I wrote this for a wonderful and beautiful couple who got married this past weekend.  Enjoy the read and let me know what you think.

The one secret of a good marriage.

It all starts with you. You are in complete control over your happiness. Individually, you can impact each others happiness, but you are not responsible for it. The most important thing you can do is to take care of yourself. Love yourself. Honor who you are. This will free you to honor who your spouse is. To love them for who they are and not for whom you want them to be. We have circled back to you.

You cannot set expectations for another person without first discussing and receiving their commitment to the expectation. Your unspoken expectations are just premeditated disappointments. No matter what the cost, you have to communicate with each other. Share your feelings, dreams, opinions, and needs. Help each other become the best possible version of yourself.

This is the central purpose of your relationship and the guiding force behind your happiness. If you both focused on bring out the best in each other, then you will view each others efforts as constructive assistance. You will avoid getting defensive and angry. Is this task easy, hell no! Is it worth the effort? Only you can answer that question.

Today, you committed to love each other to the end of time. I promise you, your love will be tested, retested, and tested again and again.  Each test has the power to elevate or rip apart your commitment to each other. You alone are responsible for how you react and respond to these tests. Your spouse is not responsible for your attitude and behavior. You are.

Relationship tests are just speed bumps along happiness highway. No matter how challenging these tests are to your relationship, just remember this, you love each other and this to shall pass. What doesn’t kill you, certainly will make you stronger. You will never be given a test you are incapable of handling.

Be true to yourself. Be responsible for your actions. Admit you are human and make mistakes. Accept each other for who you are and are not. Practice forgiveness. Focus on all the good in your life. Recognize and ignore the negative energy in your life. Listen to your own thoughts and feelings first. Above all, trust yourself and your intuition.

Why is this important? When you are faced with challenges, you will search for answers. You will confide in family, friends, and anyone who will listen. They will pump you full of advice. Some will be good and some will be bad. Take it in and filter the best you can. Don’t allow yourself to follow this advice without asking yourself if this advice is really right for you. You know what is best for you. You are your own expert. Only you know what is best for you. Don’t ever forget that.

Laugh at these silly curve balls tests life throws you. You will ace them as soon as you accept them for what they are, relatively unimportant speed bumps in the road of life. There is not a shred of evidence life is supposed to be serious. Laugh at life!

Celebrate the joy in your life. Celebrate the joy in your spouse’s life. Other than yourself, your spouse is the most important relationship in your life. Don’t take this relationship for granted. Treat it with all the love, respect and admiration you desire in your life. You owe it to each other. Help each other become the best version of yourselves.

Anne, Riley, Keegan, Logan, and I wish you both a long and loving relationship. Enjoy this moment…life only gets better from here.

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1. Being a Dad changed my life forever

Curiosity is a foundational character trait I have always owned. My parents encouraged me to ask questions and seek to understand the world around me.  Just as a compass points north, mine points towards a search for meaning in my life. I was missing grounding in my life. I longed for something to help me take my search to the next level.

Being a Dad has provided me with all the motivation I needed to jump-start my unknowingly meaningless life.

Before kids, my work life was my identity. I sunk every ounce of energy I had into work. I clung to the financial security of my six-figure salary. I rewarded my employer’s financial commitment by working harder to make a difference every chance I got. I routinely logged 60-70 hours a week. I genuinely cared about my fellow employees and the work we did. I remain friends with some wonderful people I met along the way.  I cherish some wonderful memories we created together. These events shaped the path I have traveled. As rich as the experience may have been, I derived no real deep heartfelt meaning from my work life identity.

Can you relate to this story?

Being a Dad turned my life inside out and upside down. Suddenly, nothing was more important in my life then my son. He ushered in an opportunity for me to cut through the superficial randomness of my daily life, and slow down enough to ask myself a powerful question.

What do I really CARE about?

