Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Are Your Relationships Working?

Affirmations:
I learn from everyone and everything.
I value my relationships as an ever present loving reminder.
I forgive judgments and respect others for their differences.
I seek what works to bring healing and harmony with everyone.

We are in Kona on a working sabbatical.
Available by email, Skype and phone.

Do you have what you want?
Are you in harmony with your relationships?
Do you feel connected with those you love?
Our relationship with ourselves is reflected in our outer relationships.

When we are forgiving of ourselves, our relationships can be forgiving.
When we are appreciate ourselves, we appreciate others.
What we give to ourselves, we can easily give to others.
When relationships are not working, begin within.

Relationships help us heal whatever we have left, lost or never known.
Relationships show us quickly where we are off purpose, off balance or just plain off.
Relationships give us clear and immediate feedback to show us what is needed and wanted.
Use your relationships with others to help elucidate what is calling for attentions and intention.

Consider using relationships to support you in becoming the best YOU!
Pay attention to any and all feedback to see what is missing or wounded.
Wake up to what brings you the love, consideration, harmony and good you want.
 Honor what you are learning from everyone and everything, all the time.

Communication = Coming together in unison.
When communication brings disharmony or conflict, stop and choose again.
When communication is frustrating, stop and listen to what is needed.
When communication creates separation or upset, seek you own inner connection first.

Know what your intention in relationship.  Set a goal for every encounter.
Ask for the best time to speak and share your self. Give always your respect first.
Listen for how to honor what the other want and need. Understand first, then to be understood.
Acknowledge and accept all differences without needing to convince, win, or be right.

The highest quality relationships honor both people with win-win solutions.
The best relationships have total freedom to disagree and choose to see things differently.
The most fun relationships appreciate and enjoy the diversity and differences.
The relationships with most longevity give one another total trust and freedom to be and to grow.

Consider your relationships as pure gold for the valuable feedback they offer.
Appreciate your relationships for the powerful inspiration and learning they give.
Forgive yourself for trying to make your relationships what you want them to be.
Give your best self in all your relationships and watch them inspire you to grow.

Relationships are a valuable tool for healing and personal growth.
Blessings to each one of you for teaching me and inspiring me to be all that I am.
Betty Lue

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE TO CONSIDER!
I hope you are thriving in your relationships, but if not........consider this!

I am inviting you to learn from all of this.
Awaken and take a deep look at your decisions and make ones that work for everyone.
 Blessings of gratitude and grace.  Betty Lue

Nine Most Overlooked Threats to Marriage.

1. We marry people because we like who they are. People change. Plan on it. Don't marry someone because of who they are, or who you want them to become.Marry them because of who they are determined to become. And then spend a lifetime joining them in their becoming, as they join you in yours.

2. Marriage doesn't take away our loneliness. To be alive is to be lonely. It's the human condition. Marriage doesn't change the human condition. It can't make us completely unlonely. And when it doesn't, we blame our partner for doing something wrong, or we go searching for companionship elsewhere. Marriage is intended to be a place where two humans share the experience of loneliness  and, in the sharing, create moments in which the loneliness dissipates. For a little while.

3. Shame baggage. Yes, we all carry it it. We spend most of our adolescence and early adulthood trying to pretend our shame doesn't exist so, when the person we love triggers it in us, we blame them for creating it . And then we demand they fix it. But the truth is, they didn't create it and they can't fix it. Sometimes the best marital therapy is individual therapy  , in which we work to heal our own shame. So we can stop transferring it to the ones we love.

4. Ego wins. We've all got one. We came by it honestly. Probably sometime around the fourth grade when kids started to be jerks to us. Maybe earlier if our family members were jerks first. The ego was a good thing. It kept us safe from the emotional slings and arrows. But now that we're grown and married, the ego is a wall that separates  . It's time for it to come down. By practicing openness instead of defensiveness, forgiveness instead of vengeance, apology instead of blame,vulnerability instead of strength  , and grace instead of power.

5. Life is messy and marriage is life. So marriage is messy, too. But when things stop working perfectly, we start blaming our partner for the snags. We add unnecessary mess to the already inescapable mess of life and love. We must stop pointing fingers and start intertwining them. And then we can we walk into, and through, the mess of life together. Blameless and shameless.

6. Empathy is hard. By its very nature, empathy cannot happen simultaneously between two people. One partner must always go first, and there's no guarantee of reciprocation. It takes risk. It's a sacrifice. So most of us wait for our partner to go first. A lifelong empathy standoff . And when one partner actually does take the empathy plunge, it's almost always a belly flop. The truth is, the people we love are fallible human beings and they will never be the perfect mirror we desire. Can we love them anyway, by taking the empathy plunge ourselves?

7. We care more about our children than about the one who helped us make them. Our kids should never be more important than our marriage, and they should never be less important. If they're more important, the little rascals will sense it and use it and drive wedges. If they're less important, they'll act out until they are given priority. Family is about the constant, on-going work of finding the balance.

8. The hidden power struggle. Most conflict in marriage is at least in part a negotiation around the level of interconnectedness between lovers. Men usually want less. Women usually want more. Sometimes, those roles are reversed. Regardless, when you read between the lines of most fights, this is the question you find: Who gets to decide how much distance we keep between us? >  If we don't ask that question explicitly, we'll fight about it implicitly. Forever.

9. We don't know how to maintain interest in one thing or one person anymore. We live in a world pulling our attention in a million different directions. The practice of meditation--attending to one thing and then returning our attention to it when we become distracted, over and over and over again--is an essential art. When we are constantly encouraged to attend to the shiny surface of things and to move on when we get a little bored, making our life a meditation upon the person we love is a revolutionary act . And it is absolutely essential if any marriage is to survive and thrive.
As a therapist, I can teach a couple how to communicate in an hour. It's not complicated. But dealing with the troublemakers who started the fight? Well, that takes a lifetime.
And yet.

It's a lifetime that forms us into people who are becoming ever more loving versions of ourselves, who can bear the weight of loneliness, who have released the weight of shame, who have traded in walls for bridges, who have embraced the mess of being alive, who risk empathy and forgive disappointments, who love everyone with equal fervor, who give and take and compromise, and who have dedicated themselves to a lifetime of presence and awareness and attentiveness.
And that's a lifetime worth fighting for.