How do you develop personal growth in a relationship? This is the question that most of us deal with in our everyday lives, and we’re talking about relationships with our partners and relationships with ourselves and life.
Guy Finley, the best-selling Letting Go author, shares his powerful insights on relationships and personal growth in a relationship. He explains how relationships can be a magical space for transformations and incredible shifts.
If you are wondering how to promote personal growth in a relationship, keep reading!
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
We are standing all the time in front of a spiritual gold mine that we don’t recognize as being such, and that is our relationship. Knowing this helps us promote personal growth in a relationship.
- There is absolutely nothing more plentiful, nothing more pressing, and ultimately, nothing more powerful than understanding that the romantic relationships we have with one another are mirrors.
- Relationships are a full-contact sport. Once we begin to understand the real purpose of a relationship, we also understand what it means to be present and the powers that can help us start to develop and strengthen ourselves, the transformation and self-growth that we seek.
- Relationships are the instruments we are introduced to ourselves most profoundly and meaningfully. Knowing these instruments will help us understand how personal growth in a relationship happens.
- We are revealed to ourselves and within ourselves by our relationship. Personal growth in a relationship depends upon how well we understand ourselves.
- In our consciousness that we are, by and large, asleep within, we have almost no consistent recognition of these divine celestial characters that help us understand personal growth in a relationship.
- You’re drawn to a man or a woman because when you’re around him or her, you get to meet parts of yourself you like, which is essential for self-expansion and learning the fundamentals of personal growth in a relationship.
- We are drawn to the relationships we’re drawn to because they help complete what we can’t yet have as a full-time experience of our consciousness. This is how partners in a relationship grow.
- We realize these more profound, more accurate, more fulfilling aspects of ourselves through our romantic relationships with others because when we’re around them, there is an unmistakable stirring in our soul and a subsequent realization that quality time is something we’ve been looking for in an intimate relationship.
- Suppose you look to another human being for only those beautiful, gentle, and loving qualities when you’re around them. In that case, you begin to look at that other person as necessary and required to experience what you do. Out of that, a terrible dependency is born.
- Those moments in our lives where we blame the relationship for what we’re feeling has to be recognized as being under the same law as those relationships that we find to be beatific because of what they reveal in us. This helps us realize the significance of personal growth in a relationship.
- Relationships are equal opportunity mirrors. They don’t judge; through hard conversations, they reveal overcoming challenges and individual growth while sharing life experiences with your romantic partner.
- The relationship dynamics we have with one another are intended to reveal to us what we don’t know about ourselves, and that includes the characters in our consciousness who have continued to hide in us by blaming others for what we feel when we’re around them.
- Relationships are the ground of revelation. Each moment is the seed of revelation that teaches us personal growth in a relationship.
- We tend to summarily reject or resist the realization of the parts of us that stand in the way of these more profound revelations and realizations.
- Until we recognize that relationships reveal within us what has remained hidden in us and that stands as a limitation to enlarging our life and our relationship with life, then we will not be transformed, nor will we become the better version of ourselves for our partner. Knowing this aspect is important to cultivate personal growth in a relationship.
- The active side of love does not transform us. We are transformed by embracing both expressions of it. The other face of love isn’t just what I am drawn to but what love draws to me through those people, places, and problems that I don’t want that I might awaken to what stands in the way within myself to nurture a healthy relationship between myself and my romantic partner.
- This life is not a race to win. It’s a school for our higher education where we need to know the fundamentals of a healthy relationship and opportunities for relationship growth.
- Suppose we resist the moment or anyone or anything in it. In that case, we fight the lesson that moment has taught us about overcoming challenges in making a relationship work with a romantic partner.
- What we desire from our partner often troubles us about them.
- Finding something unsettling about the present moment implies that you carried that unsettled mind into the moment. The situation doesn’t create my awareness but rather exposes the attention already within me.
- The adversary we face is any aspect within us that dismisses or holds us responsible for the present moment for our discontent. Set aside quality time to discuss future plans for you and your partner, set relationship goals and self-growth, and explore new opportunities to grow together.
- If the present moment causes turmoil, you must bring forth everything on your mind. Doing so allows you to develop and progress in becoming a better version of yourself as a romantic partner. This transformation is unique to this particular moment and can’t be replicated in any other way. Embracing this approach helps two individuals express their own needs, respect their comfort zones, and navigate their relationship in the right direction.