Knowing the question is all fine and well, but answering it another story. This required reflection and true commitment to finding the real me. I needed to find courage to ask and answer these provocative questions.

You are familiar with these questions. They periodically pop into your thought process from time to time. They tug and pull at you trying to get your attention.

Will the real David McGraw please stand up?

Kids do the same thing. They tug and pull at you. They challenge your ability to focus and completely focus your attention to them. Being a parent requires skills we have not refined.

Basic skills are the same as being able to solve 1st grade math problems.  We all can do basic addition and subtraction. We take these skills for granted and think nothing of our ability to perform them.

Calculating if we have enough money to retire on requires skills well beyond our 1st grade math ability. Raising kids requires advanced skills. Finding out what matters most to us, what we really CARE about, requires advanced skills.

Taking work seriously was naturally easy. Taking my cares seriously was as hard for me as raising kids.

I was avoiding these questions my entire life. As I held my son for the first time, I felt true joy. I felt me.

To the world I maybe one person, but to one person I may be the world.

Instantly, he was what mattered most to me. The joy I experienced was only rivaled by seeing my beautiful bride begin her journey down the aisle to marry me. They events were extremely important to me. They were what I CARED about!

What I care about has become the most important operating principle I live by. I am motivated and directed by my cares. I bring these cares with me into every conversation and action. My wife and kids provide the grounding I need to confidently live by my cares. They push me closer to my cares and propel me towards the meaningful life I desire.

Being a Dad is not just about raising kids, it is about writing a meaningful life story.  A story worth living. A story I care about.

Are you writing a life story you care about?

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1. Being a Dad changed my life forever

One of the male rites of passage is to become a father. The day my son was born was the first day of my new life. My journey to being a dad was a little longer than most and filled with so many lessons.

My wife and I spent a few years unsuccessfully trying to have children. We lost hope. We felt defeated. We hit rock bottom. Our struggle was sucking the life out of our relationship. We tried to escape our emotions and by creating distractions from our struggles.

We buried ourselves in our jobs. We bought higher end material goods. We traveled more. We withdrew from interaction with our friends. None of these actions satisfied our true emotional needs. We were too self-absorbed in our individual sorrow to see what we really needed.

I convinced myself that if God meant for us to have children, we would. My wife wanted to pursue other options. I resisted them. I put up every argument you can image. I hunkered down in my self-pity and disappointment. My wife patiently waited me out.

In the fall of 2002, she convinced me to try IVF.  Unknowingly to her, I went internally kicking and screaming through the process.  You see, I was resigned to a certain outcome. If it is meant to be, then it will happen.  I did it for Anne.

Outwardly, I was confidently strong and told Anne we were going to be successful. We were meant to be parents and good parents we shall be.

I remember the big day…I had not felt nerves like that since our wedding day eight years earlier. Dr. Gordon showed us a picture of the eggs…he called one of them our little superstar. He put on his favorite song and away we went.  Quick, simple, and painless.

Two weeks passed before our next check up. Talk about nervous anxiety. Anne and I spent a lot of time reassuring each other this was going to work. The test results can back positive, but we still did not know for sure. We had to wait another two weeks before we could celebrate.

What happened next for me still puzzles me to this day.  I was numb to it all. I had no emotional connection to the pending birth of my son. Nothing through all the ultrasounds. Nothing through the Lamaze class. Nothing through the decorating of the nursery. Nothing during the baby shower. Nothing.  Nothing. Nothing. What was wrong with me?

I think the best rationalization I can come up with is I was in denial and I was escaping from the reality of the moment. I guess it should come as no surprise to me, I had emotionally checked out to having kids a few years earlier.

On July 29, 2003, my life began again. Everything changed the moment I first held Riley.

My relationship with my spouse changed. My relationship with work changed. My relationship with my friends changed. My relationship with myself changed. Even if I did not know it at the time, all these changes were for the better.

