Trust Starts with You

 have a hard time trusting people.?
 never feel like I can trust my husband (or wife).?
It is very common for me, in my work as a counselor, to hear the above statements. Trust issues abound in relationships. However, resolving trust issues is not about getting another person to be trustworthy. It about you become a trustworthy person with yourself and learning to trust yourself.

BECOMING TRUSTWORTHY WITH YOURSELF

How often do you promise yourself you are going to do something and then don do it? For example, we often promise ourselves to:

* Get the taxes done on time.

* Catch up on email, phone calls, and other correspondence.

* Eat better.

* Drink less alcohol.

* Stop reckless spending, gambling, or whatever puts us in financial distress.

* Stop getting angry.

* Stop giving ourselves up.

* Lose weight.

* Get more exercise.

* Get more sleep (or sleep less).

* Get together with friends.

* Clean up the house, or clean up the clutter.

* Be on time.

* Watch less TV or spend less time on the computer.

* Meditate or pray.

* Take time for ourselves.

* Finish a project.

* And so on?.

If you promise yourself you will do something and then you don do it, you are not being trustworthy with yourself. This would be like promising a child something and then not doing it. Eventually the child would learn not to trust you. The same applies with your Child within. If you promise yourself ?your Inner Child ?that you will take care of yourself in some way and then you don do it, the Inner Child learns that there is no inner adult to trust. Since many of us project onto others our own inner issues, it is likely that if you are not trustworthy with yourself, you will project untrustworthiness onto others. You will continue to distrust others as long as you are not behaving in a trustworthy way with yourself and with others.

TRUSTING YOURSELF

Many of us grew up with parents who did not trust our feelings and perceptions. We might have been told that what we felt and what we experienced was wrong.

Mother: Put on a sweater. It cold outside.


Child: I not cold.


Mother: Youe just a child. What do you know? Put on a sweater.

Mother: Go give your Uncle Sam a kiss.


Child: No, I don like Uncle Sam. He creepy.


Mother: Of course you like Uncle Sam. Now go give him a kiss.

Child: My teacher is really mean to me.


Father: I sure your teacher is very nice. If your teacher is mean to you, it must be your fault.

Child: Daddy, why are you angry at me?


Father: I not angry.

After a while, we learn to discount and mistrust our feelings and perceptions. We learn to give our authority away to our parents and other adults, deciding that others must know more about what we feel, want and perceive than we do. We abandon our inner knowing and stop trusting ourselves.

I have worked with many people who felt deeply betrayed by someone, only to discover in the course of our work together than they had betrayed themselves by not listening to themselves. I often hear statements such as:

 knew when we first met that Frank was lying to me about his money situation, but I didn listen to myself. I believed him instead of believing myself, and now I stuck with all this debt.?
 had a feeling that Katherine was having affairs even before we got married but I didn listen to myself. The last thing I ever wanted was to be divorced with children.?
We can often feel in our bodies what is true and what is untrue, yet many of us don listen to these inner messages. Instead, we put our trust in others and then feel betrayed when others let us down. When we choose to listen to and trust our own inner voice rather than give our power away to others, we will no longer put ourselves in positions to be used and betrayed.

How often have you ignored yourself when something didn feel right, only to later discover that you really did know that something wasn right? How often have you heard the voice of your inner or Higher Self and discounted it, only to regret it later?

Your trust issues with others will be resolved when you become a trustworthy adult with yourself ?following through on what you say you will do, and when you learn to trust your inner knowing. It will be harder for others to get away with unloving acts toward you when you learn to trust yourself.

Copyright: ?2004 by Margaret Paul

This article is offered for free use in your ezine, print publication or on your web site, so long as the author resource box at the end is included, with hyperlinks. Notification of publication would be appreciated.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

To Trust or not to Trust !

Trust is something we learn as very small babies. We trust the first person that we bond with and it grows from there. Have you ever noticed how cool kids are? They trust every little thing we say. They rarely question us when we tell them something.

Believing our every word; and why not? They have not been exposed to mistrust yet, not that they would recognize it at such an early age.

