Personal Growth Tips

It seem that a sound relationship, in a couple or marriage, have to go through four distinct stages. These are stages of growth, even if one or two of them look as non-developmental for the relationship. A couple must accomplish all these stages in order to achieve its maturity.

The Romance Stage

This is the most craved stage. When we begin a relationship from passion, we hope it will last forever. However, the reality is that it lasts a rather a short time, in the most cases a year or so. This stage is characterized by a lack of knowledge about our partner. We just feel and do not think. We see now only our similitude but not the difference between us. Yes, it’s a beautiful and heavenly period when we just love.

The Discovery of the Other Stage

Even if we feel an infinite love for the other, there come a period when we begin to discover other sides of other partner. Especially those sides that seem not to meet our expectations. Now we uncover the individuality of our partner, the true one. We see now the difference between us. Yes, we love each other but first we love ourselves. This is the reason we want the other to be one with us. How he/she can have his/her own path - we ask ourselves. So we feel betrayed.

To reach the maturity of our relationship, we must firstly reach the third stage. Therefore, at this moment we have to build a bridge between ourselves:

• communicate;
• listen to each other and share your feelings;
• respect the individuality of the other;

The Self-Discovery Stage

At this stage, each of the partners begins to calm down and to focus on their own interests and wishes. Now each tries to create and develop their path and lifestyle. At this moment appears the possibility of parting the ways. To avoid this:

• allow to the other to develop in their own way;
• communicate to each other your goals, your interests, your pleasures, … ;
• accept the other as he/she is;
• don’t take the other as a mean to fulfill your individuality;

The Rediscovery of the Other Stage

Now the partners begin to see each other more realistically being aware who the other is and being willing to support. They rediscover each other and their love in a new light, an understanding one. Now they can say that their relationship have reached a lovely stage and a sound maturity.

I just read an interesting article about Steven Hayes, who had suffered panic attacks when he was speaking in public. He doesn’t suffer panic attacks anymore. Even more, he became a great psychologist and publisher (300 peer-reviewed articles & 27 books).

Questions: How did he solve his panic attacks? How could he make such a big step, from patient to coach?

When he had these problems, the stable release orientation in psychotherapy was cognitive therapy. However, he didn’t embrace this approach in his struggle with his problems. He rather embraced the opposite of cognitive therapy, and so he may revolution the psychotherapy field. He started from the hypothesis that:

trying to correct negative thoughts can, paradoxically, intensify them, in the same way that a dieter who keeps telling himself “I really don’t want the pizza” ends up obsessing about … pizza.

Then he proposed another way of tackling our negative thoughts - ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). This new theory imply focusing less on switching your bad thoughts to more positive ones, and more on modifying the way we see our negative thoughts and emotions.

As well as cognitive therapy, ACT is a meta-logical approach. This means thoughts of a lower level (”I’m depressed”) may be handled by higher-level thoughts (”I’m having the thought that I’m depressed”).

The big difference is that cognitive therapy tackles bad thoughts, beliefs directly but Acceptance and Commitment Therapy do this indirectly. Whereas cognitive therapists speak about challenging thoughts and developing new beliefs,

Hayes and the others teach mindfulness, the meditation-inspired practice of observing thoughts without getting entangled in them, approaching them as though they were leaves floating down a stream (”… I want coffee/I should work out/I’m depressed/We need milk …”).

It is more about defusing the power of our negative thoughts rather than changing or replacing them.

Instead of saying “I’m depressed,” it proposes saying “I’m having the thought that I’m depressed.” Hayes isn’t saying people don’t really feel pain (he has felt plenty of it), but he believes we turn pain into suffering when we try to push it away.

Another strong point is that we don’t live at all, if we’re always working on our thoughts. Hayes expressed this idea in “Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life”.

From a historical point of view, we can divide the world into ancient, medieval, modern and post-modern periods.

Silence in Ancient and Medieval Worlds

Some authors say that ancient and medieval periods were full of boring, silent and meditative moments. And that beginning with the modern era, our life has become more tumultuous and deprived of quiet occasions. There is an amount of truth in what they say, but I don’t think that all people from the ancient and medieval periods had so much time to idle and meditate. This kind of moments was reserved mostly for the rich people. The idea is that predominant occupation being agriculture, this work imply a close relationship with the nature, and so a more natural and mind relaxing activities.

Silence in Modern and Post-Modern Worlds

The modern world has brought in our life the industry and all its good and bad outcomes. The industrial world produced the machines that help us, but at the same time it increased the numbers of work hours, brought the monotony of working at a rolling band and ecological problems.

In the post-modern world, the informational and communicational devices are the king of our lives. They have created us many facilities, but they also subjugated us. Even when we want to rest and relax ourselves, the media devices are present (we listen or watch something on a media device in order to relax). But is this kind of relaxation an authentic one? What would you think about me if I have the plug-ears in when I visit the Grand Canyon? Am I relaxing and enjoying the nature? I don’t think so.

Why we avoid silent moments?

Why don’t we allow ourselves moments of quietude? Why are we boring if we don’t have something to do? Why don’t we suffer the silence?

This happen because such moments connect us with our true self and essential questions (such as the question about the meaning(s) of our life). In such moments, we become aware of our weaknesses and we don’t this happen. Another cause is that we have become addicted to agitation. Some say that we are too active, but I think we are too agitated, our minds are overloaded. We can’t stay quiet because the agitation is like a drug that makes us forget our dissatisfactions.

Tips

• don’t avoid quiet, silent and sometimes boring moments, they help you understand yourself, bring you more awareness and raise your level of consciousness;
• try to take silent moments, even if at the beginning they are boring, afterwards they will bring you a peaceful and relaxing silence;
• free your mind of worries and agitation; these instants must be “free of worries”, let your worries fade out;
• just stay unmoved and be aware;
• don’t ask yourself continuously: “what’s next?”, “I missed something?”;
• such occasions give you a sense of perspective and trigger insights;
• these moments train your patience;
• boring is more productive than agitation of mind and body;
• quiet and meditative moments empower and recharge you;

Enjoy your boring moments by transforming them into silent, meditative and relaxing ones.

Daily we enter in more or less conversational situations, with acquaintances or unknown people, on street, at work or at parties. When we meet them, usually we greet each other then begin our conversation on a topic or subject that have attracted our attention, affected or interested us in the recent time.

During our daily conversations, occurs one of these two situations:

• the other is interested in the topic or subject we begin to talk about;
• the other isn’t interested in our subject;

In the first situation, the conversation begins and flows very easy, being constructive and motivating for each other, both/all parties having something to learn.

In the second situation, the conversation becomes, most of the time, a monolog. So one may talk with passion about a certain subject, while the other doesn’t listen, he only mimes listening (certainly he thinks at something else).

When one of participants of a conversation isn’t interested in the subject the other talks about, he either mimes listening until the other finishes his speech and energy or takes the initiative by introducing a conversational virus (a totally different subject). This may lead the conversation into a new direction or not.

The key of a constructive conversation, useful for both/all parties, is to find the common interests. When we know each other, the situation is simpler because we know what we have in common. However, when we begin to talk with an unknown person, the things are harder, the common interest may rise only by trial and error.

Conversational advices:

• try to be aware of the conversation flow and topics, subjects;
• don’t accept passively any subject the other begins to talk about, if you think it isn’t constructive or useful;
• change the course of conversation elegantly and imperceptibly (usually when you don’t know the other);
• when you know the other, you can let him know politely that the subject isn’t constructive and that you want to discuss something else;
• profit of constructive conversations, they give you the possibility to develop your latent ideas;