All I needed was to figure out how to integrate all my life parts together. I had to figure out how to live again. Luckily, I had a son and a wonderful wife to help show me the way.

Seven years and three boys later, I am still learning every day what it means to be a father.

Fatherhood has been a life changing experience for me. Having kids is one of the  greatest joys a man can experience.

Welcome to Being A Dad!

If you are a Dad, then you have a story to tell.  Please share your story in the comment section below.

Related posts:

1. Will the real David McGraw please stand up?
2. Kill boredom before it kills creativity
3. There is only 1 secret to a good marriage

Are you bored and feel the need to be entertained?

Peter Bregman wrote a thought-provoking article last week in the Harvard Business Review entitled “Why I returned my iPad.”

The premise is the iPad is too good. It is an escape boredom device that distracts us from reaching a state of boredom that triggers our most creative capabilities.

Much of the parenting advice I have heard of the last few years flies in the face of this premise.  Keep your kids busy. When they start to mix it up, distract them into another activities quickly. Whatever you do, don’t let them get bored.

Have you heard those parenting advice tales?

I will not argue these tactics don’t work. I will argue using them kills creative imagination.

Recently, I took the Wii away from my boys.  Problem was, every time they got bored, they played Wii, then they would fight, then the parents felt compelled to intervene or check out and ignore the situation. Wii was sometimes a tool to enable us parents to get something done around the house or intentionally check out.

Have you done this yourself?

In a few short days, removing Wii has changed our family interaction for the better. My 3 boys are playing outside more, interacting with their neighborhood friends, building legos, having Bakugan battles, started playing tennis, doing more artwork, and returning to pre-Wii life. A life where they are using their creative imagination to escape boredom.

Guess what else has happened, my wife and I have checked back in.

The brilliant Kurt Cobain sung a very poignant line in Nirvana’s 1991 classic Smells like Teen Spirit. He said, “Here we are now, now entertain us.”  That line stuck out to me then and it still sticks with me today. I may choose to use distraction to escape my boredom. Too much is at risk for me to rely on distractions to entertain my kids.

Wii was a distraction for my family. The iPad was a distraction for Peter Bergman.

Find a way to limit your distractions. Embrace your boredom. Allow your creative juices to flow. You will be surprised what emerges.

What does escaping your boredom cost you?

Related posts:

1. Being a Dad changed my life forever
2. Noises here, noises there, noises everywhere

I attended a conference awhile back.  One of the central themes was what gift do you offer the world. Talk about a heavy question.  Did you feel the weight that question carries?  I will bet your body tensed up and you became a bit distracted by your thoughts.  Take a moment to recollect yourself.

Ready? Great.  Let us see if we can lighten this question into something less daunting.  Here we go.

The question of gifts is an important question to answer. Knowing our natural gifts is an integral part of finding our voice.  Finding our voice gives us strength, courage, and freedom to step into our greatness. The fact you are reading this post is a direct result of me finding my voice.

Without my voice, I was drifting through life. With my voice, I act more purposefully in life.  I look forward to sharing my true authentic self with people and causes that matter most to me.

The gift you offer the world is not your work experience or learned skills. Your gift is your innate natural abilities that show up in every interaction and experience you have.  You share your gifts without any conscious effort at all.  Our gifts are the obvious things in our lives.

Sometimes we struggle to see the obvious things in our lives. Clearly seeing our gifts can be a struggle for even the most self-aware.  When our actions and ideas become obvious to us, we accept them with an unshakable knowing.  We unconditionally accept them, at times diminish their importance, and take them for granted.  We need to bring them to the forefront of awareness and share our gifts with more conscious intention.

Before we can do that, we need to become keenly aware of what our true gifts are. The best way to I have found to uncover our gifts is a three-step process.

1.  What gift do I offer the world? What is obvious to me? Write on a piece of paper, every thought about what your gift is for the next 15 minutes.  Write longer if you can.  The intention here is to capture your top of mind responses as well as the ones that arrive after the obvious ones have been written.   Typically, a person will exhaust all the extremely obvious stuff in the first 5 minutes and then begin to uncover deeper hidden more valuable gifts.

