COVID Stay-at-home is making many people go batty; take lemons and make lemonade. Use this
Use Your COVID time to change your life
time wisely and increase the quality of your life when you come out of if. The most important person in your life is not your mother or father, not your mate or son or daughter. The most important person in your life is you. No exceptions. You now have the opportunity to get to know someone who you may have never known well your whole life. Estimates predict under 1 percent of us know ourselves. Let’s look at 10 ways that in one week can increase the quality of your life.
- Let’s start with a bird’s eye view, or for you less philosophical types, the helicopter view. Who are you? If you had to write an owner’s manual, how thick would it be? The answer to this question reveals how well you know yourself. Try opening a page on Word, break it down into different numbers by topic, and list some of your strengths, loves, desires, and then take a separate page and…
- Write down how you think others see you. Who do you appear to be for them? We are often different people depending on who is with us. Do keep in mind that some people bring out the worst in us while some others only bring out the best (you know that person who makes you smile when you pick up the phone and he or she is on the other line?). Forget these extremes, just keep them in mind. Now, list how others see you. Do you come across as assertive, submissive, repetitive, obnoxious, funny, intelligent? Do you think they experience you as open-minded or conservative? Are you demanding? Are you stubborn? Given the stresses of everyday life, how do you come across to those closest to you? If you want, you can even ask them.
- Now that your mind is more detail-oriented, write down who you are in a more detailed fashion. What is your favorite color? Why? Your favorite breakfast? Meal? Vacation spot? What animals do you like and why? Where would you live if you could choose anywhere on the planet? What is it that you are looking for that does not exist where you are?
- Now that we have dealt with the definable, let’s analyze the harder-to-define areas. This one I am writing for both single people and those in relationships, so please put each sentence in your own perspective so it fits. Who is the perfect person for you? Do you want someone who challenges you and keeps you on your toes, or someone who is just happy to be in your presence? Do you want someone more or less dominant than you? Are you seeking someone whose tastes are different from yours so that you experience different worlds or do you want someone whose tastes are similar with whom you can share events? Do you want someone who is also your best friend in order to do everything with, or do you want some part of your life to be exclusively yours? If so, what percentage of your life?Are you very sexual? Do you want someone who isas sexual as you are or do you want someone who is more or less that way?
Do you like to experiment sexually or are you more conservative? Do your prefer one kind of sex over the other and do you want a partner who has complementary tastes?Are children important to you? Would you be interested in meeting someone who already has children or would you like your own only? Does your life have time for children or are you too busy? Will a nanny raise your child or will you? How many children would you want? Are you flexible? What would take priority in your life: your career or your children? How would you deal with a scheduling conflict? How would you want your children educated..public/private/home-school and why? Should your mate share your views or are you flexible?How do you feel about animals? Do you like dogs, cats, or other animals? Are you flexible with respect to your mate’s likes or dislikes? Do you know that cat people are very different from dog people and both are very different from fish people? If you are an animal lover, how would you feel if your mate is a hunter, or likes fishing? Who would take care of the animal? Would you or your mate feel like taking care of the animal is a chore or a pleasure? - Last but not least, physicality. Great looks are wonderful but don’t always have staying power in the sense that as humans we will be attracted to the looks but not get to know the person much deeper, enjoying the attention and the sex. The challenge is that if you don’t get to know the person’s insides if you will, you may end up with someone you don’t know. A lot of people are either too caught up in the moment or, alternatively, are afraid to ask the person the difficult questions for fear of losing the “great catch”. Are you or were you in that situation?
The other side of that equation is that you may be with someone who does not fit your ‘dream person’ image in your mind. How do you deal with that? Some people blame it on fate and state that the right person was never presented to them by ‘nature’. Other people just settle for that person that they came across, got to know, and enjoyed life with. However, some people call it settling and others feel that they were lucky. This person did not meet their physicality requirements but was so ‘perfect’ for them that if they would have gone after their ‘ideal’ they would never have found their soulmate, the person they are beside. Look at who you are with if you’re not single.If you think you can do better in all aspects of this person’s personality: how long do you think it will take you to not only match the person but exceed him or her? Are you 100% certain you would be happier than you are now? We are all born with our physicalities. We cannot, for the most part change them. We can, however, take care of our bodies and prevent them from deteriorating in one way or the other with exercise, moderation in alcohol consumption, and by watching what we eat. However, what is more lasting and more important than our physicality is what we have made of ourselves as human beings; ‘that’ we have almost complete control of. If you are single, you have now covered a lot of ground. What is it that you are looking for in your mate? Examine all of the questions I have presented today.Make two documents: one, a physical one as well as one that covers everything ‘but’ the physical.
Examine them after you wrote them. Now, write your physicality levels on a document, Print both documents that have to do with physicality. Examine them carefully. See how well you match up to what it is you are looking for in someone else.
The next step is to throw away both documents that deal with the physicalities. Now examine who you are and what you are looking for. Concentrate on the traits you are looking for. Find that person. That person may or may not match your requirement for physicality but that is not what life is about….you need to be happy. Keep in mind that a lot of our ideals of a person’s physicality are media-driven. At one time, overweight women were in vogue. Then, skinny was in. Now, a healthy balance is in vogue. Try to figure out how much of what you are looking for is presented by the movies you watch and the magazines you read. How much is you? How much do you really need in physicality? All you need is someone who can make you happy in his or her surroundings…and COVID is a great test for that. Go find that person.
I hope that you take on this project….it may change you life, in a week. Do a little every day if you must, or do it all on a Sunday. Choose. It’s your life. Stop rushing from one task to another. Slow down. After all, with COVID, regardless of age, you could be dead in 2 weeks’ time from when you catch it. Not meant to depress you, but meant to get you to put your priorities in place.
This is ‘your’ life. Know yourself, know what you are looking for. If you are single, now you know who you are looking for better than ever and don’t be surprised if you find him or her soon. If you are in a relationship, use the tools I provided and talk to your mate. Talk to him or her from your soul. Ascertain if you can trim the sails and get that ship back on course. Talk to him or her and fix what needs to be fixed, but from this new perspective, one in which you know yourself and what you are looking for; it will make all the difference in the world. I will leave you with a quote that I live by: Plato had stated that “The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living”.
Stefano Riznyk
#relationship, #love, #relationshipgoals, #couple, #relationships, #dating, relationshipproblems, #relationshipadvice
