by: Patricia Wagner

Would you like to enhance the quality of your life and increase your personal happiness? If you answered “yes,” the information in this article could change your life!

Isn’t it easy to get stuck in the everydayness of life? We can get so busy making a living and getting ahead financially that the really important things fall through the cracks!

That can happen to all of us. However, when people come to the end of their lives, they don’t wish they had spent more time making money. When all is said and done, we want our family and friends to be with us then!

So let’s try to focus on developing better relationships instead of acquiring more things. Think of your circle of family and friends as a lovely garden to water and cultivate. The book of Proverbs teaches this crucial truth: “A man that has friends must show himself friendly” (Proverbs 18:24).

Here are 7 keys that will help your relationships to bloom:

1. Spend time with your friends and loved ones.

Although this is obvious, we need to intentionally set aside time in our schedules for them no matter how busy we think we are. Put appointments with friends and family into your daytimer or palm pilot. If you don’t do this, you may forget and months and even years can go by without seeing these special people. The sad fact is that those relationships can dry up and wither away from neglect.

Many marriages fail for just this reason. People are often too busy to spend enough time with each other and one or both of the partners can’t take the neglect. If you want your relationships to bloom, you have to water them with quality time. How long would a rose garden be lush and beautiful if no one watered it for days without end?

2. Genuinely appreciate the special people in your life.

Tell them how much they mean to you. Mention their good qualities and how special they are. For example, if you need to correct your children’s behavior, be sure to spend twice as much time appreciating their positive qualities than reprimanding their negative ones.

3. Learn to say, “I was wrong. Please forgive me.”

This will do wonders for your relationships. Humility is a beautiful quality in any person. Someone who thinks he or she is always right can be impossible to live with. If your habitual attitute is “I’m ALWAYS right,” that’s a poisonous plant that will spread and ruin your entire garden. Apologizing and asking for forgiveness when we’ve done something wrong does not degrade us. Instead it shows that we are growing up.

4. Be quick to forgive and don’t hold grudges.

Bury the past. Bitterness never helped anyone. It only hurts the bitter person. Don’t let the agressive weeds of unforgiveness spoil your garden. Try not to crush tender relationship plants by being harsh and unforgiving.

5. Learn to say “thank you” a lot.

Everyone loves to be appreciated for what he or she has done instead of being taken for granted. You may be thrilled by the vibrant blossoms of encouragement that will result from taking time to say “thank you.”

6. Listen more than you talk.

In a game of tennis it would be very strange for one of the players to bounce the ball up and down on his or her side instead of hitting the ball back to the other player. The same could be said for the game of ping pong. These games teach a powerful lesson. If you are always talking and other people don’t have a chance to get a word in edgewise, you won’t be very popular for long.

7. Go out of your way to help others in practical ways.

If a friend is in the hospital, go visit him. If a neighbor is going through a difficult financial time, bring groceries over to help tide him or her through the crisis.

If you follow these simple but powerful suggestions for nurturing your relationships, you yourself will also reap benefits in the form of increased happiness, pep and vitality. That’s because our relationships are far more important to our wellbeing than how much money we make or how well we’re doing climbing the corporate ladder.

Why not take a personal inventory of your life today? Put these suggestions into practice and become more effective in cultivating your special relationships.

Happy gardening!

About The Author

Patricia Wagner offers informative tips on living a more energetic lifestyle at http://www.a-to-z-wellness.com and through her free “A to Z Health Tips” newsletter. Subscribe at http://www.a-to-z-wellness.com/subscribe.htm. Contact Patricia at wagner.art@verizon.net
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Have you been holding onto feelings that bother you? Have you been struggling with whether or not to communicate those feelings to someone whom you care about? This article may help to give you some foresight on whether you should unleash those feelings, or not.

Communication is good, right? Personally, I believe it’s next to impossible to have a healthy, rewarding relationship without it. Sure, the level of required communication depends on your level of intimacy with the person you are communicating with. But, can open communication ever be destructive, even when the communicator thinks they are providing a helpful message for the recipient? I would say it all boils down to knowing your audience. Think about what you are about to convey, and then try to predict how your recipient is going to react. Is the message sensitive or volatile enough to destroy the relationship you currently have? If so, it’s best to think twice. Sounds simple enough, right?

