If you’re not happy with your body, chances are good that if you mention it to someone, you say you need to lose weight.  Losing weight can, of course, help, but do you honestly care what your weight is, or do you care what your body looks like?

The first thing that comes to mind for most people when they think about reshaping their body is going on a diet, a diet that either leaves them hungry all the time or drastically reduces the range of what they can eat.  While that sort of diet can work, there’s actually a way that’s much faster and more effective, a way that doesn’t leave you hungry all the time, nor deprive you of either meats or vegetables.

The fastest, safest, and most effective way to reshape your body in a short period of time involves three elements:  sleep, diet, and exercise.  It may surprise you to see sleep listed along with diet and exercise, but poor sleeping habits can considerably reduce the effectiveness of the other two factors.

I’ve covered sleep and diet in previous articles this week, so today’s article is going to be on exercise… not on specific exercises for you to do, but a general pattern for exercising effectively.

The first thing to understand is that aerobic exercise (also called “cardio”) is not the most effective tool for reshaping your body… it can certainly be one component, but an exercise plan that doesn’t cover resistance training, also known as lifting weights, will be far slower and less effective.

Let me dispel a myth quickly that I’ve heard from many people… weight training (more properly called resistance training) doesn’t have to make you big and bulky.  What it does do is sculpt your body… putting muscle in the right places while allowing that muscle to burn extra calories and remove fat from other places. 

Speaking of an exercise plan… you need one.  You need to set up a schedule for your exercise, knowing what you’re going to work on at what times.  My personal preference is to rotate upper body, lower body, and cardio.  That means that one day I’ll work out the major muscle groups of my upper body, the next day I’ll do the major muscle groups of my lower body, and the next I’ll work on my cardio (generally running on the treadmill for me).  This gives your muscles a couple of days to heal before they’re worked again.

Once you have a general plan like the one mentioned above, then you can work on plans for individual days.  You’ll need to choose a specific exercise for each muscle group that you’re going to work that day, and you’ll need to change the exercise that you use for a given muscle group fairly regularly, or your body will adjust and that particular exercise will become less and less effective for you.

You may want to start each day with a bit of a warm up… I usually jog for one mile before I really get started.

Regardless of the exercise, you’ll want to use this pattern while doing it:

1. 12 repetitions (reps) at the original weight
2. 1 minute break and increase the weight for the next set
3. 10 reps at the new weight
4. 1 minute break and increase the weight
5. 8 reps
6. 1 minute break and increase the weight
7. 6 reps
8. 1 minute break and decrease the weight
9. 12 reps
10. 2 minute break and move to the next exercise
    

You can continue that until you’ve done all the muscle groups for that day.

So how do you decide how much weight?  You should always select a weight subjectively, rather than objectively:  the first weight you use, for 12 reps, should be about a difficulty of about 6 on a 10 point scale.  The next weight should be a 7, then 8, 9, and the final set of 12 should be at a 10… in other words, you should barely be able to complete it.  Whether that’s 5 pounds, 50, or 500 doesn’t really matter… it’s the amount of effort your body is putting into it that determines how much you get out of it.

When you first begin your exercise routine, you’ll likely find that your muscles are sore the next day, and even the day after… the best cure for this soreness, believe it or not, is to lightly exercise those same muscles again, doing something like what you would do for your first set if you were working that muscle group that day.  If you avoid exercising because you’re sore, on the other hand, that soreness can last much longer.

If you keep it up, you’ll almost certainly notice a major difference in how you feel after just a few days, and it won’t take much (if any) longer for you to be able to start seeing it.  There is usually a measurable (as in tape measure) difference within 7-10 days… assuming you’re not already in top shape, of course.

I’ve personally done this before, and I intend to do it again (and soon, too!).  I did it for twelve weeks before, and in that twelve weeks I lost about 10% body fat and gained over 20 pounds of muscle.  I don’t have pictures of myself, but if you want to see pictures of other people who’ve followed the same plan (or a VERY similar one), you can check out the Body For Life Challenge champions pictures… and remember, this is in twelve weeks… less than three months!

Good luck… and feel free to send me before and after pictures if you do try it!  I may even post them if I get enough… and I might appear in that post, as well.

There’s one attribute, one piece, of your life that affects the rest of you more than anything else.  When you damage that aspect, it can damage the rest, like bringing down a building by taking out one critical support.  On the other hand, improving this one area of life can bring improvements nearly across the board, as well.

