This is a mid-week-pick-me-up. Getting started off on the right foot is very important as you walk down this 90-day path of learning.

Are you interesTED in others or do you prefer to be interesTING for others?

Here is your Agenda for the week:

• Watch the Video.
• Read the report on Ted & Ting Level 1.
• Practice what you learn.

There are broken hearts all over the world as a result of children making harmful decisions. Parents who blame themselves are often overwhelmed with sorrow and shame and sadly share their misery with others.

Since the beginning of my cognitive reasoning skills, I’ve questioned the cause of children making bad decisions. This is not a discussion that addresses why bad things happen to good people. Rather, an inquisition into why a particular child, raised in an environment of love and Christian values, would venture off the strait and narrow, and into darkened pathways.

The perceived anomaly is that the hoped-for prodigal has many siblings happily following the teachings of their parents. Why then do children make poor decisions, when all indicators are that the child’s environment was conducive to leading a life of proper behavior and social norms?

Some chalk it up to a DNA transfer at the time of conception and write it off as predestination. Certainly many of each child’s idiosyncrasies explain part of the problem, however writing off delinquent behavior wholly to nature leaves a vacuous feeling within my heart and a stupor of thought in my mind.

My current understanding of this paradox lies within a statement by W. Edwards Deming, the man who helped rebuild Japan after WW2. He said:

“94 percent of all failure is a systems malfunction.”

Within this powerful phrase is found hope for parents who struggle with raising children in a world that has lost her soul and moral compass. Using Deming’s statistic, there is a six percent chance that the wayward path taken by our misguided children is a direct result of mom and dad.

Be careful not to read into this statement an exoneration of parental behavior. What this means is that the systems used by mom and dad need to be addressed as both the culprit and the potential solution.

A system is like an employee. If the employee brings about good fruit, all are happy. However, if the employee produces bad fruit, the best recourse is to retrain or to eliminate the employee.

So it is with how we raise our children. Each child is individual and each child requires a unique system of rearing. Too often have I heard the explanation “I raised all of my children the same,” as a justification of why one child went astray.

Each child has an innate desire to be loved and numbered with others. The single most important ingredient in your system for the future is recognizing that you are the change agent. The 2nd most important is the desire to change.

Love is not the key, it is the starting position. The end result is intimacy and the catalyst to success is trust.

Betty and Ben married young and quickly had a baby. Betty never seemed to get along with her in-laws. Ben teased Betty that his in-laws were better than hers. It was funny to a point, but it got old.

The early years of marriage were difficult and the harsh criticisms by Ben’s folks made for emotional family visits. Betty dreaded seeing them. Ben’s parents constantly gave constructive criticism and couldn’t understand why Betty wasn’t receptive.

They reminded her on a regular basis how much easier she has it compared to what they endured in their earlier years. They usually combined their chest thumping by sprinkling subtle hints of improvement on the side to maintain their superior positions.

The in-laws were intrusive, critical, agreement-seeking missiles, who had an addictive habit of always being right. Their way of seeing life was the only way to see life. “After all, weren’t we dubbed The Great Generation? There was a reason ya know,” they would often quip.

Betty tried everything she could think of to combat the feelings she had about her in-laws. She tried being overly nice and friendly. She tried complaining and once even threatened Ben. Whining didn’t work either. In fact, nothing Betty tried worked, but true to human nature, she kept trying her failed strategies as though one day, something would change.

Betty sought help and was coached to write down everything that didn’t work. Then she was challenged to stop doing every failed strategy. In other words, Betty was held accountable for not doing what didn’t work. She soon realized how upset she became when her strategies didn’t work and she would blame her husband and her in-laws even more.

When Betty followed the system of eliminating failed strategies from her behavior, she discovered different strategies. These strategies contained concepts such as let it go, forgive them, and relax. She was now free to focus on the practice of forgiveness and give herself permission to be happy again.

With time, Betty soon found new boundaries in her life as self-respect slowly returned into her life. She learned that you will never receive respect from another person until you learn self-respect. Betty was adept at the skill of learned helplessness and transformed into a doormat whenever Ben’s parents were around.

