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Book Review: The 5 Love Languages

 

Since I have been talking about Relationships for the past few days, I want to throw out some kudos to The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman

This book opened my eyes to discovering the different ways the people in my life express and prefer to receive love. Dr. Chapman breaks it down into 5 categories:

Receiving Gifts – Some people like tokens of love, these do not have to be big gifts, but tokens to show them you were thinking of them.

Words of Affirmation- Some people prefer to hear words, “you look great!”, “I love you!”, “Great Job!”

Acts of Service- Some of us like our loved ones to do things for us, this always reminds me of the woman who says something like “there is nothing sexier than a man with dish soap on his hands” in this example, the woman would be someone who appreciates acts of service.

Special Touch – Some people need kisses, hand holding, hugs and physical affection to feel loved

Quality Time –Some people appreciate time together, it does not really matter what you are doing together, but spending time together, paying attention to each other, talking and sharing…

Personally, I find quality time very important. When I first started evaluating my concept of blissful timelessness, I noticed many of my moments were moments in which I was spending quality time with people I love.

One of the times this became abundantly clear to me, was on our first mandatory family dinner night. We all made dinner together, ate at the table together (that is rare in this busy house) and then we cleaned up and played board games.

It also happened that the season premeire of one of my favorite shows was on that night. I figured we would play games for a little while before I retired to my room to watch my show.

Hours later, the premier long past, I noticed that I hadn’t even thought about the show in hours, I was engaged in a game with the kids, we were laughing and having a great time.. My DVR recorded the show and I watched it later, but the point is… The old me, would have stopped the game and ran to the TV to watch the show, as it aired. Instead, I spent time with my kids and it was good time and it truly nourished my soul. This is how I came to know that Quality time is important to me.

Pay attention to the things you love… and the things you complain about in your relationships… When you are thinking about things that make you unhappy… is it because you want more time, more affection, more words of affirmation? When you think about what is missing when you complain about your relationships, the words can queue you into what your chosen love language is.

Once you learn to recognize it, you can start to see your loved ones… how do they speak love to you? How do they like to receive love?

After I read this book, so many things came together for me… I was able to have a conversation with each of my children about the book and their preferred love language. Aside from that, I am able to try to and convey my love for them in more way than one…. A touch on the shoulder while I tell them they did good at something or look good, or to while thanking them for some act of service. I can bring home a little candy or something I know they love, just because I saw it in the store and knew they would like it. It lets them know I was thinking of them. Knowing that each of us expresses and appreciates love differently, enables me to apply this lesson in my relationships.

Have you read The 5 love languages? It is a worthwhile read for all of your relationships. As with anything I read, or tell you to read, take what you want and leave the rest. But, if what you are doing right now isnt making you happy…. what have you got to lose?

Love Relationships

Out of the mouths of babes….”Mom, you can’t find Love by hiding out in your bedroom”
Love and Relationships are something I consider a priority. I have been a single mom for 13 years now. My sons are growing and have love relationships of their own and its time for me to find a romantic relationship of my own. And, my son is right, I am not likely to find it by sitting in my room.
When I broke down relationships into three categories, family, friends and love interest, I decided I should take baby steps in order to make lasting changes. In order to do this, I selected one goal for each of the three sub-categories, family, friends, love interest.
I made family dinner on Sunday a priority and I made a monthly date night with each son a priority. I also took a look at how I can improve my friendships. The last part of relationships I needed to evaluate.. my love interest.
So, how can I make my love interest a priority when I don’t have one?
Well… I decided my wise 15 year old was correct when he basically told me to get off my ass and meet some people.
Now, when I started thinking about it, the best way to meet someone with similar interests, is to meet someone while doing something I am interested in.. This is easy.. I can easily list my hobbies, my recreation moments of blissful timelessness. When I apply the Pareto Principle again, I already know what things I love doing, like dancing, hiking, camping, scuba diving…. but I do not make them a priority. That is for another post, but the fact is, if I start scheduling time to do the things I love, I am more likely to meet someone with similar interests. I could make new friends who also love dancing or scuba diving or any of the other things I love, or I could even meet a potential love interest.
Truly, this becomes a multi-purpose agenda item, by making time for the things I love, I am making myself happy, I am also meeting people who love to do the same things I love. While my goal in making myself a priority and doing more of the things I love is not to meet a potential love interest…. staying at home will never get me there, so what can it hurt?

