#210 - Simple changes can make a huge difference in your life!
Are you off course?
When an airplane takes off, the pilot sets a course for his destination and off he goes. If you’re on that flight, you sit back and relax, fairly confident in the fact that the pilot is going to get you to your destination.
What you don’t realize is that the airplane is off course most of the time it’s in the air. Due to factors such as wind and weather, the pilot has to continually correct the airplane’s course. If he didn’t, you wouldn’t reach your intended destination.
Just a small deviation of 1º from the intended course can have a significant impact. If you travel just one foot, you’ll miss your target by 0.2 inches. Not a big deal, right? When you travel the length of a football field, you now miss the target by 5.2 feet. Still, that doesn’t seem like to big of a deal.
When you’re 1º off course for one mile, you’ll miss your target by over 92 feet. Now, if you’re flying from LA to Washington DC, your flight will land nearly 43 miles from your intended destination.
It’s important to make corrections often.
As you can tell from the illustration, being off course for a short time doesn’t seem like such a big deal. However, the longer your course goes uncorrected, the farther away from your destination you end up.
How does this relate to dating and relationships you ask? It’s quite simple. Every relationship will veer off course from time to time. If you don’t make adjustments or don’t adjust in the right direction, you’ll end up drifting away from your ideal relationship.
Your intended adjustments should be done to keep your relationship on course.
When you start making adjustments just to keep a poor relationship going, you can really get derailed. You start to lose yourself for the sake of the relationship. I most often see these types of adjustments in relationships with narcissists, alcoholics, or other co-dependents.
The changes you make to accommodate these types of relationships are incredibly destructive and may take years to recover from if you let them go too long.
Choosing the wrong course.
We all make poor choices from time to time. The sooner you can correct your bad choice the easier life is.
What are some poor choices?
Tolerating bad behavior such as alcohol or drug abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, or infidelity.
Often time its staying in the wrong relationship too long in order to satisfy your need to prove to yourself that you did everything you could to make it work. In most cases, waiting, hoping, asking, or begging someone to change is a total waste of your time.
When you start to see red flags or signs that this isn’t going to be a great relationship, it’s time to leave.
What are some poor choices that you’ve made? Leave your answers in the comment section below.
Never underestimate the power of small changes!
As you can see from the airplane illustration, making small changes in your life can have a huge impact. It can mean the difference between good communication and extraordinary communication. It can literally mean the difference between success or failure of a relationship.
Making changes in the wrong direction is like going on a diet and then eating an extra donut a day. While it might feel good in the moment, in the long run, it’s not getting you back on track.
Learn to make effective changes. Look at your situation and figure out what you need to change or correct. If you need to lose weight, you’ll need to adjust your diet and exercise habits. If you need to learn to communicate better, check out books on communication.
If you need to make better relationship decisions, start by looking at your past choices and see what went wrong. What role did you play in your relationships that didn’t work? Learn to recognize your role and what changes need to be made to not do those things again.
Look for the small decisions you made. How can you make better decisions and how can you make them more quickly?
Summary
You have to be so careful to maintain your morals and values. It is so easy to lose your way. It happens incrementally, one degree at a time. And before you know it, you don’t recognize who you are or the relationships you’re in.
If you need help recognizing what a healthy relationship should look like, check out my blog #220 – The 8 Key Element of an Extraordinary Relationship. Then, request your copy of The 5 Biggest Dating and Relationship Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. This will help you recognize red flags of poor relationship more quickly.
If you really want a deeper look at great dating skills, order a copy of my book Dating Backward. It’s available on my website or on Amazon.com.
I hope today’s topic is helpful. For more information like this check out my other blogs and videos right here at RickSoetebier.com.
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Have a great and blessed day!