West meets East

Peaceful Relationships

We all want to have a relationship as close to perfect as possible but the truth is a “perfect” relationship does not exist. We all encounter bumps when it comes to our relationships. Obviously no relationship is perfect all the time.

This is not to say that you can not be complete happy all the time in your relationship, you absolutely can. Finding inner peace in relationships is not as hard as some people think either.

How do you do this? I can state this concept, in one word… Perception. The way that we perceive the things that happen in our relationships directly dictates what we will feel as a result of that experience.
Here’s an example…

You are home waiting for your wife to get home and she is running late. After she is an hour late, you begin to worry and try to call her on her cell phone, which she does not answer. You think that she has been in an accident or that something happened to her so you worry more.

When your spouse arrives, you ask “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”, “I HAVE BEEN WORRIED SICK!” Then your spouse starts to explain that they were caught in traffic and that their phone battery went dead or something of that nature and you feel like you over reacted which you most certainly did!

The key here is that you chose to be worried instead of thinking “they are probably just stuck in traffic” In addition, you probably spoke loudly, when she came through the door. If you were stuck in traffic for an hour, would you want to be greeted like that when you got in the door?

As you chose to be worried, you can choose to be optimistic and think the best of every situation.

By doing this you will save yourself a huge amount of stress and also save yourself tons of arguments and fights as a result of always thinking the worst of every situation.

When you take control of your perception and choose to perceive things optimistically and always think the best of each situation, you will find that nearly every experience will be a positive one.

The first step though is making that choice to change your instinct to think the worst about a situation.

This is not as easy as flipping a switch, at first. You need to be conscious of your thinking and catch yourself, when you start thinking negatively, so that you can quickly change your thinking.

Over time, you gain more control of how you perceive things and you will automatically begin to perceive everything in a happy, go lucky way.

Your mind will grow and become stronger, as you train it perceive things optimistically.

Be conscious of the way you perceive the situations in your relationships and achieve a much more peaceful and fulfilling relationship.

For my SU friend, I think I should go from the general to the specific. Your message states, "I know I need to see him in a more positive light." Do exactly that... perceive him in a more positive light. You can not change your brother; you can only change your perception of him. Brothers and sisters share long, complicated stories but at one point in your mutual story, you did not perceive him as a lazy bum. Return to you previous perception, shower him with love and acceptance. Perhaps, he will change his perception of himself and act accordingly.

Any questions??