Maximizing Performance Through Applied Common Sense*

If you think about your relationship with your mate, you might notice that you and/or your mate is really good at criticizing. And, if you are good at criticizing the prognosis for your relationship really stinks.  You are going to kill the relationship because criticism is continually toxic; it actually robs the relationship of its foundation. If you want to pretend that you are helping instead of actually criticizing you might want to adjust your perspective on things.  A relationship with continual criticism in it will actually die.  So replace the criticism with all that reinforcement that you did during courtship.  When you do that, you are building a foundation and you can repair things. 

You’ll notice that when you are stonewalling your need to avoid talking about it is more important than your need to resolve anything.  Often one or both of you have these off limit subjects in your relationship that now are so incendiary it is impossible to talk about them.  So therefore you avoid talking about it.  You say, “I don’t want to deal with it.” You’ll say, “There is no problem.” You simply stonewall. So, does it really make any sense to keep avoiding dealing with it, whatever it is simply because it is so difficult to do so?  Therefore, stop stonewalling.  Start talking about it.  Start resolving it.  And you’ll get some results. 

Do you get defensive?  Do you defend yourself all the time? If you do, then you’ll notice that very often you have to be right or make sure you avoid being wrong. When you defend yourself, your need to be in the contest is more important than your need to resolve an issue with your mate.  Therefore, if you or your partner continues to be defensive, that creates a death-nail for your relationship. So ask yourself, do you need to be right or would you like to resolve the issue? If you think about resolving it then the need to defend yourself goes down and now you actually resolve issues and make progress, so consider that.