Category Archives: Relationships

Can Better Relationships Improve Your Health?

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can better relationships improve your health? georgianna donadio

A report in the Harvard Women’s Health Watch notes that research supports the benefits of relationships for overall well-being and longevity. The newsletter notes that “dozens of studies have shown that people who have satisfying relationships with family, friends, and their community are happier, have fewer health problems, and live longer. [A] lack of social ties is associated with depression and later-life cognitive decline, as well as with increased mortality.” 

A study of more than 309,000 people demonstrates that folks who lack satisfying relationships with family, friends and community experience an increased risk of premature death from all causes of 50 percent. While this alone is an amazing statistic, the same study shows that you face greater threat to your mortality from social isolation than from a lack of exercise, obesity or even smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day.

Having enjoyable, fulfilling companionship with others reduces stress levels and keeps cortisol (a stress hormone) under control. If cortisol rises, it can adversely impact insulin function, suppress the immune system, clog the arteries and wreck digestion.

can healthy relationships improve your health?Other studies demonstrate that women in their 40s who endure difficult or negative marital-type relationships experience a higher risk for cardiovascular disease than women with fulfilling relationships.

A Swedish study of people 75 years and older shows that dementia risk is lowest for people who maintain satisfying relationships and have a large group of friends and family they enjoyed.

The foundation of all relationships is good communication. Most people are unaware of how their lack of communication skills adversely affect the quality of their relationships.

Working to improve your communication skills may be easier than you imagine. It requires only desire and a few simple, proven steps to make a big change in the quality of your interactions.

For more whole health discussions like this, listen to my weekly radio show Living Above The Drama available on iHeartRadio.

 

 

 

Six Immediate Steps To Improve Your Relationships

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Six Immediate Steps To Improve Your Relationships

Making your relationships more fulfilling for you as well as for the important people in your life is easier than you might think. Most of us simply forget what makes a good relationship, yet we know what it feels like when one of our relationships isn’t going well. Often, improving any aspect of your life is a matter of being reminded what the tried and true behaviors are that create happy relationships. Here are six easy-to-remember and even easier-to-do steps you can take right now to improve your friendships, family dynamics and even interactions with co-workers:

1. Respect Everyone

Respecting someone means to literally accept them for who they are and how they choose to think, feel and live. We cannot change others, and it is futile and even presumptuous of us to try. By accepting others and meeting them in a respectful way, we save ourselves needless frustration. No one wants to be told who to be or how to live; and the sooner you apply this principal, the sooner you improve your relationships.

2. Practice Kindness

Kindness is one of the most attractive qualities in anyone. Even more attractive is when a person thinks and feels that all others are worthy of their consideration and kindness and treats others with mutuality and compassion. People notice kindness and know when someone is caring. This is easy to do if you treat other people the way you would treat anyone you truly care about.

3. Be Happy For Others

In the highly competitive, often dog-eat-dog environments many of us work and live in, we can develop an attitude that if “we don’t have ours” than “no one else should have his.” This is an unhealthy and unsuccessful attitude that doesn’t allow us to celebrate for others and invite them into celebrating for us when we have success or an achievement. Good wishes toward others result in good wishes for us.

4. Release Resentments

When we hold onto anger or resentment toward others, we end up doing more harm to ourselves than to them. Anger and resentment make us sick and chains us to the events or circumstances that hurt us. This does not allow us to move on in life, and it lessens the love and kindness we can be experiencing and sharing with others. It leaves us in turmoil about something in the past.

5. Do The Small Things

Think back to your most tender and memorable moments with the important people in your life. You will probably find that those moments were filled not with expensive, larger-than-life gifts, events or experiences, but rather with small, meaningful gifts, gestures and shared experiences. While you cannot do special things for everyone in your life, the people who are most important will really appreciate it if you show them how important they are to you with the small things that mean so much.

6. Follow the Golden Rule

There is a saying that we should never expect others to give us what we are not willing to give to them. The Golden Rule is a simple one: Give to others what you want the most for yourself. If you want to be loved, love others. If you want success, than provide service or value for others. This is an easy and simple rule and best of all, it works.

For more whole health discussions like this, listen to my weekly radio show Living Above The Drama available on iHeartRadio.

 

Take The First Step Towards Happiness

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Take The First Step Towards Happiness

With such a strong emphasis on achievement, accumulation and recognition in our society, it is easy to become discouraged or disappointed with who or what we perceive ourselves to be, especially in how we stack up in the “pecking order” with those around us. Being happy with yourself is a choice that each of us can make every day by taking simple, practical steps to develop habits of happiness.