So what is this one critical thing?  What is it that affects everything else?

Sleep.

When you don’t sleep well your body and mind don’t get the chance to slow down and take care of repairs and construction.  That means that everything starts wearing down… everything from your thoughts to your emotions to your physical health.

There are many different ways of “not sleeping well”.  It could be a lack of sleep (probably the most common), restless sleep, or even oversleeping.  All of these things cause your body and mind to be unable to rid themselves of stress, and therefore unable to heal.

There are many symptoms, as well, and although most people will get most of the symptoms eventually, which ones show up first can vary widely from person to person.  Some people may start off by being irritable, while others may show it through depression, getting sick easily, lack of mental focus, or even difficulty getting their eyes to focus.

Whatever any given person’s early symptoms may be, they tend to be consistent for that person, meaning that if you start by getting irritable when you don’t get enough sleep, chances are pretty high that you’ll start with that symptom the next time you’re lacking in sleep, also.  That’s fortunate, because it can help you to figure out that it is, in fact, a lack of sleep that is behind it.

Sometimes not sleeping well is nearly unavoidable… when a major life-changing event is coming, when you only have a limited amount of time to do a lot of things, etc.  A limited amount of exposure to this kind of situation isn’t generally enough to start causing serious problems.  It’s when you get to be in the habit of not sleeping well that the real issues start to arise.

A persistent lack of focus can make your job (or school) performance drop to the point where it becomes dangerous… or speaking of a lack of focus being dangerous, how about when you’re driving?  Constant irritability can cause your relationships to suffer and eventually even begin to wither.  Constant stress can cause different parts of your body to start failing, often beginning with your digestive track (your stomach and your guts).

So now you know the negative side, some aspects of which you may already be dealing with, not knowing that they’re coming from your poor sleep.  What about the good side?

Getting enough good sleep can do the opposite of the negatives, helping you deal with depression, improving your focus (and mental/emotional state in general), and giving you a better outlook on life.  Those things, of course, can lead to more positives… better relationships, better performance at work getting you a better job, or even (to be drastic) keeping you from committing suicide out of your depression.

How, then, do you make sure you get enough good sleep, so you can move from the negative to the positive?

The first step is to establish a routine for sleeping.  That consists of many different pieces, the most important of which is probably the timing, but also your behavior before you go to sleep, where you sleep, and other factors that make the experience similar each night.

If you know that in general you need to get up at 5:00 AM, for example, and you need six hours of sleep each night, you might set a bed time of 10:30.  It is important to stick close to this bed time as much as possible, because your body begins preparing for sleep long before you actually get there.  Your breathing slows, your heart slows, and you may start to yawn… all of these things are preparations the body is making for sleep, so that it can get to work on repairs as soon as possible.

Going to bed at a given time helps your body know when and how much sleep it’s going to get… establishing a routine for before bed gives you a way to send a strong signal that the time for sleep is approaching.  You may, for example, choose to read for a bit prior to bed (it helps some people relax… it often has the opposite effect on me, however, if it’s a good book).  The routine can also involve much smaller things, like brushing your teeth.

It doesn’t really matter much what your routine is, as long as it’s consistent… the consistency is what teaches your body and mind that these things are a signal that the time to sleep is approaching.  There are a few exceptions, of course… a lot of physical exercise or downing a couple cups of coffee are probably not productive as part of a bed time routine.

Just because you’re an adult now doesn’t mean that you don’t need a routine and that you don’t need a bed time… you do need it in order to get the best sleep, and thereby get more out of life.

PS – This is another thing that I have to work on, and one thing I can suggest that can be very helpful to making your sleep better sleep is to take a few minutes before you lay down to have just a little quiet time to yourself, allowing the day’s events to come up and be mentally looked at, then let go.  This simple process can, if practiced regularly, drastically improve the quality of whatever amount of sleep you get.

It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?  The secret to weighing less is eating more?  It’s true, however.

Of course I don’t mean you should eat more food, I mean you should eat more often.  Many people eat only one or two meals per day… few indeed eat more than three.  The optimum, however, is actually five or six.

Your body is designed to have food intake every three to four hours that you are awake.  This doesn’t mean you eat the equivalent of a full dinner every few hours, though… you should, instead, have a portion of meat and a portion of vegetables.

What is a portion?  A portion is an amount of food about the size of your palm.  Easy enough to figure out, right?  You don’t even need to read the nutritional labels for that!

