How is it going to serve you?

Life can shake us to our core from time to time.  It can shatter our confidence about whether we can make it through the ugliness.  Have you been there?  Have you ever been at rock bottom in your life, feeling totally alone and empty?

It can happen in a moment.  Loved ones can be taken from us instantly.  Your money can run out.  Your business can go belly up.  Your child can get sick.  The love of your life can have an affair and leave you.  Horrific, traumatic accidents can happen.  It can feel as if the life has been sucked out of you… if you let it.

Life happens to everyone.  We all go through unbelievably gut wrenching, difficult moments.   In the past, I have wondered if I have had more than my share.   Have you ever asked Why is this happening to me?

Some of us get caught up in the despair.  We become depressed and can’t see our way out of the pain, immersed in self pity.  Our lives can lose meaning.  Have you been there?

These challenges can also be defining moments.  Our adversity can become our  greatest triumph.  The very thing that took you to you knees can be the moment where you find your inner strength, and resolve to step up in your life and live.  Truly live.  To feel totally alive even in the pain because you know it will change and you will survive it.  Every priority in your life can change in an instant, and you can discover the  strength that brings a renewed sense of purpose to pull you forward into a brighter future.

Every aspect of your life can change.  You can recommit to living YOUR life.  You can decide to do all those things you had put off.  You can decide to do something completely different.   You can decide to more beyond whatever happened.  You can use the brutal reality that life brings and redefine who you are, even now.

Adversity shapes us all.  What we decide these challenges mean… determines our destiny. What we decide these moments mean… determines what we will do next.  What we decide… is up to us.  When we change the meaning, we change our life.

Whatever something meant to you before doesn’t have to matter.  Meanings can change now.  You might wake up tomorrow and realize that the bad thing that happened to you actually means something completely different.  Maybe it means a chance for a new beginning.  Maybe it means a chance to grow stronger.  Maybe it means new wisdom to share.  Maybe it means… time to wake up and life YOUR life.

Every adversity that you face and overcome makes a deposit in your bank account of resilience.  Any challenge broken through can build confidence, and strengthen your belief in your ability to handle anything.  Adversity can become your greatest asset.  There is incredible power in knowing that you can handle whatever life throws at you.

Will adversity become your competitive edge?  It can mean toughness, resolve and strength, or it can mean compassion, creativity and love.  It’s up to you.

Who have you become as a result of your challenges?  Who might  you become?

Are you struggling with a challenge?   If you are feeling unhappy or frustrated with some aspect of your life, and want to change it, send an email to jeff@peakresultscoaching.com  People welcome our experience and we can talk about specific strategies to help you create the life success you want.  How will the greatest  challenges of your life define you?  Will you create a meaning that empowers you, or one that holds you back?

But you would never do that… would you?

Almost everyone wants more success in life. But we all have our own individual ideas about what that means.  What does success mean for you?  Do you measure it by financial terms; income, job title, fame, money the in bank, size of your house, or types of cars that you drive?

What about overall life success?  How do you measure that?  Is it based on life balance, overall health, relationship status, or happiness levels?  That too is a very personal thing.

Whitney Houston had incredible success.  She was one of the best in her field.  She had the money, and fame, and career success, and the big houses and nice cars.  But she wasn’t happy at all, and it ended badly.

This isn’t a new story is it?  We have seen it repeat itself over and over for celebrities who have the appearance of great success in their lives, but it hasn’t brought them personal life success.  Their life dissatisfaction has driven them to emotional challenges, suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, and multiple divorces.  Of course celebrities aren’t the only ones failing at life success. 

Here are the 3 Things That Limit Life Success

1. Beliefs- What do you believe about yourself?  What do you believe about your relationship and those close to you?  What do you believe about life?  We all create rules around our beliefs. Are they serving you?  If these beliefs and rules aren’t serving you, then they need to be addressed.

2. Fears- Is fear holding you back in some area of your life?  Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of not being enough, fear of rejection, fear of change, and fears from the past all hold us back in some way.  If you want more life success it’s important that you address your fears.  Do these fears prevent you from experiencing more happiness?

