Relationships work . . . . 5 ways to see if yours can too.

Relationships, love them or hate them.
Most of us have one, had one or want one AND I think it is fair to say that relationships can give the most joy and the most grief in life.

Relationships are important and make life wonderful when they work and are an asset.

If the whole manifesting business is all about aligning thoughts and desires with how I feel and vibrate,
how do I manifest when I have relationships in which I am not aligned, where everything and everyone is at odds and my good vibration is constantly going out of the window?
That means we need to pay attention to the vibration of our relationship, right?

But I think that we don’t know how to do great relationships.

Mostly we fight over whose idea gets preference, we argue over who is doing what, we manipulate and dominate each other, we disagree over money and where we spend our time.

We fight and argue and disagree, because we live and are brought up in an adversarial world.
The talk of our world is not about complementing each other but about opposites and being right and making the other wrong.
It is ‘me against you’ and about getting people on your side with either threats or promises you cannot keep.
We can all relate to this;
“I don’t think we can afford that right now!”
“I don’t want to live there, why would you?”
“I am working too, you know. I cannot possibly do that, you sort it.”

We haven’t developed the skill to change from being opponents to becoming complementary team players.
And the unfortunate thing is that all this is in the ‘we don’t know we don’t know’ department.
To make relationships work, we have to realize that ‘I don’t know that I don’t know’ and get our head around total new points of view.

And that is hard, trust me, I know what I am talking about.
I fought hard to keep my own familiar opinions about money, work, kids and God.
In the beginning, I couldn’t even see that it was possible to change my opinion, it was like changing my left arm for my right.
The other opinions were weird and theirs should convert to mine!
AND all that was invisible to me; different opinions had a hard time getting through to me.

You may ask: “why should one change one’s opinion or at least be flexible about them?”

Good question.
I have learnt that holding on to opinions regardless, is just as limiting as being in jail or dead.
If opinions don’t change, your life will be the same old same old and your relationship will forever be one of opposites and adversary.

If you are happy with that, okay, but I have noticed that a change of points of view can contribute to changing your relationships and your life for the better.

And again, trust me.
I have struggled and struggled AND I have experienced the change ‘letting go of opinions’ can make.
I also realized that
first the heart needs to experience the goodness of a different opinion, only then the mind can follow.

Of course I am not saying that we should change our points of view like we change our fashion.
However it would be a different ball game if we allowed the heart to test other points of view.
Then when they feel good, the mind will argue no longer and follow the heart’s opinion.

In the beginning I couldn’t get my head around John’s view of life and all that manifesting talk.
I first thought it was a load of BS and a way for lazy people to justify themselves.
I simply couldn’t get my head around it.
I also couldn’t calmly listen to John’s points of view; all I wanted was to butt in with mine.
I never looked at where my own opinions came from.
That was in the invisible department, it was how it was and that was that.
With my former points of view for example, you worked hard according to a linear plan and all the results were only your doing and nobody else’s.

I never questioned it, that was the way it was, end of story.

I vividly can remember the disgust I felt when John said I could work less and manifest more of what I wanted and that he wasn’t impressed with my ‘hard working’ attitude.
I was fuming when he uttered that ‘in my eyes’ very pedantic and unfeeling statement.
I argued my head off, saying that I had manifested a lot and who in their right mind expected things to just fall in their lap.

What changed my opinion were my experiences of first seeing and then tentatively doing things differently.
I first had to allow myself to see that my opinion of working hard created not that much fun and not necessarily created such great results either.
Yes, it did bring in a regular income stream but at a cost.
I then looked at John’s opposite way of earning money by not overdoing things.
I still felt my way was good (and right), but I slowly got to see that he had more freedom and more fun during the day than I had.
And then the major thing happened that I think is crucial to being able to change your point of view.
Slowly my heart started to agree that he did have a good life, and as my heart more and more felt the joy of that way of doing things, my mind slowly followed suit.
I didn’t feel like disagreeing any longer.
John had the better end of the stick with his point of view and my own opinion started to waiver.
Having a regular income was NOT the best thing since sliced bread, it has its advantages but so did being entrepreneurial.
Once the heart was allowed to see and experience from close by the impact of a different opinion, the heart started to make more and more sense to the mind.

Making relationships work by changing points of view is quite a process though.
It doesn’t happen overnight and takes a lot of experiential learning, letting go, daring to do things differently and observing how that feels.
This is how part of the process goes;

1. Start off with noticing how not aligned you are. See where you fight and when you get upset. Observe how this slows things down and how it ruins your day.
2. Next ask the questions; “where is the win in this for both of us?”
   “What would make both our hearts sing for joy?”
3. Listen to each others observations without judgment. Just declare what you observed and ask what they observed. You are looking for understanding them. not ‘who is right’.
4. Keep asking; “What would be the win in this for both of us” and if there is no win, then choose ‘no play’, do nothing and experience the doing nothing.
5. Trust your heart and your decisions based on your heart’s opinion.

Can you see how your opinions stop you from being aligned in your relationships and how that stops things from happening?