2.  What is obvious to others may not be obvious to me. Invite a diverse variety of people in your life to provide some important feedback to you. The best way to enhance our awareness, learn new skills, and build self-confidence is by soliciting and receiving feedback from people we trust. Positive and negative feedback is equally as important.  Encourage your respondents to freely provide their responses.  Unconditionally accept this feedback as a gift they are providing you.

Here is a sample request. Please feel free to use it as is or modify it in any way.

Will you take a few minutes and provide some important feedback for me?  I am looking to expand my self-awareness and improve the way I show up in the world.  I would greatly appreciate your help in identifying what personal qualities I bring to the table.  What positive qualities do you notice? What annoys you about me? General characterization is fine, but responses that are more specific will be more beneficial to me.

I am open to receiving any and all feedback you would like to share with me. I am deeply grateful for your willingness to be open, honest, and reflective with me.  Please feel free to address any aspect of our relationship you would like to address.

In gratitude,

3. Reflect on the responses received and repeat number 1.

People who deeply care about us, love us more for our natural gifts than anything else we may bring to the relationship. Find your gifts and liberally share them with the world.  Love and happiness will come in abundance.

I hope this exercise is helpful to you.  I look forward to hearing how this exercise was helpful or not helpful to you.

Thank you for allowing me to share a gift with you.

Related posts:

1. Re-gifting: Offering our gifts to the world
2. Opening the door to our cares
3. 29 days of gratitude

A recurring theme keeps surfacing in conversations I have with my coaching clients is what do I want to be when I grow up? (aka “life purpose”).  I welcome this question with open arms.  This big picture thinking opens the door to a much richer discussion. It also tells me the client is committed to their journey of self-discovery and growth as a human being.

I used to struggle with this seemingly insurmountable life purpose mountain of responsibility question. It is very overwhelming to believe we all have a life purpose and not know what it is.  I did self-discovery exercise after self-discovery exercise.  None of them seemed to yield the response I was looking for.  Of course, that assumes I knew what I was looking for. One day it just hit me…it not a singular action, it is a theme to live your life by.  It does not need to be overly complicated. Apply the KISS (“Keep it simple stupid”) principle.

I asked a different set of questions with new eyes.  What is a common theme in your life? What a pattern continues to repeat itself?  Voila! The pattern emerged from the darkness and became clear as day.

I have lived my life trying to learn something new every day while continually challenging myself to grow and expand my abilities.  In the simplest pure form, my life purpose is to becoming a better version of myself every day.  This declaration freed me from the introspective search burden I was carrying and opened a new world of possibilities.

I now had a foundation to build upon.  Every action from here on out can be in conscious support of becoming a better version of myself.  Every action I take with my clients can be in support of helping them become a better version of themselves.

Extending this concept from an “I” world into a “We” world opens the door for us to have a common relationship purpose. Help each other to grow and become better versions of ourselves.  Adoption of this principle creates fertile ground for relationships of compassion, understanding, and selfless behavior.

Under these conditions, we look forward to investing our time and energy in our relationships. We bring enthusiasm and passion to each interaction. We share in a more open and meaningful way. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable and we feel safe doing so.  There is genuine interest and care in our relationships.

I believe we all share this purpose in life.  I am committed to becoming a better version of myself every day, and to help those whom I care about to do the same.

What purpose are you committed to?

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As autumn approaches, a new NFL football season begins with high expectations and visions of ticker tape parades in February.  Suddenly without warning, men have access to a dormant passion hidden inside them.  We transform into a confident, focused, determined, strong-willed, highly competitive, and vocal super humans.  We act with passion and purpose.  We are men chasing the immortality of winning our fantasy football championship.  Nothing will stand in the way of our opportunity to reign supreme.

