Weekly Relationship Tips
“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
~ Will Rogers
Before this day ends I guarantee your partner will give you the opportunity to learn something about yourself.
Relationships are an interesting and fascinating blend of events, processes, challenges and growth opportunities. Life is not about what your relationship partner is trying to teach you but what you are willing to learn about yourself as a result of sharing life with them. Relationships are a classroom. In a sense class begins the day we begin our new relationship and ends the day the relationship ends for whatever reason. There are no vacations, recesses and you never graduate from this relationship school.
There is no final exam and there is no pass or fail. You can however repeat a grade again and again until you learn the necessary skills or attitudes that your teacher in this or any relationship class is trying to help you learn.
Each of us is traveling through our very unique lives toward a variety of circumstances, events, people, and outcomes. We are bringing these outcomes and people into our lives both unconsciously and consciously.
Some people are good students and learn the necessary lessons the first time they appear while others are stuck in the same old patterns, life dramas and situations because they fail to bring the learning back to themselves.
You can’t quit school and you must complete each assignment before you get to move on to the next one. There are however a number of pop quizzes. Some people refuse to see the learning as theirs. They continuously point their fingers outward toward their partner or circumstances and blame them for their own issues, frustrations, stress, fears or challenges.
Life is a neutral experience. It doesn’t care whether you are poor or wealthy, happy or unhappy, educated or ignorant, good looking or ugly, afraid or courageous, from Boston or Atlanta, are a Catholic or Jewish, single or married working or retired. It doesn’t have opinions. It doesn’t judge. It just is.
Class is not about what comes into your life, but how you handle it that matters. Relationship success comes to many people. Some handle it well while others do not. Relationship adversity comes to all of us sooner or later. Some people give up while others use the struggle to get better, wiser or stronger. Everyone has problems in their relationships; with children, in-laws or spouses.
The opportunity for personal growth or learning, can be found in each of life’s experiences or teachers. The key to success and happiness is to learn to bring all of the learning back to yourself and not to point your finger or blame others or life, for the teachers you get. You and I don’t get to choose all of the lessons in our lives or our relationships and we certainly don’t get to choose how other people should learn their lessons. Each of us is on our own unique path through life into our future.
One way to know if you have not yet learned one of life’s particular lessons is to observe that which is in your life now. For example if, you are having a particular relationship problem there is most likely a relationship lesson that you failed to learn in the past.
The opening line in the all-time best selling book by Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled states, “Life is difficult.” Scott goes on to explain that life is only difficult for people who expect life to be easy.
Are you learning your lessons well or are you in blame or denial?