1. Contrary to what the media would have us believe, love is not something that you “get” from another person. It is an inner experience that you can cultivate through consciously choosing to act lovingly.  By this I mean acting with kindness, patience, acceptance, forgiveness, and generosity of spirit. You are the one who determines the amount of love and happiness that you experience in your life.

2. Your relationship is molded over time by daily habits. Be mindful of how your daily habits are affecting your relationship. Keep doing the little loving and considerate things that you have cultivated during your courtship.

3. Practice being the kind of person that you want your spouse to be. In treating your partner lovingly, you will be setting the pattern for how the two of you interact with each other. Through your kind actions, you are providing the emotional safety that is essential for love to survive and to grow.

4. Respect and take the time to truly understand each other’s feelings, viewpoints, and needs. If you disagree with each other’s viewpoint, respect is even more essential. In fact, treating your partner with respect is a vital and essential element of any healthy relationship.

5. If the problem is yours, the responsibility for fixing it is also yours. Relationships are opportunities for personal growth. If you do not use the opportunities your relationship gives you to grow, you will no doubt have to confront this growth need repeatedly during your life, in this and other relationships.Taking responsibility for your own actions and issues will save you much angst over time. It is an essential ingredient for a healthy relationship as it provides your partner with emotional safety, and a relationship that continues to grow, rather than become stagnant or die.

6. A harmonious relationship requires self-discipline. This includes putting the effort into speaking caringly with your partner even when you are angry or upset, continuing to be considerate and polite, even when it requires extra effort, and being willing to make sacrifices for your partner’s happiness, or for reestablishing love and connection in your relationship.

7. Affirm each other as individuals, and support each other’s growth, dreams, and aspirations.

8. Be True to yourself. Your individual life journey is as important as your journey together as partners.

9. Consciously choose to grow from mistakes and hard times. Doing so allows you to benefit from whatever you encounter in life. Over time, it allows you to build skills that pave the way for a smoother life journey.

10. Work to stay open and vulnerable, especially in difficult times. A guarded heart will shield you from love, joy, and connection with everything that makes life meaningful.

11. Don’t let the sweet moments of life pass unnoticed. Attending to the constant demands of life can sometimes become our sole focus. Remember to smile, laugh, and light-heartedly share with each other daily.

12. Remember that you are not alone. Your community of family and friends as well as your spiritual relationship are essential aspects of your lives together. Make time for nurturing these connections as well.

Growing and sharing your love is your gift to your loved ones, yourself, God and to life itself.

Habits are insidious. They take root and blossom in our lives, for better and for worse, mostly unconsciously.

Our most rooted habits are born of the environments and people we are exposed to at a young age

Use this understanding with awareness in raising your children.  Good habits that are formed early in life will serve them well. That way, when they develop to the point where they can exercise choice in creating their own habits, they will have a platform of good habits as a launching pad.

Habits form the structure of our lives

We are neurologically wired for habits and could not function without them. Choice is always available to us in the habits that sustain our lives, but most of us do not often exercise this freedom of will.

Habits come in many forms.  There are action habits, such as when we sleep and wake, what, when and how we eat and drink, how we spend our time, and our habitual verbal responses to others.  There are mental habits, such as how we think about ourselves or others, how we view certain situations or cultures, what we tend to notice or to not notice, and what we mentally tell ourselves.  We also have habitual, familiar ways of feeling, as well as triggers for these habitual feeling responses.

Once a negative habit takes root it takes conscious effort and willpower to create a new positive habit. It does not change of its own accord (although we act as if this will be the case sometimes!)  The longer it has had to take root, the more difficult it is to change.

How do we change habits that are not serving us well?

The first step in changing a habit is to practice noticing what your habits are. This “noticing of habits” can become a practice you engage in on a regular basis throughout your life. If the habit you are noticing is important to you, jot it down.

Unless you consciously use your will power to create something else, your present habits are creating your future life for you.

They are building your character and determining who you are becoming, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Ask yourself where each habit that matters to you is taking you.  If you continue with this habit, where will you be in 10, 20, or 30 years?

This is a very powerful, life-changing concept if put into use. Each of us has so much potential power to become who we want to be and to create what we want in life.  Habits are the building blocks. Understanding and acting on this can make or break who you are, who you become and how you feel about yourself.