Quality Time, Quality Relationships

When I sat down to evaluate the things that make me happiest, the first category I came up with was relationships. Many of my moments of Blissful Timelessness occur when I am spending quality time with the people I love.
Within relationships, there are several categories: My family, My friends, My love life
First, let’s take a look at my family. As a single mom, my immediate family consists of my three sons and the two girlfriends that live with us. Quality time with my sons is one of my favorite things!  When I applied the Pareto principle, I realized that I often put off time with my children for other things, that are less important to me, like work, television, books, etc.
With that in mind, I evaluated how much time I spend with my boys and decided to turn it around and make quality time with them a priority.
I have a different relationship with each of my three sons. Each of them expresses and expects love in a different way. Each of them also has different interests.
The key to making changes in my life is taking baby steps.
As a task oriented person, I decided that it may be best for me to schedule time, somehow, putting it on my to do list will make sure it happens. I don’t want this to be just another thing on my ever growing list of items that needs to be done, I want it to be special. The boys each agreed to a date night with mom, once a month. This quality time I crave with my children, must be a mutual desire, as they all agreed to family dinner every Sunday as well. So, My handy bullet journal gave me a place to schedule dates with each son and write in family dinner.
One caution here is that sometimes life happens and we miss a date or family dinner is replaced with some other obligation and that is ok. The important thing is making it a priority without the guilt, if plans have to change.
I don’t want to feel guilty if I have to reschedule, so, if I reschedule, it has to be a mutual decision and something important. Healthy boundaries are important and establishing boundaries around the things that are important to me feels good.
Identifying what is worthy of a cancellation or reschedule and what is not worthy, upfront makes it easy when something comes up.
So, there you have it, I was able to add family dinner to my schedule and date night with each son. Simple baby steps that make me happy and fulfill me.
Later, I will talk about how I added my other relationships to my priority list and dig into the other 9 categories on my life balance wheel.

Quality Time-Quality Friendships

 If a man is measured by the quality of his relationships, what is your measure?
I have a lot of acquaintances but only a few people that I truly call my friends.We truly are pack animals and we are not meant to be alone.

One common theme in almost all of my life drama...is relationship.

I do not always listen to my heart when I make decisions. I do not always do what is best for myself.
When I started evaluating most of my troubles, I found a common theme. I am and always have been a crappy friend. Its true, my friends will tell you so...

I am not being non chalant about it, but I am facing my own truth. In order to find my happiness, I need to be brutally honest with myself. When I sit down and think about it, honestly... I am a bad friend.

Again, I cannot go back and change the past and no amount of sorrow can change it, so I CHOOSE to change it now and make an effort to do it better from here on out.

In order to do this, I decided to focus on my current relationships and make a better effort.

The first thing I did was sit down and think about the friends I have, and the people that are important in my life.

One of the things that makes me a bad friend is I am not really great at staying in touch.

As I have said in the past, depression is really ugly and it causes me to isolate. Isolation perpetuates the viscious cycle of depression and keeps me from spending time with the people I love. In turn, the isolation from the people I love makes me more depressed.

I often rely on my friends to reach out and stay in touch. Of course, I reach out when I need something, even if I just need an ear, or a shoulder, but if I am going to be brutally honest with myself, I am going to recognize the fault I play in the relationships and this.. not keeping in touch and only reaching out when I need someone is one of my greatest faults.  Its not pleasant, being so brutally honest with myself, it hurts. But, if I want to be happy and I want to make necessary changes, I have to face the facts and admit the part I play in this, even when it sucks to admit it.

Quality relationships can make all the difference when times are hard, so isolating myself when things are bad (depression) is not the best thing for myself.

My friends are always there for me, I know if I reach out they will be there, but I am not sure they can or would say the same about me. I have been so hung up in my own drama, depression and self that I am not sure my friends trust that I am and will always be here for them. That is a sad thing to admit about myself.

Part of this healing process and admitting my faults is walking a thin line. I want to be brutally honest with myself, but I do not want to get sad or depressed at the past and my past mistakes.

Keeping that in mind, all I can do is focus on the future and what I can do to be a better friend.

I started reaching out more. A simple "Happy Friday" text or "I saw this..... and it made me think of you" The Pareto principle really does apply here.. it does not take much effort to reach out and let my friends know that I am thinking about them. The benefits, (the 80%) are exponential, I feel good because I am talking to someone I care about, the relationship thrives because I make an effort, my friends know I am here and present and they can count on me and all of that equals Happiness.. which was the goal in all of this self analysis afterall.

