LOVE, Kloudiia

I decided to do this. Because like I mentioned in my earlier post, there are some good lessons we can learn here that we can apply to our relationships.

This was what I got from a reader, after I blogged about Tao Li and Michael Phelps. In short, after I wrote about 2 posts on the Beijing Olympics 2008.

Are you writing about olympics to get more hits on Google? What has olympics got to do with the Love website you are writing?

It’s amazing how people make money on the internet whether they are an expert in the subject or not.

Moreover, you don’t sound like a sports person. What you wrote is pretty much from a super amateur sports watcher.

There are several messages that one can pick up from this reader’s comment. He/she didn’t leave a name, but gave what I suppose to be a nickname made up of alphabets. So I’ll address this reader as R.

What are the lessons to be learnt here? I’ll list them down one by one, if you are keen to know too.

1. My interaction with readers

R raised a very good point. He said that my blog posts on Olympics has got nothing to do with a love site. Well, he made me think about this and I realised where my mistake lies. R must have missed out on this post where I made the announcement that I am shifting all the Love Q&As and formal love articles to my love coaching blog.

This will in turn become my personal blog where I’ll muse about life in general. Of course, it’ll still very much be my style of sharing insights and reflections on events that take place, and that can’t leave out issues relating to love, dating and relationships too. Just that they’ll come in an informal style.

Why is this my fault? Because I had conveniently forgotten that this announcement should be constantly placed at a location where readers, especially new ones, can see. I’m guessing that R is a new reader. Maybe R got to here because of well, the Olympic posts. And R begins to look around and check out this site. Then, R sees my banner on the header, which still carries the tag line “Love and Marriage. Dating & Relationships. Beautiful Living”. I really can’t blame R for thinking this is a love site, isn’t it? After all, this really used to be the focus.

In short, I had overlooked that I need to engage my readers the first instance they come to my blog! How could I expect them to go to the Archives and dig out the announcement which was made on 13 November, 2007? I can’t, can I?

So thanks R. I’ll probably have to do abit of stuff to my blog design pretty soon. Anyway, I’ve been thinking of changing it for some time, this could well be the catalyst!

Lesson: Always engage your customers. Keep their needs and likes in mind. When you’ve given them what they need and what they want, they’ll return the favour, almost naturally.

2. Assumptions

R made some assumptions and judgements about me and my site. 

Firstly, he assumed that I’m writing about Olympics only to get hits and make money. These thoughts were what went through R’s head.

In actual fact, these thoughts went through MY head as I was typing those posts: “OMG! I’m so happy for Tao Li and Singapore. Though she didn’t win the medal, we mustn’t be negative about this. We must see from another positve perspective. I must share this on my blog!”

If R were to know what I was thinking, or my genuine intention, then R probably would still give this comment as R found it not appropriate for a love site to contain sports-related stuff. But R wouldn’t have assumed I’m writing this to make money or to generate hits. Or maybe, if R knew me as a person, and well enough, R might not have this thought after all!

Frankly, after reading that comment, it then dawned on me that I’ve never given this a good consideration. Despite that Stuart is helping thousands of people to make use of blogs to get high rankings on the Internet and search engines, I’ve never really applied what he taught on my blog (yeah, I should feel ashamed!). I write what I feel, and I don’t care about keywords. I don’t litter them all over my posts, because if I do, I won’t be writing that freely.

So until R mentioned about the hits, I wasn’t thinking about that. Rather, I felt fortunate that I happen to be working from home during this Olympics, and have the privilege to catch the matches and races LIVE as they were happening. As a result, I thought it would be good to update my readers about the latest news.

But, guess what I did after reading his comment? I went to google Olympics and see if my posts do turn out. Ha! Just for the fun of it, I thought.

I remember in those times when I was coaching in POE, we always remind ourselves and we tell the participants to think of a person’s highest positive intention. If someone did some socially-unacceptable act, what is his highest positive intention? When we force ourselves to look in that direction, we can be surprised at what we find out. Test it, if you don’t believe.

Lesson: If you have certain thoughts on your partner’s actions and behaviour, or even things they say, do not jump into conclusion or assume anything. Find out what they are really thinking. I was often surprised by what Stuart was thinking as it turned out to be so far off from what I thought it was. Do not judge a person’s character. Because it is not fair to the person.

3. Sports vs Life vs Love

Are these really mutually exclusive? Can’t sports be a way to bond relatioships between people? Isn’t the way we play sports a manifestation of the way we live our lives too? How champions become the successful athletes they are are wonderful stories that can motivate us in our lives, to dream and to achieve what is touted as impossible to others.

Michael Phelps did it. Our Singapore table-tennis team did it. Tao Li broke her own record. Many, many more.

I think in life, we really can’t take a knife and draw boundaries so clear that those parts will never come into play with each other. Life is really a big mesh and it serves as a melting pot. Even other people’s lives will come in touch with ours, what more the various aspects of our lives?

Lesson: To the men, this is probably why you can’t understand why women are always mixing issues up. When you thought it’s only about the strawberry vs blueberry jam, she thinks its about commitment. See?

4. Handling criticisms

I mentioned in my book that we shouldn’t criticise, but should give feedback instead. But we really cannot stop anyone from criticising us, can we? Since we can’t change the situation, we can change the way we respond to it.

I reflected on what R wrote and found that he made some sense there (Lesson #1), that’s why I decide to write about this. But if anyone criticise or personally attack me, or anyone per se, without any facts or justification, there are still choices for us to make. We can choose to ignore, or we can choose to take another course of action.

For me whatever that course of action is, it has to be in line with my integrity and conscience.

Lesson: No matter what choices we ultimately make, we have to know beforehand that choices come with responsibility on the consequences. And it is very easy to criticise someone, but it is never easy to give constructive feedback. And it takes courage to face up to negative remarks and do something about it. So, be easy on your partner. Give your emotions a check first before you tell him/her what you like to see more of, or less of. Ok? Plus, it’s always better to communicate than to accuse and defend!

Wow, what a long post! If you have read till this point, I thank you for your patience and your interest! Haha…

So have you come across any times in your life when your nice intentions have been grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted by others? Would you like to share your experience here with us?

P.S R made a right assumption though – that I am not an expert. And yes, this is probably the first Olympics that is making me feverish. I completely skipped the entire Athens Games, as I was burying my head in the dating agency then. But being a super amateur sports watcher doesn’t mean I can’t express my opinion. We all have the right to, don’t we? And I thought I was being pretty factual about my posts, because I was really paying attention to learning about the sports I was watching, as I was watching.