📧 E-mail subscribers: 42.217 / 100.000 👥 Active users: 1.516 🎞 New Mini Documentary: The Last Porn Video - Premier ⏰ This is how long it took to write: 9 hours 23 minutes
You've probably heard that there are 3 pillars to success:
💰 wealth,
💪🏼 health,
❤️ and relationships.
But how do you balance your career and personal life so that both flourish? 🤔
In this post, I'll not only talk about how to build a sustainable and happy relationship, but I'll even give you a concrete, how-to guide on what worked for me.
If you feel like your career is soaring but your personal life is lagging behind, or you simply want to spend more quality time with your partner, this article is for you! 🫵🏼
But first, let's see...
🚀 How's the challenge going?
📱The new Prototype is almost ready
The guys are moving at an extreme pace! Edu has already got the design coded down from Kokesz and started wiring things up to make it work.
He's got the main page, search and profile ready. 😲
We still need the reading, listening and library page, once we're done with that, round 2 will come.
Then Kokesz will design and code these pages:
🔥 Streak
👣 Onboarding
🤝 Referral
⚙️ Settings
Edu also plugs these in and voila...🪄
The first Prototype is ready to be given to Beta testers! 🤩
🎞 New Documentary
Ladies and Gentlemen, the moment has come to announce the premiere of our latest Porn-related YouTube video. 🍑💦
In this video, we have literally summarized everything you can find on the internet about the harmful effects of Porn. But we won't let anyone down, we've also shown you a way out that can change your whole life! 😉
This is the technique that got me off Porn and I'm proud to say that I've cut it out of my life completely 13 months ago.
🚨 The premiere is this Saturday at 19:00 on our YouTube channel.
Before anyone asks, these are AI generated girls... 😅
📍Meeting of 200 = Mindset Meetup
We finally have the exact date for the next Offline Meetup, which is called Mindset Meetup. Most of the speakers have already said yes, but I will be able to say for sure in my next letter.
📍 The event will be held at the University of Óbuda. 🗓️ 10th December (Sunday) 13:00-20:00
Tickets will go on sale next week. We will be selling them in several rounds - Early Bird, Normal, etc. - so it pays to be attentive.
🎟️ If you don't want to miss out, you can sign up to the Waitlist here!
Now we can get started...
💭 Why is a relationship important?
I've experienced that when all I have in my mind is business and money, I can go really fast, but not for long. I quickly get to a state called burnout. It just doesn't motivate me in the long run! 😪
Misconception that being in a relationship slows you down, my progress has been much more accelerated!
Well, let's see how it helped me:
1. Support and Stress Management 🙏🏻
It feels good to know you have someone to rely on when things get tough. It's just an extra when you have support and encouragement that you can do it! 💪🏼
Kinga is outstanding at this and I am very grateful to her!
2. More Responsibility, Better Decisions 🧐
Because I have more responsibility, as I am partly responsible for the well-being of the two of us. So, I think more about my decisions, which, leads me to make better decisions!
💡 Side note: It's scientifically proven that when you're in a relationship, you have less testosterone in you, which results in you not rashly going into certain situations. After all, you have a responsibility to your partner too. Once you have your first child, this level goes even lower, as you are responsible for even more people.
💡Side note: Just for interest, this was in the book Evolutionary Psychology. Men generally look for a woman whose IQ level is at most on par with them, but preferably less. While women are looking for a man with at least the same IQ level, but preferably more. That's why it's hard for smart women to find a partner, because they have high standards.
3. His success also gives joy ☺️
It's easiest to illustrate this with an analogy.
You are playing football and your team scores a goal, you are happy. Because your team, of which you are a part, has gained an advantage. It's the same in a relationship, you are a "team" and you can be as happy about your partner's success as you are about your own. ⚽️
💡 Side note: I've seen relationships where one partner was not happy about the other's success because they were jealous of the other partner's success. These are the relationships that need to be broken up immediately because they literally lead to nothing!
4. Accountability 🔒
In good cases, you and your partner discuss your goals. That way he knows what you want to achieve and how. If you're not on track, you'll have someone to remind you:
"Hey Christopher, didn't you say ..., why don't you do ..." 🤨
You may think this is negligible, but it can probably give you the biggest boost in your progress. I would add that if you have good friends, they can warn you about this too, but a relationship is different! If he warns you, it carries more weight, at least in my perception.
For me, these are the 4 most important benefits of being in a couple, if I'm strictly just lighting it from a business perspective. 🔦
If I sat here until the morning, I'm sure I could write countless more, but these are the ones I felt were important at first.
