This morning as I played piano on my radio presets, I stumbled upon an old but familiar song. Correction – an anthem of the heart - a song so powerful, so lifting and so spot on that it can change your heart’s way of thinking for the better… in just under four minutes. That song was Des’ree’s You Gotta Be. Doesn’t ring a bell? Didn’t think it would. So I gift to you, the video of this gorgeous spirit. And no, it isn’t me singing it – it is the real Des’ree in all of her magnificence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKW3zREFA00.

Go ahead, have a listen. Take it in. Throw your hands up and dance to it. Sing the hook – you know it’s stored in your mental lyric filing cabinet. If I could do it this morning with my top down driving along the beach in traffic, you can certainly do it in front of your computer. I’ll wait.

Ok, once you’ve caught your breath, read the complete lyrics below, including or not including my 1½ cents. When you read them, really absorb the words. They are simple but insightful – just good for you thoughts to take to heart and carry with you on your love journey.

Listen as your day unfolds

Really pay attention on your path. Be in your moments. All of them. Breathe in and celebrate the goodness that is coming your way – from the simple gifts like having hot water in the shower to big knocks on the door and everything in between. Practice showing equal appreciation for the sun and the rain as after all, they are both gifts. Listen to uncover what you might learn about yourself in all of your processes. The more present you are, the more in control you can be of your reactions and it is through your choices, that your day truly unfolds.

Challenge what the future holds

Your tomorrow is not pre-determined. It is written in everything you do today. Be aware of all the directions you can take and don’t let fear inhibit you from traveling the road most appealing to you – the road that feels most authentic. You have the strength to question what is in front of you and the creativity to develop new opportunties. Draw on faith when moments of weakness swim over you.

Try and keep your head up to the sky

Life offers lessons by looking in the rear view mirror but only when you have positive intention of growth at heart can you truly learn them. That positivity – a core belief that something good will come from even the most painful of times is what spurs growth in the most significant of ways. Sometimes it helps to literally look to the sky to absorb the power of the sun and remind you to shine on.

Lovers, they may cause you tears

Never measure the potential of a relationship by the tears shed. Tears are a result of feeling deeply, be it a feeling of joy, pain or otherwise. A love who can take you there is one to be learned from whether regardless if they are meant for a season or a lifetime. Tears don’t mean the end. They can mean the beginning.

Go ahead release your fears

Wrapping your heart in a seemingly protective bandage of fear may block out anticipated hurt, but it also blocks out the dripping goodness that love and learning brings.

Stand up and be counted

Love of self is fuel. Fuel to shout your worth to yourself daily and thus not accept people or experiences in your life that don’t value you in the same way.

Don't be ashamed to cry

Tears are a recognition and healthy release of healthy emotions. They are beautiful and cleansing. They clear up muck in your heart and allow you to see more vividly. Tears do not represent weakness but rather strength.

CHORUS:

You gotta be

You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold

You gotta be wiser, you gotta be hard

You gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger

You gotta be cool, you gotta be calm

You gotta stay together

All I know, all I know, love will save the day

Life is designed to take you on a rollercoaster ride of experiences which result in a rollercoaster of emotions – NONE that you are not capable of absorbing, processing and becoming stronger from. Each experience when faced head on puts a nugget of emotional gold in your pocket making you even more capable for the next one. Tap into your arsenal of knowledge and strength. You can rise through anything leveraging your inner power and the all powerful love.

I would add you gotta be: true, authentic, self-loving, aware and forgiving

CHORUS END

Herald what your mother said

Read the books your father read

Draw from great thinkers, yourself included. Continue to evolve, evolve, evolve in an effort to best understand your relationship with love.

Try to solve the puzzles in your own sweet time

Silence the noise in your head regarding timelines. Your heart doesn’t have one. Your heart ticks on an experience line… thriving from your positive experiences so feed it with love and learning… remembering you are a unique soul whose life is unfolding in a way unlike anyone else’s which is what makes you special and important.

Some may have more cash than you

Others take a different view

Seek the similarities between you and others and embraces the differences with hugs of love.

-CHORUS-

Don't ask no questions, it goes on without you

Leaving you behind if you can't stand the pace

The world keeps on spinning

You can't stop it, if you try to

Trust the flow. Trust in yourself to be more effective as a bamboo than a tree. Know that you don’t need to know the reason for what is now but that what is now is necessary. By moving with instead of against, you will always be moving forward.

-CHORUS-

Love WILL save the day. Why not start with today? Why not start with yourself?