3. Strategies- Are your strategies for success effective?  You might be the most confident, fearless person in the world, but if you use a bad strategy in your business it can bankrupt you.  You might have incredible financial success but not know how to create a loving, passionate relationship.  If you use bad strategies in a marriage, divorce is typically the outcome.  My simple view on strategies is that they are either effective in creating the results you want, or they are not.  If they aren’t effective it’s time for some new strategies.

In my coaching practice, I often see extremely successful people experiencing limited happiness.  They are busy and stressed out, caught up in the day to day routine without the ability to step back and honestly evaluate how their lives are working out.  Ultimately they realize that they don’t have all the answers and they seek outside guidance to correct the imbalances in their lives. I have found that by making changes in beliefs, addressing fears, and implementing new strategies that things can change relatively quickly.

If you are ready for some guidance on how you might create more life success send me an email jeff@peakresultscoaching.com  Step back from your hectic, crazy schedule, and ask yourself if things in your life are working out the way that you really want them to.  Are you settling for a life that is less than you deserve?  If so…Why?  Maybe it’s time to take a look at your beliefs, fears, and strategies.   Are they serving you, or limiting your life success?  What will it cost you in health and happiness 5 years from now if nothing changes?

Are you doing them?

Where do we get our relationships skills?  Who teaches us how to have a passionate, loving, committed marriage?  Were your parents a good example of how to create an extraordinary relationship?  If you didn’t have a good role model, who did you learn from?

If you’re like most couples today, you are just winging it, and it’s not working.  There is no plan to make it better, and there is no clear understanding of what your partner needs, nor how they communicate.    Maybe you even stopped trying to figure them out because they haven’t done much for you lately.

Here’s a dose of reality:  About 50% of first marriages end in divorce, over 60% of second marriages, and over 70% of third marriages all end in divorce.  Why?  You already know the answer.

So, marriage sucks, and now people want to just live together.  Here’s an interesting fact:  Within the first 5 years, 45% of live-in couples have gone their separate ways.  So much for the idea of just living together in loving bliss, because that’s not working either.

The hard truth is that most couples don’t know how to make a relationship thrive.  Based on my relationship repair work over the last several years, here are the

3 Little Mistakes That Mess Up Any Marriage:

1.  Showing Little Appreciation-  It’s very clear that men feel unappreciated by their women.  It is by far their largest complaint.  They feel unrecognized for all the hard work that they do to provide for the family and it builds into a grumbling resentment over time.  When men feel unappreciated, it becomes much easier for their attention to go where they are appreciated.

Women also feel unappreciated, but it’s different. Most women feel that they struggle for attention from their partner which is an aspect of appreciation.  When they are communicating to their man, and he is distracted by watching TV, on the computer, or working on something, and not paying full attention it reduces trust and respect.  When trust and respect start to disappear, attraction is reduced.

2.  Misunderstanding Communication –Men and women have different communication styles, and it leads to challenges.  Men typically communicate in short direct ways, while women weave in more details and longer flowing volumes of communication.  Men can have a short attentions span and be asking themselves “what’s the point?”, when listening to their woman talk about something on her mind.  While women know they have a point that they are getting across perfectly clearly.  Unfortunately they are not talking to another woman who would normally get it.  So men get frustrated particularly because they want to fix everything, (huge mistake) and pay less attention, which leads to a loss of attraction, trust and respect.

3.  Assuming Bad Intentions- Everyone makes mistakes, but the real challenges come when one partner believes that the other did something wrong intentionally.  For example: “I’m working my ass off and she only cares that there is money for her to spend, she doesn’t care about me.”. or “I’ve seen the way he looks at other women, he doesn’t care about me”.  I had a situation recently where a woman called her husband “lazy”.   He didn’t take it particularly well understandably, but when we dug into the real reason for the comment, it had nothing to do with him.  It was just a comment that came from frustration about something else.  When we assume that a partner intended to hurt us, or doesn’t care, or is not interested, it often leads to bitterness and resentment.