I think it's becoming clear to you that a GOOD relationship doesn't slow you down at all. However, it is also important to remember that it is undoubtedly something that takes time, and a lot of it. ⏰
Jordan Peterson - Canadian clinical psychologist - says the minimum you should put into a relationship is 2x45 minutes a week. This is the amount of time you need to be in touch with each other's lives. 🤏🏼
Well, I put in a lot more than that, but it's the minimum without which it simply can't work.
And I understand if someone feels they don't have time for a relationship right now. ❌
💡Side note: You have time for what you want to do, so it's not "no time", it's not a priority right now!
There's nothing wrong with that, you can decide in your head that business takes priority for X amount of time now and then open up to a relationship. But it's easy to get stuck in this mentality here, because sooner or later you will be able to work it out on your own and ask yourself the question: Why do I need anyone at all? 🧐
Well trust me, you may not see the "point" now, but your 60-year-old self will be grateful for this post. 😉
It's time to show you how you can build a really good relationship alongside your career...
But first an interesting fact...
Did you know that: For every person you send the Blog to who subscribes you will receive gifts! And quite valuable ones at that:
1️⃣ invited - 🧭 Guideline Targeting Ebook 3️⃣ invited - 📙 Exclusive Workbook with Practical Tasks (with the most useful books I've read) 🔟 Invited - 🎥 Self Confidence Course with 11 videos (showing you specifically how to be more confident in business, meeting people and making friends)
🧐 How to build your relationship alongside your career?
As a workaholic, it has helped me a lot to think of our relationship as a business. I need to build that too and keep making it better. 🧱
But then the first question arises:
"How do you build a relationship?"
Unfortunately, this is more complex than I can answer in one sentence, but I'll list the most important factors:
1. You have to take the time ⏰
The simplest answer is that you have to make time for it. Which has worked for me:
Organizing 2 dates a week where it's just the two of us. It can be a coffee, a card game or a serious outing. The point is that we can talk and spend quality time alone 2x a week. ❤️
Hence, quality is more important than quantity. Kinga and I are in the same airspace for about 18 hours a day, if you count sleep, thanks to our jobs. Which is a lot, but very little of that is quality time, we are often just side by side working. That's why we need dates! What I've learned recently: Quality > Quantity 🫂
That's how I know something is important, it's written in my calendar. That's how it is with Kinga, the dates are fixed in my calendar every week. And yes, I may change the date, but then I just move it around in my calendar. The point is, it's written in black and white that I have to make time and attention to this. 🗓️
Just like no flower grows immediately, a relationship takes time and care. 🌸
💡 Side note: It's good to do things together that, by default, you should be doing, like having lunch together. This way you can get things done and spend time with your partner at the same time. For example, Kinga and I always have lunch together.
2. What is your love language? ❤️
Relax I'm not going to turn into a love doctor by the end of this post, but this is an important topic to get into. Because, if you don't know this, your efforts can easily be wasted. 👨🏼⚕️
Everyone has 1-2 kinds of love expressions, the way he expresses his love for others and the way he feels when others love him.
There are 5 types of love language:
🗣️ Words of acknowledgement
⏰ Quality time
🎁 Gift giving
🙏🏻 Favors
🫂 Physical touch
The problem is when you don't know your partner's love language and try to impose your own on them. What happens is when you praise him non-stop because your love language is "Words of Appreciation", but he doesn't notice any of it and lets it go by the ears because his love language is, say, "Physical Touch".
So, you notice that You are really "trying" to love him, but he is not reciprocating at all, while he will feel the same. 🤨
Serious, no?!
That's why it's important to find out or discuss this from the very beginning and there will be no misunderstandings!
It's like a "radio telephone" that only works if both parties are communicating on the same frequency. ☎️
That is, get to know your partner's love language and don't try to impose your own.
📕 Book recommendations: Gary Chapman's book "The 5 Love Languages" describes exactly this, I learned it all from there. It's no coincidence that it's in the most read summaries on BookBase. You can listen to it there!
3. Get new experiences 🏄🏼
These don't have to be expensive; the point is to get them together.
To this day I see the whole relationship as building a big castle. Every experience we have together is a brick I use to build my castle. So, the more experiences we have together over the years, the bigger and more secure my castle will be. 🏰
It could be anything, but I'll give you some ideas:
Go-kart
Boating
Skating
Free room
Hiking
Camping
Zoo
Wellness
etc.
It's not how expensive it is that determines how great the experience is!
Always keep that in mind!
4. Lay down the boundaries 🚧
It's important to talk about who needs what and what the "rules" are early on in the relationship.
