Having the courage to thrive in life’s relationships is so important.

I am not a fan of commercial celebrations like Valentine’s Day, but I do believe that we need to take every opportunity to enrich our daily lives with gratitude and joy.

In normal years, unlike this isolated, uncertain winter of 2021, I would ignore Valentine’s Day. Instead, I am dedicating the entire month of February this year to celebrating and writing about relationships.

I like to define

• Courage as something that you do despite the presence of fear and uncertainty.
• Thriving as a feeling of contentment and a sense of being our authentic selves.
• Life’s Relationships as all of the important relationships that we have in our lives.

One of the things I have realized as I contemplate, learn and teach clients how to thrive in their relationships is that in those relationships

                                          Everyone is right.

                                          Only partially.

A concept that helps to clarify this is the idea that we all make things up.

What we hear creates a physiological reaction in our bodies, which causes feelings, which creates thoughts that bring our beliefs, our experiences, our interpretations and our assumptions into place. We then create a conclusion about what we just heard. All of this is a fast and unconscious process. That is how our minds work and that is what we all do.

My suggestion today is not that we try to stop this process.

It is, after all, a physiological and natural way that our minds and bodies work.  I suggest, rather,  that we recognize that we all do this and that this is why we can all be right… only partially.

Are you willing to be curious and try to understand how someone received what you said?

Are you willing to be curious enough to see the 2% truth in what the other person is saying?

What if you are both partially right and you invite each other into your different points of view, without trying to convince each other of who is right or wrong?

Are you willing to be courageous and communicate differently?

It can be done. You can create, even in the midst of this uncertain time, strong, positive and fulfilling relationships.

There are tools we can use to thrive in our relationships. It would be my honour to help you achieve just that.