Happy, Sad Or In-Between? Songs To Fit Every Mood, Moment, And Reason This Valentine

On my way to work this morning, the radio played some really lovy dovy songs, one track after another, for quite a while. I double-checked the radio to make sure I was tuned onto my regular channel. After that batch of songs, came the commercials. Later, the DJ explained the logic behind the continuous love songs! In my moment of insanity, I forgot what day it was.

So, today I am going to take a break from my normal blogging niche. Listed below are my recommendations for the "frame of mind", you currently are in, might have been in or will be, in the future! Regardless of where you are in the relationship spectrum (hopeless crush, 20th anniversary or sworn off love for good), there is a song out there that matches your situation like a needle to a groove. Which one is your story?

Valentine’s Day: Happily ever after

• You're Still the One By Shania Twain


• Everyday I Love You By Boyzone


• The Love I Found In You By Jim Brickman


• Through The Years By Kenny Rogers

Valentine’s Day: "You are the best thing that happened to me!"

• When I See You Smile By Chicago


• You're One in A Million By Bosson


• Its Your Love By Tim McGraw & Faith Hill


• Since I Found You By Air Supply

Valentine’s Day: Complicated

• You and Me By Lifehouse


• Don't Give Up On Us By Owen Wilson


• Too Little Too Late By Jojo


• How Can We Be Lovers By Michael Bolton


• If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Right By Rod Stewart

Valentine’s Day: Why, Why.. why?

• If You're Not The One By Daniel Bedingfield


• Anyone Of Us By Gareth Gates


• Why Do You Want Him? By Green Day


• Some Guys Have All The Luck By Rod Stewart

(Note: Might need a bottle of whiskey to listen to these!)

Valentine’s Day:Can’t Let Go

• Until I Find You Again By Richard Marx


• Say It Isn’t So By Gareth Gates


• I'll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me By Vanessa Williams


• Against All Odds By Westlife & Mariah Carrey

Valentine’s Day:Heart Broken

• Where Do Broken Hearts Go By Whitney Houston


• I Will Love Again By Lara Fabian


• Heartbreaker By Dionne Warwick


• Ghost Of You And Me By BBMak

Valentine’s Day:Goodbyes

• Remember me this way By Jordan Hill


• I'll Remember You By Atlantic Star


• Love Will Lead You Back By Taylor Dayne

Valentine’s Day: Miss You

• Home By Micheal Bobly


• Here Without You By 3 Doors Down

Valentine’s Day:Single, Alone and Waiting..

• All By Myself By Eric Carmen


• Waiting For A Star To Fall By Boy Meets Girl


• Right Here Waiting For You By Richard Marx


• I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For By U2

Valentine’s Day: Pessimistic

• Too Much Love Will Hurt You By Queen


• Look What Love Has Done To Me By Mattie Groves


• Love Hurts By Nazareth


• Love Stinks! By Adam Sandler


• In the end By Linkin Park

Valentine’s Day: Angry...

• I Hate You So Much Right Now By Kelis


• I Don't Love You By My Chemical Romance


• Are you Happy Now By Michelle Branch


• Hate (I Really Don't Like You) By Plain White T's

Finally... Valentine’s Day: Dedicated to all the ladies who read this post!

• I Will Survive By Gloria Gaynor


• Man! I Feel Like a Woman By Shania Twain

Valentine’s Day: Dedicated to all the men

• No Woman, No Cry By Bob Marley lol!

Is your story here? What’s your favorite mood and what songs will you recommend? I look forward to your comments.

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The War Is Over; Man Understands Women

About a week ago, a good friend of mine broke up with his girl friend of 3 years. There were many reasons for the break up, but he summed it up by saying, “complicated practicalities”. I called him up last night to check up on him. It is hard enough going through a break-up but I suppose it is even more difficult when valentine day is around the corner. As expected he was feeling down and was full of self-pity. After complaining about his situation for several minutes, he sighed and said, “I give up. I don’t understand women.”

I bet he is not the only one. Men, through the ages have thrown up their hands in surrender, after battling one of womankind!

So this post is something I put together, to help him and others, who are in similar situations. It is dedicated (but not limited) to those of you who will be spending this Valentine’s day drinking Bleach Schnapps and jumping off fire escapes!

So You Wanna Understand Women?

I am aware that dealing with women is a topic of vital importance to most men. I won’t lie to you, or hold out some ridiculous claim that reading this post, will instantly turn you into a super-stud women understanding machine. Nevertheless, this post will get you closer, from where you are now. After all, women are complicated creatures!

