Welcome to the first session of Relationship YOU. You have made a very wise choice. The tools you are about to learn – the journey you are about to embark on – is heading you in exactly the right direction to create the relationship of your dreams. Every Wise Fairy God Mother has her toolbox. In this program I will be sharing mine with you. I have acquired many tools and much wisdom in my 27-year successful marriage which came following a lot of learning and study in the 5 years between it and my 19-year relationship failure. I also learned a thing or two from an important teacher in my life, John Gray, the Men Are from Mars guy whose company, Mars Venus Institute, my husband and I founded and ran for 5 years. One pretty much learns to eat and breathe the material when you work with creating and giving workshops and training 500 speakers and therapists throughout the world. My Assumptions I’m going to assume a couple of things are true about you before you got to this moment. I’m going to assume:
You will have no need to hurry through this course. You have 14 weeks with your coach and a lifetime to use what you learn. However, if you are committed to creating the relationship of your dreams and want to make the associated adjustments, set aside a certain amount of time each week to work with it. Plan on spending twenty minutes to a half hour each time you work. There is no way to really know how long it will take. It depends on you. If you make time each week to focus on the material, you will continue to add to the building blocks of relationship change. Beginning Relationship YOU and contemplating the changes are big steps. Relationship YOU is for anyone who wants to improve their relationships – whether you are in one at this time or not. It will provide the awareness and tools to create the Relationship of Your Dreams. Oh, it’ll also give you the tools to improve relationships with family, friends and yourself too. It occurs over 14 weeks. It includes weekly coaching and weekly assignments. Meet the Coaches |
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Following is the Table of Contents to the program with a short sentence or two about each part so you know what to expect. After you have finished looking this over, there are two exercises for you to do to complete this first class.
Week One
My Assumptions
1. You are interested in creating a long-term healthy relationship with someone you love – whether now or in the future.
2. You are committed to working through this Coaching Program.
10 Secrets to Keep Your Relationship Working Happily Ever After
Explanation of usage in program.
Once Upon a Time There Was You: Three Magic Secrets to Finding Your Real Self
Short review and why and how they are important to change.
Commitment
Commitment means even when you don’t want to do the work because it’s hard or you’re tired or you’re busy or it’s uncomfortable . . . or . . . or, you’ll do it anyway.
Week Two
About Significant Others
Example from My Life – Why did my first husband and I get together?
The Perfect Partner Exercise – Having done that exercise, you will realize that there is likely unconscious processes working in you and you might compare a partner to an unconscious list of perfection.
We Didn’t Know Any Other Way – My contemporaries and I may have chosen partners for unconscious and societal reasons, but we have reached a time in history when you can choose your significant other from healthy, more evolved perspectives and support your individual development in ways you want to grow. (Does not mean your current relationship cannot be the “Relationship of Your Dreams”.
What If You’re Already in a Relationship That Isn’t Working? – Can it work?
Where Are You Focused?
Reminds you that what you put your attention on expands.
A Solid Decision
Making a decision means jumping from one state of mind to another. “Before – I thought and felt this way; now – I think and feel this new way.” Make a decision fully and it is not hard to follow the new way as it generates a new consciousness and therefore, ideas and knowledge follow.
Week Three
About Healing
Healing – The First Leg of a 3-Legged Stool – Healing means you look at all the relationships and situations from your past and work on bringing them into equilibrium.
Example from My Life – Somehow the combination of who I am, with my particular mother, made me feel very unworthy – with self-esteem so damaged that I didn’t believe there was a man out there that I would want that would also want me.
A Short Commercial
What qualifies me to teach you how to have the relationship of your dreams?
Defending Yourself or Going to Sleep
A bit about two important defense mechanisms – suppression and rationalization
The History of Your Relationships
You will be looking at a bit of your past in order to begin the process of healing anything that needs healing.
Week Four
Changing Your Beliefs
Changing Your Beliefs – The Second Leg of the Stool Why change your beliefs? It is likely that some unconscious belief(s) you hold is keeping you from attracting and creating the relationship you want
How the Mind Works – It compulsively thinks many of the same thoughts repeatedly.
Are We Stuck Forever Thinking Negative Thoughts? The answer is both yes and no.
