February is the month of friendship and love but how can you find long lasting relationships if you can’t be your own best friend?
Relationships are formed in many different ways, for many different reasons. In some circumstances, the strangest mix of people are thrown together but manage to make it work. Others who share the same interests and blood can’t bear to sit in the same room as each other. What is it that makes or breaks relationships? As individuals and groups of people, we spend a lot of our time talking about our relationships with:
- Parents
- Children
- Partners
- Siblings
- Lovers
- Friends
- Colleagues
- Neighbours
Not only does it take up a huge amount of time and energy, it can keep us awake at night, stop us concentrating on other important matters and can even convince us into doing or saying something to make or break the relationship.
I suppose the next question to think about is what makes up a relationship?
All relationships, whichever form they appear, are all based on a complicated communication system between two or more people. This communication is built up of:
- Honesty
- Forgiveness
- Trust
- Similar Values
- Patience
- Respect
- Humour/Fun
- Mutual Affection
- Understanding
- Connectivity
It’s all very well discussing how relationships are made up but some people don’t have a good relationship with themselves. They don’t like themselves, so if they don’t like themselves, how can they have a healthy, long lasting relationship with others?
As a population, it has been traditional for the British to associate liking yourself as being conceited and a lack of modesty. However, if we did get into the habit of liking ourselves more then we would have more confidence, be more assertive, push ourselves a little further and, more importantly, forgive ourselves when life doesn’t go quite according to plan. It can take many years for some to understand how to do this but along the way wasting great opportunities that they have let slip through their fingers.
What’s the key to learning to be friends with yourself?
- Accept who you are and where you have come from. Your past has made you who you are today.
- Know that what you were is not what you have to be in the future. You can change and be a better version of you.
- To remain authentic to yourself. Forcing yourself into someone you’re not will be noticed by the way you hold yourself and communicate with others. You will feel uncomfortable in your own skin and it will become hard work to maintain.
- Learn how to forgive yourself when things go wrong. We all make mistakes and curse ourselves for it but we all need to learn from them, let them go and work on the improvements.
Be true to yourself and you will achieve everything you set out to do.
This has come to you from;
Catherine Lloyd
Your Stress Management Coach and Consultant
To help you make the change from stress to success.
07941 584939
