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Being a parent is one of the best jobs in the world, but it’s a job that doesn’t pay the bills. In fact, being a parent is expensive. It’s impressive how much money kids actually cost when you figure in things like food, clothing and medical expenses. This is why so many parents have to leave their kids at a daycare while they go to work every morning. While the majority of parents commute to work every day, there are many other parents that have the best of both worlds. These are the work-at-home parents. These individuals are able to stay at home with their children during the day while they work. How cool is that? Being a work-at-home parent is something that many people want to do, but they have no idea how to do it. There are three crucial things required to be a successful work-at-home parent. Have a Good Job: Obviously, if your family depends on your income, you have to have a job that you can do from home that will replace your current stream of income. Therefore, making the decision to become a work-at-home parent is something that you shouldn’t take lightly. You may consider working part-time from home until you’re certain you can make the amount of money you need each month from home. Organization: Work-at-home parents are extremely organized individuals. They know how to balance the responsibilities of taking care of the children during the day and their work. Therefore, you must be able to effectively organize your day in a way that is profitable and still benefits everyone in the house. Self-Motivated: One thing all work-at-home parents have in common is self-motivation. You have to be self-motivated in order to make money from home because there isn’t someone there making sure your work gets done. You need to be honest with yourself here, because if you aren’t easily motivated then working from home won’t work for you.  
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 Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 3:20PM It’s been a while since I posted here last, and I apologize for my absence. I’m back and will be posting more regularly in the coming weeks. No excuses, but I can explain where I’ve been for the past month. I’ve been writing blog posts about Critical Thinking at http://critical-thinkers.com. It’s my “new thing.” One of my latest posts relates to personality type, so I thought I’d share it here as well. I hope you enjoy the post and would love to hear your thoughts about Thinking versus Feeling and Critical Thinking. “As someone who has been a fan of personality type for years and is a certified practitioner for both the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Golden Personality Type Profiler, I am well-acquainted with the general message about personality type. As you should learn in any personality type debrief, no personality type is good or bad. In addition, no personality type is better than another. However, based on studies conducted for theWatson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisalassessment, there is a very important difference between the critical thinking results for someone with a Thinking preference versus a Feeling preference…..”
READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE 
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 1. You will understand yourself better 2. You will learn how to handle your doubts and make your thinking more productive. Sadly, we get used to not talking to our husband or wife. We get used to the idea that our life is just the way it is. Getting used to things is our mind’s way of adapting. It sure beats being continually reminded of how bad things are (what depressed people experience). But, it also keeps us from looking for better ways. Do you think this applies to your husband or wife? Could it apply to you? But, it doesn’t keep the boat from heading into the rapids. If we don’t take action, the boat may well head over the falls. In business, we try to maximize profits, but in relationships, we try to minimize losses. Thus, in business, we take small risks in the hope of a gain. In relationships, we avoid even small risks. We resist change even when change is the only thing that can keep us from going over the falls. or another bitter reminder of what we don’t have, we become determined not to let the situation continue. But, minds that are hardwired to avoid pain and danger don’t cooperate with our new ideas about change. Every time we try to make any change in our lives, we will need to deal with the attempts that our “inner voice” makes to stops us. And, our inner voice always knows what to say. When your husband or wife tries to make changes, he or she also runs into this inner voice somewhere in the process. And whenever there is a relationship problem, it involves both people, doesn’t it? And doesn’t it matter who started the problem? After all, if I didn’t start the problem, then why should I be the one to work on the relationship?” Unfortunately, in relationships with problems, both husband and wife tend to blame each other. It only matters who started things when we are looking for reasons not to work on something. Because doing something good doesn’t really depend on who did something bad. “All it will do is make him/her more upset and then things will be even worse than now.” Or, “What if he decides to leave? What will I do then? I can’t support myself just on my income?” These questions make sense, because they are our thoughts. Our thoughts always make sense to us. The result is inner conflict–A desire for things to change along with inner messages that try to stop us. And your spouse. The key to growth and change is understanding that inner conflict signals an opportunity. Focusing on the opportunity without trying to resolve the conflict (without waiting until you are not afraid) will result in change. You can’t stop an inner conflict by trying to stop being afraid. Another way to think of this is as a first jump from a high diving board. You want to do it, but your scared. The longer you stand at the top of the board, the more scared you become. The inner conflict is the desire to jump along with the fear of jumping. There’s only one way to stop the fear and that is by jumping. Jumping will advance your abilities and your self confidence. When you use your inner conflict as an opportunities to face your fears, your abilities will always improve. Inner voice: “He created the problems, why should I be the one who has to work on things?”