Ego-Mind - That is the part that gets between us and the knowledge that comes from our Higher Self or Real Self.
The Biology of the Situation - Scientists tell us that new neuronets are forming all the time. New neuronets form when we learn new things – like you are doing with this program.
Fear - Another thing invented by the ego-mind
Self-Imposed Limitations - With your understanding of how the ego-mind works, now you can see how you impose limitations on yourself based on erroneous beliefs you have picked up along the way.
Week Five
Inspired Action
Inspired Action – The Third Leg of the Stool – All the pure thought and healing in the world is not going to change your life if you take no action or you act from fear or old beliefs.
Learning How to Take Inspired Action - Following your intuition is a very special kind of trust. It is a combination of trusting yourself and trusting the guidance that comes to you about what to do or where to go or how to act.
The Three-Legged Stool
Parental Relationships Pattern
Belief
Inspired Action
Week Six
Secret #1 – Who’s Most Important?
The first three ingredients to activate this secret: (1) Find your authentic self; (2) Know your worth; (3) Awareness of first two.
What is this thing called me? – Who is the Real You? Can you find it?
A Part of Me – Are you a fully integrated person?
Week Seven
Secret #1 – Who’s Most Important? continued
The rest of the ingredients to activate this secret: (4) Having good self-esteem; (5) Understanding validation; (6) Having and honoring your own boundaries; (7) Making yourself happy – selfish or not?
What Do They Really Think? A Self-Esteem Exercise
Validation - Being validated by another is like having your parking ticket stamped at a restaurant. You have already parked your car and you will be taking it along with you when you go. Validation of your parking ticket is important but it isn’t the same as owning the car.
Boundaries - A boundary is a limit. Inflexible boundaries imply that you are never available to do or allow what you have a boundary about.
Making Yourself Happy – Is It Selfish?
Week Eight
Secret #2 – Make your commitment to the power of your relationship.
The three ingredients to activate this secret: (1) Willingness to change; (2) Taking responsibility for your own needs; (3) Dealing with the ego.
Willingness – Taking on transformation as a way of life requires that each time a new experience occurs in your life; your inner gyroscope keeps searching to find that cheerful, open and eager learning attitude once again.
Maintaining responsibility to fulfill your own needs – You will see if you can see how the lack of fulfillment of needs might contribute to undermining commitment to a relationship. Shining the light of awareness on your needs, allows you to know what and how to fulfill them.
Seeing the Big Picture or Moving Your Ego Out of the Way
Week Nine
Secret #3 – Tell the emotional truth quickly – but check your timing.
The three ingredients to activate this secret: (1) Emotional integrity; (2) Emotional intelligence; (3) Forgiveness
Your Insides Match Your Outsides: Transformation is all about change. Not just acting differently but also being different. Your outer behavior will change; however, it will only be authentic if the inner change has occurred.
How & Why Re-Gain Emotional Intelligence? Access to and understanding of your full range of emotions is the key to self-knowledge and interaction with your world. The more aware you are of your emotions, the more you know what is going on in your thoughts – conscious and not conscious. The more you know your thoughts, the better able you are to create your life the way you want it to be.
Week Ten
“Top of the Class” Work
To Give Love as Before: Much has been written about forgiveness. I will remind you that my favorite definition of forgiveness and the one that allowed me to dive into it is: to give love as before. You might be asking yourself, “Why would I want to do this?” or saying to yourself, “I’ll just skip this part.” No one will know. But believe it or not, you suffer from every person you don’t forgive. Suffer? Yes. When you do not forgive someone, there is a negative leak of energy going towards him or her and each little bit is tying up a bit of your authenticity. Instead of freedom from the past, it’s as if your have leg irons holding you to it.
Week Eleven
Secret #4 – Communicate appropriately.
Saying the Same Thing Two Ways: You will find if you begin to notice how you communicate, that you can convey difficult messages and information if you come from your heart and are not trying to figure it out in your head.
Speaking Your Truth: I have developed a reputation amongst my clients for delivering “hard stuff” in a gentle manner. I recommend it.
Week Twelve
Secret #5 – A matter of respect.
