Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

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This week, we wrote about talking to each other, and how important that is. Here are some earlier writings of ours on talking and listening to one another.

Don’t interrupt! I’m talking! How to Keep the Peace in Relationships “We went out to breakfast to come up with a blog topic, the first time we’ve done that in a long time. We noticed that we were interrupting each other, something that has happened many times before: “Wait, I haven’t finished saying what I want to say,” and so we examined it further. What is peculiar is that we have a method for making decisions and resolving differences that involves listening to the other person without judgement, without preparing a response, and instead listening intently to what is being conveyed. This is something we use often and it has worked well for us.”

You Need to Balance Talking and Listening ” We pay less attention to our partner when we are the speaker. Active listening must have both sides – speaker and listener – aware of each other at all times. Sense if your partner has something to say that fits in, and interrupt your speaking or cut short the length to allow their thoughts to enter. Both parties have to find a balance between expression and reception. Both parties have equal roles in maintaining this balance.”

Why It’s Important To See The Other’s Viewpoint In Your Relationship “People get into quarrels over all sorts of things, big and small. They get upset because they feel they’re not going to get what they want; anything from a clean kitchen to another child. They might feel hurt, attacked, insulted, ignored – whatever, some negative feelings are there, yet more often than not, they are unacknowledged and disguised by finding reasons that match. And of course, this is how your partner is seeing you. You can break this impasse by changing the focus from how this affects you to the reasons for why they are taking their position. Ask not just why they think that way, but what they are feeling about it. Bear in mind that they probably don’t know what the feelings behind their position are. In other words, show empathy.”

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This week, we wrote about the importance of sharing your truth in relationships. This is a key topic, and we’ve written about different aspects of it a number of times before.

Why it is Important to be Honest and Share Your Truth in Relationships “As to how you speak when it involves another person, you must be gentle as well as honest. Some people take the intimacy of a relationship as a safe place to dump all their feelings, act out, or blame the other person. Don’t do this. They are your feelings; find out where they come from. Even when they appear to be caused by someone else, that person probably has their own set of causes. Every lie takes an effort. Every unspoken feeling takes its toll on the body. When you are honest and authentic in your relationships, life is freer and lighter.”

Why You Need to Trust and Speak Your Truth in Relationships “Being honest is not just a matter of not telling a lie. It is more often about not sharing your truth. When you withhold some part of yourself, it can be sensed. Your partner may not know what it is, but they can sense that it is. This causes feelings of mistrust and doubt to enter your relationship. It will create unnecessary distance and even estrangement. To overcome and avoid this unnecessary and all too common behavior requires self-reflection and an open self review. As with so many issues that can complicate a relationship, this takes a desire to know yourself and to examine your actions.”

Why it is Important to Speak Your Truth in Relationships “Phil and I were sharing over dinner the other night and found ourselves discussing what it means to speak your truth, and how you find your way to that truth. I was telling him about some challenges I was trying to resolve with one of my close friends. I told him what had occurred and how once I had reflected on what was troubling me, I was able to share that with my friend. The feeling of finding that truth and then being able to speak it without charge or blame, but rather with a clear statement of what I felt, created a tremendous peace and calm within me and toward my friend. When something happens in one of my relationships that upsets me or makes me feel hurt or not treated well and I don’t really understand my reaction, often I can’t say anything right away. Perhaps this is a good thing as it gives me time to reflect on what is going on in me that makes me feel this way; what is my truth? Uncomfortable feelings of someone I know behaving and making choices that are foreign to me are often at the root of my discomfort.”

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By Posted on Posted in Peace, Reading, Relationships, Successful Relating

This week, we invited you to create peace in the world, one relationship at a time. Here are some of our posts on various aspects of peaceful relationships.

The Five Fundamentals of Peaceful Relationships “For the last few weeks, we have been writing about subtle aspects of peaceful relationships. It is now time to describe the five principles for creating peaceful relationships, of which these subtle aspects are a part. These are: Knowing and Sharing Your Core Values; Recognizing the Uniqueness of Every Individual; How to View and Interact with Differences; Finding Total Acceptance; A Process for Dealing with Decisions and Disagreements.”

Promoting Peace: What Can You Do to Make a Difference? “This feeling of peace is precisely that: a feeling, and until it is recognized and described and labeled, you won’t be aware of it, you won’t be able to cultivate it and nurture it, you won’t notice its presence or absence. Look at those moments in your life when you can rest without agitation; look at the different feelings that different people bring out in you. There are words for feelings and emotions that don’t exist in English, like hygge or zeitgeist. Some have made their way into English; some haven’t. By naming a feeling, it is that much more tangible, and the same applies to the feeling of peace.”

