In the extensive interviews with thriving couples that I conducted for my second book, The Eight Essential Traits of Couples Who Thrive (Jossey-Bass), I found over and over one outstanding quality that separated couples who thrive from couples who don’t.

It wasn’t that happy couples all came from stable, loving homes. It wasn’t that happy couples all had excellent communication skills. What happy couples had that set them apart was a spirit of good will.

What is Good Will in Your Relationship?

Good will is an overall feeling of generosity toward your partner. It is the attitude, “I am on your side, no matter what. I am your ally, not your adversary.” When you approach a situation with a spirit of good will, it means you value your relationship far more than whatever problems were caused by this one small incident. You are willing to acknowledge that your partner’s annoying habit or point of view, even when you don’t agree with it, might have some validity for him or her. You realize that positive, spontaneous acts of thoughtfulness are important expressions of love. You understand that love has nothing to do with fairness. Love is love. The more you give it away, the more you receive.

What is the Purpose of your Relationship?

Ask yourself, “What is the purpose of this relationship? What are my goals for this relationship?”

Is your purpose to get your partner to be more considerate or less controlling?
Is your purpose to get the living room painted light green when your partner wants to leave it white?
Is your purpose to be sure your partner takes fair responsibility around the house?

Probably not. Most likely, your overall, guiding purpose is to create a relationship that supports you both, that makes your burdens lighter because you don’t have to carry them by yourself. It is to enjoy your lives together, to keep alive the love and excitement that brought you together in the first place. Your purpose may be to nurture your love so that it overflows beyond the two of you, enabling you to champion those who need you, your children, your other passions in the world.

To operate on a foundation of good will is to keep the true purpose of your relationship in mind, especially in times of stress or conflict. It means keeping the difficulties you encounter in perspective. In the grand scheme of things, how important are they really? It means believing you can work through even the most difficult challenge. When the current stress or obstacle is long behind you, will your love have been strengthened of diminished by it?

The answers depend on your ability to maintain a spirit of good will toward your partner, instead of a spirit of “Am I going to get my needs met? Am I going to get my fair share?” (Of course you have to pay attention to those needs also, as we shall see in more detail, but only in a general atmosphere of good will.)

Excerpted Why Talking Is Not Enough: Eight Loving Actions That Will Transform Your Marriage by Susan Page. Susan is a leading expert on Relationships and the author of four books on this subject. She will be a special guest in the upcoming Renewing Your Relationship distance learning program, sponsored by the ToDo Institute.

“If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.”
- Leo Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina

When we think of perfectionism, we usually think of trying to be perfect. But perhaps the most dangerous element of perfectionism is the expectation that others should be perfect, as mentioned by the Unitarian minister Rev. Penny Rather:

Being a perfectionist is not about being perfect; it’s about trying to be perfect or expecting perfection from others. . . And even as we are intent on seeking perfection and improving ourselves, we also seem bent on doing the same with others. Our neighbors. Our partners. Our children. Shouldn’t they enjoy the benefit of our wisdom when they are deciding how to live their lives?

Expecting perfection usually means we expect someone to fit into our model of what we think they should do and be. When they don’t fit our model, either because they made a mistake or are simply being themselves, then we focus on their “imperfections.” This attention to what we label as “imperfections” then becomes the basis for how they should change, and, quite often, drives our efforts to “fix” our partners, family members and friends.

For many years I was driven to try to “fix” my mom. She seemed to complain about everything and never see anything positive in the world or her life. One day I was visiting her in Chicago and we were driving home from an afternoon at the horse races (her favorite pastime). She was complaining about something and I interrupted her and said,

“Do you realize that you constantly complain? Can’t you ever look at the good side of anything?”

She looked at me sideways, with a rather frustrated expression on her face and said,

“Maybe I like complaining.”

In that moment I had an epiphany. She was being who she was. She was doing a perfect job of being my complaining mother. The mother that also changed my diapers and encouraged me to play the piano. There was nobody else like her in the whole universe. She didn’t need to change at all. I NEEDED TO CHANGE. I needed to stop judging her and stop trying to make her become someone else. From my perspective, I thought I was helping because it seemed like she was miserable so much of the time. But I realized that my attitude and actions towards her WERE ADDING TO HER MISERY.

I couldn’t make her happy, but I could certainly stop adding to her suffering by trying to make her something she wasn’t.

In the brief essay below, Kaaren Anderson comes to a similar conclusion about her grandmother, after her grandmothers death:

Best described as stout, there was nothing unhurried about her. The skin under her arms swung in pendulum force when she moved. My grandmother. Far from a slave to fashion, she nonetheless cared about her appearance, wearing a full-corseted girdle daily. She wasn’t ugly or beautiful, yet she sported a quick, one-sided mischievous grin that always kept you guessing as to her womanly guises. She was a klutz of enormous proportions. . . . A woman who looked like a grandmother at thirty.