Changing it to more helpful questions: “Regardless of who started the problems, could I benefit from working on them?” “Although I don’t have to work on anything, what are some of the possible benefits if I do?” “How could I learn helpful ways to respond to this situation?” Inner voice: “She created the problems, why should I be the one who has to work on things?”
Changing it to more helpful questions: “What will happen if I don’t work on things? What will be the long term consequences of just waiting for her to change? What will I lose out on later if I don’t take action now?
Inner voice: “He created the problems, why should I be the one who has to work on things?”
Changing it to more helpful questions: “Will waiting for him to change help me get what I want? Or, am I more likely to get what I want by not waiting for him?” Using a benefits-based, fear-based, or desire-based response to our inner voice will clearly point out what we need to do. Everyone experiences inner conflict when they think about changing anything. It’s true for you, your friends, family, and your husband or wife. People who get stuck are the ones who let their inner voice have the last word. We can understand their struggle, and we can choose to respond to this inner struggle like a successful person or as an average person. We can use the success method of asking ourselves good questions instead of just reacting to our fears. Getting to work on answering those good questions will allow us to sidestep our fears. You can use your fears to show you where you can experience your next success. Not by rushing out to meet them, but by learning to uncover the possibilities they are blocking. Every fear is like a magician’s black table cloth pulled over the top of an opportunity. The questions, like coaches use, help you to reveal the opportunity. (If you value this approach, but need a little help with discovering the opportunities your fears are hiding, you can benefit from relationship coaching). At first, the coach will ask you all the important questions that help you to move ahead. Then, you will gradually learn what questions to ask yourself, for any situation in your life. Even if you have never used this method before, using it now could open up doors to wonderful opportunities. 
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 When relationships die, break up happens all by itself. But, if you fix your relationship, then you will be relieved that you didn’t break up. Negative circumstances are best handled with positive actions. If you are doing poorly in school, is a positive action to get extra help or to quit school? If you are running a business and not making a profit, is a positive action to get rid of your business or learn to succeed? If your health is poor, do you jump off a cliff or see a doctor? If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be a hard decision. It’s just that they are at the point where they have tried to make things better and have failed. Now, they think there is no way to make things better. So, they are comparing breaking up to continuing the way they are. Although I believe in the permanency of love, I would never encourage someone just to tough it out in a bad relationship. Life is short and the world does have many opportunities. To watch them go by while you suffer in a bad relationship makes no sense to me. I would also say that quitting school is better than continuing to fail. Quitting your business is better than going bankrupt. But, neither of those options will make you happier. It’s not really easier to quit than to fail. And it’s not really easier to break up than be rejected. They both feel really, really bad. This is a very powerful question. Many people have overcome serious problems to succeed in school. Many sole proprietors and large corporations have gone from red ink to black. And many people who were getting to the point where they couldn’t stand each other fell in love again. With this question, “What do we need to do to make things better?” These truths are hard, as truth often is. The first truth is, that although you may be very mad or very sad, you love your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife. Otherwise this wouldn’t be a struggle for you. The second truth is, your significant other loves you. And for the same reasons. You are both clueless as to what to do and are both sick and tired of your bad feelings, but if you could you want each other badly. As self-serving as that may sound, coming from a relationship coach, it is nevertheless the truth, also. If you don’t know how to succeed in school, someone has to teach you how. In my first year of college, I had many struggles until someone taught me how to take notes, review for tests, write papers, etc. Because what I was doing wasn’t working no matter how hard I tried. Once I learned the academic skills, I didn’t need to struggle, although I still had to work. Running a business is the same thing. You can’t just have a good product, you need to know many facets of the business that get more money coming in than is going out. And when you are in a relationship, you can have a lot of love and patience, but if you don’t know how to talk about important things or work together, then you’ve got to learn before it