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3 Helpful Tips To Improving Your Relationships

Possessing the character quality of being a good listener is something many of us would say we’d want, so in the name of becoming better listeners, let me share a few helpful tips I’ve picked up over the years as I’ve studied people, including the various communication tactics good listeners use. Hopefully, a careful study of this subject will vastly improve the quality of your relationships—friendships, dating relationships, family connections…any relationship, really.

1. Ask good questions when someone is finished communicating so they have the opportunity to further clarify what they want to say. Don’t you love it when someone asks you a great question? You get the sense that they genuinely care about you and your insight into the topic at hand. Asking good questions communicates interest, and interest is an important thing to express when you’re dating someone. Be careful, however, not to ask too many questions or inappropriately timed questions when someone is speaking. Continually interrupting someone’s train of thought with various questions can be more annoying than endearing. Listen well and ask well.

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Dating Relationship Games

To Play or Not To Play?

There is an inappropriate and strangely popular side effect of little-to-no communication in a dating relationship—the manipulative tactic called “playing relationship games.”

When I say games, of course, I’m not referring to busting out Settlers of Catan on a Saturday night and enjoying some healthy competition. What I’m talking about here is the specific scheming that can go on between two people who are dating one another in an attempt to elicit a certain response from their partner. It’s essentially intentional manipulation for the purposes of either getting something you want, subtly asserting your dominance, or triggering that unexplained jolt of adrenaline one gets when you tamper with someone’s emotions and their heart is on the line. 

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My TGC Article

3 Ways Technology Makes Us Anxious

I wrote an article for The Gospel Coalition, and it ended up going live today.

It’s about how technology can make us anxious, and the 3 gospel responses when our fear and anxiety rises up. You can click on the image above to be taken to it. I hope you enjoy!

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New Shirts Available Now

Thanks to some of the talented designers I work with, I was able to have a couple of T-shirts designed and made available to you just in time for Christmas.

  

So, if you’d like a “3D Mona Lisa” shirt in charcoal gray, or an “I Am A Tool” shirt in a variety of color choices, click on the images above or the widget on the side of my site. Merry Christmas!

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Bad Dating Relationships: A Personal Example

You Gotta Talk To Each Other

When there is a distinct lack of communication in any dating relationship, a few things inevitably rise to the surface that will ultimately lead to the end of the relationship. I personally have experienced some of those repercussions because of little-to-no communication when I was dating a girl, and I must say that they aren’t healthy or life-giving repercussions.

Sure, it’s easy to act cool like nothing is wrong when someone asks how the girlfriend or boyfriend is doing, but that ache in the pit of your stomach tells a different story, doesn’t it? If communication dwindles, fear and anxiety begin to grow. Without a steady stream of dialogue between two people who are dating, the pair often begin to wonder what exactly is happening in the relationship. And man-oh-man was this true of me with the girl I was dating my senior year of college.

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Captain America’s Abs and Communication 101

I was a communications minor back in college. “Whoop-dee-doo,” you might say, “a communications minor?” Yes, I know that means absolutely nothing when I’m trying to highlight the idea that I’m somewhat qualified to wade into the deep-end of how people should interact with one another, but at the very least I can tell you that I took a few classes at the university level involving research into the more complex levels of communication.

To this day, I distinctly remember sitting in a lecture hall of about 400 students and listening to my professor talk to us about how he should talk to us in order to make sure we understood what he was talking about. My brain starts to hurt a little bit when I think about what that last sentence actually means, but you’re probably smarter than I am, so my guess is that you know what my professor meant.

It’s essentially Communication 101, and the breakdown is fairly straightforward from beginning-to-end regarding what needs to happen on the journey of a certain subject. Let’s start with thinking of a topic I might theoretically want someone to clearly understand in the way I’m able to understand it. For the sake of illustration, I’m going to choose the topic of Captain America’s abdominal muscles.

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I Love Me Some Me

The Lie of Self Esteem

I really like thinking about how great of a guy I am. I know that sounds bad, but regrettably, it’s true.

I’m a genius when it comes to the subject of me. I’m literally obsessed with myself. Not a day goes by when I don’t think, “What could make me happier right now?” or “What do I want to do?” And if you were honest, you’d probably say the same thing about yourself. Am I right?

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Anxiety, Faith, and Glitter

Glitter might be one of the worst inventions in all of human history. You might think I’m joking, but I’m as serious about this as Darth Vader was about turning Luke to the dark side in The Empire Strikes Back.

If I ever run for office, the bedrock of my campaign strategy won’t be to balance the budget or fix the health care crisis. It will be the push for complete and total annihilation of the glitter department in the American greeting card industry.

Everybody’s got their one ultimate archenemy: Superman has Lex Luthor, the Red Sox have the Yankees, Chuck Klosterman has Coldplay, and I have glitter. I once heard a comedian say that glitter was “the herpes virus of the crafting world…it just spreads everywhere.” I couldn’t agree more.

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OCMD: The Best Summer of Your Life

Each summer, my family and I head off to Ocean City, Maryland to lead the OCMD Summer Mission. This year will be no different.

Ocean City, MD has long been a favorite hot spot for high school seniors, college students, and families alike. With 27 blocks of boardwalk, an amusement park, and a beautiful beach, it’s the perfect environment for a great summer. Throw in a couple thousand international college students, living and working there, and you have a tremendous opportunity for a world-impacting ministry.

The OCMD Summer Mission places a high emphasis on student ownership and leadership development. Our hope is to help better prepare you to lead on your campus, and to equip you for a lifetime of personal ministry. If you love the beach, the boardwalk, personal ministry development, and reaching students from all around the world, then consider joining me and 50 other college students/Cru staff from around the country in OCMD. I promise you nothing but the best summer of your life.

Here’s our new promo video…it captures the spirit of the mission quite nicely:

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My Open Letter To Taylor Swift

You Always Knew How To Push My Buttons

Below is an open letter I wrote to Taylor Swift after the release of her album 1989. I was thinking about Taylor today, and I thought I’d share with you what I wanted her to see many months ago when I wrote this. Here it is:

You Always Knew How To Push My Buttons: An Open Letter to Taylor Swift

Dear Taylor,

Undoubtedly, this letter will never be read by you because you are the most popular musical artist on our planet of billions, and you simply don’t have time for every little thing that’s written about you day after day. I’m okay with that. But I’m going to continue anyway, knowing that I’m really writing this for any of my readers who happen upon my blog and decide to ingest what I’ve typed out beyond this paragraph.