Blog | Bigg Success

The Secret Behind a Passionate Relationship That Lasts

Written on July 30, 2010 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Relationships

love There’s a perception that romantic love doesn’t last in lasting relationships. So we found some fascinating research by Bianca Acevedo – now at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She conducted a study about long-term romantic love [PDF].

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss lasting relationships on The Bigg Success Show! Click the player to listen while you read [5:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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The subjects of her research claimed they still had an “intense romantic love” for their spouse. They had been married at least 10 years. (21 years, on average).

Some still had kids at home; others were empty-nesters. Some were still in their first marriage. Others had been divorced.

She showed them photos of:
1. their spouse
2. a close long-time friend
3. a highly familiar acquaintance
4. a person they didn’t know well

While they looked at the photos, the researchers conducted a brain scan.

Love at first sight
When looking at the photo of their spouse, participants demonstrated brain activity associated with romantic love. In fact, it was the same brain activity that people who had just fallen in love exhibited in previous studies.

Apparently, it’s possible to keep falling in love!

Benefits with friend
That’s interesting but it wouldn’t have been enough to get us to talk about it with you. It gets even better.

The researchers also found that these people also showed brain activity that indicates calmness when looking at the photo of their spouse.

Passion and peacefulness can walk hand-in-hand!

How do they do it?
Tara Parker-Pope, author of the book For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage, recently wrote an article for The New York Times, where she asked Dr. Acevedo the secret behind a passionate relationship that lasts.

The answer: Don’t let engagement end with the engagement.

Stay involved in each other’s lives. Love can be a noun or a verb. We tend to only think of it as a noun. If love is taken for granted, it will burn out.

She suggests 3 questions to determine how much passion you have in your relationship:

1. How much does your partner provide a source of exciting experiences?
2. How much has knowing your partner made you a better person?
3. In the last month, how often did you feel that your marriage was in a rut?

We think it’s a good idea to turn this question around. Ask yourself how you’re doing with these things.

You have to take action to keep up the attraction! The BIGG idea behind BIGG success is synergy. This study shows that you can have both passion and companionship.

With that, we should go. It’s time to put another log on the fire!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00613-073010.mp3

(Image in today's post by pitabox987)

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Courtship on Facebook and Twitter

Written on July 28, 2010 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Relationships

wedding dance Once upon a time, in a virtual land just a click away, there lived a man named Sam. Sam wanted to find a wife.

He’d heard all about this thing called social media. He thought it might be a good way to meet a woman to marry.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn tell Sam's story on The Bigg Success Show! Click the player to listen while you read: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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A faceoff on Facebook
So Sam set up a profile on Facebook. He started adding friends – people from his childhood, college classmates and former co-workers.

One day, as Sam was checking his friends’ updates, his eyes noticed a beautiful woman named Sally. Facebook said she was “someone he may know”. He didn’t know her, but he did notice that they had a number of mutual friends.

So Sam asked her to be his friend. To his delight, Sally accepted!

The next day, Sally noticed that Sam was now “in a relationship”. To her surprise, he said he was in a relationship with her!

She immediately removed him as a friend. Sam was so disappointed. He had high hopes for Sally.

Getting the message on Twitter
He decided this Facebook thing wasn’t working out so well for him. Then he got a great idea – he should try Twitter. So he set up an account and started following people.

One day, as Sam was looking at his tweeple’s tweets, he saw one of them had retweeted Sue. He liked the comment Sue had made. So he clicked on the link to her profile.

Sue was even more beautiful than Sally. Sam followed her. And Sue followed back!

Sam immediately direct messaged her. He said that he could tell from her profile that they were perfect for each other. So he asked her to marry him.

Sue blocked Sam. Poor Sam – he didn’t know what to do. He was getting increasingly desperate.

Automatically asking
Then he read about a service that automatically messaged people after they followed him. This was the answer! It’s a numbers game, he reasoned.

He would propose to everyone who followed him on Twitter. Surely one of them would accept his offer!