~ Kaaren Solveig Anderson, Ms. Perfect

Thank you Kaaren, for reminding us how to appreciate another human being for who they are. Thank you mom, for tolerating my arrogant efforts to fix you all those years and still loving me. Thank you Abbie (my daughter) for being such a free spirit, which I too often label as disobedience or inattentiveness.

Once we cease trying to make everyone perfect, perhaps we will get a glimpse of what perfection really is.
_______________________
Your relationship deserves your attention, if you want it to thrive. Join the ToDo Institute’s upcoming course, Renewing Your Relationship, for a fresh new approach to a healthy, fulfilling relationship. Starts February 17, 2012.

But if you are willing to consider your relationship as an element of your own spiritual practice, then I would like to offer you a different framework for the challenges in your relationship.

1. The Challenge of Acceptance
Letting go of trying to control how life unfolds and accepting your partner rather than trying to fix him or her;
2. The Challenge of Co-existing with Your Thoughts and Feelings (without acting on them)
Developing the self-discipline to have a roller coaster of thoughts and feelings on the inside without necessarily acting on them;
3. The Challenge of Skillful Attention
Cultivating an authentic sense of gratitude by noticing how you are supported and cared for, rather than what aggravates you;
4. The Challenge of Self-reflection
Using your relationship as an opportunity for examining your own conduct and taking responsibility, rather than blaming and criticizing your partner.

These challenges match up exactly to the skills I discuss in my book, A Natural Approach to Mental Wellness. If we can figure out a way to cope skillfully with each of these challenges, we have the potential not only for a successful relationship, but to develop character and move forward on our own spiritual or religious path. This is not an easy path.

“For one human being to love another is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.” –Rainer Maria Rilke

Several years ago I made a presentation for the One World Library Project in Bristol, Vermont on the theme, Cultivating a Sense of Gratitude in Relationships. Here’s a ten minute “short version” of my presentation, which specifically touches on the challenge of self-reflection and the importance of cultivating a sense of appreciation for our partners.

One of the forces that works against our ability to cultivate gratitude is familiarity. We get used to what our partner does for us. And as we become accustomed to what they do, a sense of expectation grows. It’s a lot like turning on the light switch in the bathroom. You walk through the door, turn on the switch, the light goes on, and you do what you came there to do. How often do you think, after you hit the switch, “wow, how nice that the light went on so I can see.” You probably don’t pay attention to the bathroom light at all until . . . . . it stops working. Then you express your frustration and disappointment as you go look for a new bulb.

Equation #1
Familiarity + Expectation = Absence of Gratitude

Equation #2
Expectation – Fulfillment of Expectation = Disappointment/Frustration

These are not formulae for a successful relationship with your partner, though it may work alright for your bathroom lighting.

February is the month when we celebrate Valentine’s Day, so I’ll be posting some additional ideas related to the challenges of marriage and intimate relationships. The ToDo Institute is also sponsoring a distance learning program called, Renewing Your Relationship, which starts on February 17, 2012. My wife is teaching the course and besides having over twenty years of experience in Japanese Psychology, she has the credential of having had to deal with me for the past twenty years. That’s no small accomplishment.

Research has proven that music triggers the release of dopamine, the pleasure chemical. In fact, when we listen to our favorite music, our pupils dilate, our pulse rises and blood gets redirected to the muscles in our legs. Our bodies are primed for dancing or at least some serious toe tapping when we hear the music we love.

But music provides other benefits beyond delight. It helps us with memory recall. By stimulating the hippocampus it makes it easier for us to access what we learned previously. It creates physiological changes, such as increasing our level of antibodies, which in turn strengthen our immune system. It can help us to function better when anxious, and to relax when we’re too wired up.

Music adds to our quality of life in so many ways, some of which we now understand and others which remain mysterious. Read more about the wonders of music here .

So let’s think about how we can disrupt this downward spiral right here and now, with a minimum of force and a light touch. Let’s engage the mindful use of attention and behavior to tweak a big shift in our lives and our relationships.

We all know how it goes –a problem develops in a relationship and takes on a life of its own. The more we think about it, talk about it and focus on it, the more it grows, until it dominates the relationship, reducing it to one big unsolvable problem.

As the problem(s) take up more space, other things are overshadowed, overlooked and devalued. Even forgotten. Of course we need to problem solve and address problems from time to time, but if we let them saturate the relationship, we’re in trouble. While some problems can certainly be solved, other problems will not be — irreconcilable differences exist in virtually all relationships in some form.

The point is that problems aren’t any more real than blessings — they just come with more of a charge which we find hard to resist.

