Communication is another important element. You have to be willing to put your feelings on the table and communicate about them calmly, openly, and fairly. The other person in the relationship cannot read your mind, no matter how much easier that would be for you! You must reveal your thoughts and your feelings while taking responsibility for them. Take the time to make sure that the two of you are on the same page. If you're not, no amount of talk will change anything.
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Commitment is also important because once the honeymoon is over, you start to unpack all the baggage you brought with you into this relationship, and that’s when the fun begins! Unless you’re committed, you may find yourself talking about toothpaste lids and toilet seats being grounds for divorce.
Relationships are the greatest tool you have in your life for effecting change, especially the up-close and personal ones. They give you so many opportunities to put what you learn into practice. This is important because you never know for sure how many of these new ideas and attitudes have actually taken root in your belief system until you interact with the world and test out your reactions.
There’s an old story about a monk who went up into the mountains where he prayed and meditated until he reached what he believed to be an enlightened state of mind. So, quite proud of his accomplishment, he left his cave and went down the mountain. When he reached the main road, a fellow pedestrian bumped into him as he walked. Immediately, he became angry. The moral of this story is that inner work comes first but it is only in the relative world – in the interactions with others that we can know the extent of our understanding because we can only express what we truly understand. Appreciate the value of your relationships. There is no greater tool available to you for refining your efforts to reach toward your highest potential as a “spiritual being having a human experience.” The state of your inner world attracts experiences to you, including relationships that harmonize with that inner world. As a result, your outer experiences allow you to determine what kinds of attitudes—both positive and negative— really exist within you. We often fool ourselves into thinking that we are a certain way, but the nature of our experiences doesn't try to fool us. For example, you may think you are totally independent and self-assured, but if you find yourself fully participating as a victim in a relationship, you’re fooling yourself.
So bless your relationships when they reveal the truth about yourself. Otherwise, you won't know what you need to change in order to have a better life! Finding the sweet spot within yourself is the key to better relationships and experiences in your life. Whatever your relationship is with yourself is the cloth from which the pattern of your life is cut. Your life mirrors back to you the relationship you have with yourself. If you believe yourself to be inferior, you will draw people and experiences to you to support this. So, if you want to experience Life’s Sweet Spot, that place that gives you joy each and every day as you wake and go about your business, start by finding that sweet spot, that place of harmony, within yourself. Then you will discover that your relationships with those in your life will start to improve, and you will draw new people to you.
The disappointment found by not finding the right job or the right relationship is meant to be a "mindslap!" — an opportunity for clarity and change, an opportunity to find your sweet spot in life. This sweet spot cannot be found “out there.” So relationships and experiences out in the world cannot reveal it to you by themselves. Outer experiences and relationships with others act like teasers to give you the chance to define the power you have over the emotions within yourself. Why is this important? Because your feelings attract your life, including the quality of your relationships.
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Surfing The Rift
Learning to heal rifts or disagreements that pepper relationships of all kinds, including the one with yourself, that can make it difficult to move forward.
AuthorJohn Dean Williamsen teaches about psychological balance and how to
use your life experiences to achieve balance. 
 Surfing The Rift Blog by John Dean Williamsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Archives
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