“Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.” – Hugh Mackay
What a great introduction to How Can I Improve My Relationships. Haha, but it’s true, isn’t it? Life is messy, uncertain, and at times people (not us) can be irrational!
So, nothing in life goes perfectly for us all the time. And maybe it isn’t meant to? Maybe life is something we are meant to experiment with to find out what works for us and what we don’t want more of.
Maybe it is in our best interests to have the experience of what we don’t want, just so we can become more focused on what it is that we do want? And for this process to work, we need to be exposed to stuff that pushes our buttons. And boy, most of us do have some buttons…..
What better arena to have our buttons pushed than in the play of our relationships! After all, wouldn’t it be a little boring if we and our partners agreed on everything all the time? How amazing would it be to spend all our time together, staring into each other’s eyes in bliss? Sometimes is great, but all the time…… who really wants that?
If things were always good and comfortable, there would be no reason to grow and expand our potential. So, for our good we sometimes need to struggle a bit, be exposed to diverse ideas, and experience some conflict…. All for our own good….. because, to have everything perfect all the time without having done anything meaningful to achieve it, renders it pretty much meaningless as an ‘experience’….. because we didn’t have to do anything to earn it…….
How Can I Improve My Relationships?
Great relationships are the cornerstone to having great lives. After all, what good is having health and abundance in all things if we have no one to share it with? There are many ways we can bring a temporary smile, relief, or satisfaction to our partners, however, the best relationships are made and maintained because they consist of two people who have ‘GOT THEIR ACT TOGETHER!’
Yes, short-term solutions and temporary fixes are possible. However, are they the best option?
If you are already in a relationship and wish to resolve a few issues you are having, the best way is to begin to pay more attention to your partner. When you are making time together, you should be together. And this means that you are not checking your social media accounts every two minutes, have one eye on the TV, or wishing you were out with your mates.
For a list of ways you can make your existing relationship better, now, check out my post: How can I make my relationship better: 9 easy ways to improve your relationship NOW!
However, if you go down the road of trying to patch up issues and problems all the time, eventually you will become tired and annoyed. This will, of course, directly lower the quality of your life and also of those you are in a relationship with.
So, with this in mind, what we should really be wanting to know is: Is there another way to create wonderful lasting relationships that encompass all spheres of our lives, including family, social, and working relationships?
“The quality of your life is proportional to the quality of people in your life. The quality of people you attract depends on the quality of your own person. It’s a two way process. To attract better people become a better person. To become better, seek the company of better people.” – The Ancient Sage
If we want to improve our relationships with others, we must first address our relationship with ourselves!
So, most relationship advice focuses on changing little things to get our partner back or to get them to love us more by doing a few things differently. However, this is not the best way to build lasting healthy relationships. I say this because; if we are not already doing these little things then it is not who we are!
Who we are is what we consistently do. It is our personality and our habits. And if we have to break from who we are to please our partner, again and again, we will end up resenting them and ourselves for it. It’s us pretending to be something that inherently we are not just to try to make the situation a little better.
If we consistently feel the need to do things, to please others, that is out of character for us, then we are not ‘addressing the elephant in the room.’ That elephant, or the biggest factor in determining the quality of our relationships, is ‘WHO WE ARE.’
“Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.”
– Robert Holden
Therefore, if our relationships are typically not as good as we would like them to be, and we are trying to fix them all the time, it is we who need to address our thoughts, beliefs, and our reasons for being in this relationship.
To have healthy, successful, relationships, we need to become the type of person we would want to go out with. This should be our priority, and when achieved, we can attract that sort of person into our lives….. This is basic Law of Attraction stuff, and this is the only way to attract things the way we would like them to be.
So, ask yourself now, “WOULD YOU BE HAPPY TO GO OUT WITH YOU?” If not, maybe your partner isn’t happy to go out with you either? And maybe this is why you are having problems?…. problems that you have been trying to fix with small gestures here and there that can only ever bring temporary relief to the situation……
So, instead of trying to ‘fix them’ to make them happy now, a better solution, to all our relationship problems, is to work on ourselves. If we can turn ourselves into wonderful people, then we can attract wonderful people and relationships into our lives…. And everyone wants to be with a wonderful person, so we will have more choices available to us! It’s a win-win situation….
