Three Master Skills for Building a Successful Life
There are three master skills that are absolutely necessary for your life mastery toolbox in order to be able to create the dynamic quality of life you want, help the people you care about or make a significant difference in your community.
The first of these is the ability to understand your own model of the world and others’ as well. Everyone has a model of the world. Everyone has a way they interpret and think of life, people, situations, events, and the world in general. Your model of the world is what has shaped and continues to shape how you perceive life and the world around you. It is basically the governor of all that you focus on. Your perception of the world is moulded by the experiences of your life (references), your beliefs, and values. It controls what you mentally focus on, pay attention to, and notice in life.
It’s imperative for you to know your model of the world, that of the people around you, and those you interact with on a regular basis. Knowing this will help you understand yourself on a deeper level; why you approach life the way you do, why you behave the way you do, and why you think certain things are possible or not so possible for you. It also enables you to better appreciate others’ uniqueness and points of view.
This awareness and clarity can help you understand which of your beliefs are holding you back, dragging you down, tearing you apart or limiting the prospects for your future. The best way to be your best is to know who you really are. You can’t truly know who you are and your uniqueness if you don’t know what’s shaping and regulating your life.
It is this knowingness that will enable you to decide which old beliefs and values are no longer serving you and which ones you need to discard. It will also enable you to decide what new empowering beliefs and values you need to adopt into your life in order for you to be all that you have always wanted, and also to create, achieve, and live the life you have always dreamed of. This process of self awareness, refinement, and improvement will pay you the highest dividend because who you become is the final source for lasting happiness or everlasting misery.
The second skill you need to master is your driving force. Your driving force is the energizing and consuming life purpose and passion. It is that which excites you the most about life. Your driving force is the essence of why you are doing what you are doing, and what you are striving for in life.
Your driving force can be positive or negative. A positive driving force finds a way, creates a path, and attracts to you the resources and people you need to work with for the actualisation of your most desired goals. It inspires and expands you to be, create, achieve, and contribute more in life. A positive driving force operates on faith while a negative driving force zaps your energy and wastes your time on things and situations that temporarily may make you feel good, but in the short term, and, most importantly, long term, always create more problems, confusion, and emptiness in your life. A negative driving force operates on fear.
Knowing your driving force and what moves you is another great step in broadening your knowledge of self. This awareness gives enormous advantage to start the process of consciously choosing where you want to spend your time, energy, and other resources. You then begin the process of gaining insight into your own motives or motivation for your personal actions. And, as you may already know, there is no human action without a motive.
Your driving force therefore provides you with the constant fuel for your actions. If your motives are constructive and progressive then you have gained access to an unlimited supply of life’s premium fuel for your success engine. Taking action for creating the life you deserve then becomes a joyful process because you are being pulled by your driving force instead of trying to push yourself to make things happen.
It’s a personal responsibility to dig and reclaim the compelling driving force that resides deep within you. Once you uncover and ignite it your life’s success engine will be fully turned on and directed for the achievement of your magnificent purpose. This is a life mastery skill you cannot not want to master.
Within all of us there is an obsessive driving force that, once turned on, can make the impossible possible
Once you understand your model of the world and your driving force, the next skill you need to master is the skill of knowing what it is that is stopping you and other people from taking action, from giving up that disempowering habit, from moving forward and becoming your best. Fear is what stops us all from taking action and doing what we know inside we are fully capable of.
Knowing the fears you have that are immobilizing you from taking the action that is necessary for creating the quality of life you truly want and deserve is a crucial life skill to master. Until you know what your fears are, you can’t break those invisible limitations and have peak performance in your life.
There are all kinds of fears people have in the world:
● fear of rejection
● fear of saying and doing the wrong thing
● fear of giving everything and committing resources and things doesn’t work out
● fear of what others might think and say
● fear of failure and losing love
● fear of success
● fear of not knowing how to handle the responsibilities of success
Fear deletes your awareness of the resources available to you and your resourcefulness and creativity to apply what you know. It is what poisons your psychology and weakens your capacity to do what you are capable of. When you are free of your fears you can do the unthinkable because you can step beyond the known into the unknown where everything is possible with confidence.
The skill of knowing what your fears are, and then mastering them is paramount for your emotional, relationship, career, financial, and spiritual success.
The needs that cause people to cheat
I have combined breakthrough research by Guelph University in Ontario, Canada, empirical knowledge from Human Needs Psychology, and insights from my experience working with thousands of clients to reveal the instinctual needs that cause both men and women to cheat.
The research by the University of Guelph reveals that for men it is the “propensity for sexual excitation and concern about sexual performance failure” that causes them to cheat. For women “relationship happiness is paramount. Women who are dissatisfied with their relationship are more than twice as likely to cheat; those who feel they are sexually incompatible with their partners are nearly three times as likely.”
Basically, when a man is easily sexually excitable, and/or suffers from sexual performance anxiety, he is more likely to cheat. For women it is about the depth of satisfaction she experiences in the relationship. According to the research report, women who are unfulfilled in their relationships are more likely to find that level of satisfaction outside their current relationship.
