Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

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In this week’s blog, we wrote that knowing yourself is important for your relationship, and we’ve found some very good articles about this – so many that we picked four this week.

Know Yourself? 6 Specific Ways to Know Who You Are “This blog will reveal 6 elements of self-knowledge that can help you understand your own identity. As you live your daily life, you can look for clues to these important building blocks of Self. But first, why is it important to know yourself?”

Knowing Yourself: How to Improve Your Understanding of Others “Developing a better understanding of yourself may also improve your capacity to better understand the thoughts and feelings of other people, a new study from Germany suggests. Researchers found that adults who participated in a psychology-training program to enhance their “perspective-taking” … became better at understanding themselves as well as understanding others, according to the findings published…in the Journal of Cognitive Enhancement…. all things being equal, more people are undone by behavioral issues than by anything else.”

The Right Way to Get to Know Yourself “To put it rather indelicately, many self-help books attempt to provide remedies for scraping away the sticky build up from the business of everyday living in order to reach an Authentic Self. But I fear the quest for an Authentic Self is as likely to succeed as a quest to capture a unicorn.”

People Don’t Actually Know Themselves Very Well “the truth is that no one has perfect self-awareness—you probably believe more than a few things about yourself that are false. Sixteen rigorous studies of thousands of people at work have shown that people’s coworkers are better than they are at recognizing how their personality will affect their job performance.”

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In this week’s blog, we addressed how to keep love alive in your relationship; here are some articles that also offer suggestions.

How To Keep A Relationship Interesting “The good news? Even the happiest, most stable and loyal of relationships will ebb and flow. The tough pill to swallow? You’ll still need to roll your sleeves up, bite your ego and build your patience to maintain a love affair that can stand the test of the ages. Here, psychologists provide their best solutions for recharging your relationship with intrigue and enchantment:”

18 Ways to Keep Your Relationship Strong “It takes more than love for your relationship to work. Although love is the foundation of any happy romantic relationship, love is not enough. In order to have a healthy relationship, both parties have to be willing to work on it. Below you’ll find 18 ways to keep your relationship strong.”

The Science Of ‘Happily Ever After’: 3 Things That Keep Love Alive “As Daniel Jones, author of Love Illuminated, explains: we spend youth asking “How do I find love?” and midlife asking “How do I get it back?” Anyone in a relationship or who plans on being in one needs to know how to keep love alive over the long term. But how do you learn the secret to this? Everyone is happy to explain “how they met” but few give the details on “how they stayed together.””

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In this week’s blog, we discussed why you need to feed your relationship. These articles offer lots of good suggestions about this topic.

10 Small Acts in a Relationship That Are Actually a Really Big Deal “There is an important distinction to be made in relationships between people who pay attention to detail, and people who don’t. The first type are people who don’t usually go all-out on the big things like extravagant gifts or getaways for special occasions, but they don’t do small things like take care of you while you are sick or go to pick up a prescription at CVS.”

The Single Best Thing You Can Do for Your Relationship “When we think of what we can do to nurture our relationship, we often think of tangibles. Buy her diamond earrings. Take her out to an elegant dinner. Surprise him by wearing sexy lingerie. Buy flowers and chocolate. Take a romantic trip together. While all of these things certainly won’t hurt your relationship (at all!), they aren’t necessarily the strongest ways to connect with your loved one. The deeper component has more to do with how you interact together rather than what you do together. It’s called validation. Consistent, thoughtful validation of your partner’s thoughts and feelings is the best thing you can do for your relationship.”

Best Relationship Tip Ever? Pay Attention to Your Partner! “It’s easy to get into a rut. Sometimes we take the people we love the most for granted. They deserve the biggest part of our attention, but we frequently find ourselves giving them the least. This is incredibly common. It seems life just gets in the way. With so many distractions, it can seem impossible to get it right.If you’re finding yourself nodding along as you’re reading this, then you’re in the right spot. It seems like everyone has some love advice they’re eager to share. But what is truly the best relationship tip to help you turn this situation around? Pay attention to your partner!”

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In this week’s blog, we asked why is empathy important in your relationship? These articles share interesting studies and viewpoints on this topic. Oh, and Happy Valentines Day!

The Power of Empathy in Romantic Relationships & How to Enhance It ““Empathy is truly the heart of the relationship,” said Carin Goldstein, a licensed marriage and family therapist. “Without it, the relationship will struggle to survive.” That’s because empathy requires compassion. And, without compassion, couples can’t develop a bond. “[A] bond is like glue: If there is no glue then everything falls apart.””

6 Ways to Nurture Empathy in Intimate Relationships “Having empathy applies to all walks of life and professions, from romance, friendships, parenting to politics. In his early research, Carl Rogers defined empathy as perceiving the internal frame of another person. He said that maintaining an empathetic way involves being sensitive moment by moment to the changing felt meanings that flow in the other person. “It means temporarily living in the other’s life, moving about in it delicately without making judgements; it means sensing meanings of which he or she is scarcely aware, but not trying to uncover totally unconscious feelings…””

9 Ways To Be More Empathetic To Your Partner & Feel More Connected, According To Experts “To have a healthy, strong relationship, it’s important for you and your partner to feel deeply connected with each other. While it may be easier to maintain this during the honeymoon phase, being vulnerable in your relationship and finding ways to be more empathetic to your partner can help with strengthening that emotional bond. Being empathetic means you’re aware of someone’s emotions from their perspective; you feel what they feel. Although it’s important to be empathetic in every personal connection you have, it’s vital to maintaining a long-lasting romantic relationship with your partner.”

Here’s a late addition: a BBC video on teaching empathy:

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In this week’s blog, we wrote about how to avoid annoyed in your relationship. These articles cover the issues of touch, dealing with anger and talking about feelings.

The Power of Touch “Hertenstein had volunteers attempt to communicate a list of emotions to a blindfolded stranger solely through touch. Many participants were apprehensive about the experiment. “This is a touch-phobic society,” he says. “We’re not used to touching strangers, or even our friends, necessarily.” But touch they did—it was, after all, for science. The results suggest that for all our caution about touching, we come equipped with an ability to send and receive emotional signals solely by doing so. Participants communicated eight distinct emotions—anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness—with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent. “I was surprised,” Hertenstein admits. “I thought the accuracy would be at chance level,” about 25 percent.”

12 Creative Ways to Deal With Angry People Without Strangling Them to Death “Ancient wisdom traditions, especially Buddhism, invites us to take matters into our hands and look deeply into the nature of our mind in order to find the true source of our suffering. Buddha’s advice on how to deal with angry people is simple, profound and involves three steps
1. Examine your own mind,
2. Examine the mind of other person,
3. Use skillful means to make peace.”

How to Talk About Feelings With Your Romantic Partner “…recent research has shown that even just naming a feeling, without doing anything else, can lessen the intensity of the emotion and help us manage it better. On the other hand, when you ask your partner to tell you how he or she feels, you often have an agenda. That agenda most likely puts pressure on your partner. And that pressure makes it hard for him or her to label the feelings honestly, which then means that your partner doesn’t get the benefit of naming the feelings, and you end up feeling hurt, angry, and/or betrayed.”

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