This past week my interview on the Ryan Answers podcast went live. Ryan Jakovljevic is a relationship counseller and coach, a dating coach, and also does personal coaching and counselling as well. Ryan helps individuals and couples solve their relationship problems worldwide via Skype and over the phone, and also sees clients in person where he lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you're interested in working with him you can learn more here.

Sex in a long term relationship or marriage has the potential to be the best sex of ones life. Unfortunately rather than doing what helps keep the excitement going with their long term mates, many people give in to the monotony of everyday life and throw that potential away and then falsely attribute monotony to monogamy.

As I've stated before a large part of our energy goes into seeking pleasure and avoiding pain (click here). There is a certain utility in this, but the problem that arises from this is that we can start to invest so much in avoiding painful experiences that we close ourselves off to an important motivator to make the changes we need to make in our lives. I'm going to propose a new perspective of break ups and point out two distinct benefits of what we otherwise tend to see as a solely negative experience.

The fact that people change how they act once they get into a relationship is a common phenomenon. Both men and women do this, albeit in different ways. Though men and women may have similar reasons for acting different at the beginning, there are also reasons unique to men which I touched on last week. Another trap men fall into includes BOTH men who acted different in the beginning of a relationship AND men were confident enough to be themselves from the beginning. That trap is Complacency.

Some guys resent others to whom life comes easy. If you think about it, do you really want to be one of those guys? The moment they hit a challenge in their life they get completely thrown off, become frustrated, and give up. When push comes to shove, and success requires real effort and character, these people are the first to fail. They don’t have the strength, character, and integrity to cope with growing pains, because they have never had to grow, and maybe never will. Ultimately, if you have not tasted these growing pains you will not really appreciate the taste of success when it does come; such men will take it for granted and life will be dull for them.

The moment I saw this video it immediately shattered the threshold I use when I try to decide whether a feat is inspiring enough for this series. Here was a man, disabled through his service to his country, who gained a lot of weight which compounded his disability, to the point he needed heavy bracing and crutches just to move around. Everyone had given up on this man. He seems to have nearly given up on himself. But, something inside him had not fully given up… I will not go into the story, since it is pretty clearly spelled out in the video.

In trying to keep up with a whirlwind of inspiring events over the summer my last blog focused on the negative press that surrounded Gabby Douglas after an electrifying performance at the Olympics. Some of you asked me what Gaby Douglas has to do with self-improvement for men. The real question that blog post addressed was how negativity can have a detrimental impact on your life and a model for how to overcome negativity directed at you.