Relationships help us discover self-love
Relationship experts tell us that relationships offer us one of the best opportunities for personal development and experience of any relationship confirms this.
Relationships are like mirrors. They help us see our true feelings and they reflected back to us what we may be blind to so that we can:
- grow and understand ourselves,
- heal and integrate,
- improve our future relationships with others.
Personal story
Recently I got into conflict with a colleague and a friend. I was deeply disappointed by the way I felt he was letting me down and I told him as much. But on reflection, I realised that the person who was letting me down was none other than myself. It was I who:
- failed to set clear expectations for our working relationship,
- tolerated repetitive errors and even paid for it,
- excused poor work on the grounds of being compassionate and kind.
As I value this person and care about relationships, I made time to sit down to reflect on this experience deeper. Doing this helped me realise the massive gift in our conflict and how it helped me grow.
The reflection helped catalyse a vital change in my approach to working partnerships. It helped me:
- dissociate compassion from professionalism which I managed to collapse together over time and most of all,
- regain healthy self-respect, and
- genuinely soften towards my friend and colleague who was no longer someone letting me down but someone who was teaching me how to not let myself down.
Paradoxically it was the feeling of being let down that had kicked off my initial complaint in his direction.
5 questions to help you look into your work and life relationships
Q1: How do you feel in this relationship?
Q2: What are you giving or bringing to the relationship?
Q3: What value(s) ground your relationship?
Q4: Are you capable of handling/dealing with your internal conflict when it arises? And, are you equally able to be with the conflict that may arise in the other person or people?
Q5: Are you prepared to listen and find a nurturing resolution to the situation where everyone feels better?
Lack of love is often the root cause of many problems
There are many ways in which we can sabotage our progress and growth. They often boil down to two key ways: (1) lack of self-love and/or (2) lack of self-respect.
While there are many reasons for how we can find ourselves in this situation, healthy relating starts from a place of being able to:
- recognise and admit how we truly feel,
- take ownership of what belongs to us and what does not, and
- know effective methods to calm and soothe painful feelings and emotions to allow us to return to healthy relating.
Dive into your relationship with yourself and others with our retreats
I have established a unique way of looking at mind, heart, body, and spirit alignment as a way of pinpointing internal and external trigger points for conflict. Based on this framework, I have also developed simple and easy ways of communicating to help us meet our own needs and the needs of others.
The process and practices I use form the basis of our day retreats. The idea for these gatherings is to work gently yet deeply to help participants realign these four critical parts for a stronger whole. Our returners are a joy to watch. They move with more ease, grace, confidence and their life flows more. I’m not surprised. When inner conflict leaves, more space is made and energy released to serve life.
Discover for yourself how you too can create more possibility in your life. Join us in London and other major cities.
