If you ranked the relationships in your life in order of the priority you give them, how far down on the list would your relationship with yourself be? Does it even make the list?
A few years ago I didn’t have a true relationship with myself. I didn’t even know I should… I had no sense that a relationship with myself was a possibility.
I busied myself with being things for other people. Need a shoulder to cry on? Need someone to be silly and make you laugh? Need a direct conversation to hold you accountable? I would be what I knew the other person would value so I could then find value in myself.
I built a pseudo relationship with myself through other people’s perceptions of me. Their need and appreciation of the role I fulfilled for them became my only relationship with myself. The only way I knew myself.
Sound familiar to some of you?
It wasn’t until a dear friend accused me of being an emotional flasher – showing all my vulnerable glory in a split second then hiding again behind my cloak of who I was to her – that I started to look at this.
She challenged me to show more of myself to her. To take down the walls, throw open the cloak and be me in our friendship – not who I thought she needed and wanted me to be.
What a gift…
She unwittingly started my journey of discovering who I was, without the confines of the roles I had taken on for other people…
Would you be willing to do the same?
Who you are outside of the roles and needs you fulfill for others?
What would be different if you allowed your inner voice to drawl your attention as much, if not more so, then the voices around you?
What if you fostered and nurtured your most important relationship of all – the one with yourself?
Ease and Joy,
Lauren
MORE PLAY:
Interested in exploring this topic further? My FREE radio show this Monday the 14th is about Being Your Own Playmate. Emily Russel and I will be sharing tools to build intimacy and fun with yourself – no matter what. How many doors can we kick open? Click here for listening information: https://www.facebook.com/events/1626623364292363/