Hunting, Building a Deck, Supermodels and Other Guy Stuff

This article is all about football, hunting, building a deck and poker; oh yeah, and hot chicks.

If I had to choose which of those activities I love best, it would be really difficult; I'm sure you know what I mean guys. What's better, the feeling of your team scoring a last second field goal to win the game, or shooting a 10 point buck, finishing that home improvement project and cracking a beer to admire your handiwork, or pulling out a full house on the river to win a huge pot?

OK, the women should all have stopped reading by now. Sorry for the subterfuge guys, but this article is for men's eyes only! I had to throw all the ladies off the scent.

When was the last time you really connected with your wife? I'm not talking a about a physical connection, although that's important too; I'm talking about connecting with her through conversation. When was the last time you and your wife had a talk like you did when you first met? Remember those? Three, four, six-hour conversations; talking through the night; $200 phone bills; feeling like a world champion every time you made her laugh; feeling like a warrior when she cried on your shoulder.

Guys, those talks were the reason she fell in love with you; those talks are the reason she's your wife. These days, when she attempts to initiate one of those talks, you don't even look up from the football game, you're distracted. These days, when she trys to go back and recreate some of why she first fell in love, you roll your eyes, you do your best to shut her down. She gets sad, or gets pissed off and walks away. Your marriage is like any other relationship; the conversation IS the relationship. What does that say for your relationship with your wife?

Once you've been married any length of time, talks like this don't spring up like they used to. Maybe you both feel like you already know everything about each other, that there's nothing else to learn. Maybe you're both so exhausted by the day-to-day living of your lives that you just don't have the energy to really focus on each other and truly engage.

The bottom line is that if you don't feel truly connected with your wife, chances are, she is losing that feeling of security that is so important to her in the marriage. Chances are most of the problems, disagreements and hurt feelings in your marriage are a result of that loss of connection. As the leader of your family, it's your duty to get things back on track. Here's how you're going to do that.

The purpose of this exercise is to make your wife feel valued, loved and connected with you. The way you are going to achieve this is by getting her talking and keep her talking. This is going to be unlike most of the conversations you have with her, because during this conversation, you aren't going to give her advice, tell her how to solve her problems or turn the conversation back onto yourself. You are going to be an engaged, active listener; you are going to maintain eye contact, keep an interested look on your face and ask follow-up questions. It is important to plan this conversation for a time when neither of you are distracted for at least two hours.

Here are some more ground rules: you lose if you give her a solution, you should be asking at least 5 questions for every statement you make, when in doubt about what to say, ask her "how do you feel about that?”, the more bored or distracted you feel, the more interested you should look. The powerful thing about acting the opposite of how you feel is that eventually, how you feel starts aligning with how you’re acting.

This exercise uses the principles examined in the following Forging Leaders articles; read them before you attempt this conversation to give yourself the best chance of success. Eyes Up, Building Your Army, The 5 Things Men do to F*uck Up Their Marriages, The Conversation IS the Relationship.

I would love to hear how this goes for you.

Take the lead,

Jeremiah

Eyes Up

What’s the best way to get what you want?

How do you give yourself the best chance of success in any interaction whether it is a conversation with your wife, a sales presentation, an escalation with an irate customer, a job interview, a guys weekend retreat, a trip to the park with your kids, a lunch meeting with your boss; anything?

Have you ever been so deep in the actual "doing" of a job, or project, or relationship, that when you finally take a mental step back and evaluate HOW you're doing, you realize that you aren't headed in the right direction? That somehow in the day-to-day living of your life, you've completely lost track of what’s important to you and where you're going?

"Eyes Up" is the term I use to describe the act of checking in with yourself to make sure you're clear about your objectives and that you're on track. Conversely, "Eyes Down" is when you have your head down and are focused on the actual work at hand. In life, it's when we've been Eyes Down for extended periods of time that we get so far from where we meant to go. The way this manifests itself in your life is that you feel like you're stuck in a rut, like you're just spinning your wheels; working so hard, but making no headway.

Here are the three steps to take before any important interaction to give yourself the best chance of success:

Step 1. Ask yourself "What are my objectives in this conversation?" The mere act of clearly identifying what you want before initiating a conversation will cause things to go your way more often. Think about the last time you played pool. What worked better, identifying which ball you wanted to sink and carefully lining up your shot or just hitting the cue ball as hard as you could and see if you got lucky? Don't live your life counting on sinking slop shots.

