Self-awareness Improves Your Relationship
If you let your past rule you, it will be difficult to love others well in the present.
5 Star review of The Way Forward:
“Probably the best book I've ever read. I couldn’t put it down. I tabbed so many pages to revisit for myself and for clients. Uplifting. Inspiring. A must read.” - Carol
The Way Forward is 33% off on Amazon and available in local bookstores.
The greatest gift partners can give each other is a continuous commitment to their own personal healing. The love you are able to give to yourself and your partner is determined by your self-awareness. If your self-awareness is growing, you will have a greater capacity for intentional actions that are authentic. If you both find methods to help you unload the past that you carry, you will find your minds lighter and there will be more space for you to deepen your connection. Love is a dynamic force, and if you are both able to loosen your attachments, you will flow together with greater ease.
Since healing is the cultivation of harmony within the individual, there is a direct connection between the depth of your healing and your ability to navigate the ups and downs of a relationship. A perfect stream of happiness, joy, and unending fun is not possible between two people. Your imperfections, ego, and survivalist habit patterns will occasionally cause ruptures that create friction in your relationship. The outside world will also pose difficulties you will need to navigate and adapt to. But if handled skillfully these challenges can bring you two even closer than before by building trust and understanding.
One of the best ways to get to know yourself is through interactions with other human beings. Silent meditation retreats or deep one-on-one sessions with a therapist are extremely productive, but putting the skills you’ve developed into action in the real world builds self-awareness in a whole new way. Intimate relationships take those interactions to another level because you mutually decide to build a bond. Together, you take on the adventure of building a home where you both feel safe, free, and nourished.
The profound proximity of relationships makes them excellent incubators for personal growth. To be in each other’s presence not only allows you to practice love but also forces the ego to see itself, even if what you find is hard to bear. Proximity among imperfect human beings, even when they have cultivated a lot of emotional maturity and taken their inner work seriously, will eventually lead to some sort of discord or conflict. Try to look at these moments as opportunities for you both to see yourselves more clearly—moments where harmony has decayed so that it can be rebuilt with a wiser design.
Whether due to hardened old patterns that get in the way of loving each other right or a lack of self-awareness that doesn’t let you see when you are projecting your emotions, unjustified blame and displaced anger are common when we are unaware of our mental movements. Relationships are often situations where the love is clearly there, but what makes them hard is all the emotional weight you have been carrying with you that slows the flow of clear observation and the compassionate support of each other’s happiness.
When your mind is burdened with tumultuousness and unresolved pain, the people around you will be impacted by your inner struggles. Even if you try to forget those struggles, what goes unprocessed will reveal itself in your actions, words, and thoughts. If you let your past rule you, it will be difficult to love others well in the present.
This is why I’ve been working hard on building Ready. Good people who are looking for a partner that also cares about growth not only need a place to connect with each other but they need to keep building their self-awareness along the way. Ready will help you keep growing as an individual, connect with others, and once you are in a relationship we will continue supporting you with learning that will help you get through the ups and downs. Whether you are single or in a relationship, you can join the waitlist here.
The piece above is an excerpt from my book Lighter. It is temporarily 39% off.
Currently Reading:
I have been really enjoying reading Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari. It is a fascinating history of information that helps us understand what might happen next with the development of Artificial Intelligence. I am impressed with Yuval’s clear thinking. If you like history and technology I definitely recommend picking it up.