Welcome to Head to Thrive. I'm your host, Kate Snowwise. This is a podcast for people who are ready to steep up and live a happier life. It's for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life.
It's a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought, always with a focus on practical advice so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don't believe we're here to merely survive. I truly believe we're here to thrive. So let's get going.
Hi, it's Kate here. After recording this episode, it dawned on me that these are great tips that I'm going to share in here. If you have a healthy relationship that you just want to deepen the connection on, where these tips may not be so useful is if you're truly in a toxic relationship. It's hard to hear, but if that is the case, I don't want you listening to these tips and somehow thinking that you have to change yourself.
If you know in your heart of hearts that you're in an unhealthy and toxic relationship, please look after yourself. Remember, you're beautiful, you're strong, and you deserve the best. One of these tips, just to give you a sneak little peek, is around making yourself happy. And if you're truly in a toxic or unhealthy relationship, I would ask you to concentrate on that.
But without further ado, if you'd like some tips on how to make your good relationship better, let's dive in. It's episode 32 of the Here to Thrive podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about relationships. And I mean the relationship with a significant other in our life.
The boyfriend, the girlfriend, the life partner that you may have, or perhaps you hope to have one day soon. I want to go through some tips with you to help you keep your relationship thriving. Now, if you're not in a relationship at the moment, but would like to be, these tips will be just as relevant. Because if you can start a relationship based on these principles and keep it sustained with these ideas in mind, hopefully you can keep it thriving from the get-go.
On the other hand, if you've been with your partner for quite some time, you'll recognize that sometimes relationships go through those phases where it feels like the connection is just waning a little bit. If you happen to be in one of those stages or want to make sure that you don't fall quite as deeply as you have before, then these tips will also be relevant. Specifically, I want to talk to you about how you can empower yourself with this knowledge that can turn into real meaningful action so that you can see a positive impact in your relationships. I'm hoping that you'll be more aware after listening to this of how you're contributing to the connection you have with your partner and will really be able to see a little bit more how relationships are a two-way street.
Finally, these ideas are things that you can start doing today to help your relationship either climb its way back out of a slump or stay happy and healthy. Talking about my own relationship with my husband, getting a little bit personal with you here, we've been married for just about seven years and we were together for a couple of years before that, so we're approaching nine years together. It's a little while and we've certainly had some different phases in our relationship. We've gone through that really loved up first phase when everything just felt so perfect, through to getting married and then the stress of having children.
It does add another dynamic to your life. Our kids are now four and three and I would say that my husband and I have never been happier in our relationship. I really feel like we know each other well and he's my safe place to fall. I know what I'm going to get with him now and we've worked each other out.
I feel like with time, our love and commitment to each other has just deepened, which is also a beautiful thing. But that's not to say that we haven't had some tougher times in our relationship. What I would say is right now, these three tips I'm sharing are the things that I do and I stay really focused on in my relationship with my partner and I do think they have significantly contributed to where we are today. So launching right in, the first tip I want to share with you is that if you want to be happy in your relationship, you need to first be happy within yourself.
Now before you tune out and be like, oh, so cliche, this is just a point that can't be overlooked. I know that back in my early and younger relationships, I was waiting for someone else to make me happy. I thought that being in a relationship would make me happy and I saw it as my partner's responsibility. I wasn't seeing that that was up to me.
That's the important point here. It's about recognizing that if you're a happy person, you will put that energy back into your relationship and create a more open, loving and friendly environment within the space you share together. If you're relying on someone else to make you happy, you'll always be disappointed because happiness truly is an inside job. Nothing outside of us can really sustain us or keep us happy in the longer term.
You might get a quick buzz from it, for example, shopping. That might keep you happy in a moment, but it doesn't sustain you in the long term. The real, true, regenerating happiness comes from inside of us. Going back to my relationship, probably the toughest time in our relationship was when I was miserable.
When I was burning out after the birth of our second child, like I said, he's only three, so this is only a few years ago, I was exhausted and I don't think I've ever been crabbier. I was grumpy with my husband. I was short. I was short with myself.
There was no patience left in me and it affected all of my interpersonal relationships. I wasn't the mother I wanted to be and nor was I the wife I wanted to be and I wasn't the friend I wanted to be either. When I really started feeling better was when I started cultivating and prioritizing things that I knew would make me happy. That's where my blog started, which then turned into this business.
I started a blog purely because it brought me joy. It was cultivating the passions that I had in my heart, writing and sharing my knowledge and ultimately just wanting to live in a more positive world. If you think there's some room for improvement with how happy you are within yourself, I would ask you this. What can you do to support your own happiness?
Is it picking up a hobby that you've let go of? Is it spending more time with friends? Is it perhaps like me cultivating a passion that is deep within your heart or could it be more self-care? Start there.
If you want to have a better relationship with your spouse or significant other, start with fostering that connection with yourself. More specifically, turning now to your relationship with your partner. Have you ever felt like all you can do is nag about what your partner is not doing? If you've got good girlfriends, you might recall those sessions where someone just can't stop whining about their partner.
I'm all for getting things off your chest. But if this sounds like it might be you, I would encourage you to ask yourself, am I looking for the positives in my relationship or am I focusing too heavily on the negatives? It's easy to get caught in a mindset trap of when you don't think things are going well, only seeing other things that aren't going well. It can lead to us overlooking everything that's going right.
If we're frustrated with our spouse, we start to only see we're there not living up to our expectations as opposed to acknowledging all the great stuff they still may be doing. This is why the crucial difference is between when we begin a relationship and when we've been in it for a little while. At the beginning, we are blind to any of the things that we later may perceive as negative. We are love-struck and have those rose-colored glasses on and see everything that our partner does in a positive light.
