Relationship Tip of the Week: Identify What Works

[Amy Warren, LMHC / WQ Mag Columnist]

Too often, people focus only on what doesn’t work in their relationship. When you focus on the positive, your relationship will become more positive. What you focus on expands. This week, take the time to identify what does work in your relationship.

Ask yourself these questions:
• When you are getting along well, what are you doing differently than when you aren’t getting along?
• When you’re arguing and the fight finally stops, what did you do to turn things around or to help the ice to melt?
• When your partner has a bad day, what do you do that helps to change the mood in the house?
• What do you do to get beyond a bad day of your own?
• When there is tension, how do you help it fade?
• When there have been really special moments between you, what did you do to make it happen?

Notice that all of these questions have to do with doing. Just identifying what works won’t change your relationship. You have to do it. As I tell my clients, “Insight alone isn’t curative; the cure occurs when insight is combined with action.”

You can also gather good information about what works from watching other people in relationship. What do you envy about other people’s relationships? What are they doing that you are not? Don’t sit around wishing your partner would bring it to your relationship; go ahead and instigate it yourself. If you want it to happen, make it happen.

Identify what works, and do it over and over again. You’ll be glad you did.

Amy Warren is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and Master Certified Relational Life Therapist. She counsels individuals and couples in her private practice in Sarasota and nationwide by phone.