Day 182 of 365 - Developing New Relationships
Recently I have been in a few conversations with people who are exploring having new relationships, whether they be for friendship, companionship or romance. This seems like a good topic to explore a bit.
Though I am not any kind of relationship expert, I do have some life experience behind me. What I do know, better in hindsight than I did with foresight in my younger years, is that we will surely bring to any new relationship our thoughts, beliefs, experiences and feelings about similar ones we have had before.
Thus, it could be helpful to carefully consider your expectations before getting involved with someone new. If you don't take time to do this, you should not be surprised to get what you had before. Patterns and habits repeat themselves unless we consciously make choices to examine and change them.
To help me in my exploration I went to my bookshelf. There I found a book/workbook by Iyanla Vanzant. The title is Living Through the Meantime, with a subtitle of Learning to Break the Patterns of the Past and Begin the Healing Process. You may have seen her on TV where she has hosted talk shows focusing on empowerment and healing of relationships.
Vanzant reminds us that 'all relationships are healing opportunities. They provide us with the information we need to heal our minds and hearts.' ' All we ever need do in a relationship is to choose the experience we desire and assume full responsibility for creating that experience.' This requires identifying patterns of thought and behavior and making necessary shifts.
To that end, she provides a series of worksheets with questions designed to help you ask for exactly what you want. Areas explored include: looking at your current life and examining how you feel about it; thinking about how a new person would make your life better and what you would ask for in a relationship; how would you feel in that relationship? What attributes would you be looking for, meaning character, demeanor and likes/dislikes. How would these qualities make you feel?
So, the basic questions are: What do you want? What would you feel if you had it? What experience would it bring you? Are there ways you could create these experiences for yourself?
If you have had unsatisfactory previous relationships, identify what you believe you can do or stop doing to allow you to create the experience you desire.
I can see that going through a process like this could be very helpful in bringing clarity about expectations. Clearly, these exercises refer more to looking for a committed relationship, but could also be helpful in identifying what we seek in relationships in general, and why.
This of course does not preclude randomly meeting someone who could become your best friend or mate, but doing this work ahead of time could avoid some bumps in the relationship road.
We can learn from every relationship, whether chosen or not. Life keeps handing us experiences to learn how to love ourselves and others better. Difficulties in relationships ask us to stretch and grow and to use what we have learned for future ones.
Growth and change is always possible, no matter our stage in life. We just need to be open and willing to do so.
Though I am not any kind of relationship expert, I do have some life experience behind me. What I do know, better in hindsight than I did with foresight in my younger years, is that we will surely bring to any new relationship our thoughts, beliefs, experiences and feelings about similar ones we have had before.
Thus, it could be helpful to carefully consider your expectations before getting involved with someone new. If you don't take time to do this, you should not be surprised to get what you had before. Patterns and habits repeat themselves unless we consciously make choices to examine and change them.
To help me in my exploration I went to my bookshelf. There I found a book/workbook by Iyanla Vanzant. The title is Living Through the Meantime, with a subtitle of Learning to Break the Patterns of the Past and Begin the Healing Process. You may have seen her on TV where she has hosted talk shows focusing on empowerment and healing of relationships.
Vanzant reminds us that 'all relationships are healing opportunities. They provide us with the information we need to heal our minds and hearts.' ' All we ever need do in a relationship is to choose the experience we desire and assume full responsibility for creating that experience.' This requires identifying patterns of thought and behavior and making necessary shifts.
To that end, she provides a series of worksheets with questions designed to help you ask for exactly what you want. Areas explored include: looking at your current life and examining how you feel about it; thinking about how a new person would make your life better and what you would ask for in a relationship; how would you feel in that relationship? What attributes would you be looking for, meaning character, demeanor and likes/dislikes. How would these qualities make you feel?
So, the basic questions are: What do you want? What would you feel if you had it? What experience would it bring you? Are there ways you could create these experiences for yourself?
If you have had unsatisfactory previous relationships, identify what you believe you can do or stop doing to allow you to create the experience you desire.
I can see that going through a process like this could be very helpful in bringing clarity about expectations. Clearly, these exercises refer more to looking for a committed relationship, but could also be helpful in identifying what we seek in relationships in general, and why.
This of course does not preclude randomly meeting someone who could become your best friend or mate, but doing this work ahead of time could avoid some bumps in the relationship road.
We can learn from every relationship, whether chosen or not. Life keeps handing us experiences to learn how to love ourselves and others better. Difficulties in relationships ask us to stretch and grow and to use what we have learned for future ones.
Growth and change is always possible, no matter our stage in life. We just need to be open and willing to do so.
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