Two questions for you…..

 When was the last time you felt really loved by your person? 

and

Do you know how to make your person feel really loved?

 This week over in our facebook group - Thriving Couples Collective, we ran a poll to see what the most common primary Love Language is.

If you aren’t familiar with the 5 Love Languages, it’s a concept by Gary Chapman that suggests we each prefer to give and receive love in one of five different ways.

• Acts of Service

• Physical Touch

• Receiving Gifts

• Quality Time

• Words of Affirmation

 
You might instinctively know yours and your partners or you may want to take the quick quiz.

 
The catch here is that just knowing their #1 really isn’t enough. We need to learn to speak our own and our partners' primary love language fluently so that they can truly feel it.

 My #1 is Receiving Gifts and Nath’s is Physical Touch.

 A few years ago, I walked into our apartment...

How was your week? I am back to work as “normal” this week and it’s definitely taken me a moment to get re-orientated. Especially because I’ve returned to a new office in our new apartment. (Yay!)

At the end of last year, Nath and I finally pulled the trigger on moving closer to the beach after literally years of the conversation going back and forth “should we, shouldn’t we” - a result of being unclear on what we wanted.

After both agreeing now was the time, we looked at around 15 apartments and only loved one - the one we got! And in the Sydney real estate market, that is no mean feat.

While on the hunt, some apartments we walked into we instantly knew it wasn’t for us, others it took a little longer and hypothesising “what if this went there, and then that there”

But mostly these conversations were easy because we had discussed at length what we really valued in our home.

We had a long list of shared values - things that were...

How’s your first few weeks of 2022 been? Nath and I collected the keys for our new place on Christmas eve and we did the big move right on the cusp of the calendar flipping over, so mine have been lived out amongst clutter, not yet unpacked boxes and sand. We are now living within strolling distance to the beach so the sand I’m gonna have to get used to, the other two things, they’ve gotta go!

This week on the poddie we chatted “Organising your life and home for a Better Relationship with Lisa Hodgson'' which felt fitting since my home has been absolute chaos and not at all organised. Timely advice really.

The past few weeks I’ve snapped at Nath more times than is probably reasonable since moving in. Mostly over little things like, where the fuck is that thing I need that is usually at my finger tips but is now currently no where to be found. It has reminded me how hard our relationship and life can be when our home isn’t humming along and the...

Happy New Year!

How was 2021 for you? Mine was a bit here-there-and-everywhere. I had some great days, celebrating my birthday and Mardi-Gras with some of my nearest and dearest, my first surf lesson, my first return to running-run after many years in retirement and the celebration of our 9th wedding anniversary. But I also had days that rolled into weeks that rolled into months that were just “meh” sometimes even less than “meh”.

If you listen to our show Date Forever, you likely heard me stretching to find things that fuelled me up some weeks, it’s not a nice place to be. And I know a lot of people were there with me as Australia and the world experienced more government mandated lockdowns, restrictions, additional rules and we continued with the Corona Virus Pandemic and the rollercoaster of logistics, emotions and feelings that goes with it.
 

I’ve done a lot of personal development, inner work with coaches and professionals to know...

What do reverse parallel parking and trust have in common? Lemme tell you.

Earlier this week I was driving with my husband Nathan in the passenger seat, we approached our destination and I spotted a car park on the street between a Vespa and another car, a tight spot but totally achievable for our little car.

As I reversed into the snug spot, Nath jumped out of our car and stood on the footpath giving me hand signals on how close I was to the obstacles in front and behind me as I manoeuvred into the spot. 

The car was parked and perfectly aligned in the space in under a minute. Not because I am an expert parker or because Nath is overly skilled in sign language but because we worked together as a team. Together we conquered a task much faster than if either of us had gone at it alone.

It’s almost the perfect analogy for our relationship and life together. Wherever possible we embrace the opportunity to see things from the others perspective to ultimately achieve the...

Have you ever been caught out in a car that has run out of petrol? I have, it really sucks.

