The Mars Venus and You Blog

John Gray & Aliens, Mars Venus Trees, Films and more...

Oh my, what an exciting week!

To kick it off, on Tuesday I went up to London for the John Gray event – what I hadn’t realised until I got there was that this was the first time John had given a public seminar in the UK for TEN YEARS – now how exciting was that?!
Of course he was amazing; he was mostly talking about the concepts in Why Mars & Venus Collide – but being a Mars Venus swot I could spot that there were a few tasty titbits from his soon-to-be-released book – Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice. As always, John spoke with passion, humour and empathy about the relationship challenges men and women are faced with today.

There was lots in there about Oxytocin – the wonderful stress reducing, contentment lifting hormone that we ladies produce when we’re happy in life (and in major amounts when we’re giving birth and having orgasms – but don’t worry - these are not the only two sources!) . And in relation to this, John spoke a lot about the importance, as women, of asking for the things we want.

Now I know, both from personal experience and from the clients I see, this is not something that always comes oh-so-easy to us ladies. This can be for a variety of reasons: two of the most popular being 1) because we think we shouldn’t have to ask or 2) because we think it’s ‘weak’ to; we could ask but when we are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves, so we jolly well shall.

The latter caused a meeting that I had this week to be a particularly interesting one... it was a group of very successful and spectacularly capable women. These women are all at the top of their game and with very good reason to be. In career terms, inspirational would be an understatement. One of these women heads up a very powerful organisation with a lot of interest in other powerful women, and she relayed a tale of how she’d been at a meeting with an affiliated organisation who had offered to take on some of her organisations workload. She told us that ordinarily she would have said no, as her organisation is perfectly competent at doing the tasks mentioned... but this time it occured to her that the organisation doesn't have to do it all; why not dish out some of the work to others for support?

Having listened to John talk about the importance for women to feel supported in order to reduce stress, this was fascinating to watch in itself, but what made it even more interesting was watch how the other women around the table were so enthused to hear someone they view as a figurehead taking the approach of accepting assistance – that accepting support didn’t mean you were any less capable – it simply means that you'd have a lesser workload! As the head speaker relayed her feelings that it was OK to offload responsibility to someone else, I smiled inwardly at how this was Oxytocin building on a corporate level – and they didn’t even know it. It is funny how many areas that this Mars Venus stuff is relevant to our lives – it continuously impresses me and reinforces to me the importance of learning about it all – I love it!

Another point that I loved hearing at the talk was John relaying that sometimes women will say to him ‘why do I have to do the changing; I’m already the one who does all the work – why do I have to be the one who does the work here too?’. First of all – phew – it’s not just me who hears this... and secondly – he so brilliantly and simply summed it up, as John does, with (words to this effect): the changes that you make are not for the other person, they’re for *you* - the benefits mean that you’ll be happier in your relationship as you’re getting the outcome you desire – which will make your partner happier too – but ultimately the results that you’ll get from making these changes are the results that YOU want. Women, you’re the winners in this situation; it’s all about creating changes that lead to a benefit for you.

Which I think ties in rather nicely with the philosophy that the Mars Venus & You name was borne from : )

And then there was a book signing at the end of his seminar ... rather geniusly someone turned up as an ‘alien’. I’ve still no idea who it was but it was a priceless moment – hence the picture share above!

In other news this week (like maybe that wasn’t enough?!) we went to the Bristol Women’s Show – which I believe is the nearest women’s only show to us in South Wales. In fact I think Women’s Show’s are relatively new in the UK... although I know they’re very popular in the US. It was a great experience all round and the new business cards got their first outing on the Mars Venus tree (behind my head in the picture below)– which received lots of positive comments and general all round good noises!

And for those of you who subscribe to the lovely Mars Venus & You newsletter – the first one went out this week too! Do let me know what you think/what you’d like to see in future issues and so on... and if you’ve not signed up already make sure to click the 'sign up to the Mars Venus Newsletter' link in the blue banner at the top of this page... promise we’ll never, ever spam you and promise to try and make it interesting... or at least funny – even if that’s funny when it’s meant to be interesting... ahem.

Anyway, my last bit of very exciting Mars Venus news this week is that they’re making a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus film!! I don’t know many of the details yet, only that it’s going to be along the lines of the very successful adaptation of the self help book turned film: He’s Not That Into You.

(Although I do hope not too similar as I found it slightly infuriating that it surely deviated from the point of the book by having a fairytale ending where everyone got together and lived happily ever after?!?)

But I digress... it’s obviously very exciting news and I will be sure to keep you posted on updates...

And finally - in personal news - assuming the smoke clouds have stopped doing their little dances in the sky, I will be on an Island in Greece next week... a whole week of doing nothing but reading and eating good food and enjoying lots of sunshine – bliss! If I get internet out there I shall drop you a wee virtual postcard from the harbour; sitting in the sunshine, Greek salad and spritzer close at hand... til then, over and out; from Nadia, via planet Venus, with love x

Posted: Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Your Comments

What do you think? Leave a Comment