The Secrets of a Relationship Start With You

Posted by Sohial in TCM Education on Feb 14, 2014 .
This time of year (Valentine’s Day) can be very special to many people but this time of year can also be quite upsetting and lonely for others. For couples, Valentines Day is a day to celebrate each others love, passion and connection. It is a great time to actively set aside space and time to really fulfil each others need and focus on the fundamental connection of the relationship. The one major drawback of such a day is that although it brings a great deal of attention for those who are together and in love, the day does make you wander why this close connection and romance occur primarily on one special day and not every day.

Now, although this is not the circumstance for many couples, it is wise to be aware not to fall into the dogma and commercial intention of Valentines Day purely due to pressure and expectation.

It is critical to set aside time for your partner and celebrate your love but it should not be forgotten that this celebration should be an active component of the relationship all the time. This does not mean you have to buy gifts and celebrate daily but it does most definitely mean you must show some form of appreciation and gratitude daily to your partner for having them in your life. Gratitude opens your heart so that you can love and be certain in who you are.

The basis of human behaviour falls heavily on each individuals appreciation of his or her core values. Each and every human has a set of intrinsic values that are most important to them at any given time. You may not realise this consciously but you live your life daily and proportionately according to your highest values (Check out Dr. John Demartini’s teaching’s on values). What’s truly most important to you? These are the values you give most of your attention too and they are prioritised according to significance and nourishment. What gives your spirit sincere nourishment? Whatever this is, you will actively seek and constantly be attracted to finding it.

In relationships, one of the key principles to sustain and grow each other is to focus on appreciating each other for whom they are and for the values that are within each other. You have to focus on finding out what’s most important to your partner and meet their needs by meeting your’s at the same time. This creates mutual connection of interest, growth and prosperity. You start to recognise the importance of what makes your partner who they are (their core values) and how you can invest your time and spirit in fulfilling that need for them and in return for yourself. Because once you meet and respect ones values, they are then inspired and poised to meet yours in return. This develops a true bond of intimacy and is magical. You both evolve consciously and reach new levels of complete satisfaction and fulfilment.

You may have heard the famous quote from Zig Ziglar which solidifies this above statement – “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want”.

A common misunderstanding of values in many people in relationships is they have a natural tendency to project their desires and values onto their partners by trying to shape them to meet their own standards. Whilst you may think you’re doing yourself a favour and potentially creating the perfect match, in fact, you are simply creating an illusion (or version) of yourself. This kind of relationship faces imminent failure. Instead, be open, humble and free in order to create a fulfilling relationship, based on aligning each others values so that you both grow and expand, not contract and fall.

Another critical concept is that you also have to remember that people impose self-limitations on themselves. This is one of the major drawbacks in maximising human potential. You may not be personally evolving at the same rate or time as your partner. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you appreciate that everyone has his or her own sense of evolutionary growth (journey). As it is commonly said “there is time for everything and everything in time”.

Focus on building each other and investing in each others personal/self development. In order to override the self- imposed limitations, create a higher standard for you to live by and do whatever it takes to reach that standard for yourself. If it is relevant, encourage your partner to do likewise and allow them the space and time they need to achieve this.

Here’s another major relationship destroyer “do not measure what you do and give to your partner”. I’m sure we can be honest with ourselves and remember a time that we may have been a victim of this terrible trait sometime in our lives. Give generously, intentionally, passionately and intimately but ultimately give freely and from your heart. Give all your heart and spirit and don’t hold back. The more you give genuinely, the more you will receive openly. But remember to abide by a law of the universe based on fair exchange (look this up and do some reading on this law).

Ok what about the single people out there?

An extremely valuable lesson I have learned is this and it is my advice for those who are looking to meet a lifelong partner.

A common question I ask my clients when they are desperately trying to seek and find their life partner is what attributes, character traits and personality trait(s) do you want in your future partner? I ask this because more often than not, the list of traits one seeks to find in a potential partner, are completely missing and void in them. If you are looking for a particular type of person with certain qualities then first ask yourself this “do you have and own those particular qualities yourself?”

This is an extremely crucial question to ask. But you cannot lie to yourself, for if you do, you will be the one feeling disappointed and unfulfilled as an end result. You alone will feel the disappointment. Focus first on becoming the kind of person you want to attract in your life and then, and only then, you may just find the special person destined to share their life with you. But remember, do not attempt to find exactly the same traits in others. It is said that humans have approximately 75% differences and only 25% similarities. So it is wise to learn how integrate your values with your partner rather than “hoping” you will find and attract the exact similarities in a partner simply because you have aligned your life better with what you’re seeking.

