Relationships 101
I’m sitting here at my desk looking over at my husband home from his first day of a new semester with the approximately 100 kids a day he teaches. He fell asleep while reading the Physics textbook. I’m making dinner.
How we honor each other is what I guess I want to focus on . I’d love to complain about how hard I worked today and how hard it is to come back from a vacation. I imagine he does too – when he wakes up and eats
and works on school stuff until bed. He left the house at 6:15 this morning. So how can I complain?
I think instead I’ll just express appreciation.
A little later: He woke up. We ate. I told him I really appreciated my 75-year-old husband going to work and doing what he does to take care of me. He hugged me and thanked me for saying that. It’s great when I follow my own advice.
November 6, 2009 | Tags: free relationship advice, love relationship advice | trackback
Category: life coaching
In this post , Maia is talking about expressing appreciation. When you read this you may think, hey, this makes sense, this is easy I will do it sometime.
I have been working with this one for about 25 years and this is how it comes down for me. Whenever I am in a negative mood for whatever reason, I know it is time to express appreciation. My problem is that when I most need to do it is when I most can’t remember to do it. My mind will go everyplace but that place.
Furthermore, if it happens that Maia sees my predicament and says to me “it would be good if you expressed appreciation now to change your mood”, I probably get angry with her.
However, when I finally get to the place where I am going to express appreciation, I find that the difficulty in starting is directly proportional to how badly I need to do it.
In other words, if I am really in a bad place , it is really hard to start expressing appreciation.
This is one of those places in life where it helps to have a partner or friend who you can trust and knows you well.
Maia,
You are right on the money about appreciation! If we focus on what we appreciate, instead of what isn’t going our way, we will always attract more of what we appreciate. This is something I try to practice every day and it can quickly turn my mood around. Not always easy to do, but definitely worth the effort!