Without learning to replace her bad habit with a different habit, Ben and Betty’s children will be susceptible to the same learned trait in their adult lives.

Learning new skills is not usually found in self-help books. Such products focus on WHAT to do. Learning skills to work with and the principles that support them will change behavior much faster than discussing or studying behavior.

Clarity is power. Developing the skill to gain clarity in communicating is like printing money in business. In a family setting it’s like ordering food at a restaurant: I’ll take the ‘happiness‘ special tonight and my wife will take a side plate of ‘cooperation.’

The primary cause of contention, anger, getting offended, giving offense, misbehavior, lack of sales, interdepartmental friction, and staffing turnover is a lack of understanding. And a lack of understanding is the root cause for a lack of trust and respect.

There are not multiple communication methods to be mastered: one for work, one for home, one for engineers and nerds, and another for jocks and blonds. Believing you must communicate differently for each walk of life is a recipe for failure.

Trust establishes a foundation for communicating with anybody in any culture and in any business. The root cause for failure is a lack of clarity, which means trust and respect are not present.

There exists with each human a space that surrounds him or her. Picture an invisible bubble around you. Some bubbles are larger than others. The content of that bubble dictates your communication capability and language.

Is that space safe for others? Is it inviting and neutral? Do others have permission to voice their honest opinions? Can they even voice an opinion? Or is that space filled with judging, persuasion, anger, coercion, and manipulation? Do people fear entering your space or are they welcomed with open arms?

Phil

Years ago Phil confessed a severe indiscretion to his wife. Their marriage went into a nosedive of accusation, anger, rage, silence, violence, discord, and every emotion conceivable. Trust and respect utterly disappeared from the radar screen of marriage.

Then one day Phil discovered the concept of the bubble. Phil shared how his hope for happiness revolved around a support group of men who shared a common bond and when he entered the classroom with these men, he felt welcomed, safe, buoyed, and ultimate trust. Each man in the room offered strength to the relationship.

Phil’s realization and insight hit when he was asked to describe the space that exists between him and his bride of almost 30 years? After a week of internal turmoil and fighting with his thoughts, he admitted that the space he creates for his wife is not equal to the one he shares with his support friends.

The road to healing within his marriage is the same for any of us, it is the development of trust and respect within our own bubble. Trust thrives within the boundaries of clarity. Ambiguity, deception, persuasion, manipulation, hidden agendas, lack of disclosure, and coercion are trustbusters.

Whether in sales, management, business, friendship, courtship, marriage, or parenting, the same exact process for success and failure exist.  Trust is the currency, clarity is the power, and effective communication is the skill required for the solution.

1. Spend it
2. Save it
3. Invest it

The media overflows with investment advice and commentary. TV pundits, talk radio, and news specialist discuss almost exclusively the stock market, mutual funds, bonds, real estate, and to some extent hedge funds and other esoteric opportunities.

Our world of communication is filled to the brim with investment advice. So how is the primary focus on investing working? Are you feeling better about your finances today than you did 2 years ago? How about 10 years ago?

It doesn’t seem necessary to cite how much of a mess we are currently experiencing in our country. Bloomberg, Frontline, and Time have done special reports on the failure of the 401k concept and the exorbitant fees charged by management firms and mutual funds.

Overwhelming evidence proves the failure of the for-profit-mutual-fund industry says David F. Swenson in his book Unconventional Success.

None of this should be alarming or new. The data have been around for years, yet why do we as working folks continue to put our money at risk at the expense of basic financial principles each of us claim to know.

Let’s review the meaning of spend, save and invest.

Spend: Having a Spending Plan. Knowing where each dollar is going. The rule of thumb is to give each dollar a rule or the dollar will rule you. A Spending Plan puts the focus on cash flow.

Save: Protected money. Zero to little risk. Checking, savings, cds, money market, life insurance, annuities (not variable), mattress (assuming your children don’t find it).