It does, of course, matter what meat and vegetables you eat… leaner meat and vegetables that are lower in sugar are better.  Men should keep in mind, however, that animal fat is an important part of testosterone production, so going ultra-low fat can be counterproductive.

There are two major reasons that eating like this helps you lose weight.  The first is that your body automatically goes into starvation mode after not eating for a while, setting itself up to conserve all energy from the next meal you consume.  The second is that keeping your body fed keeps it from craving sugary and fatty foods, which it mostly wants because it thinks it needs to store energy for the times when it is “starving”.

As you get into eating more often, you’ll find that it’s hard to eat as often per day as you should, both because you get tired of eating so often and because of the sheer amount of time involved.  That’s when you can turn to protein bars and shakes.  These are easy (though sometimes slightly more expensive than more “regular” food) and quick, but still provide the protein and other nutrients that you need.

If you go to a nutrition store to purchase the bars and shakes you’ll find that there is an incredible variety in brands and flavors.  What you’ll want to look at besides that, though, is the nutritional label.  If you want something satisfying, you’re probably going to be looking for something with at least 20 grams of protein (30 is better), and as little fat and sugar as you can find (fiber is fine, sugar is bad).  You can also look at the additional things some of them will have, such as vitamins and minerals, or body building supplements such as creatine.

Speaking of body building, an essential part of losing weight in a healthy way is exercise.  You already know that… what you may not know is that the best way to lose fat and look better is NOT cardio workouts.  Weight training is much more effective, as muscle mass burns calories even while you’re just sitting around.

Weight training doesn’t have to make you big and bulky, though, for those of you who are worried about such things.  You can, of course, get that way, but simply lifting weights doesn’t automatically make you that way (in fact, it takes quite a bit of work for most people).  Even for girls who just want to slim down weight training is more effective than aerobics… especially because aerobics simply makes you smaller while retaining your current “shape”, while weight training can actually reshape your body.

There you have it in a nutshell… if you want to weigh less, eat more!

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Variety is the spice of life”, right?  Even if you’ve never heard it before, if you stop and think about it for a moment, you’ll understand the meaning behind it… it’s the things that stand out that make life fun and interesting.

Variety is important… but so is the routine that makes it stand out.  Your body learns from routine (so does your mind, actually, but we’ll concentrate on the body for now).  It learns when it is time to sleep, along with how much to sleep, when, what, and how much to eat, and many other things that you likely consider subconscious, and out of your conscious mind’s control.

When you lack a routine (Guilty!) , and your life is essentially chaotic, it takes a toll on your body.  You start sleeping poorly and become tired all day, and even sleepy at less than optimum times.  Your diet likely starts to suffer as your body tries to compensate for the unpredictable demands on it, and starts craving more sugar because of the interference with your sleeping patterns.

You’ll also find that you seem to have less and less time in the day to get things done.  Because nothing is planned and nothing is routine, you lose time both because you can’t be as efficient (there can be little planning ahead when you don’t know what’s coming) and because you have to keep taking the time to choose what to do next.  Eventually it starts to seem as if you have no time to do anything, even though you have exactly the same amount as everyone else who IS getting things done.

Variety also starts to lose its flavor to where it takes more and more for you to feel like you’re having a good time, like what you are doing is fun, enjoyable, and really what you want to be doing.  All the little things that you haven’t done because you let go of the routine start bothering you, hanging about at the back of your mind and draining you bit by bit.

You can alleviate all of this, and make your life more enjoyable, by establishing a routine.  That doesn’t mean that everything in your day has to be the same every day, it just means establishing certain patterns, and sticking with them the majority of the time.  Establishing specific times to eat (or specific intervals between eating), for instance, can help you improve your diet, which often also improves your mood.  Establishing a bed time can also help to improve your sleep, as your body can become adjusted to going to sleep at that time, and therefore start preparing beforehand.  Times in a routine don’t have to be set down to the minute… approximate is good enough.  Dinner could be at 6:30 PM, give or take 15-30 minutes (or your interval could be eating every 3.5 hours, give or take 15-30 minutes), and bed time could have the same sort of range (ie 10:15 is close enough to 10:00 to still be accepted as part of a routine).

