, feed the hungry, raise awareness and be a good person. We can respect the human need to find a cause, to express a social good and fight against injustice. This is a purpose and a purpose greater than you transcends your relationships. We need connectedness to a purpose and a power greater than ourselves in order to create purity in our intent. What is done from love will become love. Connectedness to, in my example, nature and the universe makes us the loving person we can bring to a relationship.
Daily Connectedness How many times have you found yourself angry and frustrated because someone doesn’t understand you? This reveals a common human issue. We think too much. That just reveals that we need to get outside and reconnect. When we think too much we become what we think. When we connect to a power or purpose greater than ourselves, we think less. Separating ourselves daily from what we think is a magic pill. All you need to do is get outside, open your heart to nature and the sunlight, let it in, and not try to become “good at it.” just connect. This is the raw energy for your relationship and your work. Once you have learned to be “dead still” you can feel the energy of nature going through you. That is the most important relationship you can have. Connection to nature and the light, love and energy of the sun. For me, it bypasses a lot of the mumbo jumbo of religion but remains religious. In a state of connectedness to nature or above, you are in perfect intimacy and this is great practice for your relationship. You can, in nature, let yourself be, without force, and connect. You can do this with your lover too. If we project our need for some sort of connectedness into our relationship and nowhere else, then we’ll become an emotional fruitcake. All our expectations will be false, disappointing. Most people are disappointed with the world because what they lost their real connection to a higher sense of life and are hooked on substitutes like a relationship.
You can bring that connection to nature into your life too. You don’t have to keep running outside all day, although that would be perfect. You can also apply the five universal laws of nature: 1. Balance 2. Harmony 3. Abundance 4. Growth 5. Higher order
! Emotional Connection As you engage in your relationship it is easy to slip into low levels of interaction. To avoid this I recommend selecting a few emotions that are at the top of the leader board for producing good healthy, intimate relationships. They are:
! Gratitude There are two sides to everyone. You know that. When you think there’s just one side you get obsessed and your intuition won’t engage. You’ll hold something back. If you see both sides of someone you can love them, but it’s not romantic. So, you must see the two sides of someone and then complement or focus on the positive. This is gratitude and romance. Presence Turning up inspired in your relationship makes the difference between a topsie turvy tic roc of quarrels and make up sex or good deep intimate trust. All your partner wants from you is that you turn up, 110% interested in them and by them we mean, their top values. The art of presence comes automatically when you balance your thinking and make the other person more important than you. Certainty The outer voice has no certainty, it is never meant to be certain. Emotions, feelings and thoughts are meant to fluctuate. And therefore they are not the foundation from which you can build the future. Certainty is inner wealth and this is a certainty of purpose and values. You can know where you are going, just not always know how you will get there.
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Love Choose an object, which is something precious to you. Feel it, go deep into it and let it go deep into you. It is not for the purpose of achieving pleasure but for the purpose of achieving connection. The moment will come when all other objects have left you, and there is simply one in front of you and then this one will disappear. When you have forgotten all, you and the object will merge. And this is love.
! Nature Connections Out in nature you can learn to become what you see and therefore create the connection. Seeing with your eyes is not good enough, you must learn to feel it. You see a rose, but this is with your eyes, and if your heart is not stilled, you are not feeling it. It is not true seeing is it? While there is a separation between you and the rose, you are seeing only with your eyes. That connection is incomplete. When you see the rose with your eyes, there is no real experience; you are actually recalling a memory, from the past, and this seeing is just recollection. You see it and go “Ahh, that’s a rose”; you intellectualise it and keep moving. Did you really experience anything? Only that experience you just had is the one of the past. Your memory substitutes even the smell, you are just too busy to keep smelling things, you say, “I already smelt a rose” But what about the rose you are looking at now? Just a short glimpse of anything is enough to revive the memory of the past experiences, and simply we pass on thinking, I have seen a rose it is beautiful, but we really haven’t seen this rose. There is no connection. To connect to the rose, you must remain with the rose. See it, with your eyes, and then feel it with your heart. How do you feel? Smell it, touch it, let it become a deep bodily experience. Close your eyes and let the rose touch your whole face. Feel it. Let the eyes and the ears touch it, smell it. Taste it with your mouth. Put it against your heart, be silent with it; give this rose a chance to be itself, give yourself the chance to experience the feeling. Forget everything else, forget the whole world, make the whole world just this rose. If your mind is thinking of other things then your experience of this rose is not real. It will not penetrate deeply. Forget all other roses; do not compare this rose to any other rose, or any other flower. There is no need to say that this is better than any other rose, or this is not as pretty as the rose I saw last week, or this is an Australian rose and that is a Russian rose, they are unnecessary thoughts. Be here with this rose now and experience all it has do offer. There will come a moment when there is no separation and you will say in your heart “I have become a rose, I am a rose” - this is connection.
