But all the personal work doesn’t amount to a hill of beans if you don’t have rich relationships with other people. It’s like trying to live in a void, a vacuum, or a hermit cave, without accessing the things that form the core value of human experience: a full range of heart-based emotions and feelings, as well as the clearest mirrors possible for your own behavior<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, depending on the depth of your personal growth to this point, that might all sound like a given. But the sad truth is, most (or, perhaps, ALL) of us have challenges with it. And the patterns we create in our relationships with others — the good, the bad, and the ugly <\/em>— are programmed in us <\/strong>so deeply that sometimes it’s hard to even see what’s going on, let alone change it for the better…<\/p>\n For example, maybe you grew up like me, in a household full of intellectual people who could recite facts and thoughts until the cows came home, but rarely expressed heartfelt feelings. It’s a classic case of the mind over-running the heart, which not only makes it difficult to share your true essence, but causes a tendency to judge, blame, make assumptions, have a need to be right, or simply take people for granted.<\/p>\n Or perhaps you grew up with a parent (or two) who ruled with an iron fist, causing you to be afraid to say what you thought or felt, run away — physically or emotionally — when things got tough, or let problems and misunderstanding simmer until they boiled over.<\/p>\n Or maybe nobody paid attention to you, so your mind wanders when people talk to you, or you become defensive and focus on your own agenda.<\/p>\n Becoming aware of your patterns is the first step to correcting them, and while it’s the simplest step, it can also be the hardest<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This is something I’ve been wrestling with myself lately, because it took many painful discussions with Barry — somebody with a completely different background, and hence totally different patterns — for me to see what I was doing on a subconscious level.<\/p>\n Yeah, you know how it is… whatever you grew up with just seems “normal” until you’re able to see it from an objective viewpoint, reflected in the mirror of a close relationship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That doesn’t mean we should blame our upbringing or our families for our own shortcomings, because eventually you have to take a stand and admit that the buck stops with you (and hey, if I can do it, so can you!)<\/p>\n Then, of course, the next step is changing the old self-defeating pattern into a newer, better one<\/strong>. One resource that has helped me in this area is the Relationship Reverse Report<\/a><\/strong> by Susie and Otto Collins. It goes over 14 ways you may be thinking, acting, communicating or being that can take you further away from what you really want… and, of course, tells you how to correct the ones that you struggle with.<\/p>\n I say “the ones you struggle with” because I’d go to Vegas on the fact that you, like everyone else, has at least a couple of these bad habits… and if you feel you don’t, you’re either in denial or have already done a LOT of conscious work on yourself and your relationships.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.lwlworldwide.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/RRRimage002.jpg\" "\\"RRRimage002\\"")
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