The #1 most important lesson I learned about relationships:
Go to work and look around you. Are people happy?
Go home and look around you. Are those in your family happy?
Go out with your friends and look around you. Are your friends happy?
Go into your community and look around you. Are those in your community happy?
Now go look in the mirror. Are YOU happy?
The lesson I learned from years of setbacks and traumas is this: The most important relationship you will ever have is the one with yourself.
For the longest time, I was so focused on making sure that others around me were happy, that I lost myself in the process.
Sound familiar?
My energy was placed on taking care of others, not myself. Were my colleagues happy? Are my clients doing ok? Is my family healthy? Are my kids good?
This is very poor leadership.
You become exhausted and debilitated when difficulties arise and focus on fixing what cannot be fixed.
This becomes the modeling we put into place, which is, by the way, not at all how we are intended to live or be.
It took devastating life-altering traumas that stripped me to my core before I realized that everything healthy starts with ME.
This is the most selfless and productive way to approach relationships.
When we show up from a healthy space for ourselves, we show up creating a healthy space for others.
Life is hard.
People are fighting battles every single day that we know nothing about. Including ourselves!
We can focus on the battles, or we can focus on the strategy to overcome our battles.
The strategy begins with us.
When I began realizing the importance of owning my power, stripping myself of unhealthy patterns, and finding who I am while taking ownership of what I could change in my life.. everything around me began to change as a result.
By developing your relationship with yourself first, you develop better relationships around you.
This isn’t a one-and-done. It is an everyday practice.
Much like there are seasons in nature, we have seasons in our lives as well.
Births, deaths, kids going to college, marriages, divorce, career changes.. these are all seasons in our life. And with seasons in our lives, comes change.
So every now and then, take some serious inventory.
Consider:
>> What are my core values? And am I living according to those values?
>> Where can I take responsibility for my actions? Did I cause ______?
>> Where can I forgive myself for allowing unhealthy patterns or people in my life?
>> What lessons have I learned, and how will I choose better the next time?
>> Where can I set better boundaries in an effort to create happiness in my life?
You will never be able to “fix” those around you, but you can model for others what it is to live as a healthy human being – as intended all along.
I’d like to leave you with one important question.
I wake and fall asleep every single day asking myself this question. Please use it in your own life, too.
“Would my 108-year-old self be proud of how I am living in this moment? Would she be happy and proud of how I lived this day?”
If the answer isn’t a “Hell yes!” then it is a “No.”
Start with yourself.
Start today.
xo
Sara
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