Applying the Pareto Principle to my Relationships

 

In my last post, I talked about applying the Pareto principle to my life. I broke my life down into categories and now I am going to break down each category into the things that I can apply 20% of my effort to, in order to get 80% of the output or happiness, I am looking for.

One of the ways I used to identify what makes me most happy, was looking for moments of blissful timelessness, or moments when I am able to be present in the moment, when I am happy and nothing before or after makes any difference, I am perfectly content right here and right now.

When I started paying attention, I noticed that relationships made me most happy. I am happy when I am spending quality time with the people that I love.

Ironically, when I started to track the amount of time I spent on the things that were most important, I was pretty disappointed with myself. But, this new lifestyle of mine prohibits me from focusing on what I have done wrong, all I can do is focus right now on making it right.

So, I grabbed my handy bullet journal and started writing. Quality time with people I love is something I want to do more of. I often get caught up in my work or in my anti-work (aka relaxation time) like watching TV, reading books etc. I turn down quality time with the people that are important to me, when love and relationships is absolutely one of the things that makes me happiest.

I cannot remember which book I read, that led me on an exercise (Please tell me if you know of it). In this exercise, I had to write what I want said about me at my funeral. If you could be an angel, watching your own funeral services… what are the people saying about you? More importantly… what do you want them to say about you?

Have you ever heard of someone, on their eve of death who is reflecting upon their life…. say, “I wish I had worked more!”? I haven’t. I hear people say, “I wish I had told someone that I loved them,” “I wish I had spent more time loving_______”",” I wish I had been more fearless,”

Why then.. do I spend so much time focused on my work? I could list a hundred reasons why I spend my time on work… but, really we are living in the moment and doing what makes us happy, so I wont focus there… I will focus on spending more quality time with people I love.

Did you use relationships as one of your categories? What one thing can you do to start improving your relationships? What gives you blissful timelessness?

Reality Check

 

 

Are you familiar with the Pareto Principle?

Simply put 20% of the input = 80% of the result.

In terms of happiness, if we invest our time and effort into the 20% things, we will be more happy.

Let’s me break this down and show you what I mean…

If I focus my time and energy into the things that give me the greatest happiness, I will only need to focus on 20% of the whole, or 20% of the things that are on my plate. In other words, there are a handful of things that make me happiest, that give me the greatest reward for my effort and time.

The reason this is important is because, when I sat down to look at where I invest most of my time… it is not on the things that make me most happy, actually, quite the opposite. 80% of my time is expended on the items that give me 20% of my happiness, maybe less….

 

So, sadly, I have always had it backwards. When I made a list of the things I value most.. they were not the things I spend most of my effort on… why do I do that to myself?

Once I started paying attention, I was able to see how much I spin my wheels, trying to spend my time, attention and even money on things that do not make me the most happy.

If you are playing along on my little journey… try it for yourself, list the things that are the most important to you.

Think about the most important categories in your life… Family, Relationships, work, health, spirituality, recreation, travel, charity, finances… whatever is most important to you.. You want a balanced life, so make sure you include all areas. Then, think about what needs to happen in each area… what makes you happy and fulfilled?

For example, remember my post on blissful timelessness? Think about the times when you get lost in the moment, when you are so happy in the present moment that nothing else matters. These are the things that make you most happy.

Spending quality time with the people I love IS important to me, it makes me happy, it feels good. Unfortunately, I often neglect the people I love for things that are much less important…. like… work, or watching TV.

Why, I spend 80% of my time on the things that produce only 20% of my happiness… Its in the past, its irrelevant. I will not allow myself to judge my past, I will not allow myself to get caught up in what I should have done… In shaming myself…the only thing I can do is to change the present, change the right here, right now.

I broke out my handy little bullet journal and I listed the areas of my life:

Relationships

Career

Self Improvement (Mind)

Health and Fitness (Body)

Finances

Paying it Forward

Recreation

Environment

Spirituality (Soul)

Travel/Adventure

These are my categories, you can feel free to choose your own once you start getting clarity on your happiness.

In my next post, I am going to show you how I broke down the things in each category and how I started applying the Pareto principle to each category, to re-focus on the 20%, the things that will give me the most bang for my buck in the happiness department. I would love for you to play along! What categories do you have?