Then they get older and come in contact with other children. This is when relationships begin., seperate from the familiar family relationships that they have grown to know as "normal". They begin to compare lifestyles with their friends and for some, this is when the first mistrust begins. They find out that it is not normal to be touched by people in their private parts. They find out that it is not normal to be beaten for doing something wrong. They find out that it is not normal to not be fed for a day or even two. They find that it is not normal to watch their dad hit their mom. They find lies, which gives birth to MISTRUST. Their lives turn an entire chapter at that point. They grow up somehow; suffering through the pain and loneliness of living with mistrust. For some they rise above it and use it as a learning tool. For others they become it; mistrusting everyone and everything. A small number of those people seek help and spend many hours and a great deal of energy trying to conquer it.

Then we have our jobs, we trust immediately anyone that has been there longer or that comes off as knowing more than us. We trust our bosses and our co-workers.

It is natural to trust as if we were babies all over again. With any new venture we yearn to trust.

When we first fall in love; What is that saying, "Love is Blind"? Ha! Now that's funny, because it really is blind. We trust so instantly and genuinely that we potentially set ourselves up for the biggest fall in our lives. Why is that? Is it because we are so driven by nature to want to trust someone? Or is trusting someone just a happier, easier, way of life.

Once a trust is breached, it creates a scar that has it's own heart and never goes away. We just learn to ignore its beat. We try to reorganize our minds and put it on the farthest burner we have. Some of us can do just that, while others cannot. For them life is not so easy. They find themselves thinking, should I trust or not? It's like they have to find proof and reason to trust, because their minds already mistrust. This is similar to the term "Guilty until proven innocent". For anyone out there that can relate to that, and I am sure there are many of you that do just that, life is hell.

If, lets say we love someone and they tell us one thing, and we keep getting mixed signals that stir up our mistrust thoughts, where do we go with that? Books tell us, that we are to trust the ones we love and that's it. And then, if our trust gets breached, and only then, can we be accurate with our mistrust. "Blah" I say! Oh and we're also told at the same time to trust our gut feelings. OK, I admit confusion here. I know this subject is really going to cut like a knife for some people and I will apologize now, but we have to deal with the reality of our lives. How else are we going to tackle our insecurities and get stronger. Our goal is to have a somewhat happy life. One that we can talk about to our grandchildren. We have to open our eyes and know what is going on in our wolds. If your relationship has had a breach of trust or if you have experienced mistrust earlier in your lives, then you already have a reason to feel insecure. Now that you know that, you can start to build up on that. Now you need to identify the exact core of it and toss it. Its old news and its over.

Start a whole new life as if being born again (for lack of a better phrase). I hear you already saying, "Easier said than done". I totally agree, but how many times have I said, "Anything worth having , does not come easy"? The answer is MANY. Life is not easy. We have to earned all our happiness. I have noticed, and I am guilty of this myself, that we are waiting for our lives to be happy. I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about happiness and if I have realized anything at all, its that happiness is in you and your thinking and how you deal with every little thing. To Trust or not to Trust is in our control. If we choose not to trust, we open the door to all sorts of evil demons, such as jealousy, low self-esteem, anxiety, envy, selfishness, self-torture, worry, loneliness and just plain unhappiness. So when we feel that , "Trust or not trust" debate lurking in our minds, choose to not allow your mind to go that direction. Tell yourself, that you are an intelligent person and you know what is right and what is wrong right now. It'is now that you are living, not then, or the past. We are very good at deciding what we want to eat, right? Or where we want to vacation and spend tons of our hard earned money. So then why is it so hard for us to just change our train of thought? Let me tell you..HABITS!

Bad habits, and for any of you that have read my HABITS blog, then you know what I mean. So go back and read it again and again. I believe that if one really wants to change something, it CAN be changed. "Let your thoughts determine your goals and your goals determine your destiny" (something like that). We are all destined to be happy. We just have to focus on our goals.

Feeling mistrust definitely has been caused by something in our lives. We may never figure it out and some of us have already figured their reasons out. But for whatever the reason, it is a negative emotion and one we can surely do without. Work on it, then work on more trust and more love. When we can trust, love comes naturally and that always invites happiness. So there you have it! I have given you the steps; it is your responsibility to you to climb them. Again I have shared my thoughts with all of you. I would love to hear your thoughts, on anything I have shared with you here.

