Let’s face it, even if you focus on your relationship, dress better, learn how to cook, and practice better grooming habits, the only person you’ll always be in a relationship with is you. In fact, you will be a better person to be around if you take the time to work on your self, first and foremost.
That doesn’t mean you need to eschew all relationships until you reach some sort of inner nirvana state, but it does meant that spending a little time, every day to become more confident, happy, and to engage in positive behaviors will help you become a better person, which is ultimately what makes you a better partner and lover.
That said, here are a few iPhone apps that can help you with you.
Lift
What’s the best thing you can do to form positive habits? Do them, of course. Lift is an app that encourages you to do just that, a little at a time, with its unique combination of user-definable goal setting and social support networks. You create an easily achieved goal, or choose one that other Lift users have already created. Every time you engage in the behavior, like “drink more water,” “exercise more,” or “tell my partner I love her,” you tap the Lift app to track it.
Over time, you’ll create a graph of how often you engage in any given behavior, and other folks in the Lift community can can Like your habit check-in, creating a little feedback loop of pure motivation. If you’re looking to become a better person, do it by doing, and Lift could be the free app that helps you along the way.
LiveHappy
Happiness is a key factor in how you live your life. When we’re happy with our life, we’re easier to be around, view the world as a generally good place to live, and engage in fewer self-destructive activities. LiveHappy takes the exercises from The How Of Happiness, by professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, and puts them into an app that lets you work on changing your outlook on life, working toward a sunnier disposition. You’ll work on setting and evaluating goals, tracking positive moods and happy days, keeping a gratitude journal, thanking people for their positive contributions to your life, and remembering acts of kindness. There’s even a personality analysis section, as well as some information on the science of happiness, all in this one $0.99 app.
iStress
Chronic stress has been linked to physical illness, depression, anxiety, and–ironically–more stress. iStress, by PsiApps, was created to focus on all areas of stress reduction, like monitoring, relaxation, positive self-talk, humor, and attitude improvement to help you feel less stressed, more truly yourself. That’s who your partner wants you to be, anyhow, right?
The $0.99 iStress helps you take control of your own stress level and the resulting emotions with a daily and weekly record of stress levels, as well as the thoughts and emotions that surround those stress levels. The app also features two relaxation exercises to help calm yourself down, a page of humor to help you take small things a little less intensely, encouraging sayings, and even an inspirational poem that you can read when life seems to be doing its utmost best to grind you down.
