Improving your relationships
by David Lane

Finding and maintaining happiness seems to be one of our greatest desires. The relationships that we develop have a huge effect on happiness. It does not really matter what sort of relationship that we are pursuing because good relationships must trigger a certain amount of happiness. Relationships can cover many aspects of your life because of the base word; ‘relate’. Most people will think of their relationships with other humans; particularly with their partner. However; we can have a broad spectrum of relationships ranging from the external such as work, environment, governments, institutions etc. We can also have more personal relationships with people we interact with, particularly with our family, friends and partners. The most important and intimate relationship is the internal one that we have is with our self yet this is the one that most people take for granted or don’t even think about.

If we are to build or improve our relationships then we need something to build on; something with a strong foundation. We know that a strong and safe building needs a strong foundation to support it, however; not many people apply this principle to their own lives and the relationships that they try to build within it. We are the builders of our own relationships and any relationship we form will only be as strong as the builder. There are many people who feel victims in relationships and are very ready to blame the other person, persons or situation for the predicament that they find themselves in. The problem can nearly always be traced back to the early foundations they created in their part of such a relationship. Once it gets to the conflict stage then it is very hard to own that we probably didn’t do enough in depth research (or didn’t have the tools to do so) and that we could have known a lot more about what we were building during the foundation stage. This may give credence to the old statement that “love is blind” when we look at our more personal relationships.

We may need some principles or foundations to follow if the above stories relate to us. If this sounds like you then please complete this simple questionnaire on assessing where any of your relationships are at so as to get some insight into what you can do to change the structures you have built.
1. Identifying what you originally wanted out of the relationship
2. Identifying what you now want out of the relationship
3. Identifying what you originally didn’t want in the relationship
4. Identifying what you now don’t want in the relationship
5. Honestly access where your relationship is now. How does it compare to questions one and three?
6. Reflect upon and recognise what contributed towards how the relationship developed to the stage it has reached so far.
7. What do you want to change?
8. What are you going to do about creating the changes you desire?

It Is sometimes hard to see the wood from the trees when any relationship becomes difficult to manage because there are usually many contributing factors. The idea of the above exercise is to define or break breakdown the issues into compartments so as you can see the bigger picture more clearly. Many people tend to generalise the reasons why and where things are not working as they were intended to do. This is often very confusing because it can inadvertently create several grey areas. It is a lot easier to see/solve an issue when the picture is either black or white. If you still have a grey area in your problem then see if you can break it down even more until it becomes obviously clear about the factors involved.

Now you will have more of a chance to review the problems caused at the foundation stage described earlier. Remember; the exercise is about trying to understand how the problem was created. It is definitely not about blaming anyone or anything. Any blame will trigger negative emotions that will interfere with your ability to see the reality of the issue. Blame also has the amazing ability to deflect your thoughts away from seeing and owning your contribution.

If you would like to go deeper into how you can fix up your relationships then you will find more on my website. David Lane
Laneway to Personal Power
www.Davidlane.net.au
David’s journey into higher consciousness includes many understandings drawn from a diverse range of information. He believes that we are all individuals who have come to tread our own unique path. David’s book is titled ‘Personal Power’. It is about how we evolve our consciousness and how to monitor our journey and is available online.