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Assumptions
are
the termites of relationships.
Henry Winkler |
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Most
people enter into relationships with an eye toward what they can
get
out of them,
rather than what they can put into them. The purpose of a
relationship is to decide
what part of yourself you'd like to see "show up,"
not
what part of another you can
capture and hold. The purpose of a
relationship is not to
have another who might
complete you; but to have
another with whom you might share your
completeness.
Neale
Donald Walsch
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In my
early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would
phrase the question this way: How can I provide a
relationship
which this person may use for his or her own personal growth?
Carl Rogers
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Our relationships are our sacred
responsibilities, for they are the framework within
which life is
lived. They show us
where we have more learning and loving to do. Our interactions with others call up the disabling beliefs
and negative patterns
of behavior we need to release—the
cynicism, anger, resentment, and
jealousy that
block love’s
flow. Our
relationships are our mirrors; they reflect
where we are in
consciousness. And if we are willing to face the truth about
ourselves, our
relationships offer the lessons that lead to our greatest
transformation.
Susan L. Taylor
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An
intimate relationship does not banish loneliness. Only
when
we are comfortable with who we are can we truly function
independently in a healthy way, can we truly function
within a relationship. Two halves do not make a whole when
it comes to a healthy relationship: it takes two wholes.
Patricia
Fry
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To know when to go away and when to come
closer
is the key to any lasting relationship.
Doménico Cieri Estrada
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The quality of
your life is the quality of your relationships.
Anthony Robbins
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That's another lesson I've
learned the hard way.
All relationships will die
if they aren't nurtured. Just
as a
flower will die if it's
not watered. Because love is
demonstration, not declaration.
Patti LaBelle
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Today we are faced with the preeminent fact
that, if civilization is to survive,
we must cultivate the science of human relationships. . . the
ability
of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world,
at peace.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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It
is only when we no longer compulsively need someone
that we can have a real relationship with them.
Anthony
Storr
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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
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By asking for what you need, you reveal your
fragility as a human being
and you invite the person you love to share her or his
fragility. The reaction
to an expressed desire not only brings to the person who needs
help the
pleasure of seeing a need filled, it also brings to the person who
fills the
need a feeling of effectiveness as a person and a sense of being
capable of
giving happiness to someone else. In such moments, each of
you have the
opportunity of sharing your love and your humanity.
Daphne Rose Kingma |
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Relationships
are the hallmark of the mature person.
Brian
Tracy
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Remember that the
best relationship is one in which your
love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
unattributed
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The
more connections you and your lover make, not just between
your
bodies,
but between your minds, your hearts, and your souls,
the more you
will strengthen
the fabric of your relationship, and
the more real moments you
will experience together.
Barbara De
Angelis
When you make a commitment to a relationship, you invest your
attention and energy in it more profoundly because you now
experience ownership of that relationship.
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For over 75
years, Harvard's Grant and Glueck study has tracked the
physical and emotional well-being of two
populations: 456 poor men growing up in Boston from
1939 to 2014 (the Grant study), and 268 male graduates
from Harvard's classes of 1939-1944 (the Glueck study).
Due to the length of the research period, this has
required multiple generations of researchers. Since
before World War II, they've diligently analyzed blood
samples, conducted brain scans (once they became
available), and pored over self-reported surveys, as well
as actual interactions with these men, to compile the
findings.
The conclusion? According to Robert Waldinger,
director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one
thing surpasses all the rest in terms of importance:
The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study
is this: Good relationships keep us happier and
healthier. Period."
reported by Melanie Curtin, Inc.com |
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Mutually
caring relationships require kindness and patience,
tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence
in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.
We need to accept the fact that it's not in the power of any
human being to provide all these things all the time. For
any of
us, mutually caring relationships will also always include some
measure of unkindness and impatience, intolerance,
pessimism, envy, self-doubt, and disappointment.
Fred Rogers
The
World According to Mr. Rogers |
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Human
relationships are primary in all of living. When the gusty
winds
blow and shake our lives, if we know that people care about us,
we may bend with the wind. . . but we won't break.
Fred Rogers
The
World According to Mr. Rogers |
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When we experience meaningful connections with other people, life is
good. Positive relationships contribute to better physical and mental
health, longevity, and, yes, happiness. Without positive
relationships—whether at home, within our social circles,
or at work—our happiness and health suffer.
Deborah K. Heisz
Live Happy: Ten Practices for Choosing Joy |
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Take refuge in the constant.
If you seek security in anything
that passes, you will be sad upon its departure. This does not
mean we are to distance ourselves from relationships, deny
ourselves the joy they bring, or rebuff sorrow when they depart.
To the contrary, knowing that one day those close to you will
not be here enriches relationships while you have them. When
you are with people you love, imagine you may never see them
again. Be fully present with them. Speak the words you wish for
them to hear. Thank, honor, acknowledge, and celebrate them.
