Let's explore six internal shifts that can help nurture conscious love...
1. When we have differences with our partners, we often focus on a desire to explain ourselves better so that we feel heard and understood. If we are willing to give our partner equal space, however, and lean into their valid perspective, not negating the value of our own, we can gently invite our partners to do the same and have a much better chance of co-creating compromise and shared understanding. If we continue simply trying to explain ourselves better, we rarely resolve anything and we make it difficult for either person to actually soften or expand their perspective.
2. We rarely evolve, or get what we want, when we’re focused on receiving and on whether or not our partners are meeting our needs. We tend to see what’s lacking rather than the unique ways that our partners love us. When we focus on what we want to provide, who we want to be, and the value we want to add, we’re in a constant state of becoming, and we increase the likelihood that our partners will want to grow into a version of themselves that matches our impact in the relationship.
3. When we feel upset, we often immediately focus on our story about our partners—about the reason for their behavior or attitude, what it means about them about us, or about the relationship, and we can globalize some version of who they are that matches our bias. It is much easier to focus on what our partners have done “wrong” vs focusing on our unique and valid emotion. When we focus, instead, on what we feel in our bodies, the sensation and emotion we’re experiencing, without attaching it to some universal wrong that our partners have committed, but on our own unique experience, we validate our own inner world, and we give space for our partners to explore their experience without defense.
4. Instead of your partners potential negative response dictating your behavior, imagine validating your own feelings and bringing those honestly and skillfully to your partner and not attaching to a particular outcome in your partners response. Your partner’s response is theirs, not yours to manage and certainly not an indication that you should become a smaller version of yourself to make things comfortable for them.
5. It’s easy to let the small things roll off our backs, but these small things can serve as our practice ground to strengthen the emotional habits that become more necessary when we’re faced with the bigger issues. If we intentionally use the small things to build the emotional muscles of skillful conflict resolution, we’ll be a lot more prepared when it’s time to jump into performance conditions later on.
6. When you have upset feelings, instead of focusing on what your partner has done, try focusing on the effective response that you have the opportunity to practice. Most often when couples argue or have upset feelings, no one has done anything inherently wrong—we have different perspectives, priorities, values, and desires for which there is no generally accepted standard. And each time there are upset feelings, we have an opportunity to practice having a more effective response, which is the strongest predictor that we’ll feel treated better in our futures.