The Secret To Relationship Success

As we approach another Valentines Day, many of us prepare to celebrate and cherish the bond we have with our partner. And why not? It is well known that intimate and committed relationships generally increase life expectancy and also reduce incidence of illness – both mental and physical. On the other hand, people in relationships that lack commitment and intimacy are more vulnerable to a variety of ailments including stress, depression, psychosomatic disorders, and mental illnesses in general. So, it is not relationships per se that are good for us; it is all about how we are within them.

Ironically, the least healthy dynamic in a relationship appears when we start to hold on too tight. When we are too determined to hold on to something or someone, we start to tense up inside like an iceberg. This frame of mind then translates into every day actions and decisions, and we start facing the challenges before us – the kind of challenges that every couple faces – in an inflexible way, trying ever-harder to barge through what we see as resistance before us. All the little details then start to loom large and, before we know it, we’ve lost sight of the big picture and the small stuff has taken over. Each task then requires more and more energy and, ultimately, we end up grinding ourselves to a halt. As a result, the commitment and, eventually the intimacy fades, and the relationships starts to turn unhealthy.

The desire to hold on too tight exists in every one of us, though. It harks back to our first days of life when we were, in fact, truly dependant on our original relationship; the one with our parents. That is where the iceberg of tension – of dependence, need and controle - comes from. The greatest value of a relationship is to help us come to terms with this; to actually feel it – not act on it - but be with it. Every time you dig your heels in over something, or feel a reluctance to discuss or negotiate, it’s there. It sits within you like a child. Knowing it is the ultimate gift of relationship.

Through knowing and relating to your partner more and more deeply, and feeling what this journey brings up for you inside, you will be able to ultimately know and relate to yourself better. And, through loving someone in this way, you will learn to love yourself more too - which ever direction the relationship ultimately takes.

That is the catalyst for all the other benefits derived from relationships; physical, spiritual and mental.

So the secret to success in relationships, is the same as the secret to success in pretty much everything else in life, only it’s not a secret. It was described succinctly as far back as the first millennium BC, written over the entrance to the ancient Greek temple of Delphi; know thyself.

Knowing yourself is the real prize your relationship brings to you, and it is a treasure worthy of celebration indeed.

Happy Valentines Day!

Spiritual Wisdom For The New Year

The number of New Year’s resolutions that will be make as we usher out 2010 and launch the New Year will be almost as large as the number of people on the planet. If not consciously, then at least at some level, we all have expectations for the New Year – whether it is a series of goals in our career, or our personal life; one way or another, we are always hoping that the New Year will bring with it something, well... new.

Ultimately this means that we all have expectations for ourselves in the year ahead as well. Some ideas, plans and dreams will be realized and others won’t. Either way, it won’t stop almost all of us from making another set of resolutions the following year.

It’s a cycle that never ends. Why? Because it’s human nature. We never settle. We always keep striving. At any given time, there’s always a part of us, somewhere in the bowels of our mental engine, that is whirling away working towards a goal, and then the next, and the next. The consequences of this are both good and bad, however it doesn’t matter because it’s our nature. The important thing is not to attempt to overcome our nature, but to recognize and respect, and in turn maintain a balance.

Gratitude is the other dimension to our nature that the New Year also conjures up. Gratitude for what we have today, irrespective of any ambition for the future, is the ultimate acceptance of the world as it is and, therefore, the ultimate acceptance of ourselves.

Therein is the key to our happiness. We cannot immerse ourselves into it solely and attempt to become 100 percent happy, a hundred percent of the time, because the other side of our nature – the driven side – would automatically arise. Whether we recognized it or not, we’d proceed to push ourselves in the other direction. I am reminded of the story I heard from an experienced Buddhist teacher who told me of the time when he was in a Buddhist monastery with the aim of finding enlightenment and spiritual wisdom, goallessness and inner peace. The desire to do it became so great that they started to compete with one another as to who could meditate the longest and reach various stages of practise first! All that competition seemed to make enlightenment a most unhappy business. They were, of course, defeating the objective.

So the force of achievement and the force of acceptance must always coexist. The need to combine loving ourselves with improving ourselves, is the fundamental tension of human nature. The New Year is a celebration of this spiritual wisdom within. Getting the balance just right is a life’s work, it is what the journey of life is all about, with New Year’s Eve serving as a landmark along the way. It’s an intersection of love and acceptance, drive and desire. So raise a glass to the beautiful journey of life and keep treading – not too fast and not too slow, but always keeping the balance.


Article first published as New Year: A Celebration of Balance on Technorati.

