Ken Donaldson: Get Smarter and Raise Your Relational Intelligence
You’ve seen the obvious trends: Increased numbers of divorces, more frequent domestic violence and an overall decrease in relationship intelligence.
We’re becoming relationship dummies.
It’s time to get smart and raise your Relational Intelligence (RQ)!
But how do you raise your RQ?
Let’s start by understanding three components of a highly intelligent relationship culture and what it takes to make healthy relationships:
First, let’s all learn how to effectively deal with conflict and differences.
Second, let’s practice commitment and apply commitment actions to make relationships last.
Third, let’s all be good relationship role models for our children and for future generations.
When we do that, we begin to break the dysfunctional cycle of divorce and domestic violence!
Additionally, it’s wise to know the healthy stages of the relationship continuum. Yes, relationships grow and develop through stages and if you don’t know the stages, then you’re bound to get lost and create relationship havoc for yourself and others.
It’s also worthwhile to know what the most common divorce predictors and indicators of relationship failure are. Always good to know what the early warning signs are!
Perhaps the biggest piece of relationship intelligence is knowing how to effectively communicate, especially with emotionally charged issues.
This is commonly referred to as the “intentional dialogue” and it has very specific techniques that help the people in the conversation stay in the conversation and manage the emotional state of the conversation.
As odd as it may sound, it’s also wise to create a proactive “Relationship Success Plan.” Actually, this only sounds odd because most people don’t do it. Always best to do this before you’re in a relationship, but is equally as valuable to create once you are in a relationship.
When you apply new methods of creating positive rituals in relationships, you also increase your RQ.
And when you understand how to increase positive energy in your relationships, your RQ is raised as well.
It’s time for us to realize that relationship education is no longer an option…it’s mandatory. Reading, writing and arithmetic are not going to prevent divorce, domestic violence or depression. We need life skills training that targets confidence building, self esteem enhancement and basic conflict resolution skills. This is the start to creating healthier individuals who can then create healthier relationships.
It’s time to create relationship education that will change our relationship priorities…that will make us relationally smarter….and raise our RQ!
I invite you to do something to help break these patterns and create a happy, healthy and more harmonious legacy for our future generations.
Go ahead…I dare you!
And Marry YourSelf First!
Coach Ken Donaldson: Healthy, Happy and Lasting Relationship Secrets Uncovered
Whether you’re single, in a relationship or perhaps coming out of a relationship, it’s always good to know the primary relationship building blocks…right?!!
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with and/or interview thousands of people and ask them about their relationships.
I’ve noticed some trends in the happier, healthier and longer lasting relationships: The individuals in those relationships have some very clear traits and behaviors that separated them from the rest.
Want to know what they are?
Here you go:
The 12 Steps to Proactively Creating a Divorce-Proof Marriage
1.) Know yourself, trust yourself and like yourself first!
• Define your Life Purpose
• Discern and live by your Values and Priorities
• Create your Life Vision and Life Mission Statement
• Develop a Legacy that will live forever
2.) Create a Balanced Lifestyle
• Set Boundaries and eliminate energy drains
• Create a proactive Self Maintenance program
• Evaluate and Inventory your lifestyle weekly
3.) Surround yourself with Supportive Networks and Communities
• Seek out like-minded and like-valued people
• Create Accountability agreements with others
• Avoid negative situations and environments
4.) Know your Requirements and Needs
• Create and live by your “Deal Makers” and “Deal Breakers”
• Make direct requests to get your needs met
• Always be true to yourself
5.) Take your work in life seriously, but take life lightly
• Practice being flexible, fluid, and accepting
• Avoid trying to “push the river”
• Express your passion in life with the utmost of passion
6.) Understand the healthy romantic relationship developmental process
• Create the criteria for your Life Partner
• Develop “Screening” and “Testing” strategies
• Use your support system for feedback and input
7.) Define your personal Spirituality
• Discover and walk your Spiritual Path
• Practice daily acts to activate your “Highest Self”
• Accept life on life’s terms
8.) Be perfectly imperfect
• Know your character challenges and work to strengthen those areas
• Accept all your errors, mis-takes and failures
• Practice non-judgment of yourself and all others
9.) Live from Abundance
• Practice daily acts of ‘Random Kindness”
• Develop a “Pay it Forward” system in your life
• Create an affirming, fear-less inner dialogue
10.) Be an Excellent Communicator
• Practice Active Listening as often as possible
• Commit to creating a “Win-Win” outcome with others
• Learn to process emotions, conflict and disagreements
11.) Get out of your comfort zone
• Learn to accept all your uncomfortable feelings and emotions
• Practice deliberate daily acts of new behavior
• Celebrate discomfort as healthy growth and development
12.) Consciously Breathe and Smile
• Learn to be Silly (use a clown nose if you need too!!)
• Develop Breathing Exercises to enhance your Mind, Body, Heart and Soul
• Smile until you are happy
And if you like this, you’re going to love the workshop this Saturday:
Love YourSelf Before You Love Again
Saturday, November 13th, 9 A.M. – 5 P.M.
Cost: $27 if prepaid, $37 at the door (and includes lunch!!)
FAMILY RESOURCES
5180 62nd Avenue North
Pinellas Park, FL 33781.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER OR CALL 866.600.6064.
