Relationships can have a huge impact in our every day lives. Love, friendship, social interactions all reflect the essence of who we are and help us to grow, especially through adversity. The people we meet on this journey are our teachers or students as we are their teachers and they the students. We draw those we need into our lives for the lessons we need to help us grow, and as we know growth is not always a fun ride at the fayre, or a lazy day at the beach.....growth can be painful, it can make us feel hopeless, defeated where we cry and cry or shut the world and those we love away from us. Then, like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon we are both beautiful and new, but also delicate from our experience. Our pain is personal and very few see the torment that can rage within us like a cyclone destroying all in its path. But just like the cyclone passes, we too can rise like the Phoenix from the Ashes, battered and bruised and very different or sometimes subtly different from who we were, but without doubt, we are changed. How we see things may be different, what we think was once acceptable to us no longer is. How we respond or behave has changed.....This is growth....
Our relationships are like flowers, they need to be nurtured, just the right amount of sunshine and warmth, and not too much or too little water, an environment that is fertile and love that is given without a need for anything in return but to see the beauty of it as it blooms is the reward we reap for our investment. If we do not invest in our relationships and nurture them, they will become weak and atrophy, like a muscle that we have stopped using. But how do we get a good relationship with others........?
Be the Change you wish to see in the world....Mahatma Ghandi
To have a good relationship with others we must first have a good relationship with ourselves. How much of your time do you invest in YOU? What are your values, your boundaries, what matters to you, and how well do you know yourself?? What did you learn from your parents about love and social interactions?
Our blueprint for how a relationship should be is created by observing the relationship with our parents/caregivers, the good news is that once we evolve into adulthood we have the capacity to see any patterns that may not be serving us and go through the process of changing them. As children we literally 'feel' our emotions as our cognitive abilities are not developed enough for us to interpret or question them. In Don Miguel Ruiz book 'The Mastery of Love' he very eloquently says "You have to focus on the most wonderful relationship you can have: the relationship with yourself. It is not about being selfish; it is about self-love. These are not the same. You are selfish with yourself because there is no love there. You need to love yourself, and the love will grow more and more. Then, when you enter a relationship, you don't go into it because you need to be loved, it becomes a choice" (Ruiz, M. 1999, Mastery of Love, Amber Allen Publishing, Inc. p.99).
Many of our drives can be unconscious and socially driven and therefore it is imperative that we go within to understand what our motivates us to do what we do, to do this effectively it must become a daily practice that involves the support of a therapist or study in the field of self development. I will finish this with a few sayings that I love 'If you don't go within, you go without', 'Love when you are ready, not when you are lonely', “I have decided to stick to love. Hate is too great a burden to bear” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Believe, Trust, Forgive and Love, Thrive don't just Survive
Yvonne