10 Things you can do to Mindfully Create a Better Relationship

Relationships aren’t easy. They ebb and flow and sometimes get really stuck. We go through phases just like the developmental phases in life and we often need a few tips and tools to help us smooth the path. Below are 10 things you can start doing right now using the skills of mindfulness to increase your happiness and health in your relationships.

1. Practice gratitude and take yourself out of default mode: being grateful and focusing on the positive tips our brain towards expecting good things. What we notice quite simply persists. Our brains are wired for negativity and we need to consciously practice tipping the scales in the other direction.
2. Become an expert on reading your partner’s brain: notice when they are triggered or calm. Don’t raise difficult topics when your partner is activated as they simply will not be able to engage with you. Look for signs of fight/flight/freeze and know what helps you or your partner feel more settled. Work consciously towards this, be prepared to stop an argument that is going nowhere.
3. Practice listening from an open and receptive place: mindfulness encourages us to be present in the moment and fully engaged. Mindful listening is a gift you can offer on a regular basis.
4. Practice the attitudes of Mindfulness: gentleness, non-judgement, compassion, empathy; first with yourself and then practice extending it outwards to your partner. The more lovingly we treat ourselves the easier it is to be loving to our partner.
5. Learn to press Pause: during an argument and at the smallest sign that things are about to escalate. Pause, notice, breathe: when you pause on a regular basis you reduce your own stress and make yourself safer for your partner.
6. Stay/get grounded in your body: this helps us be fully present with our partner in the relationship and to remain open to connection rather than shut down.
7. Cultivate awareness of your nervous system as this is where it all starts. When you mindfully learn to track your own cycles of activation and calm, you soothe your own brain and in doing so you co regulate that of your partner. We are mammals and we effect each other in unseen ways.
8. Know how to repair and do it quickly: the longer ruptures go unrepaired, the more they get wired in the brain as the default place of pain and negativity. Be prepared to forgive and let go of fixed ideas of who is right and wrong, a tenet of mindfulness is let go and sense into what is happening right now and from this place of space the next moment arrives with its own wisdom.
9. Cultivate seeing your partner with fresh eyes: we become conditioned to relating to each other in fixed and habitual ways, practice instead seeing with curiosity and interest; no matter how much you think you know what is going on for another person, you can never be fully sure!
10. Remember our relationship with others is a mirror of our relationship with ourselves: cultivate good self care, nurture and respect yourself, find out what makes you happy and do more of it; getting yourself in a state of flow and fully connected to your own life means you will be more inclined toward what you bring to the relationship rather than focusing too much on what you can get.