Renovate or Relocate: The relationship challenge Insights October 2004
The biggest challenge in any relationship is to know when it's worth it. You might be reluctant to risk a relationship because you've been burned before, or you might be in an unhappy relationship.
No relationship is perfect, so there are always good days and bad days. In a committed relationship, it's important to be willing to ride out the bad days - that's what commitment is about - but when is it time to call it quits? And what if your good days aren't actually happy? Why stay? Can it get better?
How can you know you would benefit from help? If you answer yes to any of the following, you can benefit from the tools of self-mastery:
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You feel hurt, sad, frustrated or resentful because of your partner's behavior.
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You're wary of a new relationship because of a past one.
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You avoid certain topics to avoid conflict or tension.
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You feel a past relationship is affecting your current one, or blocking your potential to have a relationship.
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You feel more like a room mate than a lover.
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You think about a past relationship with sadness, hurt, frustration, resentment, anger or despair.
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You feel it could be better, but it's better than being alone.
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You're lonely - whether you're in a relationship or not.
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Your thoughts about yourself are sometimes critical or demeaning.
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You feel unhappy, unworthy, or unlovable.
If any of this sounds like your truth, you have a huge potential to make things better. There are concrete tools that can help you make real, tangible improvements. I'll talk about one possibility in the many that exist.
One of the burdens on any relationship is the baggage you bring into it. We all know about baggage, and we even know about letting it go - the key is finding the tool for letting go that actually works for you. There are lots, so keep trying until you succeed.
Here's an example tool. Think about an event that bothers you, whether it be a conversation, an action, or a situation. Picture that event like a vinette captured inside a glass ball, like the Christmas balls that are shaken to look like snow is falling inside. Humans store memories of events by the kind of emotion that is experienced at the time of the event - not by the type of event. Therefore, for any event, there are emotional strings attached. Those strings might include positive and negative emotions. Although the actual event may have troubling emotions within it, there is also a problem with how that event and those emotions influence you, now that the event is in the past.
Imagine the event inside the glass ball, and protruding from it are strings representing all the emotions in the event, and those strings are the influences. Sometimes more than one event may be on the same string, so that all the times a person feels anger end up on the anger string, and so on. That means the loaded string becomes a heavier influence as time goes by.
To have an honest and successful relationship requires that you be able to evaluate circumstances, behaviour, and emotion that is occurring right now, free of those past influences, free of the haunting of what happened before. Certainly, past behaviour might be an indication of future behaviour - but hanging on to that past forbids change. It locks your interaction into those old patterns, those expectations, and those negative emotions, so that you can't evaluate what is actually happening now except through the filter of what happened before.
Imagine that you can put on gloves made of healing light. With those gloves on, hold the glass ball containing the hurtful event. Use the gloves to clean the surface of the glass ball, wiping away any strings that emerge to influence the future. The memory is still present, and the event is not changed. What you are doing is freeing your present from the influence. Remember, you were changed by the event when it happened, and you have learned from it. You no longer need its influence, because you're done with it.
Sometimes people are not ready to part with the pain of the past. There are other tools to help in that situation. (*A recorded meditation for releasing past pain called Unlock is on the Self-Mastery meditation CD Living Your Light.) For any situation you are willing to put behind you, try cleaning the glass ball. In doing so, you give yourself the gift of opportunity for change. After all, if you don't like what you have, change is the way to make it different. This is a simple way to remove the pressure of the past from your relationship without risking confrontation.
Here's the real opportunity: decide not to settle. You can change your situation, without confrontation and without drama. You can change your situation by healing yourself so you become open to new possibilities. Create the life you really want.
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Relationship Challenge
Going Beyond Success
Mind over Weight
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