Whatever you have going on - relationships are at the heart
What would you bring if I asked you to wave a magic wand over the top three areas of trickiness in your life and just make all the problems go away?
Would it be how to stop staying behind at work to get things done, would it be how you and your kids seem to be growing further apart by the day, would it be that your relationship with money seems to be one of constant abandonment or maybe your partner just never looks at you like you are the prize any more.
Where are the bits of your life you just want it to be a bit damn easier?
No matter what you have going on, it is the central theme of relationships which the rest of your life revolves around.
Because the way we treat others (and other things) is directly correlated to how we treat ourselves.
And I know we've all heard that a million times, but it's not as easy to put into practice. Or even see how it could be relevant to our busy lives, let alone how to make the time for it.
So let's put the theory into a real-life example. Let's say you're pretty anxious about the environment (in other words - you've been paying attention). That feeling of anxiety may come from a loads of different thoughts, but for ease, let's just allocate it to “We are doomed”. What kind of things do you do when you feel that kind of existential anxiety? Probably try and get away from it, right? And that might be disappearing off into Netflix or a bottle of wine or snapping at people you live with a bit more because you're frightened or maybe avoiding work for a few hours whilst you follow some nice clickable Instagram feel-good accounts and avoid thinking about it at all. Because thinking about it feels rubbish, and we are hard-wired to avoid things which make us feel rubbish. And what do you think the results of these kind of actions are? It is probably somewhere in the range of making you feel like things are hopeless, AND there is nothing you can do about it, all the way through to blaming yourself for not doing more, right?
And you'll notice that the outcomes are pretty unlikely to be getting out there and doing something, boycotting a company, writing to an MP, joining a protest, setting up a neighbourhood recycling swap scheme, getting creative about solutions and who needs your support and what ideas you may have.
Your thought of “We are all doomed” directly gets the result of you being less engaged in incremental change.
And why? Because you have told yourself that your actions don't count. That it is all too small to make a difference. That none of your ideas would make a big impact anyway, given how things are going.
And I cannot think of a single change maker throughout history who was talking to and about themselves like that. Very few revolutionaries have ever sat around thinking, “Well, this is all really big, so I may as well not try. Little ole me can't make a difference”.
And maybe you don't want to be a revolutionary; perhaps you want people to stop dropping litter in your local park. But that change rarely happens in isolation (or whilst telling yourself it is all pointless) either.
The way we speak to ourselves has a real impact on the real world.
And this is why I am spending all of July teaching about how to improve the relationship you have with yourself. Because ultimately, this impacts everything.
If you'd like to begin telling a different story, join us for July.
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