The day after he signed up for the service, he checked his Inbox in Twitter. One gentleman had replied that he would be happy to accept Sam’s offer. The thing is Sam doesn’t swing that way.

A woman had also responded. She would be happy to accept his offer. The only problem, she said, was that they would need to get married today. If they didn’t, she was going to be forced to leave the country.

Going coach
Sam was beside himself. He didn’t know what to do. Then he ran into a relationship coach.

Sam told the coach what had happened. The coach told Sam he was approaching it all wrong. He needed to be patient.

He needed to focus on the relationship, not the result.

From follow to fairy tale
Sam took the coach’s advice. He kept adding followers. He got to know many of them personally.

One day, Sam followed Samantha and she followed back. It turned out she lived in his town.

They met, in person, for the first time at a tweet-up. Then the two of them met for coffee. The next week they went to dinner together.

They enjoyed each other’s company. They really clicked. Over time, their relationship blossomed.

Sam and Samantha got married, had two kids – a boy and a girl – and bought the house with the white picket fence. Oh, and they lived happily ever after.

How to start a relationship

Every relationship – personal and business – starts with a simple contact. Don’t pitch them immediately. Give it some time. Over time, you may connect and a courtship ensues. It’s just as true in the world of social networking as it is in real life.

If you want to use social media to build your business, don’t propose marriage before you ask for the first date.

When you do ask for that first date, make sure you know enough about the other person to know what they want to do.

Watch their updates for a while. See what they’re talking about. Check out their web site. Have some conversations that aren’t about your business. Discover a problem they’re trying to solve. Then talk about how you may be able to help them.

In other words, build relationships and you’ll grow your business and live happily ever after. Sounds like BIGG success!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00612-072810.mp3

(Image in today's post by scottsnyde)

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Do You Think Like the Upper-Class or the Middle-Class?

Written on July 26, 2010 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Money

increasing wealth A friend of ours told us about the Bridges Out of Poverty program. We’ll warn you – there’s controversy surrounding it. We’ve grown tired of conversations full of labels so we won’t get into that here.

Many teachers seem to love the program. Many academics don’t.

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Hear George & Mary-Lynn about today's money topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the player to listen while you read [5:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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It was started by Dr. Ruby Payne, who co-authored a book with the same title along with a book called A Framework for Understanding Poverty.

We can’t do it justice in a short time but here’s the basic idea:

In addition to political, economical and societal issues which we need to address collectively, Dr. Payne says that poor people think (and therefore behaves) differently than people in the middle-class.

But here’s the reason we’re talking about this today:

The middle-class thinks (and therefore behaves) differently than the wealthy.

Educating for middle-class

Our educational system is designed to teach people to be middle-class. For example, business schools don’t train students to become C-level executives. It trains them to be middle managers.

Why? We don’t know. We think we should train people to be exceptional, to be a BIGG success.

But we don’t.

Promoting the upper-class

Even worse, the images we promote in the media – from Madison Avenue to Hollywood – are mostly images of the upper-class.

So we train people to be middle-class and then bombard them with messages about how great the upper-class is living.

Is it any wonder so many people bash the rich?

How do the different classes think?

Good middle-class people are thing-oriented. They save money to buy a house. They set aside money for retirement. Money is to be managed.

The wealthy are goal-oriented. They seek first to preserve capital. Then they strive to grow it. Money is a tool to make more money.

How do the wealthy make money with money?
In many cases, it’s about control. They manage their risk by exercising more control over their investments.

What’s the best way to do that?
Look at the Forbes 400 – most of the people on that list, year after year, got there by owning their own business or by owning real estate or both.

But what if you don’t have the money?
First, with the technology available today, it’s amazing how much can be done with a small amount of money.

Second, if you really don’t have the money, find a partner who does. Of course, you’ll want a partner who shares your vision, shares your values and complements your own skills.

You can come up with all sorts of reasons not to go for it. Without a question, it’s not easy. It can be complex if you don’t educate yourself.

But it’s your choice: be happy with where you are or do something about it. That leads to BIGG success!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00611-072610.mp3

(Image in today's post by svilen001)

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