Nov. 2020: Relationships
Starting September 2020, I will be writing a series about a different monthly theme. The goal is to walk you through a weekly process to help alleviate concerns surrounding the topic of the month. November’s theme is relationships, and this week you will learn that the most important relationship you will ever have includes your thoughts about yourself.
What have we learned about relationships thus far?
- Engineers usually relate to others engineers quite easily; it can be difficult to relate to no-engineers.
- If you are believing someone is difficult, it changes you, not them.
- Since your actions are directly due to your thoughts, your relationship with others starts with your thoughts about them.
And what we’re going to learn today…
- You have beliefs and thoughts about yourself. These beliefs and thoughts constitute the kind of relationship you create with YOU!
Brain Exercise: What do you think when you think about yourself?
I challenge you to take five or ten minutes and write down the thoughts you have about yourself. These thoughts include:
- Do I like me, why or why not?
- In what ways am I such an amazing person?
- Would I prefer to be someone else?
- Why do my friends want to hang around me?
- What am I creating for my life?
- How am I uniquely valuable?
Often, people do not take time out of each day to think about who they are or why they are such great human beings. Some might say this could be boasting, and many people are afraid to boast. So, they think lesser of themselves out of fear of being perceived as arrogant or snotty.
While I do not promote the practice of arrogance (see Post #35), I absolutely promote self-care. And self-care starts with thoughts about yourself. It involves all the beliefs you hold about you, positive and negative.
Without self-care, your life will be full of wishes, dependency and possibly unhappiness. Self-care means you do things to take care of yourself physically and mentally. It means you nourish yourself so you can tap into your most inherent strengths. When you can utilize your strongest assets, you will maximize your output into the world.
And isn’t that what life is all about – optimizing your given strengths to make the world a better place? But, it starts with knowing yourself. It starts with recognizing the thoughts about yourself. Because you will never cultivate healthy relationships with others until you are whole with yourself first.
So ask yourself, “What do I think when I think about myself?” The more you work on you first, the better your relationships. It starts from within, my friends!
Helpful Hint #4: The most important relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself.
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