This is also what happens in love. If you are in love with someone, and you have achieved this connection with nature, you will forget the whole world while you are with them. If you are still remembering the world, then it is not love. When you have forgotten the whole world; only the beloved, the lover remains. In nature, when you have forgotten yourself, then you are connected.
Love Connections Every person can learn to trust this connection with nature. It can make you a power in your day, if not in the world. It can work out your destiny. By having mastery of it, you can become an architect of your own life on earth; you will learn self-reliance. Connection awareness will keep you wholly within the bounds of right dealings with all others, and then you will be able to show a generosity with the things that selfawareness has accumulated, including your relationship.
! When your eyes come to the front of your head they are in attention, when your eyes soften toward the back of your head, they are in connection. One is hard one is soft. One creates tension the other releases it. First try it in selected periods. For one session just be attentive to your breathing. By and by you will be able to change your attention into connection. Then do some simple things, for example, walking; walk attentively with full connection. Focus on just one thing, let connection come from holding that focus. By focus on your connection to your higher powers, you become aware of life force, you become the beauty, you feel it; it is you. This is the key. You feel the heat, the warmth, that’s the clue. If you are cold within, always feeling chilled you have lost the inner glow, the warmth of self-love, the life force has escaped. Then you need to turn the world inside yourself and find the third eye and feel the life force, then inner beauty will come and you will again feel the warmth of inner strength return.
Stay On Top Of Your Game! ! Go to Nature Recognise that the most important relationship you have is with nature, the universe and the creator of it all. The revelation comes to you that every leaf of the tree is like a a page of a sacred scripture. Once you have learned to connect to this picture, then every insect reflects the mystery, the stars reveal the whole story and you become a walking, talking, breathing, living and loving person. A relationship for such a person is cream on the cake, rather than, the cake itself. You still chop wood and carry the water, but it’s different. You seem to stay on top of your game. Great lovers have always known this. If they wanted to understand something, they simply observed it, they didn’t criticise it, they didn’t condemn it, they didn’t reach out for it or avoid it. They just sat in silent observation of it. Go together into a place of beauty and solitude and stop. Stop wanting to stop. Stop wanting to go. Stop trying to connect to each other. Just find stillness. Don’t speak, don’t look into each other’s eyes, don’t try anything. Great composers, artists and inventors have always had the capacity to be alone for extended periods of time. The greater their achievements, the more alone they were. Edison, lived, ate and slept in his workshop laboratory for weeks at a time. Interruptions would bring his mind back to the surface layers, so he would immerse himself in the inspiration of silence for days at a time. It was through this isolation that his subconscious mind could access that great ocean of knowledge. The person who finds connection with nature does not give up material life, nor throw away technology or even stop the quest for self-improvement. This person simply underpins everything they do with an awareness of stillness and love. And you have reached this clear state of realising exactly what you love to do and what you are good at and therefore you bring a certain calmness and integrity to your relationships. This means you have a life that you love independent of the relationship itself and therefore bring something to share rather than something to balance. Being aware that there is a greater plan for your life that waits to unfold in the course of daily life you will begin to become in tune with something greater than yourself. Every incident that comes into your professional and personal life will be an opportunity to celebrate and to unravel the mystery of your life.You will feel that
whatever work you are doing is sacred, completely intended for you. Then, there’s no need to blame the work. No need to come home for balance. No reason not to turn up. The important piece here is not blaming the work or the relationship, but rather understanding how the work you are performing right now can be seen in the context of the bigger picture of your vision/destiny. All relationship beauty is driven by this idea that you have a responsibility to see your life in the context of achieving your vision/ living your destiny. It’s in the doing of things that the wealth exists. A person who can say, “I love doing this” is far more rewarded on the cosmic level than the person who would say “I am doing this job because I’ve got to do it” Even an open heart will close if work is not loved, because healthy thoughts are not being expressed. The artist must paint, the sculptor must sculpt, the doctor must heal. All your love must result in action. When you do what you love and follow this inspiration, your opportunities expand ten fold. That’s not to say that there won’t be tough times, they do happen, but when you do what you love, the challenge is worth it. It’s all in your ability to perceive things exactly as you want.