📕 Book recommendations: By far the best book for this - the one that has given me the most to my relationship life - is David Deida's "The Way of the superior Man". Top book, would make it a must read in school! Teaches you how to be a man! It's also up in BookBase! 🎧
Where boundaries are not set there lightning fast, conflicts can arise. Because one party thought it was allowed, while the other saw clearly that it was not. ❌
It's like a game, you need to know the rules to play well. ♟️
Identify what is important to both of you and agree on the "rules of the game".
This includes what has now become a mystical concept: me-time too
Self-Time means: quality time dedicated to yourself, which you spend on self-recharging, self-development.
It is necessary to discuss who needs how much "me-time". I speak for myself, but I like to be alone during the day. 🙏🏻
If you read back a bit, I wrote there that Kinga and I spend 18 hours a day "together". That's why we need activities when we are apart, such as exercise for me.
I almost always go to the gym alone, it's me time for me, it's where I recharge! 💪🏼
If I go further, I also count the fact that I don't sleep at home 1x a week. I need 1 night when I'm somewhere else, at my parents, at my grandmother's. 😴
💡 Side note: This fits into my life extra well, because I get to spend quality time with my grandmother or my parents. By the way, just a note that for some reason, I have the best sleep at my Mum's place, almost always 100% SleepCycle!
Spend time with your grandparents while you can, because trust me, you will regret it afterwards if you didn't! 👵🏼👴🏼
5. Support each other 🙏🏻
If they are going through a hard time, you will stand by them and help them where you can. You may not be able to help him with his work, but you can sometimes help him out (I sometimes quit too).
The main thing is to make him feel that he can count on you! 🫂
You get that feeling when you see a big guy on the street and there's a bombshell next to him, well most of the time it's because she somehow feels safe next to him. It could be physical, financial or emotional security.
You need to give her a sense of security too! 🔒
💡 Side note: It's important to remember that a relationship is never 50-50, it always varies just who needs to put more into it. Sometimes it's harder for one party, sometimes it's harder for the other! The key is to make sure it doesn't shift in the long run!
📕 Book recommendations: Here I can recommend Daniel Goleman's book "Emotional Intelligence". It summarizes everything on this topic, a perfect read to develop your empathy! It is also up in the BookBase! 🎧
6. Match long-term plans 🎯
If you don't have the same end goal, you can go together for a while, but after a while you'll grow apart.
You don't have to agree on everything, the important thing is that you agree on the big things:
👦🏼 Do you want a child?
🏡 Where do you want to live?
👴🏼 What do you want to do when you're older?
❤️What are your values?
If a lot of these are different AND you don't want to change them, you'd better let it go because it's only a matter of time how long it will take. ❌
This was a big lesson for me too.
💡Side note: In hindsight, I've had relationships that literally made no sense. Sure, I learned from it, but our long-term goals were so misaligned and we were so unwilling to let go of them that it was only a matter of time how long it would last.
7. Attention 👁️
These are the little things to make him feel that you are listening.
🥛 If he's/she”s been working late, take him/her a glass of water.
🍝 You order dinner so he/she doesn't need to cook.
🌹 Surprise him/her with a flower every now and then.
These don't cost a huge amount, but they can still add a lot to your relationship.
💡 Side note: Psychologist Sadia Khan said that most of the cheating happens because the woman doesn't feel listened to in the relationship. But as soon as she gets that attention from someone else, she immediately starts showing interest in him. It's not the man she wants so much, but the feeling of being noticed!
📕 Book recommendation: Here I can recommend Amir Levine's bestselling book "Attached". He brilliantly explores this topic and gives a scientific explanation of why some relationships flourish! You can find it in the App! 🎧
If you pay attention to the 7 things mentioned above, you can build your relationship nicely alongside your work. 😉
You have to remember that success has 3 pillars and only one of them is wealth, the second is health and the third is relationships. All are at least as important.
So, it needs the same attention!
Like a three-legged chair, if one leg is weak, the whole thing becomes unstable. 🪑
You can't neglect it completely, because there will be serious consequences later. 😕
You know me well enough that I wouldn't leave you without a concrete guide. So let's see...
✅ What exactly do you do?
