This brings us to our current topic lineup. So far, we’ve covered aspects of Repeating Patterns (from Element3-Clarity & Dynamics), Communication (from Element2-Communication & Alignment), and Boundaries(from Element1-Context & Mindset) in our Successful Couple Strategy™… Repeating Patterns tend to kick relationships in the butt. Dissatisfying and reactive patterns that is.
This is where partners feel stuck, get discouraged and potentially give up. But, these patterns CAN be changed, and more satisfying, nurturing and collaborative ones can be created in their stead… The trick is to own what WE contribute to the stuckness, and focus on reprogramming our own stuff and stepping up how we show up…
Today’s topic is on Connection. Feeling connected, belonging, is at the core of our basic human needs (after physiological and security needs are met). This is a fundamental need that is a strong driver in our life. We don’t feel Ok if we don’t feel connected, and like we belong. This of course goes beyond our primary romantic relationship.
Though feeling connected within the relationship with our partner makes that relationship so much more meaningful, satisfying, rewarding, and even powerful… Being fully connected with our partner allows us to tap into the relationship’s inherent Synergy…
There is a caveat though. It is very challenging to properly connect with someone else, including our partner, if we are not connected to our Self first…
And, I don’t mean in any kind of superficial, selfish, arrogant, narcissistic kind of way… I mean connected to our Higher Self, Higher Consciousness (secular view), Super Conscious (spiritual view)… This is where the ultimate and most powerful connection of all is… When we connect at this level everything else is possible…
I was recently checking in with myself about when I am the most Happy. The answer immediately came that I’m the most Happy when I’m with clients… Translated/extrapolated version: I’m the most Happy when I’m grounded, present, and fluid in whatever I’m doing – when I’m connected to my Higher Self…
For after the initial answer, I recognized that state across other areas of my life… This is not an easy state to reach, and sustain…, unless we are practiced at it… And, even then we can be subject to get thrown off. Doesn’t it make sense then that for those that are not practiced how challenging it is to easily connect to their Higher Self and others?
This means that to have a Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life, it is imperative that we learn to Connect with our Higher Self… That we make connecting to our Self an intentional daily practice. That we don’t make this a luxury item in our life to do when we are able to find time for it… This is not a luxury, this is a must to have our best human experience and best life!
Otherwise we’d live our life bumping around and in reactivity. That is not Living… Let’s live the full expression of our Self by fully accessing all of our Self… From this higher state we Connect much more easily and lovingly with those around us, including our partner. This is how we CAN create our amazing relationship, no matter its current state…
Assignment: Take a look at your current daily routine and unapologetically make time to Connect with your Self… Make time for a Mindfulness Practice… This is one of the best Success Habits you can implement into your life, for rest flows from here…
This is a life changing concept. Change your state, connect with your Self, Align, and Then…
Complete the Assignment, and share your takeaway, insights, and results with a note in the Comments box at the end! I’d love to hear how you are using this content.
Copyright (c) 2019 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
Last issue covered aspects of Communication(from Element2-Communication & Alignment in our Successful Couple Strategy™), the prior covered Boundaries (from Element1-Context & Mindset)… Communication is such an important part of a successful relationship.
It is a very basic skill that most partners botch in their relating. They are not aware of all the different things that impact their communication and getting on the same page. They are left butting heads and hurting each other instead of really getting, accepting and supporting each other.
But having amazing skills at setting effective Boundaries and mindful Communication in and of themselves is not enough to ensure you create your successful relationship and meaningful life… Not everything in relationship is as obvious and practical as this. A lot of what plays out in relationship is actually informed by not so conscious processes… These are just but the tip of the iceberg!
