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Tag: Relationships

Ep259: 3 Ways to Love Better, with School of Love NYC founder, Monica Parikh

They say experience is the best teacher, but they never tell you how often cruel the teaching method is of this metaphorical professor. As we spin this thread of life we are on, we’re constantly caught off guard no matter how much we prepare, but how we deal with these setbacks and surprises is what shapes us as people.
For Lawyer and School of Love NYC founder, Monica Parikh, her unexpected divorce with her husband was a dark time in her life but it was also the spark that started her journey to guide professionals and young people through the confusing world of intimate relationships.
After her husband suddenly decided one day that he no longer wanted to be married and walked out the door, Monica was devastated. The first years that followed were what she called “the dark night of the soul” filled with questions and longing. However, it is when our hearts break that light enters through the cracks.
After regaining her ground, she decided to study this vague idea of love and dedicate her time and energy to helping others about it. Monica had an Ivy League education, a law degree, but still decided to educate herself in psychology, non-violent communication, and even quantum physics.
She shares with us three tools that you may add to better your relationships, not just in love but in life, holistically.

Set Your Boundaries
Monica recognizes that marriages and other romantic relationships do require intimacy. But that intimacy should not be without limits. She says that partners need to listen to each other and approach each boundary with respect to mature as adults.
“We need, basically, someone to calmly teach us how to mediate conflict and de-escalate it,” she says, “how to align needs, how to set boundaries, and how to move to a place of interdependence as opposed to codependence.”
“Your life is not just about one person, where you ask that person to fulfil all your needs,” she adds, “you see that you live in a village, and we have lots of different people we need to talk and relate to. So really, marriage and relationships are just a vehicle for personal self-development.”

Look Inward
The former public interest lawyer shares a story where a woman, after a first date, decided to visit her partner—who lived in a different state—and stay at his home for four days. The girl told her that after a while, the guy started being crabby with her.
The woman told Monica that the guy was a narcissist. “The problem with, when we look outwards, we sometimes don’t look enough inwards,” Monica told her, “and the inwards look is, was it a good choice to spend four days with a stranger?”
She notes that the situation the woman was in was an overwhelming one for both of them. She notes that people need to start taking “personal accountability” for the relationship-decisions they make.
She thinks that narcissism is a “pernicious disease in society” which is why she also places boundaries on social media—a platform that promotes self-centred behaviour—for her relationships and work life.

Take Care of Yourself
“You can’t take care of other people,” she says, “until you take care of yourself. So the better I take care of me, the better I take care of a lot of people who need me to solve relationship problems.”
During the dark grieving stage of her divorce, Monica focused her energy to move on in a healthy and positive way. She maintained a morning routine of one hour for exercise followed by a calming 45-minute meditation.
She also adds that the effect of processed food on her brain was dour, and she’s mostly had a vegan diet. She adds that our wallets are just as important to our health as much as our food. After that dark time of her separation, she allotted some time on analyzing her personal finances, and since viewed money from a different perspective, adding that it was vital to learn about if she wanted to help this generation’s burgeoning youth.

More from Monica:

Visit her website www.schooloflovenyc.com

February 8, 2021
The Feel-Good Business Model: Why Sticking To What You Know Can Lead To Success

Imagine if you could build your business doing only what feels good to you, all the time. No more spending countless hours learning how to code, trying to become Instagram famous, hacking the SEO algorithm, or self-bookkeeping. Sound impossible?

Meet 28-year-old Jordan Gray, a relationship expert with five best-selling books on Amazon and an audience of over 20 million readers. He’s achieved all this in the three years since launching his personal website.

Gray’s secret to success is what I call the “Feel-Good Business Model,” the simple idea of operating your business exclusively around your core strengths–the things you enjoy doing and do well.

Gray details the Feel-Good approach to his business on this week’s podcast episode, “Why Being 100% Yourself is the #1 Life & Business Hack.”

On his entrepreneurial path, Gray witnessed many of his peers striving to adhere to the “correct method” for success. They believed in a “tried and true” path that involved doing things they didn’t actually want to do, but believed they had to do, in order to make it.

Gray shares, “There are so many things that were constantly being offered up to me, people saying you have to know this, you have to do this, you have to be at least self-sufficient in these things, etc.”

With so much advice out there, and the rise of a $9 billion coaching industry, it is easy to get overwhelmed in sorting information. Focusing on the next “big hit tactic” or the newest social media channel fosters “shiny object syndrome,” a type of thinking that can distract you from your own organic process, while wasting time and defeating passion.

Distinguishing your own set of criteria for what feels good to you and only spending time on the things that are aligned with your core strengths is a key to being successful.

For Gray, that criteria is a unique blend of “stubbornness and ignorance.” Stubbornness to only do what brings him the most joy, and ignorance to everything else. Gray shares, “There was a very conscious shrugging off of all the things that didn’t speak to me… For me, writing’s really easy, coaching’s really easy, so from day one I was like ‘What am I really good at?’ How do I basically only do that and stay as ignorant as possible about everything else that aren’t my core gifts?”

