MENTAL DIET: HOW TO DEAL WITH FRICTION IN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

DISSECTING FRICTION IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

The ability to get along with people is a prerequisite to moving ahead in your success journey. The inability to get along with people cripples progress in life and it is a major setback in life. Lacking the ability to get along with people is courting failure in life. When there are frictions in human relationships, frustration evades life and unhappiness becomes the state of life.

 People’s problems are the overriding problems in human life; jobs are lost; opportunities are missed; friendship turns sour; marriages fail; families become disintegrated; business dwindles; all because of people’s problems. The key to an improved life is improving your relationships with people.  

The ability to see the good in every person and in every situation; the ability to freely forgive people breeds the ability to get along with many different kinds of people with varied opinions, personalities, attitudes, and temperaments.

And the higher and more positive your self-esteem, the greater will be your ability to get along with varied kinds of people. That implies the more secure you are, the more you can get along with people; the more insecure you are, the more your inability to get along with people. Insecurity or low self-esteem spells friction in human relationships. And insecurity is rooted in fear of some sort.

Every relationship friction has a fear undertone to it. The surface problem is not usually the actual problem. Suffice it to add, it is only the symptom of a deeper problem.  Every external problem in relationships has an internal root within.

The core problem in relationships is usually the cause of the problem and the cause of the problem is rooted in a core fear. The more you gain mastery over your core fear by engaging in a healthy reaction or response, the greater will be the harmony in your relationships. To master your core fear is to master the core problem in your relationships and to usher in satisfying and harmonious relationships.

The relationship battle is not really with the other person but with our core fear and when we begin to wrestle and win the battle over our core fear, we have winning relationships with people. However, if we wrestle with the other person rather than our core fear, we lose the battle over our relationships with people.

Human relationship problems follow a cycle: the other person says or does something (consciously or subconsciously and at times with good intention) you feel hurt (you see the person as the cause of your problem), you want the person to cater to or solve your inner expectation or craving.

Fear takes over because the other person does not meet your inner expectation or want but rather responds in ways that feed your feelings of hurt and out of that fear you engage in an unhealthy reaction or response which flares up the reaction of the other person, as the other person also engages in an unhealthy reaction due to his or her inner fear too.

I hasten to add, you tend to interpret the world around you and the actions or intent of others through the lens of your own inner pain or inward fear. Consequently, your inner pain or inward fear becomes the lens through which you use to view the world around you and respond to situations and people.  This cycle must be broken in order to break out into satisfying relationships with people.

Human relationship problems are always evident in response or reaction to an inward fear due to an outward situation or behavior of another. And the discovery and understanding of the core or inward fear is the pathway to human conflict resolution that arises from the change in response which produces positive changes in relationships.

When there is a root of the feeling of failure; feelings of being controlled by another; feelings of disconnection or loss of love; feelings of rejection etc. dependency thrives and dependency or codependency results in dysfunctional relationships which makes life defective.

It is important to note that our inward wants can only be adequately and maximally fulfilled by God; expecting people or anyone to fill up or adequately meet your inward wants is to meet with frustration and experience an unfulfilled life.

You must be validated from within and live with the consciousness that God is the Source of everything that you will ever require to live maximally within and without; you become immersed in His Love, free from the bondage of dependency on people or anyone.