BALLET - DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE. REALLY?

The idea of privilege, and the ill-effects of it, demands that we examine who we are and what we stand for. I struggle with that on a personal level, as I don’t want routine assumptions to blind me to reality and limit my participation in our evolving society.

But what about established cultural institutions, where the role of tradition is especially strong? As audiences are comprised more and more of the grey-haired among us, the need for relevance (read new patrons) is acute.

The world of ballet, for example, has always fascinated me. Captivating is my word for the elegance and discipline of its dancers. But I recently found myself wondering how ballet organizations, both performing and training, are making this art form more accessible and reflective of society. I decided to chat with some key people leading this change. Their dedication and vision left me feeling so inspired. 

I found that traditional ballet institutions are indeed working to include a broader range of styles and viewpoints. They're trying to preserve ballet's beauty while making it more accessible to everyone, to reinvigorate it with fresh creativity. 

The audio clip above features the voice of Esie Mensuh, one of the dynamic change agents bringing new thought, feeling and movement to the world of dance. Earlier this year, she worked with Ballet Kelowna to direct her new work, which had been commissioned especially for the company. She touchingly describes the inner work required to make these outer changes, and the discipline needed over her own thoughts and feelings. Change, it seems, comes from a combination of courage and creativity.  

When I spoke with John Dalrymple, the executive director of Canada's National Ballet School (NBS), he emphasized the need to include the right voices in the conversation. He told me, “We had to reflect on who we didn't know, people we should have known for years, who should be at the table when we have any event." The struggle to search for what is not seen rather that what is already visible is such a worthwhile effort, and so challenging. As a therapist, I was trained to listen to what is not being said. This is taking that idea to a whole different level. What is it that we are not thinking, what are we ignoring, that is right in front of our faces?  

Robert Binet, a choreographer at the National Ballet of Canada, shared a similar sentiment, saying that ballet has a big role in keeping all doors open for young people, so they can excel and make choices that align with who they are. The very idea that success can come from including the whole person, rather than giving people the skills to fit into a pre-ordained model, reflects a larger change in society. It is new and exciting, and we don’t know where it will end up. But we can’t do anything other now, as the genie is out of the bottle in that regard.  

I found out that Canada, through its National Ballet School, is playing a key role in balancing ballet's discipline with inclusivity. Some years ago, NBS initiated Assemblée Internationale, a gathering of dancers and teachers from different ballet schools around the world to help young dancers learn and grow. This year, many more schools, including some important schools founded by artists of colour, were included (expenses for all attendees werepaid by NBS!). John said to me, "We're not here to compete against each other. All performances will be by blended casts, so kids from different schools meet each other, learn different roles in a new work, spend a few hours in the studio and then present it on the stage." The new work was one developed by Esie and Rob, mentioned above. Needless to say, it featured creativity and feeling.  

Collaboration could really push ballet into new territories, making it more approachable and reflective of society. Sponsoring artistic projects can help brands reach new customers, while funding enables dance institutions take risks with innovative productions. Small wins can make a big difference. Offering classes in under-served communities, providing scholarships, and making sure people with disabilities can participate all help create a radically expanded ballet world.

One amazing example is how Canada’s National Ballet School is helping people with dementia through ballet. A twenty-minute film on YouTube, Dancer Not Dementia, is so beautiful it had me in tears. It includes comments from Mavis Staines, the Artistic Director and CEO of NBS, whose visionary leadership has been crucial to the concept of dance as in integral part of the broad community.  

As I explored the changing world of ballet, I couldn't help but feel excited about the future. Empowering the next generation of ballet dancers and promoting inclusivity is so important for keeping ballet relevant. New collaborations, diverse artistic styles, and a focus on inclusivity point towards a bright future for ballet, one where everyone can enjoy its beauty.  

In the end, the transformation of ballet is not just about dance; it's about the power of art to bring people together, regardless of their background, and to create a more vibrant world. How wonderful is that!   

TASTING THE BITTER WITH THE SWEET

Sometimes I find that after I write a column for Sixty and Me, I can’t stop thinking about it.

Last month I wrote an article entitled ‘So Much Pressure to be Up’. To quote myself: “If we are going to be full human beings, we cannot avoid sadness. Sorrow and loss are part of living. Periods of lack of confidence, lack of hope and lack of energy are inevitable. There is nothing wrong with us if we experience these feelings. To me, the point is just not to be stuck there.”