Establishing your new routine can be difficult, at first.  It can feel confining, which may make you want to rebel.  It also requires conscious effort until it becomes established habit, which can take two or three weeks.  During this time of change, you may feel even more stressed than when you had a routine… precisely because it’s a change.  If you stick with it, however, you should start noticing a difference within a couple weeks… and then eventually you’ll stop noticing the difference, because that’s how your mind and body work.

If you want to try this, but don’t want to try to reorganize your entire life at once, the change with the most impact is probably setting a bed time.  The amount and quality of your sleep can drastically affect nearly every other aspect of your life.  The second most effective thing to make routine is your eating… this will tend to cut down on your cravings for unhealthy food, as well as the negative effects of eating too much or too little at a time.  Other things which are good to make part of your routine but can wait until later are things like exercise, laundry, dishes, and anything else which needs done every, or nearly every, day.

If you have children, having a standard routine in your life is even more important, as they are more sensitive to such things than adults.  Having set times to eat, sleep, and even play (especially if that set time to play is a set time to play with you) can make massive improvements in their behavior… which can make massive improvements in your mood.

This article is not suggesting, by the way, that you never vary from the routine… far from it.  Exceptions to the routine are likely to be what you remember long down the road… but there must be a routine before those exceptions are noticeable.  It doesn’t hurt anything that the routine can help you clear out stress and give you more energy (through improved diet and sleep) to enjoy those exceptions, either.

So, in closing… don’t make everything in your life routine, but do try to establish some routines.  It’s very draining and damaging to your mind and emotions when either everything, or nothing, is planned.

PS – This is something that I, personally, plan on working toward… it’s been quite some time since I had much routine or pattern in my life, and it’s time I got some back.  Except for my trip to Vegas next month 😉 

The best thing to do when you need to deal with a controlling person is understand that the need to control comes from a place of fear, of weakness, not of strength.  A person operating from a place of strength has no need to control others.

The fear that causes someone to be controlling is generally one of two kinds:  fear of failure (if I’m not running everything, then it will all go to pieces) or fear of showing their weakness (if I don’t control this person, they will find my weaknesses and control me).  The way to treat those fears differs, although both involve letting go, but this isn’t about how to fix someone being controlling, it’s about how to deal with them.

Controlling people have a sliding scale along which they place each person they encounter, a scale that runs from vastly inferior to vastly superior, with the very center being those that are unknown.  People on the low end of the scale are safe to manipulate, while those at the high end are to be obeyed (and maybe even feared).

People are placed on this scale (and moved on it) based on their behavior… if your behavior shows strength and confidence, you move up the scale, but if your behavior shows weakness and uncertainty, you will move down it.  Much of this behavior is subconscious, and is even shared with many types of animals.

The girl in the picture, for instance, is clearly showing her submission… leaning away, head tilted downward, eyes raised and barely able to look at the man.  The man, on the other hand, is showing aggressive, dominant behavior… leaning forward to look down on her, teeth bared, finger in her face, etc.

There is also a place between these two extremes… your behavior can show your dominance without being aggressive.  If you stand with your back straight, confidently meeting the eyes of whomever you encounter, speaking strongly and clearly, then you will come across as being high on the scale, without having to be a jerk (though being a jerk to someone who is controlling can often place you above them on their scale, it is a temporary placement… they will not respect you, and without respect, they are simply looking for a way to maneuver around you to a superior position).

If you want to stop someone from controlling you, then, you need to adopt behavior which shows them that you are higher on the scale than they consider themselves (or so strong that you actually are off the scale, but that’s much harder both to learn and to do).  You can easily figure out what that behavior is by mentally picturing someone of strength and confidence… picture them standing, moving, and reacting.  The behaviors you picture are the ones that you should aim to adopt.

When you first change your behavior in this manner, the controlling person’s first reaction is often to try to drag (usually through guilt) or push (often through angry reactions) you back down the scale to where you were.  Don’t back down, though… even if you don’t feel the confidence you’re projecting, their very reaction shows that you are having an effect, and when you understand that, and that they are indeed seeing what you are projecting, that itself can cause you to grow into that very confidence.   In people behavior and attitude are interdependent:  as your attitude changes, so does your behavior, but the reverse is true as well… as your behavior changes, your attitude slowly follows.

The new strength and confidence that you find as you change your behavior can help you across all aspects of your life, too… it may give you the confidence to ask for a raise, or the strength to do something about the state of your relationship.