Most of what happens in interactions with our partner, and observe and entertain in our relationship, is influenced by subconscious and unconscious programming…
Where the subconscious is riddled by unattended scripts and limiting believes (can be directly reprogrammed), and the unconscious is how we organized ourselves psychologically and biologically (can be indirectly reprogrammed)… Being clueless to these forces is like traveling our Journey like Mr. Magoo drives his car
These processes are our human operating system. When they are not intentionally managed, they glitch and hold us back from living our efficient, productive, and rewarding life… When we don’t know what’s installed, what’s outdated, what’s redundant and such, our system doesn’t properly support our best life at best and undermines it, even crashes it, at worst…
This is when we are witness to basic levels of success, poor health, mental illness & emotional symptoms, addictions, misbehaved children, relationship breakdown and other not so pretty by-products…
Having Clarity as to what is going on deep inside ourselves and in turn what we are cocreating with our partner, and others, is the first step in really fully owning our life…
We can learn all the skills we want and get the best help in fixing problems or taking care of tasks, but if we don’t do this deeper piece the operating system is still going to glitch… You are still going to create dynamics in your relationship that undermine its success and experience recurring negative patterns in all areas of your life…
Attention to Personal Development and Healing must be a prerogative in our life for us to hack our system and be in charge of it. It is of utmost importance for us to instruct and utilize our system to its highest potential… We don’t get in a car and expect to immediately be where we want to be (at least that technology hasn’t been invented yet!).
First, we make sure it is working properly and has gas. Then, we know where we are going and how we want to get there, might even put that in the GPS. This is how we get to where we want to go when traveling roads, why should it be any different when traveling our Journey…
We hack our subconscious when we address our limiting beliefs.
We hack our unconscious when we address our wounding (unresolved impact from imperfect childhood).
When we don’t intentionally and proactively do this, we are allowing ourselves to ride our lives not firing on all cylinders… We operate from triggers and defenses creating patterns and circularity in our relationship that doesn’t work for us or our partner. We don’t create the relationship we desire. We feel stuck and dissatisfied.
The key to this is to stretch and integrate ourselves and mindfully, intentionally, and appropriately address all our needs… This requires better learning ourselves and our partner and being proactive about our Life…
Whenever you get stuck white-knuckling an issue in your relationship, find the same complaint consistently coming up, persistently butting heads with your partner on a topic(s), or practical solutions don’t stick – something deeper is at work and it behooves you to get to the bottom of it in order to make the changes you want.
This doesn’t mean going to hang out in the past, dredging up everything that ever went wrong or processing stuff at nauseam. This means to decidedly address your operating system to ensure you live your best life and have your best human experience.
Assignment: Take an observer stance in your relationship and identify what are your themes, recurring issues and fights, and circular relating (dynamics) that get you. The purpose of this is to increase awareness in your relationship and prompt you to start addressing the drivers. It’s up to you to empower yourself to do something about them… Don’t just sit with the awareness, it is not enough. Start proactively resetting your operating system…
Well, if last issue was not for the faint of heart, this one certainly is not. This one requires a strong desire to not live a mediocre life and to be able and willing to do what it takes to not settle… This one requires you to mean to have your best human experience. You might not care to and that’s your prerogative. But if you do, Gosh, get to it with gusto already!
Complete the Assignment, and share your takeaway, insights, and results with a note in the Comments box at the end! I’d love to hear how you are using this content.
Copyright (c) 2019 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
… Newness generates inspiration, energy, motivation, momentum, new heights… How do you keep things Fresh in your life? How do you inspire and motivate yourself? How do you strive for new heights?
Building on our current Spring Renewal Theme, when we declutter, detox, spring clean and reenergize the outcome is a phenomenal spaciousness, surge, and drive… This generates a new perspective from which anything is possible…There is so much opportunity and beauty in this…
Spaciousness – When we don’t run around like a chicken without a head. When we don’t triple schedule ourselves. When we generously create transition, buffer, down/lazy, unscheduled/open, leisure time. When we allow for time to think, process, plan. We engage our creative juices, problem solving, healing, and other inherent human gifts.
Surge – When we refresh, replenish, and reset, we generate more and better energy. This allows us to connect with our desires and fuel our dreams, our vision, our Journey. This keeps us engaged, interested, curious. This keeps us joyfully in the game.
