What do relationships bring you?

Our lives are made up of a range of relationships. Your earliest relationships are with your parents and siblings. As we grow, they include friends, fellow students, wider family, neighbours, lovers, managers, colleagues and many others.

We chose to be born into this life to learn life lessons.

Life lessons are not about acquiring material wealth but more about how you behave with other humans, animals and nature.

It is my belief that some of our greatest challengers and difficult relationships are our greatest teachers.

I can remember my dad saying to me to think before I opened my mouth and spoke. At the time I was cross at the comment, but now I can see the truth in what he had said. My dad was trying to guide me to go for quality of conversation rather than quantity.

A considered reply comes from a higher place within you and generally is a better reply.

We bring many hopes to relationships, especially love ones, which are often not fulfilled. That is not the fault of the relationship. It’s just that we have been encouraged to have unrealistically high expectations.

No relationship stands still.

It either develops and grows or degenerates and falls away. Being pragmatic, all long-term relationships have their ups and downs. If you want to keep the relationship in your life, it is important to work on it especially during the more challenging times. It is possible to work through those times and get to a better place.

In most relationships, the other party is often giving you the opportunity to learn a life lesson.

You may well be doing the same for them.

My natural disposition tends to be impetuous. My dad was trying to teach me to be more considered, planned, practical and grounded. It made me smile when I had an esoteric astrology natal reading. My soul has all of these characteristics whereas my personality (ego) is a more strategic and big picture thinker disliking the detail.

My dad was really asking me to lead a more soul led life.

What a wonderful gift he was bringing me. So rather than being irritated by his guidance, if I had been more aware, I should have stood back and asked myself what life lesson my dad was helping me to learn.

Having a life rich in an array of relationships helps you to learn a broad range of life lessons.

Or you may have come into this life to learn a few but key life lessons. In this case:

You may have a few but very important relationships to help you to learn.

To speed up your learning, take the time to step back and review your relationships. What life lesson is it helping to teach you? It could be a whole range of things such as learning to listen to, to define and hold your boundaries, not to rush, to allow yourself to have fun and many more things.

By consciously reviewing a relationship, especially if it is a difficult one, you step out of victim mode and become more objective. It is much easier to learn the lesson from this perspective. As soon as you demonstrate you have learnt the lesson by doing and saying the right things, amazingly the relationship usually improves along with the quality of your life.

Keep reviewing and keep learning to help bring about a better life….