“Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.”
Emmet Fox

“Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them.”
Unknown

Criticism can be a painful thing. When it’s valid it can also provide you with new insights about yourself and your life.

Many of the tips in this article can be used to learn to handle criticism aimed at you in a better way. But I’d also like to point out that it can be very useful to examine your own reasons for feeling like you have to criticise someone. It can tell you quite a bit about your own life at this moment and what you think about yourself.

1. Understand through experience.

“Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.”
Elvis Presley

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
Benjamin Franklin

It’s easy to fall into the trap of criticizing things because, well, you feel like it’s wrong. But do you really understand what you are criticising?

From my own experience I have found that one tends to become less critical of things when you have experienced it for yourself and have an understanding. Instead of just knowledge about it.

It’s easy to be the armchair general, knowing what is always right. Especially in hindsight. It makes you feel good and like you are right.

But in the end the credit does not belong to this person.

2. Remember who the credit belongs to.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Awesome quote and a thought that you may want to keep in mind. It is of course the wo/man actually out there in the arena who takes the difficult path. The path one doesn’t really have to take. You could just stand on the sidelines criticising which would be easier.

But watching life instead of living it may not be the best option. Because anytime you are on the sidelines just watching you are probably not doing what you deep down think is the right thing to do. Such behaviour makes you not feel good about yourself or your life.

3. Keep your focus on what’s helpful for you.

“The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.”
William Faulkner

If you’re in the arena you are doing, failing, learning and repeating that all over again and again. You doing something you think is worthwhile.

It’s helpful to use your focus selectively. If you look at the sides of the arena you may see people booing and some people cheering you on. But to really get the results you want you have to focus. Focus on what you are doing in the arena. Keep your eyes on the ball.

The thing is if you take in the positive voices and let them define you then you have to take in the negative voices too.

How can you get past that problem? You can listen to them all, but don’t have a need or craving deep inside for any of them. Don’t seek yourself on other people’s opinions. Instead, validate yourself by focusing on the positive things you think and do. And get to know who you really are, not what other people think you are.

My mindset for praise – that I try to stick to as much as I can – is that it’s cool and I appreciate it. It’s great to get praise, but I seldom get overly excited about it and jump and down shouting enthusiastically.

A great upside of this mindset is that when you receive the opposite – negative criticism – you can often observe it calmly without too much wild, negative emotions blocking the way. This allows you to appreciate that piece of criticism too (if there is something to learn from it).

Basically this mindset is about not caring too much about what other people think. If you do then you easily become pretty needy and let others control how you feel. Both how good and bad you feel.

4. Don’t accept the gift.

“A man interrupted one of the Buddha’s lectures with a flood of abuse. Buddha waited until he had finished and then asked him, “If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?”

“To the one who offered it,” said the man.

“Then,” said the Buddha, “I decline to accept your abuse and request you to keep it for yourself.”

Simply don’t accept the gift of a criticism. You don’t have to. Then it still belongs to the person who offered it.

This is of course easier said than done. To have everyone own their own feelings and opinions instead of letting them be a part of you or something you feel responsible for isn’t easy.

Still, one can do it if one is aware of what Buddha describes. You can then choose to decline the gift rather than thinking that you have to accept it. Now, this might not work every time, especially if you are feeling very emotional and vulnerable. Still, it can be helpful to keep in mind.

This also ties into the previous tip. When you really need and crave other people’s positive – and perhaps negative – opinions to define yourself it becomes hard to reject the gift since you don’t see/don’t want to see it as something separate from yourself. You are all wrapped up in it.

5. Who are you talking about?

“When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says something about our own need to be critical.”
Unknown

When you criticize someone what does that say about you? And when someone is criticising you who are they really revealing?

If someone makes a personal attack or just let’s the destructive words flow then remember that criticism isn’t always about you. Criticism can be a way for the one critiquing to release pent up anger, frustration or jealousy. Or a way to reinforce that his/her viewpoint or belief is the right one. Or s/he may have habit of getting others involved emotionally – baiting them – to build a negative spiral, an argument/fight or to get attention. It’s about him/her. Not about something you did.

It can have a calming effect to remember this. And to remember that the other person is still human and might just be having a bad day or week.

This does of course not just go for “the other people” out there. It goes for you and me too. Whenever you feel a need to be critical, ask yourself why. Whenever you have been critical towards someone who didn’t deserve it remember that you are hurting yourself and reinforcing your current state of mind and self-esteem level by this behaviour.