Drive – When we are properly resourced, we can effortlessly put in what it takes to make what we desire happen… Too often people are not properly resourced and quit midgame… Or, hey, they might not even get in the game. When we are resourced, the fuel allows us to leverage, to pick up momentum, to take off effortlessly.
Some of us operate from this state much more consistently than others, and boy, what a difference it makes. I’m sure you can pick out your colleagues, friends and families that operate from a resourced state vs not… These are the people in your life that are doing well, that seem to have it all together, that seem very lucky, that are effortlessly high producers, that seem to be creating and living the life they want, and more.
When we are resourced, we are able to have a better perspective and approach life differently… This is where the magic happens… Let’s apply this to our relationship:
When we are resourced, we can be the Partner we want to be… When we are resourced, we can show up better and interact with our partner more lovingly and meaningfully… When we are resourced, we can give more grace, be more openminded and more resilient (less easily triggered…). When we are resourced, we can appropriately meet our and our partner’s needs with ease.
Your Assignment this week: Play with the Spring Renewal Theme (see related links below) to resource yourself to the max, and keep playing with this for ongoing benefits… Keep tabs on how you feel, how you are able to show up differently, and how exchanges and outcomes turn out much better than usual…
Why go through your Journey on fumes, sputtering as you go, and potentially running out of gas?! What a terrible way to live. Start resourcing yourself better now and enjoy the ride!
Share your insights and impact by leaving a comment below! I’d love to learn what you are able to accomplish and create when you are resourced.
Copyright (c) 2019 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
We are in charge of how we choose to experience our life moments, and what we choose to do with them… This is a choice we can make about anything, at any time… Even in the face of trouble, chaos, crisis, and anything that we would usually consider negative life events. It’s all about the meaning we assign things… How we let them impact us… And, how we choose to address them…
The same goes for when others around us are having a moment… If they are spinning, we don’t have to spin with them… If they are feeling blue, cranky or mad, we don’t have to take on their feelings… If they are stressed, we don’t have to fix their stress… If they are ambivalent, we can stand in our Knowing…
We can have our feelings and experiences independently of others’. We can also choose to safeguard our wellbeing when those around us start to influence or impact us with their negative state. It’s not super easy to always stand still and not get sucked in…
It’s in our, and in our loved ones’, best interest to learn how to not get sucked in… I’ve had several sessions, and other experiences, recently where this was a prevalent theme. Partners get sucked into their partner’s mood, reactivity, and script allowing themselves, their emotional state, to be hijacked…
It’s already bad enough that we co-create our current patterns, our relationship dynamic, playing-out our unresolved issues so we have another go at them. It’s imperative we exercise more personal boundaries, self-soothing and regulating, and self-management to not take the bait and get hijacked. Consequently, this is also essential for changing the patterns themselves…
When you don’t take charge of your side of things and jump into the mud with the other, you perpetuate the negativity, collude with their perspective, entrench the limiting mindset, and create a life story riddled with dissatisfaction… You end up creating a mediocre life!
Jumping in the mud with them – trying to fix their issue, trying to make them feel better, trying to show them a different way, trying to rescue the moment and the like are all signs of Loving TOO Much… We can’t save people from themselves. They can only do this…
For when we fix things for them, we prevent them from experiencing the motivating pain, accessing their own resources, figuring it out, and possibly hitting the necessary rock bottom that would lead to the Light…
We have to be mindful not to get in their way. And, we have to be mindful not to get in our own way… When we take care of another in this way, we don’t take care of ourselves… Nobody wins!
Don’t take the bait. Don’t get on anyone’s ride. Focus on standing still. Reap the rewards!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Standing!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Take stock of when your interactions tend to go south in your relationship: before work, upon getting home, dinner, evening routine, bed time, Friday night, a particular time during the weekend, Sunday night, when food shopping, in the car, at weddings, at events, at in-laws’, etc.
See if you can identify a pattern as to when, and as a theme as to what about…
Do something to mitigate the when. Do something to address the what.
