I want you to write down all of the people who are in your life right now. Then I want you to look at that list, and separate it into two lists: the people who drive you crazy and the people who don’t drive you crazy.

Now take your “drive you crazy” list, and I want you to write down what it is about each person on that list that drives you crazy. For example, maybe your friend Chris constantly badgers you about being late.

Now here’s what I want you to do next. I want you to start working on each of those things that you wrote down which drive you crazy. Here’s why.

Everybody who comes into your life, does so for a reason. They come into your life to teach you a lesson, and get you out of your comfort zone. They come into your life to get you out of that coma that we’re all in during our life.

These people who drive us crazy do so for a reason. They drive us crazy because they are in our lives to teach us a lesson. That is the why they frustrate us so much.

They frustrate us because we know the lesson they are in our lives to teach us is something we need to learn. Those lessons are things that are pretty tough to learn at times.

Do you ever battle with someone over and over again about the same thing? The reason you continue to have the same fight with that person is because you haven’t learned that lesson yet.

So instead of continuing to have that same argument over and over, look at your list and write down how or in what ways that person has a valid point about what they’re saying to you. Say to yourself, “Maybe the things they are trying to convey to me are things I need to learn in order to move forward in my life.”

Say the next time you’re at dinner with a friend, he tells you to put your cell phone down and pay attention to the conversation. Instead of defending yourself by saying that you just need to return one text for work, realize that you’re doing something that maybe you need to stop doing.

So the lesson from this blog that you need to learn is this: Pay attention to the lessons in your life.

In the beginning, you try to impress each other. You do special things for each other. When they come over you set an intent for the evening — you light candles, put on some music and maybe make a special dinner.

As the relationship progresses, though, you stop setting intents. It’s almost like you stop listening to each other. “I know he (or she) likes candles, but I’m just not going to light them anymore because I’m lazy (or because we’re in routine world or because they are as attracted to me as a piece of furniture).”

There’s a lot of things that we should keep doing for each other because they are fun and are things the other person likes. There are also things we shouldn’t be doing for each other.

One of those things is settling into the comfort zone where we stop doing the great romantic things you used to do for each other and letting the inner slob come out. Men tend to start farting more, leaving the door open when they go to the bathroom, and really just leaving their smell all over the place.

Women may not walk around farting, but they tend to start leaving their stuff everywhere. There are products in every nook and corner, and underwear hanging from every hook and hanger. Some women will start wearing sweatpants every single night.

We tend to stop doing things for each other because we get comfortable. Of course we love the other person for who they are, and nobody has to get dressed up for their partner every day. You need to be 100% comfortable in a relationship, but you also need to do all the things that were amazing at the beginning.

Click here for some great ideas on how to keep the fire lit in your relationship.

For anyone who doesn’t know what a “kegger” is, let me give you the quick description. A kegger is when a bunch of high school kids sit around drinking beer out of a keg, get drunk and act like idiots.

I remember that all the hot girls were going to be at that party, and how badly I wanted to go. Despite this, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get myself to go. I had so much fear and anxiety about it, and I couldn’t figure out why.

When my buddy John called me around 7:00 pm to let me know he would be picking me up in an hour to go to that party, I told him I couldn’t go. I didn’t tell him that I had too much fear and anxiety to go. I told him the excuse that I had spent the entire day thinking about and creating, that my Mom wasn’t feeling well so I had to stay home to take care of my sister and brother.

I told him how much it sucked that I couldn’t go. I really sold it, and John believed me. I remember getting off the phone and thinking what a great job I did selling that excuse.

How many times have you sold excuses? You get invited to something, but you create an excuse not to go because of your lack of self-confidence, your lack of social confidence and your mindset.

How many times have you spent the entire day working up the perfect excuse to blow off a social event to which you were invited? What is funny is that when you do this, you will always check in the next day with your friends to see what you missed.

Then, because the mind is very funny in the way it works and tricks itself, you think “Oh man, I could’ve gone to that party. I should have gone. Next time I’m going to do it.”

The truth is that the next time you are going to come up with another excuse. The same thing will happen the time after that.

We make excuses in life because it’s too hard to face our fears. As human beings, we love to make excuses. Facing our fears means we have to leave our comfort zone.

When you get out of your comfort zone, it by definition means that you are going to be uncomfortable. As human beings, we always want to be comfortable.

That is why television is so popular. Watching television allows you to escape into a different world.

The Internet is another great escape. If you ever read comments people post on Internet sites, people are as ballsy as can be because they can be their own “alter ego” and say what they would never have the guts to say in real life.

In order to overcome your fears and excuses, you must go out and do something that takes you out of your comfort zone. There is no way around it.

For some of you, that might mean approaching ten women a day. For others of you, that might mean going out on a date with someone you’ve always wanted to ask out on a date but never have.

if you don’t do something every single day that gets you out of your comfort zone, you’re just going to remain comfortably numb (as Pink Floyd so aptly put it) for the remainder of your life. Let me tell you, time goes by really fast.

That was 31 years ago I made that excuse to my friend John to avoid going to that high school party. While I have obviously gotten over those fears, there are times in my life that I will still bail out of things with some other stupid excuse.

Today’s story is about such a person. It is about none other than Chris Henry of the Cincinnati Bengals. He is a guy who finally turned his life around, only to die on Wednesday falling out the back of a pickup truck during a domestic dispute.

Apparently he and his fiance were arguing. She jumped into the pickup. He ran after her, jumped in, fell out the side and died. He was just 26 years old, and just starting his life over again.

We read stories like this, and realize how easily it could have been us. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t likely have been any one of us falling off the back of a pickup truck, but it could have been our lives cut short in any number of other ways.

It seems like we never learn from things like this. We read these kind of stories. We feel badly about what happened. We reflect on it, but them we go right back to the “same old same old.”

There are two strong lessons to be learned here.

The first lesson is that when you’re fighting in a relationship and the other person wants to leave or be alone, respect that. So many times, people will continue a conversation and say even more hurtful things.

When we fight with our partners, it’s circular. So it’s really better to let them walk away and cool off. Nothing ever gets accomplished in the heat of an argument, except the creation of more arguments.

The second lesson is to answer the question, “What is your wakeup call?”

New Year’s Day is coming. Is that your wakeup call? Are you going to make another bullshit New Year’s resolution that you don’t have the self-discipline to implement in your life?

The only thing constant in our life is change. So why do we always fight it? Why do we always resist what is natural in evolution of life?

Why do we fight so hard when someone asks us to change our ways for the good? Why as humans are we content to sit around mired in things that don’t make us happy, and waiting for rainy days that don’t make us want to do anything?

Chris Henry was turning his life around when it was cut short. So today, think about Chris Henry and do something that takes you out of your comfort zone.

Ask out that person you’ve had a crush on for ages. Walk up to a stranger and wish them Merry Christmas (Oops, I mean Seasons Greetings).

Whatever pulls you out of your comfort zone, only you can do. Think about what would happen if you did one thing outside your comfort zone every day for thirty days.

If you did that, pretty soon those things would no longer be outside your comfort zone. They would be well inside it.

You won’t have to rely on bullshit New Year’s resolutions. You won’t even have to make any this year. It’s never too late to turn your life around and make it everything you want it to be.

So how are you going to pull yourself out of YOUR comfort zone. I want to know.