Add & Subtract - Relationships

ADD APPRECIATION

If we are partnered, the thought of relationships might focus our attention on our significant other.

If we cast the net wider, this week’s ‘add’ can be applied to any and all relationships.

Choosing one person for now, how can I improve the connection? If I have taken them for granted, what can my positive focus remember or discover? What qualities can I find to appreciate?

Appreciation reminds us to open our heart to the other, and invites openness and greater trust from them.

Suggestion: write down at least three things you appreciate, value, admire, love about the other. Express these things in a card, tell them, make sure to communicate it well because they might not believe it about themselves!

Author Gary Chapman on affirmation:

“Verbal compliments, or words of appreciation, are powerful communicators of love… best expressed in simple, straightforward statements”

Source: The Five Love Languages

SUBTRACT GRIEVANCES

A grievance is a hurt, injury, injustice, mistake, attack that is past but which we cannot let go.

Most all relationships will accumulate wounds over time, and if not addressed can fester into resentment, bitterness and eventually hatred.

What we experienced with the other person may be a mild error or extreme, and would have needed some form of response. But if we are still harbouring a grudge long after it’s been dealt with, then it has become our problem to resolve.

Suggestion: write down on scrap paper (not on a card this time!), any and all grievances you think and feel about the other person. Give it ten minutes (put the timer on). Empty it onto the page, might be a little, might be a lot. Do not give it to the person concerned, rather tear it up, throw it away, or (my favourite) burn it in a ceremony of release. Repeat as required.

From author Amit Ray:

“If you want to fly in the sky, you need to leave the earth. If you want to move forward, you need to let go the past that drags you down”

Source: World Peace: The Voice of a Mountain Bird