Shape Your Success

Do you want to make the most important relationships in your life work? What are the significant relationships in your life – examples: your spouse, your child, your boss, your colleague, your parent, your sibling — anyone who is a major player in your life.

What approach do you take in regards to particular major relationships?  Do you make that relationship work, do you let that person walk all over you, or are you passive to the point where you’re just waiting to see what’s going to happen.

I’m often surprised that when someone comes in to talk with me about a relationship, they are usually waiting to see what’s going to happen next. This might look like a good choice at first, but the problem with this approach isthat if you wait long enough – you’ll inevitably see things you don’t like.

I’ve noted three key differences between a relationship that a person want to make work and one where the person is waiting to see if things will turn out the way they want.

First, you can choose your battles you can use the my way or the highwayapproach. In any of my relationships, there are certain areas I just won’t negotiate,including boundaries that involve my physical and mental well-being. It theline gets crossed, the person isn’t allowed to remain in my presence. However, inrelationships that I choose to wait and see, I give a more leeway to somepeople than I do others.

Forexample, if your 5 year old sticks her tongue out at you, is that a “dealbreaker” for the relationship? Of course not. If a friend sticks his tongue outat you and calls you a name, you might not like that. If you don’t, you mightjust use that as a “deal breaker” and relinquish the relationship.

Second, you can fix the problem or fix the relationship.As with anything, what you focus on expands. If you want to fix the problem,the problem becomes more evident. It also become less tolerable. When you decide that you want to make the relationship work, you bring in more of the concept of relating. You build on the better points of that relationship.However, if you’re in a “wait and see” relationship, and there’s a problem being focused on, you tend to re-evaluate the relationship.

Third, Many people care about things and what happens and some people over-care. When we decide to focus on making a relationship work, we don’t stop caring about ourselves and our own personal needs. When choosing for the relationship, we also don’t require to make our happiness dependent on relationship. On the other hand, when we are waiting tosee what happens and how things will turn out, we can get caught in the “over-care”trap. This means that when something doesn’t go your way, you take it personal and get caught in the never-ending cycle of inner argument and resentment.

Today’s Experiment:

Make a list of you top five important relationships.

Next to each one, decipher whether this is a relationship you have decided to make work or are you “waiting to see” how it turns out.

If you have chosen to “wait and see” in any of your relationships, experiment with how that relationship would change if you decided to make it work.