Whether you like it or not……

Whether you are an entrepreneur, solopreneur, Fortune 500 CEO, network marketer, employee,volunteer, married, single, mom, dad, or kid, life depends on relationships. Period.

How do you go about fostering your relationships? Do you venture out to seminars and workshops. Do you read books, articles and magazines? Or perhaps you watch videos and webinars. Whatever you do, do it consistently.

Relationship skills are not often specifically taught today. With so many distractions and electronic methods of desensitized communication, the art of dialogue has, within my generation, been lost. What, if anything, can and should you do?

I am not a licensed doctor, counselor or therapist. I’ll throw that out now because I’m about to share my two cents. Start building your relationship skills by clearly understanding how you talk to yourself! Self talk is where this all begins.

Self talk is the real truth about how you see yourself

Recently, I realized I was talking myself right out of believing in my own growth potential for TruPayroll. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I mean after all, I started this company and built it for the last 14 years with hundreds of customers across dozens of States. Why would I doubt myself? Bottom line truth and transparency,……, I did not believe I was worthy of this much success. I was self talking my growth opportunities into oblivion.
Why share that with you? I firmly believe if I’m talking to myself this way, I’m not the only one doing. This came to mind,

“I give hope to men. I keep none for myself.”

Aragon – The Return of the King, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

Surely, I kept some for myself? I evaluated how I spent the last several years networking and connecting to build other people up both personally and professionally. Lo and behold, I wasn’t giving myself any hope or encouragement to succeed! Often, I left my own personal gas tank empty leaving myself to run on vapors. In doing so, I now realize I doubted my methods, actions, and beliefs through the discussions I was having with myself on a regular, daily basis. And the scary part? Those conversations were happening often – more like a machine gun firing thought after thought. There’s no one to stop those quick fire ideas whether they’re positive or negative. So, take time. Breath. Learn to hear the conversations happening in your head.

How can you start to reshape your own conversations? Here’s a good one:

Get to know your own feelings

I’m a big fan of personality and behavioral testing. While I don’t believe any of us can be 100% one thing all the time, I do believe the variety of tests you can take can help provide an outline to and shape for our own personalities. Don’t be stingy either. Take as many tests and quizzes as you can handle. Many will re-iterate what other results say. Each might provide a new insight that another will not. Enjoy the process of discovering yourself and how you talk to you!

Until the next time….

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Brian

    Powerful blog! Thank you for sharing! You are worthy and deserving for sure my friend! ? Im glad you see it. Reminds me of a great book. “The Four Agreements” by Din Miguel Ruiz. The first of the four agreements is – Be Impeccable with Your Word. I originally thought it meant Do as you say and say as you do. I now know it means to avoid criticizing yourself and hold yourself at your highest, as well as others.

  2. Al Wagner

    Thank you Brian for your kind and generous words. Over the past number of years, you have been an encouragement. Belonging to http://www.masternetworks.com here in the Florida Southwest Region helps me to remain focused on building positive relationships.

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