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Do you have healthy and happy relationships? Love and respect yourself first

How do you create love and respect in a relationship when the other person is not supportive of the process? If you’re like most people, you care a lot about the people you’re in some sort of relationship with. You may want to be compassionate and able to listen lovingly, but it may seem like the other person isn’t trying to help the situation or is being negative or interacting in a less than productive way. Does any of this sound familiar to you? If so, you probably feel confused, frustrated, and even guilty that you couldn’t be nicer to the person you care about.

misunderstanding compassion

We believe that these feelings stem from a misunderstanding of the true meanings of compassion and care. Here’s what we mean: In the minds of many people, empathy and compassion are often associated with self-sacrifice or selflessness. People think that if you are a compassionate person, you ALWAYS behave compassionately and are able to listen carefully, no matter how you feel. This can be especially difficult when you’re in a relationship that causes hurt feelings and other types of emotional pain.

The notion that one should be selfless and simply sacrifice their feelings to get along is far from the truth as we see it. Most people want to cultivate compassion and learn empathetic listening to improve their relationships, to create closeness and understanding. This can only happen when you really want to do this, when empathizing with the other person is the most wonderful thing you can imagine doing at that moment.

Furthermore, empathy is not just something we offer to other people. We found that many people don’t understand how to use self-empathy: listening carefully to yourself. However, it is a vital ingredient in learning to understand yourself and staying true to what is most important to you. And these are essential building blocks for creating closeness and understanding with others.

Empathy is not always beneficial

If you try to listen empathetically to another person when you’d rather be doing something else, two things are likely to happen. First, you will probably resent and judge that person and their behavior. This happens because you are not being honest with yourself; you would rather be doing something else, but because of the idea that you should listen compassionately to this person no matter what, you go against your own wishes.

When this happens, it’s easy to start blaming them for the lack of happiness you’re feeling with thoughts like, if only… stop complaining, think positive, get a different job, stop being so negative, find some friends. .. or any number of other ideas that you think would help the relationship.

Second, whenever you hear someone with these kinds of negative thoughts running through their head, you’re sure to pick up resentment and judgmental attitude sooner or later. This will create just the opposite of the understanding and closeness you hope for and will continue to shatter any hope of a healthy and happy relationship.

Following, NOT sacrificing, your feelings

When dealing with a situation like this, start by giving yourself permission to NOT empathize, not just throw your emotional pain out the window in a spirit of self-sacrifice. Be honest with yourself about how you feel and what is most important to you at the moment. Never try to be empathetic unless it’s the most wonderful thing you can imagine doing at that moment.

We suggest that you begin to use your emotions as a guide to know when to empathize and when to walk away. Being true to what would bring you joy in the moment is one of the most important first steps you can take to not only get along, but also create the closeness and understanding you desire.

When you start to be more honest with yourself about who you are and what you want, it’s easier to accept others as they are. This is the key to saving your relationship if love and respect are lacking. Practicing this requires much more knowledge and skills than we can address here. However, we would like to provide you with two practical exercises that we believe will improve a situation where one party is unable to cooperate in the way that you would like.

Exercise one:
Since we are sure that what you focus your attention on grows, we recommend that you start making lists of the positive qualities of the other party, the things you enjoy about them, the things you are grateful for about them. They can be things from the past or the present, and nothing is too small to include.

When you have completed the initial list, any time you feel uncomfortable or hear yourself starting to judge the other person, pull out your list and read it. When you’re done reading it, add at least one more thing to the list.

Exercise two:
Cultivate more joy in your life. To do this, you need to be very clear about what is most important to you, what you value most in specific situations, what qualities bring joy to your life. Once you’ve done this research and narrowed down your list of values ​​to the three qualities that would bring you the most joy in your current situation, think of at least two things you can start doing right now that will help you experience more of these qualities in your life. life.

For example, if you do your stock research and find that connecting with people brings you a lot of joy, you can create a list of friends you can call when you can’t get the quality of connection you want. of the conflictive relationship. If play and exercise are important to you, plan ways you can play or get more exercise with your children or friends.

This change in your relationship begins when you realize that your happiness does not depend on the actions of others and that you can stay true to yourself and find alternative ways to experience what you value. We are confident that this change will help you have less resentment and dissatisfaction, greatly improve your ability to be compassionate and listen empathetically, and increase the love and respect you experience in all of your relationships.

So let’s recap:
1. Pay more attention to how you are and what you want most (Practice Self Empathy).
2. Focus more on what you can appreciate from the other party.
3. Take responsibility for bringing the qualities that cultivate joy into your life.

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