Happy Anniversary

Every day, I think about the day you chose me.

The day you saw through the mess. Sifted through the ashes. Dug down to the core, and chose me.

You knew me before I ever even knew myself.

Our 8 years together have been a rollercoaster. Let’s be honest, I am the rollercoaster, you were just along for the ride. When people got off, you stayed on. You knew. You could see past the turmoil. 

You knew me, even when I didn’t know myself.

Thank you.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you from the deepest part of my soul.

I still can’t believe you are the very first and last thing I see every single day.

I recognize it, I appreciate it, and I value it above everything else.

My drive and ambition is to show you every day that you were right. I am worth it. I am not defined by my mistake. I have something amazing inside me that needs to come out, that gets a chance to come out every single day, because of you. That’s why I work as hard as I do, to build my business, myself, and our life. You ask me to take a day off, to take it slow, but you know I can’t. There is too much to do, and you absolutely understand that. You know my dreams, you know they are going to materialize, and you believe in me.

Now I know myself.

I know my strengths.

I know my weaknesses.

 I know my purpose.

But you knew me first, and you are the driving force behind everything I do. You are my power. I spend my days proving you right. Letting you know you made the right decision. Letting the world know you made the right decision. You chose correctly when it would have been so much easier to walk away. I am in awe of your strength and resilience. There is no me without you.

As we enter in to our 9th year of matrimony, know that it is only going to get better. We have big dreams, and every single one of them is going to come true. We are a machine. Running stronger than ever. Nothing can stop us.

Me and you. You and me.

Forever and ever.

Love,

Joey

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Love The Ones You Hate

Hate is ugly.

Hate is unhealthy.

“But man, he/she is such an asshole.”

They did this to me.

They did that to me.

They make my life hard.

“I hate them.”

It’s Time To Re-write The Narrative

Just to be clear, my approach does not to take away from whatever they did to you, or continue to do to you. It is to look at the situation from the other side of the coin.

What if you were able to take the negative and make it a positive?

What if you could take the hate and learn to love?

The most important thing you can get out of this article is:

“Life is not what happens to you, it is what you do with it.”

If you want to dwell on yesterday, go ahead. It won’t get you anywhere, but, be my guest. The more you look backwards the less you are looking forward. I can’t remember who says this, but there is a reason the windshield is big and the review mirror is small.

Focus on the future, not the past.

And how do you do that Mr. Smarty Pants?

I’m glad you asked.

Step #1

Take the negative from yesterday, and focus on the growth it gave you for today. Focus on how much better you are today because of what you had to overcome yesterday.

They taught you something.

It exposed a weakness.

They broke you down.

If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t have been able to build up stronger.

You would still have that weakness, and not even know it was there.

But now do.

Thanks to them.

Value the relationship for what you gained from it. Just because it was not intended to be positive doesn’t mean you can’t make it positive.

Go back to 7th grade math, or whenever you learn this stuff, and think of it like an Absolute Value: the distance from zero. -10 and 10 are both 10 units away from 0. The value is 10. This person may be a -10 on your “life” line, but they are an Absolute Value of 10. You got 10 out of that relationship, even if they gave it to you negatively.

Still with me?

Ok, less with the math analogy and more with some hippy, mental stuff.

Step #2

Sit down. Close your eyes, and imagine the person(s) you hate. Just look at them. They aren’t saying anything, they aren’t doing anything. It is just you and them, in a room, looking at each other.

Tell them why you hate them.

You don’t need to yell. You don’t need to scream.

Just look, and talk.

After you have told them everything, let it sit in the air for a minute. Give it time to sink in.

Now walk over to them.

Put your arms around them.

And give them a hug.

Tell them, “I love you.”

Put the image of love and loving them in your mind. That’s where all of this hate comes from, and it’s where you can turn it around.

Every time you are feeling the negative, hateful feelings, just imagine hugging them, telling them you love them. Eventually the hate will recede, love will fill the void, and you can start using the windshield again.

Does this sound hippy dippy? Absolutely.

Does this work? Absolutely.

Try it and tell me it doesn’t. I dare you.

I triple dog dare you.

The Power Of Your Mind

You control your mind. Your mind does not control you.

Have a thought you don’t want to have? Don’t. Think of something else. Put another image in your head, put another thought in your head. Flip the script.

Your brain is a muscle, the more you use it the way you want it to produce, the more it produces for you.

Want to be more positive, think positive thoughts. Want to love more, think more loving thoughts. 

The more you practice the more you produce.

By thinking about the negative and the hate, you are not only building up your “poor me” muscles, you are giving that person power over you. Remember, the more you practice, the more you produce. 

That works with negative thoughts just as much as positive ones.

