Get a New Problem And You'll be Happier -

I have been in a funk all weekend.

First, Terreeia and I went to a personal development course this past Friday so we could work on improving our communication. It’s not easy being married AND working together 24/7.

Terreeia and I have participated in a lot of personal growth work and our relationship and communication is pretty amazing because of it. But there’s always room for improvement, especially when you work together as well as live together.

Whenever I talk to someone who says “My husband or wife wouldn’t do that kind of course”, I think it goes back to core values. Terreeia and I both value personal growth and feel that it’s extremely important to maintaining a happy and fulfilling relationship.

After all, who taught you how to communicate powerfully inside a relationship? Who taught you how to navigate a difficult conversation? How did you learn how to resolve issues that keep rearing up in your relationship? Why would you want to bury your head in the sand and say things like “I don’t do self-help?”

All of this comes down to communication. If you’re not communicating, your life is not moving forward. If you need to learn how to communicate much more powerfully than you do now, then I recommend this course, it will change your life.

I find it extraordinary that Terreeia and I can go toe-to-toe on so many issues but, regardless of how much we argue, we still love each other deeply. This is what happens when you marry your soul mate and your values are fundamentally the same. I feel truly lucky and grateful.

Anyway, I lasted in this course until 3:00 PM. This work was about accessing your emotions. The premise is that if you don’t explore the emotions you have around the issue you are stuck on, you can’t move past it. I’ll tell you about the course when I’ve actually completed it. Right now I’m too embarrassed.

In all fairness, I was cranky about being there in the first place. Not about doing the course, but about the timing. The longest we’ve been home since August was two weeks and I was tired. Plus this is the weekend I normally decorate the house for Christmas.

Friday afternoon I said something that drew a negative reaction from another participant in the room, I responded in a not-so-charming way because–as many of you know–I have a quick temper, so that was the end of that course. For this weekend anyway.

I was sad all weekend. It literally poured rain here the entire time so I decorated my Mom’s house for the holidays as we watched a Downton Abby Marathon together.

One of the things I most love about my wife is that she is an amazing communicator. I love that NO ONE and I mean NO ONE can talk over her. She is responsible for all the most brilliant ideas that happen in my business.

It’s like I’m the talent, and she is my agent.

We have had a very busy Fall with 5 Specify Colour with Confidence courses and each got better and better.

Since I live and breathe my Understanding Undertones system, I don’t call it ‘A System’ enough.

On the first day of my New Jersey course when I put up a slide that explained that this course was not ‘A formula’, in other words, NOT 2 + 2 = 4. Terreeia quickly wrote a sign and held it up for me so I could see it that said “It’s a system”.

Recently someone called the office and spoke to Terreeia. She said “I have an issue with Maria’s theory about colour, and Terreeia replied, Maria doesn’t have a theory, she has a system.”

So on the morning of Day 2 of my New Jersey workshop, I put up a new slide that said: “Yesterday you learned my Understanding Undertones System”.

At the end of Day 2, one of my fabulous new True Colour Experts said “Since I know Sherwin William colours so well, when you started yesterday talking about Benjamin Moore colours, I started to panic”. But now that I see that this is a System, I totally get it.

That was Terreeia who put in that clarity. Yet again. Like she does with so much of our business.

Before she officially joined me as VP of Business Development last year, she had a business coaching entrepreneurs. She said entrepreneurs like me are generally drivers. We are really good at generating ideas and driving the business. What we are not so good at is managing people.

She’s spent a lot of time in her coaching practice over the years, teaching her clients how to communicate better, or helping them clean up the messes they made.

Penelope Trunk talks about this in her courses on personality type. I’ve done two courses with Penelope here and here.

And Terreeia won’t hire anyone to work with us in our company without putting them through a DISC Assessment first. It’s astonishing how accurate these assessments are.

If you are an entrepreneur, what you don’t need is someone just like you, so you give them a test to be sure you are hiring the personality you need in your business.

Anyway, I am NOT an easy person to be with. In meetings I interrupt her constantly and I’m honest to a fault. You would think honesty is a good thing, but here’s when it doesn’t work:

If I even embellish a little bit on a story, my heart starts to race because I worry that someone might see right through me and find out. So I rarely do it. And I correct Terreeia all the time. And it’s totally unnecessary.

When we were in a meeting with our coach the other day, she said I’d been working on my new website since May. I said “No it was January”. Does this little detail matter in the big scheme of things? NO. But the correction automatically comes out of my mouth and there seems to be very little I can do to stop it.

Life is a work in progress. When you solve one problem, for example, you’re single and you want to be in a relationship and then you find one? Now you have a new problem, making your relationship great.

Do you have a job that sucks and you want to be self-employed? And then you decide to quit your job and start working for yourself? Now you have a new problem? Finding clients.

I feel grateful to have both problems in my life and I’m committed to making them both great. I’ll keep you posted!