To attract and maintain better relationships, we need to first work on ourselves
None of us are perfect. We are all ‘a work in progress.’ And so is everyone else on the planet. And maybe there isn’t a single ‘soul mate’ out there waiting for the right moment to bump into us? But if we are wonderful, we will have many choices….. So, make the best available choice and back it up with a strong desire to make it work.
It is our desire or the level of involvement that we invest into our relationships, that determines how healthy they are and how healthy they will remain over time. We can make any relationship, or any situation in our lives beautiful…. If we approach them with the right mindset.
Because our lives are a subjective experience, we can CHOOSE our thoughts and feelings about anything and everything. This means that it is our interpretation of what is going on that determines if something is ‘good or bad,’ rather than the event and circumstances themselves. We ALWAYS get to choose!
So, to become wonderful, or better people, we have to fully participate in our lives and experiment to come to know and understand ourselves better.
It’s a process that requires time and continues to evolve as we grow in experience and understanding.
What this means in terms of our relationships is that we should be fully committed to making them great. After all, when we initially enter into relationships, we don’t go in believing, ‘well this is going to suck, but I’ll just try to get through it the best I can!’ No! (Well, I hope not.)
The majority of us want to be in a relationship because we have the expectation that they will enhance our lives in ways that would not be possible if we were alone. However, it’s important that we learn how to be happy with ourselves before we can be happy in the company of others.
“The purpose of a relationship is not to have another who might complete you, but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.” – Neale Donald Walsch
How can I work on myself to become a better person to attract the type of relationships I desire?
Life is a progression, a learning adventure for our soul. As I mentioned at the beginning, to just have everything without having achieved it, renders it almost meaningless. Our lives as humans are made all the more interesting because we are malleable, meaning that we do not exist in a fixed state with fixed ideas throughout our lives. This means we can learn, adapt, and grow in many different directions.
However, we are also capable of suffering so many things…… as well as capable of extreme accomplishment and satisfaction. And the difference between the two depends on how much we are continually committed to doing what it takes to make our experience a great one.
Some of us choose to numb ourselves when we are suffering by indulging in alcohol or other vices when things are not working in a way we approve of. Whereas, others of us choose a different route…. A route of trying to understand the rules of life and how we may use them to our advantage so that we can continually move towards achieving our goals and dreams.
What about you? Where do you lie on the scale of doing nothing to make your experience better, to fully committing yourself, mentally, emotionally, and physically to creating the best possible experience? You are somewhere on that scale…..
Maybe it’s time for you to become more proactive in creating the awesome life you desire????…. because no one else is going to do it for you…….
One thing is for sure: All of us have had some joy in our lives, even if it was only for a moment. And because this capability is within us, it means that we can experience it again and again. The choice we have is to remain where we are, (wanting for things we don’t yet have), or to begin the journey to attain the satisfying lives we desire.
What are you going to do about it? What are you willing to do to live the awesome life experience you desire????
The amount that we get to experience the ‘better’ things/emotions in life is directly related to the mindset we have built up throughout our lives. So, if we want to create more joy in our lives, better relationships, and more abundance, we need to go to the source of that which is preventing us from achieving these things….. and the source is our own minds.
To find out how you can change/reprogram your minds with relative ease to achieve your goals and dreams, you may like to check out a couple of my other posts:
- Our relationship with ourselves is the most important relationship we will ever have.
- Do Our Thoughts Create Our Reality? (6 Sure Ways To THINK Your Life Better)
- Conscious Thinking Creates A Better Future. (Unconsciously Reacting Attracts More Of The Same!)
- Can NLP Hero Reprogram My Mind For Success? (My 2021 Review On How To Become A Super Hero)
Shared with the desire to help make the world a better place, one soul at a time,
Andrew
I think this article fully justifies my 4 tenants of success. A strong mind, never stops learning. Strong body, physical and mental health are important. True heart, be honest with yourself always, and share that same degree of honesty with all you meet. Faith, know you can and that destiny is in your control.
Thanks for a real eye-opener with many insights to help us work on being a better me instead of serving others to the point of mental exhaustion.
Hi Andy.
I really like your 4 tenants of success. It would be a magnificent world if everyone believed, and followed, the same tenants.
We, and everyone else we meet benefit when we work on ourselves first, and this is the main reason why I believe our growth should be our priority. My other main reason for working on ourselves is that we do not actually have the right to try and change other people, even though this is what many of us try and do once we are in a relationship.
