Society works by everybody cooperating together, doing different activities and sharing the results. Also, research shows that friends are good for your health. Knowing this engenders a grateful attitude for the uniqueness of each person and creates a willingness to be open and listen more to others.
In this week’s blog, we asked if you show love and respect in your relationship. These articles cover different aspects of this very important aspect.
We have a process of exploring our wants and suggesting alternatives, and in this way, we find a resolution that works for both of us. It works for decision-making, too, when we are not clear on a direction.
Experiencing the moments as they present themselves (pun intended!) brings peace and harmony to life and to relationships. This is one of the underlying practices that creates the peaceful harmony we experience.
Total acceptance is the defining difference between not just experiencing better relating, but for a living peace that provides deep soul satisfying relationships. This is a radical concept, yet once understood, it can become a very natural way of being with another.
Recognizing someone else’s world is different is how you have a successful relationship. When you realize their life and desires are just as deep and valid as yours, then you realize that trying to change it would be just as unpleasant as if they started telling you what to do.
ChatGPT is a recent software project that is fed huge swaths of writing and (to simplify tremendously) responds based on what it has read. We asked it to “Write a blog on peace in the style of Phil and Maude” and also did the same ourselves.
Notice all that you are grateful for in your intimate relationships: acknowledge it, speak it, feel it. They are the precious things of a life shared: the sound of someone’s voice, their big and small acts of service to you, what you learn from them.
Maude just went away to a women’s retreat, and on return, we talked about how easy a separation like that was; we retain the sense that we remain connected. We don’t feel distance when one of us goes somewhere, at least not as a sense of loss or something missing.
Understanding core values and learning what yours are is foundational to creating peaceful harmonious relationships. We differentiate values from wants and needs on a spectrum of ever-increasing importance. This scale starts with wants which are the most ephemeral, moves through needs, and then to values which rarely change.