I'd encourage you to think, how can I get back to being more positive the way I look at my relationship? A relationship researcher called Goldman found that there is this kind of magic ratio and that for a relationship to stay healthy and happy, we need about five positive interactions to every one negative interaction. Now, I want you to think about that. That is the balance.
Are you living to that ratio in your relationship? Are you and your partner having five positive interactions for every negative one? And now, I'm not saying it all has to be roses here. There is benefit in disagreeing from time to time because otherwise someone tends to be being walked over in a relationship.
You're allowed to have an opinion, but don't get stuck in a negativity trap. You need to have far more positive interactions in your relationship for it to stay happy. Now, what do I mean by a positive interaction? Obviously, there's words of encouragement, praise, and sort of that positive reinforcement.
We all like to be acknowledged and feel respected and appreciated for what we're doing. So perhaps if your husband takes out the rubbish or garbage, acknowledge that rather than taking things for granted. If your partner says something out of the ordinary for you, say thank you. It's not just words, though.
It's also that soft, caressing touch, that cuddle on the couch, the phone call in the middle of the day. It's these positive touch points that you have with a significant other that kind of insulate your relationship against those rough times. You can think of it like filling up your relationship while being tanked, if you like. If you're looking for something a little bit more practical, if you really feel like you got into a bit of a rut with your relationship, I'd encourage you to start a relationship gratitude project.
Now, this is just like standard gratitude, except you make it very specific to your relationship. You don't need to tell your spouse you're doing this. You may, and you could do it together. But if you want to keep it to yourself, all you need to do is every evening before you go to sleep, just bring to mind three things in the preceding day that you have appreciated about your spouse.
It might be one of their attributes, or it might be as simple as appreciating the feel of a warm body next to you. If you can do this every single night and feel that appreciation in your heart, eventually you will start to retrain your brain to look for the good in your relationship, not just the tough stuff. Once you're looking for the good, you'll be surprised at how much that changes the flow and the communication between you and your partner. It really helps get you out of that negative cycle and into a positive one.
The final tip I have for you is kind of related to the last one, but it's a little bit more specific. And that is about putting time aside to nurture your relationship. This is where life often gets in the way and sort of sabotages the connection we have with our significant other. Like I said, I've got children and I get how busy life can be when they come along.
I've seen it happen in friendships where the children come along and become the absolute priority in a mother's life. I get it. Those babies take a lot of time, but I just encourage you to be really aware of how much you're investing in that relationship you have with their father or mother. You're doing your children a blessing if you can keep that relationship strong.
But how do we nurture connection? This is where date nights are so useful. It's the type of situation where it's one-on-one connection. There's no TV to distract you.
You're out of your everyday routine and the space is created for you to really talk with one another. So if you aren't already in a habit of trying to get out for regular date nights, don't underestimate how important and powerful they can be in terms of fostering and nurturing the connection between you. But it doesn't have to be that complex. It might be staying up and choosing to cuddle with your spouse on the couch instead of going to bed early by yourself.
It might mean taking a walk together and having the opportunity to connect outside from all of the distractions of everyday life. Perhaps it's time to schedule a vacation together or a getaway weekend. You can take the kids, but being out of your own environment can help really reinvigorate that connection you have with your spouse and help you remember how fun times can be. The point here is that you have to be intentional about when you are going to create that space to connect with your spouse.
As life gets busier, you can't assume it's going to just happen. And so if you set up rituals and routines to allow for you to connect, it can be a really positive way to stay in touch with each other. I have a great relationship with my spouse, but I can tell you it is true. Great relationships take work and effort.
You have to be willing to prioritize your relationship and invest in it just like you would a bank account. Truly happy relationships, in my opinion, start with two people being happy within themselves. If you're miserable, it's so much harder to show up in a positive way in your relationship. Don't let your own needs consistently give way to the needs of your partner, because in the end, that leads to resentment, which can pollute a relationship from the inside out.
But you have to take responsibility for your own happiness. It's not okay to sit back and rely on your spouse or significant other to make you happy. So ask yourself, what can I do today to help breed that internal sense of happiness inside myself? Remember that ratio.
Happy relationships have a ratio of five positive interactions to every one negative. You need so much more positive stuff going on in your relationship to keep it healthy and happy. Like I said earlier, it doesn't mean that you can't disagree with your partner, but just recognize that you always need to be topping up on the positive deposits into your relationship bank account. Basically, lay off the nagging and start looking for what is right in your relationship.
I talked about that relationship gratitude project where you can do it with your spouse. This is a great takeaway from today's episode and something practical you can really apply to your life. If you want to do it with your spouse, you can sit down at the end of every evening and give each other feedback of the things you really appreciated about your significant other in the preceding day. You don't need to tell your spouse, though, and you could just do it as you lie your head down on the pillow every night and quietly bring three things that you really appreciate about your partner to mind.
And I encourage you to feel into the emotion of that gratitude. Finally, nurture that connection. It is so important. Don't underestimate the power of creating space to connect one-on-one with your loved one.
If you apply these three tips consistently, you will find yourself in a happier and healthier relationship. Keep them in front of mind. Maybe make a note and write them down. I'll put them in summary form over at my website, www.thrive.how.com.
If you want to connect with me, you'll also find my details over there at www.thrive.how.com. Until next week, Thrivers, keep positive. Thanks for listening to Here to Thrive. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love if you could go into iTunes and subscribe and leave a review.
I'll be back again next week with more tips on how to live a happier life. See you then.