Relationship woes

Think of a relationship in your life right now that you wish was a little bit better. Keep this person in mind as you read the rest of this article.

You may have a habit of thinking you need to learn something new in order to improve your relationships. So, you seek new knowledge. However, more often than not, the answer you seek already rests in the body of knowledge you possess right now. It has just become invisible to you.

The answer to improving your relationship with someone isn’t “out there” in something you don’t know, it lies in recognizing the importance of what you are already aware of and how to apply it.

You see, just because you know something, doesn’t mean you’ve learned it. You can know all about how to drive a car from reading books about it, but if you’ve never actually driven a car, you haven’t learned how. Learning is all about moving yourself from knowledge to ability. When you turn your knowledge into a skill, it becomes wisdom. Wisdom is knowledge that works.

If you are not doing what you know, then you don’t know what you’re doing ...and you render yourself unable to steer change in the direction of your desire. Knowledge itself is not power, it’s fuel - it guides action. Power is the ability to create change and the only way for you to create change is to set your knowledge into motion.

You already know what builds strong fulfilling relationships with others. In fact, it’s likely so obvious that it loses its importance and you become blind to it. When you’ve fallen asleep to the importance of the obvious, it can’t inspire you to take action. 

So what exactly is this thing that is so obvious and important about relationships? It’s the fact that everyone wants to live well and be well. Every action we take either helps our relationships or hurts them. There is no middle ground. The more someone else adds to your well being the more you want them around. The more you add value to someone else’s life, the more they want you around. When two people are doing their best to meet each other’s needs and improve each other’s life, they have a strong relationship. The less two people are doing to meet each other’s needs and improve each other’s lives, the weaker their relationship.

It’s blatantly obvious, right? But, how conscious are you of the actions you take every day that help to strengthen or weaken the relationships in your life? How carefully do you pay attention to the effect that your actions have upon another?

How consciously do you decide to help make someone’s day in spite of how they treat you?

Every relationship is a bit like a tennis game: how you hit the ball to someone largely determines how they hit it back to you. How you ‘hit the ball’ to someone is how you exercise your power - your ability to create change.

When relationships break down, the people in them have fallen asleep to their power to improve them and so they blame the other person for no longer contributing to their well being. They think like a victim and reactively say, “You’re not doing anything nice for me, so why should I do anything nice for you?”

Well, I’ll tell you why.

Because your actions are powerful - they affect change. The type of action you take is equal to the type of change you influence. Take consistently good action and you’ll influence good changes.

Your relationships are in your hands so stay awake to how you are ‘hitting the ball’ to others. If someone you care for is not being nice to you in a certain moment, it’s because they’ve fallen asleep to the fact that their actions have influence and they feel like nothing they do actually matters. This is your opportunity to be kind to them in return - not to reward their cranky behaviour, but to heal it.

This is the power you are. Use yourself wisely.

Article written by Trent Janisch  © 2014

 

Join Trent at our purepower event on October 18, 2014 – The Business of Balance as he reveals 3 more invisible critical mistakes we make in our relationships and how to avoid them. Visit: http://www.purepowerevents.com/events/purepower-the-business-of-balance-october-18/ as Trent delivers our closing Keynote Address and awakens you to a new dimension of personal power in your relationships.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.