Do you treat your friends with love and respect, but when it’s their turn, they let you down? Do you end up feeling resentful when your friends just don’t give into the friendship as much as you do?  

Knowing how to deal with this resentment in a positive way—or even better, avoiding it altogether—is an essential pat of mending a broken relationship or preventing your current friendships from being torn apart.

This article will give you a clear understanding of why you have built up resentment in the first place and how to prevent losing relationships you care about.

How Are Your Friendships Holding Up?

Since you are reading this article, we can assume that friends are very important to you—so much so, that you do your best not to hurt them in any way. You may be very surprised and end up feeling frustrated when your friends act in ways that are completely different than you would act towards them. This frustration and upset can cause you to reject any apologies they offer, feel a great deal of resentment and hurt feelings, and can even result in you ending the relationship altogether.

We are not surprised that you might react in this way, nor are we surprised that it causes you to feel resentful and anger. Most of us live in cultures that teach us to always identify who’s right and who’s wrong, who is acting appropriately and who is not. Because we are taught this at such a young age, when something happens we tend to immediately focus our attention on who’s "right" in the situation and who needs to be punished because they are "wrong".

"Right" And "Wrong" Thinking Creates Separation  

The biggest problem with this “right” and “wrong” thinking is that it creates separation and leaves very limited access for working things out. (Not to mention, it's one of the top causes of resentment.) You could ask 10 people if your friends behaved badly in a situation and you might be able to get all 10 people to agree with you that your friends should’ve acted differently. This might make you “right” (in your eyes and in the eyes of 10 other people), but does it make you happy?

When something happens and you have a conversation with another person when you believe that you‘re right (justified in your opinion) and that the other person is wrong (they are a bad friend and should have acted more appropriately), this usually creates an outcome where no one ends up completely happy. And not surprisingly, such discussions often lead to resentment and hurt feelings.

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life

Changing this scenario only becomes possible by making a conscious choice: Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? This is by no means about you giving up on what’s important to you—it’s simply about letting go of your "right or wrong" thinking. If you choose to be happy—great! But to do this you need to understand that everything everyone does or says is always because they‘re trying to meet their needs, or support something they deeply value. Keeping this in mind frees you from the desire to react defensively and opens the door to sincere compassion for other people.  

It's Not About You! So, don't take it personally!*  

Next time you face a situation that upsets you, stop and decide to be happy. Consider other possible ways to interpret these situations. For example:

? You may want your friend to call you when you are sick, but your friend believes if they call they would be bothering you.
? You may remember all your friends' birthdays, send cards and call to say happy birthday, but one of your friends may have had very unhappy birthdays and would rather forget birthdays altogether.
? You may stop and talk to your friends even if you‘re busy, but when you call a friend and want to talk they may be very tired and want to get off the phone to rest.  

Does this make their actions “wrong“, or do they just need something different than you?

In these situations, if you only attempt to identify who’s "right" and who's "wrong" you limit yourself from discovering possibilities that could satisfy everyone involved.  

Do You Want to Be Right or Do You Want to Be Happy?

If you want to be happy and retain your friendships, it’s important to begin thinking about upsetting situations from a more detached place. From this place of detachment you can begin to explore the situation, identify what might be motivating your friend’s actions, and then come up with ways you can create mutually satisfying outcomes. To open yourself to this new mindset, begin by asking yourself questions such as:

? "What’s important to me in this situation?"
? “What might be going on for them that had them behave this way?”
? "What’s important to them in this situation?"
? "What strategies can we come up with together that might work for both of us?"

So, the next time someone says or does something and you find yourself with hurt feelings, STOP and remember—don’t take it personally. Be curious about what may be behind their unpleasant words or actions. Say things to yourself such as, "WOW, that seems like a strange thing to say, I wonder what’s going on with them?" Next, imagine yourself in the other person’s shoes and ask yourself, "If I said or did that, what might be going on with me?"  