They are in your life for a blessed season that bestows its unique
gifts. Don’t miss a moment of loving. Leave nothing unsaid or undone.
Alan Cohen
The Tao Made
Easy |
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A
Course in Miracles refers to our relationship partners as our
saviors—
but not in the way we have been taught to believe that someone will save
us. Our partner becomes our savior when we choose to see the light in him
and love him for who he is, not who we want to change him to be. Likewise
when we accept her as a complete and radiant soul, even if she doesn’t
match a cover-girl image. Thus we are saved from our illusions and
projections and we create a relationship with the person God created,
not the story we made up about him or her.
Alan Cohen
A Course in Miracles Made Easy |
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As we endeavor to practice with relationships, we begin to see that
they are our best way to grow. In them we can see what our mind,
our body, our senses, and our thoughts really are. Why are relationships
such excellent practice? Why do they help us to go into what we might
call the slow death of the ego? Because, aside from our formal sitting,
there is no way that is superior to relationships in helping us see where
we’re stuck and what we’re holding on to. As long as our buttons are
pushed, we have a great chance to learn and grow. So a relationship is
a great gift, not because it makes us happy—it often doesn’t—but
because any intimate relationship, if we view it as practice,
is the clearest mirror we can find.
Charlotte J. Beck
Everyday Zen |
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The most important ingredient we put into any
relationship is not what we
say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our
actions
come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality
Ethic)
rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others
will
sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and
sustain the
foundation necessary for effective interdependence.
Stephen R. Covey |
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Treasure
your relationships, not your possessions.
Anthony
D'Angelo
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Each
relationship nurtures a strength or weakness within you.
Mike
Murdoch
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Life is relationships; the rest is just details.
Gary Smalley |
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Relationships
are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists
because
it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in
isolation.
We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.
Margaret
J. Wheatley
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You
must first have a good
relationship
with yourself before you can
have a
good relationship with others. You have to feel worthwhile
and
acceptable in
your own eyes. The more independent you are,
the better you'll be
able
to connect and relate with others.
Gary
Emery
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The
key to long-term relationships is letting someone be different
today
than they were yesterday. I think one of the main reasons
for divorce is
that couples don't always create the emotional space between them
to
allow for constant and continuous change. When people say,
"We grew
apart," it's often a sign that when they entered the
marriage, their emotional
contract didn't include this clause: "I'll let you
grow. You'll let me grow.
We'll learn from each other, and we can grow together."
Marianne Williamson |
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Your closest relationships are often the ones
that have the most effect on you,
but they are frequently the ones most difficult to change.
These relationships
are complex and have long histories. Lifetime habits of
avoiding being really
present with each other may exist in many of them. Family
members, for
instance, might want to support you, but will not necessarily know
how to
genuinely listen or be present with you in a way that is
enlivening. . . . Even with
the best intentions, it can be very difficult to get beyond the
past and into the Now.
Richard Moss |
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An
honorable human relationship--that is, one in which two people
have the right to use the word "love"--is a process,
delicate, violent,
often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining
the
truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this
because in
so doing we do justice to our own complexity. It is
important to do
this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way
with us.
Adrienne Rich |
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Relationship
problems are opportunities to grow and mature. Such
problems can be character building if you don't let them defeat
you.
That's why it's important not to isolate yourself. No one
can exist
apart from others. Remaining aloof from others cultivates
selfishness, which accomplishes nothing.
Daisaku Ikeda
Buddhism
Day by Day |
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The
reality is that all relationships inevitably will be
dissolved and broken. The ultimate price exacted for
commitment to other human beings rests in the inescapable
fact that loss and pain will be experienced when they are
gone, even to the point of jeopardizing one's physical
health. It is a toll that no one can escape, and a
price that everyone will be forced to pay
repeatedly. Like the rise and fall of the ocean
tides, disruptions of human relationships occur at regular
intervals throughout life, and include the loss of
parents, death of a mate, divorce, marital separation,
death of family members, children leaving home, death of
close friends, change of neighborhoods, and loss of
acquaintances by retirement from work. Infancy,
adolescence, middle age, old age--all seasons of life
involve human loss.
James J. Lynch |
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Relationship are part of the vast plan for our
enlightenment.
Marianne Williamson
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Building
a sound foundation is hard work. And I still look to my
garden
when I forget my lesson. So many times I have blamed my
potential life
partners for not being perfect when in act it has been me who
hasn't made
the commitment, who hasn't taken the time to get to know who they
are
before I made big demands of the relationship. I rely on my
expectations
and dreams to provide the foundation on which I build my
goals. And
then, of course, I'm disappointed when I don't harvest the perfect
relationship in no time at all.
