Don't change for anyone but yourself

A lot of people speak of compromise as being the pillar for building lasting relationships and I think this is fine but how far can one go into compromise?


I personally feel that if you are in a relationship with the right person, there is little to compromise on as you would share the same values and have similar goals in life although you may not have similar personalities.


Compromise is, however, sometimes required for a temporary or long-term adjustment on small issues. If you are finding yourself in a position where you have to compromise on everything, visibly, you are not in the right relationship. If the balance is 50/50 then you are probably in a relationship which is not perfect but you may be willing to settle for this and work regularly on your relationship. If there is little or no compromise to be made on one side or the other, you are in the perfect relationship and have found your significant other. Good for you.


In all cases, if you are a good person, you need to make sure that the compromise you are making is not against your core values.

We all have core values that we consider as having built the floor level of who we are and other peripheral values that have been added on through the years and which we may relate to less strongly. Compromising on your core values makes you adjust to being a different person than who you are intrinsically, at the bottom of your heart and soul. Being a different person totally throws you off balance and although you may sustain the compromise on a short-term basis, the long-term effects of that compromise could result in the destruction of who you are. Indeed, our core values are often interconnected and the removal of one of them tends to have an effect on the other remaining values.


Change is good when it enhances your good qualities, strengthens your core values and removes only the peripheral but it can be disastrous where it destroys who you are.

In some extreme cases where your core values were wrong or built on wrong assumptions, you will find that the loss of those values is a good thing but it is seldom the case. This only would have happened if the references and role models you had as a child were corrupt. In that case only, you should embrace the new core value and compromise to keep the relationship. After all, it might be that you have met the one who will make you a better person.


So whenever you feel an external impulse to compromise and change, take some time to examine what kind of value is at stake, reassess that value if it is a core value and be ready to compromise on it if it is not a core value and the relationship is important to you. If it is indeed a core value and you have reassessed it as necessary and good, give up the relationship if the other is not willing to see the importance of that value. If your core value is necessary to you but not a good value in its effects (say like valuing very hard work to an extent that it is the only important thing in life) , you might want to do some more introspection into why that value was a core value in the first place and what interior need in you made that so. Once you have dealt with that, you can assess what other value you could replace it with and then merge it into yourself to form a new core value. This is not an easy process so you would have to be patient.


Always remember that whatever the nature of the relationship, if that particular someone at the other end of the relationship keeps asking or pushing you to compromise and let go of your values one after the other, chances are it was someone else they had in mind and are shaping you out to be that person in their minds. But you are no figment of someone's imagination. You are you and any relationship you have with another person should be built on who you are and not on whom the other person wants to be in a relationship with.


Don't change for anyone, unless the change is good for you. The essence of who you are should only give in to the possibility of who you could become if the transformation were necessary to make you a better person. Be yourself and always differentiate between your own core values and those that are external
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_31Ut_KpLQ&feature=related

True love beckons from within

Did you ever wonder why we love? Why we seek love and welcome it into our lives? Why we are sometimes willing to go to extremes to persuade ourselves that we are in love or that we are loved by the object of our love?



My personal opinion is that it is food for the soul and that our eternal beings need it like our bodies need to nourish themselves. The energy brought to our beings by the fact of loving or being loved is phenomenal and compensates many an ailment. We therefore seek it because nobody can fast forever and however strong our will, at some point in our lives we will give in to it. It is a mere illusion to believe that we can live a loveless life or that we can spend our lives moving from one loose relationship to another without allowing our hearts and souls to attach themselves to the other’s. So many people who have lived such a life come to regret at some point in time not having taken the chance of a deeper relationship.

                         

Does it mean that we should live a life of abstinence until we find true love?



I would say most certainly not. The body like the soul needs to be nourished and all human beings need the contact and proximity of a loved one. If not true love, the closest thing possible to it that allows us to feel that there is someone by our side for whom we care and who cares for us. Simple things like holding hands, talking, sharing meals, having joint activities or separate ones that are then discussed briefly are all important in keeping our souls alight with happiness and hope in a future where we will not have to carry any burden alone. For solitude, although necessary at times, weighs a lot even on the soul that enjoys freedom.



But does this mean that we have to jump headlong into the next available relationship if we have loved and lost our loved one?



From personal experience, I would say that it is a really bad idea to jump into a new relationship to forget a personal loss. It is always necessary to take a step back and analyse the reasons that made our relationship go awry. This would then allow us to correct our thought patterns that caused the breakup and have a better relationship once we are ready to move on.