Transcription: Personal Growth in a Relationship – Guy Finley
Personal Growth in a Relationship
Luis Congdon
In today’s episode, we will discuss how to let your relationship grow to encourage individual growth. The relationships in your life are a deep reservoir, an oasis for spiritual and emotional change. Today, we’ll be talking about that with Guy Finley.
Kamala Chambers
On this episode, we’re here with Guy Finley, who knows everything about personal growth in a relationship. He’s the best-selling author of Letting Go, and his work focuses on social issues about relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness and freedom, and a way to lead a higher life.
Luis Congdon
Here we are with Guy Finley. It’s such an honor to have you on the show today. I’ve been in touch with your work for quite a long time. Guy, are you ready to launch?
Guy Finley
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Luis Congdon
He is ready. Awesome! We are excited to dive deep into personal growth in a relationship.
Some of the things you’re jazzed to talk about today are creating an intimate space where two individuals grow together and the power of romantic relationships, or relationships in general, as a valuable factor in self-development, spiritual healing, and growth. I’d love to jump into that with you.
Guy Finley
Yeah. That’d be a great topic for us to look at together, and we have some insightful supplementary material touching on relationship growth. You lead, and I’ll follow there, Luis.
Developing a Healthy Relationship with the Self
Luis Congdon
Awesome. So, what’s one of the first things to know about personal growth in a relationship? When we talk about relationships and the power of a relationship to help us heal, grow, and strengthen our sense of self, what’s one of the first things that you want people to focus on or to teach and help people understand?
Guy Finley
We are standing all the time in front of a spiritual gold mine that we don’t recognize as being such. That is our relationship with the self, the foundation of every social connection.
The most abundant, significant, and influential aspect of our lives is the realization that our relationships reflect our selves, facilitating personal growth within a relationship. Relationships catalyze a unique kind of self-discovery, one that transcends mere platitudes.
Personal relationships are akin to a full-contact sport, and once we comprehend their true purpose, we can tap into their transformative powers and discover the potential for inner change. The key to unlocking this potential lies in being present at the moment and recognizing the underlying forces that can help us achieve the transformation and growth we seek.
For example, I’m sitting here in my little house on this mountain in Oregon, and just outside my window, I have my bird feeder, and it falls. The colors are striking.
When I focus on these details, I have no other space to reflect and voice my opinion. I see the forms, the colors, and the light.
By being attentive in a relationship, I can sense emotions within myself and observe aspects of myself that I’m typically unaware of. I notice the leaves losing their color and falling to the ground and how a gust of wind can make them dance across the lawn.
I see a tree stripped of its leaves, bare and uncovered. Keen observation helps us to learn how to keep a relationship strong with nature.
When I acknowledge each impression that arises during the moment as a crucial part of the relationship, it leaves a lasting impact on me, which can help strengthen the relationship. These impressions can evoke emotions that might not have been accessible.
So it’s the relationship with the color, the shape, the form, and the movement at the moment that awakens in me similar qualities that I wasn’t aware of before. Being present in the relationship exposes aspects of myself that are otherwise hidden from my consciousness.
We all understand how and what makes a relationship work with nature. We’re drawn to the timelessness of a night sky, the gentleness of a mother doe with her new fawn, and the timidity of a hummingbird, and these moments give us the most profound sense of ourselves and in truth.
It’s why we seek those things. If we’re a naturalist, we love nature. But why do we go out in heart?
I love the ocean. Why do I like to sit beside it?
Because, in that moment of the relationship being stirred in me, I experienced the same timeless qualities that I otherwise couldn’t share alone. This is a crucial aspect of nurturing self-growth.
So, we get the idea that we are revealed to ourselves and within ourselves by our relationships.
Luis Congdon
That’s magnificent. I love how you explained the nature and quality of one’s relationship with oneself.
It reminds me of when people say that we need a mirror. The reflection of others or any relationship we have helps us understand how to keep a relationship strong. It doesn’t even have to be other people or the other beings. Just a reflection from a tree or the ocean, we understand ourselves because of that contrast and the relationship.
Individual Growth in Romantic Relationships
Guy Finley
Yes, because in our consciousness that we are asleep within, we have almost zero recognition of these divine celestial characters that help us understand personal growth in a relationship.
The reason I am drawn to the timeless night sky is not because it’s a dark, starry void. Instead, it’s because I see a reflection of the eternal in myself through this relationship.