will get better. Fighting when you are thinking about breaking up just serves one purpose—to create emotional distance so that you feel better about breaking up. You know that fighting, especially at this point, is not going to bring you any closer. The first one won’t cost you anything, so it may be a really good place to start for young people without funds or who are struggling to make ends meet. It’s an ebook that I wrote and a set of relationship skills. All you need to do is give me your email so I can send them to you and I don’t send out spam or anything like that. Here is the link for getting that: http://relationship-coach.org/relationship-workbook-download-request/ I offer a one month low cost trial, so you don’t need to commit to anything. But, it will help you to see what positive options you have for making your relationship better. The good thing about it is that you can do it with or without your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse. That is typical. Don’t be fooled by online counselors who tell you it’s a really bad sign if your boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, or husband don’t want to work with you. Did you ever know your significant other to be ready to do the same things that you want to do, at the same time? Usually, if both the man and the woman are ready to work together it means that one of them has been bothered for a long time waiting for the other one. The reason I am doing this (besides earning an income) is that I believe that love really is forever and that people don’t really want to hurt each other. You may think I’m naïve, but I can be more happy and more successful with this belief than with any other. If you have no hope left, I would be happy to give you a little of mine. coachjack@relationship-coach.org
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How do you create a heart-centered connection with someone close to you? I think the best way to do it is to let the other person see you naked. I don’t mean this in the physical sense, but in the emotional-spiritual sense. As you converse with the other person, talk about your career; then let it go. Talk about your past; then let it go. Talk about your other relationships; then let those go as well. Keep talking and connecting without re-hashing the same subjects. Eventually you’ll come upon a thought that’s uncomfortable for you to explore. This is where you must summon the courage to delve in and share. If there’s an end goal here, it’s to reach the point where you feel so safe with each other, that you can ask absolutely anything and get an emotionally deep and honest answer in response, no matter how embarrassing the questions may seem or how painful the inner wounds are. You become completely naked to each other with nothing left to hide. In practice this involves a bit of a dance. Sometimes you’ll come upon new truths that are too intense or too difficult to face right away. Sometimes you won’t feel very connected to your inner truth, so you won’t be sure what to say. When that happens you can back off a bit and discuss something easier and more mundane for a while, or simply take a break. Then later when you feel ready, you can return to exploring the deeper levels of yourselves once again. As the other person shares herself with you, let her know that she’s unconditionally loved and accepted by you. Don’t judge her or invalidate her experience. Just keep your heart open, and quietly observe. Making yourself vulnerable by sharing truths about yourself in turn makes it easier for the other person to feel accepted by you because you’re giving her the chance to accept you first. Don’t wait — initiate. When in doubt about who should take the next step to reveal something deeply personal, you go first. Prove to life, the universe, and your partner that you’re willing to take a risk and that you’re willing to trust. Magical things will happen when you do that. Emotional risk-taking creates emotional depth. When you open your heart to someone and share the deepest truths about yourself, and they do the same, you gradually strip away layers of falsehood and self-deception, aligning yourself with ever deeper truths. Doing this with someone else creates an amazing sense of connectedness. It’s a life-changing experience to see another human being as she really is and to allow her to see the real you — to see your inner beauty and magnificence reflected back to you in the eyes of another… and to see so much of yourself in her. You are loved.  This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 17th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Courage & Fear, Passion, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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My wife Patty Gates-Firehammer is a love consultant. She’s really good at it! I can’t tell you how often she comes home and says, “I ran into so and so today and she said, oh Patty am I glad to see you, so and so and I haven’t been getting along very well I’m really needing some love consulting.” What I notice is that what all of these situations have in common is is that they are not thinking about love consulting or therapy or anything that might help them, until they get to the point where they can say I have a problem.