Then, if you still want to talk to your friends about what happened, begin a conversation with the intention of coming up with ways you can resolve the situation that will work for everyone involved. When you begin having this kind of relationship with your friends you’ll start down the path to a much happier, more satisfying life filled with life-long friendships.

Think about taking another step to bettering your friendships by learning more about this personal growth and self-help techniques. Sign up for our free thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series at: http://www.FocusedAttention.com  

This series offers useful tips on how to mend broken relationships and how to get the most satisfaction out of your current relationships with friends in both your personal and professional life.

Or visit our blog today by going to: http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com  

Would you like to build your self-confidence and self-esteem? Are you worried it might not be possible because you’ve had such a long history of put-downs, failures, and negative self-concept? If so, read on because this article will show you why it’s never too late to increase your self esteem and you can to take the symptoms of low self-esteem and turn them into the self-confidence you’ve always wanted.

Some people seem to believe that self-confidence and self-esteem are the result of the positive messages we hear from others, as well as ourselves. It’s as though self-esteem is a balloon that you can inflate with praise, approval, and admiration.  

We believe self-confidence and self-esteem are created through confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves and the knowledge that we can accomplish what we set out to do.  

It’s our guess that many years of “less than enjoyable experiences” are what make us doubt that it’s possible to increase our self-esteem and boost our self-confidence. In our experience, transforming a long-standing history of a lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem requires a commitment to three specific practices.  

These practices are:  

1.Replacing Limiting Beliefs

2.Taking Charge of Where We Focus Our Attention

3.Setting Goals and Achieving Them

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1. Replacing Limiting Beliefs  

Does your inner critic sound anything like this?

?I’m not good enough to get the things I want.

?My needs don’t seem to matter to other people.

?It seems like there’s something wrong with me.

?I can’t depend on anyone, I have to do everything myself.

?I’m powerless (weak, unsafe, helpless).

?I can’t take care of myself in challenging situations.

?I’m a worthless human being  

Some people say that a belief is simply a thought repeated over and over again. Some of the beliefs we adopt can become a major hurdle to raising our self-confidence.  

We’ve all adopted some limiting beliefs along the way that have prevented us from investing the time and energy it takes to develop confidence in our skills. Without this, it’s difficult to experience the success we need in order to produce the self-esteem that we desire.  

We have created a video that shows how we adopt these limiting beliefs. You can view it on our web site.

The first step toward increased self-confidence is transforming any limiting belief that may prevent you from developing new skills or honing the skills you have already.

Here’s a simple practice that can get you started down this path:

The "Out with the Old, In with the New" Practice  

First: Cultivate Your Awareness

Start by being aware of how you feel; scan your body and use any feelings of discomfort or unexpected panic as a warning bell. When you feel uncomfortable in any way, stop and take a moment to identify any judgmental thoughts in your head. As soon as you can get to a pen and paper, write down the negative thoughts while you‘re still able to remember them clearly. Be sure to write down the exact thoughts, as though that little voice in your head was dictating to you.

Second: Translate Your Negative Thoughts

Once you identify the uncomfortable, judgmental thoughts, it’s time to figure out the values that are buried within these judgments. It’s important that you start translating these thoughts into the truth of what’s important to you.  

For example, “I’m not good enough to get the things I want” might be translated into the important values of accomplishment, effectiveness, or even a deep desire to contribute. Now try saying to yourself, “I deeply value accomplishment.” Can you feel the difference?

Third: Do Something About It

After you are clear about what’s most important to you, identify at least two actions you can take that will support what you value in your life. This technique takes practice, but mastering it creates a magnificent sense of freedom.

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2. Where You Focus Your Attention  

When you’ve had a long history of put-downs, failures, and rejection, you tend to spend a fair amount of your time remembering, recounting, and regretting what happened in your past. An equal amount of time is spent worrying about, watching out for, and guarding against this happening in your future as well. This has you focusing your attention on what you don’t want.  

What’s the problem with this? What you focus your attention on grows.  