The two ingredients to activate this secret: (1) Compassion; (2) Discernment
Compassion: When judgment is active, compassion is sleeping. When compassion is sleeping and you begin to look honestly and openly at some of your past behavior and situations, you will only want to beat yourself up or run away from this process.
Discernment vs. Judgment or Looking Through No-Colored Glasses: Your goal is to rewire your brain to neutralize judgments and to create new channels, new wiring for being, seeing and experiencing your reality as it is once again – through no-colored glasses.
Secret #6 – Maintain connection.
The Gratitude Game: Expressing love, appreciation and gratitude for another will solve the distance problem and leave you feeling connected again.
Week Thirteen
Secret #7 – Express appreciation.
Your Wish Is My Command: Like Aladdin’s genii, an attitude of gratitude creates a very positive flowing life where the things you want just seem to come. It often has seemed to me like things come my way as if by magic; actually I have created this present now with the thoughts and emotions I have felt in the past.
Simple Tools to Use Again and Again: You also learned, “The wonderful thing about expressing gratitude is that it usually works to help you lift your mood and give you a wider perspective on your life.”
Secret #8 – The small stuff vs. the big stuff.
“Life Is a School” and You Are Its Star Pupil! My Life Is a School attitude has also has me looking at how I behave in situations with others and with myself. It keeps me from feeling like a victim in relationship to others. It keeps me taking responsibility for my own behavior and gives me some objectivity to be able to assess my behavior and see if it is authentic or coming from some construct of my fearful ego-mind.
How Do You Sign Up for the School of Life? You do not want to go to school because… What if I don’t choose to learn from the school of life? “What do I have to lose? I’ll humor her. now what?” Help is here.
Week Fourteen
Secret #9 – Make time together that is sacred.
Secret # 10 – Take responsibility.
I Did It! What matters is that, along with me, YOU CHOOSE TO ADOPT THE UNCONDITIONAL BELIEF THAT YOU ARE FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATING YOUR LIFE – in the past, now and in the future. In other words, the buck stops here.
Responsibility Not Blame: Blame is only important if your ego-mind cannot tolerate the idea that you ever did anything that looks like it is wrong or that you might have made a mistake in your life. Then it needs to blame someone else.
I Made a Boo-Boo: Feeling blamed is taking responsibility and then throwing in beating yourself up for whatever it is you have taken responsibility for.
What if? Just be willing to try it for awhile and know that you can always rethink it once again down the line.
Choices: How hard is it for you to take responsibility for the choices you’ve made?
Yesterday I was going through section 4 of Relationship YOU, and I couldn’t help but notice my enthusiastic interest in the part of beliefs, of how our minds are somewhat programmed to produce negative thoughts out of virtually any situation. Turns out that just a couple hours ago I found myself in a situation where I constructed the worst case scenario out of a simple phone conversation, and I immediately recalled what I had read in the above program last night.
My colleague called me at 8 pm while I was driving home with my family, to tell me that a manila envelope had been sent to me from our company’s main office located in the capital, Santo Domingo, and that it was for my eyes only. Right away I thought “what on Earth is so important that my colleague can’t wait till tomorrow morning to give it to me.” Out of nowhere my mind started wandering through all the worst case scenarios that might derive from the contents inside that envelope. Obviously, the one that terrified me the most was that there was a letter informing me I was being fired from my job because my boss wasn’t pleased with my work. Coincidentally, Deborah, my wife, fabricated the exact same picture in her mind. We are talking about two totally independent brains threading together an identical outcome to a situation than can unfold in a broad variety of ways.
For a brief moment I completely erased my accomplishments as Project Coordinator, and how my boss has confided and relied on my technical criteria to solve different issues that have come up along the way. I did not abandon the thought of being fired completely until I received the envelope in my hands and opened it up. All I pulled out were copies of checks that had been paid to various workers, as well as service and materials suppliers, during the course of last week.
I talked to Debby about this, and we agreed that negative thinking is almost a human condition, and no one is exonerated from experiencing this, at least every now and then. At first I felt upset, but then I decided not to be so hard on myself. Good thing I learned the proper information from Relationship YOU regarding this line of thoughts, and I was able to cope with the emotions that arose within me as a result of my mind’s creative thinking. I am grateful indeed!
Page last updated on March 27, 2012 at 6:51 am