Guess what? The problem was there from the very beginning. Disagree with me if you want to, but show me any relationship that has a problem and I can trace that problem back to resistance that existed from day one. Stop and think about that for a moment. Your first reaction might be to think to yourself or even say out loud, Mark, you’re full of crap and you don’t know what you’re talking about. Understandable given that excepting what I have to say on the subject means excepting responsibility for every failed relationship you’ve ever been in. Ouch! No, ouch is what happens when you don’t take responsibility for airing out relationship resistance before it can turn into something that destroys the relationship.
The real problem in relationships is that we want so badly to be in them that we fail to remember that our very tendency as human beings is to avoid confronting the things that challenge us about other people that we want to be intimate with. Why? Because we are desperately afraid to lose the opportunity for that intimacy. Our collective history clearly demonstrates that we ultimately end up getting bit on the ass by the very thing that we knew bothered us from the very beginning. This is because the little thing that bothered us grows into a big thing that destroys the relationship. It’s the big pink elephant that no one ever talks about.
Dr. John Gray is the one gives the four R’s of relationships. You remember him, he wrote Men Are from Mars Women Are from Venus.
Here’s the 4 R’s
- Resistance
- Resentments
- Rejection
- Resignation
Read the book again. There is a lot of value there. And by all means take responsibility for the resistance you feel early on in relationships. Talk about it, laugh about it, keep it light, the Rs’ of relationship only grow in the dark. Shine a little light on your silent perceptions and you will be surprised to find that the very thing you’re in resistance to isn’t even real. But instead turns out to be simply a reflection of something you experienced before with someone else entirely.
If what we really want is intimacy, let’s be clear about what intimacy is. Let’s make it more than a co-mingling of our genitalia and use our language abilities and curiosity to explore, out loud, the possibility that our perception of someone doesn’t match that person’s perception of themselves! If we don’t talk about who we think each other are we don’t have an opportunity to realize where our perceptions are off.
Intimacy = In-to-Me-See
Here’s an interesting exercise:
Sit down with your partner and take turns telling each other who and how you perceive them to be.
I guarantee you’re going to discover, differences. The moment you bring those differences to light, you have an opportunity to change your perceptions to be more in alignment with who the person really is, not just to you think they are.
Everyone should be using relationship tools, Compatikey is ours, and it’s awesome because it allows you to learn something about yourself and others that you can’t see with your eyes. It allows you to reveal whether you are the same or different, and find out whether that sameness or difference is in alignment with how you perceive each other.
Information is always good! There’s every reason to avail yourself of it. There are other tools as well, highly respected tools that are used every day in the corporate environment so that people can see each other more clearly for who they really are. The Myers-Briggs type indicator, the DiSC Assessment and there are many more.
Got relationship problems? Then ask yourself these questions:
- Am I using tools like Compatikey, or Myers-Briggs to understand myself and my partner better?
- Do I reveal to my partner how I perceive them to be?
- Do I ask my partner to tell me how they perceive me?
If you can’t say yes to all three of those, then you are not doing everything you can to ensure the quality and success of your relationship. None of those things are difficult. If you need some help call Patty! 413-626-6219
Check out the post: How to Not Suck at Relationships
Ask, Reflect, Verify, Understand, Accept
Five simple words are the key to getting along in any relationship. The key to Intimacy or In-To-Me-See. It all starts with asking.
Asking: Ask other people how they perceive you and encourage them to ask you how you perceive them.
Reflect: Repeat back in your own words what you heard is their perception of you.
Verify: The other person verifies whether or not you’re reflection of their perception was accurate. It’s important to repeat this step until you agree on it!
Understand: This is the result of verification, you keep reflecting and verifying into your interpretation of their perception is accepted and understood by the other person.
Accept: Acceptance comes naturally when you have successfully gone through the first four steps.
In the acceptance of stage it’s important to consciously acknowledge out loud and to yourself where your perceptions of each other, didn’t match your perceptions of yourselves. Whether you realize it or not this is a huge accomplishment, as a large percentage of people never reconcile where their perceptions of others, which only exists in their mind, are not in alignment with who the other person really is in their own eyes and even in the eyes of others. We’ve all heard the concept irreconcilable differences. This is where they come from, when take our silently held perceptions as the absolute truth about who someone is. When this happens we tend to judge the other person for being wrong rather than adjust our perception and therefore our expectations of them.