Take the first step towards happiness right now. It starts with creating an environment to work and live in that reduces stress and workload and brings order and ease, making your work and living easier. This uplifting environment can also provide the experience of soothing tranquility rather than focusing on the disorder and chaos that often become the working and living environments we find ourselves in.

Start With A Clean Slate

Clean out your desk drawers and closets, discarding excess. Redefining what is important to keep and what feels good to get rid of is a first step to creating a peaceful and happy living or working space. Creating an environment that truly resonates with your values is like building an oasis in the desert. By eliminating the need to accumulate more and more “things” around us, we can unburden ourselves and have a more orderly, relaxing and peaceful space to live and work in.

Review Your “Friends List” Too

This same philosophy can be applied to your circle of friends and acquaintances. Just like with material things, we can also accumulate unnecessary or unwanted relationships that can make demands on our time and energy and often insert negativity or sap our physical or financial resources. Clearing out the toxic or unhealthy relationships we may have can bring personal renewal and further our sense of happiness and contentment.

Embrace Family

Take the time to appreciate family. For most of us there are few individuals who have done more for us than our family members. This includes the people in our family who support us, are there when we need them and provide a “safe harbor” throughout our lives.

Losing loving family members can be devastating but no more so than when we fail to appreciate them as they are helping us along life’s bumpy road. Take the time to give back and express your gratitude to those who care and nurture. Not only will this bring them pleasure and a sense of being appreciated, but it will become a reminder of how loved and cared for we are. That allows us to feel more content and happy with being who we are.

For more information about this topic, you can access a free excerpt from the bestselling book Changing Behavior: Immediately Transform Your Relationships with Easy to Learn Proven Communication Skills by visiting www.ChangingBehavior.org

FREE Whole Health Consultations available.
888-354-4325 Take charge of your health

Your Relationship With Yourself Is The Foundation Of Everything

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Your Relationship With Yourself Is The Foundation Of Everything

Susannah Conway, author of This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart, said it best when she wrote, “Your relationship with yourself is the foundation of everything.” But what does a healthy relationship with ourselves look like? And how can we develop a good relationship with ourselves if we are unsure of what that is or what that looks like?

A good relationship with ourselves would look the same way a good relationship with anyone looks. It entails respect, kindness, awareness, fulfillment, having needs met, friendship and creating stress-free memories.Here are some ways that we can cultivate a good relationship with ourselves that will influence the relationships we have with others.

Start With Self-Care
We need to look after our physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental and spiritual needs to nourish ourselves on many level. Focusing on caring for ourselves in this most basic way establishes self-respect and healthy habits. It also sends a message of self-love to ourselves, which is the most important component of caring for oneself.

Make Time For What Is Important To You
If you feel good taking time for your first cup of coffee or browsing the bookstore to find a perfect book that uplifts or entertains you, be sure to take the time on a regular basis to give this gift to yourself and brighten your day. Whatever your favorite soothing activity is, be sure to carve out space in your schedule to allow such experiences.

Identify And Set Boundaries
The boundaries we establish for ourselves will have a great impact on the boundaries we set in our relationships. By not allowing ourselves to work too hard, play too little and spend too much, we will be looking out for ourselves as well as identifying appropriate ways to interact with others. Moderation in how we live and avoiding extremes is an ideal way to be centered and stay in that healthy zone.

Be Your Best Friend
Because a relationship with ourselves is the only relationship we can depend on having every single day of our lives, it is most important that we are our own best friends. By developing a positive, nurturing and loving relationship with the most important aspect of our lives (that is, ourselves), we build a strong foundation for all other relationships that follow.

It is often said that we continually repeat the relationship we develop with ourselves with all the other relationships we have in our lives, so it is essential that it is a caring, respectful and nourishing one.

For more information about this topic, you can access a free excerpt from the bestselling book Changing Behavior: Immediately Transform Your Relationships with Easy to Learn Proven Communication Skills by visiting www.changingbehavior.org.

 

FREE Whole Health Consultations available.
888-354-4325 Take charge of your health!

