Category Exercise

December 23, 2019,  Counselling, Exercise, Family, Life, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Love – A Never-Ending Story

While I ended this story with “She lived happily ever after,” in truth, the “ever after” has not come to be yet.

The story is really never ending. Every day offers my partner and me new lessons to learn about ourselves and each other and new challenges, which, as we open ourselves to each other in love, provides us with even greater possibilities for ourselves and our relationship into the future.

This is not to say that we never have arguments or disagreements, but because we love and care deeply for each other, we attempt to find a resolution in a way that demonstrates that love and care and which is good for both of us.

Nor does this mean that disagreements are always solved there and then...

March 13, 2019,  Counselling, Exercise, Life, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

I use the acronym TOUCH to remember the five ways of funding my love bank.

T is for Time

Relationships aren’t part-time arrangements. And, if your relationship is fed on left-over time (the time you have after everything else has been done), your love bank will very quickly be depleted.

Your relationship must take priority over everything else (other than yourself). You come first, your partner comes second. Your family is third, your work is next, and finally there are your extended family and other friendships beyond that.

This is not to say that you can’t work because you must always be with your family. It just means that you must always keep your family’s needs in mind if you are doing something of lower priority (like working)...

December 21, 2018,  Exercise, Love, Relationship, Relationship Tips, Sex  No comments

An Exercise:

To discover your conditions for great sex:

1.  Get a piece of paper and a pen and set aside half an hour or so. Think back to your best-ever sexual experience or experiences. If you have never had a great sexual experience, just imagine one or go find one of your favorite romantic movies.
2. Now write down all the things that made (or would have made) the experience(s) so good. They could be emotional factors (being in love or happy and relaxed), physical factors (feeling fit, well, and sober), relationship factors (feeling safe or in love with your partner), or situational factors, such as privacy or timing.
3. Next, think of your worst (or your imagined worst) sexual experience...

January 30, 2018,  Counselling, Exercise, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Some people say that forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past. Ironically, the future and the present are caused by the past, and thereby the past becomes our future and the present defines our past. And the causes and the effects mix to such a level that it is hard to even understand where it all started in the first place and where it will lead.

For me, besides gratitude, forgiveness is the single most powerful way to create lasting change for the better in relationships.

The story of a young man perfectly describes the effect of “cause and the effect” – he arrived home from work to find that his partner of ten years had left. A note on the kitchen table said that she didn’t love him anymore and she’d had enough of his abuse...

December 30, 2017,  Exercise, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Which Scenario Best Fits Your Relationship?

You wake up in the morning and lean over to your partner for a good morning kiss and hug or you grab your mobile, ignoring the person beside you, as you roll out of your bed to go for a coffee and/or a cigarette?

There are numerous ways to approach your partner when you want to encourage certain behaviours and numerous ways to fail in it.

We can so easily overcomplicate things, believing that there is only one way to get what we want and that is having ignored our partner we then get angry and demand, often through put-downs, what we want.

The smarter approach though is usually the simplest suggestion – to show you are grateful that he or she is there not just when you want something but all the time...

August 8, 2017,  Exercise, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

By saying “SMART” I mean all the things that involve a goal to be achieved. Because it is not enough just to want something and to set is as a goal. In order to achieve it there is a list of steps that need to be followed and worked on. In this context SMART is an acronym for all the things that make a goal great.

For a goal to be great it needs to be:

Specific

First it needs to be clear and formulated the best possible way so you know where you’re headed to. It needs to include as many specific details as possible:

• What you want?
• Why you want it?
• Who is involved besides yourself?
• Where it’s going to happen?

Measurable

Every goal has its price. Therefore, it needs to be clear what you want to get and what you are willing to give to have it.

• How much?
• How many?

Achievable

We of...

July 28, 2017,  Exercise, Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Life, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Limiting Feelings, Limiting Beliefs and Limiting Behaviours

There are various ways to relieve yourself from a script and a game your mind is used to playing. Many of these are therapeutic which includes many different techniques and practices. In the USA there are about 450 registered associations that offer different help for limiting beliefs, behaviours, and feelings. These three combine to create the scripts we live our lives by.

“Limiting” here means something that holds you back, restricting you from living a truly happy life. It refers to an old way of being that is no longer useful in your life. Feelings, beliefs, and behaviours based on negative past experiences can all be limiting if held onto.

In therapy, you get an opportunity to review those limitations and make changes so tha...

January 11, 2017,  Exercise, Family, Fundamental Human Needs, Games People Play, Relationship, Script  No comments

Life Is Not a TV Drama

Is it possible to live a drama free life? Is it necessary to have drama in our lives in order to feel balanced when it is over? Isn’t it easier to just exclude even the smallest possibility of turning a fly into an elephant? What make us create dramas in our lives when this is the thing we fear and dislike the most?

Look at the games the couples in our stories (The Story of Tamara and Alex, The Story of Vanessa and Mark, Vanessa and Mark (cont), Detecting Games in Relationships, Responding Assertively to Game Playing).

An Exercise

If you want you can challenge yourself: try imagining each game discussed as initiated by anyone, of either sex, and imagine how that game story might play out...

April 30, 2016,  Exercise, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

Pavlov’s Dogs and Skinner’s Theory of Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov, a Russian Physiologist, and BF Skinner, a US Psychologist, are most well known for their experiments with behaviour in the early 1900s.

You might recall hearing about Pavlov’s behaviour modification experiments with dogs and pairing feeding them meat with a ringing bell. Naturally the dog would begin to salivate at the sight of the meat.

Over time Pavlov proved he could change the dog’s behaviour and could get the dog to salivate on the ringing bell even when there was no meat present.

Then Skinner expanded on this theory it into what’s now called Behaviourism. He showed that all behaviours could be modified and that this is how certain behaviours developed in the first place...

March 23, 2016,  Exercise, Relationship, Relationship Tips  No comments

When in relationship, as in life, our thoughts, feelings and behaviours become habits. Getting what you want could thereby follow those old well-worn habits, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

If not, you could use this to inspire and even change the way you express your thoughts and feelings.

You can become more assertive by following a formula when expressing what you like and what you want to change, according to who it is being directed at and how it will be received.

How to Be Assertive

Here’s the formula I use and teach my clients:

“I feel…” (Here, simply name the feeling or feelings)

“…when…” (Describe the situation that creates the feeling, but try to neutralize it so it doesn’t sound like blaming...