Maintaining a solid connection with my feelings and interests is crucial to experiencing satisfaction with my partner.
I get to know that gentleness in myself, a celestial character that guides me in the right direction.
It’s not my character. In truth, it’s not even the character of that little buck outside my window.
We are awakened to a celestial attribute through relationships; most of us get that. We are naturally drawn to one another.
I’m drawn to a man or a woman in my life because when I’m around him or her, I get to meet parts of myself I like, leading to new opportunities for self-expansion.
When I’m with you, I feel this bubbliness. When I’m watching you, I see a strength.
I experience a force I ordinarily don’t seem to have access to, but I can see it exists in me because when I’m around you, you move me. You carry that same character in me.
We love this idea even if we’ve never been able to express it or realize it adequately. We are drawn to the relationships we’re drawn to because they help complete what we can’t yet have as a full-time experience of our consciousness.
Kamala Chambers
This is such a beautiful journey you’re taking us on in this world of mirroring.
I’m excited to hear what you have to share next about self-expansion and discovery while creating new life experiences with one’s partner. I don’t even have a specific question because I don’t know what will unfold in the next segment.
Luis Congdon
Before you jump into the next piece, I want to validate what I’m hearing and not only validate it through my own experience and say that I love what you’re saying but also bring in somebody I love and admire, Dr. Harville Hendrix. He says that it is only in loving others that we truly learn how to love ourselves, which is essential in knowing how to keep a relationship strong with ourselves. Somehow, that quote from Harville also resonates with what you’re saying.
Guy Finley
Yes. Of course, that’s true in knowing how to keep a relationship strong.
Not knowing the gentleman, I can only hope or assume that his understanding includes the following:
We’ve agreed that we realize these more profound, more accurate, more fulfilling aspects of ourselves through our relationships with others because when we’re around them, there is an unmistakable stirring in our soul and a subsequent realization that quality time is something we’ve been looking for in romantic relationships.
That’s the same situation in that movie with Tom Cruise and Renée Zellweger.
Kamala Chambers
Jerry Maguire.
Guy Finley
Yeah.
Luis Congdon
Bingo!
Nurturing Individual Growth in Romantic Relationships
Guy Finley
In Jerry Maguire, we get to this marvelous endpoint where he tells her, “You complete me. Being around you has helped me discover what I’ve been looking for my whole life.” That’s what fantastic, sentimental, emotional view of this idea that you mention this doctor speaks of.
Without the other side, it’s not only meaningless, it’s harmful.
Suppose I look to another human being for only those qualities that awaken me to similar joyful, gentle, loving attributes when I’m around them. In that case, I begin to look at that other person as, in one respect, necessary and required for me to experience what I do. Out of that, terrible dependency is born.
An attachment is not just to another person but to what I expect that other person to be so that I might be what they help me to see in myself. We have to go deeper than that.
We love looking past our relationships, at Titus, this little buck, the hummingbird, the beautiful person I’m engaged to or going out with, or my wife as a case, maybe. But these people, these places, and these relationships helped me realize what my own needs are.
However, the same principle applies to every moment when I’m around someone or something in some place that is disturbing me, causing me anger, to feel afraid, to be worried, to feel anxiousness, or even hatred. Your environment has a massive impact on encouraging individual growth in a relationship.
Those moments in our lives where we blame the relationship for what we’re feeling has to be recognized as being under the same law as those relationships that we find to be beatific because of what they reveal in us.
Love: The Driving Force of Personal Growth in a Relationship
Guy Finley
Our relationships with one another are intended to reveal to us what we don’t know about ourselves. That includes the characters in our consciousness who have continued to hide themselves in us by blaming others for what we feel when we’re around them.
We have to take both sides of the equation that helps us to explore personal growth in a relationship.
Guy Finley
The revelations introduce me to qualities, characteristics high and low, and light and dark to which I am presently asleep. Naturally, we love recognizing and realizing these beautiful parts of what is divine in us. Still, we have a tendency, and as a euphemism, to summarily reject or resist the realization of our features that stand in the way of these more profound revelations and realizations.
Knowing our divine strengths is essential to learning how to become a better person for our partner.
Here’s where we’ve gotten to. Until we recognize that relationships reveal within us what has remained hidden in us and that stands as a limitation to enlarging our life and relationship with life, we will not be transformed.