What are you doing that is hurting your relationship?  What do you not know that you are doing that is eroding trust and respect?  How are you ruining the attraction that your partner has for you?

In my experience, most challenges can be resolved relatively quickly when couples learn new strategies that actually work to create loving, passionate committed marriages.  If you are interested in learning how you might repair your relationship, and completely shift your marriage, email jeff@peakresultscoaching.com  The stakes are incredibly high, and affect the financial and emotional health of both partners, the children, and extended family. The greatest gift you that could give your children is the model of successful, committed, loving relationship.  It’s also exactly what you deserve.

Do you believe in yourself enough?

Who sets the limits on what’s possible in your life?  What expert has the divine authority to tell you that you can’t do something?

Records were made to be broken.  Barriers were built to be torn down.  The impossible happens every day by someone who didn’t get the message that it wasn’t possible for them.  They didn’t hear the outside voices of influence, but listened to their own heart’s calling to do something great.

We were born for greatness.  We were born to allow our own uniqueness to shine in the world.  At some point did you let a moment of self doubt, or someone else’s doubt creep in and crush your dreams?

What we believe has incredible power over us.  It’s success and failure before we begin.  It builds the foundation for what we are willing to do, and it’s powerful beyond measure.

Imagine all the things that at one time were completely beyond our understanding of what’s possible. The US just tested an aircraft that flew 20x the speed of sound.  That’s New York to Los Angeles in less than 12 minutes.  Impossible?  I recently watched a 250 lb man do 1 fingered push ups live, not on video.  A small thing maybe, but an enormous, mind boggling thing at the same time.  Do not try that at home.  Have you ever seen what people are doing today on bikes and skateboards?  Are you aware of the fortunes being made by those who believe totally in what they are doing?  Have you watched records fall every four years in the Olympics? How is all that possible?

The fastest, strongest, biggest, best…Every record ever made will eventually be broken by someone who believes.  Who is to say what’s possible for you, other than you.  If you have a dream and a willingness to do whatever it takes to make it real, it can happen.

What do you believe about YOU?  What are YOU capable of achieving?

Do you believe that you are here for a purpose?

Do you believe that you have time to do what’s most important in your life?

Do you believe that you can be happy and not have stress in your life?

Do you believe that you can be a multimillionaire?

Do you believe that you can have an incredible, passionate, loving marriage that lasts?

If you are lacking something in your life, take a look at what you believe to be possible about it.  Are you limiting yourself by not believing in YOU enough?  Are you limiting yourself by not doing everything YOU can to make it happen?

Your future is up to you.  Not someone else.  Nothing from the past other than lessons learned, and experience gained, matters now.  What would it take for you to believe in yourself even more fully?  Success is not a matter of chance; it’s a matter of choice.  Choose to believe in your possibilities. Choose to do what you can to make it happen.

Your future is unlimited  If you are serious about going after your dreams and want some help, send an email to jeff@peakresultscoaching.com  I believe in you, and want you to know that you can do whatever you set your heart and mind to.  Someone recently told me that I helped make what they believed to be impossible possible.  Maybe I just believed in them a little more than they did.

Do you need a Life Coach?

Let’s face it. Along the road of life, we all hit a speed bump or two. Sometimes we  need help navigating over or around them so they don’t stop us in our tracks. Fact is, most of us seek advice from time to time. Informally we may consult with a spouse, other family member, friends, even colleagues at work. But, when talking about business, relationships, or personal matters, answers can be elusive. Most people simply don’t know what works best for the difficult challenges we all face.  Sometimes it takes a professional whose expertise can bridge the gap between our struggle and real solutions.

That’s what life coaching is all about.

All life coaches are different based upon a combination of their personal life experience, coaching experience and training.  Those 3 factors make all the difference in their ability to help you create real results.

Our particular focus is on 3 Key areas that affect happiness and success:

1.  Beliefs- What do you believe about yourself and your potential for success and happiness.  What do you believe about your current life situation?  How do these beliefs affect your confidence and your ability to live the life you want?  What you believe to be true…is.  What you believe is the foundation of your success or failure before you being.   We evaluate whether your beliefs are serving you or not.

