Two Halves Do Not Make a Whole (Read Time: 3 min.)

There's a big difference between romance and love. Romance is exhilarating, mysterious, and exciting. It's the coming attractions of love but romance, in and of itself, is NOT love.

Love is who we are.

It's not limited to one specific person or a particular set of feelings. As we are, so love is. In this, who you love is who you CHOOSE to love. Where people get caught up is by confusing how romance makes you feel with who love asks you to be and they are night and day when you compare and contrast the two.

When two people get together, romance says "Here's my better half! Let us join together and become one!" Last time I checked, two halves don't always make a whole. When two broken people get together (believing the romance of two becoming one), they unite through their wounds but cannot heal completely in them.

Why?

Because brokenness cannot be healed by brokenness. Wholeness is the cure and if you find yourself in the arms of someone who's as broken as you are, unity is not possible until each of you reclaims the perfection of who you really are apart from anyone else.

Romance also longs for the fairy tale side of love. When things start to get dull, stale, boring or "hard", romance says "This isn't my Prince Charming. She's not the princess I thought she was" and, before you know it, lines like "I love you but I'm not IN love with you" start to come out.

Huh?

That's a scapegoat way of saying "I'm really not that into you." Romance requires a blowtorch and an endless amount of wood to keep up with it and if there's no love in the mix, who's really going to invest the time to do it? No one...

Love (real love) that's unconditional takes a completely different take on relationships. Love says "I desire you but I don't require you. I see you, the real you and I love the adventure of who that is. That doesn't mean I'm always going to like you but you're worth the effort. I'm worth the effort. I'm putting on the bungee chords and I'm jumping in and so are you. This is going to be one big adventure and no matter what happens, even on the days when I don't like you, I promise to always see you, the real you."

Sounds poetic, doesn't it? Try the everyday work of really doing it and you'll find two things:
1) You have to really choose that person AND they have to choose you.
2) The choice is made daily so commitment is key.

In the long run, love will get you much farther than romance. In the short run, love never has to be devoid of romance.

How does this relate to extraordinary success?

People who choose and stay in relationships filled with unconditional love have more focus, direction and less tress (i.e. energy leaks) than those who don't. They're able to succeed farther faster because they are whole by themselves and complemented (not contradicted) by the person at their side. Do divorced people experience extraordinary success? Of course they do! But if you're divorced (like me), here's one BIG extraordinary success tip:

Choose your next partner wisely.

You are Not Your Parents (Read Time: 2 min.)

Our parents set a precedent of what our lives "should" look like. They are the first individuals we ever hear from the womb, the first we ever see out of it, and the first individuals we define our lives and dreams by. Given that, it's easy to play the victim and blame them for everything.

Blame doesn't work. Blame keeps you stuck in your problems. Blame makes our parents monsters capable of creating our lives in a way that we can't. Does that sound like power? It's not.

The key to dealing with how you were raised is not in pretending that your childhood was rosy and pink if it wasn't. The power of your childhood comes in looking at it and saying to yourself, "I was raised by people who did the best they could with what they had and they were raised by people who did the best they could with what they had and I don't have to live up to my parents expectations for me. I CAN go beyond them!"

That's the truth: You CAN go beyond your parents' expectations (limitations).

You can transform your life in ways they couldn't have ever imagined. In the same way that people who lived in the 1800s couldn't imagine a time when there would be cell phones, laptops and MP3 players, our parents are people who live in a certain space and time. They have their own limiting beliefs to deal with. Their limiting beliefs don't have to become yours UNLESS you choose it...

At the end of the day, you are not your parents. What they taught you can be unlearned. At any moment, you can clean out your mental house and let all that old programming go. Why do so many refuse to do it? Truth be told, they'd rather be stuck and play victim. Blame has its own rewards when you're doing it. By the time people realize that blame offers no long term benefits, years have passed.

Get the lesson now: you are NOT your parents.

It Is Your Movie! (Read Time: 2 min.)

"I know that you see the world with different eyes, with your eyes. You create an entire picture or movie in your mind, and in that picture you are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor or actress. Everyone else is a secondary actor or actress. It is your movie. The way you see that movie is according to the agreements you have made with life. Your point of view is something personal to you. It is no one's truth but yours. Then, if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself. I am the excuse for you to get mad. And you get made because you are afraid, because you are dealing with fear. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will get mad at me. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will hate me. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will be jealous or sad. If you live without fear, if you love, there is no place for any of those emotions."

- Don Miguel Ruiz, "The Four Agreements"

Everyone is living in a life called "my movie." Our experiences are paved by our perception and our perception is based on what we choose to see. Not taking things personally is key to extraordinary success. Why?

What other people do is up to them, not you. What good is it to take another person's actions or words personally when you can't control or decide how they respond to ANYTHING? Your best effort at making them who you'd like them to be is absolutely fruitless and, in many cases, will result in you becoming the villain in their movie.

On other hand, if you love who you are and you accept people for who they are, you won't feel the compulsion to change them or expect them to be any different than who they are showing themselves to be. In fact, you'll embrace whatever they send your way because you'll be confident that, if it's negative, you'll deflect it and if it's positive, you'll accept it. The choice, in this way of living life, is always yours.

When we begin to believe that what other people say and do to us has power OVER us, we begin to live as supporting actors in THEIR movie and not the stars of our own show. You don't have to choose that. In fact, you never have to take on a role you didn't initially accept. All you have to do is love and embrace who you are and live fearlessly from that place. Your life is still YOUR movie. Claim it!