The active side of love does not transform us. We are transformed by embracing both expressions of it; the other face of love isn’t just what I am drawn to but what love draws to me through those people, places, and problems that I don’t want that I might awaken to what stands in the way within myself to that fuller, more deeply, perfected relationship.
Related Reading: 5 Ways An Online Marriage Course Mends Relationships
Avoiding Resistance in a Healthy Relationship: Let Your Partner Grow Together with You
Kamala Chambers
These powerful concepts you’re transmitting could help us explore individual and relationship growth. I feel the transmissions coming through. I would love to hear some practical ways to apply this daily.
Guy Finley
Absolutely.
First, let’s examine the last broad principle, Luis and Kamala. Can I resist any moment in my life and push it away because something in me has decided it’s against me? Can I be against life and learn from it at the same time?
Luis Congdon
I hope this is a trick question.
Guy Finley
For a lot of people, it’s not. Most of us don’t have a living context to our relationship in this life. The live context is that, as Mr. Howard, a great man I used to know before he passed away, this life is not a race to win.
It’s a school for our higher education. And if the context and purpose of our existence as individual beings is to discover through a broader set of relationships that life doesn’t just make possible but that brings to our door.
When the student is ready, the teacher appears in these lessons. Then, if I reject the class, I reject life; if I refuse life, I leave the love given to me.
We’re denying the teacher that knocks at our door because living within us is another kind of false teacher, a wrong body of ideas that tells us only what we feel is for us is actually on our side. That level of consciousness has divided life up into good and evil, light and dark, up and down in such a distinct fashion as to draw a line between us and whatever it is, by the way, that has come to reveal to us what stands in our way of knowing a love that is authentically unconditional because it embraces without question every lesson that life brings to us regardless of its seeming nature.
Luis Congdon
You’re making me think of it, and I want to get personal. I hope you’re okay with me disclosing this, Kamala. Kamala and I were recently at an event, and she was struggling with enjoying herself at the event.
She was struggling with being there, and I know that I got distraught and frustrated after a while. I wanted to pull her out of what she was feeling and wanted to change her feelings.
Looking back on it, it’s wrong to want to change someone’s feelings, and then later, I blamed her for my inability to have a good time or be present at the event. I feel like this is what you’re talking about because I was so against her experience and blamed her for the knowledge that she had that I lost an opportunity to learn.
Guy Finley
Yeah, and all that.
Growing Together: The Secret Ingredient to a Healthy Relationship
For maybe a long time, we can only see these lessons in retrospect, but just to be able to recognize what you’ve described is a marvelous step in the right direction.
The only thing that bothers us about any other person in our life is what we desire from them, which drives the need to grow together.
We get lost in these moments by misunderstanding the moment of that relationship, and I don’t just mean with our partner. What is it about any given moment that’s troubling to me? Is it the moment itself? Or is it that’s stirring in me, something that’s troubling me?
If something’s troubling me about the moment, that means that I came into the moment with that troubled nature. The condition doesn’t create the consciousness that I experience.
It reveals the consciousness I am experiencing. Do you see the difference?
Kamala Chambers
Absolutely.
Challenges to Personal Growth in Romantic Relationships
Guy Finley
If the moment reveals the consciousness I have come into the moment with, and that consciousness can only resist or hate the moment or someone in it, then that’s what I need to recognize. Not to blame the moment or that person.
This is why Christ said, “Love thy enemies”. He was referring to the fact that life continually prepares a feast in the presence of our enemy. And in this instance, our enemy is anything and everything in us that summarily rejects or blames the moment as being the cause of our unhappiness.
Our unhappiness is because we walk around with a body of psychological formations, creations of the past that were never appropriately reconciled, instead of going before us to connect to that place.
Because we live from a body of unseen psychological demands, some of which, without knowing it as part of our essence, require balancing and harmonizing. But when the moment to harmonize through these revelations comes, we reject the teacher and instead stand on the side of this older man, this older woman that lives in us, and that continues to insist you, meaning Kamala, this event, this temperature, this color, this form, you have no choice but to be what I need you to be so you don’t bug me.
Kamala Chambers
Wouldn’t that be easier? But no, it’s not.
Guy Finley
No, that’s hell.
Kamala Chambers
Exactly.
Guy Finley
That’s trying to control one’s partner. Trying to change circumstances to fit what we say through comparison would be much more comfortable for us.
Everybody listens, and we all understand what we’re talking about to some extent. The real question is how deeply I want to learn in these moments.
