This is What Gets in the Way of LOVING OURSELVES More
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I teach a class in New York City at a wellness center every Thursday. The class is about RELATIONSHIPS! Which is, of course, a very juicy topic. Because, as the research shows and as so many of us already know, the health of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.
PERIOD! But…
When we talk about “relationships”, most of us immediately assume we’re talking about the dynamic between ourselves and others. We skip right over the relationship we have with ourselves.
And there’s nothing random about this.
The things we’re most intimate with are the ones we’re most likely to take for granted. This is why it’s so, so important to stay awake inside our lives. We can get pulled breathtakingly easily out of our own experience into the drama of what’s going on “out there”. And when we do, when we focus on other people, what they’re up to, how we need them to change, how problematic they are — we go into disempowerment mode.
All relationships are mirrors. Whatever is popping up in your relationships with other people is a reflection or an iteration of something that’s going on in you.
So when we catch ourselves complaining about someone — they’re mean, they’re withholding, the don’t appreciate me — it can be really eye opening to stop and ask yourself: where am I being mean (to myself or anyone else in my life), where I am withholding, what am I neglecting to appreciate?
When we bring it back to ourselves we feel empowered to work with it, grow with it, understand it, transform it.
We aren’t seeking to make ourselves wrong with this exercise — we’re seeking to take responsibility. Fault and responsibility are not the same thing!
When we keep making it about the other person, we entrap ourselves in a disempowered state where now our peace, our joy, our well being depends on whether or not the other person is doing what we need them to do.