The Ultimate Christmas Present; Self Improvement

They say it’s the season to be merry, and hopefully for most of us it will be. However for many of us, it is surely also the season to be busy. Through all the booking of holidays, inviting of friends, remembering all the cards, buying all the presents, preparing for all the guests; in one way or another we all will be left wishing we had Santa’s super powers to help us make it through the festive period. In some ways it's as if the Winter weather also beings with it a hurricane of sorts, spinning our lives around for a few days or weeks while we adjust to a new mode, then readjust back to normal life again at the end of it.

It might feel, therefore, like this is the least likely time for self improvement but, in fact, as with all times of stress and strain, the reverse is actually the case. The truth is that the strife we experience at Christmas is indeed an opportunity for self help. Whenever we feel pressure or stress of this nature it is a chance for us to reconnect with ourselves.

How? Well, at times of turbulence in our lives, it actually becomes easier for us, in some ways, to stop and feel our inner pain. This is a pain we all feel - the price of being alive if you will. An existential pain that accumulates through our lives. This pain then becomes a gateway to our inner world: One in which we are experiencing life at the deepest level; a level beyond thought or words.

The way to access it is through stillness.

When you are in the midst of another whirlwind day or week; juggling tasks, people and plans, find a moment to sit in the centre of the storm and feel the weather (i.e. the tension and strain) inside. Sit on your own, take a few deep breaths and listen to yourself with your whole body. Watch the thoughts, images and impulses that pass through your mind and the feelings and pressures that pass through your body. Be the observer of yourself, if even for a single moment. Do this as many times as you can and you will begin to know yourself better. Start the journey of self improvement in this way and it will surely be the best gift you’ll receive this Christmas.


Article first published as Christmas 'Tis The Season To Be Busy on Technorati.

Lessons From A Royal Romance

It was Tolstoy who famously said that there are many ways to find unhappiness in this world but the path to happiness is common. For most people this involves finding comfort, strength and security through family and relationships. All relationships push us out of our comfort zones. To adapt enough to accommodate another person into our lives requires real commitment because it will invariably involve moments of doubt, conflict, discomfort and uncertainty. But this very process can be the ultimate vehicle for our own self growth.

This is something that clearly comes across in the recent interviews between Prince William and his fiancé Kate Middleton. Prince William is one of the closest things the world has to a real live Truman Show. He has been raised his entire life before the glare of a 24-hour media. As they announced their engagement, the sheer ferocity of the flashing cameras looked enough to make anyone epileptic! As a consequence of this degree of attention, every twist and turn of their relationship has been scrutinized under the microscope of the ever restless media circus.

We know, therefore, that on at least one occasion – and probably more – William broke off the relationship with Kate. This they have in common with most other long-term relationships in the modern world. Unlike almost any other modern relationship, however, they were required to answer questions about this to the world’s press within 24 hours of their engagement. The answers they provided were very interesting. Though they both acknowledged that the breakups were a difficult time for them, they nevertheless expressed that they both feel they have grown as people as a result. In fact, the overriding theme of their decade-long relationship to date is that they have used the good times and bad to work on themselves and each grow as individuals. As a result, they now have a solid enough bedrock, they believe, upon which to build a lifelong partnership.

In many respects their own pressures have been entirely unique; dealing with life under such an intense limelight is a pressure unknown to most of us. Add to that, William’s own childhood trauma and consequent lifelong adjustment after the loss of his mother at an early age. However, in terms of the general forging of a dynamic between two individuals, with their own differing backgrounds, upbringings, feelings, priorities, issues and characters, their journey has not been dissimilar to that made by millions of couples around the world who, by working on their relationship, have worked on themselves and thus become stronger and happier people as a result. That is the ultimate aim and benefit of any relationship; emotional development.

The value of such growth, and the ability to achieve it through relationship, is inspiring where ever it is seen and, hopefully, the forthcoming Royal wedding will be a celebration of this, at least as much as it is of country, Royalty or celebrity.


Article first published as Lessons From A Royal Romance on Technorati.

A Halloween Self Help Course

Halloween? A self help course? I hear you ask...

Well, Halloween is one of those holidays that has been celebrated for so long that few people can actually remember why we celebrate it at all. Historians are, however, as if often the case, the repositories of this information and they tell us that Halloween is a celebration that goes all the way back to Roman times. It was generally a mark of the changing of the time of year from a period of light to a period of darkness. Hence all the aspects relating to ghouls and spirits that we tend to associate with “the dark side” on display during that night.

As a psychiatrist, the interesting thing for me is that it is not the external environment alone that has a light and a dark side. Each of us does too. In many ways we are all microcosms of the wider Universe in which we live and, as a result, our own make up reflects what exists on the outside. There is a part of all of us that is selfish, demanding, insecure, volatile and always in search of stimulation and short term gratification in its various guises. This is the destructive part of us that is the mirror image of our creative side. For counter balancing our “shadow” are our rays of light, of love, confidence, self belief, patience and the belief in others. The truth is that one side is required for the other to exist. Just as light could not exist without darkness, so our own light side could not exist without a dark side too.

