Love & Relationships

Hello, it’s Gina Gardiner again, founder of the Thriving Together Community and The Thriving Not Surviving Development Programme and International Best Selling Author, Motivational Speaker and coach.

Welcome to video 2 of my brand new video series introducing The Thriving Not Surviving Programme and The Thriving Together Tribe. Together, they offer you a SAT NAV to navigate the pathways to happiness, success and fulfillment.

Now in this video, I’m going to teach you how to create lasting loving relationships.

If you are feeling invisible or alone but you want a life where you feel valued and loved, or you are in a relationship that isn’t as close, as satisfying, or full of love, and joy as you would like you’ll discover why.

But more importantly, I’m also going to show you how that will help you feel loved and enjoy successful relationships based on mutual love, trust and respect and why it’s critical that you focus on this right now.

In video #1, we talked about the Thriving Together Tribe programme for creating empowering beliefs. I shared how this is going to immediately help you live a much happier, more successful and fulfilling life. So if you haven’t seen that video, go back and watch it now and then come back to this one. 

Today I’m going to build on what we discussed by sharing the #1 thing you must master if you want to create and sustain loving relationships. This is an entirely new way of thinking about relationships so pay close attention.

I’m also going to share how your language has the power to create or destroy love. When you know how to do this, you’ll never have to worry about failed relationships again.

The goal is to break you free of the way your relationships or lack of them are causing you pain and get you on track towards achieving self-love so that you can experience deeply satisfying relationships with others.

We have a lot to cover today so be sure you have some paper and a pen ready to take notes and follow along. Anytime you’re trying to achieve and sustain loving relationships, it’s inevitable you’ll hit roadblocks. Perhaps you’ve experienced them before.

Things like:

• A lack of confidence when it comes to love
• A series of failed relationships which leave you feeling battered and bruised
• Regular misunderstandings or frustrations with your partner which lead to arguments

Here’s what I know to be true. If you’ve ever faced these before, you’re totally normal. But if you allow these to become your everyday truth, you’ll never achieve lasting, satisfying loving relationships.

Plus, I know how common it is for partners to trigger feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, anger and frustration when things are tricky in a relationship and I know just how unhappy that can make you feel. 

I know how challenging it can be to manage relationships with family, friends, your colleagues, team and your boss particularly when there are so many calls on your time and you are being pulled this way and that.

I recognise how great it is when our relationships are going well, but just how devastating it is when they are not.

That’s why, in this video, I’m going to take the process of creating lasting loving relationships and break it down. We are going to get very practical about loving relationships, which is going to save you a lot of frustration and heartache.

However, before we go any further, it’s important I bring to your attention something that often gets overlooked as you begin to think about this on a practical basis. And not paying attention to this will virtually guarantee that your relationships will suffer, and you will experience greater levels of frustration and unhappiness.

You don’t have to put up with relationships where you are treated badly, where you feel ignored or let down. You don’t have to feel isolated and alone. You deserve to be happy and loved. You deserve to be valued, you have a voice which is worth listening to, and you have much to contribute to every relationship.

So let’s get into the meat and potatoes of today’s video starting with...

Every relationship is a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself. When you have a good relationship with you, everything changes and becomes so much easier.

Learning how to love and appreciate yourself is vital if you want to experience all the benefits of great self-esteem.

Loving yourself is not about being lenient or overindulgent, but it is about:

• using the same criteria to judge yourself as you do others, no better, no worse
• feeling confident about yourself in any context
• establishing clear boundaries and being able to say no graciously and without guilt
• expecting to be treated with respect and taking action if anyone does not
• taking care of yourself as you would a best friend

The benefits of this are huge. People who have a great sense of self-worth have been found to be significantly happier and more successful in every walk of life, but particularly in the relationship stakes.

They take ownership of their personal wellbeing so are far less likely to let others upset them or put them down. This, in turn, means they are less likely to find themselves in loveless or abusive relationships.

A client I’ll refer to as “Karen” came to me because she was in an unhappy relationship. She talked about how her partner constantly criticised her and made fun of her efforts, particularly when there were others around. She was expected to do everything around the home but her efforts were rarely - if ever - appreciated. She was anxious, unhappy and lonely.

Helping her develop a strong, loving relationship with herself was vital if things were ever going to change. We put strategies in place which enabled her to recognise her true worth. She learned to appreciate her strengths and celebrate them. As she became more confident, she felt able to challenge her partner’s behaviour and learned to deal with him in a very different way.

It is important to recognise that the only person you are totally responsible for – unless you are talking about very small children – is you. No one can make you unhappy or angry unless you choose to let them. That may sound harsh, but it is actually the truth.

You cannot change anyone else unless they choose to engage with you. However, when you change your behaviours and do things differently, others will respond differently. But don’t expect change to occur instantly. Being consistent in your approach is important if you want lasting change.

Many people go from one disastrous relationship to another. They often choose people of a particular type and find they themselves behave in a particular way. The result can often cause significant heartache and difficulty. The costs in terms of the emotional fallout is huge but there are also enormous financial implications and the ripples impact not only the two within the relationship to affect others.

The emotions connected with love and the lack of it are strong and run deep. Those who have experienced a loveless childhood often find it difficult to create loving relationships with anyone including themselves. The problems created when people feel unloved and unlovable will affect the quality of their lives unless they find the strength to take control and change things. 