6. There is a better choice.

“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.”
Charles Schwab

So, what can one do instead of criticising someone to get them to improve? One way is by lifting them up instead. By focusing on what they are doing well. And on how they can improve, rather how they are screwing things up.

As Schwab says, and as you probably have noticed in your own life, the spirit of for instance the workplace can have a great effect on your on your own mood, productivity, enthusiasm and motivation.

Energy flows where attention goes. So whatever is focused on – criticism or lifting people up – will expand and become stronger. One may think that harsh criticism may help and get results. It may just bring people down though and pollute the emotional environment.

7. Accept that it will always be there.

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing”
Aristotle

Since criticism often is a form of self-expression for the one critiquing or based in a lack of understanding there is little you can do to escape it. You can of course minimize your interactions with highly negative and critical people. Or keep your focus on what you are doing rather than the critics.

But whatever you do some people will probably feel a need to criticise.

Whatever you do there will always be people who don’t like what you are doing.

And that’s OK. That’s normal.

As Eleanor Roosevelt says:

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.”
Dale Carnegie

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
Galileo Galilei

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
Leonardo Da Vinci

One of the interesting things about getting older and being interested in personal development is how you come to understand just how little you really understand. Quite the change from when I was younger and thought I knew it all. :)

But how can we improve our understanding of ourselves and our world now? Here are 8 timeless thoughts on that topic.

1. Take notice of what others may teach you about yourself.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
Carl Jung

What we see in others is quite often what we see in ourselves. And what irritates us in people is may be what we don’t like in ourselves. What you judge in someone you are actually judging in yourself.

Therefore what you notice and what irritates you in others can teach you important things about yourself. Things you may not be aware of. In a way people can be like a mirror for you. A mirror that can help you to learn more about yourself, what you fear and how you may be fooling yourself.

2. Look at aspirations to understand the heart.

“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.”
Kahlil Gibran

A person may not have done as much as he or she had hoped for just yet. But the exciting part of a person does to large extent lie in his/her dreams. What does s/he aspire to? Dream about during the lunch break? Work at on evenings and weekends?

Sure, many of the things people dream about may not become more than dreams. But the dreams say much about the people and their hearts. And that’s often more fascinating – and surprising – than what they work with and where they live.

3. You must do to understand.

“The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”
Tom Bodett

“There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it”
Charles F. Kettering

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Chinese proverb

The Chinese proverb above is very much true in my experience. You cannot understand something by reading about it on a blog or in a book. You may think you understand something. But it’s not until you try it in your own life that you know how it feels and you get the full experience.

That is one of the reasons why it’s crucial that you take action. No matter how many books you read on a topic you need to add real-life experience. It’s also often in real-life that you learn the quickest, because here you have access to great feedback like failure.

4. Understand first and not the other way around.

“Seek first to understand and then to be understood.”
Stephen R. Covey

It’s very easy to do this backwards. We all have a need to be understood so it’s natural to start in that end. But to really be understood it is better to start with understanding the person you are talking to.

By understanding him/her first, by understanding his/her needs, wants, dreams, mood etc. you can adjust your message, solutions and communication so it better fits the other person. If you just plow on with your message and feel need to be understood first you may not get across at all. Because you don’t understand the person in front of you.

5. Use a lens of sympathy.

“No person was every rightly understood until they had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance, but of sympathy.”
Thomas Carlyle

To really understand someone you have to open yourself up to him/her. You can do that by viewing him/her through a lens of sympathy. This opens you up emotionally and lets you relate to the person on an emotional level and not just the level of words. It also let’s you see the person more clearly instead of parts of yourself projected on him/her.

Words aren’t everything. The most important thing is often how people feel beneath the words. To rightly understand them you need understand how they feel too.

To further understand someone you may also want to remember that emotions are contagious. So what you feel is may be what you are receiving from the person in front of you.

6. Be here and now completely.

“When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely — the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti

This is something I have already written a lot about on this blog. To be present. To be here.

When you are here and now fully you sense the nuances and the layers below the surface. Presence is a wonderful thing when observing your world or in a conversation/relationship. You are fully attentive to the other person. You don’t have to think about what to say, the right words – usually – just flows out of you effortlessly. To be present seems to raise the quality of whatever you are doing compared to if you are unfocused and split.