It’s a lot better if we become good people and attract good relationships that match who we are, rather than attracting a mis-matched person and then trying to change them to suit our wishes.
I wish you all the best, mate,
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
I think that relationships are one of the most complex problems we have in our lives. You touch on a good point that we have to look at ourselves, to find out if we are the source of the problem. If we are hard to please and demanding, then our partner will get tired of trying to please us all the time.
However, it could be the other way around as well. The partner we have chosen is too demanding of us. This is probably why Americans spend so much time in counseling each year.
If we want to improve the situation, both partners must make time for each other, and work on removing the demands we are putting on each other, and strive to live and let live. I think we will learn a lot about each other when we remove the demands that shackle the relationship.
Thank you for the enlightening article.
Hi Chas.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my article.
I agree, that often it is the other person who is too demanding of us. And if we are not happy, it is because we have chosen the wrong partner for us. And this is why I suggest it is a good idea if we work on ourselves first. Because once we know ourselves and what we want from a partner, then we are more likely to make a good choice rather than someone who is demanding and hard to please.
Live and let live is a great philosophy!
Thanks for sharing,
Andrew
I love this article.
It is speaking to me. I recently decided to be a lone so as to work on myself because I just felt that I need to change and find peace within myself before engage with someone in a relationship.
This article talks about this which is perfect for growth in every aspect of our lives.
Thank you
It’s a really good idea to spend time alone so we can come to know ourselves as opposed to ‘ourselves within a relationship.’ And once we know who we are, we will have a much better idea of what we want in a relationship, and therefore the relationships we enter into will be of better quality.
I’m happy you liked my article, and wish you luck with your self-development,
Andrew
What a wonderful article to read!
In a nutshell, look at yourself in the mirror first.
Sometimes change in yourself does not seem like much but when done consistently, as you said, the right people will come and they will most often stay.
And perhaps the hard truth is that everyone knows that but not every single being is able to accept their weakness(es) and improve.
This article is powerful and the words you use are beautiful. Thank you for sharing this.
Cheers.
SAM
Thank you, Sam. I appreciate your kind words very much as well 🙂
Yes, it’s not easy to accept that it is us who might have faults that are preventing our relationships from working out as we would like them to.
Indeed…. We should take a look in the mirror before trying to lay the blame on others.
The upside to working on ourselves first is that we will attract people that we are compatible with, people who have also ‘sorted their act out.’ And therefore our relationships will be of a very good quality.
I wish you well, and many thanks,
Andrew
Wow, what an article!
“Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for each of your other relationships.” So true!
Andrew, you are a great psychologist and it is very helpful to follow the advice in your texts. This one is really great and extremely helpful because there are so many unhealthy relationships around us. I watch other relationships in which someone dominates or feels too insecure so jealousy kills the relationship. Also, a lot of people try to change the partner to be what they would like it to be.
The key to a good relationship, as you said, is to work on yourself, to strengthen your personality. And then the right person will come in accordance with the inner state. I think we attract people who fit our inner state. Examples of this are everywhere. I never regretted being alone for a very long time because I used that period to work on myself. Now I can say that I am a person who is capable of attracting a healthy person and creating a healthy relationship.
Thank you for your support.
All the best!
Danijela
Thank you, Danijela.
I must begin by denying that I am a psychologist. All that I share is what I have studied, have observed, and applied common sense to, and none of it is meant to substitute the advice of a qualified professional.
Once we become interested in self-development as a means of achieving our goals, it becomes evident that we are learning better ways of interacting in all aspects of our lives. So the goal to make ourselves into better people has a spin-off positive effect on everyone and every environment we are connected with. so yes, our relationship with ourselves does set the tone for all our other relationships.
If we never have time alone, our thoughts are always being distracted or pulled in different directions according to the people we are with. So, it is probable that we will never have a good sense of who we are.
Being alone for periods of time is a very healthy thing to do, and very necessary for our personal growth and development. When alone, we come to know what it is we like to do, and we also become much more aware of our thought processes. We will then be able to formulate a clearer idea of what we want out of a relationship, and can then wait for the ‘right’ person to come along.
I wish you well in attracting a wonderful person into your life.
May you live happily ever after 🙂
All the best,
Andrew