2.  Fears- Does fear hold you back in any area of your life?  Fear of failure…fear of success…fear of rejection…fear of not being good enough…fear of change…fears from the past…fear of the future?  People often have some level of fear that holds them back.  We address fears so  that people become free to pursue what they really want.

3.  Strategies- Are the strategies that you are using in your personal life, your work and in your relationships effective?  As an example, most people are using bad strategies in relationships, and it’s a recipe for stress and loss of attraction.  We look at strategies as either Beneficial or not… Helpful or not…Useful or not…Successful or not.  We teach proven strategies that can be implemented immediately.

A life coach can be a very valuable investment in the future that you want.  We believe that with the right help anything is possible.  We work with people at all levels to help them become happier, more successful, and enjoy their lives.

Do you want to overcome stress caused by work issues or rocky relationships at home? Do you have a desire to do something big but find yourself stuck? Is there something that affects your self confidence? Do you know you could do better at work, in social situations, even on the athletic field, but something is holding you back?

Here’s an interesting fact.  Most successful people use some type of coaching.  Imagine an Olympic or professional athlete deciding that they don’t need a coach and can do it all by themselves.  That’s a recipe for failure.  That’s why most CEO’s, successful business leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs use some form of coaching to take their lives, relationships, careers and business to the next level.  Why not you?

Our busy lives need outside guidance to help us become our best.  If you are interested in creating more outstanding results in your personal life, business or your relationships email us to jeff@peakresultscoaching.com   We have the expertise, experience, and perspective to help you create the life you want.  If results matter to you, we have the answers to the areas of life that matter the most.  The life you deserve is closer than you think. Now it’s time to get the help you need to make it happen.

No one is so perfect that they don’t need the guidance of others from time to time.-  Anon

Listen to your heart, or someone else?

I imagine as a child, or even as a teen that you had dreams to do something big in your life.  Did you achieve those dreams, or did you get sidetracked by someone else’s reality.

My dream was to play major college football.  When I asked my high school coach to send a game film out to a top level school, he laughed out loud, and said that I couldn’t possibly play at that level of competition.  Having someone I respected laugh in my face wasn’t much fun.

Now I could have listened to him and done what he suggested, and given up on my dream.  But it was my dream.  Who was he to say that it wasn’t possible for me?

I remember telling my father I was going to become a financial advisor, and that the lowest paid financial advisor in the office was making more than $45,000 at the time, which was more than he was making.  He told me that was BS and that it wasn’t possible.

When I became a financial advisor, 4 weeks into the job, the most successful financial advisor in the region took me aside and told me that I would never make it, that I wasn’t any good at it, and that I should quit because it just wasn’t for me.  He said that there were better things suited for me, and I was just wasting my time.  But it wasn’t up to him.  It was up to me.

How many people have counted you out and you let them?  My own list of naysayers is extensive.  If I had listened to the doctors, and teachers, and coaches and experts, I would never have achieved any of the success that I’ve had.  My life experience would be totally different, and I would be different too.

My ability to focus totally on what I wanted, no matter what anyone was saying, no matter what anyone else thought about me, was crucial to my success.  My willingness to do whatever it took to make my dreams happen was the intangible that others couldn’t comprehend.

If I was going to fail at anything, I was going to fail giving everything that I had to create my vision. Who could possibly predict my outcome when they didn’t understand my mindset of determination and commitment?   How could anyone anticipate my willingness to give a total effort?  Who could predict what I was willing to sacrifice, and endure, to get what I wanted.  Most importantly, who could ever know how much I believed in me?

I did play major college football with full scholarships and on national TV, and in the Rose Bowl.  I did become very successful as a financial advisor, and then as a manager of financial advisors (another story of what was not possible) that led to a successful 24 year career.  I also made lots of mistakes that were all part of the process of growing and learning.