How can you reconnect with the present? Three suggestions:

• Focus on your breath. Just take a couple of dozen belly breaths and focus on your breathing.
• Focus on what’s right in front of you. Or around you. Or on you. Use your senses. Just look at what’s right in front of you right now. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel the fabric of your clothes and focus on how they feel. You can for instance use the autumn sun or rain and how it feels on your skin to connect with the present.
• Pick up the vibe from present people. If you know someone that is more present than most people then you can pick up his/her vibe of presence (just like you can pick up positivity or enthusiasm from people). If you don’t know someone like that I recommend listening to/watching cds/dvds by Eckhart Tolle like Stillness Speaks or The Flowering of Consciousness. His books work too. But cds/dvds are better than books for picking up someone’s vibe since the biggest part of communication is voice tonality and body language.

7. Try a different point of view.

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.”
Harper Lee

“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.”
Carl Jung

This is certainly one of the hardest things about understanding. Why? Because we want to be right. The ego wants it. And it makes it very hard to switch “sides” and look at things from another perspective, especially the perspective of someone you may be in opposition to. By “choosing a side” we may project something upon the other person and label him/her. That label makes it very hard to see the real person underneath.

And so it becomes easy to regard the person as a fool. Because you never put yourself in his/her place and at least tried to understand. All that is left is strange and stupid otherness in the other person that enhances how right and perhaps even good you are.

As I wrote yesterday, judging can give you a temporary boost of positive emotions. But it’s always followed by a hangover where negative thought loops and emotions run around in your mind and body for quite some time.

In the long run it’s better to try to avoid that instant gratification. To instead, for example, try thought #5 and some sympathy. Because if you do then that makes you feel better and opens up your eyes and world to more fully understand both new – and old – things and people.

8. Understand that there are things you may not need to understand.

“People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.”
Claude Monet

“The fact that you are willing to say, ”I do not understand, and it is fine,” is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.”
Wayne Dyer

I don’t know where I got this but one quote that has been bouncing around in my mind for the last few weeks goes something like this: “Analysis is a form of violence.”

I think it was Eckhart Tolle who said it (and probably Buddha/some mystic before him).

And that’s a thing I haven’t always paid attention to. When you are interested in personal development then much of your attention is focused on understanding and analyzing things. Perhaps even more so when you also write about the topic. It’s easy to get totally stuck in an analyzing frame of mind for long periods of time.

But while that can be very useful it can also detract from positive things.

Always trying to understand it can screw up your human enjoyment in things, people and experiences. Perhaps some things are better if you don’t analyze them so much. Then you will have greater enjoyment of them and be able to see the wonderful and beautiful whole rather than all the small pieces of the puzzle.

Finding a balance between trying to understand and just experiencing your world isn’t easy. But I think it can be a very useful balance to try to figure out for just about anyone.

One great way to make your life unnecessarily hard and difficult is to assume that the world revolves around you.

Sure, such a belief is seductive in the way that it makes you someone who must be very important. If everyone is looking at you and talking about you all the time then that feeds the ego.

The ego wants to play the comparison game. So you may identify with a position where you are more than someone else. It may be that you are prettier than someone else. But it may also be something like you thinking you are stupider or uglier than someone else. As long as you are more than someone in some way the ego gets fed.

This belief about how the world revolves around you may be based partly in how when you are young the world kinda revolves around you. Your parents, siblings and a lot of grown ups are tending to your needs and whims all the time. However, now that we are adults such beliefs can become limiting.

Thinking that the world revolves around you doesn’t just mean that someone is behaving like an annoying, spoiled brat. It can be much more subtle than that. For me this has been about sitting down and really thinking about it and my reactions to different things in everyday life. You may find it useful to do the same. This belief can be a bit sneaky.

But why should you give it up though? Well, here are four good reasons that I use for motivation.

1. Decreased shyness.

Everyone may not agree with me here. But from my own personal experience with being shy it does to a large part come from a belief that people care a great deal about what you are about to say or do. Perhaps you are afraid that people will laugh or analyze what you said/did for the rest of the week.

Well, guess what. People have their own lives. I’m not saying that people closest to you doesn’t care about you. But that people mostly may think about you for a few minutes. Then they return to their lives. People have their challenges at home, at work, with the economy and so on. Yes, in your head you may be the most important person in the world. But don’t project that onto other people. Because in their world the most important person is probably them or their kid(s).

