Attitudes of Gratitude in Love: Creating More Joy in Your Relationship (Relationship Goals, Romantic Relationships, Gratitude Book)
196
Attitudes of Gratitude in Love: Creating More Joy in Your Relationship (Relationship Goals, Romantic Relationships, Gratitude Book)
196Paperback
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Overview
"This book is AMAZING and so helpful to me in my relationship. It's showing me the way to transformation and a new way of being with my partner. Love it!" —Amazon review
M. J. Ryan reveals gratitude practices that create intimate relationships. Create the romantic relationship you desire by practicing gratitude!
Gratitude starves relationship anxiety! With this gratitude book learn how to have a happier relationship with your partner. Get the answers to some of your most pressing relationship questions and use this as a guide to your own personal growth.
Relationship goals made easy with gratitude. Enhance couple goals by making gratitude a constant part of your relationship. Take your time in creating relational happiness, and restoring your relationship without couples counseling.
Inside, you’ll find:
- Gratitude practices to spark an intimate relationship
- A gratitude book centered on becoming your own relationship goals
- Practices to stabilize self-growth and starve relationship anxiety
If you liked The Four Laws of Love, Meditations on Self-Love, or The Naked Marriage, you’ll love Attitudes of Gratitude in Love.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781684810055 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Mango Media |
| Publication date: | 07/11/2023 |
| Pages: | 196 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Her client list includes Royal Dutch Shell, Microsoft, Time, the U.S. military, and Aon Hewitt. She's a partner with the Levo League career network and the lead venture coach at SheEO, an organization offering a new funding and support model for female entrepreneurs. She's the founder of Conari Press, creator of the New York Times bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series, and author of many books, including Habit Changers: 81 Game-Changing Mantras to Mindfully Realize Your Goals.
Daphne Rose Kingma is a beloved psychotherapist and relationship guide. She is also the author of a dozen best-selling books about love and relationships that have sold more than a million copies and been translated into sixteen languages and has been a frequent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. You can learn more about her work at www.daphnekingma.com. Daphne lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Read an Excerpt
The Key to Living Our LoveMost married couples, even though they love each other very much in theory, tend to view each other in practice as large teeming flaw colonies, the result being that they get on each other’s nerves and regularly erupt into vicious emotional shouting matches over such issues as toaster settings.—Dave Barry
In the years since I wrote Attitudes of Gratitude, I’ve been teaching about and practicing gratitude on a daily basis. What I’ve come to see is that while it is easy to be grateful in the abstract—for sun and rain and good food—often the place where it is most difficult to practice is in our most intimate relationships. So many of us are (rightfully) grateful to the stranger who helps us pull our car out of the ditch but take for granted the daily gift our loved one is.
I know that’s true for me. I am almost always unfailingly appreciative of everyone except the one closest to me. With my husband, just as Dave Barry points out, I spend most of my time cataloging his most irritating foibles and lacks. And yet I know all the way down to my bones that one of the best ways to create happiness and joy in life, and therefore in love, is to be as grateful as possible.
And so I set out to study the phenomenon. What holds us back from a full sense of gratitude to this other being who has chosen us among all others to spend a life with? What would happen if we truly allowed ourselves to feel the gift this love represents? How can we cultivate gratitude for love on a daily basis?
As with all my books, I must say that I am no expert in this. In fact, when it comes to an attitude of gratitude in love, I am a rank beginner. What you are holding in your hand is a work in progress. It represents what I and others have learned about the joy that can be experienced by living in a state of gratitude for our intimate partner; why we keep ourselves from experiencing the happiness gratitude can bring; the attitudes that foster such positive feelings; and the practices that enhance the possibility on a daily basis. I offer it in the spirit of a fellow traveler, one who seeks to live fully and love well, a flawed human being who, at the end of her life, wishes to be able to be proud of the ways she has loved those who have graced her life.
....
I know only a few things with absolute certainty. One is that our intimate relationship—the pairing of one human being with another—is the greatest vehicle for emotional and spiritual growth life affords us. Within its crucible, every old wound is revisited, every certainty is challenged, every fine quality of our being is forced to expand beyond our perceived limits. If we do it right, we are inevitably transformed into more loving and wise human beings. But too often we get stuck in ruts that prevent us from allowing this alchemical magic to take place. We run the same negative stories over and over, we get caught in games of blame and shame, we give up in despair.