My mindset was everything in my success.  Have you ever wanted something so badly in your life that you were willing to do anything to make it happen?  For me, a resolve takes over, and I can feel it inside, and then the thing I want is already done.  Then I get to work on it.

What you believe about yourself becomes your truth.  Decide what you want to make happen in your life.  Engage your mindset for success.  Decide on the dreams you want to pursue with all of your heart.  Then go do it.  I believe that great things are possible for you, and even though I may not know you yet… I believe in you!

Time For a Breakthrough!

What holds you back from the success that you have always wanted?  Have you ever found yourself struggling to break out to higher levels of achievement?

We all make mistakes.  In my work with hundreds of business executives who have achieved a wide range of success, I find these 3 mistakes to be the most damaging.

1. Lack of Confidence- Even the most successful athlete or business executive experiences moments of time where confidence dips.  This is often a result of a struggle in their personal life, or performance below their expectations.  The results of this lower confidence can be devastating to the individual because of the pressures to produce results at superior levels.  Frequently this stress is self defeating and leads to plateaus of success in a range where they feel safe. They are no longer are able to give their best effort because their confidence can’t afford to take another hit.

2. Fear of Failure – Everyone experiences fear at some level; fear of not being enough, fear of change, fear of rejection, fear from the past, fear of success…The fear of failure is another big mistake that limits success.  Why would you put your heart and soul into anything if you are afraid of failing? That’s too risky.  Many people wait until they have everything perfectly lined up before getting started.  They think this reduces their chances of failure. This however, proves to be an illusion because nothing is ever perfect enough, so they never go for it.  This fear of failure actually prevents them from getting started. Fear of failure keeps people from giving their best effort, because their is too much at stake.  If you give your best effort and fail, this reinforces the belief that you aren’t good enough.   If you have made mistake in the past, the fear of repeating them, or failing again, is enough to get you to do very little.  There appears to be comfort in not going for it, but it inevitably turns into long term pain.

3. Using Bad Strategies- You can be the most confident, fearless person in the world, but if you use lousy strategies, your success is limited.  An interesting phenomenon is that I consistently see bad strategies used in interactions between couples, and it pushes them apart, leading to resentment and stress. This stress spills over into business lives and leads to reduced confidence, resulting in an undercurrent of unhappiness.  Because there is already stress and pressure in business, this unwelcome addition wreaks havoc on the relationship, and business performance.  How often does this extra stress lead to the use of bad business strategies?  I see it frequently.

The low confidence, fearful life, using bad strategies is not much fun.  If you were to honestly evaluate your performance based on these 3 criteria alone, you might come to some interesting conclusions.

Do you believe in yourself enough?  Does fear limit you?  Are your strategies effective? 

The level of success you want is not going to happen unless you change one of these 3 areas.  How do you know what’s possible in your life?  Unless you have decided that  self imposed limitation is a good thing, there are better answers for you. Connect with me to learn more about the real solutions to your specific situation.   Send an email to jeff@peakresultscoaching.com  We are either opening up our possibilities, or closing them off.  You get to decide which you prefer in your life.

Time For New Rituals That Rock.

We have so much to do and we’re stressed out..  Everyone’s busy and overwhelmed because of a lack of enough time.  Busy careers, children, houses that need maintenance, chores, taxes, errands, cars that need oil changes, appointments, vacations and holidays to prepare for…the list goes on and on.  What about personal time just for you?  A joke right?

When will you get caught up?  Probably never!  From my perspective the more things that you have to do, the more things you will always have to do.  If the day got extended to 36 hours, you still won’t have enough time.  Something would fill the extra time so there won’t be enough left over for you to do what you really want.

Time is the enemy!  It’s tick… tick… ticking away on us all.  If you are looking for the newest and latest time management app this isn’t it.  I prefer simple things that work. Life doesn’t have to be that complicated.

Here’s how you find more time:

1.  Decide What’s Most Important to You in your life right now, and go do it. Know what you want to have happen.  Don’t spend time thinking about the best way, or the perfect way. Just go do it!  You’ve probably already thought about it enough, planned enough, and have enough information. Time to go do it.

