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Mindset and Relationships

How to Get the Relationship You Want in Life!

By Jelani BaptistePublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Hello All,

My name is Jelani Baptiste and today I felt compelled to write about mindset with respect to relationships. Mindset is important in all facets of life family life, business, friendships and work life. The list goes on. I am going to focus on relationships in this post with respect to having a significant other.

What is mindset? Simply put, mindset is the way you are programmed, the way you see or perceive things to get the results you desire. The easy part is that we already know what the desired outcome is. The tough part is knowing how to get to it.

A month ago while at work, I got a frantic message from a friend. The guy she was seeing lied to her and cheated on her with his ex-girlfriend. On digging deeper, she was aware that were still in contact with him, claiming he was being stalked. Without going into more detail of the story, my friend was aware that the guy she was seeing was still around his ex but did not say anything.

I am not about the blame game but I challenged her on how she could let this happen. I asked her what she desires in a relationship. I got the responses of respect, mutual attraction, loyalty. I then questioned, well why would you let someone treat you the exact opposite of your desired outcome?

There are two contrasting mindsets when it comes to relationships: fixed and growing. The truth of the matter is that we all focus on the former mindset. Two examples of a fixed mindset are:

  1. If you have to work at it, it isn't meant to be.
  2. Problems in relationships indicate a flaw.

The issue with the mindset of having to work at a relationship means it isn't meant to be is found in relationships where one or both partners think that everything good should happen automatically, that everything good in the relationship will magically occur without having to input any effort. This is, however, very incorrect but how can I blame you when we have been brainwashed by shows like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella? Your prince/princess isn't going to appear in front of you and even when this does happen, it does not translate to happily ever after. A relationship consists of two persons who by nature think differently, so how can we presume that if we do no work, both personalities would gel together perfectly? I cannot stress that all relationships need work by both parties to make compromises and to get to know each other more deeply.

The mindset of problems in a relationship indicating flaws mimics the similar message stated above. But there are no great achievements without any setbacks. You should view your relationship as an achievement because it is something so many people get into but know so little about.

One of my best friends got engaged early 2017 and is now preparing for marriage later this September. Right now, he and his fiancee are going through a relationship course with the Catholic church. We live in a world where religious institutions are scrutinized but this example really blew me away. Before marrying a couple, the couple has to go through this course where they learn about different personalities, learning to understand each other, learning how to handle conflict, and so on. As "bad" as some believe the church is, this one act embodies something that lots of couples are missing today. The outcome of this process isn't to realize that your significant other isn't who they said they were but a deeper relationship with them and cultivating the mindset of continuous growth.

To wrap this up, the main point of the article was to show how mindset affects relationships. We as a people are fixated on a fixed mindset which can have a bad effect on our relationships when we expect good things to happen without us having to do work in the relationship. With understanding the principles in the article, I hope we are able to look at our relationships not from our heart but our minds.

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