Something most people miss about this step is that they only identify their single specific objective; e.g. if they go next door to borrow sugar from the neighbor, they would only identify "get sugar" as their objective. Sure, leaving with sugar is the purpose of your visit, but the objectives of "make my neighbor feel valued" and "strengthen my relationship with my neighbor" should be additional goals.

In most every interaction, you will have "commercial" and "cultural" objectives; the commercial objective being the measurable action that you want to come out of the talk, the cultural objective having to do with the relationship between you and them. In the short term, the commercial outcome may seem more critical, in the long term the cultural outcome is always more important. Because of this, I am often willing to lose the battle in order to win the war.

Now that you have clearly identified all of your objectives, let's move to step 2.

Step 2. This step is where we create the right energy, i.e., state of mind, in ourselves so that it is possible to achieve our outcomes. Think about it; if I go into a difficult, uncomfortable conversation with the wrong energy, the chances of getting what I want is very low. I've found that for most conversations the right energy is “Love, Gratitude, Curiosity”

Imagine the kind of conversations you'd have if the other person knew that you cared about THEM more than any commercial outcome, that you were appreciative and thankful for them, and that you were really interested in them. I deliberately use Love, Gratitude, Curiosity(LGC), in any potentially volatile or uncomfortable conversation, e.g., firing somebody, giving constructive criticism, meeting somebody for the first time and asking for business, delivering bad news.

So, you're objectives are clear and your energy is flowing, on to step 3.

Step 3. Identify how you should behave in order to have the best chance of achieving your objectives. Being very clear on the questions you can ask to manage the conversation and the behavior you should model is critical to getting what you want.

Here is a real life example; one of my coaching clients was struggling to build rapport with their top sales rep. Despite having worked with her for over a year, they never connected. This started causing problems when this veteran sales rep started showing her disrespect by making snide comments during team meetings. The situation had the potential to spiral out of control as the sales rep's negative attitude was starting to spread to the other members of the team.

When we met to build a blueprint for how he wanted this conversation to go, my client was very clear on his objective; to get the respect that he felt he deserved as the manager. However, his idea of how to approach this conversation was wrong. He thought he would just tell her that her behavior was unacceptable and then ask her why she acted that way. "I want to know why she's being insubordinate." he said.

What was unclear to him at first was that in order for him to earn her respect and trust, he was going to have to give her his respect and trust first. It’s almost always that case that in order to get something, we must first give it. I call this "Pull Energy". So, once he realized this, he was able to develop a genuine attitude of LGC(Love, Gratitude, Curiosity) and approach her in a way that demonstrated sincere trust. Within two weeks, their relationship went from frustrating and insubordinate to aligned and collaborative.

Here is an exercise I give some of my clients; I encourage you to do it and let me know what you think. For one day, before you initiate ANY interaction or conversation, implement step 1 of the Eyes Up process. That's right, before any call you make, any meeting you attend, any interaction with your wife, your kids, your friends, before ANY interaction, close your eyes for 60 seconds and clearly identify all of the commercial and cultural objectives that you have for that conversation. Then, once the conversation is over or the meeting has ended, check back in with yourself and see if you achieved them.

We're going to use this method in next week's article, "Wife Homework", so get some practice in this week.

Take the lead,

Jeremiah

Life is a Team Sport

How well you connect with other people will determine the majority of your success in life.

Think about it; how did you meet your wife? How did you get your current job? How about your previous job? If you're like most people, you met the girl; you got the job, or at least the interview, because you knew somebody. Most things in life are like that; after all "It's who you know, not what you know that matters."

It was the summer of 2005; I had been out of fighting for five years. My last professional mixed martial arts fight was in April of 2000. I was now living in Sacramento, CA with, Andrea, my wife of four years. I worked in the mortgage business, I owned my own home; I was all grown up. So, when one of my good friends said "Jerry, you should try out for The Ultimate Fighter.", a new mixed martial arts reality TV show, my first reaction was to laugh. The reason that I didn't completely reject the idea was that the good friend was Chuck Liddell, soon to be UFC light heavyweight champion of the world. Chuck and I had trained and fought together in San Luis Obispo back in the 20th century. Chuck thought that I had a good shot at winning the show and the $100,000 UFC contract.

I spent the next five months in the gym. Most days, I worked out at least three hours, some days as much as five hours. It took me five months, but I got back in fighting shape. Per the instructions on www.ufc.com, I made an interview tape, and because I didn't have any of my fights recorded, I made a training tape. I sent all that in to the production company that makes The Ultimate Fighter show for Spike TV. The response was underwhelming. I heard nothing...crickets.

