Your Mental Attitude Shapes Your Relationships

Your mental attitude has everything to do with how you get along with with others. If you have a positive attitude, you tend to create positive relationships, while a negative mental attitude breeds more of that same negativity.

But how to improve your attitude if you need to? Where were you ever taught how to have a positive attitude, especially when differences arise? And because each of us is unique, each of us is different, and that can be a source of tension and conflict in any kind of relationship - intimate, work, ethnic, national.

If you want to minimize fighting, relationship ruptures, tension and trauma in your relationships and get along with others, checking out your mental attitude is a great place to start. That's because the right attitude, a positive mindset, makes a major difference in reducing, even eliminating painful disputes and disruptions.

So, before you start to develop a problem in a relationship, check to see what fundamental attitude you hold about your own humanity and that of others.

Remember that expression so popular a few year back: "I'm OK, You're OK"? That is a catchy way of expressing just what kind of attitude works best to foster positive, rewarding relationships.

But how to get there, especially if you discover your got a negative mental attitude going? Here's a way to think about yourself and other people that's been proven to be exceptionally effective in getting to (or back to) I'm OK, You're OK.

It involves accepting that there is a fundamental pattern that underlies your individual life that you share with every other individual and also with all of nature and the cosmos. Its a pattern hidden in the private world of people's inner lives, where it operates as a dynamic force that propels us through a series of repeating life passages.

No matter what our culture, becoming fully human means mastering its challenges, for it affects everything in our lives, our relationships, productivity, parenting, values and more.

Accepting that you share this natural and universal blueprint with every other human and with humanity in general creates that healthy mental attitude - one that guides you to recognize the commonalities you share with others behind the differences. And it helps you celebrate those differences rather than use them as a springboard into unhealthy conflicts.

The more you deepen this awareness and accept its truth, the more you come home to yourself, to who you really are. And, at the same time you also develop tolerance, understanding and compassion for others, for you see the commonalities of your shared basic nature behind any individual or cultural differences.

You not only share this pattern with others, you also share its components. They are part of the ever-unfolding process of human life as it unfolds in a series of six stages. You even share the key elements of each stage with everyone else - for example, you need to carry out the same emotional tasks to grow in healthy ways, and you share the same the emotional needs.

Accept this fact and you accept your own basic humanity and that of everyone else, no matter how different they may seem on the surface or in any particular moment. And that has the power to greatly reduce, even eliminate disturbing conflicts and negative exchanges.

And when you keep tripping over a negative attitude toward yourself or someone else, cut yourself (or them) some slack. Make the basic assumption that this person (you included) is doing the best they can with what they've been through and are going through. As a counselor for 40+ years now, I can tell you that people deserve the greatest respect for the ways they keep on going in the face of some truly formidable events.