Feeling Puzzled? Don’t Take Another Relationship Quiz…

Which delicious doughnut flavor best describes your relationship?

Which Beyonce song symbolizes your relationship style?

If your relationship were a paint color…..Enough already!

Healthy relationships require a certain amount of effort and understanding. When a relationship gets tangled up, it can be difficult to unwind. While scrolling through another relationship quiz might seem like a simple solution, are you really gaining any valuable insight…or are you just distracting yourself?

Our lives are filled with relationships of many kinds, not only romantic relationships. Unfortunately, figuring out why these relationships are clicking (or not) is not as simple as clicking on a relationship quiz.

It can be easy to blame the other person’s shortcomings when a relationship hits a rough patch. However, if we examine this simple guidance from Sadhguru, it becomes clear that through our own efforts, we can not only enjoy happy and healthy relationships, we can become a source of joy for everyone around us.

Sadhguru: “There are many types of relationships that you hold in your life: neighbors, friends, wives, husbands, children, parents, siblings, lovers. Even when people hate each other, there is a relationship, isn’t there?

Fundamentally, all relationships have come up because you have certain needs to fulfill – physical, mental, emotional, social, financial, and so on. You try to establish relationships based on the need you have. If that need is not fulfilled, that relationship cannot be.

Today, our lives have become complex, and we are constantly shifting from one type of relationship to another. One moment you are on the phone with your business partner and the next moment you are talking to your wife. Life has become like this. It is constantly shifting. If you treat your wife like you treat your business partner, you are in trouble. If you treat your business partner like your wife, again you are in trouble, aren’t you?

So you need to juggle your relationships constantly to keep them going. It all depends on how many balls you have picked up for juggling. If you just had one, it would be easy; but you have picked up ten. So now juggling is complex for you. You don’t want to drop any one of them, because if any one of them falls, a part of  your life will fall apart. So you want to juggle all the ten balls at the same time. When you are juggling so much, you can’t focus on anything else in your life, can you? If you are juggling ten balls, can you think of anything else?

Now, there is another way to exist – experientially – where one can exist without any relationships. One is so complete within himself that relationships aren’t needed. But right now, for most people, the quality of their relationships decides the quality of their life.

So let’s see how we can have the most beautiful relationship, every moment of our lives, wherever we are. If you look at it, you are trying to somehow make yourself happy by building different types of relationships and doing different types of activities. You make friends, you get married, you have children, you start businesses – you do everything with the belief that this will bring you happiness. You built all these relationships in pursuit of happiness. In other words, somehow you are trying to squeeze some happiness out of people. Once you do this, relationships will be constant trouble – you cannot do without it, you cannot do with it! When there is no sense of joy or happiness within you, you are trying to extract it from somebody, and that person is trying to extract it from you. Now, this is bound to become a battle.

If relationships have to be really beautiful, it is very important that a human being turn inward and look at himself in a very deep way before he looks at somebody else. If  you become a source of joy by yourself, and your relationships are about sharing your joy, not squeezing joy out of somebody, then you would have wonderful relationships with anybody. Is there anybody in the world who would have any problem with you if you are going there to share your joy with them? No. But you are trying to extract joy from them, that’s where the problem is. Relationships have become a problem because we are trying to fill the gaps in our lives with relationships.

If your relationship is about extracting something out of somebody, it doesn’t matter how much you manage, there will be constant trouble. If your relationship was an offering to the person who is next to you right now, then everything would be fantastic.”

Meditation for Better Relationships

According to this article from Marsha Lucas, Ph.D, originally published in Psychology Today, daily meditation can rewire a person’s brain for better relationships. Meditators enjoy reduced stress as well as improved communication, empathy, insight and intuition, all of which can aid in creating healthier relationships. Clearly, some of the best relationship advice is to take a few minutes each day and meditate.

Below, Inner Engineering participants share how meditation helped them enjoy improved relationships:

“One thing that stands out is how I relate and communicate with friends, co-workers and new acquaintances. I was introverted to the point where sometimes I would dread having to talk with people, and ‘not talking’ created even greater anxiety. Now, I am much more comfortable with myself and others. If there is something to talk about, we can talk, no problem-it’s actually fun. Life is much richer this way!”– John Donabedian

“Inner Engineering gave me a much-needed daily practice and discipline, which has transformed my life in so many ways: It has balanced me on an emotional level so that I feel aligned within myself and much more able to handle different types of external situations. It has made me less reactive, and more responsive and responsible and in daily situations. As a result, my relationships with friends, family and co-workers has improved. Doing the powerful practice every morning sets a tone of joy and peace for my entire day, and has really improved my clarity, focus and overall state of mind. I feel much less negative, and much more capable of taking on new challenges.” – Saluja Ghelani