 

How Love Affects Your Brain

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HOW LOVE AFFECTS YOUR BRAIN

Love affects us in many ways. Much of this is felt more than it is seen, but did you know that love affects your brain in ways that can be observed? I recently read a fascinating article that discussed a study from Stony Brook University in New York. The study examined whether couples can still be very much in love after spending many married years together and whether they experience the same intense romantic feelings as newly formed couples. Continue reading to find out what research has discovered about how love affects your brain over a long period of time.

MRIs Show Brain Regions Stimulated By Love

The scientists took MRIs of long-term married couples who said they still felt very much in love with their spouses after an average of more than 21 years together. These images were compared to images from couples who had recently fallen in love. In this way, scientists were able to compare specific parts of the brain that function and respond to love.

The images were created while the subjects were shown photos of their beloved as well as photos of close friends and strangers. The brain activity was measured while the subject viewed the images. Then, using the same scanning methodology, the researchers compared the imaging results on men and women who reported falling in love in the past year.

Clear Similarities

The scans showed “many very clear similarities between those who were in love long-term and those who had just fallen madly in love,” says Arthur Aron, Ph.D., of Stony Brook’s department of psychology. The scientists were particularly interested in the dopamine region of the brain—the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure. “The VTA showed greater response to images of a long-term partner when compared with images of a close friend or any of the other facial images,” Aron says.

Applying This Knowledge To Improve Relationships

The researchers are hoping that the study might be able to provide or demonstrate the details of how some couples can stay in love over long periods of time. This study seems to show both groups have brain activity in the regions that are wired for reward, motivation and desire.

To apply this research, Aron is looking into the possibility of using the study outcomes to assist soldiers who have returned from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to save their marriages. There is an unusually high level of divorce among deployed U.S. military. Perhaps this new information can help to improve the strength of their relationships during the stressful time of separation during deployment.

For a free chapter download on how to immediately improve your relationship communication skills, visit www.changingbehavior.org.

FREE Whole Health Consultations available.
888-354-4325 Take charge of your health!

Three Strategies To Build Excellent Relationships In Your Workplace

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relationships in the workplace, coworkers

Some of us may not realize just how important it is to build excellent relationships in your workplace. Without the support or cooperation of those with whom we spend a significant amount of our time, our job performance and certainly our work satisfaction can suffer. Several studies have shown that difficult office relationships impair performance and decrease morale even more seriously than rumors of employee layoffs.

Healthy, Friendly Environments

Most of us spend the majority of our waking hours working. And as a result, we spend the majority of our time with our co-workers. Just as with other people in our lives with whom we interact on a regular basis, our co-workers need to be viewed as important and essential parts of our “life support” group. Cultivating respectful, considerate relationships with our co-workers is good for our health and our work performance. It creates a positive and friendly environment where we spend a majority of our time.

Here are some easy ways to make the work environment nicer, friendlier and more positive place:

Avoid gossip: No one wants to be gossiped about. If you don’t gossiping about others, your co-workers will get the message that you do not wish to “stir the stink” about them and they will respect your integrity and treat you likewise. If someone starts to gossip with you, simply respond: “Really?” Then change the subject or excuse yourself from the conversation. Reducing gossip effectively enhances the work environment and your reputation.

Show real interest: One of the nicest experiences is having someone show interest in the things that interest us. It makes us feel valued and builds rapport and trust. If you are aware of co-worker’s interests and happen to run across something pertaining to those subjects, giving him information or helpful articles can really make his day and enhance your working relationships.

Give credit: Embrace the win-win attitude and always give credit where credit is due. If people have worked hard and made a huge contribution to a project, they should be recognized and applauded for their efforts. Nothing is more uplifting than being recognized for our contributions and the value we bring to our work.

By supporting and appreciating co-workers, you create for them and for yourself a cooperative and trustworthy environment that encourages them to continue to do their best. Competition can be healthy, but not when it results in giving credit to the wrong people or not recognizing excellence in others. Instead, encourage trust and cooperation to build excellent relationships in your workplace.

For more information about this topic, you can access a free excerpt from the bestselling book Changing Behavior: Immediately Transform Your Relationships with Easy to Learn Proven Communication Skills by visiting www.changingbehavior.org.

FREE Whole Health Consultations available.
888-354-4325 Take charge of your health!

 

Reference:

Ewton, Z. (2007). Sustaining Employee Morale; Keeping the Peace or Burning Down the House. (Original work published March 11, 2007) Retrieved April 2, 2008, from Associated Content Web site.

 

Want To Make Your Partner Happy?