I can demonstrate 2 things;
- That there are kinds of differences between people that produce specific and predicable kinds of conflict.
- That these conflicts occur mostly because we aren’t aware of the difference as the underlying cause.
A system that can present to you the information that represents those differences, in effect gives you the power to diminish or eliminate the possible conflict.
Is that something that interests you? If so, you’re above average because the average human being doesn’t demonstrate any interest in that!
If you look at that human behavior that leads us in and out of relationships, two things become clear;
- That as a species were quite consistent in the way we do this. The dating and mating process doesn’t differ very much from one person to the next.
- That as a species, we don’t have a very good track record in terms of relationship success, with 50% divorce rates, and relationship violence at alarming levels.
The definition of insanity, is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome.”
As a species, we’re guilty of that kind of insanity. When it comes to choosing and managing relationships, we do the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different outcome.
I’m sure you can think of someone who you have observed making the same bad choices again and again. It’s called a pattern, and it’s far easier to see someone else’s pattern than our own! That’s why I recommend looking at the pattern and performance history of humanity as a whole, and realize that there has got to be some information that can help us all to increase our rate of success. The group success ratio won’t improve until the individual success ratio does.
There has got to be information that can help us to increase our rate of success. Notice I didn’t say eliminate failure. That’s impossible, and here’s why.
Relationships by their very nature represent uncertainty. We human beings are choice making creatures, and in any given situation there is an infinite number of choices available, though we only tend to see the ones that our experience and our belief systems allow us to see. This is due to the human tendency to most often gravitate toward things in the realm of what is known to us already, but I digress, let’s stick to choice! Choice is the reason why uncertainty is the rule rather than the exception in human relationships. The degree of uncertainty that we experience in any relationship will be directly proportional to the quality of the information that we have about the people in a relationship, including ourselves.
If we don’t except that uncertainty is a universal principal, because of choice, were likely to ask an unanswerable question, and that is:
How can I eliminate failure?
Once we accept that uncertainty is a universal principle in relationships, then we can ask a much more productive question;
How can decrease uncertainty, therefore increase my chance of success?
The answer to that question, is the same answer in any endeavor where the principle of uncertainty exists, like the stock market, business ventures, the weather, figuring out that the world is round and not flat!
INFORMATION!!!
- All relationship science tools represent information, not answers.
- Information is the key to diminishing uncertainty in all endeavors.
We developed and launched Compatikey in January of 2007, and it represents the latest in a long line of relationship understanding tools, that all fall into the field called relationship science. Tools like, the Myers-Briggs type indicator, the DiSC Profile are the best-known. …….and now there is Compatikey.
To learn more about and understand the Compatikey Relationship Mapping system, get the E-Book “Understanding Compatikey”
Here’s a list of other common Relationship Science tools.
Patty Gates called this split 3 months ago. More evidence that Compatikey offers valuable insights about the invisible ingredients of relationships. Read on!!
I knew it was only a matter of time. You’ll see I wrote about them when they were a new couple….3 months ago!
In the “invisible ingredients” they have more differences than similarities.
Joe has a “low tolerence for stress” and he told People ” “Demi and I knew going into our romantic relationship that it may not be an easy one.”
via Patty Gates.
Here’s another gem from my friends Ed and Deb Shapiro, on intimacy.
 Ed and Deb Shapiro Becoming truly intimate with someone isn’t a casual act. It means you’re showing your vulnerable side, and for many, that’s not very easy to do. Ed and Deb Shapiro show you how to open your heart and soul to connect on a deeper level with your partner—while loving yourself too.Intimacy is a hot and often difficult subject. It implies letting someone else get close to you to see all your secrets and hidden places. An intimate relationship means you are willing to let go of your defenses and be seen by another for who you are, including all of your vulnerabilities and weaknesses—into me you see—which can be terrifying.
read more via How to Let Someone See You – Oprah.com.
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