Language is a behavior potentially under our control, and a powerful loop. It’s how we act upon the world, and how the world acts upon us. It’s how we express our thoughts and feelings, and it also influences our thoughts and feelings. This includes what we say to ourselves as well as what others say to us. Barring physical force, language is how we get what we want.

Being able to name something gives power. I’m not talking about naming furniture. I’m talking about the hard stuff. It’s “the nameless dread” that gets to us. We can deal with “I hate asking women out and risking rejection.” (After you read this article, you’ll reframe that as “It’s unpleasant to risk rejection, but I’ll guts it out to get what I want.”

If you can name reactions, you can think and plan a strategy. When you realize there’s fear (of losing her) behind your anger (she’s going on a vacation alone), you can avoid doing something stupid. A pounding heart and blind anger are good for telling you what you want, not good for getting it.

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Relationship crises (break-up, affair, huge conflict, children problems) demand tremendous energy and often throw our lives off a healthy track – which further perpetuates our inability to respond in a healthy way to the crisis.

Don’t forget your body while you wrestle with a relationship or marital crisis.

It is easy to let yourself go. It is easy to postpone – I will start tomorrow – your walking, running or workout. Your preoccupation with the other person floods your life, leaving little room for anything else. Or, you find yourself so overwrought that it seems impossible to “talk yourself” into getting started.

But, exercise and nutrition are powerful tools to help yourself at this point. Here are 6 reasons why:

1. Exercise and attention to your nutrition shift your focus to you. Exclusive focus on the other person atrophies your spirit, your energy, productivity, your healthy emotions and your body. You fade. You diminish. You become less than you truly are. So much of my work with others is helping them begin to think about themselves and take action for themselves. This is a major move. And it can begin by focusing on your body. It is the best, most practical place to begin. Your body is basic. It is a huge part of you. Begin paying attention to it.

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How often have you wanted to create a connection with someone or a group but somehow missed the mark? You keep getting the same results every time you make an attempt at establishing any relationship, and it’s a result you’re not happy with. If this is the case you really need to change how you do things.

Rapport building is one of mutual influence, a give and take within a relationship, includes having regard for the feelings of others, respecting and understanding them, and looking at life from someone else’s perspective other than your own. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and begin to understand where they’re coming from – it doesn’t take much, just your willingness to give it a try.

One of the great things about rapport is that it doesn’t matter whether you have agreement or not with the other party. Remember some conversations you’ve had in the past with your best friend, partner, or even children. Do you always agree with them? What happens when you disagree? Is it the end of the world or is there friendly banter? Sometimes we simply agree to disagree. I heard someone say once “You can either be right, or you can be happy.” I know I’d rather be happy.

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“Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows” Ben Stein

Life would be difficult without the blessing of significant relationships as an integral part of our lifestyle. However although relationships can be the source of much joy and happiness, they also can frequently be a source of pain, stress, conflict and anxiety. It is a sad factor that when we have a close relationship the openness and vulnerability that we share with that person has the ability to bring both happiness and also pain.

There is a natural response when we feel hurt to protect ourselves from being hurt again. Frequently this protection involves creating a wall around the heart, distancing the emotions to avoid pain. This very act may well protect a person from feeling more pain, and keep it at bay, but also means shutting out the potential of enjoyment in the relationship as well. A wall keeps out both good and bad!

Unfortunately it is a fact that too many people become detached from potentially meaningful relationships through misunderstanding and assumptions about the other person. The reality is we can never fully know a person and understand them, and often we see things from a totally different perspective, and even speak a different emotional language. A tone of voice, a look, or a comment can easily be misinterpreted, and our response is to feel hurt or offended. If this happens it is all too easy to into a pattern of assuming and responding to that assumption until the whole incident becomes a large issue.

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Marilee, a client of mine, was commitment phobic. “I’d love to be in a loving relationship,” she told me in one of our counseling sessions, “but I’m not willing to give up my freedom. I have a great life. I love my work and my friends. I love to travel and take workshops and classes. I don’t want anyone telling me what I can or can’t do. I don’t want to deal with someone feeling hurt because I want to work rather than be with him. It’s just not worth all the hassle.”

Marcus, another of my clients, was also commitment phobic. “When I’m not in a relationship, that’s all I can think about it. I really want someone to play with, to love and to grow with. But soon after getting into a relationship, I start to feel trapped. I feel like I can’t do what I want to do and I start to resent the person for limiting me. Most of the time, she has no idea what’s going on and is stunned by the break-up. She thought everything was fine. After leaving her, I’m back to square one – wanting to be in a relationship. This has happened over and over again.”

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