Once you start operating from this new “Feel-Good” criteria you can more easily say no to the things that don’t fit inside it. As Gray goes on to say, “I don’t want to learn how to point a domain name, or set up my WordPress site, or be my own bookkeeper. I don’t even consult, or send out polls and go ‘Hey, what do you guys want to hear about now?’”

His commitment to honoring what felt true for him in each moment helped him generate enough revenue to outsource the things he didn’t enjoy doing, so that he could continue to focus energy into his gifts and profit from what he loved.

With an audience of 20 million readers only three years since he started, Gray’s Feel-Good business model has undoubtedly worked out for him. Consider these three steps to implement the Feel-Good business model into your own life:

1. Hone in on your gifts. Your strengths are the access point to your contribution to the world. Identify what your top three gifts are and stick to them. You were born to do them, so be stubborn if you have to and financial success will follow.

2. Be authentic and you will attract the right group to support your mission. As Gray says, “if you are only willing to show up at 20%, then the best you can do is attract someone that is 20% aligned with you.” If you are willing to show up at 100%, even when it is uncomfortable, stretching, or scary, then you will be able to broadcast all of yourself to the world and attract a full match in line with your desire and intention.

3. Integrate your personal and professional lives. Life is no longer meant to be compartmentalized with strict lines between the personal and professional. The division between being “on/off work” is melting away as we are moving into greater autonomy with our self-expression. Allow yourself to bring play into your work life, and you will enjoy what you are doing and won’t feel burned out.

This article was originally published on Forbes

February 28, 2018
5 Ways To Profit From Growing Your Personal Network

Over the last five years, my Dad has watched me attend one conference after another. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Costa Rica, Mexico, Chicago, and Philadelphia, just to name a few. I have spent thousands of dollars on travel, event tickets, and important dinners to meet with and learn from influential industry leaders. And no matter how excited I am about what I learned, or who I met, my Dad always asks me the same question: “How is that going to translate into cash?”

Every time he says it, I could almost shake him. How does he not get it? How does he not see the value of these relationships? Even though it seems obvious to me, I know my Dad is not alone in his thinking. Historically, the path to cash has been very linear. Each person or relationship is seen like a transaction, serving a very distinct and clear purpose. Today, however, we are living in a relationship economy.

Ted Rubin, an industry leader in social marketing strategy and brand evangelism, calls this currency “Return On Relationship” (ROR). “ROR is the value that is accrued by a person or brand due to nurturing a relationship, whereas ROI is simple dollars and cents. ROR is the value (both perceived and real) that will accrue over time through loyalty, recommendations and sharing.”

Growing and building a network of relationships is essential, which is why Network Under 40’s founder, Darrah Brustein, has built a lifestyle and company out of connecting people.

I recently caught up with Darrah on this week’s podcast episode where she shares how to turn connections into cash.

Darrah says, “I can track most things that have happened in my life — both personally and professionally — back to a relationship I’ve had with someone. Once I met a man at a networking event and he asked to interview me on his podcast about my kids books. Several months later, he randomly wrote about Network Under 40 in Inc. Magazine which generated global interest that facilitated our expansion. You never know how you can help someone, as well as the power of their connections and influence.”

Darrah is on a mission to redefine the way people think about the word “networking.” In her opinion, “networking has become synonymous with selfishness, when at its root, I believe it’s about selflessness.”

To thrive in this relationship economy you have to be willing to give more value upfront than you are trying to receive. That is why the best time to cultivate relationships is when you have nothing to take–only something to offer–so that when your time comes to ask, you don’t appear self-serving. Some of the best business returns end up being the most random and you never know which connections will cash in at which time.

Want to know how to get rich from your network? Follow these 5 principles to abide by:

People are Human Beings. Look at each person beyond their perceived transactional value. See them for who they are, the interests they have, the types of things they like and speak to that. Ask them about their kids, where they want to travel, or a favorite movie they saw recently, get personal!
Be Authentic. Cultivate relationships with those with whom you naturally connect — with no self-serving agenda. Don’t be afraid to be yourself, you will find people want to help you more when they get to know the real you.

Figure Out How To Add Value. The more value you can add the higher your social currency becomes. Listen to what people need and help be the one to connect the dots for them. Every person is missing a “piece” to their puzzle, figure out the piece and when you need something you won’t be forgotten.
Keep In Touch. Always send a LinkedIn invitation with a personalized note after you’ve met someone or an email. This is a simple way to keep track of their latest job updates, birthday and other important things they might share. You can also add them on Facebook or social media so when they post something you can easily “like” it and remain a presence in their life.
Get Clear On Your Goals. When you are clear on what you need or the “pieces” you are looking for people can know how to contribute to you. Without having this clarity most people will not know how to help you. You will be surprised by how many people are willing and are just looking to you for the next step.
If you want to win a free copy of Darrah’s book “Finance Whiz Kids” subscribe to the podcast here then enter to win by following this link. Darrah has made this offer exclusively to Unconventional Life readers and listeners.

February 28, 2018