Moving to New Location

Hi Everyone,

I'm consolidating my blogs at http://guyfarmer.com/blog. I'll be focusing more on training with an emphasis on building self-awareness and practicing positive behaviors. I look forward to seeing you over there.

Take care,

Guy

The Joys of Letting Go

Have you ever kept doing something even though you know it doesn't work? Perhaps you keep enabling a negative behavior in yourself or someone else. This is natural because we tend to be most comfortable with what we know. Next time you find yourself hanging on to this negative thing try something new and let it go.

The act of consciously letting go and moving on helps us heal and think of new perspectives. People who let go of the monkey on their back suddenly find they can walk taller and more comfortably. We can take a breath and see our issues for what they really are; things that we can actually deal with. When we give negative behaviors less importance they have a way of going away.

Try it sometime. Everyone deserves to feel unburdened.

Take care,

Guy
Life Coaching

The Key to Achievement: You

When I help people figure out what they want out of life a common theme arises time after time: that every movement in our lives starts with us. This seems like a basic concept but it can have profound implications. We can choose to move in a different direction at any time but we have to start. If you want to try out this concept try this:

1. Think of something you want to achieve in your life.
2. Think of one thing you can do today to achieve your goal.
3. Take action and do it.
4. Praise yourself for actions you complete.
5. Ask yourself, "What did I learn about myself?"
6. Repeat.

People just like you create amazing change in their lives by taking action. It's incredible how much control we have over our lives if we consciously do things to change it. All it takes is deciding that we are going to do something and then following through.

Take care,

Guy
Life Coaching

Increasing Clarity in Relationships

People in relationships often move in different directions without even knowing it. Even some of the best intentioned people who really care for each other experience conflict and challenges because they are not on the same page.

I'm a big supporter of clarity in relationships. Clarity is when everyone involved understands what's going on in the relationship. It does away with assumptions, secrets, guesses, misunderstandings and frustration because we actually get to figure out what's going on.

How to gain clarity? Next time you encounter conflict in any relationship do the following to really understand what's going on:

1. Each person talks uninterrupted about how they see the situation?
2. Each person listens carefully without judging, rebutting or giving advice.
3. Each person asks open ended questions to clarify what is going on.
4. The people agree on a way to proceed.

Dialogue is very important to achieving clarity. Make sure to practice listening skills and asking questions. Open ended questions are questions that don't lead to a yes or no answer and allow the other person to meaningfully explain where they are coming from.

This is a style of talking about relationship issues that doesn't require confrontation; it's just about people listening to each other and sharing their points of view. Try it sometime to gain clarity on what's going on in your relationship.

Take care,

Guy
Life Coaching

How to Fix a Problem in Your Relationship

Many couples reach challenging points in their relationship and don't know what to do about them. We repeat an endless cycle of getting hurt, hurting back and perpetuating the hurt through our actions. This often happens even in dating situations and marriages where both people are kind, intelligent and caring. So what is it that causes this conflict and what can we do about it. Following are some causes of conflict:

Neither person understands the other person's point of view.
There is not a meeting of the minds on issues.
Neither side backs down.
Each side tries to win.
Neither side has the skills or knowledge to fix the problem.
The people involved are hurt, angry, frustrated or sad.

The good news is that you can help your situation by thinking about new ways of doing things. The key point is to start a process where nobody wins and both of you collaborate to find a solution that works for both of you. Think of some of the following ideas and begin connecting with your spouse in ways that will benefit both of you.

Both agree to talk.
Set up an interruption-free time to talk.
Agree on one thing to talk about.
Brainstorm possible ideas to fix the problem.
Evaluate each option.
Agree together on the resolution that works best for both of you.
Work together to take action on the resolution.
Move to the next problem.
Think about getting a neutral person involved to mediate.

I also encourage my clients to do away with the word "problem" and look at the challenges in life as opportunities for movement in a more positive direction. Looking at challenging situations in a positive light gives you the opportunity to actually fix things rather than repeating the same patterns.

So the next time you are in the middle of a fight, redirect your thoughts to the possiblity that both of you can work together and purposefully resolve the matter.

Have a great problem-solving day,

Guy
Life Coaching

How to Attract Great Relationships

People often ask me why they keep dating the wrong people. The answer that they most often come up with after some self-exploration is that they are looking for people based on mistaken assumptions.

Most of us look for people that create a spark, that excite us into wanting to get to know them better. This method creates an initial euphoria that blinds us to understanding clearly what we want from relationships. We become so intoxicated with romance that we are unable to make rational decisions.

What I try to help people with is building self-awareness. When we understand who we are and what we love and need we tend to make better choices regarding relationships. If we don't know ourselves very well or don't like ourselves we tend to attract people that reinforce that. When we understand ourselves better and are healthier we tend to attract more positive people.

There really is no magic to this process. What's been shown to work time after time is that people who are healthy attract other healthy people. All it takes is some work first on getting ourselves as healthy mentally and physically as possible. Then we attract people who admire us for the wonderful, healthy people we are.

Take care,

Guy
Life Coaching

How to Resolve Conflicts

People often ask me how to resolve conflicts. Many people think that letting conflict build up, followed by an explosion, followed by another build-up period is the natural cycle of conflict. The only difficulty with this approach is that the conflict continues and doesn't get resolved. The only real solution is to fix the conflict by taking action. Follow the following steps to begin working on resolving rather than perpetuating conflict.

1. Each person identifies what the they think the conflict is.
2. Both people agree together on one definition of the conflict to begin resolving.
3. Each person comes up with two or three possible solutions.
4. Both people agree together on which solution to implement.
5. If the parties can't work together find a mediator.

Resolving conflict is about working with the other person to actually fix the situation. The act of doing all the previous steps (always in order) allows us the chance to work with the other person rather than against them. Make sure you start at the first step and do not progress to the next if you haven't finished the previous step. We are conditioned to rush to solutions but frequently forget that it the working through the issue that gets us the most permanent and satisfactory results.

Have a conflict-fixing day,

Guy
Conflict Resolution