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When couples are asked what it is in their relationship that makes them feel fulfilled, they inevitably answer that they feel “understood and cared about.” In contrast, bad feelings and unhappiness stem from the realization that the person we are most intimate with and care most deeply about doesn’t understand who we are and what we are feeling.

The Great Unknown

In order to feel loved, we must first experience that others understand and regard us as good and valuable human beings. If your significant other doesn’t get who you are and how you feel, you’re left with a sense of being misjudged. It can also lead to loneliness because only someone who truly knows us, rather than just thinks they know us, can love us for who we actually are.

When you are in a relationship, you do not want to continually explain yourself to another person or to justify your values, beliefs, or choices you make in your life. If, after a time, a partner cannot be really present, listening to what you have to share and sharing their own thoughts and feelings, the relationship begins to deteriorate. This is why one of the important focal points in good couples counseling is learning what is called “active listening.”

Active Listening

The main purpose of active listening is to let your partner know that you are truly listening and hearing what they say. It is demonstrating that that you are really “present," meaning your significant other has your full attention.

When you give someone your full attention, you can better understand how they feel, and you can grasp their point of view and opinions involved in the important discussions that make up all relationships.

Time To Reflect

A key component of active listening is reflection. You have to consider what your partner is trying to communicate so that you can be sure that you understand your partner’s message. Then you don’t misinterpret what your partner is saying.

When you do this, you should ask questions to clarify, such as, “Are you saying that you were upset that I did not go to your aunt’s house for dinner on Sunday, even though you said it didn’t matter if I went or not?”

Communication Is Key

Partners must work together to achieve clarification of communication, participation in active communication and active listening to allow a relationship to take on a greater depth, intimacy and fulfillment. Effective communication is always the key to any good relationship. 

For a free chapter download about changing behavior, visit changingbehavior.org.

FREE Whole Health Consultations available.
888-354-4325 Take charge of your health!

Decoding Body Language: The Messages We Send And Receive

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What is also understood is that there are “tells,” or neurological expressions of these withheld, nonverbal communications happening inside our brains. Even though we may not consciously or intentionally express verbally or physically how we feel, our brain/body connection does express these thoughts and feelings in nonverbal ways. These nonverbal ways are the “tells” that police and other professionals use to decide if someone is withholding information. This skill usually relies on instinct, but it might be wise to include such a information in today’s health coach certification programs to assist nurses in treating their patient's ailments holistically and effectively.

Relationship Impact

Many studies have been done on the subject of body language and nonverbal communication. Most of these findings agree that it is important for all of us to become aware of how our physical and verbal or nonverbal behavior impacts others, especially those who spend the most time in our environment.

Nonverbal communication can often cause one individual in a relationship to become upset if he feels he is seeing or interpreting nonverbal actions by his partner as rejection or disinterest. Often, before a relationship ends, one partner suspects the relationship is in trouble because of a lack of eye contact or verbal communication or because of hostile body language, such as the crossing of arms or legs in response to communication attempts.

Thoughts, Feelings, and Your Body

There is a science to nonverbal communication interpretation, as well as a science to understanding the best way to express our feelings. The way we do that can result in a positive or negative outcome. The science is directly related to neurological and neurotransmitter connections between thoughts and feelings in the brain and their communication to the muscles and nerves in the rest of our body.

Healthy Applications

Body language communications are both sent and received. We should become more mindful of the cues others are sharing and learn to read them more effectively because the information can be surprisingly vital. In my consulting practice, I see this all the time. A patient’s body language often conveys information they are leaving out, whether due to timidness, embarrassment, or lack of conscious. Nonetheless, nonverbal communication can alert to a need to press further for more clues about the presenting complaint.

Interpreting a patient’s or loved one’s body language can require close observation, something worth practicing whether you are a practicing nurse, an individual pursing a health coach certification, or simply a person hoping to improve your communication skills and your relationships.

In closing, we should all make an effort to monitor the nonverbal communication we are sharing in both our professional and personal lives. These cues can also offer hints to the real struggles lying beneath the surface.

FREE Whole Health Consultations available.
888-354-4325 Take charge of your health!

10 Tips For Sustainable Love

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It is not a coincidence that happy couples share many of the same behavioral patterns. Often, we think that being happy means we have fun sharing the same hobbies or doing everything as a couple. While sharing activities enhances relationships, the most important components to successful relationships are found in how individuals within a relationship treat each other. In large part, it relies on communication and behavior.

