Clearly, good relationships are essential to living a full and happy life. Not only are they a component of that kind of life, they are in fact top priority. This is where good relationship skills come in handy.
Here are 3 universal principles on how to develop good relationships with everyone in your life:
Be quick to listen and slow to speak – in other words, be willing to listen, and listen well! Listening well to another person speak is the ultimate form of flattery and respect, because you show them they are important enough to pay attention to and spend some time with.
Listening well involves focusing on what the other person has to say, getting inside his or her head, and understanding things from their point of view. Being a good listener is not about thinking of what to say while the person is talking or interrupting in the middle of their sentences. That can come later.
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Tags: Positive Attitude, Relationships. Relationship advice
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When we think of a habit, what often comes to mind is a set of repetitive behaviours such as smoking or overeating. In fact, almost everything we do, whether constructive or otherwise, is driven by habits.
Most of the habits we have cultivated have happened without much conscious awareness on our part. We have repeated behaviours so often without thinking much about it that they have become completely ingrained in us.
We often think of habits as being very difficult to break (and make), but it can be surprisingly easy to do so, if we go about things in the right way.
It is vital to realize that everything starts first in your mind. The way you think is the key to everything. Over many years – usually decades – we have driven deep grooves of thought into our mind. These pathways have become so well worn – we have become so used to them – that they seem completely natural .
Changing habits is about replacing these mental structures with others. We need to build new habitual ways of thinking. Sometimes this can happen naturally. We might encounter a crisis or other extreme situation which forces us to radically rethink and alter our beliefs. But this is rare and our beliefs can be extremely resistant to change. Even when faced with the most extreme situations, people will often still assimilate them into their current belief systems. It is better to take a systematic approach.
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Tags: change, habits
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Our life is what our thoughts make it. Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil. ~Marcus Aurelius
A belief is something you consider to be true. You cannot decide to believe one thing this week and another, opposing thing, next week. You might think you can, but it really doesn’t work like that. I read recently that baby circus elephants are tied to a strong metal post with a heavy chain because they will try to escape and expend a lot of energy on pulling at their tether. After some time, they accept that they will not be able to escape and so stop pulling. The adult elephants are tethered to a wooden stake with a light rope: they could easily escape, but they believe they are unable to do so, and so the light tethering works as a kind of symbol of their bondage. It is clear that whether your beliefs are true or not is irrelevant. What matters is what you regard to be true. It seems to me that this is a good definition of ‘belief.’
People believe all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. Some beliefs are trivial and others are very important, but two things are certain:
- Our underlying beliefs operate at a deep, subconscious level, and
- These underlying beliefs affect what we experience in life, including our level of success or failure in any endeavor.
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Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. ~Glenn Turner
We live in a culture where everyone seems to worry. Turn on the news – someone got shot, there’s mercury in the fish we eat, the cows have got BSE, a new super-flu is coming, terrorists are regrouping, … On and on it goes. If you take all of this stuff seriously, it’s likely that you’ll never go out, never eat, never travel, never take any kind of risk at all.
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If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe (Abraham Lincoln).
Have you watched TV programmes like Downsize Me? I really enjoy watching this! People living unhealthy lives are given a lifestyle makeover and end up losing weight, and generally seeming very happy. Obviously they do make great strides over the two months they are being followed by the cameras, but I often wonder how many of these people go back to their old unhealthy ways once the TV cameras have left. The trouble is that these kind of programmes focus on external things – diet, exercise, giving up smoking – but they don’t address the inner world of the individuals they are seeking to treat. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with eating better, giving up smoking, drinking less and doing more exercise, but there’s something deeper here.
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Overcoming fear is something almost everybody could benefit from since we all experience fear. Some fears – like being frightened of a big dog chasing you – are necessary and even beneficial. But most of the fears we experience are pointless and debilitating, and overcoming these fears is an essential part of living an effective and happy life.
There are several steps you can take which will enormously reduce – and often, completely eliminate – your fears.
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Tags: NLP, overcoming fear, phobia, Positive Attitude
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Real, deep relaxation is probably something many of us rarely experience. It is a state in which tension is absent from the muscles, and where the mind is at ease, free from worry and negative self-talk. It is, therefore, both a physical and a psychological state.
The physical effects of stress are well documented. One of the main effects of stress in an increase in blood pressure, which can contribute to the development of heart disease and hence increase the risk if associated acute conditions such as stroke.
Being properly relaxed has tangible and clear health benefits – people with so-called ‘type B’ personalities tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease. Being more relaxed will also allow you to concentrate better, give you greater immunity to disease, help you to be more efficient and effective, and reduce pain.
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Psychologists have generally taken the view that personality is formed during childhood and that it is does not change much in adults.
This belief is underpinned by a wide range of research into and theories about personality and, although there is an ongoing debate about whether it is more a matter of ‘nature’ or ‘nurture,’ there is little disagreement about the limited extent to which adult’s generally change their personality. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Can we change personality, Personality. Changing Personality
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The Newspaper I was flicking through today carried an article claiming that people in Hong Kong are generally least happy in May and June. This is just the opposite of what I expected since, to me, since summer is associated with holidays and nice, sunny weather. Also, it’s the time I get to go back to the UK to see my family for a few weeks. The cause of these ‘summer blues’ is a bit of mystery. It could be that people get more depressed since there is no long holiday to look forward to – most people here work throughout the summer – and the weather is getting worse – hot, humid and unpleasant with lots of rain and storms.
The Newspaper I was flicking through today carried an article claiming that people in Hong Kong are generally least happy in May and June. This is just the opposite of what I expected since, to me, since summer is associated with holidays and nice, sunny weather. Also, it’s the time I get to go back to the UK to see my family for a few weeks. The cause of these ‘summer blues’ is a bit of mystery. It could be that people get more depressed since there is no long holiday to look forward to – most people here work throughout the summer – and the weather is getting worse – hot, humid and unpleasant with lots of rain and storms.
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Tags: Finding happiness, Positive Attitude
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William Glasser’s book ‘Choice Theory’ offers a new way of looking at relationships.
His basic insight is that we are free to change ourselves but cannot change anyone else. Even a man with a gun to his head cannot be forced to act against his will.
Because we are free (although perhaps not completely so) to make choices about our own thoughts and actions, it must be true that everyone else has this freedom too, and so we cannot interfere with it.
Because we are free (although perhaps not completely so) to make choices about our own thoughts and actions, it must be true that everyone else has this freedom too, and so we cannot interfere with it. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Coercion in relationships, Relationships. Relationship advice
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