4 Keys To Surrounding Yourself With People Who Inspire You to Grow

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How to Create Healthy, Happy and Fulfilling Relationships

Sometimes the people you love the most can also hurt you the most. Why? Because you love them!  We want to trust the people closest to us with our most vulnerable aspects of self.  Friends, lovers, siblings, relatives, and even parents or your own children. We can’t imagine being rejected by them, or worse! – Us rejecting them.

But if you find that someone in your inner circle continues to say things that put you down, or you feel bad more often than you feel good around them, that the happiness is being sucked out of you in their presence, it’s time to consider what’s best for you. 

•  Know you have a choice.  The great thing with friends is that you can choose them.  If your friends put you down more often than lift you up, it will make you miserable.  You can change this by letting them know.  They may not realize that the things they are doing are making you feel so bad.  If they stop, great!  If not, then you have a choice to make.  I hope you choose to surround yourself with people who inspire you to grow.  

•  Speak up.  It’s a bit harder with family, probably because of cultural rules around family loyalty.  Allow yourself to put these rules aside for a while, and dream into what you would do with ______ if he or she were an acquaintance.  You can love from a distance, choosing to spend less time and energy on the plight of that loved one.  Again, I hope you would choose to surround yourself with people who inspire you to grow.  

If you dread being around someone you’re close to in your family because of the hurtful things they say, try talking to them and telling them how you feel.  If the response isn’t what you were hoping and they aren’t willing to change, then accept this and keep your distance. It doesn’t mean you never speak to them again, it just means you have to put yourself first. You need to choose to surround yourself with people who inspire you to grow.  Instead of seeing them so regularly just because they’re family, you can choose to see them as much as you can manage. It’s ok to do this.

My father was such a relative. Whenever I was around him, he would inevitably blow up at me, tell me off, and leave me devastated.  I stopped visiting him; I made sure that we were never alone together (He was nicer around strangers);  yet, when he was dying, I could still show compassion.

•  Let go of the fear.  Fear will come up when making these changes. You care for these people so worrying what they will think or if you will hurt them is natural. There will be uncomfortable feelings in the beginning, but it’ll pass. The person will eventually accept your choice. Remind yourself that you are doing what’s best for you and that you have a right to choose to surround yourself with people who inspire you to grow.  Take small steps.

•  Be open to new relationships.  We worry that we won’t find fulfilling relationships, so we stay stuck in unhealthy ones. I was one of these people.  As I gained the strength to change –  I chose to surround myself with people who inspired me to grow.  I learned that healthy relationships do exist. You have a choice. This is your precious life. Don’t waste it with who people who bring you down. You deserve the best.  Take a small step today by spending more time with the people who believe in you and appreciate you. Keep taking small steps and eventually you’ll be surrounded with great people who make you feel that you, too, can become great.

Taking care of yourself

Taking care of yourself

Article Sources –

http://www.inthesoulshine.com.au/blog/4-steps-to-creating-healthy-fulfilling-relationships

How to Stop Hurting and Take Your Power Back

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When we think other people are hurting us, we have no power. We feel hopeless.

What if we thought of what was said or done as just being a mirror for us? – revealing to us what we are deeply thinking about ourselves?

Now we have our power back.

The Work of Byron Katie does just this – she calls it the “Turn-Around”

Einstein once said, “There is only one question worth asking: ‘Is the universe kind’.”

When you step into the grace of this wisdom, you can see nothing but kindness. But I’m getting a head of myself….

We have always been told not to be judgmental of others. Yet our minds are constantly assessing, and therefor, judging. We learned to keep these judgments private. These judgments turn into beliefs – stories – that run our emotional life.

Concepts are not a problem until you believe them. At that point, you are responsible for them. In the same way, by being aware of our responsibility for thoughts, we suddenly have responsibility for our power, our happiness, and our freedom.

For 1,000’s of years, we have innocently thought our suffering is caused by things outside of ourselves. So, it seems obvious to also look outside of ourselves for the solutions. Our mind runs these stories constantly, “he should/I need/ I want/...”

“The Work” invites us to find these deeper thoughts, put them on paper, and investigate how they’ve affected us. Thoughts arise. We can’t force these thoughts to stop. Once investigated, however, these thoughts may finally leave us.

It’s not that the mind is the enemy. On the contrary. The mind simply IS. By gentle, curious investigation, the same thoughts that we believed caused our misery can offer us peace.

It is only the unknown or denied parts of self that are in chaos. Feelings are a wonderful reminder to look at your thinking.

Byron Katie created the “Four Questions and the Turn Arounds” after years of extreme feelings and behaviors that were often unbearable… One day, when she was simply “despairing”, as usual, she listened to her minds constant chatter. Then she heard, “Is it TRUE?”, which stopped her dead in her tracks.  From there, she developed a simple process with which to meet any disturbing thought. She called it – “The Work”.

Turn-arounds may be shocking! For example, “He should put me first” turns around to “I should put HIM first”…  And why would I expect him to practice a concept I wouldn’t want to do? It also turns around to “I should put MYSELF first”… That’s my job!

Find out more:

http://thework.com/en/do-work
http://thework.com/en/tools-do-work