Why is your relationship with yourself important, actually the most important relationship you’ll have in your lifetime?
Because the relationship with yourself, so how you think and feel about you, is the filter that colours how we view all other relationships in our lives. One simple example: If we judge ourselves for how we look, we will also judge others for how they look, and that will flow into how we feel and behave around and towards them. You might think “so”! what’s the big deal?
It’s a big deal because unless you know yourself you have no idea or influence over this, and over time it can destroy the relationships with those we love. So your husband or wife looked fantastic when you first met and married, but over time they have lost shape, put on weight, you find yourself feeling less tolerant, suggesting for the sake of their health they might want to be more careful with their diet, or start to exercise. Depending on their knowledge of themselves and their filters, they could start to feel judged, less loved, and as time goes on the relationship falls apart. You both go your separate ways, taking the same filter into a new relationship. The pattern continues until at some point you start to question why do all my relationships end this way, and you look at yourself, because that’s the common denominator.
At this point you might consider adding a layer of judgement on yourself, however I would like you to realise that judging, or beating yourself up would only add another unhelpful filter that you will take with you. It is essential that you are understanding and compassionate with yourself. Until we get to know ourselves and consciously choose otherwise, most of our thought patterns, beliefs (a well practiced thought pattern) we learned as children, before our brain had a fully developed pre frontal cortex. This is the part of our brain that separates us from other mammals and allows us to observe and notice things about ourselves, what we are thinking, feeling, doing and question it. This gives us the freedom to choose how and what we want to think in the now and moving forward, so that we can create the relationships and life we want for ourselves.
This is why it is so important that we get to know ourselves, get interested and curious about what we do, what we think, how we feel and why. Notice I use the terms curious and interested, these perspectives are so important as there is no judgement. So don’t wait for life to happen to you, get fascinated by yourself!