I take responsibility for my life.
I have the power to make things better.
I always have a choice.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

7 Ways To Improve Your Relationship

Good relationships don just happen. Ie heard many of my clients state that, f I have to work at it, then it not the right relationship.?This is not a true statement, any more than it true that you don have to work at good physical health through exercise, eating well, and stress reduction.

Ie discovered, in the 35 years that Ie been counseling couples, 7 choices you can make that will not only improve your relationship, but can turn a failing relationship into a successful one.

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF

This is the most important choice you can make to improve your relationship. This means that you learn how to take responsibility for your own feelings and needs. This means that instead of trying to get your partner to make you feel happy and secure, you learn how to do this for yourself through your own thoughts and actions. This means learning to treat yourself with kindness, caring, compassion, and acceptance instead of self-judgment. Self-judgment will always make you feel unhappy and insecure, no matter how wonderfully your partner is treating you.

For example, instead of getting angry at your partner for your feelings of abandonment when he or she is late, preoccupied and not listening to you, not turned on sexually, and so on, you would explore your own feelings of abandonment and discover how you might be abandoning yourself.

When you learn how to take full, 100% responsibility for yourself, then you stop blaming your partner for your upsets. Since blaming one partner for one own unhappiness is the number one cause of relationship problems, learning how to take loving care of yourself is vital to a good relationship.

KINDNESS, COMPASSION, ACCEPTANCE

Treat others the way you want to be treated. This is the essence of a truly spiritual life. We all yearn to be treated lovingly ?with kindness, compassion, understanding, and acceptance. We need to treat ourselves this way, and we need to treat our partner and others this way. Relationships flourish when both people treat each other with kindness. While there are no guarantees, often treating another with kindness brings kindness in return. If your partner is consistently angry, judgmental, uncaring and unkind, then you need to focus on what would be loving to yourself rather than reverting to anger, blame, judgment, withdrawal, resistance, or compliance. Kindness to others does not mean sacrificing yourself. Always remember that taking responsibility for yourself rather than blaming others is the most important thing you can do. If you are consistently kind to yourself and your partner, and your partner is consistently angry, blaming, withdrawn and unavailable, then you either have to accept a distant relationship, or you need to leave the relationship. You cannot make your partner change ?you can only change yourself.

LEARNING INSTEAD OF CONTROLLING

When conflict occurs, you always have two choices regarding how to handle the conflict: you can open to learning about yourself and your partner and discover the deeper issues of the conflict, or you can try to win, or at least not lose, through some form of controlling behavior. Wee all learning many overt and subtle ways of trying to control others into behaving the way we want: anger, blame, judgment, niceness, compliance, caretaking, resistance, withdrawal of love, explaining, teaching, defending, lying, denying, and so on. All the ways we try to control create even more conflict. Remembering to learn instead of control is a vital part of improving your relationship.

For example, most people have two major fears that become activated in relationships: the fear of abandonment ?of losing the other - and the fear of engulfment ?of losing oneself. When these fears get activated, most people immediately protect themselves against these fears with their controlling behavior. But if you chose to learn about your fears instead of attempt to control your partner, your fear would eventually heal. This is how we grow emotionally and spiritually ?by learning instead of controlling.

CREATE DATE TIMES

When people first fall in love, they make time for each other. Then, especially after getting married, they get busy. Relationships need time to thrive. It is vitally important to set aside specific times to be together ?to talk, play, make love. Intimacy cannot be maintained without time together.

GRATITUDE INSTEAD OF COMPLAINTS

Positive energy flows between two people when there is an ttitude of gratitude.?Constant complaints creates a heavy, negative energy, which is not fun to be around. Practice being grateful for what you have rather than focusing on what you don have. Complaints create stress, while gratitude creates inner peace, so gratitude creates not only emotional and relationship health, but physical health as well.

FUN AND PLAY

We all know that ork without play makes Jack a dull boy.?Work without play makes for dull relationships as well. Relationships flourish when people laugh together, play together, and when humor is a part of everyday life. Stop taking everything so seriously and learn to see the funny side of life. Intimacy flourishes when there is lightness of being, not when everything is heavy.

SERVICE

A wonderful way of creating intimacy is to do service projects together. Giving to others fills the heart and creates deep satisfaction in the soul. Doing service moves you out of yourself and your own problems and supports a broader, more spiritual view of life.

