Everybody Wins Mediation: Finding Satisfaction in Marriage

    In the midst of our lives, there comes a moment when we stop and wonder, “Is there another way to live my life that will bring the satisfaction that eludes me now?” Caught in difficult patterns, each of us has an intuition of another way of handling problems. This other way has the power to heal division and offer the strength, compassion and understanding we all desire.          

This is what happens when we choose to stop living in anger and reactivity, constantly struggling to prove that we are right and our partner is wrong. Rather than blame, explain or seek justifications, we begin to accept who we are, who the other one is, what we are feeling, and what has taken place. Accepting does not mean we have to continue to go along in the same manner, it means we stop our struggle against events and just experience what truly is. As this takes place, the difficult situations we are in provide all kinds of surprising insights. We receive a way of seeing things differently and responding differently as well.                 
     
To begin: Take a deep breath. Put down fantasies, hopes, expectations for a moment. Take in all that is going on. Don’t judge it, hate it, push it away. Be with everything, just as it is, including yourself. Now take the next breath. Then another one. Each one is different. Each moment is different, rising freshly. When you can live in a truly new moment, new solutions become automatically available to you.
 
Most of the time we create all kinds of goals and drive ourselves crazy to reach them. We measure our progress, compare ourselves to others, judge ourselves relentlessly. This only ties us up in additional knots, making the situation more hopeless. But as we stop blaming ourselves and others, we decrease stress, increase balance, insight and well being. All kinds of unexpected solutions and clarifications become available naturally. It takes two individuals to keep a dance going. If you are in a dance with another that is painful for you, rather than hate and blame your partner, just start doing different steps.        
                      

Dr Brenda Shoshanna, speaker, divorce mediator and author, is a relationship expert. Some of her books include, "The Anger Diet (30 Days to Stress Free Living)" and"Save Your Relationship (21 Basic Laws of Successful Relationships)." Learn more about her at: http://www.brendashoshanna.com. Contact at: topspeaker@yahoo.com.