Take this story, for example. I know a woman that, for her whole life, carried resentment about how her father raised her. This story begins when she was 50 years old and her father was 72. She felt she had not been nurtured and supported as much as she needed when she was growing up. Her father was a “hard-liner”. We all know the type. A man made of mostly discipline and not enough encouragement, keeping his feelings to himself. Something compelled the woman to spill her guts and write her father a letter. In this letter she described how she felt about her relationship with her father. She pointed out many of the shortcomings in her life and how she felt he was the cause of them because she “didn’t get what she needed from him”. She pointed these things out in a very polite manner; obviously assuming her father would understand and feel compassion for her. What actually happened was quite the contrary. The father was very angry after reading her letter and felt he was being attacked. What was once an acceptable relationship was now broken beyond repair. At the time the daughter wrote the letter, she thought it would benefit her to get those things off her chest and didn’t take time to ponder how her father would deal with such things.

The case above could be considered “bad communication” as it damaged the relationship it was meant to improve. Here are some things you might want to consider before initiating a discussion with someone, especially when your message contains sensitive, blaming or potentially negative information.

1. What do you expect to accomplish with your message?

2. Try to predict how your audience will respond. Are you prepared for an unexpected outcome?

3. Is it so important for you to get your message across that it’s worth the risk of breaking the relationship? In some cases it may be, such as a case with a friend or spouse.

4. If you predict that your message may cause undesirable results, you may want to use a good friend or family member as a sounding board, so you can clear your head of your thoughts. Even more so, it can be very beneficial for you to write the person a letter but never deliver it. I believe this works better than spilling your guts to a third party.

5. You can ask advice from a trusted friend or family member (especially if they know the recipient of the message). However, always make the final decision on what to do. Your advisor probably has nothing to lose and may not give you proper advice in the matter.

Relationships are important in everyone’s life, whether with friends, family, business associates or complete strangers. For that reason, care should always be taken on how to communicate sensitive information. Can communication be a bad thing? I think it always depends on the circumstances. Sometimes you need to choose to hold back or potentially lose the relationship.
About The Author

Carl Herkes - Owner of ExoticFlames.com and GlassFlames.com shares his knowledge.

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by: Justin Luyt

If you grew up in the 80s like I did, you might remember the group Depeche Mode and their hit “Just Can’t Get Enough.” It is a song about being obsessed with the idea of being with someone, about needing another person. Romance easily becomes this addiction when we believe that we are not complete without someone else and that we simply cannot get enough of the blissful feeling we get when we are with him or her. When we believe we need the romance to be complete, we are in trouble for we are perfect and complete, connected to the world at all times - we merely need to choose to acknowledge that we are.

We are fortunate in today’s world to have great tools to help us overcome this false belief. Relationship coaching, romance coaching (with dating coaches) and counseling are merely a few of the tools we have at hand to help us overcome this fear. Many relationship books have been written with great relationship advice, but the essence is still our desire to release the fear we hold within and return to love.

In a very special way, romantic relationships are that journey back to love, back to the knowing that we are all part of a macrocosm called Life and that we can access the wonders of love, compassion, understanding, harmony, peace and more, simply by making such choices.

Physically, we’re all made basically the same way, save for gender differences. But whether one is Madonna, Prince Charles, me, you or the waitress that served you lunch today, our bodies all operate in a similar manner. The way we behave and our ideas about things stems from psychological differences. Different ways in which we think cause us to make certain decisions.

We have the tendency to label our romantic partners as being special. There’s a price to pay for special love if we are not careful. Telling a person that he or she is “special” projects the idea that the person possesses something you do not. This implies that you are not complete without them. Or in other words, that you need them. Everyone holds all the potential in the world within. Thus, our projection of being “half complete” is a false thought of guild, for innately we know we are connected to our source, but our Ego denies that truth.

So where do I start with this shift in perception? True Intimacy is of the mind, not of the body. Having sex with a person does not create intimacy in any way. You can sleep with someone, or even live with someone, for years and not experience intimacy. Authentic self-expression is the key to true intimacy in romantic relationships, as well as in all other relationships. Getting to a place where you can authentically share your feelings and experiences is where I suggest you begin in order to create true intimacy with someone.

At Romance Coaching, you partake in Transformational Education that strengthens your beliefs about yourself. You might find that you restrict yourself and not take a leap to meet new people, or you simply find you are in a relationship but lack intimacy. Think what you believe about yourself. Do you believe you deserve a long lasting Romantic Relationship? What are your thoughts about Intimacy, Affection, Love, Sex? Really think

Our Transformational Education has one aim to develop the skill of Romance.

About The Author

Justin Luyt, the author of “The Spirit of Romance” has been consulting and training individuals and corporations for over 10 years. He has build a successful Romance Coaching practice at http://www.RomanceCoaching.biz as well as released his latest book in 2004 - “The Spirit of Romance”, which is now available at http://www.Romance-IT.com. 1-877-ROMANCE

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