What do you want to produce?

Love, power, strength, and resilience?

Or weakness, fragility, and powerlessness?

It sounds like a stupid question doesn’t it? But people choose the latter ALL THE TIME.

You don’t need to be one of those people.

You control your mind.

Your mind does not control you.

“Take the power back” — Public Enemy

Joey

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HOw Have My Views On Marriage Changed In My Life?

There are only two views to have on marriage: they are great or they suck.

You can have the same view your whole life, or it can evolve over time.

My bet would be that more views change from great to sucks, than sucks to great.

I am the former.

Great To Sucks

How could this happen? So sad. *sniff

I will tell you exactly, people story tell.

They story tell about their romance, their heartwarming tale of boy meets girl. They take what they want marriage and relationships to be and they project them on to their actual relationship. Love at first sight, high school sweethearts, good girl meets bad boy, etc. And they commit. Hell, they over commit. By the time they realize their relationship is poop it is too late and there is a ring on it, babies involved, the whole nine yards.

“You changed!”

“Where is the man/woman I married?”

“Waaa!”

They were never there.

You didn’t marry Noah (The Notebook)

You didn’t marry Jack (Titanic)

*for guys

You didn’t marry (fill in porn star name here, I don’t know any *wink *wink)

You filled in their gaps, their holes, with your story. What they were actually missing, you gave them. Why? Because it allowed you to have the fairytale you wanted. You had the perfect partner. You were going to beat the odds. They were going to write stories about your love. The problem is, they already wrote them, and you plagiarized your life with them.

Oopsie daisy.

Once it hits you, it hurts, bad. Along with the crumbling of your marriage comes the crumbling of your views on marriage. Marriage sucks. Boo matrimony.

Sucks To Sucks

Because you don’t have a very positive outlook on marriage, you don’t look for the perfect partner, you look for the okayest (made that word up, but it fits perfectly). You look for someone who you can tolerate, or fills out your checklist, has a good job, or whatever else is a mediocre measure to finding a partner. You half ass it going in, which leads to a half ass marriage, and it’s an “I told you so” for the rest of your life. You created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nice work Casanova. “You can call me Nova.” — name that movie!

They look at the stats, and they look at how many marriages fail. They look at all the shitty relationships around them and go, “see!!”

They marry someone they don’t think is that great, or someone that they don’t feel they can be themselves around, or someone they need to hide things from.

They listened to the people, to the majority.

The problem is, most people are stupid. I am sorry if I offended you (but then why do you think you’re stupid?) We are at the bottom of education, we are the fattest, just look at this election? Holy moly! You think with this many idiots around you are going to get a good view of what marriage can really be?

“Come on man!!” — Chris Carter

If you are siding on the dumb-dumb majority, guess what? You’re a dumb-dumb!

Let that sink in, then read how it can be, how it should be.

Sucks To Great

This is me!! Tada!! This is how my view have changed!

I thought marriage was finding the person you tolerated the best. I am such a romantic.

Don’t fight much, nice person, would be a solid partner, mother (for my kids, not me. I have a mom), etc. I wasn’t looking for a best friend, I had enough guy friends. I wasn’t looking for soulmate, that’s a bunch of hooey. Nothing like that was real, it was just Hollywood, tricking us in to looking for bullshit, leading us down a path of misery and chasing a fantasy. I was WAY jaded.

I had great relationships to look to for inspiration.

But I listened to the dummies.

“That’s rare.”

or

“That’s a unicorn.”

“I’ll pick her, she’s perfect(ly just okay)!”

Then I met my wife.

And everything changed.

I loved being around her. We could hang out all day every day and I never got sick of her. I missed her when she was gone. She could hang with my friends. When I did something cool I wish she was there too, like something was missing without her. She was the first person I actually wanted to have a baby with (and thank God I didn’t have any babies with the “okay” ones). I could be myself (which then lead to me needing to figure out just who the hell I was. I will save that for another time). She was perfect. She was my best friend.

And it finally hit me.

This is what it is supposed to be like. That 1 out of 10 was what you were going for.

Tim Ferriss quotes Mark Twain all the time, “When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”

I was focused on the 9, not the 1.

I looked at it even worse than that. It was roulette. It was a crapshoot. No one could figure out which marriages work and which ones don’t.

But we do. F’ing Hollywood was right!

Damn you Noah and Allie!!!

- Marry your best friend.

- Marry the one you don’t get sick of.

- Marry the one you miss when they are gone.

- Marry the one you can be yourself around.

- Marry the one that makes you feel like forever isn’t long enough.

Then you can be the one.

The one that does it the right way.

You just have to know what you are looking for.

But more importantly, you have to know that you can actually find it.

Joey

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