Is the glass half-full or half-empty? It depends on which way you look at it!

Here are some tips to develop a mind-set, a set of attitudes, that will boost your relationship and provide a map for your relationship journey, no matter where you currently are placed.

You could use this as a quiz and ask yourself, how am I going with these relationship attitudes? It has been said that no one can resist a loving heart, no matter what has gone on in the relationship. Sometimes, it just takes one person to lead the way, and that can make a very big difference. If you find you could do with some assistance here in developing healthy relationship attitudes, be sure to speak to a professional relationship counselor while you are learning new skills.

1. Appreciation: Express appreciation often, do not take each other for granted.

In my experience, couples who feel excited, hopeful and positive about their relationship have a distinct mindset. They look out for things to appreciate about each other and in turn for ways in which they can support each other. They feel grateful for the opportunity to be together and they are able to express their feelings to each other without criticism, blame or anger.

2. Listening: Is an under-valued skill.

Practice listening from your heart and listen for the meaning underneath. Speak less and listen more.

Be open and receptive to each other and listen to each other, you will instantly find your relationship more fulfilling and satisfying. Happy couples are willing to take on board what their partner says and to demonstrate that they value their partners’ perspective and opinion. They make efforts to understand each other, to walk in the others’ shoes.

3. Repair: Be a leader, be willing to fix hurts, disappointments and misunderstandings.

Go the extra mile!

Strong couples are quick to forgive when things go wrong and they do not let the minor trivialities of everyday annoyances become bigger than they are. They let go of the small stuff. They do not keep score and it doesn’t matter who initiated a conflict or who’s fault it was, both are willing to move towards each other as quickly as possible after there has been a breach, both are willing to initiate that first step towards healing and build a bridge. They are willing to start over: again and again!

4. Responsibility: Relationships are a dance, change your steps and you change the dance.

You can take responsibility for yourself but you cannot force change upon your partner.

Be willing to change and take responsibility for your own part in your relationship. Couples who feel satisfied seem to have a deep level of personal responsibility and ask themselves often: ‘What is required of me here? What is my contribution to the dynamic between us?’ Listen to your own thoughts and ask: ‘Why am I thinking that way? What is really going on here?’ Be willing to look below the surface. Defensiveness and a compulsion to ‘fix’ each other can be really detrimental, so let go of thinking ‘if only he or she was a certain way, then I would be happy’.

5. Space: Is a biological need.

Do not suffocate or smother your partner but give them room to be themselves and to grow.

Great relationships demonstrate a high degree of independence, with partners not relying on each other to make them happy. Each person takes responsibility for their own growth and happiness and allows their partner to do the same. Cultivate your own interests, passions and friendships so that your partnership can be characterized by fluidity and flexibility rather than rigidity. It is healthy to understand that good relationships are made of two people who are both independent and inter-dependent.

6. Play: We all need play in our lives, let yourselves have a sense of humour.

You have to have fun together!

Laughter is the best medicine, even for a little anxiety in a relationship. Cultivate a light attitude so that you don’t see problems as being insurmountable. Being light-hearted about things and not seeing problems in the relationship as being personality failures is enormously liberating.

Don’t tune out or turn off, it’s a big turn-off for great relationships. Have a willingness to “Be there”.

Make efforts to stay in contact with what is going on in each other’s world. Ask about each other’s day, greet each other with affection and attend consciously to hellos and goodbyes with a sense of presence so that your partner knows that they are your priority.

8. Courage: Be prepared to grow, to learn, to do what it takes.

You have to be willing to risk yourself and to show up in your relationship with all your human flaws and foibles. While this can be scary, a willingness to be exposed in an intimate way will see couples respectful with each other’s vulnerability and courageous with their own.

This post was originally published here.

“For many years, at great cost, I traveled through many countries, saw the high mountains, the oceans. The only things I did not see were the sparkling dewdrops in the grass just outside my door.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

The single best thing you can do to instantly improve your relationship is to become an expert gratitude-giver! When you choose to regularly express gratitude, even when you don’t feel like it, you condition your brain to start noticing and taking in the good things in your life.

Over time, this changes your mood and sense of well-being and who doesn’t want to be with someone who feels great, who exudes happiness and well being? It’s contagious! The more automatic it becomes to express your gratitude and appreciation, the more positive you become and so on it goes. Happiness grows exponentially when you become a finder of the good.

I’m not talking about being like Pollyanna, being ungrounded in reality or having a false sense of reality. Rather, even in life’s difficulties, if we routinely rest our mind on good things and noticing the good in people around us, life becomes joyful and relationships become easier. We stop taking things personally and we build up our internal resources so we can let things go. We don’t take offense as easily and we let criticism, real or imagined, go over our heads.

Developing the habit of gratitude is also good for your health. Your immune system works optimally when you are not under stress. When you are generating a sense of appreciation and consciously noticing the good, the brain cannot be overwhelmed by stress and mindless chatter that hooks us into the negative stories. The experience then of developing a habit of experiencing ourselves differently in the world ultimately means we become more mindful and more conscious. People who are mindful also have a greater capacity for empathy. So, practicing developing a new habit like gratitude helps us transfer this skill into other areas. As the mind changes the brain changes. See Rick Hanson’s work on the brain to find out how the brain is “like Velcro for the negative and Teflon for the positive”.

It’s been a matter of survival: we have needed to remember the bad experiences like being chased by tigers so we can avoid having those experiences again. However, most of us don’t have those life and death experiences regularly. We don’t need to live on high alert nor do we need to pay more attention to the negative influences in our lives. Rather, we have to train ourselves to notice and take in the good.

So, imagine that rather than feeling irritated and critical about your partner for the dishes in the sink, the socks on the floor or whatever it may be, we choose instead to be grateful for the gift they are in our lives. We start to regularly pay attention and to notice the good they bring, the small and the not so small acts and gestures of love and kindness.