“Create space for positive people to come into your life. Surround yourself with positive people who believe in your dreams....”
How we construct relationships with others is another dimension of the beliefs journey.
This belief dimension focuses on how we view relationships. How do we construct the relationships in our lives? Be honest. Have you ever thought about this before? Have you ever thought about the fact that you ‘construct’ relationships in your life?
Once again, in this dimension of relationship view, we have the same three milestones: (1) external sources for defining relationships, (2) the crossroads, and (3) internal sources for defining relationships.
DEPENDENCE
In the first milestone, the Vessel, we are the Vessel holding external beliefs about our relationships with others. We are dependent upon rules, often having to abandon our freedom in order to comply with the rules. A commonly held rule is: ‘I need to be married and have children’ or ‘I need to settle down and get married.’
The word ‘need’ is often a clue. Need implies reliance upon an external set of rules that have established an expectation for our behavior — and we need to comply. That is not to say that all external rules are ‘bad’. The GPS for the beliefs journey is not about ‘good or bad’, ‘right or wrong’. It is about finding a good fit. Typically, we can’t find a good fit unless we try the shoe on.
When we start ‘trying on the shoes’, in essence trying on different belief systems for relationships, we have reached the crossroads.
Independence
The crossroads for the relationship dimension is independence. We are independent of the rules. We don’t follow the rules. We don’t get married just because all of our friends did. Or we don’t stay in a bad marriage because no one in our entire extended family has ever been divorced. In some cases, relationships are abandoned because we no longer feel compelled to follow the external rules.
The crossroads for relationships may look messy. It is a sorting out phase—rather like spring cleaning that looks like a tornado when it begins, but the home is sorted and sparkling in the end.
Interdependence
The final milestone of relationship beliefs is interdependence. It is a state of intimacy and connection. You are able to invest in relationships without sacrificing or ‘selling out’ your core beliefs. You can disagree without being disagreeable.
After all, why are we so reluctant to abandon the security of external belief systems in the first place? Do we fear losing the connection with the family or friends who hold those beliefs?
Is that what we are seeking? Connection? Do we sacrifice our beliefs for the sake of having the connection? Until the inner conflict, turmoil, pain, and suffering force us to move into the next milestone? Do we seek authentic connections in harmony with our core values? Are the connections we forge through our abeyance to external rules pseudo connections anyway?
Sometimes the connections are broken and then re-established after our inner core beliefs are discovered. But re-established as an authentic connection, harmonious with our inner knowing.
REFLECTION
Reflect upon how you viewed relationships with others when you were in the Vessel milestone of the belief journey?
Reflect upon how your view of relationships with others as changed when you reached the Crossroads milestone of the belief journey?
Reflect upon how your relationships view changed again when you attained the Self-Authorship milestone of your belief journey?