Are relationships important to you? Relationships are at the core of our humanness. We are social animals and relating to each other is an important aspect of our life’s expression. Relationships are the playing field through which we express the love that we are.
Relationships have always been an integral part of my life and I consider them to be an important aspect of my personal growth and spiritual development. The ups and downs of relationships have brought me both to ecstatic states of communion and to my knees in deep pain. All of my relationships have served to wake me up to myself and to the one thing that I know for sure –
Love comes from within and we grow it out into our lives through the way that we are in relationship with others.
How do we do this though? Learning how to be loving and create loving relationships is a skill that we are not taught. Outside of the big “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” of the Ten Commandments or other such religious ethics, we are left to our own devices of trial and error as to how to do this. Many of us suffer from such frustration that we withdraw from relationships and live life as soloists, simply “dealing” with our loneliness and comforting ourselves with our relationships with our animal friends, food or things. Sometimes we do this even when we are married!
An important pivotal moment in my quest to have healthy and nourishing relationships happened many years ago as a result of a challenging conflict with a good friend which ended our fifteen year relationship. Even though this relationship meant a lot to both of us, was a source of emotional intimacy and shared love, we could not overcome our individual obstacles and consequently lost the relationship. The loss left us both feeling alone and isolated.
In the wake of this painful loss I realized that I had some growing to do. In my soul searching, I saw that I was not as great a communicator as I imagined I was, and this was a big contributing factor to the separation. Also, much to my chagrin, I saw that, as much as I was convinced that it was my “friend’s fault” I was equally a contributor to the conflict! OUCH! What a sobering wake up call!
You don’t know what you don’t know until, somehow by grace, the truth hits you like a zen stick!
That “zen stick” was painful because it was a while before I was able to separate my identity as a good person from whether or not I was a good communicator and get over my resistance to admitting that I needed to learn how to communicate effectively if I really wanted to have long term meaningful and satisfying relationships.
Until then, I seriously thought that being a loving person, having good intentions, being willing to talk, doing my “inner work”, and being “spiritual” was enough to create good relationships. I was wrong because the way that I communicated did not actually reflect my good intentions, the love that I felt in my heart nor my spiritual values, but instead perpetuated my historically unproductive relationship patterns. Being attached to my identity as a “good” person blinded me to the reality that my ineffective communication skills where in the way of showing up in the world with the love that I really felt in my heart and that I wanted to share with others. Can you relate?
Once I realized all of this I opened to the willingness to learn and was on the road to a better life.
The path to improving my skills and creating a more satisfying loving life was through the work of Marshall Rosenberg, “Non Violent Communication – the Language of Compassion”. Living by the principles of this beautiful work has profoundly transformed my life and me for the better!
I learned how to get more deeply in touch with my feelings, how they related to my needs, how to expand my perspective beyond the narrow stories that I told myself about life, how to listen to others so that I could really understand what was going on for them and how share what was going on for me so that others would be able to understand me.
Where once “I wanted” to be more loving with my self and others, I now genuinely am! I am also confident to express this clearly through my energy, presence, in my words and through my actions, no matter what the circumstance.
And this makes life so much easier and a pleasure! There is less conflict, more connection and way more opportunity to love without fearing the loss of it or the loss of myself in the process of loving.
These shifts have resulted in such a profound and solid alignment of my heart, mind, and actions, and sense of trust, confidence, strength, peace and relaxation inside myself, that I am deeply moved to share this work with you and spread the word about the power of mastering effective loving communication skills.
I know that I am not alone in the quest for more integrity, balance, peace, connection, love, success, and happiness in all of my relationships. I know that we humans need our relationships to be successful if we are to not only survive but also thrive!
I am passionate about how Compassionate Communication skills can open the doorway to a more wonderfully loving life! I want us all to have lives that are pleasurable, fulfilling and filled with love!
I invite you to look through my website, get to know me and subscribe to my newsletter so that you can take advantage of the opportunities that I offer on the path to a more loving life.