If you and your partner agree to these 7 choices, you will be amazed at the improvement in your relationship!

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

To Trust or not to Trust !

Trust is something we learn as very small babies. We trust the first person that we bond with and it grows from there. Have you ever noticed how cool kids are? They trust every little thing we say. They rarely question us when we tell them something.

Believing our every word; and why not? They have not been exposed to mistrust yet, not that they would recognize it at such an early age.

Then they get older and come in contact with other children. This is when relationships begin., seperate from the familiar family relationships that they have grown to know as "normal". They begin to compare lifestyles with their friends and for some, this is when the first mistrust begins. They find out that it is not normal to be touched by people in their private parts. They find out that it is not normal to be beaten for doing something wrong. They find out that it is not normal to not be fed for a day or even two. They find that it is not normal to watch their dad hit their mom. They find lies, which gives birth to MISTRUST. Their lives turn an entire chapter at that point. They grow up somehow; suffering through the pain and loneliness of living with mistrust. For some they rise above it and use it as a learning tool. For others they become it; mistrusting everyone and everything. A small number of those people seek help and spend many hours and a great deal of energy trying to conquer it.

Then we have our jobs, we trust immediately anyone that has been there longer or that comes off as knowing more than us. We trust our bosses and our co-workers.

It is natural to trust as if we were babies all over again. With any new venture we yearn to trust.

When we first fall in love; What is that saying, "Love is Blind"? Ha! Now that's funny, because it really is blind. We trust so instantly and genuinely that we potentially set ourselves up for the biggest fall in our lives. Why is that? Is it because we are so driven by nature to want to trust someone? Or is trusting someone just a happier, easier, way of life.

Once a trust is breached, it creates a scar that has it's own heart and never goes away. We just learn to ignore its beat. We try to reorganize our minds and put it on the farthest burner we have. Some of us can do just that, while others cannot. For them life is not so easy. They find themselves thinking, should I trust or not? It's like they have to find proof and reason to trust, because their minds already mistrust. This is similar to the term "Guilty until proven innocent". For anyone out there that can relate to that, and I am sure there are many of you that do just that, life is hell.

If, lets say we love someone and they tell us one thing, and we keep getting mixed signals that stir up our mistrust thoughts, where do we go with that? Books tell us, that we are to trust the ones we love and that's it. And then, if our trust gets breached, and only then, can we be accurate with our mistrust. "Blah" I say! Oh and we're also told at the same time to trust our gut feelings. OK, I admit confusion here. I know this subject is really going to cut like a knife for some people and I will apologize now, but we have to deal with the reality of our lives. How else are we going to tackle our insecurities and get stronger. Our goal is to have a somewhat happy life. One that we can talk about to our grandchildren. We have to open our eyes and know what is going on in our wolds. If your relationship has had a breach of trust or if you have experienced mistrust earlier in your lives, then you already have a reason to feel insecure. Now that you know that, you can start to build up on that. Now you need to identify the exact core of it and toss it. Its old news and its over.

Start a whole new life as if being born again (for lack of a better phrase). I hear you already saying, "Easier said than done". I totally agree, but how many times have I said, "Anything worth having , does not come easy"? The answer is MANY. Life is not easy. We have to earned all our happiness. I have noticed, and I am guilty of this myself, that we are waiting for our lives to be happy. I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about happiness and if I have realized anything at all, its that happiness is in you and your thinking and how you deal with every little thing. To Trust or not to Trust is in our control. If we choose not to trust, we open the door to all sorts of evil demons, such as jealousy, low self-esteem, anxiety, envy, selfishness, self-torture, worry, loneliness and just plain unhappiness. So when we feel that , "Trust or not trust" debate lurking in our minds, choose to not allow your mind to go that direction. Tell yourself, that you are an intelligent person and you know what is right and what is wrong right now. It'is now that you are living, not then, or the past. We are very good at deciding what we want to eat, right? Or where we want to vacation and spend tons of our hard earned money. So then why is it so hard for us to just change our train of thought? Let me tell you..HABITS!

Bad habits, and for any of you that have read my HABITS blog, then you know what I mean. So go back and read it again and again. I believe that if one really wants to change something, it CAN be changed. "Let your thoughts determine your goals and your goals determine your destiny" (something like that). We are all destined to be happy. We just have to focus on our goals.