Can we love on command and can we choose the object of our love?



We cannot force ourselves to love a person that we wish to have as a partner for it has to come from within. The only thing that can happen when we choose a partner in life is that we eventually come to care for him/her but that notion is only a pale shadow of true love. While being a necessary component of loving someone, caring does not transport the soul like true love does. Often people settle for caring rather than taking the risk of searching for a true love. It is easier to set some criteria that are socially acceptable and then go in quest of the person who fits most the description than to open one’s heart and let love in whatever the form it comes in. But a life lived in contentment can never compare with a life lived in absolute bliss.



What is true love? How do you find it?



I personally believe in reincarnation and am convinced that the concept of soul mates is not a possibility but an actual reality and that we can only experience true love with our soul mate who is destined to cross our path. All we need to do is to be receptive and look out for the symptoms, the complex pattern of coincidences that make our paths cross in such a way that it is then obvious that it was meant to be. I also believe that the soul does not necessarily reproduce itself whole in all the lives it goes through but may split once or more from the effect of severe trauma experienced in any of the lives. One might therefore have more than one soul mate in a lifetime although only one soul mate will bear the most kinship with our soul.



So if you want to find your true love, be on the lookout for the signs. They will always be there and you just need to be open-minded and patient enough to spot, understand and follow them as they build up. But most of foremost, never be hasty in your conclusions because it is important to make the right choice. Slowly and surely is probably the best way to approach your quest for love.



Above all keep in mind that you can live for love but should not die for it. So here’s to lots of love to those who chance upon this post while they are savouring it or waiting to do so. And remember, if you think you have not yet found love, not to indulge in too much monkey business.

Private International Law or Conflict of laws

Private International Law is the set of rules that determines the way two or more nations having a connection with an individual will deal with that individual if he needs a legal decision to apply.
It determines which of the two countries has the right to judge (has jurisdiction) and which will have its law applied.

While this might seem a tedious and uninteresting matter in general that should be left to lawyers to debate, it becomes a crucial matter if you are a person who often travels, resides in two or more countries or is following a spouse on secondment. You might often think that you are protected by the rules of your country while in fact this might not be the case at all. Indeed, sometimes your country's Private International Legislation might rule that for some matters you are bound by the law of the country that you are residing in, even if it is not a permanent residence.

If you take for example the rules applying in most Muslim countries, it is Sharia law that applies and most of these countries tend to rule that absent any other provision, this is the law that will apply. Imagine that you are a housewife and follow your husband to such a country and then things something happens to your husband or you fall out. Chances are that if he were to pass away, the provisions you had discussed would not apply if nothing legal like a registered will had been undertaken beforehand and you might end up with one eigth of what should have normally been fully yours to tend to your family. If you were to divorce in the foreign country, chances are that the judges would not apply the divorce provisions you are expecting them to. This is an extreme example but similar problems arise even in other countries as well because of the different internal rules between countries.

If you are a housewife and travelling with your husband, make sure that you get appropriate advice on what is the law of the country you will be living in and how the set of conflicts of laws map out with your home country. Indeed, it might not be the country that you grew up in and that you just left that is relevant but it might be the country of your original nationality that would be the one to check.

In any case, before you travel, always make sure that you check all the rules that apply in that country and keep yourself updated on a regular basis. One of my friends recently had the shock of finding out that German divorce and alimony rules had recently changed and made the UAE relevant for examining her case instead of Germany. Had she viewed the possibility of divorce, it would have been possible to check the status of the law  and find out it was necessary to file urgently to avoid falling under the new law.

So remember, it is always better to be safe than sorry and get your situation checked before you travel.
No monkey business...

Message de bienvenue

Bonjour,
J'ai créé ce site pour y déposer des conseils en tous genres allant des conseils patrimoniaux (ma spécialité professionnelle) à des conseils ou avis tirés d'expériences de vie.
J'ai aussi un blog de poésie et de nouvelles courtes que vous trouverez à l'adresse suivante: http://geethaprodhom.wordpress.com/
En attendant  que je puisse mettre à jour ce blog, n'hésitez pas à consulter mon autre site de poésie.
Bonne lecture et/ou bonne écriture
Geetha

Hi,
I created this site to provide general advice and tips ranging from estate planning (my professional expertise) to tips and impressions or advice deriving from life experiences.
I also have a poetry blog with short novels that you can find at the following url:
http://geethaprodhom.wordpress.com/
Do have a look at my other writings while I gather material to post on this blog.
Happy writing and/or reading.
Geetha