I started to work with Sherri after a relationship breakdown. It was the last in a string of relationships where she had fallen in love with a guy who let her down very badly. 

We explored each of the relationships to look at the underpinning behaviours which had led to the breakdown of the relationship. 

Sherri was desperate to be loved. She wanted a partner to look after her; to make her feel safe. We identified that she had been attracted to partners who she initially thought were strong but in reality, they proved to be very controlling and jealous.

Helping Sherri develop a positive and strong sense of personal self-worth and forcing her to start taking responsibility for the quality of her life enabled her to do things differently. She learned how to set boundaries and to expect to be treated well. She is now in a loving inter-dependent relationship with a man who loves her deeply and treats her well. The success of this relationship was dependent on her realising that if she wanted a different quality of life, she needed to do things differently.

The language you use has a profound impact on the quality of your relationships.

In any relationship between two people, there actually three relationships going on: the one both individuals have with themselves and the one they have with each other. This is true whether the relationship is a romantic one or a relationship with a family member, friends, colleagues, or your boss. Whilst people may be using the same words when they communicate with one another, it is very common for people to have a vastly different understanding of what the words they use represent. This can cause all sorts of challenges.

When we use words like ‘love’, we all have our definition of what the word means for us. We need to experience certain behaviours from others in order to feel loved. When you are in a relationship with someone who has a different definition of what love means, and they demonstrate their love in a way which doesn’t satisfy our particular need it is a recipe for trouble.

Learning how to harness the power of language will help you manage all your relationships even more effectively but will enhance the relationship between you and your partner significantly.

If you are on your own and was to be in a loving relationship, like Anne, you will find that learning to fully appreciate yourself, to develop confidence and understand what you can learn from past experiences will really increase your chances of finding your special partner. Anne found it hard to spend time by herself. She was desperately lonely and unhappy.

Learning to treat herself as well as she did her friends was a very important element in her journey to find enduring love.

Confidence is sexy, people are attracted to those who are happy and compassionate. Everyone can learn to feel more confident and self assured if they choose. Anne was given all the tools to help her embrace life in a far more positive, self-assured way and as a result she found true love and happiness.

Let’s do a quick review of what we learned today.

First we learned a whole new way to think about self- worth and its importance in creating and sustaining lasting, loving relationships. Apply this to what you’re doing now and you’ll begin to see an immediate shift towards a better more empowering relationship with yourself.

Plus, you learned about taking ownership for your own emotional wellbeing ensures that you will never be made to feel unhappy, frustrated or cross unless you choose to be which will help you take control of your life.

You have learned that the language you use is important. The words you use may have a very different impact than the one you intended. In the same way, don’t assume the meaning behind the words people are using – it may be different to what you think. Learning how to develop a shared language will greatly enhance the quality of your communications and your relationships.

Identifying past behaviours and how they have impacted on your relationships is important if you want better quality relationships moving forward.

It’s been a jam-packed video so make sure you review your notes and take action immediately.

Speaking of taking action, before we go today, I want you to leave a comment right below this video and tell me an area of your life where you are harder on yourself than you are on others and how you are going to do things differently from now on.

How will it be if you treated yourself as you do your best friend?

After you apply this, how will life be different one year from now? Get clear about the result and the impact it will have on your life, the lives of your family and those around you.

So let me know by leaving a comment below.

And if you found this video useful, please share it on Facebook, Twitter or even by sending a friend the URL to this page.

In the next video, I’m going to show you how to create ongoing success personally and professionally.

If you’re keen to create greater success in your life this will give you the exact track to run on to get to the achieve professional and personal success you dream of.

If you’re successful professionally but feel that success has come at a huge cost to your personal or family life, then we’re going to discuss specific steps you can take right now to amplify all the good you have and identify the few things that are likely holding you back from getting sustained success in every area of your life

Speaking of getting on-going sustained success, we’ve been hearing from a number of people who have had questions about the Thriving Together Tribe Programme and The Thriving Together Tribe I would love to see you in there.

In the next video, we’ll talk more about the program and how you can enrol. The way it works is, I open the full class up to the general public on a very limited basis. We do this so we can run it similar to a college class enabling us to go the through the programme together.

So I open up registration for a few days and then we’ll close it down to create the space to deliver the programme materials and provide lots of support to the new class. That’s why the next video is going to be all about moving forward.

So if you’re interested in moving forward and you want more details about the program, I’m going to be laying it all out in that next video.

But for now, I want to leave you with this...

You deserve to be happy, successful and fulfilled. You are the author of the script to your life story. You can choose to be the victim or the hero. 

Everything you do is a choice – even not choosing is actually a choice, one which often has far-reaching consequences, so I urge you to make the choice to to be the mistress or master of your own destiny. It is entirely possible, and we can help.

As we have learned in this video, you are the common denominator in every aspect of your life. Enhancing your confidence and self-worth is probably the most important thing you will ever do. Doing so will have a positive impact on your emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing. It will improve every relationship in your life but particularly the relationship with your significant other. It will help you achieve greater success professionally and enable you to manage the challenges and changes you experience throughout your life. It is at the core of knowing your true purpose and living a joyful, fulfilling life. It makes total sense to make it a priority!

Next up, we’ll talk about how to take the next step towards achieving a happy, successful and happy life.

For more information and to see a video version of this, click here.