Assuming radical personal responsibility is like accepting a mantle of spiritual power and wisdom. It elevates you to the understanding that you are not a victim of life, your life and your partnerships don’t happen to you. Your partnerships are a reflection of your own consciousness.
Your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, attitudes and behaviors are creative factors in your life. If you will assume responsibility for the quality of those factors you can also assume responsibility for the results. That means you can have some creative control over the quality of your life and relationships.
You can be the author of your own experience. We call it radical because it is so uncommon in our culture. It represents a paradigm shift, a radical shift in your understanding of how things actually work to create your experience of reality. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
Would you even consider building a house without an architect and a blueprint? You wouldn’t get some wood, nails and a hammer and just start putting something together and hope it turned into a house you would want to live in, would you? People do the equivalent with their partnerships all the time.
They “believe” it will work out because it just “feels” right. Most people leave the success of their most important relationships up to chance and luck, in the hope that it will turn out. Too many times it doesn’t and then they are left wondering, “What did I do wrong?”
It can be a sobering realization when you see that your love and/or good intentions alone are not enough to guarantee success in your partnerships. But it can also be a relief when you discover what does guarantee success and fulfillment. The additional components are education and skill – education about what it takes to have relationships succeed, and skill in standard practices of success. Those are things that anyone can learn if they are sufficiently motivated. Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
The second key to powerful partnerships is having a working knowledge of the five stages of relationship.
The five stages are:
1. Attraction
2. Power Struggle
3. Cooperation
4. Synergy
5. Completion
The most problematic stages for most people are Power Struggle and Completion. People often ask us if the Power Struggle stage is necessary. Who wouldn’t want to avoid power struggle? People don’t exactly jump up and down with excitement when they enter that stage, like they might in the attraction stage! Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
Partnerships are intentional relationships between two or more people who want to create a future together. That future could be anything from a life-long marriage to a business partnership to a short-term project.
We’ve been coaching all kinds of people in consciously creating the kind of relationships they truly want for over 30 years. All too often we see people settle for less than what they really want, unnecessarily. We understand, because that’s what we used to do, too. That is, until we learned the five keys to creating lasting, fulfilling relationships.
People are always asking us, what’s the secret to our long-standing romantic, professional and creative partnership? It seems that being madly in love with the same person for 30+ years is pretty unusual. Especially when so many people are settling for a barely “better than bad” relationship! Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
Daniel J. Boorstin, PhD – Author, Historian, Attorney
Unlike learning to drive a car, which you were not born knowing how to do, relationship success seems like it should just come naturally. After all, you were born into relationship and were raised in relationships. You’ve been in relationships of one kind or another your entire life. What could be more natural?
Unfortunately, what comes naturally to many people is not always the wisest choice. For most of us our relationships school was watching how the grownups did it. We modeled our parents for good or ill and our childhood modeling is a force to be reckoned with if we choose to learn to consciously create our own version of happily ever after.
Some of you may not know we still have a private practice. We’ve had a private practice for 30 years and it’s still one of the most satisfying parts of our professional life together. We work with young couples just starting out in life who want to learn what it takes to create a fulfilling relationship. And we work with couples in trouble who have tried everything, and yet the same old problems keep recycling themselves with slight variations.
Continue reading »
written by Paul and Layne
\\ tags: coaching, conscious incompetence, growth, learning, Relationships, unconscious incompetence
Last Friday we had a great conversation with Denise Griffitts during her Blog Talk Radio Show, Your Partner In Success, about The Care and Feeding of Virtual Relationships .
We talked about how to avoid common pitfalls that can damage valued relationships in the “virtual world” and how to make sure you take extra care to keep them running smoothly and harmoniously.
In addition to being a virtual assistant industry expert, Denise is also a professional web developer (she did a great job creating our new site and blog). If you work on the Internet with clients, students, VAs or colleagues, we think you’ll find our conversation helpful in creating more joyful and successful virtual relationships, whether personal or professional.
Enjoy! And let us know your thoughts about the conversation.
written by Paul Cutright
This is Thanksgiving week in the US and it is just about our favorite holiday because it is a time when the entire country pays attention to something we endeavor to make a daily habit. The attitude of gratitude is something that requires cultivation and is an essential part of consciously creating the life of our dreams and visions.
Something we are always grateful for is the stream of acknowledgment and appreciation we receive almost on a daily basis from our students and clients. It is a balm to our souls and lets us know that we are fulfilling our mission to help transform the way the world relates. It inspires us to keep going and to keep giving and sharing the incredible gifts with which we have been blessed for over three decades.
Recently, we received an extraordinary e-mail from one of our subscribers. It took us aback in that the kind of feedback it contained is something we might expect from our clients and students because of our close and personal interaction with them. But, this helped us to understand that we never know how our expressions in the world, even the written word, might impact others.
We share it with you here, with permission:
Continue reading »
written by Paul Cutright
\\ tags: giving, gratitude, receiving, sharing, Thanksgiving
The evolutionary edge for humanity is sharing power. As a species we are gradually moving from using our power in self-centered adversarial ways to sharing our collective power for the mutual benefit of everyone concerned. We are shifting form a paradigm characterized by me or them to me and them paradigm. We are just beginning to tap into the power of co-creation.
It’s going to take more than good intentions for us to pull this one off. We are all going to have to learn to think differently, make new distinctions and include new practices in our business-as-usual routines.
We offer you the 5 C’s of co-creation to help you create a map for your exploration of this new and uncharted territory.
The 5 C’s are commitment, communication, cooperation, collaboration and coordination. If you are intending to create a future with one or more people it’s a good idea to deep the 5 C’s in mind and to check in with one another periodically to see if you are taking them into consideration as you progress.
Continue reading »
written by Paul Cutright
When I was leading seminars and workshops at the beginning of my career in the mid ’70′s I would frequently ask participants to indicate by a show of hands how many were familiar with the notion that our thoughts are creative. Usually no one would raise their hands. And if there were hands raised, they were very few.
Fortunately, many more people have been exposed to that idea simply due to the proliferation of books, audio programs, seminars and workshops that teach that idea. The latest to come along and reach extremely wide exposure is the movie The Secret. Recently Oprah did two shows on the movie and had some of the "stars" of the movie on her show. I read that these two shows had the most viewers of any of her broadcasts.
What The Secret teaches is the very basic principle that our thoughts are creative. That is, what we think about, visualize and dwell upon will come to us through the Law of Attraction.
That’s the theory, anyway.
In practice it isn’t quite that simple. If it was many more of us would be healthy, beautiful, handsome, slim, loved and wealthy – and world peace would have long ago broken out! You see, there is some very crucial information missing from The Secret.
Continue reading »
written by Paul Cutright
I’ve been thinking a lot about my birthday next week. I’ll be 60. Sometimes I wonder how that happened. Of course, I know how it happened, but I wonder anyway. I mean, it seems like I was just 35 or 40 not that long ago. There was a time when 60 seemed old, but I do not feel old and I don’t think I look all that old!
I remember my mother used to say that the older you get the faster time seems to go. And it’s true in relative terms. One year for a five year old is a long time because it represents 20% of the child’s entire life. One year for a fifty year old is not that long because it represents only 2% of that person’s life.
A few years ago when we lived in San Diego I had a series of medical tests that measure biological age according to certain markers. One part of the test involved something like an MRI in which my whole body was put inside a machine that took images of the entire inside of my body. The results were that across all the measured markers my biological age ranged from 29 to 38. Not bad for my mid-fifties, I thought. My doctor thought so, too.
I haven’t picked up any bad habits since then, so I expect I’m still pretty much in that same range. So much for my body.
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written by Paul Cutright