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22 Rules For Relationships Rule One…Live with Love One day, you look up, and there it is, the most beautiful sight your eyes have ever seen. You are lost, swept away, there is no choice, it happens. In that one brief moment in time you are in love. The most beautiful experience of life and in that moment you are changed forever. Nothing happened to cause it. You fell. When you least expected it, there before your eyes, the eternity opened, you fell into love. Whether it lasts one second, one week or a lifetime this love is precious, a treasure to be absolutely revered. Do it daily but let go the results.
! Rule Two…Be with Love In the whole of the universe, every molecule has a place, a role, a gift. If you can just be thankful for what you have, for the blessing of life itself, to remind yourself of how lucky you are, then your whole life would change in just that one acknowledgement. We complain about love only because we expect more and more. But we forget how lucky we are. Once you see the gift of your life, your heart will open again, your youthfulness will shine, your energy becomes infectious and your health just takes a leap. Music sounds different and life, like a springtime flower, just opens, and opens and opens. Stay humble to the gift and count your blessings. Rule Three…A Partnership with Love Sacred Love means falling in love forever, you’ll see stars and moons and heavens every night you choose, nothing can stop you, nothing can get in your way and your lover will be magnetised, because you will have a purpose to share, greater than the both of you. The Universal Laws of nature, let your arms fold around the heart of your lover, and feel the absolute delight of a love that can last forever. Feel in love forever, like there’s no tomorrow or yesterday or today. Inspired, you let your love become a moonbeam to forever, and let dreams be dreams all day. Nothing external can have
any power over you unless you permit it. Your love is too precious to be sacrificed defending menial emotions, like hate, jealously, and envy. Your life is fragile, to stay open in love, guard it carefully. Only the universe of Nature can create the magnificence of a flower, but any foolish mind can pull it to pieces. Don’t wait for a relationship to blossom in order to feel love or loved. Rule Four…Power your life with Love. You are born to love. Without the power of love, we can only follow our ego and the desires of the world. Make love a priority. Without the centring power of Love recognised by the heart, we suffer fragmentation, dispersion in the multiplicity. To work on transforming the ego can be a tedious and discouraging process. To contain it with laws and codes is temporary and synthetic. But if we bring the ego, the intellect, and the emotions into the boundlessness of the heart, this places them in a truer context. To view them apart from the heart is to view them in a partial or distorted context. Much of our human foolishness is the result of our mind and feelings. Being divorced from our hearts, divorced from our love. An essential practice is to bring the mind down into the heart, to submerge it in the heart space, and therefore to bring reason and heart into unity. Be alone in nature every morning.
! Rule Five…Grow with Love Everyday Grow your love every day. Whenever you make a mistake or feel downed by love, don't look back at it too long. Learn to move it to love. Challenges are life's way of teaching you. Your capacity to love through challenge is inseparable from your capacity to reach the higher heights of love. There is always another challenge, and your downers, when they happen, are just part of your sacred opportunity, given by your creator, for growth. Grow through your challenges. Nobody does to you more than you do to yourself. Never quit. Love is there, never walk away without love in your heart.
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Rule Six...Celebrate Life with Love Grow from life. Search for the balance of good in every adversity and for adversity in every good. Master these universal laws of nature, even this one principle of balance and you will own a precious light, a light that turns any blockage into love, a truth that will guard your commitment to love. Never be right, will you learn things in adversity that you would never have discovered without challenge. There is always a balance, and in finding that balance you thrive and arrive, turned up, ready. Rule Seven...Healing with Love Let your actions speak for your heart, act with love. Be always on guard against the traps of the ego, righteousness, false pride and blame. These can halt your progress. Take a view point from nature, the next time you think you “know best” go to the beach, remove one single grain of sand, look back at the beach and the difference you can see is a correct measure of your importance. Then look up at the stars, and imagine, we are on a planet, going around one sun, in one galaxy with 6 trillion other suns and there are 50 billion known galaxies. Stay relevant but insignificant. Rule Eight...A Heart Filled with Love Never again clutter your days or nights with so much “busi-ness” and unimportant things that you have no time to “be in love” and “live with love”. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived, with money as the only reward, is no cause for celebration. In its purified state the human heart is the hologram of the seen and unseen worlds; it is the part that reflects the whole. The heart is the point at which the individual human being is closest to the Divine. The heart is the centre of our motivation and our knowing, possessing a depth and strength of will that the personality lacks. When we say that the heart has an integrative power, we are not talking in abstract, metaphorical, or merely intellectual terms. The realisation and purification of the heart both opens a doorway to the infinite, and also results in a restructuring of neural pathways, a refinement and reorganisation of our entire nervous system, which allows the fullest expression of our human possibilities. We
can so easily fall into the world of live to work rather than work to live. Time can rush by; we are so busy getting ready to enjoy life, that we are too tired to take advantage of it. To manage our life, for the benefit of love, we must master the power of will. This, in another language, means discipline. No more busy work. No more hiding from love. Leave time, leave space to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!
