Monday, May 30, 2011

6 Steps to Talk Through Your Problems

In my last article I talked about all those important relationship issues that need to be addressed through the course of a relationship – money, chores, sex, children, work, play… the list goes on and on. Agreeing to spend even a minute bit of time with another person requires agreement, compromise, and understanding of expectations. Committing to spending your life with another person requires any exponentially greater amount of these qualities.


How do you get there?

Communication. Healthy, positive, effective communication focused on working through issues and coming to agreement, even if the agreement is simply to peacefully disagree.

So if your communication isn’t quite healthy, positive, and effective, here are a few tips taken right out of the texts for Counseling 101, Couples 201, and Don’t Drive Your Significant Other Crazy 401 (advanced class).

These are all fairly basic tips that are easy to implement. However, in our modern times, they have seemed to diminish considerably in our interactions with each other. Try these in your next disagreement/argument/discussion.

Turn off the tv, put down the paper, close your laptop, put your phone out of reach. The bottom line here is to put away any distractions and focus intently on what the other person has to say. This goes for your spouse, significant other, coworkers, and even your children. If you are going to take the time to enter into a discussion with someone, do it wholeheartedly.

Eye contact. Let the person know you are paying attention by looking at them – this is considerably easier when you adhere to tip #1.

Listen. Who ever thought one word could be so hard? It is though. We are hard-wired to be selfish, self-centered, and self-serving people; it’s part of our survival mechanisms. But when we enter in to a conversation with another person, it is vital to focus on what they are saying; even when other things pop into our head. Usually, you can expect a full range of thoughts to come into your head, like “what should I get at the grocery store, did the Cubs win, what’s for dinner, I can solve that problem…”; the list goes on, I’m sure. Of course, the big obstacle to listening is thinking about what you are going to say next – a huge communication breaker. The goal here is to shut down that list, or the part of your brain ready to answer back, and to focus intently on what the other person is trying to say to you, WITHOUT thinking about outside issues, or what you want to say next. One simple word, “LISTEN”, but so hard to do.

Minimal Encouragers. These are little cues you give to indicate that you are listening – it helps to make sure you are listening first; but the natural head nods, “uh-huh’s”, and “hmmm’s” will indicate to the other person that you are paying attention. It helps them to keep going in the discussion, and it will help you focus on what they are saying.

Paraphrase for meaning. This is another great way to trick yourself into listening better – make sure you are hearing what the other person is saying by asking; “so you are saying……”, or “what I heard you say is…….”. This may not be natural at first, but it gets easier the more you try it. It will also validate what the person is saying and let them know you really get what they are trying to communicate. One more thing, doing this sarcastically, with a negative tone, or in an angry way will have the exact opposite effect it is intended to have.

Don’t Problem solve – Validate. OK, this is where that “advanced class” comes in. This is probably the toughest but most important part of communicating. Unfortunately, for us men, we seem to be set-up through evolution and industry to think we have to SOLVE every problem put before us. Don’t worry, ladies, you are developing the same tendency. We all need to stop trying to solve each other’s problems, and work harder to validate each other’s thoughts and feelings if we want to improve communication and our relationships.

What does it mean to validate someone else’s feelings or thoughts? It is simply the act of understanding, or showing empathy for how that person feels. You don’t have to agree with them, but just understanding them goes a long way in letting them know you listened. This can be accomplished with several of the tips above, or by simply echoing their feelings as you heard them; “that must have been frustrating”, “that sounds like a really exciting moment,” “wow, you must have been nervous”. These are all examples of how you can validate someone else’s feelings.

The next time you are entering in to an important conversation with a loved one, focus on using these techniques to make the discussion more healthy, productive, and effective. Try hard to hear them, and work to validate their feelings, rather than solve their problems.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Save Your Family from "The Terminator"

Sigh… here we go again. One more high-profile story of infidelity and the havoc it causes in a marriage, in a family, and for the individuals involved. Infidelity is much like addiction in that it doesn’t affect only the individuals involved, but ripples through the lives of the family and community for a considerably longer amount of time than it takes for the act to occur.


It’s devastating.

