Real Love by Dr. Greg Baer

Real Love: The Truth About Finding Unconditional Love & Fulfilling Relationshipsis a must read for anyone. Dr Baer does an excellent job of articulating what needs to be done to change one’s relationships from being self-centered and frustrating to “other focused” and fulfilling. When I first read this book a few years ago, I immediately ordered a copy for Olu. There are many principles in this book that you may already know or even are practicing but just reading about them and getting them organised will really move you along on your path towards a more fulfilling relationship.

Three things that stood out for me from this book:

  1. Everyone needs unconditional love and they are willing to do anything to get it. If you learn how to love unconditionally you will not only be happy, you will become a source of happiness for the people around you.
  2. If you are not happy in your marriage or other relationship, the problem is not the other. The problem is you! You don’t need others to make you happy
  3. We try to “buy” love by becoming angry, withdrawing, lying or complaining. These actions only get us “imitation love” which is never satisfactory.

Other books by Dr Baer

33 Life Principles that have helped me

How you can make maximum impact. Here are some of the principles that I have been developing for my life over the years. Some of the principles listed here are still work in progress but I believe you will be able to pick one or two things from here. I have just written these straight from my heart and I know it would need some explanations and editing but I just feel like presenting the raw form of it for now.

  1. Every person must aim to live at the peak of their potentials. It is important to make sure that once you discover a way of living that will make you more useful that you follow that path as soon as possible.
  2. The World needs real, authentic people who will show that even though all humans have weaknesses, God has made a way to restore humans to Gods original plan for us.
  3. It takes courage to face the challenges of life, face the criticisms of the skeptics and yet keep focused on the word of God and be adamant that you will make a difference in your community.
  4. If you do not determine to make a difference, you will struggle all your life to be fulfilled and you may not be fulfilled. Lots of money may help you to make some difference but what the world needs is not more money but more love. More of God’s kind of unconditional love.
  5. Money, fame, power would come your way if you determine to make a difference, but you must never allow any of these to become the goal. The goal is to show the world that God loves them and to to show this perfecting love in action.
  6. But first you must re-position yourself for maximum impact
  7. You must move from a position of little or negative impact to a position of maximum impact.
  8. You can only make maximum impact in your domain. Your domain is your primary area of greatness and positive influence. It seems to be programmed in your DNA.
  9. If you locate your area of influence and work hard on it without truly connecting with God, you will make an impact but the impact may not be the maximum impact.
  10. There are millions of people all over the world who have never discovered their area of maximum impact and have lived far below their maximum potentials.
  11. Millions of people leave their homes everyday to work at jobs that limit them. I have made up my mind never to add to this number.
  12. Jesus says you (Christians) are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. You have a lot to offer. However, if you are not well positioned, your light will not make the necessary impact.
  13. Proverbs says that a poor man’s wisdom is despised. You need to realize that if you don’t seem to be benefiting from this relationship with God, people will wonder why they should listen to you.
  14. Having faith in God through Jesus Christ may be hard at times but you must stay committed to what you have discovered to be true.
  15. Determine that you will never turn back.
  16. Locate your area of strength.
  17. Develop your area of strength and find people who are strong in your area of weakness to help you.
  18. Be committed to helping other people develop their strengths.
  19. If you fall today, rise up and try again.
  20. Always be objective. If its dead, bury it and go on.
  21. If it’s not dead – don’t give up.
  22. Cultivate solid relationships that compliment your purpose and that help your purpose.
  23. Discard anything in your life that has a negative impact on your life and the life of other people.
  24. Replace bad habits with good ones.
  25. Make the people around you feel like kings and queens by celebrating their strengths and complimenting their weaknesses.
  26. Learn to receive help from people who want to help you. Accepting help enables people around you to shine and to contribute to your success.
  27. Try never to leave people the way you met them. Endeavor to pray for everyone that you meet (in your heart) and let them see the love of God in you.
  28. Never blame anyone for your failures. Always think of a better way to do things to avoid similar results. I find that if you think clearly, you will always learn from your failures. Once you learn from it, it’s no longer a failure but a learning experience.
  29. Do not be in a hurry to get to the “promised land”. Celebrate every progress and continue to move forward. Never look back. Remember Mrs Lot.
  30. Always evaluate. Check over and over to see if you are still moving forward or moving in circles. Many people start out well but then they end up badly because they lost focus on the way.
  31. Be brutally honest with yourself. If you are a thief say “.. I am a thief. it’s bad to be a thief. I will stop being a thief from now on.” Do not engage in the folly of deceiving yourself. If you are a complete failure in music, admit it and find what you are excellent in. The earlier you start looking the better.
  32. Don’t spend all your time trying to be excellent at what you are naturally poor at. Rather improve on your strengths and do the best to find people who will complement you.
  33. Always enjoy your life as it is now, and as life gets better with you, enjoy the more.

Honest Talk about Life, Love, Relationships, Marriage…

Welcome to Ade & Olu.com! Thanks for taking the time to visit. What we aim to do with this site is to share our lives with the world. We are two people who love one another very much and we believe that everyone can and should have this kind of love in their lives.

It seems that having a happy marriage or relationship is becoming more and more difficult as the years go by. We believe that one of the reasons for this is that we try to work out a healthy, loving and fulfiling relationship in isolation.  When we share our lives with one another, and we build quality frienships, our significant relationships are not as strained. As a result, on this blog you will read about our personal experiences as we Pastor a Church in Canada and our daily lives as individuals in the community. You will also read about our thoughts on various issues of life with a definite focus on love.  As a couple we believe that the missing link in many lives is LOVE. So this blog will be about love and how we live our daily lives in the light of LOVe – Unconditional love.

A good way to see this blog is that it will be informative, and also honest and practical. We will try to be as honest as we can without being rude. We know that there are may people who will not agree with what we will write, however our goal is to be of help to those who need help and find this blog useful. We don’t claim that we know it all, but we will try be as informative as possible.

Enjoy