The danger for us as conscious beings is not in having a dark side; the only way to remove our dark side is to remove ourselves from existence – and I am certainly not advocating that. The real danger exists in denying that we have a dark side. By suppressing or ignoring it, we end up giving it energy and empowering it to drive us in ways we remain unconscious of. That is why people who often start out with just or pious intent end up becoming enveloped by darkness because they thought they could banish all sin from their lives for good through some “true path” of pure virtue. Religious sects, churches and ministries throughout time have fallen prey to such thinking. Most actually believed they had found a salvation through denial. Until it was too late.

The healthiest systems and self help courses acknowledge and, yes, even respect our dark side. This does not mean giving in to it or giving it free reign, for at the same time it must always be balanced with an appreciation of our opposite, positive affirming energy. What it does mean, is remaining aware of both - staying in the tension of life. That is why finding harmless ways in which to open ourselves up to the shadow within can be a very positive thing to do.

So on Halloween this year, do enjoy all the ghostly and ghastly festivities and, through it all, try to remember that it is really yourself you are celebrating. You are both the trick and the treat, and you are all the more beautiful because of it.

Article first published as Self Help for Halloween on Technorati.

A Spiritual Self Help Exercise; Failure

Everyone knows that failure is a part of life. Yet, sometimes we can get so absorbed in the stress of failure that each failure can feel like it is the first time it has ever happened.

Undoubtedly failure leads to inevitable pain and sadness. This comes from the fact that a particular goal we had set ourselves has not been reached. But what we learn, when the sadness becomes particularly deep, is that we had somehow entangled this goal with our own sense of self worth.

If we ever find ourselves becoming too down as a result of a particular set back, we can choose to let it drag us down further or to turn it into a form of spiritual self help. Yes, that’s right failure can be an opportunity for growth too.

Just sitting and allowing ourselves to feel and be with the pain that this failure has generated can be a transformative act in itself, for what we will be feeling then is not just the pain of this particular failure, but we will also be experiencing the pain of troubles and traumas past that have somehow wound up entangled into this particular goal.

We may not know what it is – although, by being patient with our pain, the true nature of the echo may often bubble up to the surface – but the more we are able to stay in touch with the pain, the more we will be growing inside. As a result, over time, the self defeating aspects of our inner world will start to align with our goals.

So next time you reach a set back – see it as a spiritual self help exercise. This is an opportunity for you to connect more deeply with yourself. Listen to your pain and find out what it is telling you about your self esteem and love for yourself. If any failure can affect that then you know there’s more connecting to do with your child within. And that’s always true for all of us.

The Spiritual Wisdom Of The UK Electorate

The view greeting the British public this weekend on our news screens is something entirely alien; politicians talking to each other. Instead of exaggerating and emphasizing, through loud speakers, the differences between each other, they are actually sitting down and treating one another with mutual respect. Unlike in continental Europe, where coalition governments are the norm because of their electoral system, the UK political system is almost entirely adversarial where one party usually holds all the power and the opposition has none.

As we speak the Conservative and Liberal Democratic party are negotiating a compromise program. This form of negotiation is, as the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, himself acknowledged the morning after the election a scenario “unknown to this generation of political leaders”.

The sight of our politicians apparently growing up over night to engage in mature adult conversation with each other is truly refreshing and one that much of the public are reacting to favourably.

The key to success in this new form of adult politics, however, is about deploying a basic spiritual wisdom - about honouring the tribal instinct within while at the same remaining anchored to the calm centre that sits at the centre of us all.

This is where negotiation can indeed become a route to gaining spiritual wisdom for anyone engaged in it – especially politicians. The fact is that there are two dimensions to all of our personalities; one part - whether we call it the ego, lower self or, as I prefer, the outer self – that wants advantage, material reward, success, popularity, drama, excitement and pleasure, and another part – our higher self as some refer to it, or inner self as I prefer - that is detached from the roller coaster of the outer realm and that is our core centre of peace, acceptance and stillness. We constantly bridge these two parts of our inner world – the part that wants change, and the part that is acceptance – and progress is only really possible when we are able to embrace both these contradictory elements of our inner world.

If the negotiator is able to simultaneously remain in touch with the side of his/her self that yearns for change and fast impatient action, as well as the deeper layer of the self that maintains an acceptance for all that is, genuine expansion can occur in both the outer and inner worlds. It is for this reason that all peaceful negotiated progress in the world of politics and beyond, is driven by spiritual wisdom.