We’ve made it to the final month of 2021 of what has been a challenging year for all. This past week, almost everyone I’ve interacted with has echoed some kind of sentiment of “I am running on empty”. We are all longing for a break, an opportunity to rest and re-fuel. I know I am.

Fuel Collective is a bit of an unusual name for a business all about relationships but the name came about after realising a handful of ideas that all had one thing in common - a need for fuel.

A relationship ends when it runs out of fuel and the willingness to re-fuel is gone.

Each year Nath and I take a whole day to make a Game Plan for the year ahead, we set individual goals, shared goals and make a plan for our next 365 days. We are doing it tomorrow!

The Fuelled Up Life and Relationship methodology was developed after Nath and I examined our last 4-5 Annual Game Plan Days and figured out what...

Hey Hey,

My husband Nathan and I got married in 2012. I was 23 years old and Nath just a smidge older at 24.

I feel wildly grateful to have already spent more than a decade with my person and yet we are still only in our early 30’s.

The first few years of our marriage, to put it kindly, were directionless.

We didn’t have a big vision or plan for our relationship or life and we really did just fumble our way through taking opportunities as they came, living very reactively and we hardly ever stopped to think if any decision big or small aligned with our values, priorities or goals.

The result was that we didn’t achieve a whole lot. Both as individuals or as a couple.

In 2014 we spent a big chunk of the year reacting to some curveballs which resulted in me moving from Adelaide to Sydney solo before Nath followed 6 months later. I started working in a new business that was also a bit directionless - no team meetings, no goals or directions, no targets to work towards and...

Hey Hey,

Have you ever played Tetris?

I grew up in the 90’s so my first hours with the game were clocked on a black and white gameboy.

If you were born later than me, you might not be familiar so to make sure the rest of this story makes sense here is a quick outline of the game: Tetris is a simple puzzle game where different shapes called "tetrominoes" fall from the top of the screen and then the player has to arrange them to form gapless lines, the more complete lines you create, the faster the blocks fall.

I have vivid memories of my mum kicking mine and my brother's ass wiping out her own record over and over again on long road trips as we each took turns playing while dad drove. My turn would be over quickly and mums would last for ages! I’m sure she still holds the top record in the hundreds on a retired gameboy somewhere in my grandparents garage.

Anyway, the reason I’m reminiscing about Tetris with you is for a worthwhile insight I want to share with you.

If...

Hey Hey,

This week's Friday Fuel Up is all about Career and Business.

Over the past few years I’ve transitioned from having a full-time all consuming job working for someone else, to freelancing, part-time job, a business and then another business and a combination of these at any one time.

 There are pro’s and con’s to all of these dynamics that create more or less certainty, more or less cash and more or less contribution. Some of us need more of some than others.

There is an increasing number of people creating these gig-economy, side-hustle type careers and I wanted to share an idea that has helped me.

We need three things
Cash - Where and how do I make money?
Creation - Where and how do I unleash my creativity?
Contribution - Where and how do I contribute my gifts to helping the world?

At times in my career I’ve been lucky enough to get all three from one source and at other times they’ve come from different places - work ticking one, hobbies and...

Hey Hey,

This week's Friday Fuel Up is all about The World.

When I was 5 years old, I rode an elephant in Thailand with my dad while my grandma snapped pictures from the sideline. At that moment I fell in love with these beautiful animals; strong, beautiful, playful and weirdly graceful given their size. Ohh and did you know they are pregnant for almost 2 years!?

I now know and understand that the practice of exploiting animals for tourism is wrong for all kinds of reasons. But I didn’t know that in 1994 and I still held the belief that it was okay when my husband Nathan and I rode an elephant in 2011 while in Indonesia. 

I’m kinda embarrassed to share the pictures because I feel like I was a bit late to the party on this shift in thinking but as a visual human myself, pictures can be worth a thousand words. It's now a decade later and I’ve been able to reconcile that I did the wrong thing and that although I did a bad thing, I am not a bad person.

Through...