Now, the thing here is that people tend to care if you care though. Emotions are contagious. So if you feel nervous or act that way people will feel it too. If you don’t care then they won’t usually care that much either. Your new belief – that it’s not all about you – makes you less self-conscious. You become less shy. And people will sense less of those negative feelings coming from you too.

2. You become more open to try new things.

Well, this is an off-shot to the previous point I guess. When you give up the belief that it’s all about you experience a bigger social freedom since you know that feeling constrained by how people may react is just to a large part an illusion.

Trying new things is of course not only fun and a great way to grow. It will also provide you with proof that people don’t really care that much as you try something you may think will bring out a negative reaction from your surroundings. And then you are met by feedback like the disinterested “oh, that’s nice” or the eager questions from curious friends/co-workers/family.

3. It makes it easier to deal with criticism and negativity from other people.

If someone makes a personal attack or just let the destructive words flow then remember that criticism isn’t always about you. Criticism is a way for the one critiquing to release pent up anger, frustration or jealousy. Or a way to reinforce that his/her viewpoint or belief is the right one. Or s/he may have habit of getting others involved emotionally – baiting them – to build a negative spiral, an argument/fight or to get attention. It’s about him/her. Not about something you did.

It can have a calming effect to remember this.

4. It makes you more open and understanding towards others.

This is surely one of the best benefits of realizing that you are perhaps not the centre of the universe. It’s very easy to misinterpret people when you are stuck in that old mindset. You get some criticism and you think: “wow, I suck”. While it may be about the other person being human and having a bad day or week.

Let’s say that the waitress at a cafe is very rude. You may take this personally and get angry or irritated for the rest of the afternoon. Or feel like you are having a bad day and get down about yourself. But perhaps it wasn’t about you? Maybe she’s worried about her job. Maybe she is going through a divorce. Maybe her dog was run over yesterday.

You just don’t know what is going on in her life.

When you stop thinking that it all revolves around you experience a larger openness and instead of going into a powerful negative reaction when someone does something you are more understanding. Yes, reacting negatively gives you a temporary emotional rush as you feel right and poorly treated by the waitress. It’s the ego popping up again.

However, personally I don’t think that short emotional boost is worth it since it’s always followed by negative thought loops and emotions going around and around in your mind and body. Being open and understanding can be harder. But it makes you and your normal day much more pleasant.

How to put a stop to this belief

I don’t have many fancy tips on how to replace your old belief with your new one.

Just keep in mind that it’s not all about you as much as you can in your daily life. Make it a mental habit by reinforcing it. A written reminder here and there in your daily environment – such as post-it notes on your computer and bathroom mirror – can be very helpful.

The more you view the world through your new belief and get proof from experiences in your life the more comfortable you’ll be with the belief. The physical proof in your world solidifies the belief and “makes it real” to you. Instead of something you may have read on some blog.

You can also try acting as you would like to feel when you feel self-conscious and like everyone’s attention is focused on you. In such situation or on such days act as if the world doesn’t revolve around you and people don’t care that much about what you do. After a while and after taking action you will actually start to feel that way for real. It’s a way to jump-start yourself in your daily life and lead yourself onto a more helpful.

Note: This is a guest post by Kacper Wrzesniewski.

Each day we are dreaming about our goals. Each day we are moving forward, step closer to the success. Sometimes we are so focused on our objectives that we don’t have time to think why we desire success.

What is the reason? Do we really need it? Is it coming from the conscious or unconscious part of our mind?

I have a simple exercise for you, my friend. Don’t worry; it doesn’t require you to move away from screen and it will take no more than few minutes.

Just relax and focus thoughts on your latest success you have achieved. It doesn’t have to be something really big and outstanding. A small success that you have recently experienced is absolutely enough.

Ok, got it?

Imagine that achieving success is like a journey; sometimes it can be quite easy, sometimes really tough, can be also short or very long. Let’s figure out why you took this journey and what helped you to accomplish it.

Jump in your memories to the point where your journey began. Recall feelings and emotions connected to this moment. What was the reason you decided to set yourself this goal?

How did you take your first step?

While moving your thoughts on the path toward your goal, try to identify factors that motivated you and increased your energy to go forward. Look also for those who obstructed your journey.

How did you cope with them?

Finally, arrive to your destination point.

What did you feel when you succeed? Were you truly happy or maybe disappointed as the goal didn’t bring you satisfaction and fulfillment?