What will change the whole of me instead of me trying to change a part of my partner so that I could be at peace?
Opportunities to Establish a Healthy Relationship Growth Cycle
Luis Congdon
So, what would you recommend in that situation where I want Kamala to change so I can be happy and meet my needs? Which I know is wrong, but I’m lost in those tracts; now, I’m moving forward.
That moment has passed, but one thing I know about life is that if I didn’t get the lesson out, I would have plenty of opportunities to practice and become a better person.
What would you recommend to me?
Guy Finley
Here’s one of my favorite ideas, and by the way, for those of you who are religious or spiritually-centered, you’ll find this idea at the heart of all actual teachings.
Have you ever gone out with Kamala, Luis, spending time with a group of people, friends, or acquaintances at a business enterprise? You’re sitting at a dinner table at a new restaurant, and you’ve all ordered what you like, and maybe when you’ve looked at the menu, I know this is true for me, you think, “Oh my God. How can they charge $42 for a salad?” and then, you’re sitting there and the waiter comes up with the bill, and nobody reaches for it.
And, maybe it’s a more precise look, we’re all going Dutch, or perhaps someone made it clear at the start, “This is on me,” but eventually, someone has to take the lead. And maybe at some point, someone says, “You know what? Look, let me get this one,” everyone at the table has this small sigh of relief. “Let me get this one.” We get that idea, don’t we?
Here comes a moment. There’s a real uncomfortableness because life has brought along a bill, and nobody wants the whole bill, but the bill has to be paid. The parallel would be that there comes a moment in life, and whether we understand this or not, life continues to present moments to us that, by nature, are comic.
Stepping Outside Comfort Zones for Relationship Growth
Life continues to bring us into a moment where we are invited as human beings infused with what is divine to do the religious thing in this planetary body. Among these personal relationships, which is what?
“I will flip the bill for this moment.” “Let me get this one.”
“You’re negative.” “I don’t know why this is going down the way it is, and I want to complain.”
“I want to blame. I want to get angry and frustrated.”
“I want to pay back the guy that cut me off on the freeway by tailgating him.”
All of these negative emotions. And no negative emotion appears in us that isn’t preceded by resistance to the lesson presented.
So here I am, and ordinarily, I demand that you, Kamala, pay the bill. Get on my side.
I require that person see they’re wrong. Why don’t they know they’re wrong?
So I try to command you by getting sullen or irritated or aggressive to get you to change your attitude so that whatever ache is in me will go away.
But now, I understand; I can’t change you. It’s not just a mental affirmation anymore; it’s a weariness.
It’s a deep-seated suffering that I’ve gone through 5,000 times, and seeing that when I asked you to pay the bill, all that gets bred is resentment. So, I’m going to step up and do the thing I never thought possible: I’m going to use this moment of my relationship to let it reveal in me the parts of me that want to run away from the revelation.
I’ll pick up the bill. I’ll be changed.
I will lay down my life, and I’ll feel that power. This is my first step in relationship growth.
But you won’t until you agree to lay down your life. No greater love has a man or a woman who lays down their life for their brother, and their brother is not just their husband, wife, business partner, or a stranger on the street.
Suppose the moment presents something that brings conflict into my heart. In that case, my responsibility is to get everything in my consciousness, rejecting that revelation into a summary, understanding that I’ll pick it up.
I’ll let this moment change me by showing me who and what I have been up until this moment, and it will be a new me that comes out of that moment because I’ve let the revelation of the relationship produce the energy and the possibility that exists in no other moment in no other way.
Luis Congdon
That is powerful.
Kamala Chambers
Potent stuff. Having you here has been fantastic, Guy Finley. We loved the insights on personal growth in a relationship.
Luis Congdon
I want to say we could keep that conversation going for such a long time. Guy Finley has much to share about relationships and uses relationships as a magical space to perform alchemy, transformation, and incredible shifts.
Kamala Chambers
Yeah. It’s such an honor to have you on the show, and we have been here talking about relationship magic.
Guy Finley
If you want to learn more about these ideas regarding personal growth in a relationship and the material we have been discussing, you can pick up Letting Go.
Luis Congdon
Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Guy.
Guy Finley
I’m delighted. It was a wonderful chance to look at some of these deeper ideas and to resonate as I know we did. I thank you, and be well.
Luis Congdon
Thank you so much.
Guy Finley
And I hope to speak with you again sometime.
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