Building a relationship is a two-way street and surprisingly it doesn’t help if you stand on one side of the street and focus on if the other person is pulling their weight. Focusing on you and you will change your relationship with the entire world.

Increase Listening Skills

Listening is not simply a physical auditory skill. Listening involves focus, dissolving emotional bias, and heightened sensitivity. As a multitasking society, we have as a whole become less sensitive to hearing our surroundings.

This means our listening skills have gone down even in ways that we may not be aware of because we have been desensitized. Meditation increases mindfulness and re-sensitizes us so that we can become aware of details we may have otherwise skimmed past before.

 Try meditating on the mindfulness of sound here.

Another important aspect to truly hearing someone when you listen to them includes clearing out your own emotional bias. This means hearing another’s story and experience without distorting it from your own life experience.

Finding Inner Courage

Let’s face it no matter how much we romanticize the idea of a relationship whether romantic or platonic, it actually takes an incredible amount of work. A relationship will not thrive off of autopilot.

It needs our full present attention and engagement. When this happens our fears, insecurities, and belief system will begin to reflect itself within the other person. This means you will begin to come face to face with anything you have been holding inside of you.

In order to continue a healthy relationship, you need to be able to face fears and challenges with your inner courage by your side. This helps you uncover understanding within misunderstandings and let go of the safety-seeking cling to being right.

Spark Compassion

Around 1500 BCE the Vedas taught, Metta which translates from the language Pali as loving-kindness. Yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism all stem from the teachings of the Vedas.

The meta consciousness is a state of unconditional divine love to all living beings. Compassion and loving-kindness are viewed to eradicate one of jealousy, anger, hatred, greed, and envy.

It increases compassion not only for the existence of external life but your existence as well. This type of meditation is slightly different from other types of meditation This particular meditation is about cultivating and focusing on loving-kindness.

Reduce Anger

Anger does not have to be labeled a toxic or negative emotion. Anger is a messenger that lets us know something needs to change. It can let us know when someone has crossed a boundary, when something is no longer serving us, or even when we need to let go of something.

Reducing excessive anger is absolutely required in order to identify healthy feelings of anger and to create a beneficial relationship in both romantic and platonic. A study was even published in the Journal of Consciousness and Cognition between the fascinating and empowering results of anger and meditation.

The study was conducted with two different groups, one of beginner meditators and the other of experienced meditators. They studied the response of each group while asking them to relive experiences that made them angry.

The results of the experienced meditators showed physical symptoms equivalent to relaxation such as slowed breathing and heart rate and decreased blood pressure when they “should” have been displaying symptoms of anger.

After a single meditation session of just 20 minutes, the groups were studied again. The results showed that the beginner meditators displayed responses equal to the experienced meditators.

This study proves that through long term meditation practice people tend to become physically less reactive to anger and that meditators do not need to live in an ashram in order to reap results.