‘It’s not you, it’s me’. How the less obvious relationships in our life can have the biggest impact.

Without always being aware of it, every part of our life is a relationship. Whether it is the table I’m sitting at or the keyboard keys I’m bashing, to my relationship to work, myself, or others. While we’re often conscious of some relationships, typically with other people, we often take for granted many of the other relationships we create and maintain in life despite how much they can contribute, shape and impact the most important relationship, our relationship to life.

These relationships are constantly evolving, adapting and changing.

Three relationships to consider, that we can often take for granted and which often significantly shape our lives are our relationship to ourselves, our work, and even the life we want to live.

My relationship to me

• What is my relationship to me? 

• How do I treat, see and refer to me? 

• What are my expectations of me?

• If I am introducing myself to someone what would I say? 

What do all these answers highlight about your relationship to you?

What might the impact of that relationship be on the life you want to live? 

My relationship to work

• What is my relationship to my career?

• What do I expect of me at work? 

• What is work’s relationship with my other relationships?

• How do these answers show up in my approach to work and how I live my life? 

• What kind of relationship do I want with work?

My relationship with the life I want to live, with my hopes and dreams?

• What is my relationship to the life I want to live? 

• What do I expect from my relationship?

• What do I give to this relationship?

• How do my other relationships affect and contribute to my relationship with the life I want to live? 

Finally, what is my relationship to my relationships? 

• What kind of relationships do I want?

• What are the three most important relationships to me?

• What do I do to maintain or create these relationships? 

• How do I approach these relationships?  

If you were to draw all your relationships as a Venn diagram, which circles are fuller, which ones are bigger or smaller and which ones would you change?

How we live our lives is in a series of interconnected relationships, with ourselves, our physical surroundings, with other people, our thoughts and feelings, even our past, present and future. How we approach, perceive and prioritise these relationships, whether consciously or unconsciously can shape the life we live.

What relationship would you like with your life? 

What will it be like to know that relationship exists? 

What does nurturing that relationship look like?

What does that relationship mean for the other relationships you have in life?

What is different from the relationships you cultivate now?

What life is possible with those relationships in mind?