Welcome to my newsletter for February 2008. I hope you enjoyed reading last months on Creating Great Goals.
This month, love is in the air with Valentine’s Day on the 14th, and if you’re like me, I buy a card, write something brief about ‘always loving you’ or similar and leave it at that. Maybe we’ll have a meal, but after 14 years of marriage it gets a bit like that, and Valentines Day passes as any other.
We know relationships need constant work and attention to keep them alive and thriving, so why do we neglect them so when they get comfortable, and take them for granted when considered ‘not at risk’? Daily life puts its own challenges on the relationship and over time it becomes something we neither cherish nor appreciate for what it is.
I read recently that few people are able to grow in love until they are able to respect and accept their differences. As a person if we are not growing, we are dying, and the same goes for relationships too – if you don’t tend to them to keep them healthy, alive and growing, they too will start to die. Not noticeably at first, but over time the signs start to appear. So we need to constantly keep them alive and growing, just to prevent any decay.
We all have our own ‘rules’ for how we live our life and what makes us feel good. We have rules for everything from how the dishwasher should be loaded to what is considered honest and moral, and these rules come from our experiences of the world as we grow up. When things go according to our rules we feel good, but what happens when the dishwasher isn’t loaded in the ‘right’ way? We also have our rules for feeling loved, cherished and appreciated but we tend to believe that our rules are the same for our partner too, so we treat them the way we want to be treated, and not the way they would want to be treated ie according to their rules. We do this with the best intentions, as we don’t know any different – unless we find out of course.
So do you know what your partners rules are for feeling loved? What exactly has to happen for him/her to feel you love them unconditionally?
What about your rules too? What exactly has to happen for you to feel loved? Is it a kiss every morning, flowers on a Friday, a lie in while they look after the kids on a weekend, time to play golf with your mates? Think back to a time when you felt totally loved and in love – what was it that made you feel that way? Ask your partner the same thing too and see what you discover.
If we know our partners rules for feeling good, we can help them to feel good more often.
So what is your gift to your Valentine this year? How about becoming the best partner you could be? Perhaps a commitment to give up nagging or having a go when their shoes aren’t put away properly and instead focus on the big stuff of how your love could grow even greater. It starts with you. Your commitment to be the best you can be in your relationship.
This month I am launching a new programme in relationship coaching and I am looking for individuals and couples to help me trial it, in return for substantially reduced fees. If you are ready to make the commitment to yourself and your partner to revive and keep your relationship alive, then please contact me for further details. Please note that this programme is not marriage guidance or counselling of any sort, it is about taking the relationship you have now and focussing on how you want it to be, how it could be made even better than it is today, and then helping you to achieve lasting happiness with your partner long into the future. What better gift could there be?
Contact me now and take the first step to a fantastic, exciting and rewarding life with your soul mate for life. One of the best investments you will make.