This is what I have been thinking about, and I would like to take it one step further. Beyond not getting stuck there, beyond giving ourselves permission to have down times, perhaps we could actually honour these feelings and the special state we are in when we are somewhat down.

I am not talking about what could be called a clinical depression, where we lose interest in everything for long periods at a time. What I am referring to could be called melancholia or the blues – a time when hurtin’ music feels healing.

How can it be that hurtin’ music feels good when we feel bad?

Someone who asked herself that question, and wrote a book about how she answered it, is Susan Cain. I am reading her book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. For those of us who have those feelings, it is such a validation!

Our sorrows and our longings, she suggests, come from our sensitivity to being separated from our best selves, even from humanity’s best possibilities. This can show up in our more mundane issues when we feel we could be loved more or could love more ourselves.

Susan Cain talks about loving music in a minor key. There is a piano piece by Brahms (an Intermezzo, which so aptly in Italian means something in between) I often listen to when I need deep companionship in my sorrow. Either that, or some Hawaiian music I bought when I was in Hawaii nursing a deep hurt. Both these pieces of music remind me of a line of poetry I love by Gerrard Manley Hopkins: “Sorrow’s springs are the same.”

The music and the sorrow that accompanies it seem to expand the soul. In that space, we are often creative, seeking expression for what we feel. It is a time we can contemplate our lives and make changes. The feeling it evokes fosters compassion, and connection with all that is.

It is as if, for a time, we can put our weight on our back foot, rather than our front foot. The world is slightly different there. As poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “Things as they are, are changed upon the blue guitar.”

We can look upon this state as an opening, an opening that contains possibilities we can’t reach in our more ordinary way of being, or, to go back to Intermezzo, when we aren’t in the in-between zone. Not just a source of pain, sorrows can also be a source of growth that allows us to feel more.

Janice Skinner, my long-time yoga teacher, often exhorts us as we practise to “feel everything”. To me, this suggests a conscious act of permission I give myself. I have had a good and fortunate life, and yet sorrow and longing are part of who I am. Perhaps I can welcome them more fully when they come to call, and see them as reminders. Reminders of what, exactly? I’m still not sure. But I treasure them.

SO MUCH PRESSURE TO BE POSITIVE AND I AM DOWN

This is a phrase I hear over and over from my clients. Of course, the reason they are seeing a psychotherapist is because things aren’t going well. Something in their lives needs to change. But surely the change isn’t to be ‘up’ all the time.

I am going to say something controversial here that I regularly tell my clients: It is ok to be down in the dumps and depressed every once and awhile. It is inevitable.

We are told all the time to turn lemons into lemonade. I do it myself! After my last column for 60andme, “Turn Loneliness into Solitude”, I was touched by the responses. There is so much sadness out there, and those of us in the helping professions want to help ease the burden. We have tools that we know can be of real assistance, and we try hard to help our clients make things better.

But there is another side to it. If we are going to be full human beings, we cannot avoid sadness. Sorrow and loss are part of living. Periods of lack of confidence, lack of hope and lack of energy are inevitable. There is nothing wrong with us if we experience these feelings.

To me, the point is just not to be stuck there. I think those feelings should come and go. I have the image of being at the seashore, watching the waves come in and go out. Feelings can be like waves, and if we let them, they will recede like the waves of water we enjoy watching.

I want to emphasize ‘if we let them’ because we can actually hold on to waves of depressive feelings and, unwittingly, keep them from flowing out of us if we are not paying attention. “What is the matter with me; I am such a loser,” we tell ourselves. Or, “I am afraid I will have this feeling for the rest of my life.” We don’t just feel something. We compound the feeling with our negative thoughts and fears by not letting go, adding another layer of negativity, and not letting the emotions naturally recede like a wave.

What if we just thought, “Too bad. I feel down today. Maybe I will have a bubble bath, play some hurtin’ music and go to bed early.” In other words, be kind to ourselves, “This too shall pass”. We can give ourselves permission to have the sad feeling without panicking about it, without adding a layer of criticism that would keep the feeling stuck there and make it worse. It is difficult enough to feel bad; we don’t want to feel like a bad person for having the feeling in the first place.

Instead, we can try to allow a natural process to take effect despite our fears. We can just breathe, and try to stay in the present. The wave rolled in. It is likely to roll out of its own accord, if we let it.