You may be surprised, but we don’t suggest that you stop focusing your attention on these things. And we don’t suggest that you stop doing this because it’s IMPOSSIBLE to stop doing anything! That’s right, you can’t STOP doing anything—you can only START doing something else instead.

We suggest you start identifying the things you like or enjoy about yourself and make a list. Then make a list of everything you enjoy doing and a separate list of everything that is truly important to you.

From now on, every time you think about an unpleasant experience from the past, or if you find yourself mentally repeating one of your limiting beliefs, translate the judgmental thoughts as we described in the previous section, and do one or more of the following:

?Pull out your list and spend some time focusing your attention on something you like about yourself.
?Look at your list of what you enjoy doing and spend some time doing something on the list.
?Look at your list of what’s truly important to you and identify one action you can take that will support having more of that in your life.

What you focus your attention on grows. Consistently focusing your attention on what you do want is the surest way to have more of it in your life.

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3. Setting Goals and Achieving Them  

The shortest path to building your self-confidence is experiencing the desired outcome that your actions produce, which, in turn, builds your self-esteem. Here’s a simple process for proving the truth of this to yourself.  

First: Pick a Goal

Start by picking one small thing you’d like to accomplish; get out a piece of paper and write it down. Did we say it should be small and easy to accomplish?  

Second: Know Why It’s Important

Underneath your goal, write down briefly why you want it to happen, what you’ll get from it, or why it’s important to you. Do not skip this step. If you can’t answer these questions—pick a different goal!

Third: Do Something about It

List at least three actions you can take to accomplish this goal and commit to a deadline for completing these actions. Finally, create reminders about these actions.  

Fourth: Create Accountability

Call someone that you know and trust and read them your goal, as well as why this goal is important to you, what actions you‘re going to take, and when you‘re going to take them. Then, ask them to check back with you periodically to see if you’ve taken them.

Fifth: Rinse and Repeat, and Repeat, and ...

Do this over and over again. The more successful experiences you have, the better you’ll feel about yourself. The better you feel about yourself, the bigger the goals you can create. The idea is to create wins for yourself, so pick things in the beginning that you know you can accomplish.

Again, everything we’ve offered here takes commitment to practice. The idea is to start choosing what you think about and where you focus your attention; thereby creating opportunities to experience more success in your life and, in doing so, build more confidence in yourself. Take on these practices and you will be unable to avoid having greater self-esteem.

Discover more about how you can create the self-esteem and confidence you want, improve your relationships, and learn more personal growth and self-help techniques  sign up for our free, thought-provoking and motivational
Weekly Action Tips eMail series: www.FocusedAttention.com  

Or visit our blog at www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com  

Wouldn't it be nice if you could tell when someone was going to be a cheating girlfriend or cheating boyfriend BEFORE you get involved with them?  Don't you wish there was something you could do that would help you avoid having a cheating spouse? There is something you can do, and it begins with you. As you read on you will discover how to identify what you really want out of a relationship, what they want out of a relationship, and if the twain should ever meet-- or stay together.

Perhaps you've found out your partner has cheated on you. This can be a very painful experience, but fortunately, it's possible to learn from these experiences.  If you're willing to let go of the pain long enough these situations can teach you about you--what's most important to you, and what you want out of a relationship. With this information you're guaranteed to come closer and closer to having what's most important to you in future relationships.

We know it can be incredibly frustrating to want a long-term, satisfying relationship and then so often find yourself in relationships that are so much less enjoyable than what you hoped for.

In this article we'll be discussing two areas:
1) How to avoid settling for less than you want when you start a relationship, and
2) A few simple steps for creating more honesty in your present and all your future relationships.

Often, when people have painful experiences, they never go beyond the realization that they “don’t ever want to experience that again.” However, just knowing what you “don’t want” doesn’t help you get what you “do want.” It’s unfortunate, but if you only know what you don’t want, what you don’t want is all you‘re ever likely to get.

