Getting to Good: Mini Relationship Tip

I first created a version of this Mini Relationship Tip four years ago, almost to the day.

I've added to and edited this oldie but goodie, and I know you'll find a gem of "life alchemy" in here for yourself.

You'll definitely NOT want to skip reading this one because at the end there is a piece of uber personal, amazingly timely news. ;-)

August 2007:

Like an acme safe ala cartoonland, I recently feel like I got hit on the head with EXACTLY HOW to have my life and relationship be great, gorgeous always full of fun and delight.

Only instead of landing like a ton of steel, this landed like a drizzle of honey on a bed of feathers.

The price to earn pleasure is not pain and suffering.

The price to earn pleasure is enjoying what is already here.

It is pulling your head out of your own a.s.s. and looking around and acknowledging all the good that is already present. The best place to start is approving of and appreciating what is SO.

It is looking around at this green earth and the flora and fauna and crazy humans
inhabiting it, and finding it good.

The key to getting the good stuff is to start with the good stuff. And the key to getting things to be better is to start with the good stuff.

Sometimes things in our life or relationship are really the opposite of good, right? They suck, they are hard, they are bad. I know.

The law of physics, so to speak, around having things get better is that things have to first start from a place of GOOD before they can get BETTER. Good goes to better.

If things are bad, and we only focus on that they are bad, they get worse. Bad goes to worse.

You have to notice the things that are good or find something good about the crappy thing that's happening before it can get better.

The law looks something like this: bad --> good --> better.

You can't get from bad to better, you have to get to good first. The key is to start with good. Then, things are good - I mean, that's pretty great, right? And what if things got even better?

Too abstract? Let me give you an uber personal, amazingly timely example:

I have a "pinch me" relationship. It floors me constantly and there isn't a day that goes by where I don't feel grateful and blessed for this work of art we've co-created.

Throughout the eight years my husband and I have been together, we've had one painful point consistently come up where we are not on the same page: around whether to have a child together.

And we have been having a really crappy time figuring this one out, in fact we almost broke up a few months ago with how much we were suffering trying to figure it out.

An esteemed teacher pointed out to us that we were having a terrible time and losing big time, while we were figuring it out.

(Enter visual - safe falling on LiYana's head).

Could we have a great time figuring this hard, crappy, bad thing out? What in the world would that be like?

I took this to heart in the biggest way possible. I looked at my tendency in problem-solving: freak-out, get overwhelmed, play the victim. I looked at my tendency in working through impasses: back-down, feel defeated before starting, suffer.