It was late November; the selection deadline had just passed. The lucky 50 guys who were selected to travel to Las Vegas for a five-day interview process had already received their calls. Did 31 year old Jeremiah, who had been out of the fight game for five years hear back from Spike TV? No.

Chuck called me later that day, "How's it going Jerry, you hear back yet?" I told him I hadn't. He said he had to go, and we hung up. Fifteen minutes later, my phone rang; it was the production company for The Ultimate Fighter; I was headed to Vegas! It turns out that Chuck had called London to speak with Dana White, the President of the UFC, who called the head of The Ultimate Fighter, who called the production company, who called me.

So, I made it to Vegas, but washed out during the interview round. I know; pretty anticlimactic.

The point of the story is that because of a friendship, I got to have an experience that few others ever get to; I got flown to Las Vegas and put up in a hotel for five days of interviews for a TV show. Again, "It's who you know…”.

People will often use that as an excuse to explain why they didn't get the job, or the promotion, or the scholarship. They’ll explain away their failures as the result of somebody else having the relationship. Rather than use it as an excuse, it can become your mantra. You can use it to be deliberate about building new friendships, and strengthening your existing ones.

Jeffrey Gitomer, one of the preeminent sales gurus, says "The person who will make the biggest impact on your business in the next two years is somebody you don't know today."

The message is clear. If you want to achieve your dreams and live the life you were meant to live, you're going to need help; lots of help. Life is a team sport.

The problem for most guys is that we stop making close friends in 8th grade; ok, maybe college if we're lucky. Once we get married and get a "real job", most men stop seeking out friendship. I have actually heard someone say "I have all the friends I need." Bulls#&*. Nothing fulfills and connects us like close relationships with other people. The truth is that most guys are scared to open up enough to other men in order to create these true friendships. There is a fear that if we reach out to connect on any sort of deep level with another guy, we'll be mocked; rejected. It's this fear of rejection that keeps most men isolated.

Men, I have news for you; every other guy has the same fear. Take the lead, reach out to somebody you like, start having deeper conversations, expose yourself (figuratively), take the risk and make the connection.

Life is a team sport. Who's in your starting line-up?

Take the lead,

Jeremiah

Money & Happiness

I was sipping my French-pressed cup of joy at Bloom this morning, talking with a new friend about the relationship between money and happiness. It's such an awesome topic and I realized that I hadn't yet written about it specifically.

Oversight corrected.

Happiness is a funny thing. You ask anyone what they want most in life; happiness is at least part of their answer, but most people have a hard time defining exactly what it looks like. If you're a regular Forging Leaders reader, you know that I believe happiness is made up of two components; living in alignment with your core values and deep relationships with other people.

So, what's the relationship between money and happiness?

Here's the deal. You CAN have both. However, when money is our focus, our relationships suffer. I know that in my life, I was the most unhappy when I had the most money. My thoughts were consumed with how to earn it and how to spend it; I didn't spend any time focused on what was truly important, my wife, my family, my friends. The more time I spent focused on money, the more I came to believe that I was what I earned.

When we don't have a lot of money, we spend more quality time with our friends and family. We realize that we can live with less and that our stuff is just stuff.

Now, don't get me wrong, I haven't turned in my capitalist membership card, I'm not suggesting that you give away all your possessions and move to a yurt in Mongolia. I firmly believe that wealth and happiness are both achievable.

The key for guys is to be deliberate about spending time on your relationships. It means turning off the TV a few nights a week and taking your wife for a walk. It means taking your kids to the park instead of the movies on the weekend. It means making time to connect with your friends on a regular basis. These relationships are where you're going to fulfill your sense of connectedness, your sense of belonging.

Being deliberate about relationships is one of the key things that I work on with my coaching clients. I help them to get really clear about what their objectives are in three areas of life; career, marriage/relationship, and personal. As guys, we find it easier to be deliberate about our career and our personal life; after all, that's what business plans and workout plans are for. What most guys never even consider is the need to approach relationships the same way. After all, why does a CEO have a business plan? Because without a plan, there's no measure of success, without a plan it's impossible to achieve long-term goals. Relationships are the same way.

So, get out there and work your butt off to achieve your career goals; just make sure that you carve out time to be just as deliberate with all of the important relationships in your life.

Take the lead,

Jeremiah