As a person, I am sad for the people involved. I am sad for the children who are learning unhealthy behaviors and attitudes from unhealthy role models. I am sad for the spouse left behind. I am sad for the spouse who committed the act, and the guilt that will follow them. I am sad for those individuals who will be affected indefinitely in a myriad of ways.

As a man, I’m sick of my peers making bad decisions. We are expected to be the rock on which our family is built, the cornerstone. We are expected to be bastions of morale thinking and doing the ‘right thing’. Decisions like this skew those expectations for everyone. The rest of us have to pick up the slack for your bad decisions, guys.

As a therapist, I am convinced that marriages can avoid these situations with some degree of work and investment. I also know that, should these situations occur, a marriage can heal; but it does take more work and investment.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to share with you some of my favorite resources and concepts for protecting your marriage and family, avoiding infidelity or divorce, and healing from difficult times when they do occur.

The first one may be one of the simplest, but one of the more difficult to take care of – managing expectations.

Misaligned or ‘out-of-whack’ expectations can be the cause of considerable hurt, frustration, and resentment. Whether it’s where you will be going for the holidays, where the money goes, who does the dishes and who mows the long, how to discipline the kids, or how often you engage in intimacy; each topic has the potential to explode into a major disagreement if you are not both on the same page.

Avoiding these disagreements is often as simple as talking about them and coming to an agreement before negative emotions build. But that isn’t always that simple – honestly who wants to talk about dishes of all things? And how many of us are really all that comfortable talking about SEX? Even though sex is a critical part of a healthy relationship, just as critical as money, and who takes care of the bills, it’s not always that easy to discuss.

The fact remains, sex, and all of these topics need to be discussed. As do many more.

If you are able to come to an agreement on important topics in your marriage before they become an “issue”, you are doing yourself, your spouse, and your marriage a great service in avoiding conflict and hurt feelings.

Take some time to open up a discussion on these concepts. If you struggle to talk about them, find a good resource to help you through it.

Next week, I will be writing about having the discussion using the basic foundations of communication. I look forward to hearing how your discussion works out.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Choose Your Race

Can you believe we are almost five whole months in to the year 2011?

It’s been almost five months since we talked about those darned “New Year’s Resolutions” and all the changes to put into our lives as a result of the calendar changing over.

So how are you doing with that?

Have you achieved that goal, have you accomplished that resolution?

Are you looking for something new and exciting to try – a “Mid Year’s Resolution?” Or are you just annoyed that I am even asking the question?

If you are celebrating a success – if you lost the weight, or gave up the cigarettes, or wrote the book, or spent more time with your family, or changed your career, or got the degree, or whatever it is you accomplished; AWESOME!!!! Good for you! Congratulations!!!

If you are annoyed with me for writing about it, or with yourself for not doing it, what do you want to do about it?

There are quite a few tools sitting around my website to help you out with that – and a few more will be available once the website is updated in a few weeks.

But, until then, try this:

Make a decision to change something

Utilize SMALL, incremental steps

Add in some accountability from others

Achieve success.

The equation is that simple. How will you put it in to practice?

As for me, as I write this, I am wrapping up all the hard work and training needed to run a long race. Once you receive this, I will be recovering from that long run, and planning the next outlandish goal for the year.

What about you?

What’s your race this year?

Sunday, May 8, 2011

It's Time to Man Up!

This article could also be called, “What Do You Mean You’re Leaving Me With the Kids?!” Thanks to my wife for inspiring this article by leaving on Friday, and taking the weekend away. Happy (day after) Mother’s Day to her and all the mom’s out there. Thank you for everything you do.


Alright guys, it’s time to step up and man up.

Too many of us our relinquishing our responsibility as “men”, “fathers”, and “husbands” in exchange for video games, beer, hunting, sports, or any other extracurricular activities.

Too many of us are using “Work” as an excuse to avoid being at home, to avoid taking responsibility for our families.

Things need to change; we have to start doing better. Those who are working hard to do the right thing are having a hard time carrying the weight of those who aren’t. It’s making everyone look bad.

This is the game of your life; and only your marriage, your children, your livelihood, and your future weigh in the balance. It’s time to step up and get involved in all these aspects of your life. If you don’t, something else will fill the void you leave in the life of your kids, or in your marriage, or in your future.

