In the earlier days of my career as a hypnotherapist, many people used to ask me if I had plans to create and put together hypnosis audio tracks or a programme to help enhance their relationships and I tended to give a fairly stock reply when I responded in the negative to the question.

My stock reply was that I had struggled with relationships myself, not found someone I had felt capable of committing any substantial part of my life to and despite having encountered a number of relationships, I had not deemed any of them to have been particular successful. Who was I to therefore advise on how to have effective relationships?

I had many great friendships and professional relationships, just not the kind of personal relationships people were asking me about. Maybe I could have suggested that my listeners do as I say, not as I do, but that felt disingenuous, so I never wrote about it or really worked with relationships a great deal.

However... Just as I had finished reading Osho's book "Love, freedom, aloneness", I met the woman who was to be my wife. She became my wife, and we have had several years of what I consider to be a truly remarkable and wonderful relationship; a marriage that has already had to endure some incredible challenges that we have overcome together. Some of the things we encountered may have pulled people apart, however, we have grown stronger and share something that only the two of us truly appreciate.

We have a lot of joy, laughter, mutual respect, support and know each other incredibly well.

Within the next week (at time of writing this) is our wedding anniversary and as we celebrate another year together and look toward many more years of happiness, I have started to feel much better equipped to offer up techniques and strategies for helping others with enhancing their relationships. The requests have continued and so I am finally yielding to such requests and this is article is the first showcasing ways of using hypnosis to help advance ourselves to subsequently enhance our relationships.

Note that I said "advance ourselves" because we can only really be fully in control of ourselves within our relationships.

The process that I am sharing today is one I have used with clients and also upon myself. My main motivation for tracking down this kind of process was something I spoke of in my own wedding speech - I blamed my parents and grandparents for the fact that I was struggling to find the right person for me. It was said with my tongue in my cheek.

The point I was making is that my parents were together since they were teenagers and my Grandparents also - my grandparents were married for 65 years; they got a telegram from the queen which was read out at their 60th wedding anniversary party. They also died within 2 days of one another and had a joint funeral and whilst I was incredibly sad as a coffin carrier that day, it was a joy to celebrate their lives together.

My templates for an effective relationship came from these people and I always believed that theirs were relationships that were inherently perfect and nothing I had experienced prior to meeting Katie ever measured up to what I believed things should be.

Today, I think I know that we cannot expect perfection (though to me Katie is mostly perfect) but we can learn to understand people better instead in a way that ensures we learn to love that person and not strive to love something unattainable.

Many people that I encounter professionally and personally have encountered some kind of disappointment within their relationship, often brought about by unrealistic expectations. It leads to a lack of understanding of the other person. This process here today is all about you metaphorically developing your understanding of a particular person that you are in a relationship with. This process today is very much influenced by the work of Gerald Mozdzierz, Ph.D. Just follow these simple steps.

The process does have an air of fun about it, because we are working with fruits and vegetables, so feel free to have a giggle and laughter when you do this too.

Seven Steps To Use Self-Hypnosis To Develop Better Understanding Of People:

Step One: Induce hypnosis. Use any method that you know of and are familiar with. You can use a progressive relaxation process, eye fixation or whatever you find the most useful in generating a good receptive mindset.

Step Two: Think about your favourite fruit or vegetable. What do you like about it, what are your reasons for it being your favourite? Become aware of the colour, the shape, be aware of what it is that you enjoy about it and why it is that you look forward to it.

Once you have spent some time just thinking about that, then move on to the next step.

Step Three: Think about your own relationship and think about the other person in your relationship. What fruit or vegetable best represents them?

Imagine that fruit or vegetable there in front of you, see its shape, its colour, its size. Really engage with it, notice what it is about this fruit or vegetable

It is what it is.

It is that fruit, or vegetable. It is not anything else.
As you look at it, know and accept that fruit or vegetable as it is. It may not have the same qualities, flavours, colours of your favourite fruit or vegetable; it is as it is.

You might repeat to yourself "I accept that as it is" or "I accept you" while looking at it. However, you can also imagine a sense of acceptance spreading through you as you look upon it.

See it as it is.

Spend some time understanding what that fruit and vegetable is. When you feel you are seeing that fruit as it is, without comparing it to your favourite and without trying to find the qualities of your favourite within it, then move on to the next step.

Step Four: Now start to think about all the strengths, skills and abilities that you have. Think about your creativity and imagination.

Think also about what kind of fruit or vegetable you are and that best sums you up. And accept that fruit or vegetable is as it is too.

When you have a sense of who and how you are, then move on to the next step.

Step Five: Consider again the other person in your relationship. Now think of all the wonderful ways that that fruit or vegetable that represented the other person in your relationship can be celebrated.

For example, apples can be more than just apples - and though they can be sweet or sour, soft or crunchy, green or red as that fruit, they can also be found in cakes, pies, sauces and drinks too. Consider all the other wonderful ways you can celebrate that fruit or vegetable.

Then also think about all the ways in which that fruit or vegetable can also combine in some way with your own fruit or vegetable to create a recipe or a dish or courses of a meal, and how they can become so wonderful when combined.

Begin to run through as many palatable and enjoyable combinations as you possibly can, spend some time considering them too, then move on to the next step.

Step Six: Be thoughtful and consider the implications of this exercise. Relate all the deeper lessons and learning to yourself and your relationship. Let it enhance your acceptance and begin to develop some ideas of how much more it can be when you do learn to accept and understand that person as they are.

Once you have developed any deeper lessons and learnings, then you can think about bringing them with you and allowing them to enhance the way you are within your relationship and move on to the final step.

Step Seven: Exit hypnosis. Wiggle your toes and fingers, take a couple of nice deep, energizing breaths and open your eyes.

Think about some action that you can take today to respond productively and progressively to what you have learnt in this session. Go and prove that you have developed some more understanding and develop and advance your relationship today.

There you have it, a nice simple way to develop relationships.