! Rule Nine...Dream with Love Live your dreams. Do what you love. Relationships start with spontaneous love, they grow through emotion, and they survive because of shared dreams. To know your dreams is the key to a loving relationship. Welcome every morning with enthusiasm for life because today is another step closer to your dreams. Look at today as a gift, a special gift from your Creator, an opportunity to celebrate love with your beloved, to do the work you love, to be in a world of love. Design your day (the night before), to make it a day of love. Be a self-starter, start the day with love. Let your first hour be your hour to set the theme of inspired living and thoughts merged with action that will echo through your entire day. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Wake to inspired living. Nature is with you and therefore the whole universe wants your day to be magnificent. Live it and share it, make yourself indispensable for your partner in fulfilling their dreams. That is the devotion of long-term love.
! Rule Ten...Give with Love Acknowledge that you are the projector, your beloved is the screen. To change how you see the world, change the film, not the screen. The true source of happiness lies within you. Don’t blame or try to change others, it is a waste of time and effort. Love, peace, contentment and joy come from within you. Remember there is no happiness in being right, only blocked love and pious separateness. Reach out, fall in love, drop the barriers, share your gifts, your assets and your love. Smile. Hug. Happiness is infectious, I hope you get some and pass it on.
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Rule Eleven...Live – Love – Life with Love Learn to admire life rather than wanting to change it. Find contentment within yourself that there is really nothing to change. You, your lover, and your extended family are perfect creatures in Natures creation. Remind yourself that there is absolutely nothing to change, only something to love. Build each day on a foundation of pleasant thoughts by always looking for the two sides. There are two sides to everything, simply make a point of focusing on the positive. People become as you treat them. So acknowledge their gifts. Let the negatives take care of themselves. Remind yourself that through the power of thought, you can achieve any dream you choose. Let the dream in your heart be real.
! Rule Twelve...Hold a Mystical Smile with Love Develop the mystical smile. Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or cruel belittlement, but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain cure your depression. Put life in perspective emotion is just a blast from the past; your sorrow is such a mistake of identity. Put that sadness to the wind with a smile at your predicaments. Free your mind to think clearly, become open for the solution that is certain to come. Never take yourself, your arguments, your opinions and your circumstances too seriously. Always look on the bright side of life, de do de do de dum. It’s really never as bad as you think. Your ego might get hurt, but they are cheap. You heart is alive. Live with Spirit.
! Rule Thirteen... Go with Love Surrender to love. Today, and every day, fall in love, again, and again and again. Give more than is expected of you. Expect no reward. The beauty of love will be half won when you learn the secret of putting out more than is expected in all that you do. Make yourself so valuable to your beloved that eventually you will become indispensable. Find their dream and help them live it. Exercise your privilege to support their journey, go the extra mile, and enjoy all the rewards you receive. You deserve them!
! Rule Fourteen...Give with Love Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they needed your approval. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again. There is no greater existence than the life that gives more than it takes.
! ! Rule Fifteen...Tiny Moments with love Aim for the stars in your dreams and purpose. But measure your life in the little things. God is in the details. It’s the little things that count. Never neglect the little things. Be mindful of the small things; that extra effort, that additional few minutes, that soft word of praise or thanks, that delivery of the very best that you can do. Act with loving-kindness. It does not matter what your lover thinks, you must think for yourself, you must do what is beautiful, loving and true, no matter what, eventually, you have to sleep with you. You are special. Act it. Never neglect the little things. Act with love, always.
