Relationships are vital to our happiness…and can also be the source of a lot of pain. In this short video, we take a look at what genuine love is (and what it’s not) and ground in a deeply loving place before creating a relationship intention.

If you are like me, someone who prefers to read instead of watching videos, I ahve a (loose) transcript for you (though in this case I recommend the video, as we do a brief guided meditation and that is hard to do for yourself, reading):

This is Liz Connors of Soul-Warriors.com and today we’re going to be creating a powerful relationship intention. Relationships are the backbone of our lives and they are often are greatest source of joy – and sadly also pain and all types of crazy-making. If you’ve been in an unhealthy spider love relationship as described in the slide – or if you are in one right now – you know just how crazy-making and painful this can be. This is not just romantic love either – this can show up in any type of relationship.

Before we create our intention, I want to talk briefly about real love – or mature love – and how you can tell when you are in it. Martha Beck says, “the goal of real love is always to set the beloved free.”

To summarize from The Art of Love review, mature love is where:

The person who loves respect the individuality of their loved one.

The person who loves is actively concerned with their love’s desires, hopes and dreams.

The person who loves also loves themselves.

Love is not just a strong feeling—it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.

Real love flourishes when we are secure that all of our emotional needs will be met, with or without any specific person.

Before we create an intention, let’s take 30 seconds and experience that type of peace. I’d like you to close your eyes and take three deep and easy breaths, inhaling through your nose for a count of three, exhaling through your mouth for a count of six, repeating the breath one more time.

Now imagine you are in a beautiful garden party, in the most gorgeous meadow you can imagine There are twinkling fairy lights, delicious food, a warm breeze blowing, the scent of spring flowers in the air, and plenty of happy, loving people around you. These people are your tribe – the people that understand you better even than you understand yourself, and would be delighted to meet every emotional need you have.

Breathe in deeply, allowing that feeling of peace and security to enter into your being at a deep level. Know you are completely supported and loved.

From here, open your eyes and we’ll begin the 7 steps to creating a powerful intention. I’m going to run through this quickly, but you are welcome to click on the link at the end to read an indepth article with examples on how to do this if you are interested in learning more:

So, Step#1: Choose Your Relationship area – it could be your kids, your spouse, your coworkers. I’m going to choose kids as an example. 

Step#2: Name Your Ideal Outcome –  say your ideal is a harmonious relationship with your kids that brings you both joy. 

Step #3: List Things You’d Like to Experience along the Way – this might be fun activities, laughter, travel – whatever you’d like. 

Next, Decide How You Want the Experience/Process to Feel – maybe fun &  joyful. 

Step #5: Write Your ‘Shitty First Draft’ (SFD) ( that awesome term is courtesy of author Anne Lamott) – you are going to put “I am in the process” in front of the statement and then just mash everything together: I am in the process of a creating a fun, harmonious relationship with my kids that brings us all joy and laughter. 

Next, we’re going to refine it to the essence – and my example is already there, so we’ll move on to the final step, “make it juicy”.  This means that we’re going to make sure the intention lights us up and makes us want to take action toward it. (even if we don’t know the action yet!)  Well end with “I am in the process of a creating a fun, joyful, laughter-drenched, harmonious relationship with my kids.”

And that’s it! If you’d like more details, click through to see the link which describes each step in detail. Thanks for watching and have a great day!