If you have ever participated in fantasy football, then I’m sure you have witnessed this sudden transformation.  You know the person; he is the quiet unassuming one.  His social circle is small.  He eats lunch at his desk or goes to lunch with the same people every day.  He blends with the scenery and his global corporate value is relatively unknown. People perceive him as weak and alpha males crush his manhood. Joe desperately needs to man-up.  Will the real Joe please stand up?

We are in luck; a new fantasy football season is right around the corner.  In effort to be one of the boys, Joe joins a league.  He hopes leverage his participation into becoming a member of the pack.  He studies hard. He reads every publication.  The journey starts slowly…he drafts well and has a good 1^st season. There are some small successes.  People who don’t normally talk to him, talk to him about Fantasy Football. His experience builds confidence.

The following season, Joe oozes with confidence and determination. He is going to win it all this year.  He works hard and becomes a draft expert.  He is rising to Fantasy Football stardom and will be a contender year after year.  Fantasy football becomes the single most important thing in his life. Joe becomes a self-professed expert and rock star in the field.

Joe builds a reputation as a strong fearless competitor.  Mel Kiper would be deeply impressed with his fantasy football prowess.  He dominates the multiple leagues he plays in. Neither format nor competitor can crush his passion and success. Team owners from other leagues seek his advice on which players to start, waiver moves to make, and trades to consider.  If Joe could monetize this consulting, then he would have quite the business.  He is a recognized leader in the field without a doubt.

Mean while back in the real world, nothing has changed.  Joe is still part of the scenery.  His fantasy football expertise has not translated into off the field success.  His passion and determination are fading. He is left questioning why.

What went wrong for Joe?  How could Joe leverage his fantasy football success into personal success?

Joe is reading this posting and anxiously awaiting some candid feedback.  Please put on your creative thinking hats and help him.  Joe looks forward to reading your comments.

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There is always more to learn about ourselves.  Humans are biologically programmed to seek solutions to our problems. We read self-help articles to get a few tips, change our perspective, contemplate some decisions, and temporarily feel better about ourselves. For some of us, temporary relief is all we need.  For others, the search continues.  Each search involves a conversation and a decision.

We are not sure what conversation with who we would like to start.  We don’t know if the other party will listen to what we have to say.  We make up stories that stop us from starting a conversation. What I have to say is not that important. There is no reason to make a big deal about this, or is there?

Sure, it is much easier to shy away from sharing our inner personal thoughts than it is to take a chance and expose ourselves to judgment and ridicule.  We retreat into the safe confines of our personal space.  We consciously choose to keep our true thoughts, feelings, and dreams to ourselves. We pretend we are being open and trusting by building our social network profiles full of clichés and non-essential facts without sharing what matters most to us. Sharing our true self scares the hell out of us and we avoid it at all costs. We carry this attitude and behavior into every relationship we enter into.

What does this cost us? The answer is simple; we are destined to create very few deep meaningful relationships.  Most of our relationships are shallow and meaningless.  We may never fully enjoy all that life has to offer. I have very little room in my life for the shallow relationships.  I no longer want to hide from the world.  It takes courage to own your power; to have the confidence and trust in yourself and others.  The world is only as safe as you allow yourself to see it.

I choose to share, trust, and develop deep meaningful relationships.  I accept people without judgment and to allow others to judge me as they will. I share details of my life and take an interest in the well-being of the people I interact with. I trust I know what is best for me. I am not afraid.  I am free.

My desire is for you to develop your own version of free and live it to the fullest.

The road to freedom begins by assessing who you are, what matters most to you, and developing a vision for where you would like to go.

In my last posting “Cliff Jumping,” I closed with some self-examination questions about what gives you energy and what takes it away?  These are not just questions, they are guidelines for making decisions about what to pursue and what not to pursue.  If we want to be free, then we need to pursue all the positive energy sources we can get our hands on.  This energy keeps us focused on the good that people have to offer.  It keeps us focused on the good we have to offer.