So, in parting, I’ll leave you with a small list of things that can help you project that image of the strong, confident person that you want to be:

1. Stand Up Straight

2. Meet People’s Eyes Directly

3. Speak Clearly And Strongly

4. Don’t Back Up When People Invade Your Personal Space

5. Don’t Fidget

   And a mental one:

6. Every Time You Think Of Failure, Think Of Success

More detail on that list may be forthcoming in another article in the near future.

Want to make today a better day?  It’s not that hard, it just takes a little prep work.

It won’t take long, but you do need five minutes in a place where you can sit quietly.  You’ll also need a pen and paper (you can type, but pen and paper work better).

Sit down and picture something that makes you happy… happy like the baby in the picture.  If you want an example, here’s one from my own life:  making a daddy sandwich.  That’s when my wife lays on one side of me, with her head on my shoulder, and my daughter lays on my other side, with her head on my other shoulder.

Visualize it as clearly as you can in your mind… sight, sound, smells, touch, even the way it makes you feel (as in emotions).  While you’re visualizing that, write it down.  The visualizing and the writing reinforce each other… writing it down sets the memory more clearly, while the memory associates with the actual written words (which is why a pen and paper work better).

When you have it written down, repeat the process to find at least two more things… five is better, but you don’t want to go overboard, because if you get to having too many items, it will dilute the power of each one.  Now, if you did use pen and paper, fold up the paper and take it with you.

When something bad happens during the day, pull out your list and bring one of those memories back.  When something notably good happens, do the same.  If you have a few minutes when you’re not doing anything, bring it out again.

When you do it isn’t important… just spending the time to really remember something that truly makes you happy takes all (or at least a lot) of the sting out of something bad happening, and makes something good even better.

If your happy memories involve your family, it also makes you feel closer to them.  Whatever they involve, though, it brings more happiness into today than would have otherwise been there.

Which, of course, makes today a better day.

By the way, here’s my list (at least for today):

1. Making A Daddy Sandwich

2. My First Hug From My Wife When I Get Home

3. My Daughter’s Arms Wrapped Around My Neck When She First Wakes Up

4. Seeing Happiness And Excitement In My Son’s Face

5. Quiet Time With My Wife

That’s mine… can you tell that I’m a family man?  Does anyone else feel like sharing?  Sometimes just reading what makes other people happy can bring up related memories of your own that make you happy, too.

When is the last time that you had real time off?  Real time off doesn’t just mean time when you don’t go into the office… it means time when you feel no rush to do anything, time when you feel like you can take time, and not in specified amounts, to do whatyou want to do.

Real time off means you don’t have to go to the grocery store, or buy your kids clothes, or take them to practice, or fix something around the house (unless that’s what you enjoy).  You don’t have a vacation with a tight schedule, and for that matter, you don’t really have any schedule at all… you truly have leisure time.

I can’t really speak for ages past, but in the modern day, it seems to be harder and harder to disconnect and take time off from everything.  You have demands on your time coming from all sides… your job, your spouse, your kids, family, friends, people trying to sell you something.  It just never seems to stop.

You can, of course, make it stop.  Your time is your own… no one else can have any of it that you don’t give them (short of kidnapping you).  It’s all a matter of priorities… the higher on your priority list something is, the greater claims it can make on your time.

The problem is that we often forget to put ourselves on our priority list, or if we’re there, we’re way down near the bottom.  We need some of our own time, though.

When you don’t get any of your own time, when it’s all taken up by the demands of others, you begin to feel drained, and the longer it stays that way, the worse the drain is, until you feel absolutely empty inside, as if you were nothing but a shell.  The only way to get over that empty, exhausted feeling is to bump yourself all the way to the top of the priority list and take some time for you.

When you take this time, it doesn’t mean you have to sit around and do nothing (although that’s a valid choice, as long as it is a choice).  You can do anything you enjoy, just don’t give yourself a set time limit… don’t do something for just an hour, do it until that emptiness starts to fill, or hopefully fills completely, although that might take more than one time.

You can read, go fishing, play basketball, do something creative (write, paint, carve, etc.), or work on something that you enjoy.  The key is that it has to be something that you’re doing just because you want to, just because you like to do it, not because you feel like it’s something you have to do.

It also doesn’t have to be alone, as long as having someone with you doesn’t make you feel like the time is not your own any more.  In particular, I know that I can certainly feel like I have time of my own while still being with my wife.  That being said, I do occasionally enjoy some time that is just mine, with no expectations of me at all.

