Have a go. Anybody can do it.
—Allen Parker
Are you ready to have some fun? This month I am going to talk about an aspect of relationships that really jazzes me, collaboration! It is creative, expansive, educating, unifying, and a constant trip into deeper understanding. I will joyously talk about four aspects of collaboration: teamwork, commitment, harmony, and thriving. These elements allow a relationship to become an artistic expression of the two participants while they create this masterpiece entitled, “The Relationship.”
• Teamwork
Teamwork is defined as a “cooperative effort by the members of a group or team to achieve a common goal.” You and your partner are the “team”; what is your common goal? For most people it is to have a fabulous, nurturing, and Love-filled relationship. A relationship works very much like a team. Each person offers special talents and strengths. They have each developed certain skills, based on their life experience. These very different talents, strengths, and skills are used in combination to have the team be successful. One person’s talents do not make a team, nor could a successful team be made up entirely of players that play the same position. Teammates need to work together to communicate, to each play their position, and to both support the strengths and compensate for the weaknesses in their partner. Being a member of a team, you are asked to set aside your own individual needs for what will ultimately be best for the team. In a relationship you are asked to set aside your own needs, and Lovingly nurture the relationship. What is best for the relationship comes first.
It is not uncommon for me to hear clients complain that their partner is not like them. They do not take care of the house as good as they would, or handle money as responsibly as they do. Often each partner is looking for the other to play the same position as they do. The truth is, if one partner is stronger at managing money and the other is stronger at keeping house, as long as they are working together you have a good team. It is not about being the same; it is about supporting the differences in the way that makes the team stronger.
• 100-Percent Commitment
Collaboration means a 100-percent commitment to putting the relationship first. This requires that we learn how to deal with our selfish side, that our individual needs and wants take a backseat to what is best for the relationship. Everything is not “my way or the highway,” and we will very rarely get “what we want, how we want it, when we want it.” This does not mean we get nothing. This merely means that our needs are met within the framework of what is best for the relationship, and the majority of life becomes one happy compromise, and at times a not so happy compromise, but a compromise nonetheless. In those moments comfort can be taken in the fact that we have put the relationship first and that you are doing what is best for the relationship.
In putting the relationship first we are creating a Loving and nurturing atmosphere that allows each partner to discover how the other deals with different situations the best and where their strengths and weaknesses are. We learn how we can best support and communicate with them, as well as how we need to be supported and communicated with. We ultimately learn how to treat the other person as we would like to be treated. It is a constant state of consciousness.
• Working in Harmony
Working in harmony allows the ebb and flow of compromise to develop. It is in that way that each other’s strengths are enhanced and weaknesses are minimized. What is important to each partner becomes clear. How to meet one another’s needs becomes more clear. What we need and how we can accept it in the framework of what is best for the relationship becomes clear.
Harmony allows us the ability to view what is in the best interest of the relationship. In harmony we have the ability to view all the ways that the focus on me, can become the focus on we. “Who is going to get their way”—the battle that often exists between couples—starts to exist less and less. When the needs of one partner are in the “best interest of the relationship,” they are embraced. Before you know it, it becomes second nature to put the relationship first. You no longer ask, “What is best for me?” You ask, “What is best for the relationship?” Ultimately it is what is best for you and your partner. You are nurturing your Love.
• Thriving
Through collaboration partners end up complementing each other. There is a balance that is naturally struck. The discoveries that are made as an individual and as part of a couple let us gain insight into who we are at a deeper level. These insights have us understand our partner and who we are in relationship to them. We can start to let go of the insecure feeling of needing to control another person, the fear of not getting our needs met, and start to understand that our needs will be met. We will start to understand that our needs will be met even if it happens in a way that is not how we picture or are familiar with. We learn to trust that someone is there for us with Love, appreciation, respect, and support. Collaboration gives us the freedom to create whatever it is we want. No one has to change who they are or manipulate the other person. Each person is supported in being exactly who they are as an entire person, and from that a third energy is co-created, who the two people are together.
Collaboration is art. Be creative, play with it, have fun! Love every minute of it. Love.
©2007 Erika Morrell