Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

By Posted on Posted in Reading, Relationships, Successful Relating Tagged with

This week we wrote about adding gratitude to the underlying position of being positive. Here is a video and several articles that look at various aspects of this.

How Practicing Gratitude Can Strengthen Relationships “Gratitude impacts how we relate to others and how we feel about our circumstances. What you choose to focus on is where your focus remains. Concentrating on the negative when things are hard can overwhelm you, and it teaches your brain to hone in on the worst. The alternative is to choose gratitude and find things you can appreciate during all the hard stuff going on in your life.”

Celebrate What’s Right With The World! A TEDx video. “Are you discouraged by what’s happening in the world today? THEN WATCH THIS! In minutes, you’ll rediscover the wonders and possibilities that surround us everyday just waiting to be noticed and celebrated. Find out for yourself why former National Geographic photographer Dewitt Jones is considered by thousands to be one of the most inspiring speakers on the planet.”

7 Major Health Effects of Expressing Gratitude in Relationships “Whatever the situation, appreciation feels good…and, as it turns out, it’s actually good for your health. In fact, expressing or receiving appreciation triggers an actual chemical reaction in the brain. Just like when a mother holds a baby or a loved one gives you a hug, a person who gives or receives a genuine thank you experiences the release of oxytocin.”

Tagged with:

By Posted on Posted in Presence, Reading, Relationships, Spectrum of Acceptance, Successful Relating Tagged with

This week, we wrote about how you can be away and still be present in your intimate relationships. Here are some articles that discuss different aspects of emotional connection in relationships.

Relationship Connection: 3 Choices that Make or Break It “Conflict is the inflammation of a lack of emotional connection from a partner. Research confirms that erosion of a relationship begins with the absence of emotional support. Thousands of studies in developmental psychology, research on attachment and insights from neuroscience highlight the fact that in relationships, we are truly interdependent. All of us are born helpless and dependent, and the only healthy way to embrace this vulnerability is to reach out and embrace each other.”

Emotional Connection: What it is and how to maintain it “Basically, feeling connected means feeling in touch with someone who cares about us. Most people acknowledge that children need to feel a safe attachment to an adult who cares for them. The reality is that adults also need a secure attachment to another adult. Each of us has an innate need to feel safely attached to another person who will be there in our times of physical or emotional need. When we enter into a committed relationship, this need actually intensifies due to the hope that this one special person will consistently be there for us. Specifically, we hope that this one adult will meet our emotional needs in three ways.”

10 Signs You Have An Emotional Connection With Someone “As it turns out, finding an emotional connection is not as easy as building a physical or intellectual connection. While it may sound simple, it is not that easy to connect emotionally with people after all. We often confuse emotional connection with the feeling of being in love. This leads to questions like, “Does emotional connection mean to love?” Quite simply, the emotional connection is the strength that holds love together.”

Tagged with:

By Posted on Posted in Core Values, Reading, Relationships, Spectrum of Acceptance, Successful Relating 2 Comments

This week, we wrote about how to create peace in relationships and life by knowing your core values. These articles share a variety of ways to define core values and suggest how to find yours.

6 Ways to Discover and Choose Your Core Values “Life presents an endless series of decisions, large and small, that require you to make difficult choices. While many factors are involved, the critical factor in deciding may be your core values. These values tell you what kind of person you are, or want to be, and provide guidelines, or even imperatives, for your actions. But how do you know what your core values are? This blog post will reveal six ways to discover and choose your core values.”

5 Ways Your Core Values Impact Your Life “They are the reason why we do what we do, even if we’re not consciously negotiating our decision-making with values at the forefront. Don’t believe me? Here are five ways they are impacting your life and if you’re married, your relationship with your spouse.”

Live Your Core Values: 10-Minute Exercise to Increase Your Success “How are you showing up at work? In your personal relationships? For yourself? How you show up in the world is determined by your core values. It doesn’t take years of self-reflection to uncover your core values. This simple exercise can help you determine them so you can start aligning your personal goals with them. How long will it take? About 10 minutes, well worth the investment!”

By Posted on Posted in Reading, Relationships, Successful Relating Tagged with , ,

This week, we asked how are you committed to behaving in your relationships? How are some blogs on positive behaviors in your relationships.

5 ways to create happy, harmonious relationships “In almost all of our long-term relationships (whether with partners, friends, family members or colleagues), our feelings can wax and wane. Even when we are deeply connected to another person, we can lose touch momentarily and when we’re not paying attention, greater divides can appear. Our brain’s negativity bias makes it easier to pay attention to the things that aren’t right in a relationship so we need to work harder to notice the positives. A psychologist friend of mine once suggested that the single factor that defines a good relationship from one that’s less likely to last the distance is the ability we have to turn toward one another when things are difficult.”

Harmony in a Relationship Does Not Require Agreement “Because we think of harmony as an agreement between two people, we spend our energy trying to agree on some version of what’s true. We fight until we determine a shared reality. Undoubtedly, agreeing with another person’s version of the truth, their ideas, values, and belief systems, certainly makes things easier in a relationship. But in fact, deep and lasting emotional, mental, and spiritual harmony requires something other than just agreeing on a shared experience. Harmony in a relationship means understanding; we don’t need to agree to be in harmony, but we do need to be willing to understand another person’s experience and actually hear their truth.”

How to Create Harmony in Relationships and Peace Within by Challenging Your Assumptions “Frustrated with colleagues? Disappointed by your partner? Annoyed with your mother? Or maybe you’re pleased with everyone in your life at the moment – in which case, congrats! Wherever you’re on the topic of relationships today, I welcome you to just take a moment to let any concerns fall away and just appreciate all that’s going right with the relationships in your life, all the harmony that’s already there. Sometimes we forget to really acknowledge ourselves for all the fun, connection, and flow we’ve already allowed into our lives and how beautiful that is.”

Tagged with: , ,

By Posted on Posted in Reading, Relationships, Successful Relating Tagged with

This week, we wrote about why you need a balance of being and doing in your relationships. Although we haven’t found any articles looking at this issue the way we did, they do discuss ways you can practice this.

Doing vs Being: The Importance of “Being” in a World Dominated by “Doing” “When we go about our lives, we are all constantly in one of two modes: “doing” or “being”. Doing mode is when we are living in our heads, thinking about the present, the future, and the past, making plans, and completing tasks. Being mode is when we are living in the moment, experiencing things directly. Both forms of mental state are necessary at different times; however, modern cultural values dictate that doing is more important that being. Therefore, most of us spend too much time in doing mode and very little time appreciating our core experiences in the present moment.”

Being vs. Doing: The Peculiar Art of Getting Unstuck “Modern technology encourages us to do rather than to be. Even when queuing up at the supermarket, we answer emails. And while waiting for a taxi, we check Twitter or mindlessly scroll through Instagram. When did you last pause? And what did you notice when you paused? Isn’t that weird? Doing gives us a sense of control.”

On presence: cultivating the art of being rather than doing “How often do you find while carrying out a task you’re mentally compiling a list of all the other things you still need to do before the end of the day? How often do you find while talking to someone, you’re having an entirely different conversation in your head (possibly returning to that task list)? How often do you go over conversations you’ve already had, analysing on repeat what was meant by a particular comment or expression?”

Tagged with: