From This Day Forward-Relationship and Life Transition Coach/Facilitator

Another great Mexican adventure. ❤️🌞🇲🇽.

The Art of Relationships: How to build meaningful connections with the important people in your life.

The Art of Relationships: How to build meaningful connections with the important people in your life. Hi , I hope this email finds you well. As you know our relationships play a significant role in shaping our life experiences. They impact our joy, mental and physical well-being, finances, successes, failures, and opportunities - at work, at home, and at play. It's hard to deny the po...

Simple and True and Sometimes, we do need support from others to help us believe in ourselves.

Steps to cultivating a relationship that can survive the hard times.

How To Survive a Pandemic Relationship
(and potentially create an even healthier one)

We all want relationships where we know we can rely on each other to get through even the roughest times life throws our way. But even better is to have a relationship where the challenging times actually bring us closer and deepens the relationship in the end.

All relationships have their challenges at the best of times and these are certainly not the best of times.

If you were to take any relationship, even the healthiest one and forced people to be closed in together for months on end, work from home together sometimes in very in small spaces, cut them off from their loved ones and close friends, did not allow any of their normal stress release activities, add the threat of losing their jobs or actually losing them and losing loved ones they possibly weren't able to be with, what relationship wouldn’t start to crack or break apart altogether?

The following is an overview of 6 characteristics (not an inclusive list) that help navigate these extremely difficult times and the bonus is, incorporating these will also bring more fun, joy, love, respect, trust and compassion to your relationships day to day.

The first 2 points are meant to be ongoing and incorporated prior to hitting the rough times. These components help establish a strong foundation which can be compared to a tree with deep roots, when the strong winds do hit, there is a foundation that holds it steady and withstands the storms. These are general in nature relative to building healthy relationships.

• Build a positive emotional savings account – If on an ongoing basis we are continually making deposits into our emotional bank accounts with acts of kindness, expressions of love, telling others what we appreciate about them, it is like wearing a life jacket when you fall overboard. You are not going to go down as fast or sink as deep when you do hit rough water.

• Be aware of not building a negative emotional savings account. – the reverse of the above unfortunately happens more often in relationships. We build a negative account by snapping at each other, losing patience over little things, nitpicking, putting each other down, saying things in anger which are not rectified. Rather than a life jacket, we are carrying an anchor that quickly drags us down when times get rough.

Steps to incorporate when the rough times do happen;

1. Self Awareness -
most important and why it is the first step. Be tuned into your feelings. We react to and treat others based on our emotional state. This is often unconscious and programmed at a young age. Catch yourself before you cause damage or at the least “apologize” if needed. Consider the fact that for human beings feeling out of control of our situation or not knowing what our future holds is a catalyst for fear (this has been pushed to limits we never imaged during COVID). When we are afraid, we usually lash out in some way. We may do that by criticizing, looking for blame, losing patience, losing focus, attacking, angry words, being inconsiderate of others. This is where SELF AWARENESS comes in.

2. Awareness of other –
chances are if you are feeling fear, anger, frustration, exhaustion, a lack of control, then others are as well. Ask them how “they” are doing. Understanding how others are coping “or not”, gives you insight to their behaviours and actions and opens the door for empathy, patience and acceptance.

3. Appreciation and acts of kindness –
As in point #1. It is important during challenging times, to make a conscious effort to focus on the characteristics you like about the other person. It does not have to relate to anything in the moment, just random expressions of appreciation for who they are. If initially you must work at thinking of something, then put in the work.

4. Apologizing –
when we do get caught up in our emotional reactions, and we all do, we often act or say things that are exaggerated, insensitive, attacking, disrespectful and hurtful. Apologizing is one of the most important components of a healthy relationship. It will de-escalate feelings of hurt, resentment and anger faster than anything I have experienced. This isn’t an easy one for people to do and for some valid reasons. You may need coaching and guidance to better understand why and when to say “I’m Sorry” but the rewards are definitely worth it.

5. Be Aware of your own Defensiveness –
We usually feel defensive when we feel threatened or put down or questioned. However, a good skill to use when this happens is to stop and gain clarity on the other person’s intention by asking open questions. Often our defensiveness is coming from old memories, insecurities and emotional states and not appropriately aligned with the actual situation.

6. Stay curious –
prior to reacting or lashing out in anger, hurt or frustration, take a breath, slow yourself down and check in to clarify others intentions. This is an often left out, critical step in relationships. This allows you to reflect before responding, it allows the other person to feel listened to and understood and you never know, you may learn you overreacted to a misunderstanding on your part. Either way, you will be calmer, they will be calmer and your response will definitely be coming from a more accurate perspective.

This is not a complete list however it a good start to building a foundation that gets you through the hard times AND makes the good times even better.
 If you are ready for positive change in your current and future relationships let’s chat.
 If you are interested in a complimentary assessment and 30 minute introductory session, let’s chat.

Yes, you can have a performance improvement conversation that ends with the employee feeling confident, empowered and looking forward to improving. Throughout my years as an employee relations consultant and leadership coach, I have found performance improvement conversations to be one of the most challenging topics. Understandably and for several reasons; concern for hurting someone’s feelings, not wanting to demotivate someone, not feeling ...