Don’t worry if above questions was difficult for you. To help you answering them, I share with you the six main reasons, which I identify why we want to achieve success.

1. We want to achieve success because it is a part of our life plans.

Success is strongly related with our life plans. We can distinguish certain milestones in our plans, like graduating, getting a desired job, starting our own business or new relationship.

Achieving these milestones are successes for us. Each of these goals brings us positive feelings and emotions because we know that our life plans are fulfilling and that we are making visible progress.

2. We want the output related with certain success.

In many cases we want to experience benefits related with the achievement of a certain goal. In our minds, we have a strong association between these benefits and a state when we are successful.

This association causes our success to be desirable and enjoyable.

3. We love the taste of winning.

Achieving success is a very positive experience also because it adds value to us and pumps our egos. Achieving success is like personal victory.

People love winning. It is very natural. When two children play a game, each of them want to win. It is not important if there is any material prize.

They don’t need any additional purpose.

It is deep in our nature that we love the taste of winning.

4. We need stimulation.

Knowing that there is a purpose, a goal we want to achieve, it stimulates us to act. The more challenging goal, the stronger success feeling is related to it.

This way, we can get a better motivation to achieve bigger goals and we get additional stimulus to self-improve, grow personally and learn to handle challenging goal.

5. We want to compensate lacks and failures from the past.

We all make mistakes.

Failures are definitely not nice, but they are unavoidable in our lives and they should always provide valuable feedback.

They also raise a strong force that will push us toward further goals.

We lost, but in the end we want to win. This victory, preceded by many failures, can compensate all previous unpleasant experiences. This pattern is very often responsible for a reason why we want to achieve success.

6. We find success as a solution for our problems.

Enjoying success is a very positive experience.

It can weaken influence of other, bad experiences in our life. We often find it easier to act in one direction, when we expect success, while we avoid handling different, unpleasant problems in our life.

What is important is that we are often unaware of this mechanism as it mostly works on unconscious level.

Now, one more time ask yourself questions from the first part of this article. Is it easier now to answer them and identify your reasons?

I’m sure you have just achieved higher level of consciousness, as far as achieving success is concerned.

Kacper Wrzesniewski writes on KacperWrzesniewski.com

“The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.”
Anthony Robbins

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one”
C.S Lewis

I think the Tony Robbins quote above is pretty accurate. The quality of your relationships – no matter in what form they may exist – obviously has a huge impact on your life. But what can we do to create new relationships and improve our existing ones?

Well, here are 7 timeless tips that people have used throughout the ages. Hopefully you’ll find something useful.

1. Be open to new people.

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
Anais Nin

It’s easy to get comfortable with what you have and what you know. It feels familiar and safe. But being open to new meetings and being open in those meetings can also be a great thing.

One of the best and quickest ways to grow and experience new things is simply to meet new people with an open mind. You may feel some inner resistance before the meeting, but just like when you don’t feel like going to the gym it’s a good thing to not take that feeling too seriously. It’s there because it makes it easier for you in the short run and because it keeps things as they are. But just ignoring it and going ahead anyways is oftentimes much more rewarding.

2. Be wary of building walls.

“People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.”
Joseph F. Newton Men

The ego wants to divide your world. It wants to create barriers, separation and loves to play the comparison game. The game where people are different compared to you, the game where you are better than someone and worse than someone else. All of that creates fear. And so we build walls. But putting up walls tends to in the end hurt you more than protect you.

So how can you start building bridges instead? One way is to choose to be curious about people. Curiosity is filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. It opens you up. And when you are open and enthusiastic then you have more fun things to think about than focusing on your fear.

Another is to start to see yourself in other people. To get that there is no real separation between you and other people.

That may sound vague. So one practical suggestion and thought you may want to try for a day is that everyone you meet is your friend.

Another one is to see what parts of yourself you can see in someone you meet.

3. Learn to like yourself.

“It is of practical value to learn to like yourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship.”
Norman Vincent Peale

As Peale says, you will have to spend a lot of time with yourself so you might as well make it pleasant. This is also important because how you feel about yourself is often how people will tend to treat you. If you like yourself then that comes through via your body language, voice tonality and words. You will, for example, send out positive and confident signals. Two things that people generally like and appreciate in other people.

How do you learn to like yourself? Well, that seems to be a challenge with many answers.