I am sharing these thoughts to connect with anyone who needs to hear it. Even though I am part of a helping community of experienced professionals, sometimes I think just a little advice and reassurance can go a long way.

TURNING LONELINESS INTO SOLITUDE

When I think about these two states of being – loneliness and solitude – they have such different connotations. And yet the border between them is porous. If we are lonely, can we just decide that we can cross over into solitude? It seems a bit like the old fairy-tale about spinning straw into gold.

Loneliness has been called the new epidemic. The Surgeon General of the United States has written a book about it. Magazine articles about it abound. It has been linked to stress, depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, impaired cognitive functioning, decreased creativity and lower self-esteem.

A very bad thing, this loneliness. The obvious solution of taking steps to increase our social engagement is clearly positive, especially after the isolation of the pandemic. Joining clubs, phoning old friends, striking up conversations on elevators – all good.

But some loneliness is unavoidable. The existentialists draw our attention to the fact that on one level, basically, we are all alone. We can be alone in a crowd as well as in our bed. So, if loneliness is in some way inevitable, what can we do?

Well, let’s consider the case for solitude. Unlike loneliness, solitude is something we can choose for ourselves state; it’s a deliberate choice – to be alone and to savour one’s own company. It can be healing. Animals, when they are hurt, prefer to recover on their own; and we, too, are animals. Sometimes we need to shut out the noise of the outer world to let our shattered nerves recover, to allow our body and our mind to take care of us by creating the quiet space for them to do so.

We have an inner ‘voice’ that represents our instinctive knowledge, and we need peace to be able to hear it. It is this voice that conveys our intuition and our creativity. This is the voice that can help us to make good decisions, to know which direction to turn in.

This voice can be a good companion if we can honour it and not seek to silence it by busying ourselves with distractions. It can deepen our experience of life even when we are experiencing sorrow. But the catch is that we must actually choose to hear it – we must make an intentional decision to change our state of being. The effects of loneliness, such as anxiety and self-pity, can make that more difficult.

To turn loneliness into solitude, we need to get hold of that part of ourselves that makes choices. It can be as simple as asking ourselves what we really enjoy when we’re alone. Is there music that soothes our soul? Can we make a special meal for ourselves? To pause, and ask how we actually want to live, can all by itself yield results. Often, in our loneliness, we are just following habit without connecting to what we are actually feeling.

One easy way to start is to become aware of our breathing. Our breath is sustaining us all the time whether we are aware of it or not. We can take a few moments just to appreciate our breathing; for example, sensing the flow of air in and out of our nostrils. This can settle us into ourselves and help us to experience our own presence.

We can use our senses. What are we seeing in this moment, what are the sounds we are hearing, what is our body touching? Our senses are always with us, and connect us with the present, which we are often unaware of as we focus on the past or the future.

As we do this, we are creating an opening into the world of solitude. We can think of it as a landscape to explore, as a way of turning what may be imposed on us, loneliness, into a state of of chosen contemplation, solitude.

YOUR THIRD ACT IS FOR TAKING CREATIVE RISKS

“As soon as I held my paintbrush and stared into the crisp canvas, I couldn’t help but feel like a main character of my movie,” said an empty-nester friend who had been feeling the blues for quite some time. The metaphor was intriguing to me because, in reality, you really are the main character of your life.

Staying exclusively in your comfort zone, however, especially as a senior adult, can make that feeling fade away. Age has a universally negative connotation, and there is no known way to stop it. But we can be alive as we live it! One way to embrace our vitality is to consider a different narrative approach to the subject of risk.

The first step toward fully experiencing life is to move outside of your comfort zone and to think more positively about risk. Just like aging, risk has a negative overlay. Be careful not to fall. Don’t talk on your phone while driving. Don’t be fooled by scams. Of course, all this advice is good. But avoiding all risks is not.

Surely, I won’t be the first person to break the news that taking risks helps achieve greater things, but in this article, I want to be the first person to guide YOU in taking YOUR first creative leap in a long time.

Taking a Step Towards the First Act

Art is the first step of graceful aging for anyone who has entered their third act of life, from retirees experiencing social isolation to empty nesters feeling lonely and alone. Participating in artistic or otherwise creative activities is the only way to be heard above the din of everyday life.

I know firsthand how intimidating it can be to dive headfirst into a new group or endeavor, especially if the atmosphere is cold and uninviting. Many organizations and institutions dedicated to the arts and culture, however, are making efforts to alter this.

