What Is Your Relationship Climate?

Intentionally or not, you have created a relationship climate for all of your relationships. The quality of those relationships has a lot to do with this climate. Relationship climate has little to do with the exact words that you speak or the things that you do. You can say or do the exact same thing but have two very different relationship climates. It has much more to do with what is going on inside of you at the time.

You can do something nice for someone from two different positions or a whole range in between. Lets say that you that you decide to make a nice meal for someone. A positive climate would be created if you we happy to do this, you were looking forward to spending time together, and you were enjoying the process. A negative climate would be created if you were resentful that you were taking time to do this, you were dreading spending time together, and you were thinking critical thoughts as you prepared the meal.

Chances are even if these two meals could be identical; they would be received in very different ways. People react not only to what we do and say, but probably even more to the climate we have created.

Consider the overall climate of your closest relationships. Does it tend to be more positively or more negatively charged? All relationships will have some fluctuation in climate, but there will be a general tendency.

There are many factors that shape the climate in our relationships. On the positive side there are things like smiling, laughing, pleasant tone of voice, eye contact, reaching out to, listening to and validating others. On the negative side there are things like ignoring, attacking, glaring, justifying, put downs and having to be right. Keeping our behavior on the positive side will improve the climate of our relationships.

But what is more important is what is going on inside of us. When we are grateful for our relationships, when we choose loving thoughts, choose to act rather than react to others, choose to forgive hurts and be at peace, then we will not have to work to create a positive relationship climate, it will already be in place.