TN50#195_Relationships Can Be Fierce_15 April_2025
Hi Team,
Imagine listening to a relationship book by an author (a marriage counselor, who is described as “The Last Stop Before The Divorce Lawyers”) and he describes the things you do wrong in your most important earthly relationship as if he has a front row seat whenever you are being an asshole to your wife! Keep reading if you are in a serious relationship, plan to be in a serious relationship or just want to know more.
First a little catch up: I’ve been on the road for the last 4 weeks. Three of those not planned (we had some family stuff going on but it’s all good) and one planned trip to AZ to attend my Next Level Mastermind. With that in mind, I’ve got lots of resources to share over the next few blogs so I’m going to keep the blogs short!
Happy Tuesday and welcome to The Next 50 #195, I like to think of personal performance in 3 components: physical, mental and emotional. My framework focuses on 4 Buckets: Eat, Sleep, Move and Think. This blog is my sandbox for sharing information that you might find useful for your personal performance.
Terry Real’s relationship book, Fierce Intimacy, is worth checking out IF you like learning from old guys who have lots of reps, both good and bad, in the real world. Hey! That kinda sounds like me in the performance realm.
A few things you are going to learn about:
- The Adaptive Child – we all have one
- Unhealthy self-esteem and others’ esteem
- Identifying your CNI (Core Negative Image) – how we picture our significant other when we aren’t feeling the love
- The Five Losing and Five Winning Strategies of relationships
- The Feedback Wheel – A four step approach to revolutionize your communication
One of my favorite gut bunches from the book is what I like to call the Fierce Intimacy 2X2, pictured below.
Unless you are Jesus (and you are not Jesus) you will drift from the center of this diagram whenever you and your spouse aren’t on the same sheet of music. In describing his own tendencies during disagreements with his own wife, Terry described how I act to a T. When Carly and I are getting after each other, I become a “better than – tight ass”. The top left quadrant, looking down my nose in all my walled off superiority. Yea, OUCH is right, but hey recognizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery!
Ok – teaser complete. If you are enticed enough to spend about 50 minutes listening to Terry go deeper on this subject check out this short Tim Ferriss podcast.
If you want to jump straight to the book, here’s the Amazon link.
Do I agree with everything Terry says in the book, of course not, but all the relationship specific information is pure gold.
Who do you know that could use this information? I bet you can think of a couple of people before you click the next email, please share the post with your team and anyone who might find it useful and let me know what you think!
Have a good one,
Alex
PS. Questions on your personal performance? Let me know at: alex@fpp.llc
PPS. If you’re new to First Principles Performance Coaching, here’s a one stop shop for my stuff.
PPPS. Ready to improve your Physical, Mental and Emotional Capacity? Email me so I can introduce you to my suite of Better Basics Performance Coaching Programs! alex@fpp.llc
