Hellllllloooooo, Designeeeeeeeerrrs!
Your challenge beginning today will be to choose all the materials you need to design a fabulous relationship!
You will incorporate these materials into your design so that the final product represents your passion, sense of style, and vision for the future. A critical aspect of your design is that it must be constructed to last. However, you can make alterations to your design as you see fit. The materials you will be using must come from what you already have in your possession.
Ready, Designeeeeeeeerrrs? Go!
Okay. I admit it. I’m a big Tim Gunn groupie. In fact, I love everything Project Runway.
I love the fabrics, the colors, the runway shows… But most of all, I love the designers’ passion for what they do.
You can just tell that design is what they live and breathe.
As opposed to the disdain I spewed to you about carnival games, I absolutely adore the competitive reality-based games.
Food Network and HGTV Design Star? So You Think You Can Dance? American Idol, even? Bring ’em on (although NOT in a Dubya kinda way)!
Because to me – and also, apparently, to the millions of viewers who tune in – these shows symbolize the power of doing something you love to the point where it becomes your life… Your entire being.
It’s that important.
And because I am a Relationship Designer, this is how I feel about the love relationships in our lives.
They’re that important.
Actually, I think that, deep down, we all feel the same way about how important our love relationships are to our happiness. But somewhere along the relationship road, we’ve been hurt, shamed, ridiculed ignored – to the point where we’ve taken that passion and desire to put ourselves out there in relationship – and have, instead, retreated into anonymity.
In order to avoid losing at Project Relationship, most of us won’t even play the game. Or, if we do decide to play, we make sure that everyone knows (including our love interest!) that we couldn’t care less about whether we win or lose.
We adopt a posture of indifference.
Yet that posture that we think will protect us from further pain only serves to distance us from our true pleasure, which is feeling a true connection in our love relationship. True intimacy.
And that disconnect ultimately leads to failure.
The qualities I admire most about these reality-show contestants is their willingness to be vulnerable. They wear their creative hearts on their sleeves and are willing to give their right arms (maybe left ones too) in order to express their passion and get the opportunity to create their masterpieces.
One of the truly challenging paradoxes of life is that you can’t experience the greatest pleasure if you’re not willing to risk feeling the depths of pain. In other words, we have to be willing to be true to ourselves, and keep putting ourselves out there in the most authentic way, in order to reach greatness in anything we do.
We can do this in our love relationships too.
We can all be Relationship Designers and create love relationships that we are proud to show the world. A masterpiece after which others would want to model their relationships.
But doing so requires vulnerability. (And healthy boundaries, but that’s for another day.)
Perhaps your version of Project Relationship will not result in your becoming famous…
But what better place to be a star than in the reality-show that’s your life?
So, step out onto that Relationship Runway and show us how you’ve met your Project Relationship challenge.
Make it work, Designeeeeeeeerrrs!!!!!
MAKE IT WORK!!!!!!
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