What is Awareness?
Awareness--vigilance and alertness in gathering information--is an important ingredient in preventing relationship problems. Partners in good relationships are constantly aware of the health of the relationship, monitoring their interactions and making corrections or adjustments that keep the relationship healthy and strong.
Relationship Advice: Critical Components
These seven components are critical to a healthy relationship.
- Commitment - Relationships take work.
- Freedom - Deep within our storehouse of human needs is the need to be free.
- Respect - Intertwined with freedom is the sense of respect that we desire from others.
- Support - Be aware of how you support others when things don't go their way.
- Equality - The enabler that allows relationship partners to thrive as individuals as well as in the relationship.
- Healthy conflict resolution - When the rough spots of life impact a relationship.
- Trust - The ingredient that results from all the above and ironically must be in place to enable all the above.
Monitor Communications
Communication permeates every relationship and is a function easily monitored. You'll be aware of the health of the relationship by being sensitive to the tone and timber of relationship communications. Communication is more than words. You'll have to become sensitive to tone, word choice, body language, and emotions. And not just what is present, but also what is absent.
Setting Your Awareness
Think of awareness as a subconscious process running through your mind, such as a computer process that runs in the background while you're checking email. You can activate your awareness by the simple act of intention. Declare or affirm to yourself that you intend to be aware of the health of your relationships by focusing on the seven components described above.
Awareness Affirmations
To solidify and strengthen your awareness process, try these affirmations.
- I am sensitive and aware of what I say and how I say it, as well as being sensitive and aware of how I'm feeling about the overall communication.
- I listen carefully and thoughtfully, absorbing what others say, how they speak, their body language, the emotions underlying their communication, and I'm observant of what is not being said.
Bring a Friend Along
Heighten your awareness by imagining a small creature on your shoulder who watches over what you say and what you do and whispers observations in your ear. Listen to your small friend and make mid-communication corrections if you recognize that you are being anything but fully supportive of the relationship.
See Yourself From Another Perspective
The Native American advice to walk a mile in another man's moccasins is good advice for anyone wishing to improve a relationship. Put yourself in the other person's shoes and view the relationship from their perspective. Do you like what you see and feel?
Relationships Take Attention
Give your ongoing relationships the attention they deserve by being aware of all the forms of communication occurring. Affirming your heightened awareness strengthens your resolve and reminds you of its importance.
More on Relationships in the index.