Vivian Elisabeth Glyck
12 Lessons on Life I Learned from My Garden |
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In
a relationship, it is demeaning to constantly seek your partner's
approval. Such relationships are bereft of real caring,
depth, or
even love. For those of you who find yourselves in
relationships
where you are not treated the way your heart says you should be,
I hope you will have the courage and dignity to decide that you
are
better off risking the scorn of your partner than
enduring unhappiness with him or her.
Daisaku Ikeda
Buddhism
Day by Day |
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Reason, Season,
or Lifetime
People come
into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
When you figure out which one it is,
you will know what to do for each person.
When someone is in your life for a
REASON,
it is usually to meet a need you have expressed.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty;
to provide you with guidance and support;
to aid you physically, emotionally or spiritually.
They may seem like a godsend, and they are.
They are there for the reason you need them to be.
Then, without any wrongdoing on your
part or at an inconvenient time,
this person will say or do something to bring the relationship
to an end.
Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.
What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire
fulfilled; their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered and now it is time to
move on.
Some people come into your life for a
SEASON,
because your turn has come to share, grow or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.
Believe it. It is real. But only for a season.
LIFETIME relationships teach you
lifetime lessons;
things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional
foundation.
Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person,
and put what you have learned to use in all other
relationships and areas of your life.
It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.
unattributed |
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When we enter
into any relationship with the premise that we
are empty and the other person will fill us in, we are sure to
fail.
We can only win when we proceed from wholeness.
Alan Cohen |
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A
relationship is like a garden. If it is to thrive it must be
watered regularly.
Special care must be given, taking into account the seasons as
well as any
unpredictable weather. New seeds must be sown and weeds must
be pulled.
John Gray |
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I
am a big believer that you have to nourish any relationship.
I am still very much a part of my friends' lives and they
are very much a part of my life.
Nancy Reagan |
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|
quotations
- contents
-
welcome
page
-
obstacles
our
current e-zine
-
the
people behind the words
-
articles
and excerpts
Daily
Meditations, Year One - Year
Two - Year Three
- Year Four
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up for your free daily meditation
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A
complete sharing between two people is an impossibility, and
whenever
it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a mutual
agreement which
robs either one member or both of his or her fullest freedom and
development.
But, once the realization is accepted that, even between the
closest human
beings, infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living
side by side can
grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which
makes
it possible for each to see the other, whole and against a wide
sky!
Rainer Maria
Rilke |
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The
"veritable life" of our emotions and our relationships
also is intermittent.
When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in
exactly the same
way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It
is even a lie to pretend
to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We
have so little faith in
the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap
at the flow of the
tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will
never return. We insist on
permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity
possible, in life
as in love, is in growth, in fluidity--in freedom, in the sense
that dancers are free,
barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same
pattern. The only real
security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or
expecting, not in
hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in
looking back to what it
was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or
anticipation, but
living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is
now. For relationships,
too, must be like islands. One must accept them as they are
here and now,
within their limits--islands, surrounded and interrupted by the
sea, continually
visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the
security of the
winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.
Anne
Morrow Lindbergh
Gift from the Sea |
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Happy
relationships depend not on finding the right
person, but on being the right person.
Eric Butterworth |
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Mutually
caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance,
optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself,
and the
ability to give without undue thought of gain. We need to accept
the fact
that it's not in the power of any
human being to provide all these things
all the time. For any of us, mutually caring relationships will
also include
some measure of unkindness and impatience, intolerance,
pessimism, envy, self-doubt, and disappointment.
Fred Rogers |
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When
you are in the final days of your life, what will you want?
Will you
hug that college degree in the walnut frame? Will you ask to
be carried to
the garage so you can sit in your car? Will you find comfort
in rereading
your financial statement? Of course not. What will
matter then will be
people. If relationships will matter most then, shouldn't
they matter most now?
Max Lucado |
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The
people we are close to are important. We should treat them
as our treasures. When dealing with others, we should always
be
sincere and polite. Nothing is stronger than sincerity.
I have made many friends around the world and made them all with
the same sincerity. A relationship built with sincerity will
never be
destroyed, but relationships built by means of tactics and
scheming always collapse in the end.
Daisaku Ikeda
Buddhism
Day by Day |
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Relationships
with other people are necessary to escape loneliness;
however, relationships do not guarantee freedom from
pain. Nurturing a meaningful relationship with
another human being takes patience, even when we don't
have any. It takes tolerance, even if we don't feel
it. It takes selflessness, at those very moments
when our own ego is crying for attention.
Yet, we need relationships with others; they inspire
us. We learn who we are and who we can become
through relationships. They precipitate our
accomplishments. Our creativity is encouraged by
them, and so is our emotional and spiritual development.
Karen Casey
Each
Day a New Beginning |
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