Three Keys That Transformed My Marriage
I was surprised by how popular my post “Marriage: The First Ten Years Were The Hardest” was. It really struck a nerve.
For Valentine’s Day, I thought I would share the three keys that allowed me to fall in love with my husband all over again, and help me to keep falling in love with him more each day. I love you Angus!
- Understanding my husband’s upset is never personal. Part of what contributed to the suffering in our relationship was how reactive I was to Angus’ anger. I had no tolerance for this behavior. I judged him for his anger. I saw him as wrong and bad. Why? Because I took it personally. It was a personal affront to me that he was not happy, and I was particularly indignant if he was mad at me. “How dare he!”, I would think. I had no tolerance for his humanness in this area. I was not able to have compassion for his reality when it included him being unhappy with me. Now what I see is that he is human. He is not always going to behave in ways I like. When he is upset, that is his issue. He is destabilized. I don’t have to take what he is saying personally because I know it is not coming from a clear place inside of him. I may even feel compassion for him when he is upset. And when I don’t take his anger personally, I am better able to understand his point of view so we can find common ground more easily.
- Prioritizing goodwill. I am highly competitive. I always like to excel. I wasn’t competitive in sports because I wasn’t good at them. I took my ambition to academia, personal improvement and then to my marriage. This was a wonderful recipe for burn out and how to stamp out feelings of love. I still see more and more how my competitive nature does not serve me in the realm of love. Just this weekend at a training, I saw how me getting my way through stubbornness and tenacity may have short term gains, but takes away from the good feelings between Angus and I. Being willing to trust that working things out in mutually agreeable ways is what increases feelings of goodwill and trust in our relationship. This is always more important than me getting my way.
- Realizing how resilient I am. I used to think that my happiness was outside of me. I thought Angus was a big source for my happiness. When I learned that my happiness is inside of me, I thought I needed outside circumstances to be a certain way in order to access the inner happiness. That meant I needed Angus to be kind and loving for me to be able to feel my happiness. When I saw that it is never outside circumstances that get in the way of me feeling my wellbeing, only my thoughts can get in the way of me experiencing my wellbeing, I recognized that I was looking in the wrong direction. Now it is easier for me to not point fingers when I am upset, and to not take my upset so seriously because I know it is passing thoughts that will settle.
Rohini Ross is a psychotherapist, a leadership consultant, and an executive coach. Rohini facilitates personalized three-day retreats to help individuals, couples, and professionals connect more fully with their true nature and experience greater levels of wellbeing, resiliency, and success. You can find out more about Rohini’s work on her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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