Discovering the Unknown About Yourself

An Exercise to discover yourself

The more you can get to know yourself, the better you can communicate, thereby, minimizing distortions and misunderstandings in relationships with friends, family, and co-workers. As you expand the known part of yourself, it decreases your blind and hidden areas. This leads to an ability to make conscious decisions about how you are going to live. It helps you create better relationships.

This exercise can help you learn more about your blind areas. There are times when you experience an event or interaction which you cannot let go. You have feelings you do not understand and react in ways that confuse you. This exercise will help you sort out the event and lead you to a better understanding of yourself. Continue reading

6 Tools to Improve Communication

6 Tools to Improve CommunicationHave you ever been in a meaningful conversation and not known how to continue? Perhaps you dread the first few minutes of a party because you find yourself at a loss for conversation starters.   Or the conversation may begin, but soon fizzles out.  Maybe others tell you that it feels like you are not listening when you are doing your best to hear what the other person is saying.

Good communication is an important skill for all your relationships. The more comfortable you are with having conversations the more comfortable you will be connecting with others.

Here are six helpful tools that can help you in any of those situations, and anytime you want to communicate.  These suggestions can help you start a conversation, keep it going, and have people think that you are a great listener. Continue reading

5 Blocks to Empathy: How to Hurt Your Love

5 blocks to empathy“I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.”                                 Maya Angelou

Now that we’ve talked about what empathy is and why it is important, it can be easy to wonder why more people don’t practice it more often. As with most human characteristics and behaviors, there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Empathy has to be developed. It is taught and practiced. We learn through words, actions and the experiences we have with important caretakers in our life. As we have pointed out before, when our teachers are less than adequate, we don’t progress as far as we could.  Blocks can and will develop that greatly hamper or prevent our ability to be empathic. Continue reading

5 Ways to Have Intimacy In Your Relationships

5 Ways to Have Intimacy In Your RelationshipsThink about the last few movies you watched… or television shows… or books you read.   What kind of relationship did the main characters have?  Chances are good they were either falling in love or falling out of it.

Popular culture presents us very few examples of what an actual intimate relationship looks like. Most entertainment today focuses on one of two points in a relationship: the romance, or the conflict that comes after “the thrill is gone.”  There is another aspect of relationships that we seldom see, and is something we do want to achieve. We have few models as to how to get there, or how to maintain it when we arrive.  That something is intimacy.

What Is Intimacy?

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Happiness Quota: How Happy Are You Allowed to Be?

Happiness QuotaImagine this scene: A mother is in the hospital just having given birth to her baby. She is excited and happy. The nurse gives her the newborn. The baby turns her head toward mother and snuggles.

The baby is searching for warmth and comfort. The child probably is not hungry because it has just spent nine months with all its needs met. The baby is mostly traumatized and seeking comfort and safety. Continue reading