Healthy Relationships

Healthy relationships are created when we understand other people. This section is aimed to help you grow and be successful in your relationship with others, by offering practical tips to better understand those around you.

Learn:

how to communicate using love languages
how to say sorry effectively
how to become a powerful person and live in freedom

Love Languages

How do you give and receive love?

Words of affirmation: This love language uses words to affirm other people - 'Thank you,' 'Good job,' 'I'm proud of you.' This person demonstrates love by encouraging, complimenting and thanking others and feels good when the same is returned to them

Acts of Service: This love language is about happily doing things you know that your friend will like or helping with tasks that need to be done. This can include doing the dishes, buying someone a coffee or cooking dinner for the family. For these people actions speak louder than words.

Receiving Gifts: This love language includes tangible gifts - presents given either at a special time or for no specific occasion; or gifts of self - your presence in important moments or times of crises.

Quality Time: This love language is demonstrated by spending time with others - in conversation and shared activities that you both enjoy. It is about giving the other person your undivided attention.

Physical Touch: This love language is about appropriate touch - a warm hug received from a friend, holding hands with someone or a back rub. This is your communication of love through the body's nerve endings.

Take the quiz

How to say sorry

There is a big difference between admitting you have done something wrong or hurt someone (confession) and genuinely apologising (repentance). The real difference is that when we genuinely apologise we also change our actions. We can demonstrate whether we are taking responsibility for the wrong or hurt we have caused by the way we word our apology.

Learn how to say a genuine apology here.

Learn the 9 rules for true apologies

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Why become a powerful person?

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It starts with me.

Become Powerful.

3 types of relating

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Powerful + Powerless

Powerful + Powerless = Controlling

There is no REMOTE CONTROL - you don't make me happy, you don't make me sad. You don't control me. And I don't control you. Powerless people actually believe that it is someone else's job to manage them.

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Powerful + Powerless

Powerful + Powerless = Dependent

Powerful people understand that the choices I make in my life determine the quality of my life, so I had better get good at making good choices.

If one person believes they can control the other person, and if the other person believes it is your job to control them you have the makings of codependency.

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Powerful + Powerful

Powerful + Powerful = FREE

Two people in a relationship who require high levels of responsibility. I require that I bring high levels of respect and responsibility to this relationship and I require the same from you. And if you come in low I will let you know that that you are doing is not working for me. I will let you know that it feels disrespectful, or that it feels hurtful, or scary when you behave like that. I will let you know. And then I will expect that you will manage whatever it is you need to manage on your side to protect our connection.

Powerful people working together in a culture of honor, building a strong connection that allows ‘I love you very much’ to flow back and forth, back and forth.

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Powerful Language

"Do or do not, there is no try" YODA

Powerful people they are not saying I can’t they are saying I won’t. They are not saying I have to, they are saying I choose to, I will, I won’t. That’s what you are looking at, that’s what you are paying attention to, that there is a perspective that actually shows up in the way that you talk.

Trust Cycle

This cycle demonstrates how our trust is built through our experiences. We all have needs, when we express these we look for a response, this response fulfills the need and provides us comfort.

We use the trust cycle as we grow up and in every relationship that we have; obviously our needs change over time.

For example: you may feel hurt by something a friend said to you, so you approach them and let them know how you felt and what you need to feel.

A great way to do this is 'I feel __________ when __________ because _____________ I need to feel ______________.'

So you let your friend know 'I feel sad when you choose the game every day because I would like a turn, I need to feel valued.'

Your friend hears you, apologises and offers for you to choose the game. Immediately you feel heard and valued which brings comfort. As a result the trust between you and your friend strengthens because you have seen that it is safe to share a need and your friend responded.

Trust requires many repetitive cycles to develop as new areas of responsibility and freedom are constantly coming up as we get older.

Mistrust Cycle

Unlike trust, that takes a long time to build, mistrust can happen a great deal faster especially if the relationship is not strong to begin with.

The Mistrust Cycle is similar to the Trust Cycle in that there is a need that gets expressed, however the response does not satisfy the need and therefore does not bring comfort. As a result trust is compromised and the need is left unattended.

For example: you may have shared with your friend your need 'I feel embarrassed when you tease me in front of others because they laugh at me and tease me too, I need to feel safe and appreciated.

Your friend hears you but continues to tease you in front of others, therefore not satisfying your need to have your feelings kept safe. As a result comfort does not happen and mistrust enters the relationship.

Irresponsibility Cycle

Here is how this works. First, you need one bad guy. As soon as you find a bad guy you now get to transfer responsibility. Maybe they are your friend, maybe they are a peer, maybe it is your parent, maybe a sibling.

This is how the irresponsibility cycle starts because you begin to look out there for why you feel powerless. Why you are going to have the day you are going to have and as soon as you find a bad guy you now get to introduce the culprit.

And the culprit is the victim. The victim is the powerless person who is going to take no responsibility for how they behave. So as a victim I can’t be held responsible for anything I say or do. And this begins with ‘I can’t believe you said that to me, I can’t believe you did that and then this has been going on for all these years and then you did it again and I’m so sick and tired of this’. And as you begin to ooze out this aroma of powerlessness you recruit…the rescuer.

The person who now comes and completes the loop. This is the person who shows up and says to the bad guy ‘how dare you bad guy say mean things to this poor victim. I have been sent to rebuke injustice and you will be held accountable and stop in your tracks now’. And the bad guy goes ‘what have you got to do with our situation?’ and the rescuer says ‘absolutely nothing, but my life often feels out of control so I like to get overly involved in other people’s problems.’ And here we go, we now have someone who has taken responsibility from the victim and is now going to deal with the problem that they don’t have.

And then the bad guy says ‘I can’t believe you just came over here, you just get involved in this situation and you are saying I am doing bad things, you weren’t even here, you don’t even know what I said, I can’t believe you are treating me like this…help, help’ and now the former bad guy becomes the new victim. Who then takes the rescuer and turns them into the new bad guy, and then…. Here comes a new rescuer who lands and says ‘how dare you pick on this person and accuse them of things, you don’t even know what was said, you weren’t there, you need to cease your injustice’. And the loop continues and our friendships are destroyed and relationships in the community are torn apart, our work environment is turned on it’s head. Because we found a bad guy. We absolved the owner of all responsibility, we transferred responsibility to someone who is not even involved and this cycle continues.

Now where is the original victim, where is the person who started this whole thing? They are over on the beach soaking up the rays; they have no responsibility for their own life.

So rather than getting pulled into this irresponsibility cycle/ triangulation, understand what it looks like to be a powerful person.

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