But one of the most important things is to do what you feel is the right thing to do consistently. When you think and act as you would like and at least go for what you want – even though you may fail from time to time – you tend to feel good about yourself. You live in alignment with what you think is right. You are being “the best you”.

Another thing is to some way down the road realize that adding more to yourself will never be enough. It’s just the voice of the ego wanting more, more, more! It’s like trying to fill up a bucket with hole in it.

A far better mindset is that you are already complete. This makes you feel good about yourself and gives you more emotional stability. What you add to your life – people, gadgets, food – can bring great experiences but you are already complete. This mindset allows you to stop chasing “the next thing” for the rest of your life.

However, to be able to take such a mindset seriously you may have to chase things and people for a while longer. When the suffering has become enough, when you’ve tried over and over again without finding what you look for then that is often the right time. The time when you open up to trying a new perspective. When you have suffered enough you will often take the leap and change.

You can read more about this in books by Eckhart Tolle like A New Earth and Stillness Speaks.

4. Your relationships are in your mind.

“As you think so shall you be! Since you cannot physically experience another person, you can only experience them in your mind. Conclusion: All of the other people in your life are simply thoughts in your mind. Not physical beings to you, but thoughts. Your relationships are all in how you think about the other people of your life. Your experience of all those people is only in your mind. Your feelings about your lovers come from your thoughts. For example, they may in fact behave in ways that you find offensive. However, your relationship to them when they behave offensively is not determined by their behavior, it is determined only by how you choose to relate to that behavior. Their actions are theirs, you cannot own them, you cannot be them, you can only process them in your mind.”
Wayne Dyer

“It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.”
Epictetus

How you choose to interpret people and your relationships makes a huge difference. So much of our relationships may be perceived to happen out there somewhere.

But as mentioned in tip #2 in this article, your underlying frame of mind – do you build bridges or walls? – will determine much about your interactions both new people and people you know.

So you really have to go inside. You have to realize that your interpretations from the past are interpretations. Not reality. You have to take a look at your assumptions and expectations and thought habits. Find patterns that may be hurting you (and others). This isn’t easy. Or always pleasant. You may discover that you have had some negative underlying habits of thought for many years.

But to change you have to do it. Instead of just keep looking at yourself as some sort of unmoving and objective observer of the world and reality. A change in you could – over time – change your whole world.

5. Give value instead of the other way around.

“Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.”
Anthony Robbins

As mentioned above, it’s useful to like yourself and see yourself as already complete. Otherwise you may go chasing new relationships to get that kick of feeling good over and over again. When you on the other hand like yourself, you spend less of your focus on what you can take and more on what you can give. The desperate craving to get more, more, more and fill yourself up isn’t there anymore.

Creating a habit of giving value in your everyday life and in your relationships is pretty awesome. And it’s something anyone can start to develop today. Some of the things you can do to give value are:

• Bringing a positive attitude and vibe into interactions.
• Offering useful advice or knowledge to someone.
• Giving a genuine compliment.
• Just offering a listening ear to someone who needs it.
• Cheering someone up.
• Hugs.
• Helping someone out with moving, cooking, cleaning up etc.
• Taking the lead and creating a fun situation for your friends such as a picnic or a night out on the town.
• Being totally present in conversation and focused on the other person.

It’s important to do this without hidden agendas. If you do something just to get something back that often shines through. A genuine compliment is powerful because you really and honestly mean it. It backfires when you are just out to get something from the other person.

But of course, people who give a lot of value tend to get a lot of value back. In the long run things tend to even out and you get what you give.

6. Share with someone.

“Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.”
Swedish Proverb

Simple but easy to forget sometimes. Sharing makes life and relationships a lot more fun. And your hard times at least a bit easier.

7. Genuineness is the key.

“Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don’t over-analyse your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness.”
Leo F. Buscaglia

I think that one of the most important things in a relationship of any kind is to be genuine. Few things are as powerful as genuine communication and letting the genuine you shine through. Without incongruency, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness.

It’s you to 100%.

It’s you with not only your words but you with your voice tonality and body language – which some say is over 90% of communication – on the same wavelength as your words. It’s you coming through on all channels of communication.

Being your authentic self – the one where you build bridges, the one where your ego is not running the show and trying to get something from someone – will give you better results and more satisfaction in your day to day life because you are in alignment with yourself. And because people really like genuineness and people really like authenticity.