Canada’s National Ballet School (NBS) is one such institute that I heartily endorse because of its commitment to diversity and inclusion. Their honest inclusionary efforts have ignited hope in senior adults who intend to explore their artistic abilities.

When I had the fantastic opportunity to interview the NBS game-changers about diversity and inclusion in the arts, I asked their Executive Director, John Dalrymple, for his thoughts on the subject, and his response helped me see the bigger picture.

Inquiringly, “What happens when people walk into our building?” he posed the question. “Do they feel a sense of belonging? Do they see themselves reflected in what we do? And that’s where we had to get more serious about addressing issues with ballet in terms of a lack of inclusion, a lack of diversity, and really, a lack of equity-informed practice within the ballet training world.”

With an outlook of “If we don’t do it, who will?” they took matters into their own hands.

As a result of their tireless efforts, in-house programs like ‘Dance for Life’ now offer senior citizens, people with Parkinson’s, and others in the community access to dance classes and other enriching community activities.

Senior citizens have been dependable bodies as cultural keepers with exceptional social creativity throughout human history. To me, it seems obvious that the more experienced we are, the better off we will be. These individuals have a wealth of experience and emotional depth that they can easily channel anywhere. So what is stopping them today? Maybe their own thinking patterns.

Creative Aging as a Mantra and Addressing Risks, Head On

Despite the positive outlook and aging-related campaigns, the legacy of aging stereotypes seldom fades away. The most apparent ones are the exhaustion of creative vision and a lack of risk-taking enthusiasm. Society believes that as people age, their behavior grows more restrictive and cautious.

I always encourage individuals to take risks in order to amass a wealth of life experiences, particularly in the artistic and cultural realms. Rob Binet, a highly skilled choreographer at the NBS, articulated his ideas in a compelling manner, stating, “Everything that we depend on now as a totally bankable, safe idea was absolutely radical at one point. Swan Lake wasn’t a safe bet when it first went. It was crazy, and it failed, and it took about 10 years before it gained any traction, and now it’s our absolute safest bet.”

In the same way you miss out on so many things when you don’t take risks. Before, people’s options for engaging in creative pursuits were limited. Now, however, the possibilities are practically limitless. The fields of literature, theater, dance, music, crafts, and history awaits our interest.

From joining a book club to taking filmmaking or photography lessons, playing a musical instrument, singing, learning about your city’s history, taking ballet lessons, enrolling in a painting class, or participating in niche interests like foraging or tatting, your options are abundant.

However, the selection from these artistic pursuits is equally important based on health and physical needs. With the help of art in your life, your mind can feel more energized, and your body will thank you every day.

The Positives of Taking Artistic Steps

Achieving something gives you a healthy boost of endorphins, making you feel mentally good. The new addition to your daily routine will brighten your life by ushering in a newer and fresher phase.

Starting with a relaxing pottery class can be an excellent way to boost serotonin levels. When you push yourself to try something new, something you’ve never done before, your confidence and self-esteem skyrocket. We all deserve to feel good about ourselves, so why not treat yourself to a new hobby every now and then?

Engaging in these activities, no matter how large or small, puts your brain under a bit of stress, which is both fun and healthy for your brain. The arts are excellent activities for communication – sometimes even transcending language barriers. Emotional bonds are formed, problems are humanized, and the core of the group is strengthened, which in turn further reinforces the community.

The most compelling argument for starting any artistic journey is its health benefits. Many friends and family members have confided in me about their improved balance and posture. It’s no secret that your body stiffens as you age, and your muscles become rigid. Studies and articles suggest that the cognitive benefits of ballet may extend to seniors and the prevention of dementia.

Much of this is because one must concentrate and memorize numerous combinations in order to complete an action. It is an effective physical therapy exercise for people with osteoporosis and arthritis.

These pursuits also make for a smoother retirement. The prospect of retiring after years of maintaining a professional persona can be daunting. Having hobbies can help you channel your energy into something constructive and give you a sense of direction in your life.

One last fascinating advantage of starting such activities in your senior years is the sheer amount of healthy social interaction throughout the day. Recreational art programs will help you make new friends and will make you more sociable. These art forms help one be in touch with their creative side and shape self-expression.

