Being the Right Partner: Mindful Choices for Intentional Relating

This book is about you and how you can be masterful in your most important relationship.

It's about having greatly increased self-awareness and self-management, leading to emotionally intelligent choices. It's becoming far better as a relationship partner than you ever thought possible.

It's about being mindful of what's happening between you and your partner in this moment, able to create a "mindful pause" between something that triggers an emotional reaction and your usual habitual response. It's conscious and intentional relating instead of "knee-jerk" automatic reacting.

This is a book about a systematic, holistic, and action-oriented process of choosing and creating mindful relating. It's a guidebook outlining a process of regularly assessing your relational mastery across ten Mindful Choices dimensions, focusing your attention, sustaining a high level of motivation, and creating lasting positive changes through ongoing intention, awareness, focus, and practice. It's not just another self-help book, but rather a complete "how-to" manual for relational excellence.

This book is not about finding the right partner or fixing your partner. It's about being the right partner, bringing your very best self to the relationship.

Both licensed mental health professionals, Bill and Robin Shearer come from diverse backgrounds. Bill started out as United States history teacher and went on to an Air Force career, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. He has been a licensed psychologist in California since 1977.

Robin began her career as an RN before becoming a marriage and family therapist. Long on education and training, the couple has spent decades not only providing treatment in a mental health setting but living their values in real life. They engage in a variety of balancing and revitalizing practices such as yoga, meditation, and being surrounded by nature. Robin is an avid equestrian. Bill is a wildlife photographer and artist. In short, they practice what they teach, and they are on a mission.

While specializing in treating addictions, eating disorders, problem relationships, and stress and anxiety disorders — problems characterized by a lack of balance and resilience — their main passion is helping others move beyond dissatisfaction with life or mental health issues, to a life of meaning, purpose, and deep satisfaction—a life of “thriving.”

A previous book, Mindful Choices for Well-Being, offers a holistic action-oriented process of choosing and creating well-being using proven methods for transformational change. The Shearers developed Mindful Choices Therapy during more than three decades of clinical practice. Mindful Choices Therapy provides the tools for transforming great choices into powerful and effective habits.