Learning Relationship Skills

Gaining new skills is a bit like climbing some stairs to reach our destination. Few of us can jump over several stairs and the danger is we might miss our footing and fall. To learn you need to start at the bottom of the stairs.

Often we don’t realise that there is something to learn which will make a difference. Our first step on the journey is to discover what skill we are lacking. We may think we are a really good communicator, but if our relationships aren’t going well, it’s worth asking ourselves is there something here I could do better. It might be learning to listen without our internal conversations running. It might be that we need to learn to state our concerns clearly so they can be understood. What ever we need to learn, the first step is to identify what it is.

Then we are faced with a choice whether we are going to learn that missing skill. Learning requires humility and courage. We need to admit we don’t know it all and to make the effort to understand what is needed and how it works.

Once we have identified the skill needed and learnt it, we still have to put it into practice. Perhaps that seems obvious, but it’s one thing to know how to listen, it’s another to do it when we’re feeling angry and hurt. Most new skills need to become second nature for them to be really of value to us, so keep practising. Changing the ways we behave can take several months of practice, but it’s worth it!

Tip by Liz Percival