On relationships

Do you have anyone in your life that you just can't relate to? Be it a sister, brother, parent, child, or even your husband or wife? Why is that? Are they just living from a different point of view than you are? Are they just crazy?

Here's something to contemplate: Your relationship with someone else is not in them, it's in you. Let me explain. Except for psychopaths and people that have extreme mental disability, the following holds true.

Let's say the person you can't relate to or get along with is your sibling. Let's even be more specific and say it's your sister (I have four sisters, two step-sisters, and one sister-in-law, so this is good for me too). Are there people, someone, somewhere, that actually likes your sister? There's got to be someone... think hard about it. Can you identify someone? How come that person can get along with your sister, but you can't? What's the difference? Assuming your sister doesn't have multiple personality disorder, she's the same person to you as she is to the other person. So the difference isn't in the object of our relationship, it's in the subject of the relationship. It's in you. If I hate broccoli, but you love broccoli, the difference isn't in the broccoli, it's in me and you.

And this all relates back to focus. Remember the mountain biking analogy, or the new car anaolgy? What you focus on expands. So do you focus on everything you can't stand about your sibling, or do you focus on what's good about that person? Come on, somebody likes her, so there's got to be something of a redeeming value there. Focus on that, and it will expand, and all of a sudden how you treat your sister will change, and by reciprocity, the way she treats you will change. And you know what? Even if the way she treats you doesn't change, you'll think it has, because now you'll be focusing on all that you love about her and her good qualities, and that's what you'll see.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.