THE TRUST FACTOR IN RELATIONSHIPS

JUST as a door will not swing without hinges, so will any relationship that is not fastened with trust become comatose. Your level of trust for your partner is an indication of how confident you are about your relationship. Without trust, you will not have enough faith to invest for the sustainability of your relationship.

In spite of the critical role of trust in relationships, many people do not take steps to cultivate trust in their relationships. It is often taken for granted that because love is present, trust is not a matter to be worried about.

However, I think that because of how important trust is, it should be on the front page of conversations between partners. Don’t take it for granted that because you love each other, trust is a matter of course. Indeed, many relationships that break up as a result of infidelity started on the platform of love. Love alone is not enough to make the relationship strong. As a matter of fact, the reason many break ups hurt is because at the time of the break up, the love ball still rolls.

If you don’t deliberately institutionalise elements of trust, when winds of pressure blow over the relationship there is likelihood that both you and your partner will be blown away. Trust is not something you assume. It is the product of a system of honesty, openness, accountability and respect.

HONESTY
IF BOTH you and your partner are honest to each other, there will be a semblance of trust in the relationship. Honesty is about fairness, truth and moral uprightness. The best way to inject trust into any relationship is to tell your partner the truth at all times. Anytime you tell a lie, you are digging a hole of distrust and suspicion. No matter how difficult the situation is, you will be better off telling the truth. While telling a lie may seem convenient in a moment, truth will triumph in the long run.

OPENNESS
THIS is a thorny issue in many relationships. Should you be able to answer your partner’s cell phone when it rings? Is it acceptable to read text messages on your partner’s phone? To what extent must privacy be allowed in relationships?

In a business partnership, it is normally expected that parties will be transparent to each other about everything they do in relation to the business. In romantic relationships however, both parties commit their lives to the relationship. Therefore the logical thing to do in this regard is to be transparent with your life. Such transparency could help build intimacy and minimise incidents of suspicion.

As much as possible, people in relationships should not hide things from each other. If you commit to a relationship (especially marriage or one leading to marriage), you must work to get to a point where you learn to communicate with your partner in such a way that even in your privacy, there is transparency. Transparency removes shades of doubt and insecurity.

ACCOUNTABILITY
WHEN it comes to accountability in relationships, two ideas are important – responsibility and explanation. Responsibility is the degree to which you are obligated to your partner and the relationship. Explanation is the clarification you give to issues and situations.

Are you willing to let your partner in on why you couldn’t answer your phone all day? Will you tell your partner about the nature of relationship you have with members of the opposite gender? Accountability is when you answer to issues that are of concern to your partner – not only because your partner asks, but also due to your own desire to ensure that your partner understands.

RESPECT
RESPECT is about esteem. It is the level of admiration you have for each other. It is the amount of deference you give to each other. Do you seek each other’s views when making important life decisions? You may not always agree with their views but it’s a way of saying, “I cherish your advice. You are intelligent enough to advice me.”

Respect is also about not taking each other for granted. For the long-term sustainability of your relationship, it is imperative that you constantly find ways to demonstrate that you feel honoured to have the person as your partner. Let them know that you are proud of them.

GUARD TRUST
TRUST is not something you leave to chance. You must treat it like a garden. Cultivate it, nurture it and you will reap a great harvest of unbroken love in your relationship. No amount of trust is enough for the lifetime of a relationship. Each day in the life of the relationship is an opportunity to invest and deepen trust. If you don’t pay attention to this on daily basis, it could slip out. Trust is the fuel that keeps the flame of love ablaze.


© 2012 Terry Mante
Personal Development Network (PEDNET)
E:: terrymante@live.com
T:: +233.268.816.545
Accra, Ghana

MAKING CAREER CHOICES

VEHICLE FOR LIFE
A CAREER is a vehicle that carries us through our journey of life. Without a career or the prospect of one, life can be boring. Much of our socialisation from childhood through adulthood is geared towards securing for us stable and successful careers. Our education, values, lessons and skills acquired through the course of our lives are intended to enhance our career prospects.

A good career provides a means by which we participate meaningfully in the affairs of life. It can be an important stream of income and a source of confidence and satisfaction for many people.

JOB
FOR MANY people, the idea of a career has reference to their job. A job is any activity you are paid to do. This may have nothing to do with one’s education or aspirations in life. So long as they are being paid for something, they have life going on for them. The only consideration when it comes to a job-career is the financial benefit.

People who view career with the job mentality become frustrated in life when they are unable to secure an arrangement that offers them financial rewards in exchange for their services. This mentality is the reason unemployment has become such a notorious economic and social menace. Most of the time, people complain about unemployment not because there is nothing to do but that there is no activity for which somebody is willing and able to pay them.

PROFESSION
MANY times, I have had people approach me to help them find jobs. Then I ask, “What kind of job?” To such a question, I hear a response, “I read Economics so anything in that line will do.” While I admit that there is nothing wrong with seeking to be engaged in an activity that matches your education, I feel it is myopic to limit your options in life to what you study in school.

