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.
This post originally appeared on DrKellyFlanagan.com
<http://drkellyflanagan.com/2014/10/01/the-9-most-overlooked-threats-to-a-marriage/>