Another commercial love fest is upon us: Valentine’s day! YAY😜 Surely you are seeing a lot of offers on how to express your love to your partner.
But how do you express your love every day?
Heartwork’s Valentine special this year is an invitation to get out of the box with your loved one – what applies to leadership and work, also applies to our personal relationships.
Do you sometimes feel your partner is not paying enough attention to you? Or letting you down in some other way? How about these special days like Valentine’s Day?
Therefore, we might judge our partner as insensitive, uncaring, or unloving. So, we get into the box and start treating them according to this story. Guess what happens – your partner might start seeing you as demanding – if you speak up, or cold – when you taking distance. Together, you might enter inro a vicious and self-enforcing circle where one is blaming the other.
This mechanism of self-deception has been extenstively studied over the past century and the Arbinger Institute has written a very practical book on “Leadership and Self-Deception“. Alarmingly, the resarch shows that self-deception is pervasive and undermines our actions and relationships in every aspect of life and work.
The Weekly Insights by Heartwork are about the stories that you tell yourself – whether you are aware of them or not – and finding sustainable ways to let them go. And this is part of being a human – we all self-deceive and step into the box, where we are right and the other is wrong. The question is: How quickly are you aware of the story and can you get out of it? And what helps you stay out of the box?
This blog is based on the Heartwork newsletter, 10th of February 2022. Would you like to read more inspiring content?