Make All of Your
Relationships Better
with Simple Changes
Inside Yourself
50 Simple, Powerful Practices for Solving Conflicts, Building Connection, and Fostering Love
Make Your Relationships the Best They Can Be
Relationships are usually the most important part of a person’s life. But they’re often stressful and frustrating, or simply awkward, distant, and lonely. We feel the weight of things unsaid, needs unmet, conflicts unresolved. It’s easy to feel stuck.
But actually, new research shows that you create your relationships every day with the things you do and say, which gives you the ability to start improving them now. You have the power to make all your relationships better just by making simple changes that start inside yourself.
New York Times bestselling author of Buddha’s Brain and Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson, PhD, brings his trademark warmth and clarity to Making Great Relationships, a comprehensive guide to fostering healthy, effective, and fulfilling relationships of all kinds: at home and at work, with family and friends, and with people who are challenging. As a psychologist, couples and family counselor, husband, and father, Dr. Hanson has learned what makes relationships go badly and what you can do to make them go better.
Grounded in brain science and clinical psychology, and informed by contemplative wisdom, Making Great Relationships offers fifty fundamental skills, including:
- How to convince yourself that you truly deserve to be treated well
- How to communicate effectively in all kinds of settings
- How to stay centered so that conflict doesn’t rattle you so deeply
- How to see the good in others (even when they make it difficult)
- How to set and maintain healthy boundaries or resize relationships as needed
- How to express your needs so that they are more likely to be fulfilled
With these fifty simple yet powerful practices, you can handle conflicts, repair misunderstandings, get treated better, deepen a romantic partnership, be at peace with others, and give the love that you have in your heart. Making Great Relationships will teach you how to relate better than ever with all the people in your life.
Our relationships are more important than ever, but they can also be full of conflict, strained silences, and missed opportunities. Even if ‘they’ don’t change, Rick shows you how to step out of no-win struggles, respect your own needs, and feel at peace. A nourishing, useful, and timely book.
The love, spontaneity, and vitality of your relationships can continue to evolve in deeply gratifying ways. Rick Hanson—author, psychologist, and wise, loving human—offers an amazing guide, filled with potent doable exercises that will bring fresh life to any and all of your relationships.
Rick Hanson has the profound ability to cut through the noise and confusion, providing practical, effective strategies and doable wisdom that will immediately make your relationships better.
Written with grace, humor, and kindness, Making Great Relationships is a rare find. Read it, and your life and relationships will be transformed.
Anyone reading this book will know they are in the hands of a master, and we encourage you to trust the effectiveness of the many practices if you want a ‘great’ relationship.
Rick offers deeply practical instruction on how to befriend yourself, cultivate kindness, and communicate more skillfully, so you can get more of what you really want in all of your relationships.
Excerpts
Stay Right When You’re Wronged
Blasting another person with anger is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned. Speak calmly and from your heart, even when wronged.
Let Go of Needless Fear
It’s not our fault that we’re needlessly anxious. But it is our responsibility – and our opportunity – to address it.
Respect Your Needs
Many people feel needy or ashamed about their needs and deep wants. But needs are normal; we all have them.
Order Your Copy
Making Great Relationships is available wherever books are sold in hardcover, paperback, audiobook (CD or download), and numerous eBook formats, including Kindle, iBook, Nook, and Google Play.
INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH RETAILERS
ADDITIONAL LANGUAGES