Choosing a Mate Requires Understanding

A couple of signs hang in our home.  They read:

A happy home is where both mates feel they got better than they deserved.

Happiness is being married to your best friend.

Both of us feel that way.  Our relationship began as a friendship and has continued that way.  Both of us feel very fortunate to have each other.  We admire the qualities in each other that we lack in ourselves.

How did you go about making your selection of your mate?  Did you seek advice from parents, magazines, websites, movies, friends?

There is an abundance of questionable advice on “how to attract a mate” these days.  Unfortunately, people are taking the advice, which is often questionable, and the result is failed marriages.  The divorce rate is astounding in our country today.

My advice regarding just one aspect of a relationship: 

♥ Joy comes from being your best self, the wonderful person that you are created to be, and everyone is created wonderfully.  Be your true self!

♥ When you are not happy with yourself, you are seldom happy with others. Successful guidance and advice comes from encouraging a person to develop the strengths and person they have been designed to be. 

♥ When advice that does not take this into consideration is followed (even when the  process achieves the immediately sought result), the end result is unhappiness and disatisfaction.    We should not become someone we are not in order to win the attention of a targeted mate.  We cannot continue the masquerade consistently and remain happy.   

♥ We are the best mate when we are truly the person we were created to be. The best mate for each of us is the mate who appreciates us for who we really are.  

♥ Society has so glorified “coupling” that the reason for it has been lost.  The two are to become one.  Each is not to lose his or her own identity.  But the two temperaments should be so complementary of each other and appreciative of each other’s strengths that they balance each other, thereby creating a completed individual.  Their strengths fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzel.  Perhaps that is why we see so many SJ-NF unions in society.  These two temperaments balance (complement) each other very well. 

♥ The only way to accomplish such a successful mating is for each partner to be truly who each is and to encourage each other in that endeavor.  Be your true self!

♥ It all boils down to one ingredient.  The ingredient that is missing in successful relationships, then, is understanding — of the other person and of ourselves.  With understanding, our goals will be right and our relationships will be right.  There is real joy in understanding.

♥♥♥  Therefore, get understanding.  ♥♥♥ 

Choices, Part 1

Benjamin Franklin did something quite remarkable early in his adult life that made him the great man that he was in history.  I read recently that Franklin noticed that he had difficulty getting along with people; he argued too much, and he had trouble making and keeping friends.  At age 20, keenly aware of what he believed were his own character defects that hindered him, he determined to do something about it. 

He made a choice: He chose to examine his own personality, list what he considered undesirable personality traits, and do something about them.  He then selected 13 virtues he wanted to enhance in his life that he believed would help him become a better person. The virtues he aspired to enhance were:

1. To be temperate, especially in the consumption of food and alcohol.

2. To practice silence and to speak only words that benefit others.

3. To live an orderly life.

4. To resolutely do what ought to be done.

5. To practice frugality.

6. To work diligently and manage time well.

7. To be sincere and honest.

8. To do what is right and just.

9. To be moderate in all things.

10. To practice cleanliness.

11. To remain tranquil and calm, particularly in situations that cannot be avoided.

12. To practice sexual constraint.

13. To learn humility by imitating the figures of Jesus and Socrates.

Though these sound very much like SJ strengths, other temperaments can certainly possess them too.  However, the SJ is often identified by such strengths.

It was not because Benjamin Franklin was an SJ that made him great though.  It was his choices that made him great!  He chose to develop the strengths that he was given at birth and to use them to become a better person and to help his country and his fellow man.

Suppose he had not made the choice to develop this list of strengths.  He would not have become the admired and respected diplomat that he became.  People would not have looked up to him or chosen him to represent them.  France would not have responded to him positively and probably would not have helped the young nation that was emerging.  What effect did his choice for his own life have on the history of America?

Your choices about your life may not affect the world to the extent that Franklin’s did (although they might), but they will certainly affect YOUR life.

Wishing won’t make it so, but your choice can.  How is your life going right now?  Is there anything that needs changing?  I know there are areas in my life that need work.  Recognizing our needs is the first step, just as it was for Ben Franklin.  The next step is the one that will make the difference.  One good decision could change everything. 

The choice is yours.

Discover your strengths.  A great aid to that discovery and to developing your strengths is INNERKINETICS — Your Blueprint to Excellence and Happiness.

They Joy of Controlling!

If you are being controlled, you probably did a double-take at the title here.  I don’t blame you.  You would expect that from an SJ.  We are known for controlling others in a bad way.  When we do this, we are living in our weaknesses.  However, we can also be counted upon to keep the ship steady, create order, and manage the logistics to accomplish goals.  When we use our drive in that way, we are living in our strengths and people are thankful to have us around.

However, it’s control in a different area that I had in mind in the title.  When we’ve been dealt a bad hand in life — birth defects, broken family, alcoholic parents, debilitating disease, unfairly dismissed from work or whatever the bad circumstances in which  we find ourselves — we are still in control! Yes!  We have a choice about how we will respond to our circumstances.  By making that choice, we control the effect our circumstances have on our lives moving forward.

We can choose to blame the circumstances (or whoever caused the circumstances) for our failures and unhappiness, or we can take control of the outcome by simply determining that we will find a way to benefit and overcome.  If we choose to blame the circumstances or the one who caused it, we give control to them and we remain victims, forever subject to those people or circumstances.  We become embittered with negative attitudes toward others and pessimistic about every opportunity that comes our way.  The circumstances or perpetrators are then in control, and we are weak and suffering by our own mistake to allow them that control.

However, when our choice is to leave the bad experience in the past and move forward to new opportunities — new job, further training, new location, adjusted goals to accommodate and make use of our current positioning — we take the reins back into our hands and control what our future will become rather than allowing others to determine it.  We can focus on what we have and what we can obtain through effort, and we will become better and stronger.

The same is true with our weaknesses.  It is not necessary for me to continue in a weakness (like controlling others) just because the drive to control is hardwired in me from birth.  That urge or drive is a positive, good strength when used correctly.  When I concentrate on developing that strength in its positive, productive form, the weakness of overusing it to control others disappears.  I am in control and the drive appears as a strength when I use it for the good and to benefit others.

What is your choice?   I hope you choose to take control!