As all of us grow up, we all develop an less than complete point of view about ourselves and other people that can sometimes create challenges when relating to others. This is part of the traditional way our brains develop, and we can sometimes feel trapped in no win situations when it comes to dealing with others.
The good news is that once we recognize it, we can supercharge our experience of relating to all other people for the better forever.
We tend to either carry one or both of the following assumptions that often times makes it less than easy to relate to other people.
we assume we can’t make ourselves important without hurting others in some way or
we assume we can’t make others important without hurting or compromising ourselves in some way
Do either or both of these sound familiar to you?
Both these assumptions are based on a larger assumption about life itself:
There isn’t enough for both us and others to always be equally important.
Carrying around these assumptions can lead us to behave with others in a way that guarantees conflict.
We tend to either cave into other’s wishes only to feel regret and anger later or we disregard others wishes to try to get more of what we want only to experience tension and distance with them later.
When we begin to see through these assumptions and break the patterns of reacting to them, we can begin to have a completely different experience of relating to others. Our experience can become one of knowing:
There is always enough for everyone to be equally important. Life is the ongoing adventure of discovering how.
-Andy
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