I’ve shared a great website here before that covers a myriad of manly topics – www.TheArtofManliness.com has covered date night, top books for men, shaving techniques, workouts, dress codes, and a ton of other topics over the past few months. It has a considerable cache of great manly info, I encourage you to check it out. In this article, I am going to talk about the manly art of…… Spending Time with The Kids!!!!!

If you are spending enough time with them, and those who have an outside few and important opinion (mom) agree, great! Keep it up. If you are not, and you’re not sure what to do, here are a few tips. If you are not sure what “enough” is, I will tell you what I do. I aim for at least an hour every weekday – homework time, coaching time, play time – whatever I can work in to our busy schedules. Then the goal is for us to spend most of the weekend together doing something fun and character building (for them AND me), because that’s what families do more weekends than not. That’s what we signed up for when we had kids.

Teach them something. Every time the oil in the cars gets changed, my daughters help. I’m pretty sure they could change it themselves at this young age. Cleaning the house is a team effort, so it gets done quicker and they learn how to take care of things. Same for cleaning their room – although not as easy to be as active in that part of teaching – we do try to make it a team effort in order to teach. Let’s face it, not many eight year-olds know what it means to “clean up” unless they are taught and it is role modeled for them. Life is full of teaching opportunities. You don’t have to look very hard.

Show them your favorite hobby. Hard work deserves its reward. I’m a huge fan of doing anything outdoors. I appreciate the opportunities to go camping or hiking with friends – we all need time away. But it’s just as much fun to take the family camping, or to take my girls hiking. We just picked up a new GPS unit so that we can do more geocaching together. Whatever your hobby share it with your kids. If you don’t have any hobbies, develop or redevelop some. Check out the fun of geocaching at www.geocaching.com , or you can take a look at the app on your smartphone. Magellan has put out a new series of very basic starter units that you can pick up for a reasonable price. Nothing says “manly” like mixing tech and the outdoors, using our billion dollar satellite system to find piece of Tupperware in the woods.




Coach them. This is right in line with teaching them, but requires a bit more focus and research on our part. Are they in a sport you don’t know much about? Learn it. Do they play your favorite sport? Step up and coach the team – I know most kids leagues are always looking for qualified coaches. Whether you were an Olympic athlete in the sport, or just found out about it, you are qualified to coach because you are a Dad. There are plenty of resources available online or at your library to learn the sport and how to coach it. If you are not able to dedicate the time to a full season of coaching, take the time every weekend to support the team by working with your child in the yard – throw the ball, shoot some hoops, kick the soccer ball, hit the puck around – do something. Be active. Be a part of their interests.

Do something THEY like to do. This is not always easy, but one of the most “manly” things you can do. I can’t tell you how many times of tried to play Polly Pockets or Barbie or My Loving Family. It’s more fun when the gigantic Barbie comes to raid the Polly Pocket village, but that doesn’t always work for my girls. What does work is letting them take the lead, I just get to be a witness to their play, and they like that. We have been able to find some common ground with Legos. Whatever it is your child likes to do, try to be a part of it. It can be rewarding for your, but immensely rewarding for them.

Give her some away time. All of these suggestions have been aimed at this point – Mom needs time away. It doesn’t have to be two weeks in Hawaii, although that might be nice, but it could just be a few hours with you and the kids out of the house, or just letting her get out for a cup of coffee with friends, or even get away for the weekend. Just as we need, and deserve, our evenings or weekends with the guys; mom needs that too. Just as much, you need time with the kids – it’s not always easy, but neither is parenting. The point is that you do it. Start putting the time in, you will get better at it, and it will get easier as you go.

Hopefully you did something nice for mom yesterday. Now, what are you going to do with the kids this week, and next weekend, and the week after that, and during the summer? It’s not just one day. Being a dad is a full time job. It’s more than a full time job. So get to work.

Monday, May 2, 2011

What You MUST Know to Get Through the Month

By now, if you’ve been reading this website fairly regularly, you know I’m a pretty big fan of the Psychology Today magazine. They put out some fairly interesting articles and ideas, even if it IS pop culture psychology – that is to say it’s not ALL firmly research based, although quite a bit of it is. In a way, it challenges you to be a critical consumer of the research they offer. Meaning you (and I) have to think about whether a “1-person case study” is cause enough to overhaul our lifestyle and behavior when a previous decade’s worth of research may indicate the contrary. That idea of being a “critical consumer” of “research” is pretty important in our times of being bombarded with “new and improved” facts, opinions, and research.


