Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

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In this week’s blog, we wrote about the need to balance talking and listening. We didn’t find any discussions about this balance, but here are some good links on active listening.

Active Listening: The Art of Empathetic Conversation “It is time to focus again and practise the skill of mindful listening. Not just because we owe our full attention to others when we converse, but because the positive emotions of a truly good conversation have the potential to make us happy!”

Active Listening: The Master Key to Effective Communication “The sense that we are not being listened to is one of the most frustrating feelings imaginable. Toddlers scream about it, teenagers move out, couples split up, companies breakdown. One of the main reasons this breakdown in communication occurs is that listening (like reading, thinking clearly and focusing) is a skill which we rarely consider to be something requiring knowledge and practice.”

How to Listen and Build Deeper Connections with People “We’ve never had more excuses to not listen. As technology advances and content explodes, we continue to spread our attention across multiple screens, problems, and people — often all at once. As a result, attention has become one of the scarcest resources — and one of the most valuable. People who can truly listen have a unique edge in a world fragmented by distraction.” (A new and updated version of the article is available here.)

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In this week’s blog, we asked what lies at the core of successful relationships. Some authors get it! Here are three.

Beware Of Mistaken Marriage Advice That “All Couples Fight” “Stressful situations that are becoming adversarial between loving partners can escalate into ever more stressful arguments. Alternatively, they can be handled with calm, productive, collaborative talking together that dissipates stress and yields creation of mutually comfortable solutions.”

5 Ways To Create More Harmony In Your Relationships “If you want to create more peace in your relationships, it starts with your relationship with yourself. The relationship of your dreams, where there’s authentic connection and you feel loved, accepted, and honored just as you are is completely possible when you realize that it starts with YOU. … Here are a few practices that will help you tame the monkey mind and create more peace, harmony, and connection with yourself and in your relationships.”

5 Top Tips to Enhance Relationships and Find Inner Peace “We all have challenges in our relationships at some time or other. If you are having relationship problems, you wouldn’t be having them if you weren’t having them with yourself. It all starts with you, being at peace with yourself! You cannot expect to have peace with others, never mind even thinking of having a healthy relationship when you have turmoil inside of you.”

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In this week’s blog, we asked why total honesty is important in your relationship, so here are some writings about that, both personal and general.

10 Benefits of Being Honest “What does honesty have to do with health and wellness? If you’re striving to be the best you can be, honesty has to be at the foundation. Change won’t last if you are trying to be something that you are not. Honesty is the bridge to authenticity and self-compassion. Honesty allows you to set realistic goals. It bolsters your courage and frees you to be your best self.”

Honesty and acceptance “When I woke this morning, the first day of my forty-first year, I thought to myself: going forward there is one idea that will guide me in life, above all others, and that is honesty. Call it what you will – radical honesty, microscopic truth, total transparency, proactive honesty, or just plain ol’ honesty – but don’t underestimate the change that it can bring. It is this one simple idea – honesty – that has had the most profound and lasting impact on my life this last year, and I will choose it again and again.”

Honesty Can Make or Break a Relationship “When you know you can totally trust your mate, it removes a large potential for worry. It also builds your internal security so that you not only feel good about your partner, but you also feel better about life. Having an honest relationship creates a kind of buffer between you and the difficulties of the world. Having a mate you can trust and rely on also makes it easier to take those risks that help us grow.”

Why Authenticity Is the Best Dating Strategy “Is it better to be yourself or play hard to get when dating? Is being yourself attractive and what type of person does being yourself attract? Do we become more emotionally open and available when we are made to feel safe to be our true selves? A series of studies by Josephs, Warach, Goldin, Jonason, Gorman, Kapoor, and Lebron (2019) just published in Personality and Individual Differences answers such questions.”

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In this week’s blog, we wrote about how to balance structure and flow in your relationship. Here are two articles that make a good case for being flexible in your life and relationships, and one about how to set joint goals.

Why We Should All Give Up On Goals Already “To be successful or fulfilled, we all know you need to have specific goals. To achieve them, you should visualise, plan your steps there and attach deadlines and incentives. Work hard, even if you hate the work. And never stray from the path. But that outlook, say a growing number of academic researchers, career coaches and thought leaders, isn’t only flawed; it may also, ironically, be keeping us from success.”

Optimize your life for productivity and flexibility “I’m talking about flexibility of course, and in this article I will focus on how to develop and keep flexibility in personal life as the ultimate competitive advantage. If you aren’t flexible by nature, this article is a must read. Think about what happened to the dinosaurs only because they weren’t flexible enough.”

The guide to relationship goal setting “When it comes to New Year goals and your relationship there are two considerations. Firstly, setting personal goals often involves considering your romantic partner and whether your goal is going to require any involvement or support from them. Secondly, it can be worthwhile to use the New Year period to set some shared goals as well. Here are some tips for discussing and setting goals as a couple.”

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In this week’s blog, we wrote about how truth transforms arguments in your relationship. Here are some articles that cover this from various viewpoints.

How Secrets and Lies Destroy Relationships “…in an intimate relationship, emotional honesty includes allowing our partner to know who we are. Honesty is more than simply not lying. Deception includes making ambiguous or vague statements, telling half-truths, manipulating information through emphasis, exaggeration, or minimization, and withholding feelings or information that is important to someone who has a right to know, because it affects the relationship and deprives that person of freedom of choice and informed action.”

The 1 Question That Can Save Your Relationship “Sometimes fights with your partner are about core issues in the relationship that need to be hashed out, and these types of arguments can be productive. But other times fights are the result of people trying desperately to get their point across, while failing to understand the other person’s point. These types of fights are far less productive. Luckily, there’s one question that can shift the dynamic of these fights almost instantly. That question is… ‘What do you need from me?'”

9 Steps to Better Communication Today “Relationships don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist between two emotional human beings who bring their own past experiences, history, and expectations into it. Two different people also have different levels of skill when it comes to communication. But better communication, because it is a skill, can also be learned.”

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