Are you showing up in your relationships as the person you intend to be?
If so, that's great! Our well-being is greatly impacted by the nature and quality of our relationships. Not only between romantic partners, but all the relationships in our lives, including partners, spouses, parents, siblings, coworkers, neighbours, animal companions, and many others. While some may have more up close and personal views of our roles, moods and experiences, who we are in any given moment will not only have an impact on our own well-being but on the well-being of those we're interacting with. And problems can arise if we aren't being who we think we are, or who we intend to be.
Busyness and stress can often have us acting in ways that we wouldn't be okay with if we were to watch or hear ourselves played back on video, and this can create negative habits within one of our most important relationships - the one with ourselves. It can cause us to second guess what we believe about ourselves, making us replay our behaviours over and over, almost to the point of feeling haunted by our own actions. We can feel shame, embarrassment or anger at ourselves, which lowers our self-esteem and contributes to feelings of depression, social anxiety and hopelessness.
By being intentional and taking the time to consider who we want to show up as in each of our relationships, we can begin to free ourselves of the programming that we all pick up as we've moved through life. Because we spend a lot of time on auto-pilot, doing things by default, we may sometimes surprise ourselves by repeating speech patterns or behaviours of other people - parents, siblings, spouses, even characters from shows. None of us are so isolated that we aren't influenced by whatever inputs we receive from others, and we have to also be aware that what we are sending out may become the internal voice of someone else.
Making conscious decisions about what we are and are not okay with putting into relationships, and out into the world in general, and then trying our best to follow through on being these people as often as we can, will allow us to start to seeing shifts in ourselves. We can create new habits, and this will help us to react in ways that we feel good about and respect ourselves for. The more moments we spend in a state of awareness the faster this process goes, and through uplifting ourselves and our relationships in this way, we will find a greater sense of internal peace. We will be able to see that while we cannot control the other people we are in relationship with, we can take full responsibility for our own word and actions. And this includes setting and respecting appropriate boundaries without hurt feelings or guilt, and removing ourselves from toxic situations as an act of love for both parties.
Self governance is a powerful tool that we can all benefit from, and by being our authentic selves in relationships, we can make it less scary for others to do the same. At the end of the day, we each have the opportunity to decide who we are, so we might as well choose to be someone we like.
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