When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
TLC, Bringing peace to the legal process
A Word to the Wise
How is The Law Collaborative Different?
In under a minute Mr. Supancic tells you exactly what makes The Law Collaborative special.
Thought for the day
Mimi Donaldson is the author of Bless Your Stress: It means you’re still alive. She shares rules for the contact sport of life. An intention to get to a certain place is unstoppable. Every moment is a new opportunity to win. We must respect the clock and we must learn to push the pause button. We maintain control by maintaining composure. By pushing the pause button, we allow for process time. What am I feeling? What do I fear? What are they feeling? What is their fear? Give yourself time. Use the time you have. Invest in yourself.
TLC, Bringing peace to the legal process
How much does a divorce cost?
That’s a great question, and very often the first question a lawyer hears from a potential client. Mr. Ron Supancic answers that question in this short, informative video.
Happy Valentines Day!
Mark Goulston, PhD says:
What does it take to be happy in a relationship? If you’re working to improve your marriage, here are the 10 habits of happy couples.
1. Go to bed at the same time Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps.
2. Cultivate common interests After the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.
3. Walk hand in hand or side by side Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand in hand or side by side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.
4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.
5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.
6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused) and “no touch” (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch,” which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.
7. Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.
8. Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.
9. Do a “weather” check during the day Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.
10. Be proud to be seen with your partner Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.
Happy couples have different habits than unhappy couples. A habit is a discrete behavior that you do automatically and that takes little effort to maintain. It takes 21 days of daily repetition of a new a behavior to become a habit. So select one of the behaviors in the list above to do for 21 days and voila, it will become a habit…and make you happier as a couple. And if you fall off the wagon, don’t despair, just apologize to your partner, ask their forgiveness and recommit yourself to getting back in the habit.
From Mr. Goulston’s website, Usable Insight.
Rules to live by?
Ron found this on Mark Goulston‘s website, Usable Insight. It’s interesting to think about what our lives would be like if we lived by these rules.
What would be the effect on relationships if the mutually agreed upon* ground rules were:
1. Before you say something negative or critical to a person, you must say something positive and praising.
2. And before you speak those negative or critical words to a person, you must ask the other person if it would be okay to do so.
I can understand why it would be natural to be more adamantly negative or critical than enthusiastically positive and praising towards another, because negativity comes from a sense of something missing or being wrong within you that compels you to do something about it. Alternatively positivity comes from a sense of fullness and completeness. And just like you’re not too motivated to do anything after a filling, satisfying meal you may not feel compelled to do anything positive towards people. That may explain it, but it doesn’t excuse it.
You might say to me, “That’s hopelessly naive and impossible.” Maybe so, but then what would make it possible?
What would happen if you proposed this to your partner and to your children and agreed to practice it one day at a time, before you slip into the “addiction” that most of us have of being much too quick to be negative than positive? And if they immediately responded, “No way” or “That’s just stupid” what would happen if you said that you were going to commit yourself to doing it anyway?
* BEWARE! If someone won’t agree with these ground rules, you may be dealing with a high-maintenance (easy to upset, difficult to please) person.
TLC, Bringing peace to the legal process