It’s been a while for me since I had time that I felt was my own.  I’ve been working a lot of hours, and of course that leaves little time for taking care of all the other things that need taken care of in a life.  I think soon I may take the time to grab a pole, go out to a lake, and see if I can find some dinner.

And I think I’ll give my wife some time off soon, too… I’ll take care of the kids, and give her time to do whatever it is that she wants to do.

That’s it… don’t forget to put yourself on your priority list for your time.  You can thank me afterward.

A lot of people seem to be unaware of who they really are… they’ve never stopped to figure it out, just doing what they’ve learned that other people expect them to do, what they think they “should” do, rather than what is right for them.

If you would prefer to find fulfillment, rather than just trudging through life, you need to break that mold.  You need to really figure out who you are, and whatyou really want to do.

The good news is that it’s pretty easy to do, although some people have trouble with the concept the first time or two.  So… are you ready for it?  Do you want to know how to find fulfillment in your life?

All you need is a little directed daydreaming… you just need to daydream enough to answer this question:

If you had no responsibilities, no pressures, no need to worry about making money, paying bills, doing chores, or taking care of anyone… what would you do?

This isn’t asking what would you do with a billion dollars, and answers like “be with my spouse” don’t really answer the question… the question is what would you DO, not who would you do it with.

There is no wrong answer… what you want to do may not be popular, or may even be looked down upon by society, but that has nothing to do with whether or not it’s right for you.

I’ll get this started by answering the question myself:  I would travel a bit (Australia and Italy are at the top of my list), go fishing (hence the picture), write fiction, make things out of wood (particularly furniture), and design clothing (See?  It doesn’t have to be an “accepted” activity.).

Once you figure out what it is that you would do if you were given complete freedom, why not see if you can work some of that into your life now?  I can go fishing, make things out of wood (at least small things, I don’t have room anywhere for a workshop), and write without doing anything more than spending a little bit of money and dedicating the time to it.  If I knew how to find software that would allow me to alter basic patterns, I might get started on the clothing, too (oh, and find someone to make it for me once I have the pattern… I don’t sew, other than patches on my uniform when I was in the Army).

I’m really curious… what would you do?  Anyone else for some nice relaxing fishing?  If you have any inclination to do so, please answer in the comments… I would really like to know.

PS – I read a really good article the other day at The Art Of Manliness that you may like.

That is a question that many people have, particularly young people… and it actually can be read two ways:  “Am I too young to get married?” and “Have we been together long enough to get married?”

The answers to both questions vary from person to person, of course, as does nearly anything so personal.  There are some general guidelines that it wouldn’t really hurt for anyone to follow, however.

What is too young to get married?

To be honest, giving an age would be silly, because the real answer to this question is not based on age, but on experience… more of a mental maturity level than a measurement of the amount of time you’ve been on this planet.  There are certain times in life that tend to push this maturity level higher, though some people react in the opposite manner.

There are many of this type of event, and some of them can happen at wildly different ages.  There are two that tend to happen at a relatively young age, though, that I think are good to go through before getting married: graduating from school and living on your own.

Graduating includes both high school and college.  Graduating from high school certainly brings changes, even if you are going to college, but the real changes are felt when you are done with school entirely, when you are pushed to enter real life.  This is also often the time when you first move out and live on your own.

At that point, you have the freedom, and responsibility, of choosing your own job and your own path through life.  You have the choice of where to work, what to do, and what work ethic you are going to have.

With this freedom, of course, come the consequences of acting upon it.  These consequences may be good or bad, but either way, they fall on you directly as a consequence of your own actions, rather than it filtering through your parents or teachers, forcing you to mature as you learn to deal with the impact of your actions directly.

Both of these events can, and often do, happen at about the same time, and both of them make you more aware of the world and yourself.  That makes you better able to judge whether someone is right for you, your soul mate with whom you will spend the rest of your life.

So there is no “magic age” at which it is okay to get married, and you don’t even need to wait for after you graduate and move out on your own.  The real secret is the maturity level, and if your maturity is high enough without those experiences (and only someone who really knows you could tell you), that’s great.  If your maturity is low enough, even being well into middle-age is not really enough.

Have we been together long enough?

This is the other side of the question, which also seems to come up more often for young people.  There is no universal answer for this one, either, but I have a couple of suggestions to make.

