049 Effective Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Relationships

What You’ll Learn Today:

  • My top 10 strategies for getting from stuck and frustrated to satisfied and collaborating

Top Take-A-Ways:

We all have these situations and people in our lives where we just feel like it’s Groundhog Day – lather, rinse and repeat. Over and over again. 

If you’re ready to get out of stuckness and resentment and into collaboration and creativity, then you’re ready to check out these effective strategies: 

  1. Go in with the right intention. When you’re assuming bad things it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. 
  2. Mindfulness. If you’re practicing mindfulness daily, you’ll catch yourself before you get too far down the rabbit hole in these negative interactions. Learning all these great tools is awesome but, if you don’t remember to use them when you need them, you’re stuck at square one. 
  3. Take a breath and check in with yourself. Are you overreacting? What’s really going on here? Is this about the current situation or is this about what’s happening right now? 
  4. Timing and Tone: Is this the right time? Are you very angry and really want to have it out with this person? You can say what you want, just not usually when you want to say it. 
  5. Use the I Feel, When You and I Need formula
  6. Get into the habit of asking questions first, before making any statements
  7. Summarize what you’ve heard. What I hear you saying is…
  8. Do you want to be correct or effective? Concentrate your energy on problem-solving instead of being “right”
  9. Make sure you’re really listening. If you’re thinking about your response, you’re not listening. If you’re interrupting, you’re not listening. It’s OK to take notes to come back to things. This way, you can listen and know you won’t forget. 
  10. Remember that you can both be right. It’s possible for two people or teams to be 100% correct and 100% reasonable and STILL disagree. This is because you can have different perceptions, values, definitions and ways of thinking. Get away from “right” and “wrong” and get into “options” and “creativity.”

Resources and Links:

Check out my Book, Be Happily Married, Even if Your Partner Won’t Do a Thing

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Dr. Abby with her Book "Be Happily Married, Even If Your Partner Won't Do A Thing"

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