Like the Law of Attraction, what we get from our relationships with others is what we focus on. This is a lesson I have learned this week from Complaint Free Relationships: How to Positively Transform Your Personal, Work, and Love Relationships
What does that mean exactly?
Bowen explains ‘focus’ as the type of questions you ask yourself.
In our lives we are constantly asking questions in our head and then answering them; this is our judging process and is necessary for survival. For example, we need to be able to identify threats to our safety and protect ourselves accordingly, so asking “is now a safe time to cross the road?” might be a good idea if you are a pedestrian at a busy intersection. But the questions that we ask ourselves about people and experiences that do not pose a safety concern have the ability to colour the experiences that we have in our day-to-day lives.
If you were focusing on things that you like about other people, you would consciously or unconsciously ask and answer questions like “What am I enjoying about this relationship?”, “What do I like about this person?” or “What can I do to make this person happy?”
If you were focusing on things that you do not like about other people, you would consciously or unconsciously ask and answer questions like “What is bothering me about this relationship?”, “What is annoying me about this person?”, “What do I wish I could change about this person?” or “Why is this person not making me happy?”
If you are always asking the latter kinds of questions, then answers will come and those answers will bother you for as long as you continue to answer the same questions. Some people will move from partner to partner, never staying with anyone for very long, because they ask the same negative questions about every person they meet and keep receiving answers. Other people will stay in a relationship but won’t enjoy it very much because of the fact that they are always focusing on the negatives. The fact of the matter is, if you are asking questions like “What is annoying me about this person?” and the answers you get make you feel annoyed, then don’t expect that changing the other person will make any difference to your relationship. If you are focusing on what is annoying then you will find something to be annoyed about.
Bowen explains that one of the keys to enjoying happy relationships is to change what you focus on and start to ask yourself more positive questions. At first this may be very difficult if focusing on the negatives has formed a habit, but if you commit to changing this aspect of yourself it will show up in the positive relationships that you will attract to yourself. One question that he suggests asking yourself is “How are we able to exist and perform in a harmonious and agreeable way?”. Try asking yourself this question whenever you run into trouble, and see if it makes any improvement to the outcome.
The kinds of questions I have been asking myself this week include: “How can I be more friendly?”, “What can I do to be more helpful?”, “What do I really appreciate about him/her?”, “how does s/he make my life good?”. For someone I don’t get along with, I have started asking “What do her friends like about her?” I have been giving it some good thought and recognising that I can like those same traits too. 
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