2.  Decide Tonight What You Absolutely Will Do Tomorrow based on your priorities of importance.  Maybe the countless checking of face book, texts and email, and long winded conversations on things of little real value, are just a sample of things sucking precious time away from you.  The electronic world is particularly good at this.

3.  Make a List of your Priorities and Go Do Them.  Cross them off and keep going.  It’s all about progress.  We need to feel that we’re making progress in our life in order to be happy.  (By the way if you use the excuse that this takes too much time you’re kidding yourself.)  You already know the important things and can list them in approximately 45 seconds.  It does take a few deeper thoughts, but you have the 45 seconds, so make the list.

4.  Keep Your List in Front of You at all times so that when the inevitable distractions come up, they become irrelevant.  Stay focused on the priorities that you listed.  If you don’t know what to do next, go back to the most important things in your life and do them.  Time wasting will become less and less likely.  It’s the small moments of lost time that cause you to feel stressed out.

5. Schedule Some Time For You.  You need to recharge your batteries.  You need to de- stress.  It’s healthy.  I give you permission to treat yourself with kindness.  Take a break and do something relaxing or fun. Take time to just sit quietly in nature and BE!  We don’t need do so something every moment.  Where’s the balance in that?  It’s perfectly OK to just BE.  You will recharge and revitalize yourself when you do.   Remove yourself from the frenzy for a specific period of time.  How much time are you worth?  After your break, just go back to what’s important.

6.  Think About the Big Picture.  We all have a tendency to get really caught up in things that are far from beneficial.  We all experience information overload.  Ask yourself this question.  Do I really need to know this?  Is it beneficial or useful for me to do this, or know about this?  If the answer is no, move on to what’s most important and get back to it.  I gave up most TV a long time ago. The important news is everywhere, and what the latest celebrity is doing is not part of my routine.

7.  Be Grateful For Your Time.  Set aside a few minutes each day before you go to sleep to feel grateful. What are you grateful for in your life?  Your happiness will like it, and you might be surprised at the effect on you.  Life happens when we least expect it.  Honor the ticking moments and squeeze the life out of them.  None of us have forever.  We only have now.  And right now is enough for the truly important things in your life.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.  – JR Tolkien

End of Message.   So share it, and then go do what’s most important to you.

In case you didn’t know or forgot, self confidence is the foundation of happiness and success.  How you feel about yourself matters.  It’s not a little thing.  It’s everything!

It determines your willingness to go after the things that make you happy.  It expands the possibilities in your life.  It gives you a real sense of worth.  It’s the intangible that allows for the greatness in you to pour out.  (fyi-You do have greatness in you.)

Whatever you believe to be true…is!  Whatever you believe about yourself is the foundation of your success and happiness before you begin.

Let me tell you a secret…You were born with confidence.  You were born to struggle through adversity and challenge, and come out on the other side smarter, stronger, and more resilient.  You were born to make mistakes, and to learn, and grow, and stretch yourself.

Maybe you forgot that you are this ingenious survivor who can withstand any challenge that comes your way.  Maybe you even forgot some of the lessons of previous tough times as I have.  Did you know that everyone struggles from time to time?  Everyone goes through their own version of some brutal adversity that shakes them to their core.

Who did you become as a result of going through those tough times?  Did you become stronger, or weaker?  Did you become less of a person somehow, or more?  At the depth of the greatest challenges in your life exists a moment... A moment where you make a decision; to pull yourself up out of the funk, or lay in it.   You either resolve to do whatever it takes, or give up.

Who we become is measured in those moments, and it affects our self confidence. Our story traps us, or frees us.   The truly amazing thing is that you can lay in the funk and give up for 10 years, and then just all of a sudden decide that you’ve had enough.  The life that sucked for so long can change instantly.  Your focus can shift even now, and you can discover a hunger and a determination to fully LIVE your life.  You can reach inside of yourself and remember this incredible courage.  The courage that gives you the strength to say ENOUGH!

