However, there really are some fairly simple words and actions that create transformation. Especially if you are consistent with them. Try these:

1. Use specific and positive words to express appreciation for one another’s actions. Whenever possible, use character-related words that honor your spouse for such qualities as patience, helpfulness, courage, or kindness.
 
2. Create regular opportunities for fun, laughter, and positive experiences. These don’t have to be expensive to work well. A picnic? A walk? Sharing and laughing over the Sunday comics?

3. Figure out what communicates love to each other and do what is most important. Is it a gift? A hug? Listening to what’s happening in the other’s life?

4. Be observant and thoughtful with little things. Making a cup of coffee? Not rolling up the socks that go in the laundry basket? Pulling the weeds in the garden?

5. Do a chore that the other dislikes. Yes, even cleaning the toilet. Vacuuming? Changing light bulbs? Sweeping the sidewalk?

Sometimes marital transformation takes a long time. But you can definitely find ways to talk and act that make an immediate difference for your spouse and marriage. Consciously doing what opens and softens your spouse’s heart will benefit you both in the long-run and keep your marriage happier.

It’s easy to feel like it’s hopeless or you’re in that situation because you can’t control it. But why? Why do we feel that way? Why do we feel we should sacrifice our time, freedom, and happiness for the security of a steady paycheck or to meet the expectations of others?

Some of the best advice ever written was this: Do what you love – the money will follow.

And while doing what you absolutely love may not pay the bills exactly, it will help you feel better about life.

Our relationships are constantly affected by the things we do each and every single day. If you have a job that you hate, you most likely come home from work feeling like you don’t want to even talk to your partner, and that you need to just zone out in front of the TV to relax for awhile. Maybe stress from work makes you feel overly tired or quick to get upset – resulting in arguments that should have never happened in the first place.

When you love what you do however, there are some amazing differences. You may come home excited to tell your partner about what happened that day. You may be more productive at work. You wake up in the morning looking forward to all the world has to offer you.

Obviously, none of us can go through life without money or some type of work – but is there a rule saying you can’t have a job you love? Or live in a place you love? Or spend all of your free time doing things you love? Nope.

If you’re not doing what you love, here are some things to do to help get you started in the right direction:

Identify the Things You Like to Do: What are the things you enjoy the most? For some it is a creative outlet, such as writing or painting. For others it might be helping others. Some may love being with animals, others might enjoy mountain climbing or scuba diving. There are thousands of things to do and hobbies to pick from. Start off by making a list of 10 things you would do all the time if money was no object.

Identify What is Holding You Back: For many people it will be things like time or money. For others it may be a fear of failure or worrying about the approval of others. It’s okay to have obstacles – you just need to know what they are so you can work your way around them.

Brainstorm: Are there jobs available in the activities you enjoy the most? If you love scuba diving for example, you could consider becoming a scuba diver instructor. Love animals? Maybe you’re best suited to become a veterinarian, zoologist, or someone who works in preserving natural wildlife habitats.

Research: Chances are if you search online for “make money doing xyz” you’ll find something out there that will give you some ideas. Don’t be afraid to ask someone who is doing what they love how they did it and what steps they took to get started.

Make a Plan: It’s a lot easier to have a map when you get lost – and so having a plan is also a good idea. Maybe your plan would include researching jobs available, going back to school, or starting a savings fund to help you get on the right track.

You don’t have to be stuck going through life doing the things you don’t love to do. When you know what you want, and start planning to be able to do it, you’ll be amazed at what a difference it can make in your life and relationships!

I’m willing to bet that you, or someone you know has a resistance for change. You probably have things set in a certain way that you like them, and you probably have different routines and habits that you follow on a regular basis. You’ve probably felt “stuck in a rut” at some point or another, but also had no idea on what to do to make it better or get all the things from life you really deserve.

With a New Year approaching, I couldn’t think of a better topic to write about than why we are resistant to changing, or what it takes to truly transform your life into something great. You can have the relationship you want, the job you want, the things that make you happy – but you have to be willing to accept the changes that will get you there!

There are three different types of changes that we all go through in life. Changes we instill are ones that we are motivated to make and usually are to make life better. Maybe you switched from regular to decaf coffee because you were worried about caffeine – maybe you made a change in your diet to eat healthier. These types of changes aren’t easy to make, but they are changes that we want to make and consciously make.

Then there are changes that occur without us even realizing they happen, these are passive changes. These are changes that come from either growth or neglect in our own personal lives.  Sometimes these changes are positive, other times they can be negative. We all change at the very least physically as we age – and we also develop emotionally from different experiences we encounter. We can’t really resist these changes, because we don’t notice them until we look back on our lives a month, year, or decade later.

The third kind of changes are ones we have no control over, External Changes. Sometimes, I think these changes happen simply as the universe’s way to force you to learn how to adapt or get out of the rut. Again, sometimes these changes are good – like the birth of a new baby or maybe meeting someone new. Other times, these changes can seem traumatic, like losing a job at the worst possible time or losing someone close to you that you love. We have no control over most of these things, we must instead learn how to use the change as an opportunity instead of as a disaster. Most of us deal with these types of changes passively, not realizing that it’s often a change for our own good in the long run, whether to grow emotionally or find a new opportunity we may have ignored before.

Why Do We Resist Change?

Change, no matter how bad it may seem, is a good thing. If life stayed the same all the time, we would get bored. We would never grow, never develop beyond what we already are. But most of us hate changes, especially sudden unexpected ones.

