Tag Archives: relationships

True empathy…

Empathy is full presence to what’s alive in the other person at this moment.John Cunningham

This is about the best advice I’ve come across when it comes to building better relationships with one and all!

Think about it, your full attention on the other person, totally connected to the very heart and soul of this individual. What would be the world-wide result if we all did this even once a day? There are 3 components mentioned:

  1. Full Presence: We’re listening and present at all levels.
  2. Alive: We seek that which is beautiful and magnificent in the other.
  3. This moment: It all occurs in the eternal Now.

Imagine the sheer power of this one exercise on all aspects of our lives!

Recommendation: Co-Active Coaching, 2nd Edition

Co-Active Coaching, 2nd Edition: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and, Life

All we need is love…

The general thing to remember is that politicians need love.Dick Simpson

So do we. Everyone needs love and needs to be appreciated. We live our entire lives seeking love, adoration and appreciation from our lovers, parents, siblings, teachers and friends. Once examined we realize that this quest for love is the driving force in our lives and underlies all ambitions.

What does this mean to you?

What happens when we recognize this need in every person (including family) we meet, daily?

Recommendation: Love: What Life Is All About

Love: What Life Is All About

How’s your inner life?

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.Henry David Thoreau

The modern day equivalent to the Post Office is email, the internet and the cell phone! When we don’t have a satisfying inner life, we run towards outwardly distractions to occupy our minds. We fill our precious time with chores and activities so that we don’t have to confront the emptiness of our own lives.

What’s the inner life? It’s our thoughts and psyche. It’s our self-perception and sense of self-worth. It’s also our chance of touching base with the very reality that created all. An essence of God resides within us, ever waiting for the time when our minds can be a little still. The inner life is our relationship with this essence.

Contact is made slowly and gently. It’s the portal to a peace and contentment that cannot be found without.

Check it out.

Recommendation: Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tse

Tao Te Ching

Only through love

Life in abundance comes only through great love. Elbert Hubbard 

How filled with love is your life? How about your pursuits, desires and even mundane activities?

Imagine how much bigger any relationship is when it’s full of love. How much do we look forward to our day when our job is truly fulfilling? Which can only happen if we love our job. What if you were in love with life itself? How would that make your day, week or whole year?

Here’s the problem though, you can’t easily love external objects and beings if you’re not comfortable in your own skin, if you don’t appreciate your own self, if you don’t love yourself.

Love is the currency of the universe, it’s the underlying reality of it all. Live in love and you’ve figured out one of life’s deepest mysteries!

Love it up!

Recommendation: Love: What Life Is All AboutLeo F. Buscaglia

To understand is to forgive

To understand is to forgive, even oneself. – Alexander Chase 

  • Do we understand why the person who irritates you acted in that fashion?
  • Do we understand why we got irritated, what was it exactly? 

With deeper, below the surface understanding we can truly know another, their real motives. With careful observation we can also uncover our own tendencies and motives. We can then be forgiving towards one and all, including ourselves.

Not being able to forgive is the biggest hurdle to living a spiritual and peaceful life!

 

Recommendation: The Awakening of Intelligence

We must want to change

God changes not what is in people, until they change what is in themselves. – The Koran

Why is it that we always have such rich suggestions for others :)? 

Like Gandhi once said, ‘You must be the change, you want to see in the world’. We are only responsible for our own-selves. We can only change us.

As we start to do that, our world sets itself right. We’re less likely to have relationship problems. We’re happier and more fulfilled.

 

Recommendation: Choose Them Wisely: Thoughts Become Things!Mike Dooley

How to really understand someone

You truly understand another when you see him free from your personal feeling toward him. Vernon Howard 

Can we really see another as they are? To do that we would have to do at least two things:

  1. See them for who they are right now: Just be with them and not dwell on any thoughts about them, their past and what they might have done to you (good or bad). Just be, with them, now. Experience them.
  2. Listen to them at all levels: Listen to them so there’s no chatter in your mind while you listen and ensure that you’re not compiling your response to them, while they talk :)! Can you hear the flutter in their voice, the subtle nuances, the pain or joy? Can you notice their body language, facial expressions and what might lie under these expressions? Can you sense their being, their motive, their desires? All of this lies just under the words they speak. So listen deeply!

Meditation Tip #1 will help here!

Reference: The 3 levels of listening (Co-active Coaching)

Recommendation: The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle