Category: Relationships

Your Secret Partners

3/8/2015

Regardless of how much people might say they hate or love partnerships of any kind, they are in a bunch of them their entire lives. Most of these partners are not out in the world. They look back at you every time you look in the mirror. You get out of bed with them in the morning, and they are still with you when you crawl into bed at night.

What is even scarier is that you don’t notice how sneaky they are and how much their voices influence your life because they look and sound just like you. Even when you look in the mirror you don’t see them. Why should you? All you see is you looking back at you. You’ve gotten so used to them, you no longer notice when they start making decisions for you and acting as you.

The only way to get rid of them is to catch them in action and give them a name. This means you have to make a conscious effort to recognize these sub-personalities within you. By calling your attention to them, you can stop them. You can stop being angry at the same things over and over, not even really understanding why you're having such feelings.

Why Marriage Can Be Important

3/4/2015

Life is a process. Marriage is intended to be part of the process. However, no one quantum leaps into a perfect understanding of relationships of any kind. As long as you are in this human experience, you’re always going to be on a journey of learning. So, don’t get so up tight. Remember that you are a creative being. You have the luxury of taking your life one day at a time.

With marriage we have the advantage of being in a committed relationship. In other words, one of us is not going to fly the coop without effort. Friends can come and go easily—married partners not so much. We can get mad at each other, and because it’s not so easy to walk away, we get over it. The question is do we learn from it?

Spiral Of Growth

3/1/2015

The more attention you pay to the results of your inner work as they unfold in your relationships, the more in tune you will become with the work you need to do. Consequently, the quality of all your life experiences will improve. This is the spiral of growth. Life only sucks when you refuse to participate in this spiral of growth.

Communication

2/25/2015

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.

Commitment

2/22/2015

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 Your Greatest Tool

2/18/2015

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.”

Don't Lie To Yourself

2/15/2015

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!

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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.

Author

John 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.