Let’s get started, we have got a lot of work to do!

3 Facts to keep in mind, Always

Fact #1: Men are still from mars, and women are still from Venus
Yes, I know; you already know that right? However, I must remind you THIS is the root cause of all problems. I think the one thing that men and women have in common is that they are from the same species.

Here is an excerpt, from Doug and Barbara Pease’s book,Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It with some good examples!

When a man goes to a rest room, he usually goes for one reason and one reason only. Women use rest rooms as social lounges and therapy rooms. Women who go to a rest room as total strangers, can come out as best friends and lifelong buddies. But everyone would be instantly suspicious of the man who called out, “Hey Frank, I am going to the toilet, you wanna come with me?”
Men dominate TV remote controls and flick through the channels; women don’t mind watching the TV commercials. Under pressure men drink alcohol and invade other countries; women eat chocolate and go shopping!

Just as much as men are trying to understand women, women are also trying to understand men! It is a continuous cycle.

Fact #2: Women… each and every one of them is unique. Once you figure one of them out, another will throw you a curve ball!
All women are not the same; all relationships aren’t either. Just because you know one woman, doesn’t mean the same “style and strategy” will work with all other women. Comparing each other won’t help either!

Fact #3:Man has will, but woman has her way
At family reunions, there is an embarrassing story that practically everyone keeps reminding my cousin brother. They laugh and tease him about it, to date! Let me share it with you (and hope my neck doesn’t get chopped off!). When he was in forth grade he had a crush on a girl. I think it was his first crush. One day she received a note from her saying, “I like you; Do you like me? ”. Obviously, he was over the moon! Later that day he went over to talk to her on the playground. She was standing with a group of her friends. When he was approaching her, she had pointed at him, and everyone has giggled. Sadly, it was a big joke it was considered a joke by these 11 year olds. But my cousin was very upset and he refused to go to school for about a month!

Anyways, what I mean to say is that, the typical guy is usually clueless about the mind games women play. You better be aware of what’s going on.

What does she really mean?

The great question that has never been answered and which I have not get been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a women want?" ~Sigmund Freud

#1. Are you listening to me!? = [Too late, you’re dead.]
Listen and don’t offer advice until it is asked.
I wrote a post about this a couple of weeks ago. If you want to be understood
#2. "Yeah yeah, you look fine" is not a compliment. Show some interest in our lives! We appreciate attentiveness.
#3. Nothing says "I love you" like offering to go to the grocery store! Try to do what they are waiting for you to do.
#4. Don’t take everything we do for granted
#5. Be okay with our independence
#6. Pay close attention (there might be a quiz later)
#7. Do unexpected stuff. I mean NICE unexpected stuff!
#8. Remember dates. If you forget use the assistance of technology to remind you (But don’t tell her that!).
#9. "My eyes are up here ...", need I say more?
#10. I don’t want to talk about it = Go away, I need some space.
#11. I’ll be ready in a minute. = Kick off your shoes and find a good game on T.V.
#12. Be yourself. Don't try to be anything but yourself. Generally, women know if you are really trying, not to be you!

This blog would probably run out of storage space, if I try to detail out every delicate thing.Having said all this, it can be easily summarized into one point.

Guys, we are complicated, messy, and hard to understand....sometimes ;-) While there are many articles offering you "magical insight", what will work for you will be how well you communicate. If you want to know something, just ask. The true solution will come when we are finally able to encourage open and honest communication. As I said before, no two women are exactly the same so sometimes a generic answer will only help you to understand the one you care about even less.

Perhaps, Helen Rowland has the best of advice anyone can ever offer.

To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot, and not try to understand her at all. ~Helen Rowland

Ladies...Are you with me? Have I left out anything? What have you got to share?
and gentlemen... Is there a guide to understanding men? lol ;-)

These steps are easy to learn and remember. With practice (and patience) you will master them and will be more successful in understanding women, than you ever imagined. Good Luck and Happy Valentines day. Hope you have a good one!

Note:If you have read up to this point, it shows that you have a genuine interest in the subject. Don’t let the journey end here; check out these books. These books offer more superior wisdom, than I ever can!

* GenderSmart: Solving The Communication Puzzle Between Men and Women
* What Women Want: What Every Man Needs to Know About Sex, Romance, Passion, and Pleasure



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Fake It and Flaunt It? (Even Personal Development Bloggers Do It!)

This may be old news for some of you but I thought I would write a post for the benefit of those who may not know about it. After all, until today, I had no idea that things of this nature are happening around our blogging world!

