The Most Important Relationship You Have In Your Life
Friends, family, acquaintances, significant others, colleagues - needless to say you have many different relationships in your life.
But there is one common denominator in all of them…
And that’s you.
Okay, I know that sounds obvious and maybe even a little silly, but think about it.
When it comes to your life and your relationships, you are a key player! You’re a main character in every experience. So in order for any relationship in your life to have its best shot at success, you need to make sure you’re doing your part.
And I don’t mean buying your friends gifts, letting people borrow money or clothes or materialistic relationship things. I don’t mean making the most perfect lunches or dinners for your kids on a regular basis. I don’t even mean always texting back within the hour (because all my friends reading know I’m terrible at that).
When I say you need to make sure you’re doing your part, I’m talking about self-care.
Are you being kind to yourself? Appreciating yourself? Are you finding ways to keep yourself happy? Are you working on being the best version of you? That’s what I’m getting at.
Are you prioritizing yourself?
Maybe you’re still figuring out how to do that, and that’s okay too. I know some people hate the saying “you can’t love someone if you can’t love yourself.” But the fact of the matter is this: you can’t pour from an empty cup. That’s why self-care is so important and why prioritizing you is crucial to the relationships around you.
How can you properly support, celebrate, understand or sympathize with the ones you around you, if you can’t do that for yourself? You might think you can get away with it, but I can assure you it isn’t sustainable.
Don’t believe me? Think about it like this.
How often have you compared yourself to someone else?
Has someone else’s success, even though you were “happy,” secretly made you jealous or even a little annoyed? Maybe even inferior?
Have you ever done something like lost weight, got a significant other, got your teeth whitened, finally bought that designer purse you wanted, and still didn’t feel happy?
How often have you thought that an external factor would finally be the KEY to your happiness? “Well I think I’ll really be happy when….”
Have you ever felt that you weren’t good enough? Has that held you back from an experience? Maybe you ditched a date or got cold feet on that job interview.
Sometimes you feel this way because you’re having a bad day. Sometimes you feel this way because something traumatic happens in our personal lives. I totally get it, we’re not always going to feel our best.
But if you feel like this significantly MORE often than you don’t, it’s a sign you’re not giving yourself the TLC you need. So that cup I mentioned before? It’s dry. It’s empty. When the cup is dry it makes it a little bit harder to be the friend, partner, sibling, coworker, parent or even stranger, you’d like yourself to be.
That’s why your relationship with yourself comes before all others.
When you show up as the best version of you every day, everything and everybody wins.
How you feel about yourself and how you value yourself reflects in absolutely everything you do. It shows up by how you treat others, how you handle stress, how you approach obstacles and even your daily habits. It’s your golden ticket in being able to face adversity.
Ultimately, if your relationship with yourself is not solid, your happiness and self-worth will always depend on external factors. The reality? No accomplishment or salary increase or boyfriend or girlfriend will ever be enough and you will never be satisfied. You will never feel as if you, on your own, is enough. (And for the record, you always, always are.)
You’ll refuse to believe that you have the tools you need to be the person you STRIVE to become.
But when your relationship with yourself is healthy, you gain self trust, awareness, appreciation and strength. That’s why well-being in such an instrumental part of our lives. You function your best when you feel your best. And believe me, like I said before, I know that’s simply not possible 100% of the time.
And honestly, we all know it’s not easy. We have productive and motivated days. Days where we simply don’t want to leave our bed. Days that seemingly start out great and end, well crappy. And no matter how many times you see that motivational quote on your phone background, sometimes life is just plain hard and all you want to do is punch a wall or cry. Every age and every stage (heck every day!) carries its own trials and tribulations - but that’s exactly what I find so opportunistic about the life we’re given.
We have the opportunity to constantly create and evolve and to learn; to be better than those before us and leave the world a better place after. To love ourselves to the fullest because we are deserving of that. And I truly believe once you start to view your life like that, everything changes. But I didn’t always have this mindset. In fact, a few years ago, I was the exact opposite. I had to really hit a low before rising again. However, if it weren’t for the experience I had back then, and other experiences along the way, I would never be who I am right now. This likely wouldn’t be the theme of my blog, or who even knows if I would have had a blog at all.
Now, loving yourself isn’t always a one size fits all deal.
A lot of the content you’ll find on this blog are what I do on a day to day to keep my relationship with myself in check.
For example, this morning I woke up, made my bed and carved out some time for stretching and yoga. Because I made the time for myself to do these things, I feel a little bit more relaxed, calm and ready to take on my day. I don’t feel overwhelmed by my phone, requests from work or even my insanely loud barking dog. The days where I don’t have that steady start to my morning, it’s definitely not pretty!
I understand what might work for me might not work for others so don’t think of this as a one-sided conversation! Comment, e-mail me, shoot me a DM! I’d love to know your thoughts, your “life hacks” and your stories.
What’s something you’ve done today that benefits your relationship with YOU?
Alright I know this was a little long, but as always, thank you so much for reading. I’m so happy you’re here. Be on the lookout for most posts where I talk about what makes me feel as best as I can about myself on a day to day, and maybe you can start doing that for yourself too.
(Update June 2020): This piece was written a few months ago. Given the situation we are in now with COVID-19, something so rare and even a little scary, I am not downgrading anyone’s response to this situation. How we feel about ourselves might be derailed and I know it’s. a little harder to do the things that make us happy right now. However, I do think this is the time to show yourself the most love though.)
