What would you say if today I gave you some ideas and questions that could improve your relationships with your spouse or your partner? Or if I gave you tips on how to strengthen your relationships with your children, parents, siblings and friends?

I hope that some of the following tips will guide you to achieving richer and better relationships with your loved ones still before the end of this year. Perhaps some of my tips and ideas won’t be new to you and will only collect a mere “Well, I already know all this, don’t I?”.  But perhaps if you look closer, you might see that your default knowledge or the typical answers to these questions might not be enough, and that what is really needed is the time to ask these questions and the time to reflect on the answers. Have you used all your options?

I have come up the following reflections and questions when I was developing my VIP TEAM (Business Start-Up). Today it has become clear to me that they are very well suited for personal relationship development as well, not only for helping businesspeople to understand and gain new customers. I have naturally adjusted these questions and tips to be applicable in the personal development area:

You know your spouse or your partner well when you know…:

1. …what is frustrating him/her most at the moment in their life, work and in the relationship. (Do you listen to them? Do you have time and understanding for them? Being understood and knowing that we are listened to is one of the fundamental human needs).
2. …when you know what wishes, plans and ambitions this person has. (Again, this can be applied to various areas, e.g. job, relationships, life etc.)
3. …what would need to happen in order to double this person’s satisfaction and happiness and his/her feeling of being loved. (At this point we can learn what can be done or what would have to change to be happier. Often people who are dearly loved don’t think about it consciously, and only when their attention is brought to this they experience a eureka-moment. This brings closeness into a relationship!)

Use the longer fall and winter evenings, and the relaxed and cozy atmosphere they bring, to improve your relationships, just as you do with your job, your career or your business. Knowing, that at the end of the road, in sickness and in the old age, we will want to have loving people around us. Invest your time and energy today to make your relationships more successful now and in the future!

Quotes

The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident.

Sir Hugh Walpole

Relationships of trust depend on our willingness to look not only to our own interests, but also the interests of others.

Peter Farquharson

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.

Alexander Penney

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