As a practice, I take time each morning to visit the blogs that have linked(trackbacked) to my blog/blog post. You must have noticed the bottom left sidebar link, "Blogs that link here". I like to see what others say about my blog. In the process, I do find some really worthy reads, which I add to my feedreader.

Here I was, making my routine round trip when I came across a peculiar looking blog. I don’t want to make any blogging enemies, so I won’t mention the blog name. In spite of everything, this person did link to my blog! (If you are really interested, have a look at the blogs that have recently linked to Enhance Life. You should be able to figure it out yourself!) This particular blog had a preposterous layout (I should know I am a software professional!) and dull content. I believe the blog in question, falls into the personal development niche. However, I felt it didn’t have much to offer to the reader.

Yes, I am aware that there are many blogs of this caliber. However, the noticeable difference between those and this blog was the FeedBurner feed count. On the top right, was a heading subscribe to my rss feeds, and along side it displayed an image with a text indicating 2621 readers. I wanted to find out how this blog managed to get so many subscribers which such mind-numbing content. I didn’t even see a single comment for the 5 recent blog posts.

The detective inside me started to come alive. Even though I don’t have that many RSS subscribers, at least someone leaves a comment on every post!
My curiosity led me to investigate the HTML code of this blog. I also searched the web and found out a way to check the number of subscribers. All you have to do is type the following, on the browser.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/feedname

Replace the feedname, with the actual feedname of the blog. For example, If you want to check how many readers I have, the link would be http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/EnhanceLife

As expected, the blog I was dissecting, returned a very low number; 18 readers to be exact. I was amazed to find out that this HTML code snippet was in the code. It took me a few minutes to realize that this person has swapped the feedname. The name of the feed was another blog’s feedname. I kid you not!

Why Do They Fake It?

I think it is because the feedcount lets the visitors know how popular the blog really is. By showing a larger subscriber count, new visitors might feel that the blog is worth subscribing to.
Statistics wise, I know it can be frustrating when you have a new blog. Blogging stardom doesn’t happen overnight! Thus, some might consider it to be a good ego boost and show off a high number of readers.

Does A Fake Feedcount Really Help Promote Your Blog?

My personal opinion is that it depends on the blog and how fake the feedcount is. Obviously, the blog I visited had not thought of the later!

When you visit a blog for the first time, in most cases, what happens is that you read just two or three articles, and then you look at RSS count. If the content and the RSS count impress you, you subscribe.
How many times has this happened to you? When you visited a popular blog the first time, noticed a high feed count of say 10000, and asked yourself - “Why haven’t I subscribed to this blog? 10000 RSS readers mean the blog is definitely worth subscribing!”
So, if you have a pleasing blog design and some decent content, I think you might get attention from your visitors with the fake feedcount.

However, if a reader finds out that the blog they read were faking their FeedCount, they would surely unsubscribe. They may even blog about it. Which might lead to controversy. We all know that creating controversy is a great way to get publicity! Is the risk worth it? Is your conscience up to it? Also, it is a matter of trust. My mindset is, “If I can’t trust that the number of subscribers shown is true, then how can I trust anything you say?”
Looking a bit deeper into the other side of the coin, if you’re planning on selling adverts on your blog, then it can be construed as fraud or misrepresentation. If I advertised on a blog that had faked its subscriber counts, I would demand my money back!

Would I Fake My Feedcount?

Having said the above, I have never faked the feed count on this blog and will never do it. It is my belief that it is unethical and wrong. One could achieve the same (if not better!) results, and keep the readers longer, using other much more ethical social proof ideas.
As tempting as it may be, I do not think it is a healthy way to attract more subscribers. I write a personal development blog and I stand by honesty is the best policy. I try my best to practice what I preach. I am a strong believer that dishonest activities like this will usually come back to bite you!

It doesn’t mean I don’t care about the statistics. I do! I love to see my numbers grow, but I have no desire to fake the readership. Even if I just have one reader today (Thank God I have much more!), I will still be happy knowing that at least someone is reading what I have to say. I would rather have an honest, engaged and small audience than a huge, fake or indifferent audience.

The blogging road trip, which has led me to today, hasn’t been easy. It has been hard work every step of the way. So I take great joy and pride in watching my subscribers grow- naturally. I admit, it is a slow process, but I am not going anywhere! If you like what you read here and have not subscribed to this blog yet, please consider subscribing to my RSS feed ;-)

Would You Fake The RSS Feedcount?

What about You? Have you ever considered faking the feedcount? Would you do it? Please leave your comments.

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