Feeling mistrust definitely has been caused by something in our lives. We may never figure it out and some of us have already figured their reasons out. But for whatever the reason, it is a negative emotion and one we can surely do without. Work on it, then work on more trust and more love. When we can trust, love comes naturally and that always invites happiness. So there you have it! I have given you the steps; it is your responsibility to you to climb them. Again I have shared my thoughts with all of you. I would love to hear your thoughts, on anything I have shared with you here.

I take responsibility for my life.
I have the power to make things better.
I always have a choice.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Trust Starts with You

 have a hard time trusting people.?
 never feel like I can trust my husband (or wife).?
It is very common for me, in my work as a counselor, to hear the above statements. Trust issues abound in relationships. However, resolving trust issues is not about getting another person to be trustworthy. It about you become a trustworthy person with yourself and learning to trust yourself.

BECOMING TRUSTWORTHY WITH YOURSELF

How often do you promise yourself you are going to do something and then don do it? For example, we often promise ourselves to:

* Get the taxes done on time.

* Catch up on email, phone calls, and other correspondence.

* Eat better.

* Drink less alcohol.

* Stop reckless spending, gambling, or whatever puts us in financial distress.

* Stop getting angry.

* Stop giving ourselves up.

* Lose weight.

* Get more exercise.

* Get more sleep (or sleep less).

* Get together with friends.

* Clean up the house, or clean up the clutter.

* Be on time.

* Watch less TV or spend less time on the computer.

* Meditate or pray.

* Take time for ourselves.

* Finish a project.

* And so on?.

If you promise yourself you will do something and then you don do it, you are not being trustworthy with yourself. This would be like promising a child something and then not doing it. Eventually the child would learn not to trust you. The same applies with your Child within. If you promise yourself ?your Inner Child ?that you will take care of yourself in some way and then you don do it, the Inner Child learns that there is no inner adult to trust. Since many of us project onto others our own inner issues, it is likely that if you are not trustworthy with yourself, you will project untrustworthiness onto others. You will continue to distrust others as long as you are not behaving in a trustworthy way with yourself and with others.

TRUSTING YOURSELF

Many of us grew up with parents who did not trust our feelings and perceptions. We might have been told that what we felt and what we experienced was wrong.

Mother: Put on a sweater. It cold outside.


Child: I not cold.


Mother: Youe just a child. What do you know? Put on a sweater.

Mother: Go give your Uncle Sam a kiss.


Child: No, I don like Uncle Sam. He creepy.


Mother: Of course you like Uncle Sam. Now go give him a kiss.

Child: My teacher is really mean to me.


Father: I sure your teacher is very nice. If your teacher is mean to you, it must be your fault.

Child: Daddy, why are you angry at me?


Father: I not angry.

After a while, we learn to discount and mistrust our feelings and perceptions. We learn to give our authority away to our parents and other adults, deciding that others must know more about what we feel, want and perceive than we do. We abandon our inner knowing and stop trusting ourselves.

I have worked with many people who felt deeply betrayed by someone, only to discover in the course of our work together than they had betrayed themselves by not listening to themselves. I often hear statements such as:

 knew when we first met that Frank was lying to me about his money situation, but I didn listen to myself. I believed him instead of believing myself, and now I stuck with all this debt.?
 had a feeling that Katherine was having affairs even before we got married but I didn listen to myself. The last thing I ever wanted was to be divorced with children.?
We can often feel in our bodies what is true and what is untrue, yet many of us don listen to these inner messages. Instead, we put our trust in others and then feel betrayed when others let us down. When we choose to listen to and trust our own inner voice rather than give our power away to others, we will no longer put ourselves in positions to be used and betrayed.

How often have you ignored yourself when something didn feel right, only to later discover that you really did know that something wasn right? How often have you heard the voice of your inner or Higher Self and discounted it, only to regret it later?

Your trust issues with others will be resolved when you become a trustworthy adult with yourself ?following through on what you say you will do, and when you learn to trust your inner knowing. It will be harder for others to get away with unloving acts toward you when you learn to trust yourself.

Copyright: ?2004 by Margaret Paul

This article is offered for free use in your ezine, print publication or on your web site, so long as the author resource box at the end is included, with hyperlinks. Notification of publication would be appreciated.

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.