How to Create Peace in Relationships and Life by Knowing Your Core Values “Your core values are those upon which you base your life, your actions and decisions, even when you are not clearly aware of what they are. This can occur because values are often felt rather than thought, and as a result you may not have actually put them into words for yourself. And yet they are so critical to your life, inner peace, and all your relationships. A knowledge and understanding of what yours are can be a great tool for creating mutual solutions to disagreements and misunderstandings in your relationships, as well as finding a more fulfilling way of applying them to what you do and how you do it in your life.”

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This week, we wrote that a true connection between people brings peace and joy. Here are some earlier blogs that cover the same issue.

Peaceful Relationships Really Do Exist: Make Yours One Of Them “Phil has a favorite quote “Optimism is a political act.” In the same way, knowing that peace is possible and that it exists, and can exist, not only within yourself but between people, is a powerful tool for facing the realities of today’s conflicts and challenges. Once you experience peace, and know it exists, keep moving in that direction and share it with all who you come in contact with. Speak it often; insist on it. You can change the world by bringing peace into each relationship you have.”

Why It’s Important to Speak Your Feelings in Relationships “At the same time, he also shared that he had been very self-focused for a bunch of weeks and that as a result, he felt he was not giving me, or the relationship, the attention we deserved. This pronouncement had a strong effect on me. I had indeed been feeling his lack of availability and presence. I knew what he was involved in, so I was comfortable to a degree with what was happening, although it was not a way of being together that I would want to go on for any length of time. As Phil put his experience into words, I felt any distance that was there disappear. It made me aware of how important it is to speak feelings in relationships. Yet, it is also important to wait and not speak hastily. If you say something too soon, before it has coalesced, it may be too full of ambiguity and confusion, and a general lack of clarity. If you wait too long, the other person might start to make things up about your behavior.”

It’s Important to Feel the Connection in Your Relationships “A cautionary word for relationships: Pay attention, be alert, stay aware of the experience of your connection. All too often, people become so used to the contact and connection in their relationships that they start to take them for granted. You presume upon that sacred gift. You stop really noticing the experience of that connection; how it makes you feel, why you treasure it, why it’s so important. The less you are aware of it, the less you nurture it and the thinner that connection becomes. Yes, there are memories of the importance, yes, there is fondness and love for what has been. But the actual experience can begin to fade. In its place grows distance, even a sense of estrangement. These feelings can easily give rise to fear and all its components. The first to go is that feeling of safety and peace that you derive from a living, vital relationship. One where the connection resides in the present; in an experience of the magic that occurs between two people sharing love and awareness and caring for each other.”

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This week, we wrote about how important it is to make fairness a foundation of all your relationships. Here are some other posts we’ve written that speak to different aspects of this topic.

Why Fairness and Trust are So Important to Your Relationships “There are relationships built on power and dominance, but those do not create or further peace. For us, the key is a balanced relationship; it is balance without a balance sheet that we are talking about. What does that look like? We don’t count up how many times either of us has done our part in the upkeep of life activities or who is doing more or less. We have a rather delicious sense of how varied each of our contributions are, yet how balanced they are in the larger picture of our life together. At the core of this way of relating is a deep sense and commitment to fairness. A relationship built on fairness engenders trust and a commitment to act from that trust.”

How Trust and Peace go Hand in Hand in Your Relationships “Trust. What’s my personal way of experiencing that? Well, I think that trust and openness go hand in hand. To feel seen and connected, you need to be open and show yourself; whatever you feel, you share. That may sound extreme, but the route there is that you open up just a little, take just a little risk, and if you are greeted with acceptance and offered some openness in return, then your trust increases and your openness increases until you reach the experience that the two of you are operating from the same place. It’s a wild experience for me still because it presupposes a different kind of consciousness, or identity if you will, and there isn’t a space in material thinking where that belongs, so I am very much in awe of it, and that stands in stark relief against the rational mind.”

How to Deal With Decisions and Disagreements in Your Relationship “But once you know that you share the same values with someone else, you can deal with decisions and disagreements without generating rancor. It takes time, trust, honesty, and openness. You have to be willing to listen to the other person and find out what their wants and needs are in the particular situation.
There are multiple ways to solve a problem, and by exploring, you can find a solution that works for both of you because it will fit with your shared values. There is a solution out there somewhere, even though you can’t imagine it in the face of that daunting 100 ft. cliff. Here’s where the fun comes in. You can find a path toward mutual solutions: a place where both of you are happy, satisfied, and even enriched beyond your original version of the solution. It is a co-creative process of listening, exploring, and searching for the values and important aspects of what underlies each others’ wants, and then finding a path to mutual satisfaction.”

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