I’ve often been asked the following question: “O.k., I took my time to develop Self-Awareness. Now I better understand the ways in which I sabotage my relationships. That’s great! But how can I use this awareness to make the necessary changes to cultivate and maintain a successful and satisfying relationship?”In this article I address this important question. My advice is based on the assumption that by now you have taken the time to develop your Self-Awareness, and that what you want is to understand how to use what you’ve learned about yourself to be able to “translate” it to your daily attempts at cultivating a successful relationship.Using Self-Awareness to cultivate a successful relationship: 5 TipsUseful Tip 1Developing Self Awareness is a process. Therefore, as you begin to develop your awareness you already begin to take steps to implement what you become aware of. Realizing it enables you to use what you have learned as you pay attention to how you now handle yourself in relationships or while attempting to develop one.Useful Tip 2Now that you consciously and intentionally observe your interactions with your partner (or past relationships in retrospect) you become able to:* Stop letting these control you;
* Halt your reactions and behaviors and contemplate which ones to us;
* Choose new ways to behave, vital to cultivating a successful and satisfying relationship. Useful Tip 3As you develop your Self-Awareness you can understand how you harmed your relationships by not being true to yourself and by giving up on your will:* Being driven by needs and fears;
* Being controlled by messages;
* Wishing to ensure you have a relationship;
* Wanting to avoid conflicts;
* And due to other reasons which you discover when you become aware.Now that you have become aware, you become self-empowered to connect with your will.Connecting with your will enables you to be authentic – which is a virtue to a successful, satisfying and healthy relationship. Useful Tip 4Connecting with you will enables you to begin to initiate changes in your relationships – albeit small ones – which you might have not taken before, for example:* You allow yourself to be selective regarding who you date or begin a relationship with (if you’re single and have previously succumbed to whoever asked you out);* You allow yourself to express your opinions and desires with your partner (if you haven’t allowed yourself to do so before);* You allow yourself to avoid doing what doesn’t feel right to you – even if your partner asks you to;* You allow yourself to suggest things to do (if you haven’t dared making suggestions before); and so on.Useful Tip 5As you develop Self-Awareness, realize and understand what has driven you to sabotage your relationships, you become able to de-activate their power.For example, now that you have become aware of your fears, you no longer find yourself jumping from one relationship to another and being in relationships which are no good for, nor do you stay in relationships which are bad for you and behave as a victim within the relationship – all of which you have previously done in order to escape the fear of being alone.The best way to combat the fear is to “be in it” : to stop acting like you had until now in order to “protect” yourself from being alone, but rather take the time to be by yourself. You might feel the fear, but if you will resist the temptation to run away from it. Being in it empowers you to combat it! As you allow yourself to “be in” other fears – such as the fear of commitment (rather than running away from it by escaping from every relationship) or the fear of being hurt (allowing yourself to be open with you partner rather than be cautious or refrain from having one altogether) – you can free yourself from the power these fears have exerted over you.Using your Self-Awareness is vital to succeeding in your relationshipsAs much as your own relationship issues might be similar to or different from others’, the Self-Awareness you develop and the insights you achieve are unique to you. Therefore, there are no specific tips on how to use the awareness, the knowledge and the understanding you have gained.The advice I’ve outlined here can serve you as general guidelines on the basis of which you can move forward in dealing with your own relationship issues and in making the specific changes you need to make to cultivate a successful intimate relationship.