You are less likely to feel lonely, and sometimes it also gives rise to intergenerational social relationships. A nice cup of coffee with your new friends after a class sounds like a win-win! This trifecta of mental, physical, and social benefits is all you need for a thriving life.

Start Slow to Get the Ball Rolling

Fear of not fitting in can be a valid reason for people not trying in the first place. However, these mental roadblocks are simply mental ifs and buts. At whatever age you are, you must try to challenge yourself. Starting ballet or any other art form requiring physical endurance at a later age isn’t the easiest transition that you can achieve.

You need to take your physical limitations into account in addition to your stamina. As I always say, having a strong determination is essential before venturing out, but it is also critical to recognize and address any shortcomings or challenges along the way.

It’s true that tailoring an experience to fit your unique needs and preferences increases its comfort and enjoyment factor. Similarly, your creative pursuits shouldn’t be confined to cookie-cutter lessons. If the traditional forms are currently inaccessible, consider opting for a different and personalized way to start your journey.

For instance, most written choreography is appropriate for relatively young dancers. In that case, I recommend beginning with a seated ballet barre. This low-impact exercise is ideal for beginners and helps improve balance and coordination.

You may not have the time to do something right now, or you don’t live in a place where it’s possible to do it. Your saving grace may be the availability of relevant online courses.

Contacting a senior center in your area is another great option for narrowing down a list of potential beginnings. Remember that the thresholds at which different people can participate in any given social or artistic activity vary greatly along physical, mental, and temporal dimensions. That friend of yours might be having a great time with an activity but if it isn’t your cup of tea you need to seek a different passion.

Redefine Age to Manifest Happiness

As a child, I was always captivated by professionals who effortlessly displayed their picture-perfect performance art, a pristine glow and halo of enchantment surrounding them. Today, however, I am more captivated by someone’s first attempts and their less-than-perfect first steps.

To help new artistic attempts, small amounts of encouragement can go a long way, so if your partner aspires to try something new, encourage them. If you’re nervous about joining a community, find someone who shares your interests and do activities with them. Sometimes the comfort of company does more than one can imagine. And make a habit of taking risks – one day at a time.

As I close this piece, I can’t help but think of Rob Binet’s inspiring words: “I feel like every time I take a risk, and things aren’t totally destabilized, it creates opportunities for others to take risks, and it lets me take a bigger risk.”

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What artistic risks have you taken recently? How have you benefited from taking those risks? Were you afraid to step forth? How did you conquer your fear of risk?

THE REAL POWER OF PAYING ATTENTION

Kathleen! Pay attention! These words, from my mother, from my teachers, dragging me back from my daydreams, still echo in my ears.

But what is attention? We think of it as focus, something we can do with a little effort. Just snap back to reality.

But I think it can be something more. Evidently, we can tell when someone is looking at us, even if our back is turned. It is as if we emit something – an energy, a force – when we “put our mind to it.” I had a client once who was sure she could make a certain man telephone her if she thought hard enough about it.

Attention Is Powerful and Effective

An interesting example of the power of attention, of being in the moment, was given by the great tennis star, Billie Jean King. After winning an important tennis tournament, she was asked how she prepared for the afternoon match. Did she watch videos of her opponent, analyzing the weaknesses? No.

She stayed present in the simple things she did during the morning, and was able to keep that calm attention going as she played tennis in the afternoon. She wasn’t blaming herself for past mistakes or stressing about what her opponent might do next. She stayed present.

Attention is something we need to make us thrive, like air and water for plants. Babies that are deprived of it don’t grow properly. Children are believed to ‘act up’ if they don’t get enough of it. And grown-ups need it, too.

In the famous drama Death of a Salesman, the wife says of her distraught husband, “So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.”

Understandably, attention may seem in short supply in our busy lives. How can we be expected to listen deeply to our children or our partners given all the other things we have to do? Shouldn’t they just understand that we love them and let us get on with the dishes or a work deadline we must meet?

Being Attentive Has Benefits

I am fortunate that my job as a therapist requires me to sit quietly and pay attention. My phone is off. I can’t use the time to organize my grocery shopping. I can’t be planning what I am going to say next when my client finally stops talking. If I’m doing my job well, I am staying present and listening, as well as talking.

Although I hope this benefits my clients, this is a wonderful opportunity for me. I find it easy then to be genuinely interested in my client and what he or she is saying. Images come to me that I would otherwise never experience that help me to understand the person at a level other than just the words that are spoken. This kind of attention deepens my presence both to myself and to the other person, and it is something so fundamentally human that no artificial intelligence will ever replicate it.

