mindful-relationships1Yesterday I wrote about the importance and benefits of introducing mindfulness into our relationships and shared some tips for achieving a more satisfying relationship with ourselves and significant others.

Today I want to continue with two more top tips that should help you kick start an existing or start afresh with a new relationship, but please remember that meaningfulness begins with ourselves.

Being kind to your self and others are the foundations of having a good relationship, so start simply by being kind. Kindness is really easy to introduce into our behaviours, all we really need to do is take a second to consider how our words and actions may be received by another person, we all know what unkind feels like, so take some time to think about the words and actions directed at ourselves and our partner.

So what else can we do to be mindful in our relationships?

  • Be aware of your constant or recurring problems or relationship blocks, for example if you find yourself feeling angry at your partners actions, consider what is going on to make you feel angry, look at a way to express it as kindly as possible and look for a solution. It could be that you both mean well but other pressures are allowed to impact on your relationship. A relationship is like a garden, it needs regular maintenance, take a look at a recent blog post of mine ‘improving relationships and being a couple’.
  • Becoming aware and clarifying our own thoughts and feelings is good for our relationship too. It is much easier to resolve issues if we are aware of what we are unhappy about and can communicate it in a non defensive or attacking way.

Next time you find yourself being on auto-pilot, try to switch to Mindfulness, take note of what happens, you will be pleasantly surprised.

Remember changing how we think and behave takes time, we have to unlearn our thinking and auto responses, unlearning behaviours can be tough, sometimes harder than learning new ways.

If you need some help with changing how you think and behave and would like to try online counselling with me, take a look at the testimonials from past clients to see how counselling online can help you make your relationship with self and others better.

I hope you have found these ‘Mindful Relationship tips’ useful and I would love to hear your thoughts, you can comment below.

Written by Paul Parkin – online counselling and life coaching

25th April 2013