Living with positive energy keeps us from focusing on events and behaviors that are beyond our control.  We can only control ourselves and how we react to the daily situations that we find ourselves in. We choose how we respond to people, events, and news.  We are responsible for the energy we transmit to the world.  The choice is ours to make.

I am going to assume you want to live a life of freedom and positive energy.  If not, just do the opposite of what I am about to suggest, and you will attract all the trapped negative energy your heart desires.

My freedom journey led me to eliminate as much of the toxic negative energy sources as I could in my everyday life. Today, I crave positive uplifting energy and run for the hills when I don’t feel it.  To get to this point, I had to consciously become more attuned to the type of energy people carry with them. I set an intention and designed a practice to help me to become more aware.  Good news is, you already have these skills and unconsciously use them every day.  Turning this unconscious thinking into conscious thinking is all it takes to unlock your natural abilities and cultivate more positive energy into your life.

The practice is simple and requires virtually no time to do.  After each interaction, quickly ask yourself a few questions like:

How does this person make me feel?  Do they trigger a certain emotion response in me? Do I stay positive in our conversations?  Is what I am experiencing with them, a result of a current life event or a general disposition they live with?

Most of the time, I am able to confirm my observations on a person during our first interaction and I know whether not I would like to continue discussions with them.  Sometimes, I am not so certain and it takes a couple of interactions for me to be certain.  The more I practice, the better I become at developing my energy reading abilities.

A few years ago, I began a relationship decluttering exercise by taking an inventory of the people around me and how my positive energy was changed by being around them and the environment I knew them in.

My list began by relationships closest to me.  I gradually expanded that circle.  I grouped my relationships into the following life domains (family, friends, co-workers, and networking contacts).  I wrote down people’s names, grouped them, and identified how each of them made me feel energetically.  Next, I identified why I felt this way. Then, I made a “Yes or No” choice about whether the relationship was working in a way I would like it to work.

List made, I decided which relationships if I wanted to continue, end, or change. I graded them as follows:

a.  Good – Let the relationship continue on its path

b.  Bad – Cut your ties and move on

c.  Change – Take action to reenergize it

My list (no real names used here) looked like this:

Domain        Name  Energy     Why                            Work?  Status

Friend          Sally    Positive   Supportive, Pleasant   Yes      Good

Co-Worker   Jerry   Negative  Brings me down          No       Bad

Network       Joe     Neutral    Nice Guy, I like him      No       Change

I cut my interactions with the negative relationships right away.  Next, I set out to improve the positive not working relationships.  Decluttering our relationships is no different from cleaning out a closet and throwing away some clothes that no longer fit you. I have the freedom to determine which clothes I wear and which people I want to hang out with.  I choose who I want to develop deep meaningful relationships with. Through this process, I learn more about what is important to me, why it is important, what I want to focus on, and where I can best place my efforts and energy. I am free and you can be too.

Freedom begins with eliminating all the negative energy forces in your life. Are you ready to begin your inventory list?  Start your inventory today. You owe it to yourself.

Related posts:

1. Cliff Jumping
2. Life is not fair or is it?
3. Are you ready to unwrap your gifts?

WeVivify was founded to create a powerful community of change agents.

Community building starts with you. The more you get involved, the more you will get out of it.

I STRONGLY encourage active participation. The more you get involved, the more you will get out of it. Your opinions and thoughts are important contributions to the conversation and community at large.

Individually, each of us is our own expert. We are the only ones who know what is right for us. Our individual expertise contributes to the growth of others in ways that we cannot possibly image. Please don’t be shy, share your expertise. Your contribution to the conversation will be met with respect and kindness. Together we can help each other expand our perspectives and ignite our innermost desire to learn and grow.

Besides, conversations are more fun when they involve more than one person.

I look forward to beginning our conversation.

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