awareness tools
Relationship is the most challenging thing in the world. I don’t mean just romantic relationships but all the relationships that involve you and … ‘the other.’ The wonderful, and wonderfully impossible other. You meditate at a spiritual retreat for 10 days feeling enlightened and peaceful, then ten minutes after you get home, your spouse starts getting on your nerves. ‘Where did my serenity and mindfulness go?’ You learn on the spot that relationships require something else in addition to deep breathing and emptying your mind, although it’s a good start.
If you are having good relationships with people, that’s wonderful. Let’s keep it up. But what to do if you have someone in your life, be it your romantic partner, spouse, colleague, boss, family member, that you just can’t stand. If you just avoid the situation or leave relationships that you don’t like, e.g. changing your job because ‘your boss is authoritative and is making you miserable,’ you will surely meet the same kind of boss and situations in your new workplace.
I would like to introduce one of many ways to use such moment as an opportunity for personal growth. That is, to try to see the essence of the disturbing quality in the other as something you need more of, or your potential power. It sounds like paradox, I know. What I mean is that when it’s time for us to grow out of our current identity, somehow you start to attract certain people with certain qualities in your field as if something is trying to say you need to take a good look at it and learn from it.
For example, if you see yourself as being a quiet and shy person, and somehow start to be surrounded by people who are ‘loud’ ‘bossy’ ‘self-centered,’ etc., maybe it’s time to learn something from them. Not that you have to be like them literally. What you want to do is to distill these qualities until you can get some kind of ‘essences.’ When you distill them, ‘loud’ ‘bossy’ ‘self-centered’ may become ‘expressive’ ‘having confidence’ ‘valuing oneself.’ Once you understand the essence, it’s a matter of integrating the quality gradually into yourself in ways that feel right for you.
Awareness Exercise; Becoming the Other
1 ) what is the exact quality of the person that you are disturbed by? E.g. critical, arrogant, too quiet, drama-queen, etc.
2) Set aside the context with the person for a moment, and focus on the quality itself. Now, let’s go one step further. If you filter out all the negativity from the quality, how would you describe it? In another word, what is the ‘essence’ of the quality? For example, the essence of ‘being critical’ may be ‘being good at observing and discerning.’ The essence of ‘drama-queen’ may be ‘expressiveness.’
3) Think of how you need to be more like that. Do you need to be sharper when you observe certain situations? Are you too shy to express your feelings? Practice these new qualities for the next week wherever you can.
The present article has focused on how to work on relationship difficulties in yourself. How to deal face to face with people who are difficult for you is a different topic in itself. Also, there is a moment when inner work alone is not appropriate and you just have to say ‘No’ or take actions, especially if someone is actively abusive or intrusive. However, once you do the kind of work I introduced above, sometimes the problem itself mysteriously disappears. It’s because you’ve started to change the way you deal with others, and what you felt was disturbing does not bother you any more.
*If you would like personal assistance in following the exercises or would like to have one-on-one phone consultations to support your process, please contact us at info (at) innerawareness.org.
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