The first one, which I suggest VERY strongly, is that you wait for at least six months before you even get engaged.  The reason for this is simple:  the first few months of a new relationship are filled with euphoria, happiness, and a general tendency to not just overlook but actually blind yourself and deny that the relationship, and the other person, is anything less than perfect.  This can make you think you want to get married to someone, and spend the rest of your life with them, when a few months later you would see more clearly and know that you’re just not right, long term.

It’s also relatively easy to pretend to be someone other than who you are for a few months, but as time goes by your real self tends to come out, at least occasionally.  Seeing that in your significant other can really make you want to back off quick… which is considerably more difficult if you are engaged, and even more so if you are married.

My other suggestion is that you be engaged for six months or more before you actually tie the knot.  This gives you time to adjust to the idea of being together forever, which can alter the relationship and the way you interact with each other.   Taking the time while engaged lets you see if the idea of being together forever holds up when it is a lot more real.

So, is it too early?

No one can really make that call but you.  That being said, the advice above, if followed, can help you to be more ready for marriage, and more able to determine whether or not the person that you’re with is the one for you.

Marriage is the biggest thing in your life, once you enter into it… please take the time to make sure you get it right.

Sometimes, when enough things change in your life in a short enough time, you feel like you’re being overwhelmed, like you are lost amidst the chaos surrounding you.  It is a draining and very unpleasant experience, and it can make people who normally seem unflappable completely at a loss.

That feeling of chaos can come from many different areas of your life… changes in your finances, your relationship, your job, or any other major thing in your life can trigger it.  It generally arises more from changes you perceive as negative than ones you perceive as positive, but if the positive changes are big enough, it can alter enough other things to leave you with somewhat of a feeling of chaos, too.

I recently went through this feeling myself, much of which was due to massive changes in my job.  I still work from the same office, and I still have the same boss, at least technically, but much else has changed.

The company that I worked for sold off the piece where I worked, meaning that not only do I now work for someone else, but we have to take over things that were previously supported by the larger company… in the case of our department, this includes things like email and desktop support.  At the same time, my boss was moved from the facility where I work to the other facility that the company who bought us owns, and had enough new work piled upon him that I seldom see him.

That means, essentially, that there are now two people doing the work that previously was being handled by six people.  Add in to this the fact that the sale of the company was on again/off again and the general change and adjusting surrounding such processes, and it adds up to a large amount of change in a small time, meaning I started feeling that chaos was overwhelming me.

I got past this feeling by learning, or more accurately by being reminded, of one lesson:  If you want to wrench order from chaos in your life, you must take responsibility and you must take action.

Order, or at least the human perception of it, doesn’t come naturally.  Nature is full of chaos and random chance, not the planning and structure that our minds crave.  That means that someone, at some point, has to step in and take action to change the natural course in order for that structure to be built.

A structure can be built with action alone, but if you want it to be of study construction, there needs to be responsibility, as well.  Imagine a workplace filled with people who won’t take responsibility for their work or their actions (not too hard for some people to imagine, I’m sure)… the business will flounder, going nowhere due to lack of direction, and no one will want to work there because of the negative atmosphere.

The same thing applies to relationships, as well… if no one takes responsibility for taking the necessary actions to maintain and strengthen the relationship, then it won’t get done.  If it doesn’t get done, the relationship will gradually fall apart, with neither person particularly wanting to be in the relationship any more… although both may be sad to look back and see what they lost, see where the relationship used to be.

If you want order in your life, a solid structure upon which to stand and be confident, there is only one person you can turn to:  you.  You are the only person who is involved in every aspect of your life, and the only one who can take responsibility for the actions necessary to make your structure strong enough to stand up to the occasional hits it will take as you go through life.

If you feel like your life is in chaos, or if you feel like you’re not really getting anywhere in life, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself a question.  Are waiting for someone else to come in and hand you things on a silver platter, or are you taking responsibility for yourself, doing what needs to be done in order to move ahead?

If it’s the first, then be aware… even if you are lucky, and are the one in a million who doeshave someone give you what you want, you’re likely to lose it again before long if you don’t change.  Look at all the lottery winners who end up worse off than before they won… someone handed them money, they acted without responsibility, and they gained nothing.  They may even have not learned their lesson.

Do you want to be free from the chaos in your life?  Do you want to be, and feel, successful?  All it takes to start down that path is to take responsibility for yourself and your actions… when you see something that needs to be done, stand up and take that responsibility and get it done.

You’ll make everyone who is still waiting for someone else to fix things happier!