It’s our job to be aware of this tendency and to shift our attention in a mindful and deliberate way to what is going right and how we are being supported. This simple and gentle practice can go far toward turning a troubled relationship around, even a relationship with challenging problems.

The issue of attention is key in relationships, as Jim Roberts, author of Deliberate Love, explains. “I believe that where there is a problem in a relationship it is always a problem of attention and that virtually any problem can be resolved with a redirection of attention.”

Every year we experiment with practices such as this in our Renewing your Relationship distance learning program. We can learn new ways of being together. Big shifts are possible from small tweaks day by day. May we each have the presence of mind to recognize the opportunities as they arise and to respond with heart in the moment.

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”
– Frederick Buechner

A healthy 19-year old man from a nearby town died unexpectedly a few days ago after an accident while hiking in the woods. I didn’t know this young man (let’s call him Brian) or his family, but his death has sent ripples through my life. For many of the high school students here, this tragedy represents their first personal experience with death and the lesson is shocking. We are all temporary. Life is delicate. Anything can happen.

So we are all in the same boat, so to speak. None of us knows who will wake up tomorrow and who won’t. What are we to do and how are we to live, given the tenuous nature of our lives and the lives of our loved ones?

Death opens our hearts and helps us to remember to be kind. At least it can. That is why we use the name “Thirty Thousand Days” for this blog and for our quarterly publication. Not to be morbid or preoccupied with death, but to be joyful and appreciative of every day we are given.

So in honor of Brian, I will offer 19 gestures of kindness to the world — one for each year of his life. Whose death, or recent hardship, has touched your life? I invite you to join me in making symbolic but meaningful gestures of love and kindness, in the face of death and in the shadow of tragedy.

After my cousin was killed in the World Trade Center, his family channeled their sorrow and loss into a positive funnel of support for others by creating the Let Us Do Good Foundation. We need to respond to the tragedies that touch us with as much heart as we can muster. Then they were not for naught – something positive grew that may not have grown otherwise.

Buechner’s words offer some comfort and guidance for all of us:

“When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.”

2. Simplify – Reduce Your Stuff
We’re taught to equate “more” with success. So it takes a shift in paradigm to realize that the more stuff you have, the more complicated your life is. Surplus clothing, old toys, books, magazines and bank statements from ten years ago are taking up physical and mental space in your life.

3. Set Direction
At the beginning of my workshops I often ask people to identify their three most important accomplishments of the past year. Many people say it was an accomplishment just getting through the year. There’s more to be done than just stay alive. Dream. Prioritize. Take action on what’s important.

4. Learn to Do Something New
Getting older is no excuse to stop learning. Studies show that if you want to keep your mind sharp you have to keep learning out of the box. Challenge your mind this year.


5. Reduce or Eliminate TV Time
If you knew you that this year was to be your last, how much of your time would you want to spend in front of a TV? Be very selective and find other ways to relax and be entertained.

6. Improve Your Attention Skills
In Japanese Psychology we have a maxim, “Your experience of life is not based on your life, but on what you pay attention to.” Learn how to direct your attention instead of just letting it go wherever it wants to. (Resource – audio program – Life is a Matter of Attention)

7. Give Yourself Away
Look for opportunities to help someone or make a contribution to someone outside your family. Express appreciation. Make someone’s day. More fun that watching TV (see #5)

8. Make Time for Self-reflection
The balance in our lives should be between active/reflective not active/passive. Take some time to reflect on your day, year, life. I wrote a book on this – Naikan: Gratitude, Grace and the Japanese Art of Self-reflection (Stone Bridge Press).

9. Finish Something That is Unfinished
Get rid of some psychological clutter: a half-written novel, a half-painted bedroom, a not-quite-learned sonata on the piano. Bring a project to fruition.

10. Take a Risk
When author Richard Leider interviewed more than 1,000 senior citizens they said that if they could live their lives over again they would take more risks. The real risk is letting your dream die without ever trying to make it real.

Most people won’t keep their New Year’s resolutions for very long. It’s difficult to break free from the momentum of the past. Purpose and perseverance are critical. We need to shift away from a feeling-centered life and live with more purpose. I invite you to join me on January 9, 2012 for the distance learning course, Living on Purpose. We’ll spend 30 days finding our purposes and learning how to stay on track. It’s a great way to start the year.

This is the short version of Gregg Krech’s essay, Ten Changes to Start You Off on the Right Track in the New Year. The full version is available here. Gregg Krech is a leading authority on Japanese Psychology and has written several books including, A Natural Approach to Mental Wellness. He is the Director of the ToDo Institute in Vermont and the Editor of Thirty Thousand Days: A Journal for Purposeful Living.