That’s where the power of gratitude comes in. The more we can practice gratitude for our love, the less we get stuck in the places where relationships can really hang us up. Theorists call this an “asset focus.” Increasingly, those who study human systems are doing work that shows the more you look at what’s right instead of what’s wrong, the more change actually occurs. Impasses break up, new insights arise, and the energy begins to move in a positive direction. Conversely, when you focus on what’s wrong, you tend to dig yourself into a bigger hole.
Socially, this understanding of how important an asset focus is can be seen in the switch so many people are making from therapy to coaching when needing support. Therapy assumes you or your relationship are broken and need to be fixed; most of the focus during the sessions is on analyzing the problem and where it came from. Coaching, on the other hand, assumes you or your relationship are whole and supports you in manifesting more of what you want. The current focus on coaching represents, whether implicitly or explicitly, an understanding that noticing what’s right is more useful than analyzing what’s wrong in creating satisfaction and peace of mind in ourselves and our relationships. This is not to say that therapy or looking at a problem is always bad; sometimes it is crucially important in order to heal. But it is an awareness that perhaps we’ve been putting most of our attention on the wrong thing. As the song says, we’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places.
....
An attitude of gratitude will not solve all problems—no one thing could ever do that—but it can make all problems more manageable. That’s because gratefulness is a mood elevator; by flooding our bodies with endorphins, it gives us hope. Gratitude also opens our hearts and gets us out of bitterness or resentment, creating a sense of emotional generosity toward the one we love. And from that place of generosity, new possibilities emerge.
The process is so effective that often I find myself in awe. Love with all of its problems seems to be so complex, how could this be so easy? Could it be this uncomplicated? The only thing I can recommend is to experience it for yourself. This little book is a place to begin.
May you find within its pages thoughts and practices that will be stunningly simple for you to use to bring more joy and peace into your most intimate relationship. May your love grow exponentially as you practice, and may the ripples of that love reach out to touch all those around you.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Daphne Rose Kingma1: The Key to Living Our Love
2: The Gifts of Relationship Gratitude
- You’ll Feel Closer and More Loving
- You’re More Likely to Stay Together
- It’s Positively Contagious
- You’ll Both Be Healthier
- Conflicts Are Resolved More Easily
- Resentment Melts Away
- The More You’re Thankful, the More You Receive
- You’ll Touch Love’s Mystery and Majesty
3: Myths that Hold Us Back
- I Need to Protect Myself
- Relationships Are Hard
- It’s Dangerous to Be Too Happy
- It’s Better to Be Right Than Close
- You Should Be Just Like Me
- If I Feel It, It’s True
- Feelings Come before Behaviors
- It Has to Be a Certain Way
4: Love's Attitudes of Gratitude
- You Can Choose What to Pay Attention To
- It’s Right to Notice What’s Right
- Receptivity Is Key
- It’s Not about Being a Doormat
- Assume the Best
- You’re Not Perfect Either
- The Other Person’s Quirks Are Delightful
- Love Is Truly a Gift
- You Are a Great Gift Too
- Awareness without Judgment Creates Change
- Love Is the Cauldron in Which Our Souls Are Tempered
- It’s All about Learning
- We’re Here to Bring More Love into the World
5: The Practice of Gratitude in Love
- Just Begin
- Be Explicit
- Practice Truly Seeing
- Make a Gratitude Laundry List
- Do It on Your Own
- Celebrate Your “Usness”
- Give Thanks for What’s Not Difficult between You
- Give What You Most Want to Get
- Remember Your Manners
- Share What Makes You Feel Appreciated
- Receive What’s Being Given
- Do the 5 to 1
- Give Thanks for Being Loved with All Your Foibles
- Recall Your Love Story
- Don’t Forget the Bad Old Days
- Notice Repair Attempts
- Appreciate Love’s Obligations
- Take a Daily Gratitude Vow
- Express Your Appreciation to Others
- Ask a Friend for Help
- When Times Get Tough, Go to the Higher Level
6: The Joyful Journey
My Thanks
About the Author