And finally, what about people who have had breakdowns in their relationships and have been hurt?

What about people who have been hurt and have lost touch with their inner being? What about people who carry a great deal of anger, rage, disappointment from their previous encounters and ultimately have lost faith in the value of relationships?

Here is perhaps the hardest lesson to learn and accept but one that’s most rewarding and fulfilling.

A problem with many people is that they live their life as though ‘life happens to them’, and that they personally are the result of a terrible circumstance. They are the victims of their past. The lesson in life is this – life does not happen to you, life happens to you as a result of you. What happens, happens to all of us in different ways? What you do about what happens and how you control what happens is up to you. There is a big difference in that. You are not a creature of life but a creator of life. But this requires a mindset shift and some inner work.

You see dealing with people’s health on a daily basis, the best advice I give to my clients is that no healing is complete until cause equals effect in their own mind. We project our blame and shame on to the universe, nature and the people around us. You may have read many times before that “nature does not deceive you. It is us that deceive ourselves”. You see nature has an obligation to evolve and keep us moving forward, the problem lay’s with us who get in the way expecting nature and the universe to meet our overwhelmingly unrealistic expectations. And when this fails, we withdraw and retract and think of ourselves as failures.

There is a seed of a blessing and potential growth in each and every challenge and pain in our lives. The hardest thing to do is to accept and acknowledge that once we’ve been hurt and our relationship has broken down.

You see the universe will never give you an experience that you cannot handle. Why? Because it is proportionate to your growth and evolution if you accept the lesson in it. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this ‘if you have been hurt before (and are feeling the pain and distraught) but you are reading this now, well you are alive and breathing still, aren’t you?’

No one rejects the notion that you’ve been hurt and that your experience was somewhat painful, but the fact that you are still here and moving forward (as slow as it may seem), reflects that you are ok. You need to embrace the lesson in your experience so that you do not have to repeat the experience. Big statement? One of the reasons why people ask themselves things like Why me? And Why does this always happen to me?…is because they didn’t learn the lesson well enough and they repeated the same behaviour’s that attracted the pain in their life in the first place. And so they have to experience it again (same or different form) until they can be thankful and grateful for the lesson learnt and now they can move forward leaving it behind.

The extreme emotions you carry as a result of your pain and trauma do not serve you and you must let it go. The only reason you are still carrying it within you is because you have an imbalanced perception on the event. You couldn’t, didn’t and are still not seeing the blessing in the event and how it served you. It is a painful notion but one that must be acknowledged in order for you to resolve it, let it go, move on and ultimately be liberated and free.

Everyone that comes into your life comes for a reason. I learnt a while back from researching this topic and I came across an article that had displayed three beautifully crafted reasons why people generally come into your life and these are (unfortunately I can’t remember the reference):

To teach you something you need to learn as part of your growth and then let go.
To be taught something from you as part of their growth and then let go.
To teach you something and learn something from you and stay (whether as friends or intimate partners)

So, are you ready to focus on your life’s lessons, learn and then let go? Can this be the day you reach the point in your life where you allow yourself to move forward? The most powerful thing to remember while you answer this question for yourself is “the decision really is yours”.

So figure out for yourself what the people that were in your life were trying to teach you? What was their role in your life? And here’s the really big one, how did their experience with you serve you?

The two most common emotions that are carried by people who have been hurt are anger and resentment. These are by far some of the most devastating and shattering emotions to your physiology. They occupy space and time in your head and they eat you away. They impair your immune system and may give way for disease. You might have heard the saying that goes something like this – “anger is like holding a burning coal in your hand ready to throw it at the person you hate, but you know only too well, you will not throw it. So, only you get burnt from your anger by holding it.”

Or, what about holding onto resentment – ‘it’s like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die.’

Two very powerful statements, yes? The only way these emotions are serving you is to help warn you that you are not seeing the other side of the whole story (again the blessing of how did that experience serve you?). You need to find balance for these emotions in your head and let it go.

The last lesson I want to share with you is this. It is OK to have someone still in your heart but, and this may be a big but, perhaps not active in your life.

Happy Valentines Day.

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Best wishes,
Sohial Farzam