Spring Renewal: Revitalize Your Relationships

3/20/2024

Happy Spring! This is a beautiful time of year where we collectively shift from hibernation into rejuvenation, through decluttering our spaces and making room for new beginnings. But Spring cleaning doesn’t just have to mean cleaning out your garage, our relationships and connections could use a little reboot, as well.

Relationship Revival

Our connections are the backbone of our wellbeing; having deep and healthy relationships has been proven to be one of the top contributing factors to reducing stress levels and increasing longevity. Whether you're in a relationship or single, learning essential skills to strengthen your relationships is so important. Take time to rejuvenate your relationship skills as the Spring season blooms!

We have put together some simple tips informed by Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy to help you do just that:

1. Ditch your Losing Relational Strategies

A losing relational strategy can involve defensiveness, blame, or avoidance. Individuals employing this approach ultimately undermine trust and intimacy within the relationship. Losing strategies are what we resort to when we’re ‘in the crunch’. At these times we are typically in our Adaptive Child, and thinking only about getting what we want in the current moment. These are the 5 RLT Losing Strategies:

Being Right (objectivity battle, at its extreme it’s self-righteous indignation)
Controlling (being condescending, commanding, manipulative)
Retaliation (revenge, raging, passive aggression)
Unbridled Self Expression (venting, excessive sharing, etc)
Withdrawal (checking out, refusing to engage)

2. Employ some Winning Relational Strategies!

A winning strategy can involve open communication, vulnerability, and mutual respect. By prioritizing understanding, empathy, and compromise, you’ll foster deep connection and intimacy. Real's insights underscore the significance of self-awareness and active engagement in cultivating healthy, fulfilling partnerships.
Winning strategies in relationships can manifest in various ways, all geared towards fostering mutual understanding, trust, and emotional intimacy. These are the 5 RLT Winning Strategies:

Go After What You Want (remember love, engage your partner respectfully with a request, not a complaint)
Speak to Make Things Better (use “I” statements, keep it focused, use the feedback wheel)
Listen to Understand (put yourself and your “objective reality” aside, be curious about the other’s experience)
Respond With Generosity (acknowledge whatever you can, stay in your functional adult)
Cherish What You Have (dare to take yes for an answer, take pleasure in and celebrate what is going right, cultivate the skill of 'having', support your partner to give you more of what you want)

3. Relational Mindfulness

Relational mindfulness, as conceptualized by Terry Real, underscores the importance of being present and attuned within intimate relationships. It involves cultivating awareness, empathy, and responsiveness towards one's partner, fostering deeper emotional connection and understanding. In Real's framework, relational mindfulness entails several key components including presence and awareness, emotional regulation, empathetic understanding, and acceptance and non judgment. Learn to work with your own reactivity and get yourself ground and centered before engaging with your partner.

4. Relational Revival Course

We are excited to bring forth an event dedicated to giving your relationships that Spring reboot! Now is the perfect time to “revive” your relationships, remember your intentions for 2024 and get a tune-up! In this one-day, one-of-a-kind online course, we teach essential skills to strengthen all relationships, including going much more in depth on the above tips. This event empowers, builds and sustains meaningful connections, based on Terry Real's a radically effective approach of Relational Life Therapy (RLT). RLT is regarded for its ability to spark profound, lasting change in individuals and their relationships.

Access the Course

Make the most of your Spring! It is the best time of year to revitalize and rejuvenate your life, and your relationships. We hope to see you at our Relational Revival Event, where we will be diving into RLT’s Winning/ Losing Strategies, Relational Mindfulness, and so much more. See you soon, and happy spring!

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