These helpful hints and activities are a good way to start enhancing your relationships right away. Select one for each week and be sure to do it every day. Feel free to improvise or modify the activities or make them regular rituals in your daily life together.
HINT #1 - ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Everyone wants to be acknowledged for what they do. No one feels like they get enough acknowledgement. Thanking someone for something they did or acknowledging their good intentions is very rewarding. The best way to get acknowledgement is to give it. It is a meaningful way to give a gift to the person you love. We are often stingy with it –- even though it costs us nothing. As time goes on, it is one of the first behaviors that drops out of a relationship. Maybe we take each other for granted, or maybe it just seems like too much work. With focused intention, these obstacles are easily overcome.
ACTIVITY #1 - I ACKNOWLEDGE YOU TODAY FOR...
For a week, acknowledge your partner every day. It doesn’t have to be for anything serious or important. You may let your partner know that you appreciate his making the coffee or taking out the garbage. It’s not enough to just say “thank you.” Share by saying “I appreciate” or “I acknowledge you for” rather than “I want or would like to thank you for” – making it more immediate and intimate. Also, you don’t have to wait to be acknowledged; you can ask for what you want to be recognized for by your partner. It still feels good to get it.
HINT #2 - GENEROSITY
Generosity is the act of giving to another unselfishly -- with more concern for the other than for yourself. True generosity allows one to be present to love for another. It is an action based on love. To be free to express love in this way, we most often confront the barriers we experience in feeling and expression. Generosity often begins with a choice to share or not, to give or not, to love or not. To be generous may involve giving without the prospect of receiving, realizing that life may not be fair, or looking at what fears we might have of showing love or affection. Practicing being generous in our relationships helps us understand our own barriers to intimacy.
ACTIVITY #2 - MAKE A REGULAR "NO" INTO A "YES"
Every day we are asked to do things by our partner; pick up the cleaning, get gas, rub my back, take out the garbage. We have the option to refuse the request, ignore it, do it grudgingly or agree enthusiastically. This exercise is quite simple to do. Select one of these requests each day and just do it! The less you are inclined to say yes to the request, the more you are being generous by agreeing to do what is asked. Start with something small each day. Grant a request to your partner and make a request in return.