When the pandemic started and I needed to do all my work online, I worried that this quality of attention required being in person, and that it would be lost online. I was pleased to find that it wasn’t. Some years ago, a Japanese researcher found that we can alter the structure of water by thoughts, even at a distance. Maybe that client really could get her boyfriend to call her!

Even if we are not trained therapists, we can still improve the quality of our attention. Just by making that inner decision to ‘be there’, to connect with the power of our attention, is an important start. Knowing that paying attention really does have an effect helps us to put our ego aside, and consider the other. I find that life in general has more sparkle, is more interesting and even more meaningful when I am attentive.

Paying Attention Makes People Like You

The 19th century English Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, was a master at paying attention. His great rival was William Gladstone. When an important society woman was asked to compare them, she is reported to have said, “When I sit next to Mr. Gladstone at dinner, I am convinced he is the most brilliant man in all England. But when I sit next to Mr. Disraeli, I am convinced that I am the most charming woman in all England.” Attention wins again!

Attention has a mysterious power. Giving it benefits both to myself and the other. It affects all relationships. It is always at hand, yet easily overlooked.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How well do you pay attention to the people who surround you? Has anyone noted their appreciation for your attention? Do you think paying attention to people is important?

LOVE AND RESENTMENT ON VALENTINE’S DAY

Valentine’s Day! Causes the heart to flutter, doesn’t it? Champagne, chocolate, flowers… you know, go big or go home, right?

It is one of my favourite special days of the year. I love to celebrate love. But intimate relationships have an underside, and sometimes it is helpful to allow ourselves to see that, too.

The Underside Is Resentment

We are capable of feeling resentful in many different situations, but in honour of Valentine’s Day, let’s consider it in intimate relationships.

Yes, we have all felt it. Even if we love deeply, there are times when – well, you can fill in the blanks. Even the most perfect partner is just not thinking of you all the time. Or they intrude on your space. Or they do nothing at all, really, just breathe, but somehow they trigger that disappointment that can twist our hearts and minds.

The dilemma is that resentment is delicious at first. It lets us assume our rightful place as the wronged person. When you think of it, it is weird to want to be wronged, but we feel absolved of responsibility for our negative feelings. Beware! It is a slow drip of poison that tastes good at first, but soon turns sour. That’s how the famous saying goes: Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Resentment Can Damage the Closeness We Want

If resentment festers, it can lead to distance, the enemy of intimacy. To express our resentment without owning it, we avoid eye contact, avoid physical contact, or avoid sharing our thoughts and feelings, often in a vicious cycle.

Unfortunately, resentment is a normal part of two people trying to share a life. So, what is to be done about it? We are more likely to address resentment constructively if we are honest with ourselves and acknowledge it. And that is easier when we do not have to feel guilty or ashamed.

Start by Asking Yourself What the Problem Actually Is

Of course, the feeling itself is a problem, but what are you reacting to? Dig deeper. Have you figured out the underlying issue? And is there something that you can do to change it? Often, when we feel resentful, we have the sense that nothing can be different.

Maybe we are looking for change in the wrong place. For example, we can get stuck and resentful waiting for the other person to be different. But if we dig deeper, we question whether there is anything we ourselves can do differently.

We may discover that there may not actually be a problem outside of ourselves to solve. We can find ourselves stuck in a negative mindset, in which resentment becomes a habit and the default way of looking at the world.

Your Assumptions Are Only Your Own

We may also be dragged down by a strong sense that things should be different. But a brilliant therapist would certainly challenge our assumptions of ‘should’. He or she would ask, “Where is it written that your husband should want to move … or take out the garbage … or remember your birthday?”

The therapist’s work reminds us that of course we all have our ‘shoulds’. But if we challenge our own assumptions, uncomfortable as that may be, can we find an opening for changing our mindset?

Whether our resentment comes from a problem that can be solved, or from a deep attitude of disappointment, that question, of what can be different, is key. As long as we believe the answer is nothing, we are stuck. Sometimes this job is a tall order for us to work on independently and the best approach is to seek support.

Changing One Thing May Have a Domino Effect

Making a difference with one thing in our lives can make it easier to change another. It’s surprising how the action of making change makes our feelings follow suit too. We act so that our feelings will follow, rather than wait for our feelings to change so that we act.

