Pay attention to the relationship in order to keep it healthy
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TRANSCRIPT:
Relationships are tricky, even good ones. I supposed that's the first thing that you need to bear in mind. There always gonna be ups and downs but there's ways or at least checks that we can put in place to make sure that the important things don't get lost or left out. So, what are healthy relationships? What do they look like? What do they feel like? Healthy relationships are relationships where those partners involve are both valued by each other. That there's a respect there that's reciprocated. It's given both ways. That the contributions of each of the partners involve is appreciated. Healthy relationships are healthy because they work positively for all of those involve. So, how do we keep them? Well, just like all parts of life, over time, newness loses its excitement , it loses its appeal. If you think back to new relationship you have formed, that stage is very exciting, its very positive., there's a lot of politeness, a lot of trial and error in terms of trying to understand the right way to approach the other people in the relationship. But just because we learned how to manage the people within the relationship doesn't mean that we should stop being more conscious about the way we engage with these people and this is something that people forget to say. When skills become automatic, we pay less attention to them. When our work routines become automatic , we pay less attention to them. And the people around us in the relationship that we built, when we learn the routines associated with them or the patterns associated with how we manage these people, everything becomes more automatic we pay less attention to them. So, mindfulness is key and mindfulness is a really powerful movement that asks people to stop and pay attention, use your senses, engage so that you can really remind yourself of what is like to be interacting with the people that you are interacting with. The people that have meaning for you. The people that you respect and that you want to keep around. What is it that need from you? Have they changed? Do you need to think about them in a different way? Is your relationship so automatic now that nobody kind of thinks about what to say to each other and how to interact? In order to keep a relationship healthy, you need to pay attention to it. It needs to be minded. Letting it become automatic is not a very smart thing to do because quite soon what happens is that people start to drift. Different things excite them. Different things draw their attention. So, the big trick about helping a relationship to stay healthy is to pay attention to it but also to ensure that communication still part and parcel of what that relationship is based of? This communication needs to go two ways. It needs to be verbal and non-verbal. Most of the ways we communicate anyway is through our body language, through our gestures and through the tone of voice we use. Pay attention. See what those messages are really saying about the relationship and take action even if it's small steps to ensure that the relationship lasts and see if it stays in a healthy way.