Live and love largely,

Tristan

I know a quality froyo shop when I see one. For me, it has a wide and often rotating flavor selection. It is clean and has a fun atmosphere. The yogurt is thick and creamy. If a froyo joint meets those criteria, I consider it high quality and it will earn regular business from me.

This quality stamp has earned prestige in our society. Whether it is premium ice cream or coffee, designer shoes or gyms, or luxury vehicles, in our material lives it is natural to evaluate products, seeking high quality ones. No matter how quality is measured, be it taste, reputation, style, or just the way something makes us feel, it is inarguable that once something is deemed high quality, its value inherently increases.

Now imagine if we applied quality control metrics to our relationships. In this way, early on we would be able to rationally determine if the experience was/could be valuable for us. It would force us to examine how we spend our emotional cash. Are you giving with free will and pure love in your heart, or does giving feel burdensome, laborious, agenda-ridden or otherwise icky? Does your bank continuously get replenished by the goodness in your relationship or do you regularly feel sucked dry? Or even more simply: Are you profiting from the relationship?

Now if you are thinking that the word “profit” sounds like the approach of a taker, it isn’t. In fact, if you break down the word “profit,” you get pro + fit. Pro meaning ‘for something’ and fit meaning many things such as healthy, strong or in harmony with. A woman who seeks a relationship that she can profit from – mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually – is demonstrating her commitment to self-love. If you aren’t profiting from your efforts, you are operating on a loss which ultimately results in bankruptcy.

Ok, so that brings us to establishing reasonable and helpful quality metrics. Simply think of three criteria that you can quickly (void of gray area) evaluate a guy/relationship as low or high quality. A couple of thought starters: respect level (do you respect this person? Do they respect you?), attraction (are you attracted to him in more than once category? Do you find yourself feeling great when you are around him?) and so on. Remember that these need to be personal to you – not what you think they should be, but what they actually are; just like some people care about ambience in a restaurant, others could care less but are sticklers for service.

The more you allow yourself to explore yourself… the more you learn to fall madly in love yourself, the more you will be able to confidently specify and honor your premium quality requirements. You will be able to do so without fear that a current low quality opportunity may be as good as it gets because you will be confident in your options, faithful that there must be more and committed to yourself to not settle until you find it. You will be able to reach those seemingly fantastical heights without wasting time trying to transform a current low quality opportunity because with self-love comes acceptance of others and you will know that expending energy trying to morph someone into what you want them to be instead of letting them blossom as they are is selfish and fruitless; your time is better spent on you.

Loving smart is about not staying stuck in a relationship that isn’t fulfilling, that isn’t propelling you forward, or in one that is sucking you into emotional debt. So if your emotional cash isn’t being spent wisely, like an investor does, know when to fold him so that you can move onwards and upwards towards a higher quality, more profit-rich opportunity.

Live and love largely,

Tristan

P.S. If you liked this post, you might like Your Relationship Balance Sheet, too!

Big screen love stories are made of chance encounters between two strangers colliding fatefully on public transportation. Two people who shared a glance from afar in an old train station, a gentleman who helped a lady lift her bags into the overhead compartment, a lady who giggled at a man who wrestled his scarf out of a closing subway door. Two people who woke up that morning not knowing that said stranger would inject their day, and perhaps their life with a spark. You see, sparks between two people can fly anywhere, which makes the whole world one giant dating playground. That’s right, meaningful hookups don’t just happen in bars, clubs, online, singles events and so on. They can happen anywhere, to anyone... if your eyes and heart are open. In fact one of the BEST, most important men in my past, came in to my life during an hour long emergency stop on a New York/New Jersey commuter train.

Often, road warriors think that Cupid is dismissing them, punishing them for their jet-setting lifestyle. But it is simply not the case. Cupid’s arrow can joyfully strike on a subway platform, a crowded airplane aisle or a train depot, but it helps if you know the ways of road warrior romance. Follow these do’s and don’t to increase your chances of true commuter connection:

Do leverage social media. The day before and the day you are leaving for a trip, post to all of your networks (i.e. FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter) where you are headed and request "tour guides" – friends of friends that could show you around at your destination – they will see between the lines that you are looking for a bit of stopover love.

Don’t leave home in your sweats and last night’s eyeliner. Although traveling can be uncomfy and slipping into your favorite oversized college hoodie and worn out ball cap may be tempting, DON’T! You never know what cutie awaits you at the airport gate or in a long security line and if you don’t look good on the outside, you may not feel good enough on the inside to exercise your flirting muscles.