Invest: Potential money. The potential exists for gain as well as loss. Stocks, bonds, real estate, mutual funds, variable anything, hedge funds, a member in your church who has a great tip, Las Vegas, lending it to a relative.

The Financial Planning industry has been around for decades. They specialize in investing. I recently read a short article found in Discover magazine that cited research conducted on the clients of Financial Planners.

The research found that when a Financial Planner tells a client what to do, the client’s capacity to make financial decisions becomes paralyzed. The difference between a Planner and a Coach is that a Planner tells the client what to do. A Financial Coach teaches the client not only how to make good decisions but how to accomplish what the client wants.

My take: Anytime thinking human beings abdicate responsibility for wealth and happiness to another, they get what they deserve. Very little to no effort is invested into the wealth and happiness today and therefore very little by way of return will result.

We cannot afford to continue down the path on the pursuit of prosperity focusing on the symptoms to our problems. Investing is not the solution. Putting together a sound spending plan and learning how to save your money will outperform investing, it is the path to peace of mind and financial stability.

Within a marriage, learning to set priorities is almost as important as learning to discuss the topic of money. I’ve provided a basic understanding of how money works. Within the courses taught in Trust In Marriage, you can learn how to take the emotion out of money.

____________________

In the financial arena, we spend so much time shuffling symptoms at the expense of the root cause, rarely does anybody slow down long enough to study the numbers.

In a recent conversation with a client we discussed the difference between getting a higher rate of return and learning how to save by implementing a Spending Plan.

“I don’t know what you mean, Spending Plan,” Ralph asked.

A Spending Plan is a tool that assigns a rule to every dollar. If not, the dollars will rule you, I explained. “How will dollars rule me,” Gertie chimed in?

How much do you have left over each month after all the bills are paid?

She looked at her husband who shrugged his shoulders, “I’m not sure.”

How much money do you give your children each month? How much do you spend on minor items such as a quick lunch at McDonalds or a 7-11 stop?

We’re not really sure, but it’s not that much. Okay, let’s look at your situation through the eyes of time. You’re combined income is $100,000 a year, is that right? Yep.

You have a financial planner? Yes. How’s that working out? Fine, she averages a decent rate of return. Okay, let’s give her credit for equaling the DJIA for the past 100 years, 7.26 percent.

Now assuming that you are saving or investing 3% of your income, which is the current national average, you will accumulate $435,076 over the next thirty years. That’s good, right? Well it will last you less that two years if you stop working.

Notice what happens if you adjust your spending and increase your savings rate to 10 percent as in the 1970s. However, instead of putting your money at risk in an investment, you put it into safe vehicles that only average 5 percent.

Well that doesn’t make sense, how is 5 percent going to outperform the DJIA at 7.26 percent?

Your balance is now $994,704 or $559,628 more money just by putting in a plan of action.

That’s interesting, but why don’t we just get a higher rate of return? Okay, let’s bump your rate of return to 10 percent under your current spending plan. Here ya go, now you have $286,517 less.

In other words, a 10 percent rate of return with risk, will have a more that a quarter of a million dollars less than a 5 percent return with a Spending Plan that puts more money into a safe vehicle.

So you mean, we don’t need to risk our money? Well what I’m saying is first things first. Get yourself our of debt, organize a Spending Plan, increase your savings amount, and when you can afford to risk your money, get the best Financial Advisor you can find.

A marriage may start on the foundation of love, but if criticism, constant blaming, anger, pornography, food disorders, or any number of stumbling blocks are permitted entrance into your marital space, intimacy is thwarted, and the key ingredient to intimacy is TRUST. Without trust there is no intimacy.

To a man, physical intimacy can become confused with love and love is often confused with lust. Hollywood may have coined the phrase to ‘make love.’ What they meant was to ‘make lust.’ Love is a sacred term and conducted within proper boundaries.  When a husband views pornography and fantasizes during sex, he has rendered his wife an object. She is no longer the recipient of his love, she is the object of his lust.

