Relationships are Mirrors

How do your relationships look like? Are they harmonious? Do you have many friends you can count on? How trusting and supportive is your relationship with your partner? How do you get on with your colleagues? Do you feel understood? Do you feel challenged?

All these questions asking you to reflect on your relationships with other people. How often do we do that and what do we actually do with that reflection? Why would we reflect on relationships anyway? We can not really change our boss, our friends, or our partner, can we? Even if we try we would feel quickly a huge resistance. Nobody likes to be told what to do and how to react. And neither do we.

What we can do is to change how we react though. Well, that would be an option. But often we want to change a behaviour, but all what happens is that we have a good intention. In the moment our good intention is born we do belief we can change. But anyhow it remains an intention and soon we are back to our old self. We start believing, that we can not change. That is how we are. We accept the way our relationships are. Do we really?

Actually we are annoyed when someone is disrespectful, aren’t we? We are insecure when our boss calls us in their office without any obvious reason, aren’t we? We are hurt when our partner shouts at us, aren’t we?

So maybe we do not fully accept every aspect of our relationships with others, and neither can we change the other person. A huge dilemma since every time we are not happy with an interaction we have to cope with a huge deal of emotional stress. There must be a way out!

And there is! We probably can not change the other person, at least not by trying to change them. But we are certainly capable of changing ourselves although having a good intention might not be enough. We need to find out more about our behaviours and figure out what these behaviours are triggered by. Now we are back at our initial questions. The answers to these questions help us to determine what does not work within our relationships with others. When do you feel annoyed? Do you miss respect? How much do you respect yourself? Do you feel insecure? How confident are you in yourself? Do you like who you have become? Do you feel hurt by the way others talk to you? How high is your self esteem? How much do you value yourself? What are the beliefs about yourself? Make a list! How are those beliefs reflected in your relationships?

Start observing what words exactly trigger a certain reaction. How does saying or hearing those words feel inside? Is there any real evidence for feeling this way? To gain awareness about ourselves helps us to evaluate whether beliefs are limiting or empowering ones. This helps us to reframe beliefs that hold us back from having happy, balanced and understanding relationships with others that mirrors aspects of our relationship with our inner selves.

by Sandy Seeber, Life & Intuitive Coach