Tips, Tools and Skills

1: Accept Yourself As You Are

This is required for others to truly accept you as you are. It’s called self-compassion and it may be your hardest challenge.

2: Acknowledge what is already working in your life

Being grateful meant acknowledging the benign forces in the universe that were working in my favor. Life wasn’t just a battle I had to fight on my own; it was also a bounty I was lucky to receive, hands I was lucky to have supporting me. Gradually, I began to understand gratitude the way Fred saw it, less as a reaction to this or that circumstance than as a way of looking at the world. Life itself was reason to give thanks.

3: Ask your waiter's name

Next time you go to a restaurant for a meal, make it a point to ask your waiter's name. Notice their reaction. Address them by their name.  You may learn something amazing about this person.

4: Avoid Spiritual Bypassing

Don’t hide from or avoid the pain of waking up by taking a spiritual bypass. It doesn’t work and it’s a waste of precious time and energy.

5: Be Appropriately Vulnerable

Vulnerability is a powerful sword with two sharp edges. It can cut through defenses like a warm knife through butter, or it can cut your arm off and destroy the budding relationship by providing too much information too quickly.

6: Be Curious About Everything

Curiosity alone is the antidote to tightly held beliefs, and curiosity will make you want to know the other person more deeply.

7: Be Here Now

Find happiness within turmoil, be satisfied now, not sacrificing the present for a future that might never happen.

8: Become the Person You Want To Be

Are you the person you want to be right now? If not, what is stopping you?

Start the next moment NOW by visualizing the person you want to become. Journal about this person. Draw pictures if his or her life. Be specific. What are you doing? Who supports you in this process? What are you working to accomplish?

9: Does your live language cause clashes with your partner?

Did you take the Love Languages assessment? If you are in relationship. did your partner take the same assessment? Do your love languages match or differ from your partners? How have any differences impacted your relationship?

10: Drop Your Defenses

Develop awareness of your defenses and what triggers them. Learn to drop them if and when you want to connect. Defenses are often boundaries that have been set unconsciously.

11: Enjoy what you already have

The good things in life-happiness, purpose, contentment, companionship, beauty and love-have been there all along. We don’t need to earn them. Good food, friends, art, warmth, worth-these are the things we have already. We just need to choose them as our lives.

12: Experience your feelings

Own what you feel and speak your feelings appropriately. You can express anger without attacking. You can express sadness without embarrassment and guilt without shame.

13: Express Gratitude

Expressing gratitude builds deeper connection with yourself and with others.

14: Express your love in the language your partner recognizes

If you are in a committed relationship (or want to be in one), consider expressing your love for your partner in a language she or he recognizes. If you need physical touch, how does this land on your partner? And conversely, if your partner doesn't express love in one of your primary love languages, how does this impact your relationship? And more importantly, what adjustments can you both make to get more of what you want?

15: Fail Early & Often

Failure is an excellent teacher. Learn to welcome and embrace its lessons.

16: Focus on Substance instead of Form

Form is just the wrapping paper. Substance is the gift hidden beneath the wrapping. Focus not on the wrapping, but on the gift, no matter what its form.

17: Get off the Victim Triangle

No blaming - take responsibility for your choices and their consequences.

18: Healthy Self-Esteem

Never allow someone to become your priority while allowing yourself to become your option.

19: Healthy Self-Esteem

Never allow someone to become your priority while allowing yourself to become your option.

20: Hold Your Beliefs Lightly

Remember that your beliefs may or may not be true. If your beliefs are different from the other’s, that difference alone is a barrier to connection.

21: Interrupt Harmful Patterns

Develop a habit of using the Pattern Interrupt. When you can notice that a pattern is about to trigger a defensive response, choose a different response...one more in line with who you are, your vision, mission and purpose.

22: Invite Your Shadows to Tea

You can’t kill your shadows, but you can integrate them by inviting them into the light.
Remember, it is highly likely that those around you can see the shadows you don’t see.

23: Kindnes

Kindness is a language the deaf can hear and the blind can see

24: Know Thyself

Use every means available to know yourself more deeply, to know your beliefs, your shadows and defenses. Take assessments, sit in circle with others, get counseling or coaching, journal and look deeply into the mirror of who you are.

25: Learn to laugh at yourself

Can you laugh at your own mistakes? Although some mistakes may have serious consequences, most mistakes are little ones and don't merit critical self-judgment. When you make such a mistake, find the humor in it and have fun with it. Then ask yourself what you learned from making that mistake.

Every mistake is a learning opportunity.