It is what it is. Let it be. Allow it to happen.

These are sentiments you will hear from spiritual people who have suffered. There is great wisdom in those words.

Pain is a part of life and is very helpful for keeping us on a good path. Avoiding legitimate pain is not practical or realistic. We have the ability to make the pain worse, by wishing life were different or telling ourselves it should not be this way. That is the basis of suffering. We do have to have pain; we do not have to suffer. It does not change the pain at all, it changes our relationship to the pain.

When I get migraines, I can fight them or say to myself, "I can't handle this. This is terrible." Fighting makes the pain worse as do those statements. "I don't deserve to have this pain," I said, as if other people deserve to have their pain and I am somehow exempt.

My doctor actually told me to embrace the migraine, make friends with it and learn from it. At the time, I got upset, thought he was delusional and disregarded that advice and yet fighting it makes it worse. Maybe the good doctor had some wisdom there.

I remind people that when they avoid the object of their anxiety, they strengthen it. When they embrace it, understand it and learn from it, the anxiety is weakened. The same goes for other types of pain.

The pain can help me understand something profound. It helps me look for different ways of being. It helps me align myself and get back into balance (harmony). Yes, I am saying the pain helps me. It is simply a message that something in my life is not working. It is not God punishing me, it is actually a message to get back on track akin to telling the doctor, "It hurts when I do this," and the doctor replies, "Then stop doing that."

As much as I hate to admit it, pain upsets my status quo and I become more alive. I experience life differently and have to be more aware, more engaged with life. I get in touch with my spiritual side more when I am in pain.

I look for the lesson in the pain rather than look for ways to dull the pain (though aspirin has its place as well). Since I do not see reality as it is, I need to learn how to correctly interpret suffering and go into it instead of avoiding it. I need to stop judging pain as bad and something that I must avoid.

The goal is to relate to both suffering and pain in ways that I have not yet done.

If you are looking at being happy, as in the transitory feeling, then you will be happy and then unhappy and then a whole bunch more feelings and then happy again. If you are asking how to have a meaningful, deep, fulfilling relationship, I can help get you started here.

First of all, like anything worth it, there is hard work. How hard? You've heard of the Olympics, right? Yeah, that hard. No joke. Yeah, even on days you don't feel like it. Yeah, even when things don't seem fair. It is work and yet, it is worth it. I don't see a whole bunch of hermit houses going up around town. People seem to still want to work it out even though it is a lot of work. The hardest work is being nice, kind, compassionate when you would rather share y

Second, I recently finished reading The Power and the Pain by Andrew Holecek and he described it beautifully "It does not matter what happens in the outside world if your mind is free and your heart is open on the inside. You may not control the world, but you control the way you react to the world." Your relationship does not make you happy or make you sad. You yourself control the way you react to the world. If you choose to be happy, you will be happy in your relationship. If you choose to be miserable, you will be miserable. By the way, the same is true for your job.


Third, your relationship is like life. It is not all about you. If you make it about you maximizing your happiness, watch how miserable you become. If you make it about the relationship, being of service to the other person and finding joy in their happiness, it is much more likely to be happy.

Gottman calls them "Regrettable Incidents." We have all had them, most of us weekly if not daily. We wish we had not said or done it, but we did.

The fact that messed up is not a good thing. If I mess up, apologize sincerely and genuinely attempt to not do it again, the problem is addressed and usually I am forgiven. Believe it or not, this builds trust.

Try saying, "I am really sorry that I messed up and hurt you. I did not mean to hurt you. Here is what I will do to make sure that does not happen again." This is not a free pass and your actions need to match your words in order to fully earn that trust back.

What happens when I mess up and do not apologize? That is when it appears to be intentional by the other person. I had a chance to make up for it, if it was a mistake and I did not even attempt to make up for it? That is going to hurt a relationship. I am communicating , "I really do not care that I hurt you. I am not accountable."

This is less likely to be forgiven in a relationship. It chips away at the trust.

Now imagine if the mess up was a big one and you have already chipped away at the trust in the relationship for awhile.

Let me know what you think,
Don

How long do emotions last?
That depends if you poke them, stir them, fight against them or just allow them to be. If you just allow the emotions to be emotions, remind yourself that feelings are not facts, then most emotions evaporate after about 20 minutes. They are emotions, nothing more and nothing less. They can guide us to do very wonderful things as well as very damaging things.

Imagine a disagreement in a romantic relationship. Not hard to do, right? It is hard to live with other people and it is hard to even be in relationship with other people. We have not figured out how to change that and it has been that way since humans have walked the earth. Furthermore, it can be challenging to disagree with other people in a way that both parties appreciate. Heck, I  would rather not have any conflict at all.

Research has found that there are some ways to have disagreements that lead to divorce rather quickly. While that is nice to know, I would rather know how to disagree and stay married.

Think about it from a customer service perspective. Good customer service, like at Wegmans, is not filled with emotion. It is a simple exchange of facts and the situation is rectified, if at all possible. Remember that not all problems can be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

Gottman talks about perpetual problems as problems that have no apparent solutions. These are normal and natural and to be expected in every single relationship. When they get dangerous to a relationship is when there is gridlock on perpetual problems, which usually means there are strong emotions. If you can work through your own emotions, then have the discussion, it invariably goes better. This does not mean turn into a robot or be devoid of emotion. It means having the discussion be about the issue without setting one another off.

Gottman reminds us, "When arguing, those couples who spend the most time being unemotional remained married. Neutrality was key to the fate of the relationship."

Do you find it odd that a counselor and a marriage researcher are both advocating less emotion? Think about how well you think and concentrate and function when your emotions have the best of you. It is not about being a robot, it is about managing the emotions that you have so that they serve you rather than cause you to be reactive and out of control during an argument. When you are not in argument mode, it is also a good idea to manage your emotions instead of putting them in control.