If you already have a girlfriend, you can easily take these steps to improve the quality of your relationship:
[ ] Step one, see how much time you're taking to build the relationship, and if necessary, increase it! ⏰
[ ] Step two, have an honest discussion with your partner about the boundaries you need to respect. 🚧
[ ] Step three, put fixed dates on the calendar. 🗓️
[ ] Step four, if your partner is going through a difficult time, help them, remember a relationship is never 50-50. 🫂
[ ] Step five, it's good to sit down for a serious chat every month, where you talk through how you're feeling and what you need in the relationship? After all, you both want this relationship to work well. 🗣️
[ ] Step six, grow with your partner. If you can self-improve, that's great. But it's important that you and your partner grow together, so that over time, there's not too much of a gap between you. 📚
[ ] Step seven, there will always be disagreements, have a strategy to deal with them. For example, if Kinga and I disagree, before we jump on each other, we'll take a little time to think about what happened and then... - we'll jump on each other and the argument starts - just kidding! Most of the time, when you calm down, you can see more clearly and admit when you've made a mistake. You may have others to help you, the important thing is to find your own! 😡
Remember, you have time for what you want to spend time on!
If you don't have a girlfriend yet, this list will help:
[ ] First step, see if you want to make time to build a relationship now. 🤔
[ ] Step two, if you do, write down in your calendar how much time you're going to spend finding a partner. 🗓️
💡 Side note: Many people may say that this is too much effort and that it will come when it has to come. Well, my friend I have to disappoint you, I have heard of very few relationships where the woman sought out the man. You must act!
[ ] Step three, be open to possibilities, but strongly filter who you start building your relationship with. 🙏🏻
[ ] Step four, if your long-term plans are very different, then 2x also think about whether you would definitely go into that relationship. ❌
[ ] Step five, get to know your own and your prospective partner's love language. This will help you express your love and appreciate each other more effectively. ❤️
[ ] Step six, clarify roles and expectations in the relationship. Many conflicts can be avoided if it is clear from the beginning who takes responsibility for what. 🚧
[ ] Step seven, discuss how often you would like to meet and how much "me time" is required. This will help with time management and not feeling overwhelmed. ⏰
[ ] Step eight, set common goals and plans. This could be a trip together, exercising together or trying something new together. Shared goals will strengthen your relationship and help you grow in the same direction. 🎯
It was a bit like a reminder of what I need to pay more attention to! That's why I love this blog, because it's like my public diary where I organize my chaotic thoughts. 📖
I swear it helps me maintain my mental health too!
I never thought I'd say this, but:
Writing is cool!
🔥 Biggest obstacle
I wouldn't say an obstacle, more of a challenge. Understanding the concept of Product-Market fit and achieving Product-Market fit at BookBase. 🙏🏻
Product-Market fit means, in short, that you have successfully found a target audience for whom your product solves a huge problem and therefore they are eager to use it.
Of course, it's much more complex than that and even I don't fully understand it, but I'm now working on breaking this big topic down into smaller parts and understanding the basics. 🧠
It's interesting to think about, but since I never studied entrepreneurship, I just went and learned from my experiences. So, I have a lot of "blind spots". Which means I don't understand why certain things are the way they are. 🫤
Then I have to go back to theory and understand the basics to fill these "blind spots" with knowledge.
Product-Market fit is something they talk about in the first classes or so at Startups, I'm still just starting to dig into it. 🙃
It's like being a race car driver but not knowing what the clutch is for. I would use it because I have to, but I don't understand why I need it.
This is exactly how I feel about 1-2 topics and it's time to change that!
👷🏼♂️ Fix It Friday
We've just fixed a bug that was discovered due to a completely unintentional event. 👀
The gist of it is that I wrote Streak Notifications and Emails about 1 year ago, so if someone didn't do their Streak by the end of the night, they would get a reminder. 🚨
We have thrown it out in the App but nothing has changed, literally nothing. I didn't understand, did I say Notifications are that bad?
I left the whole thing in despair; I say it's useless to change it... 😕
Then 1 year later, in an offline meeting, I talk to Gellert, one of our Power Users, and tell him that I finally rewrote the Notifications, they must be better than the previous ones.
He says: "What previous ones, I didn't get anything so far?" 🤨
I say that's impossible; it's been a year...
And that's where the shroud fell, that because of a bad condition nobody got the notifications but us developers. So, it didn't bring any results because it didn't work... 🤦🏽♂️
That's about the kind of head I had when I found out: 😐
So, if all goes well AND the license is IN FIRST, you should be getting Notifications and Emails now! ⚙️
📖 What have I just read?
I finished the book "The Science of Self-Learning". It has highlighted a lot of things and I finally know how to effectively understand 1 to 1 topic. 📙
The best part by far was Cornell Notes, which explained how to take notes in a way that sticks! I wish I had known this in college... 📝
It would be long to describe, but here is a video of it:
🎧 What have I just listened to?
I'd be lying if I said I listened to any podcasts. This week has been mostly about reading and incorporating what I already have!
But here's my playlist, which I did listen a lot. 🎧
✍🏼 Top quote
"It's never too late to be what you might have been." ~ George Elliot