It would be nice if experiences were like pancakes and whenever you were looking at what you don’t want you could simply flip the experience over and find what you do want on the other side. It will take a little more work than flipping a pancake to develop a really good list of what you truly value in an ideal relationship. But you‘re worth it, don’t you think?

Let's take the thought: "I don't want my partner to cheat on me."  If you do a pancake flip of this you'll be looking at: "I want my partner to be faithful to me." But what does "faithful" mean to you, and what would you "get" if they were faithful? You see, "being faithful" (or monogamy) is a behavior, and behaviors are only strategies that we use to get something we value.  

If you want your partner to be faithful, then you probably desire monogamy because you value dependability, predictability and security. Without these it’s hard to satisfy other values you hold such as intimacy, honesty, closeness, etc.

It’s not important whether this list is accurate for you personally as much as it’s important for you to create your own list of values. Think of it like going shopping for a car. If you're finding yourself insecure in a relationship, we assume that there must be something “very attractive” about the person that you‘re getting involved with.  

So let’s say your relationship desire was like wanting to own a sports car. You dash out to the nearest car lots, find an attractive, sexy convertible that you just love the looks of, and minutes later you’ve signed on the dotted line and you‘re out the driveway.

But next month, as you‘re having it towed into your local garage for repairs, you get the loan payment book in the mail and it’s twice what you can really afford to pay, and you start worrying about your sexy convertible being repossessed.  

So, while it may satisfy how much you value attractiveness, it doesn’t quite satisfy your values of dependability, predictability or security, does it?

This may seem simplistic, but on a regular basis we find ourselves coaching people who could give us a much more detailed list of what they value in a car than what they value in a relationship. And, not coincidentally, they tend to be happier with their cars.

So the only way to avoid settling for less than you want in a relationship is to be very clear about everything you want in a relationship in the first place. This isn’t just a list of which behaviors you don’t want and which ones you do. This starts by developing your own list of everything you truly value in a relationship, and then identifying character traits and behaviors that will give you everything you value.

When you make your list of what you most want and value in a relationship, we strongly suggest that you put honesty at the top. If you find yourself insecure in relationships often, this may be the biggest missing ingredient.  

Honesty starts by being honest with yourself about what you truly want, and then being honest with yourself about whether what you truly want is "negotiable".  In the past you may have wanted honesty, but on more than one occasion you may have been willing to enter into a relationship before you were certain that honesty existed.

You may also be relying on your thoughts, feelings and guesses about your partner’s really wants,  rather than direct, open, honest communication straight from the horse's mouth.

Here are a few simple steps for creating more honesty:  

EVERY TIME you feel tense or concerned about anything in your relationship, stop and ask yourself: “What do I want that’s not happening?” and “What might prevent me from asking the other person about this?” After you answer these two questions ...
Tell the other person about what’s not happening that you want, such as: honesty, predictability, dependability, etc. Then ask the other person if these things are also important to them. Then listen to what they have to say.
You may hear any of the following, or some combination of these:
If they avoid answering your question, work with them to figure out what prevents them from answering.
If they change the subject, then make sure you address whatever they brought up instead, and then be sure you get back to your question.
If they also want what you want, work with them to figure out what’s preventing this from happening already. Then see what you‘re both willing to do to make it happen.
If they don’t want what you want, figure out what they want instead. Then see if what they want would be satisfying for you too.

Of course, there are many other possible ways that this conversation might go. The important thing is to make sure you are honest about what you want and are communicating this to your partner. Honest communication is the only way to ensure that you‘re not giving up on what’s important to you, or end up being surprised that your partner wants completely different things in a relationship.

We hope this limited amount of advice will begin to help you create more successful relationships in your future.  

If you're ready to discover more information on building positive, honest relationships and more personal growth and self-help techniques . Sign up for our free thought-provoking and motivational Weekly Action Tips eMail series. This year long series has practical advice on how to create and maintain happy satisfying relationships in all areas of your life.

Visit our blog at: http://www.NewAgeSelfHelp.com .