Relationships aren’t always a walk in the park, regardless of if you’ve bonded with love or been thrown together out of circumstance. Within relationships, you have two people trying to get along who have different personalities, needs and views. Then to add to the mix, one of the two might be going through a certain change or flux with hormones, development, work, health or whatever else life throws at them.
Relationships on Female First
So how to be aligned and get along with your other half? Here are 7 easy tips to understand and follow so you can fully blossom within your relationship.
Understanding Energies
3,000 years ago the ancient Chinese identified that each of us is born with a certain makeup or blueprint, which sits at the heart of Acupuncture and other forms of oriental medicine.
In simple terms, we’re born with a blend of Five Energies - Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal and each Energy gives us a question we constantly need to have answered.
Water Energy asks - “Am I or are we safe?” Wood - “Am I free?”
Fire - “Am I loved and appreciated?”
Earth - “Do I understand?”
Metal -“What’s missing or incomplete?”
Accepting we’re are different people
One of the greatest challenges within our relationships is that we all see and experience the world in a different way. We can share the same experience, hear the same words, be in the same place and yet have a completely different interpretation of what we’ve just experienced, seen or heard.
Learn to love yourself
Suffice to say that it’s very difficult to have a good relationship with someone else if you don’t have a good relationship with yourself.
One of the aims of this book is for you to have a better relationship with yourself, and dare I say... “love and value yourself a little bit more.”
Dealing with daily stress
It’s very hard for most of us to isolate ourselves and our relationships from the activities, stresses and strains of everyday life. Money worries, time pressures and exhaustion all get in the way of our relationships. Not to mention work, hobbies, dreams, our health and everything else we’ve got going on.
Life has many joys, distractions and stresses that will have an impact on your relationships all of which have to be navigated.
Understanding flexibility and flow
The easiest way to understand the importance of flexibility and flow within our relationships is to look at what happens when it’s not present, when we’re in a place of friction, stagnation and stuckness.
Stagnation and stuckness often arrive when friction haven’t been dealt with or has been there for a long time.
Stagnation and stuckness can be less obvious and perhaps less painful than friction but they often be more damaging as it starts to destroy or interfere with our deeper sense of who we are, or what is possible.
When we’re stagnant or stuck in our relationship there is often an inability to accept something or let it drop. There’s a bogged down, heavy unyielding or fixed quality to what we say, do or how we behave with each other - the lightness and flow has gone. Or, there could be a lack of interaction between you, interspersed by intense emotions or reactions. When we reach a state of complete stuckness, we’re often at an impasse when one person is forced to reluctantly yield, or the horns stay locked!
Embrace Change
Within any long-term relationship, the one thing we can be certain of is that the person we start the relationship with will change over time. As humans, we are in a constant state of change and growth with our ideas, attitude and the way we see the world. Time and experience changes us on many many levels, and that means we and others have to constantly adjust to that new reality of who are in a relationship with.
Kindness as your golden rule
The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated. It is a general truth or rule of conduct found in many religions and cultures. And in terms of our relationships - it’s a fundamentally flawed idea.
I think what we should be saying is.
Treat others as they would wish to be treated, not as you’d like to be treated. Imagine if that happened? How powerful and kind would that be?
Just imagine what life and the world would be like if you treated other people in a way that they’d wish to be treated, and they treated you in the way that you wish to be treated.
Kindness sits at the heart of everything we do here at the Five Institute, and as we share and explore that with our community and fellow like-minded souls, we are always very clear that Kindness starts with you. It’s not about striving for more and more externally directed random acts of kindness, it’s about how we look after ourselves, and in doing so, how spontaneous acts of true Kindness appear in an effortless and abundant manner. Plus, we start with being internally Kind because in our experience that’s where the imbalance often lies.
At the Five Institute talk about developing a healthy KindSet, which is like a mindset, except that it’s all about Kindness. And we’d go so far as to say it’s the new mindset.
The Vitality Test, which identifies your blend of these Five Energies is available at the Five Institute along with The Art of Kind, Loving and Flowing Relationships.
Nicholas Haines is the Kindness Ambassador, founder of the Five Institute and author of The Story of Boxes.
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