Relationship Counselor Ken Donaldson: Is Divorce Contagious?
My friends at Fox News 13 Good Day Tampa Bay wanted to know my thoughts about this.
What do you think?
Leave a comment below.
Today is THE day: Marry YourSelf First!
Ken Donaldson Asks: Was it poor work life balance that caused Al and Tipper Gore to separate?
Are You Prioritizing Your Love Life?
We’ll probably never know what has driven Al and Tipper Gore to separate, and out of respect and dignity, we never should. But it does invite a curiosity, and an interesting case study, regarding work life balance and its impact on your core relationships (marriage, life partnerships, etc.).
One of THE most significant parts of work life balance would be your primary, or core, relationships. These relationships are your primary support in life; THE person you can go to to discuss anything.
THE person you can go to in your most desperate times of need.
THE person you can go to to celebrate your wildest dreams.
THE person you can go to to share your most intense fears.
This is true intimacy and is often referred to as the “in-to-me-see” of the relationship!
But if you don’t take care of that relationship, cherish it, respect it, and put it at the top of your personal totem pole of life, then it becomes vulnerable to stagnation, mediocrity, strife and unnecessary breakdown.
It really comes down to priorities: We may never know Al and Tipper Gore’s priorities, but here are 7 core questions for you to ask yourself regarding your work life balance as it applies to your core relationship:
1.) Do you check in with each other regularly and share what’s REALLY going on? Not just the day-to-day superficial stuff, but the core needs, wants, desires and requests.
2.) Do you put time and energy into the relationship on a REGULAR basis? This means truly making the relationship a priority. No auto-pilot here. Conscious and proactive choices to put the relationship first whenever possible!
3.) Are you still dating regardless of how many years you’ve been together? Once a week, or more, is best.
4.) Are you able to discuss, using your best communciation skills, the toughest issues and dynamics with a level of respect, the goal of understanding and the ability to accept the differences of each other?
5.) Do you “speak your partner’s language” in that you know what it is that truly lights them up, gets into their heart and soul and enables them to feel truly extraordinary? Do you do that every day in every way?
6.) If you have children, do you and your partner work as a unified team with your children and also balance between being parents and being partners, remembering that your relationship if the foundation for the whole family unit?
7.) Whatever your passion is in your world of work, do you have a greater passion for your relationship? And if not, will you commit to find that passion because without that it’s like forgetting to put the intimacy logs on the bonfire of love and you’ll then find yourself with only smoldering ashes, or even less?
Again, we will never know what Al and Tipper Gore have gone through, but this is an ideal time for you to check in with your core relationship and honestly assess what your work life balance is and how it’s impacting your relationship.
If it’s not where you want it to be, it may be time for you to seek out a relationship counselor who can help you get back on track to have a great life, and fulfilling career and a most passionate relationship with your life partner!
“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke
And Marry YourSelf First Everyday!
Feel Free To Leave a Comment or Two…
Marry YourSelf First: Depression, Addiction, Divorce…
I had a client say something very interesting to me last week…
she suggested that because I was a mental health counselor, I,
therefore, have minimal issues or challenges in my life.
Ha! I wish!
I shy away from sharing much of my personal story with my clients,
as that is all part of having, and demonstrating, healthy boundaries.
But I felt inclined to share the following with her…and now, with you…
I shared with her my early life challenges with addiction to drugs and alcohol,
the three drug-related arrests by age 18, my 18 months of treatment,
and the “mac-daddy”, the relapse with cocaine and methamphetamine.
Then my spiritual awakening at 29 after over 40 different jobs,
my marriage, my “calling” to go to college and become a therapist,
my being “THE” self-proclaimed relationship expert,
followed by the next breakdown: The divorce!
Then the fall into depression and the battle with it over the
next 15+ years.
I shared this all with her to convey one message: Yes…
I’m human too and I’m NOT beyond any set of circumstances
that occur with my clients…or anyone else, for that matter.
BUT…through all those trials and tribulations,
I have learned valuable lessons…many of them.
I’d like to share a few of them with you now…
Everything passes…Sunshine always follows the cloudiest of days.
I choose to focus on the future sunshine, not the past clouds.
I have a choice of my attitude regardless of outside circumstances.
I choose the positive, hopeful and optimistic path.
The bigger the challenge, the bigger the opportunity.
I look for opportunities.
The more uncomfortable something is, the more I can grow from it.
I commit to growth.
I’m either living or I’m dying…there is no neutral.
I choose living every time.
And the biggest and more wonderful lesson is this:
No matter how far down or how hard I might fall, I can always
get back up and it doesn’t have to be pretty.
And with each fall or stumble or fumble, I learn something
that I’ll inevitability be able to pass on to someone else or,
better yet, because of my poor choices or bad experiences,
I now have an empathy with another who has a similar
challenge and that empathy, that connection,
has tremendous healing power.
Yes…I can turn every bad, negative, hurtful wound inside-out
and grow a garden…after all, manure is great fertilizer!
These are sacred wounds and I am the wounded healer…
and for that I have no shame.
Rather, I have gratitude that I am able today to have the ability
to connect, help and heal others because of all my varied
life experiences.
The good…the bad…the ugly…and the beautiful.
And the same goes for you….
Marry YourSelf First! Audio
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