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2019 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
As we continue to settle into September, Back-to-School and the Hectic/Q4 Season, it is paramount that we are in tip top shape to handle the demands and opportunities of the Season. We all have different expectations for ourselves, our relationships, our family, our home, and our business.
We all have different ambitions, wishes, and dreams. We all have different definitions of what being in tip top shape means as well. But most importantly, we all have different motivation, energy, resources, skills, support and such. We are our own worst enemy and usually hold ourselves back if we are not intentional about our approach to our life…
In your quest to get yourself in better shape to gracefully and joyfully navigate the Season, you might want to address and clear feelings that might be driving and glitching your “operating system”…
Some of these feelings include: guilt, shame, anger, resentment, rejection, loneliness, abandonment, sadness and grief. The energy generated by these feelings course through our body and inform our state. They even lodge themselves in our body when left unprocessed. This causes the body to function poorly and eventually break down, causing dis-ease (ungraceful aging and a shorter life-span to boot!)…
The issue with this is that it’s not as simple as getting over the feeling… Our thinking patterns keep generating the same feelings over and over!
Our thinking habit is the culprit. The way we choose to interpret the events in our life, the way we give up are personal power, the way we allow others to take advantage of us, the way we allow others to take us for granted, the way we plow through inconsiderate of others and the like, all generate feelings that we don’t process or address properly.
A lot of times we are aware of the feelings but continue to go about our situation the same old way in the pursuit of resolution. The same approach will always create the same result! So, unless we are proactive, intentional and mindful in our attempt to take care of ourselves and do right in our life, not much will change. If we have lofty dreams, they might go unrealized… And, what a shame that would be!
When we are habitually angry and resentful – we are the only ones hurting with our insistence of holding on to these feelings! This habitual state of being means you are processing your world with a victim, poor me, I don’t matter and the like kind of lens that generates these feelings. This lens needs cleaning and your boundaries need reinforcing…
When we generate guilt and shame feelings we are filtering our life by beliefs that don’t serve us – guilt has to do with doing what we consider a good deed, shame has to do with what we consider being a good (worthy) person… We might have all sorts of funky beliefs driving these… We need to set clearer and more compassionate expectations… Also, we might be great at guilting and shaming others. Ugh! Clean this up immediately.
We don’t want this done to us, so why would we do it to others. Through mirror neurons, what we do to others we also are actually doing to ourselves… Stopping this relational habit is the quickest way to start cleaning up the negative related energy running through our bodies…
Rejection, loneliness and abandonment are similar to anger and resentment. We can choose how we perceive the event, and most importantly how much meaning and power we give to it… We can also go about getting connection, belonging, and acceptance needs met differently than how we are expecting them to be met currently that is dissatisfying…
Sadness and grief usually follow a loss of some sort. Sometimes the loss is not so obvious, or what we traditionally would consider a loss… These include things like – loss of childhood, youth, success, progress, outcome / certain experience, what was, what could have been, etc. Transition periods cause this inherently, even when the transitions are positive.
Here our role is to honor the feeling. Rituals, traditions, processes, and the like are excellent for relieving this.
It is imperative to make sure we are in tip top shape to smoothly, effectively and productively tackle our Autumn Agenda. Addressing our feelings and our habitual feeling state is a must to get out of our own way, and ensure a peaceful, delightful and rewarding Season. Minding our feelings clears the way for a better way of Being and an enriched life. Go ahead, you’ll be super happy you did!
Remember to complete the MetroRelationsip™ Assignment below to help you effortlessly implement this, make changes and immediately start creating your Successful Relationship and Meaningful Life…
Share your experience by leaving a comment below!
Happy Minding!
~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment
Identify what is your habitual way of feeling…
Anger, resentment
Guilt, shame
Rejection, loneliness, abandonment
Sadness, grief
Start cleaning up your lens/script/beliefs, how you interpret events, how you allow events to impact you, how you choose to feel, how you choose to respond, how you are proactive about addressing your circumstances…
These feelings are your friend. They guide you to where you need to make changes…
Add this to your Tool Kit…
Copyright (c) 2018 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.
Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.
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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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