There’s several theories on why we resist change – and once you identify your reasons, you can see what is holding you back:

Fear of the Unknown:  What happens when you quit your job one day with no future plans? It can be terrifying to think that you might end up losing your house, your family, barely living and starving to death underneath a bridge. Will that actually happen? To most of us, no – but we’re still afraid of it nonetheless. Sometimes staying where you are without ever changing can be a much more scarier thought. Staying with someone who doesn’t inspire you, or wasting your life through a mundane job you hate is just as equally terrifying and suffocating to me. It’s not irrational to be afraid of anything, but at the same time, being afraid of change can cause results that may be even more scary.

We’re Too Busy: Being too busy for anything is usually just an excuse, because if you want something you will make the time for it. But we get distracted, we get sidetracked – giving too much focus on mundane tasks that don’t really need the amount of attention we give them, letting our personal relationships and personal development often suffer. Everybody is busy – even my two year old has a schedule and a social agenda. Sometimes you need to cut down on all that noise and think about what really is important to your happiness.

We Put Money as a Priority: There are millions of people who are not eating healthy foods, simply because the ones that are unhealthy are cheaper. Yet, when they suffer from health problems, they don’t that maybe it’s because they were letting money control their destiny. When you put money as a reason for not changing, you’re limiting yourself forever to being worried about money. Why should you let money control your destiny and your well being? I’m not saying go out on an uncontrolled shopping spree here – but money should not be the reason why you are unhappy, unhealthy, or otherwise not living the life you deserve.

We are too Accepting: Those who don’t like change tend to be very accepting of things that happen around them – even if they really shouldn’t be. Most of us are all too fast to just say, “Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it”. While yes, some things we have no control over, we can control how we react and respond. When you take control of how you feel, how you live, and what you do, you’re not going to suffer when the uncontrolled changes happen, and you’ll be less likely to see passive changes as well.

We Need More Faith: Faith goes on beyond believing or non-believing in the deity of your choice. We need to believe more in ourselves and of others what we’re truly capable of doing. Everywhere you turn there is a skeptic, and many of us are programmed to believe “Oh, I could never succeed at that”. What you believe will likely manifest itself as true. Without faith in something, you’re never going to see a change.

We Change the Wrong Things: It’s not easy to know what to change to make life better. Maybe you’re having problems with your spouse, and so it seems like the obvious solution is to end the relationship, since it must be him or her that needs to change. But, it might not have been that person – it may have been how you communicated with each other or what you did together or your expectations that truly needed changed. Unfortunately, it’s not until many a relationships have ended do we realize we needed to change our behavior and actions, not remove the person we once loved. Before you go making drastic changes, take some time and look beyond the physical layer of what is bothering you and dig deeper to see what the root cause is.

So What Do You Do?

If you want to change, or know something in your life needs a change – be it your personal finance situation, your relationships, your stress level, a bad habit, etc. – look at really what kind of change needs to happen. Most of hard part about changing and fighting the resistance to change starts right in your own heart. If you never overcome the reasons why you afraid to change, you’ll never make the change. And if you continue to be resistant to change, you’ll look back a month from now, a year from now, a decade from now – and see change anyway.

A New Year is here, and for many I hope this is the year you take control of the changes that happen in your life and your relationships with others instead of just letting life pass you by. Not liking change isn’t going to protect you from it happening – so why not take control and get the life you want?

Some people make long lists of their New Year’s resolutions, others might just focus on one or two things they’d like to see change. Others know they will forget about their resolutions in a few days and don’t even bother making them in the first place!

If you’re the resolution making type, here’s a few tips to help you achieve them:

1. Don’t make too many, or you’ll likely get overwhelmed and discouraged.

2. Plan ways to carry the resolution out. Without a plan or ideas on how to go about carrying out your New Year’s resolution, its very likely you will give up or forget about it.

3. Identify WHY that resolution is important to you. The more you know why you want something, the more it will help you stay motivated.

4. Look at last year: While dwelling in the past isn’t a good thing, it doesn’t hurt to look back and see what mistakes were made and how you can avoid making the same ones again this year.

5. Make them specific: Let’s say you want to lose weight. Rather than being generic with “losing weight”, you might want to aim for something specific such as “I will cut out sugar” or “I will exercise every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday”. The more specific the goal, the more likely you’ll be able to carry it out.

6. Be prepared for failure: Not to be pessimistic, but its likely you won’t be perfect in achieving your resolutions. Instead of giving up completely, start right back where you left off before the slip-up.

Are you making any resolutions this year? Have any tips to share in keeping them? Share them in the comments below!

It would seem with billions of people in the world, meeting people that have the qualities of a good friend shouldn’t be that hard. And yet, for many of us finding that friend in of itself is a challenge – and continuing that friendship over the years and trials of life for many just isn’t possible. There have been times in my life I had so many friends I couldn’t fit them all together in a giant room – and other times I could count all of  my friends on one hand and still have fingers left over.

I did some thinking about what really makes a good friend and what characteristics they have. I thought back on the past friends I’ve had and presently have – how they treated me, how I treated them – why we are still friends today or why our friendship has changed or dissolved.

All of this thinking had led me to create this list of the qualities of a good friend.

A good friend is honest and trustworthy

A good friend lets you be yourself and doesn’t try to change you or change to be liked by you

A good friend shows they care

A good friend never would let you do something that would hurt you

A good friend calls you just to say hi or see how you are

A good friend is genuinely interested and involved in your life

A good friend can tell if you’re happy or not happy without you saying a word

A good friend sticks with you through the terrible-horrible parts of life

A good friend makes time for you even if they don’t have a lot of time

A good friend has enough dirt on you to blackmail you for life – but keeps his or her mouth shut

A good friend can forgive you when you make a mistake or screw up

A good friend never takes more from you than they can give back

A good friend is respectful towards you and every other person in your life, whether they like them or not

These are just some of my thoughts on what makes a good friend based from my own experiences. What qualities do you think make a good friend? Do you have many of these friends or just a close few?