Some of the most important aspects of having a successful relationship with your significant other include:

Friendship: Being friends and genuinely liking your partner is one of the most important components of a happy and successful relationship. If you don’t like the other person, how can you truly love them?

Enjoying your partner’s company: Laughter is not only good medicine, but it is also the glue that binds relationships and creates memories. Laughing together and even crying together are meaningful in good relationships.

Being spontaneous: All of us have preferences, likes and dislikes. When you’re spontaneous about trying new food, travel plans, places to visit and other novel experiences, you expand your personal horizons and show respect for your partner’s preferences as well. Life is more interesting if we can be spontaneous together.

Having your own life: Developing a healthy relationship is about two independent and emotionally mature individuals joining company to share their lives together. Sometimes our needs can become interjected into our relationship in a way that creates a co-dependent dynamic. This can derail happiness in an intimate relationship.

Being fully, purely present to your partner: It has been said that there is no greater gift than our full, complete presence to another. Being authentically interested and attentive to the other person is a hallmark of a healthy, happy relationship.

Showing and expressing affection: Physical touch is an important part of happiness and fulfillment in relationships. Couples can often express that just by holding hands or sharing affection with their partner. This is a very important part of feeling loved and cared for.

Being caring and kind: Kindness is one of the most attractive things about another person. When we are kind, not only do we feel good about our behavior, but our significant other feels good about our behavior as well.

Being honest: If we give our partners a sense that we are devoted and loyal to them and they provide that for us, we create the foundation of a truly lasting and loving relationship. Marriages or relationships often break up because of trust issues. Trust is the foundation of all good interactions.

Being committed: When we are committed to someone, it means that we are there for them and can be counted on to support them in times of need. This is what we all want from our relationships. In order to depend on this benefit, we need to provide it as well.

Communicating: By actively communicating with your partner on an ongoing basis, you can avoid many of the problems that arise in relationships before they even get started. Being proactive and checking in with each other on a regular basis to see how things are for the other person goes a long way in preventing difficulties with conflicts and unmet needs.

Sustaining A Relationship

Creating and sustaining a loving, trusting and lasting relationship is one of the most fulfilling experiences a person can long for and look forward to. While this is not a complicated process, it does require awareness and cultivation similar to what you need in raising a child or growing a garden.

If you keep disruptive weeds from infiltrating the flower beds of your relationships, you can enjoy the uninterrupted beauty of longed-for interactions and reduce the work, wear and tear that neglect can produce. Relationships take time, caring and commitment, but they are truly worth it.

For a free download on communication skills for enhanced relationships, visit http://www.changingbehavior.org/

FREE Whole Health Consultations available.
888-354-4325 Take charge of your health!

 

Apologies: Men vs Women

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For most of us, it does not come as a surprise that men and women think, behave, and are in many ways fundamentally different from one another. We also know that hormones play a large role in these differences. Now science is beginning to unravel the specifics of how male and female brains function, in large part because of male and female hormones that craft our brain development and orient our behaviors. These differences in brain function and hormones may be the reason why men and women approach apologizing in completely different manners.

Two new studies look at the brain function of men and women and offer some interesting observations regarding the subject. One study is from the University of California in collaboration with the University of New Mexico, led by researcher Richard Haier, a psychology professor at the University of California.

The findings of their study show that generally men have 6.5 times the amount of gray matter relating to general intelligence compared with women. Women on the other hand have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men. "These findings suggest that human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior," said Haier. But apparently these types of intelligent behaviors manifest differently.

Women apologize more often than men do, according to a new study led by researcher Karina Schumann, a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. It appears it is not that men are reluctant to admit wrongdoing, they simply have a different perception regarding what they feel rises to the level of requiring an apology.

The research team saw no difference in the number of times men and women acted in ways that elicited apologies, but there was a distinct difference in the male and female perception of what constituted a situation that requires an apology.

"Men aren't actively resisting apologizing because they think it will make them appear weak or because they don't want to take responsibility for their actions," says Schumann. "It seems to be that when they think they've done something wrong they [men] do apologize just as frequently as when women think they've done something wrong. It's just that they think they've done fewer things wrong.”

For more information about this topic, you can access a free excerpt from my bestselling book Changing Behavior: Immediately Transform Your Relationships with Easy to Learn Proven Communication Skills by visiting www.changingbehavior.org.

FREE Whole Health Consultations available.
888-354-4325 Take charge of your health!