Do use airline/train delays to your advantage. Instead of whining about your travel frustrations and burying them in a Cinnabon and the latest UsWeekly, hit the airport/train station bar and socialize with the other delayed passengers. Miserly loves company, a drink and a spontaneous flirting session.

Don’t stay in your hotel room. If traveling keeps you overnight, and in a foreign hotel room, don’t use this as an excuse to chow down on room service and order pay-per-view. At the very least, head down to the hotel bar to mingle with the other jet-setters, or better yet, ask your concierge for recommendations of local hotspots and venture into the city. Locals love to entertain out of towners and show off a bit of their city.

Do make your interest known. In the transportation playground, time is of the essence. With passengers quickly coming and going, you need to strike while the feeling is hot; this is not the atmosphere to hesitate, playing cat and mouse for hours. This is the occasion to be a little more obvious - use your body language to illustrate your interest to your crush, start with eye contact to zero in on your new crush, smile and position yourself near them to make it easy to strike up conversation.

Don’t be a griping globetrotter. Every road warrior knows the battle – the flight delays, the long lines, the missed trains, the hotel rooms that weren’t booked, but truthfully, no one wants to hear about it. Instead be a breath of fresh air. Your positive outlook will shine through in your aura and in your attitude, and subsequently catch the attention of eligible singles.

Do rock a conversation piece. Adorning a conversation piece, be it an interesting book that you aren’t actually reading, just simply carrying or having by your side, or a fabulous statement accessory (a striking necklace, a funky hat, unusual carry-on bag) is like an open invitation for chit-chat to interested parties.

Do de-tech. If you are perma-plugged into your iPhone, Kindle or laptop, you may as well have a closed for business sign hanging up. Just as you wouldn’t disturb someone who appeared otherwise engaged, if you are, you can expect the same. Power off for a bit and open yourself up to the possibilities, and you just might get turned on in other ways!

Don’t aim to fall in love, aim to fall in like. Since you don’t know if your target is coming or going, it is important to manage your expectations in the transportation dating field. If you wind up with a steamy one-nighter or an exciting date, great, but nonetheless, it is an opportunity to enhance your flirting skills and certainly a better time killer than phone Scrabble!

Do think creatively. Once you’ve made a connection, the end of your road will require you to be a little bolder than with typical local bar sparks (i.e. you may need to jump off at a train stop earlier to continue the conversation and secure the phone number). Be bold. Think spontaneously – after all, life on the road is supposed to be an adventure.

Live and love largely,

Tristan

Yesterday was moving day.

I unlike virtually anyone else I know, LOVES moving day. In fact, I love everything that leads up to that big day. I love looking at where I am in relationship to where I want to be. I love choosing my next destination as a result of the soul search. I love the quest of finding my ideal new haven. Each visit reveals a little bit more about what I want and what I don’t want. And of course finding “the” place is exhilarating.

I love going through all of my stuff to determine what will stay with me and what is no longer a part of my life. I love looking at old treasures that take me down a positive memory lane and the liberating feeling of discarding those items that don’t fit (literally and figuratively) me anymore. This move I finally gave up the jeans that no matter what I do, will never go past my thighs again… and instead of being sad about it, I was high off the fact that I have learned to love the thighs I once hated.

I love saying goodbye with happiness in my heart to what was… the last meal, the last shower, the final door shut… and hello to what will be… the first step through my new door, the first meal, the first shower. I love creating my new sanctuary, representing the person I have now grown into.

Of course you don’t have to physically relocate to achieve the same benefits of moving on and up. All it takes is a decision. A simple decision to go from somewhere that isn’t working for you, to somewhere that will. And then a plan.

For example, say you have a lingering ex-BF. You keep him around just in case he was as good as it gets, or plainly for those cold, lonely nights, or maybe only because he keeps you around. Whatever the reason, you (and everyone else) know he isn’t moving you forward to your best self. That means it is time to pack him up. Release yourself of his old t-shirt, his apology emails and so on. Consider tech cleansing him from your phone, Facebook, etc. In doing so, take a moment to be thankful for what was – the indelible mark he and your relationship made on your life. Take the time also to dissect what wasn’t ideal and vow not to replace him with the same guy in different shoes. Now imagine what you can invite into this new vacancy in your life… in your heart. Imagine what a sanctuary you can create with this newfound freedom. Oh the possibilities!

When we pack up the past, we can unload a lighter, healthier version of us into the present… making room for new, better fitting experiences.

Live and love largely,

Tristan