Courage allows you to remember who you are.  Courage is the fuel to ignite a blaze of confidence within you.  You have always been courageous!  You have always been brave!  Courage is your path back to confidence.

Sometimes we forget, and need to be reminded that it’s easy to find just 20 seconds of courage to step up and face your fear.  20 seconds to reconnect with your confidence.  20 seconds that can change your life.

Self Confidence is the reason people with less talent, less ability, and less intelligence become happier, and more successful, than people who have much more of those same things.

Who gives you self confidence?  You do!  Who gets hurt if you don’t feel good about yourself?  You do!  And unfortunately so do the people around you.

Everything you have done well or poorly in your life; mistakes or success… has brought you to this moment in time …right here, right now…reading these words… You have the power within you of incredible influence.  You can imagine beginning to have an understanding, to live a larger, more meaningful life, and impact those around you.  What will you do with it?  Will you step up and connect with your confidence and courage, to do what you really want to do, or always regret that you did not.

This might be just another article to read, or maybe this is your life calling…

You could choose to do nothing.  How long does the pain of regret  last anyway?  Your future is waiting to be written.  Looking back, what did you want it say about you?    Someone,…right now,  is making a new decision,… maybe that’s you.

Is It Because Men Think About Sex Every 7 Seconds?

Men do think about sex more than women, but at almost the same frequency as they think of food.  If men are sex maniacs, they must also be food maniacs.  We must be just a bunch of horny, hungry guys.

So let’s get to the truth.  Based on my interactions with hundreds of men in my coaching practice and through close friendships over the years here is what’s real.

Men don’t cheat solely to get more sex, or because the sex at home isn’t any good.  There is a larger issue at play here.  They frequently cheat when they feel unappreciated from a spouse or partner, and they cheat to feel significant again. Even if it’s for a short period of emotional escape time.  In my opinion, this significance plays a larger role than the need for sexual variety.

This significance is a driving force and can be seen as the need to feel important, special, unique, of value, respected, successful, etc…When a man feels unappreciated at home, he doesn’t say to his wife “honey I feel like you don’t give my enough credit for all I do” or “ I wish you would just tell me how great you think I am”.  Men don’t communicate this way.  They do look for places to get this need to feel important met when they are feeling unappreciated.

Here are a few other triggers that create the opportunity for men to cheat.  When men feel that they can’t make their woman happy, they get frustrated and feel like failures so they look for places to feel successful.  Spending more time at work is a typical place for men to hide from their relationships. Here they are open to available opportunities to feel like men again with someone who treats them like they are special, attractive, valued, wanted, desired, etc.  All more versions of significance.

When men talk about their sexual conquests it’s always in terms of; I did this, and I did that (more significance).  They aren’t talking about the variety of women they have been with, they are talking about what they were able to do, or get the women to do for them.  (more of the feeling significant, successful, unique).  They did it… not me, or someone else… they did it.  They are the man in those moments, even if it’s in their own minds.  Regret and guilt factor in later on.

If you’ve heard anyone talk about the chase, or the excitement of pursuing and bedding a woman, here’s the reason; that’s all part of feeling significant.  They were good enough to seduce her, and persuasive enough to get the job done.

You may remember some famous celebrity men whose success makes women constantly available to them, which of course makes them feel even more significant. They can have any woman they want, so they go from one to the other.  This powerful feeling from position or success (more significance), can lead to a feeling of being entitled to do anything because it reinforces how special they are.  They will usually only stop when a woman makes them feel extraordinary.

Men are not serial cheaters.  In fact according to an Indiana University study men and women cheat at about the same rates today.  This isn’t popular information.  Men are emotional beings just like women. They may not show their feelings, but they’re there below the surface churning away.

If you’re a woman reading this and you want to keep your man faithful, make him feel like he’s your hero, and totally appreciated.  Find opportunities to tell him how great you think he is, or to praise him for something that he’s done for you and/or the family.  Learn how to meet all of his needs in the ways that he prefers to have them met.  Learn how to meet his needs sexually in ways that makes him feel like the special man you have chosen.  If you do, he will never want to leave.