No trust, no intimacy. He is addicted beyond his capacity to master and the marriage endures with a lot of pain and anxiety. To many, viewing pornography is a way of life. It’s normal and it doesn’t hurt anybody.

Even the god of Atheism, science, teaches that pornography and sex addiction destroy marriages, children, jobs, careers, families, and societies. Both Rome and Greece fell because, as a society, they sought pleasure and became addicted to the vices associated with the selfish desires of the flesh.

When a husband uses pornography as a way to satisfy his passion, he loses the ability to develop intimacy within his marriage. The addiction is actually a chemical imbalance within his body.

The brain, the body’s largest sex organ, has an internal pharmacy. When a man views pornography, the pharmacist (brain) produces increased levels of adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. The levels are beyond the normal balance, so the body builds up an immunity and the pharmacist reduces the production, thus dropping the resting level of the chemicals.

The spread between the normal balance of chemicals and the new balance after viewing pornography is painful, so the body craves equilibrium. The man, in pain, looks to alleviate the pain, so he acts out in a way to feel better. Since pornography is a world of fantasy, he can never get satisfaction, as such, the never-ending circle of addiction ruins the marriage.

Wives, who think that viewing pornography is ok, are deceiving themselves and enabling their husbands. There can never be happiness when sex addiction is part of marriage. Soon the husband wants the wife to view pornography with him as a way to increase physical intimacy.

He’s looking for satisfaction that doesn’t exist because he lives in a world of fantasy, and you, the wife, can never satisfy his fantasy. You will either live in a state of an Invisible Divorce, or he will eventually cheat. Pornography is a form of cheating.

All forms of addiction are vicious because they further the inability to trust, the most important ingredient to intimacy. Pornography may be the most vicious addiction known to man. If you or anyone you know are stuck in this situation, take action now and get some help. Call your ecclesiastical authority or a therapist. You can’t handle this one alone.

Communication In Marriage

Communication is vital in a marriage. This story of Nicole and Jeff might be something you have done or witnessed:

As Nicole walked through the kitchen into the man-room (where Jeff was watching TV) she commenced sniffing. Curious, he thought, she must be getting one of those nagging summer colds. Something’s wrong because she walked right between Jeff and the TV during the middle of a 3^rd and 15 with 1:57 left on the clock in the 4^th quarter. As she continued sniffing Jeff asked if she was coming down with a cold. “Nope, but do you smell that garbage in the kitchen,” she asked? “No can do hun,” he responded as he pointed to the screen, “aromas don’t get this far from under the sink.”

Ladies, what is she trying to communicate to her husband? Of course, you know, every woman knows that sniffing with a little gusto anywhere around a garbage can is a communication message to take out the garbage.

Men, what do you think? I pause here as you make the sort of comment over which any wife would strike you. That’s ok gents; you communicate differently than does your little lady. This isn’t about whose communication style is right or wrong, rather it’s about learning how to communicate effectively within your marriage so you stop arguing and fretting over the trivial things that bog down most marriages.

There are two types of problems within a marriage, 1) those that can be resolved or solvable, and 2) those that go on forever, we call those perpetual. More than 80 percent of the time, the wife will bring up the problems that cannot be resolved. 31 percent of your problems are solvable if you had better communication techniques. The remaining 60 percent that last forever, may or may not ever go away, but you can learn to address them differently and without so much stress, anxiety, and blowups. Your communication style comes from your side of the family, and your spouse’s communication style comes from the in-laws. Learning how to merge them is a function of a few techniques that are teachable as long as you will practice.

Learning to listen or develop a new communication style is very difficult. So you start with something you can change immediately.

To learn more on how to calm down your arguments and open up the communication pathway, click here for an introductory video on Trust In Marriage. You will be treated to a short set of lessons over the next few days that will address the following topics:

• Arguing
• Collusion: how each of you creates more trouble for yourself
• 5 ways of Listening
• 4 Phases of Marriage
• Introduction to Marriage Above the Belt Internet course

Click here to access the Home Page.