While these predictions and behavioural patterns may seem very logical, they are far from the reality of what drives infidelity. Cheating is rooted in both men’s and women’s attempts to satisfy their deepest instinctual needs that are not recognized and met by their intimate relationship partners. These are not wants, desires or wishes but deep-seated neurological needs that make us feel alive and give us a sense of meaning for living. It is the lack of understanding of what these needs really are and the undisciplined attitude to meet these needs consistently and creatively that I think are at the core of relationship infidelity. When these needs are not met we become unfulfilled or dead inside. It does not matter how high a person’s level of intelligence is or how strong their beliefs or values are, people will basically do anything to meet their top neurological needs. “People will violate even their deepest values to get their needs met,” says Dr. Cloé Madanes and Anthony Robbins in the Ultimate Relationship Program.
These neurological needs are the same for all humans. What separate people’s behaviours is which need a person values more and their preferred way of meeting that need.
The need for excitement and variety “I cheated on my husband because I was so bored and I needed some excitement in my life,” says 40-year-old Angela,* who has been married for 15 years and has three children. To most people, Angela is living the perfect life with a good husband, a nice house, and three children. But what most people don’t know is that Angela is miserable in her marriage. “I think my husband is a very good and caring man, but I am bored and feeling empty all the time,” Angela said.
Since Angela loves her husband, you might be wondering what was missing that drove her to look outside the marriage. The need for passionate intimacy, positive stimulation and variety was missing for her in her marriage. The relationship spice was what she was missing, what she was hungry for, and what drove her to cheat. People will do anything to meet their needs.
Cheating on your partner will never bring you the lasting fulfillment you crave. If your situation is like Angela’s, communicate your needs and feelings for some excitement, new adventures, stimulation, and passion in a heartfelt way with your partner. The need for variety, passion, and positive stimulation is instinctual. Cultivate an attitude to have personal vibrancy, passion, and energy in yourself so you can bring that into your relationship and meet your partner’s needs congruently and consistently. Lasting fulfillment comes from you giving your partner what he or she needs the most, not what you think they want.
The need for appreciation “I work my ass off everyday to make sure we have a good life and my wife can have the things she wants. But she doesn’t show any appreciation and makes me feel like shit. I think she feels I am not enough for her and I don’t do enough,” says 34-year-old teary-eyed Jack.* “She nags at me all the time and it just drives me crazy. “Whenever I was home I just felt drained like I am depressed. So when I met this other woman when I was out and started talking with her it was different. It feels good being with her and I don’t question myself. She always tells me how great I am and she shows a lot of appreciation for even the smallest things I do for her. After four months I ended my marriage to be with this other woman.”
Remember that people will do anything to meet their needs. Showing respect and appreciation and making your partner feel special is very important in boosting their self-esteem and positively reinforcing their self-worth. Jack needs to feel he is enough and is loved. The nagging and lack of appreciation shattered his self-worth and when he met someone who made him feel worthy and loved, he never looked back. The feeling of being enough is very pivotal in everyone’s existence and when one partner makes the other begin to feel as if he or she is “not enough,” then they start to look elsewhere for their individual wholeness and the validation that they are enough and are lovable. Who you choose to be in a relationship with is the single most important factor in determining your happiness and level of certainty in your relationship. In any relationship you go into make it a habit to cherish and praise your partner so they feel that they are enough, special, and loved.
The need for certainty and assurance During their three year relationship, 29-year-old Bridget* says her boyfriend Mark never talked about their future plans and avoided the question whenever she brought it up. Is this a familiar pattern with someone you know? “I didn’t know where we were going in life, and after three years, all he still talks about is the next work promotion he is working towards. I want to get married and have kids someday but he is not talking about any of that with me so I became afraid that time is passing me by. It seems to me that his job is more important than I am and he does not want to get married and have kids,” Bridget said with an anxious voice. “I met a guy when I was out with my friend one evening and we exchanged contact information and started talking. We hung out a few times and I started having very strong feelings for him even though I knew it was wrong. I slept with him four times because he talked about how he would like to get married and have four kids. I liked that. I felt liberated around him. When my boyfriend Mark found out that I was cheating on him, we agreed to get help from a life coach. We worked on our relationship and he proposed to me after one year,” she said smiling.
Bridget is driven by the need for certainty and assurance for the future of their relationship, the possibility of marriage and having kids. After three years with Mark she began feeling uncertainty about a future with him since he was not communicating in relation to what was important to her. Engage in open and honest communication with your partner about what your needs are for you to be happy. Learn what your partner’s needs are and work together to align your needs so that both parties can experience love, passion, and growth.
Cheating has nothing to do with a person’s level intelligence, how much they care or do not care about their partner, how they were raised or even who raised them. Cheating is a decision, a choice of that moment to temporarily meet a primary neurological need and thereby have a temporary emotional state change.
*All names have been changed in order to protect personal identities.
To learn more about Human Needs Psychology (HNP), Relationship Strategies or Life Coaching contact Lucas Asu at info@msrcoaching.com or visit our website www.msrcoaching.com for a full detail of our coaching services.
Sources:
- Original research source: University of Guelph: http://www.uoguelph.ca/news/2011/07/sexual_anxiety.html
- Anthony Robbins & Cloé Madanes: Ultimate Relationship Program (DVD) http://www.robbinsmadanes.com/products.html#ultimateprogram
- Robbins-Madanes Center for Strategic Intervention: http://www.robbinsmadanes.com