Suggested Exercise: One very powerful way to change a habit is to consciously choose to do the opposite.  For example, perhaps you have a habit of inwardly ruminating on all the things you do not like about yourself.  You could start by making a list (which you continuously add to) of the things you appreciate about yourself.  Keep this positive list handy in your phone or your purse. As soon as you notice yourself engaging in the negative thinking pattern that you want to change, pull out your positive list and consciously choose to focus on these positive qualities instead.  You will notice that doing this has an uplifting effect upon your mood. By engaging in this exercise regularly, your default thinking habit about yourself will become much more positive.

With practice, you will find this becomes easier, and even automatic.  New neurological patterns will eventually supersede old negative ones.

This simple but powerful practice engages you in the process of creating and reinforcing a happier and healthier life for you, your children, and others in your daily life.

Practical Tip: Using the Pause button in changing habits

Changing a habit requires noticing as soon as possible when you are starting to engage in the old habit that you want to change.  One way to do this is to “red flag” any cues or triggers for the old habit and pair it with a mental “pause” button.

For example, perhaps you want to change your habit of yelling at your daughter every time she is late getting ready for school.  There are definite internal body sensations that precede the act of yelling. You may have an internal rush of heat, racing thoughts, or perhaps an accelerated heartbeat.

The trigger for these sensations may be the morning routine and signs that she might be running late. As soon as you notice your identified internal sensations, mentally see yourself putting your finger on a pause button and pair this with a long deep breath.  (Or, if needed, two or three long deep breaths!)

This gives you a moment to interrupt your old neurologically greased “yelling” habit before you engage in it. The deep breath helps to calm your nervous system and gives you a chance to consciously decide how you want to respond to your daughter.  Over time, she will notice the difference in your behavior, and will likely start to respond differently herself.

This practice can also be helpful for couples during difficult moments, as well as for controlling anger outbursts at work or in other interpersonal situations.

Do you a have an annoying inner critical voice chronicling your mistakes and imperfections?

Do you wish you knew how to get this voice to just shut up?

The “Mini-Me”

Self-critical thoughts accompany most people to one degree or another throughout the day, or in circumstances that evoke self-criticism.  If you are not paying attention, you can let these critical thoughts have free reign and create havoc in your life, like a critical “mini-me” who chronicles your deficiencies and mistakes as you move through your day.

You may not like this critical “mini-me”, but condemning it will only serve to strengthen it. The time and emotional energy you invest in hating something only feeds its presence in your life. The more you dislike something, the more it sticks to you, and the more influence it has on the quality of your inner state.

You cannot get rid of anything in your life by hating it. Love is the healing agent in all situations. This is a universal Truth.

If you can find a positive way to view this critical “mini-me”, you can lessen its stronghold on your inner life.

It is quite possible that these self-critical thoughts are from a part of yourself that is trying to protect you from doing things that evoke shame or humiliation.  From its point of view, if it criticizes you, perhaps you will not do or say something that could cause you shame or humiliation.

With this perspective, is it easier to be kind towards that self-critical “mini-me”?   After all, it is only trying to help! If you can see it with kindness and compassion, you are in a much better place to lessen the hold this “mini-me” has on your beliefs about yourself.

Why carry boulders up a mountain?

Change is much easier and more readily accomplished when you are not beating yourself up or putting yourself down.

If you can see yourself from an objective “looking at the facts” place (rather than a place of self-condemnation), you are much more capable of setting kind and reasonable expectations for yourself.  This paves the way for setting kind and reasonable expectations for your children as well.

From a logical perspective, if you want to change yourself, why burden yourself with a load of criticisms to make the change process even more difficult?

With my clients, I often use the analogy of climbing a mountain.  If you are climbing a mountain, why pick up rocks and boulders to add to your load?  It is neither efficient not practical.

Try practicing just noticing what you would like to change for next time, and moving on. No punishment or criticism is required.

Changing your self-critical thinking habits is an ongoing practice of self-acceptance, along with consciously setting reasonable and practical expectations for yourself.  Please be kind to yourself in this process. Remember, love is the healer.

Self- love and the ability to love others are two sides of the same coin. The more you can genuinely accept and love yourself the deeper your capacity to love others and the more compassion you will have towards all sentient beings with whom we all share this world.