Rule Sixteen…Begin Each Day with Love Begin each day with your inner work — early is best — and with this to support you, as you move through the day, you will meet each opportunity that presents itself from your own centre. Then you establish and dance with a sense of joy, vitality and enthusiasm for life. With this in place, no activities are work any more: they are an act of love and you find yourself tireless in it because you have all the energy you require for anything. It is a question of where you begin, and of what you understand your real work to be. Try to start out with an intense love of life. then go wherever that love takes you, and do whatever you are called upon to do from there. Rule Seventeen...A Home with Love Always remember, that you work to enjoy the rewards of love. Always honor your hard days work in the very best way, wrapped in the warmth of your beloved. Nurture their love carefully, treasure that gift, and prioritise them over all the rest of life. And know that by this one act, your children get models, not critics. Bring your best side home, take your hat off at the door. Then, even if you have not reached your mark at all else in the world, bringing love to your family, you are the best of success.
! Rule Eighteen...Choose with Love Choose love. Make your day a step, rather than a leap toward your dreams. Whatever you do, do not fill your day with long and difficult projects, or rushing here and rushing there, feeding your ego, getting nothing done well. Create small increments that add and will take you, step by step, toward your rainbow. Life is a process the process is love. Love cannot exist in a frenetic scramble of over work, over reach, and over filled schedules. Write down your daily chores, if you must, but make it easily achievable in a healthy state of mind. Don’t drag chores to tomorrow. Be patient; prioritise your attitude, your thankfulness, you love and your lover. Never allow your day to become so cluttered that you neglect your most important aspect, to love the best you can, to love this day, and rest grateful and satisfied with what you have accomplished.
Rule Nineteen...Romance with Love Romance your beloved. Live this day as if it will be your last together. Remember tomorrow never comes. Forget yesterday's challenges. Be innocent get off the high horse. Ignore all your worries about tomorrow. This is it. Your own Jihad. Give it all you have. Make it the best day of your year. Forget Valentines Day, every day is valentines day. The saddest words you can ever hear “I wish I had my time over again ... I’d do it different” regret. The stupidest people have “do it tomorrow,” on their calendar.. Act like your beloved is the most precious diamond, and if you don’t act now, they’ll melt. Run with it! Today! Now. Don’t be a mourner get out of the corner. Rule Twenty…At Peace with Love Love others, but love yourself also. Go out! - the world is beautiful, adventurous; it is a challenge, it enriches. Don't lose that opportunity! Whenever the world knocks at your door and calls you, go out! Go out fearlessly - there is nothing to lose, there is everything to gain. But don't get lost. Don't go on and on and get lost. Sometimes come back home. Sometimes forget the world- those are the moments of meditation, Each day, if you want to become balanced, you should balance the outer and the inner. They should carry the same weight, so that inside you never become lopsided. This is the meaning when Zen masters say: "Walk in the river, but don't allow the water to touch your feet." "Be in the world, but don't be of the world." "Be in the world but don't allow the world to be in you. When you come home, you come home as if the whole world has disappeared." Rule Twenty-One…Be Free with Love Live with an open heart. Move to love. Accept the diversity of love. Don’t run away, have the courage to change your consciousness around love. . Hold your love for life supreme, and devote your life to it. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it. Your love is too precious to be sacrificed defending menial emotions, like hate, jealously, and envy. Your life is fragile, to stay open in love, guard it carefully. With an open heart we learn not to punish people for who they are. Other people can’t belong to us, no matter how much we love them, our only right is to appreciate them. Don’t allow support or challenge to distract you from doing what
you love, being with who you love and giving what you love. Learn to free others to have their choices, without getting caught. Love is not attachment. Do not react to negativity, ignore it, let it pass you; don’t even hit the ball back. Never accept criticism you didn’t ask for. Opinions are the cheapest commodity on earth. Their stress is not your stress, their fears and doubts are not your doubts. Only the universe of Nature can create the magnificence of a flower, but any foolish mind can pull it to pieces So open hearted living is inspired living. You can be inspired simply by knowing that everything you feel was inside you, already. Someone just bought it out. And at least that makes you honest with yourself.
! Rule Twenty-Two...Compassion with Love Each day count your blessings to be alive and able to love. Although emotion may suggest that life is not always fair, never allow the pains, hurdles, and disappointments of the moment to overwhelm your loving attitude and plans for yourself and your beloved. What you don’t appreciate, depreciates. You can never win when you wear the resentful mask of self-pity, and the bitter taste of accusation. They will certainly frighten away any opportunity for love. Never again hold a critical thought for yourself or your beloved. There is a better way.