If we develop options, options give choice, and choice gives… It is almost as if choice releases a different chemical in our brain – a more desirable, positive one. We want to be able to forgive others and also ourselves. We want to be able to find better solutions to the ordinary problems of living together and to feel more in control of our own lives.

Maybe we can’t avoid resentment, but if we accept it and confront it, we are more likely to have a Happy Valentine’s Day.

MAKE THE MOST OF THE NEW YEAR BY MAKING CHANGES IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP

It’s a new year, and a time when we naturally begin to review our lives. A new year can remind us to make positive changes.

However, change is a complicated and nuanced subject. We may say we want things to change, but at the same time we may also find ourselves thinking change is too hard. Or it may be unclear what it is that we even want to change even if we have a desire for something in our lives to be different. It can be surprisingly difficult to know what we truly want.

Change can be particularly complicated with our partners. It can be all too easy to wish for a relationship with more romance and better communication, and to place the onus of changing on our partners instead of ourselves.

If you want to improve something in your relationship this year, how can you get started?

Look at an Area Where Change Is within Your Control – Yourself

Simply wanting your partner to be more responsive won’t work. We can’t stay the same and hope someone else will be different. If we want to change our relationship, we need to begin by looking at an area where change is within our control – ourselves.

It’s easy to point the finger at your partner and to tell them what they are doing wrong and what they need to change. Resist this temptation – it is exhausting, and it doesn’t work. On the other hand, any changes you make within yourself will invariably have an effect on your relationship.

And it works best if you do it for yourself, regardless of how you want the change you’re making to influence your partner.

Start by Changing Something – Anything

You can begin by changing anything, even something that has nothing to do with your goals. You want to feel your own agency. Call a person you haven’t talked to in a while. Take action on something you’ve been procrastinating about.

Feeling a sense of your own personal agency is a powerful starting point for initiating larger changes that may feel daunting. Building confidence is a key ingredient for initiating change, especially when the change is challenging to our most important relationships.

Make Your Goal Clear and Tangible

The best goals are those that are clearly defined so that it is easy to tell when you succeed. For instance, “I want to be more patient with my partner” is well intentioned, but hard to measure.

You can improve this goal by including a concrete action, which if taken, will mean that you accomplished your goal: “The next time I feel overwhelmed, I will tell my partner that I need to go for a walk to clear my head and then I will calmly respond to him when I am ready.”

Once you have a concrete goal, write it down. Research has shown that writing down a goal is effective for success. Set a timeline that is reasonable and decide how often you will look at your goal. You may even want to consider finding an image that represents you achieving your goal and make it your phone or laptop background so you see it several times a day.

Think Positively

When thinking about change, it’s also helpful to frame your goal positively rather than negatively. Rather than, “I don’t want to get angry when my partner demands a response right away,” try something like, “I want to take my time and answer calmly.” We can choose a positive option, such as taking a walk.

Visualize: Imagine Yourself in Action

It is well documented that athletes who mentally rehearse their performance perform far better than athletes who do not engage in visualization.

We can apply the same visualization technique to the change we want to make real in our relationships.

For instance, can you imagine yourself feeling overwhelmed, and then stopping, taking a deep breath and calmly telling your partner that you need to go for a walk? Go over it in your mind as if you were watching a movie on a large screen with you as the star actor. Focus on the end result and how that feels.

That’s visualization: What does it feel like to be you when you achieve your goal? What do you see, hear, think, experience in your new changed reality? If you feel the change deeply through visualization beforehand, you are more likely to make it happen. Use your imagination to your advantage!

Work with a Trusted Therapist or Coach

Another strategy for creating a meaningful change to your relationship is to have a trusted person in your corner. A relationship coach or therapist can enable a better conversation with yourself. They help you to see patterns in your thinking that are not readily apparent to you as well as help you reframe your perspective on how to make change happen.

A therapist can also help you gain more self-control. If a deeper change is needed, a therapist or coach can help you get to the core of what really matters so that you can identify what will have the most impact.

Change Starts Within

To create a positive change in your relationship, whether big or small, you need to choose a good starting point. Think about all of the areas that are within your control, create one measurable goal, visualize the end result, and achieve it.

If you are struggling to understand what you really want, or you don’t believe change is possible, or you simply need encouragement, work with a coach or therapist who can support you in your journey.