I thought might provide for you a quick take on some of the more enlighten bits I read from this month’s issue to see what you might think about using in your life:

There was a fairly graphically entertaining article on optimists and pessimists titled “Optimism, Optimized”. In it, we are told that thinking about, planning for, and expecting “ the worst” is often helpful in educational situations in order to motivate us to study and to not feel too disappointed when our studies don’t pay off. On the other hand, expecting “the best” can often be helpful in the areas of family, romance, and career, as setting high expectations in those areas can lead to self-fulfilling behavior.

I’m a big proponent of working towards being medication free in most mental health situations; but I do recognize the need for the use of psychotropic medication from time to time. There are a few new developments in this area and the treatment of anxiety. Most anti-anxiety medications today treat the issue in a manner that causes most people prolonged periods of sleepiness or just plain unconsciousness. Research is promising for a medication that will help with anxiety based issues like post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and specific phobias that doesn’t leave the patient unconscious. This would prove extremely helpful in helping those struggling with anxiety, and it’s many forms, to be successful in treatment.

Boost your brain with your i-device or smartphone. Here are three cool memory-based games to help stretch your brain. I picked up Memory Matrix for my phone, and I believe it has helped me achieve near-genius levels of intelligence, as well as boosted my self-esteem. You can check out Lumina and Touch Attack for other ‘handy’ memory improvers.

The article Mood Makeup was pretty interesting, even from a male point of view. Although it highlighted three different products, I’m not one to comment on ‘bronzer’ or ‘foaming moisturizer’. Apparently the aforementioned smartphone brain booster has not given me the intelligence to understand such thing. However, the Firmenich’s Smiley Perfume piqued my curiosity. You should know that smell is the strongest sense linked to memory – if for no other reason because your nose and brain are close together and linked pretty tightly. A particular smell from a pleasant time can trigger pleasant thoughts and feelings. This product goes quite a bit deeper into the nasal cavity and incorporates theobromine and phenylethylamine (the same ‘happy chemicals’ found in cocoa beans). So, if you’re feeling down, give it a try.

Of course, for every positive piece of psychology, there’s got to be a little bit of negative – the interview with Simon Critchely, a philosopher in the field of death, may make you run out to buy Firmenich’s secret happy potion… The crux of the article is that contemporary society has put such a negative spin on death that we work hard to avoid it, and therefore struggle to cope with it. Coping with death, embracing it’s inevitability, and recognizing our own mortality are keys to a happier life. What do you think? True or just plain morbid?

The final article I thought would be helpful – The Fab Fourteen – a helpful list of the top 11 foods you should be trying to eat more of. Yes, the article is called Fab Fourteen, but even after reading it three times, I could only find 11; unless you break out all the nuts listed, and then there is 15… What you should be eating more of and why:

Barley – knocks out bad cholesterol

Quinoa – quinoa is a great alternative to rice and has all 9 essential amino acids; even though it has a funny name, it is gaining in popularity and can be found in most grocery stores

Buckwheat – huge in the antioxidants race

Rye – protects against gall stones and is great for fighting hunger

Nuts – almonds, walnuts, pistachios, pecans, and hazelnuts – have “good fat” in them, and protect against cardiovascular problems AND cognitive decline

Black raspberries – lots of fiber and lots of great chemicals that help your brain deal with stress more effectively

Blueberries – more great chemicals that protect against cognitive decline, including Alzheimer’s

Broccoli – mom was right… this is a great detoxifier and just plain good for you

Pomegranates – similar to the positive effects of blueberries, but much more difficult to harvest… have you ever tried to get the fruit out of one of these? It takes quite a bit of work, but is well worth it

Tomatoes – one of the few foods who nutrient value is INCREASED by cooking and processing; great for blood pressure and fighting bad cholesterol

Next time you are grocery shopping, grab more of these, and less of the boxes and bags of processed foods, and you will be well on your way to a healthier you.