A profession is what you are trained to do. You are a lawyer because you attended law school. You cook because you have studied catering. You teach because you are a product of a college of education. You are a nurse because you have been trained in a nurses training college. You are an accountant because you studied accounting in school. You sew because you have learnt fashion and dressmaking.

The main platform for engagement by people with the profession mentality is their training. Their claim to life is their education. They cannot dream beyond their education. Such manner of thinking becomes an obstacle for those who are not well-educated. For highly-educated people who are profession-minded, they are not able to access the broad range of opportunities that education provides. Their scope of productivity is bounded by their education. If this is how you think, what will you do if you graduate from a course and you discover that there is no employment vacancy in that field?

MISSION
MY IDEA of a career is not just a job or a profession. A career is not just about earning an income. It is about pursuing the essence of your life. It is becoming what you were born to be and doing what you have been destined to do – mission.
If we see career as a mission to be fulfilled, none of us will ever complain of unemployment. Every individual on the face of the earth was born with a specific mission. The mission is the work of your life. It is a God-given mandate. If you focus on it, you will never feel unemployed.

It is that mission which helps us to live with meaning and make a significant impact. Our real career is to discover our mission and fulfil it. Yes, a job will give you income and a profession will unleash your skills and competencies but they will not guarantee you fulfilment. A mission however, will give you fulfilment and everything else that a job and a profession offer.

So instead of merely pursuing jobs for the pay and professions because of our training, let’s order our lives this way – find your mission, train yourself for your mission and get paid for pursuing and fulfilling your mission. To find your mission consider your talent (natural abilities), passion (heart yearnings), personality (unique attributes) and experiences (life realities).

The purpose of a career is not only to help you make a living but to give you a meaningful and value-enhancing experience of life.


© June 2012 Terry Mante
Personal Development Network (PEDNET)
E:: terrymante@live.com
T:: +233.268.816.545
Accra, Ghana

READING FOR COMPREHENSION

WHEN I was a high school student at St Peter’s in Ghana’s eastern region town of Nkwatia-Kwahu, I had a mate who was extremely good at memorising notes given to us in class. Sometimes, while I would be busy struggling to make meaning out of certain topics, this guy would appear from nowhere and begin to recite from memory the entire lesson notes in a matter of minutes. Whenever he did that I got shaken a bit, that what I was finding difficult to absorb was a piece of cake for another person.

Yet, most of the time I performed better than he did in examinations. I never understood why I did better than someone who could recite all his notes from cover to cover. But now I know why. My friend often read with the sole objective to memorise the words of his notes without seeking to understand the concepts the words represented.

Literacy confers the ability to read but not necessarily the ability to comprehend what you read. It takes a sense of purpose and consciousness to make sense of what you read. Don’t take it for granted that because you are literate, you will understand everything you read. Effective reading is an art which can be learnt and perfected through series of practices.

Before you begin to read anything, set your objectives. Why do you want to read this material? Is it for entertainment, inspiration, information or relaxation? Setting an objective right from the beginning helps you to know what to look out for while reading. If you read without any conscious objective, you will only end up accumulating facts that do not make sense to you.

You should establish some linkage between what you read and your life or career. If you determine how relevant what you read is to you life, education or work, you would most likely stay focused and definitely grasp something useful from your reading.

Again, before you read actively, you must have a feel of the particulars. Look out for the name of the author, the publisher, place of publication, number of pages, title of work, number of chapters and the central theme that the work covers. All these will help you to decide whether or not the material is worth reading. It will also help you to establish a degree of confidence and familiarity even before you begin to read.

Another recommendation is to engage the material with questions while reading. In your mind, employ the use of questioners such as how, why, when and what. Sometimes you can even decide to play the devil’s advocate by challenging some of the things you read and see if the script can defend itself by the time you get to the end. Or you could get cynical with phrases like ‘and so what.’ All these approaches will help you evaluate whether or not your objectives are being met throughout all your stages of reading a particular text.

Taking notes is another way to ensure that your reading is not a futile venture. You can take notes in different ways. You could write your impressions unto a separate medium such as paper, word processor file or personal blog or use a highlighter to mark important sections of the text. This approach ensures that you focus on portions of the text that are important to you, thus gleaning meat from it.

If my prescriptions do not work for you, it means you are probably not taking care of something – yourself. Yes, yourself. You must know your best context or atmosphere for reading. Some people read better in the night when everything is serene. Others like to read when there is some noise at the background. There are people who require the radio to be on or some music to be played when they are reading. Some also like to read continuously for hours without any interference while others prefer to read amid intermittent breaks. What about you? When is the most conducive time for you to read? Within which circumstances is your mind alert to grasp things you read? If you examine yourself well, you will know. Then you can read and understand.

Reading to understand is so critical in the knowledge because your effectiveness will be based on what you understand. If you can’t understand what you read, then the one who does not read is better off in the sense that you would have wasted your time – another critical factor of production in the knowledge economy. Don’t just read. Read to comprehend.


© June 2012 Terry Mante
Personal Development Network (PEDNET)
Accra, Ghana