Nurturing Others!

A young individual in his late 20’s reached out early last year as he wanted a sounding board for something that had been on his mind for a longest time.  After series of ugly break ups, he finally found a girl who he really wanted to settle down with.  The girl, apparently, had her own share of ups and downs and therefore was leaving no stone unturned to ensure that their meaningful relationship stayed. 

The hiccup in this was the energies that they put in to make the relationship work.  The boy had a hard time letting go of the past which sometimes made him inaccessible to the girl, emotionally.  The girl in her quest to let the guy stay tried every trick that relationship experts across the globe had to throw her way, making her emotionally confused and struggling.  What seemed like a beautiful relationship from outside, was actually an unauthentic association that thrived on struggles, uncertainty, lack of trust and communication, lack of self-love and respect for own space and boundaries and a built up of multiple masks that both wore to fulfill an agenda.

Over the last year, these conversations revealed a lot of lessons for me personally.  A sounding board also has beliefs, biases, opinions that need to be shed sometimes and this particular experience did help me go deeper to bring this awareness out about relationships and associations.  While ethically, I can’t disclose the details of our conversations, but here are some of my personal learning from this association.

1. Speak your truth: Expressing your real feelings can be so liberating at times. You operate from a space of being real, honest, authentic and vulnerable that is so very important in building rock solid relationships in every aspect of your life.  We hold back not knowing how will we come across to the other person, but with right amount of compassion, reasoning and assurance its so easy to speak what holds true for you.  And that’s a sacred space that will allow every conversation to thrive and blossom.
2. Let them deal with unpleasantness: We all witness/encounter pain, challenge, sorrow, loss and failure at work and outside of it.  These moments are often the things that open people up to their inner power and strength.  When we shield our colleagues/loved ones from such a pain or failure, we actually take away their opportunity to discover their own awesomeness.  Allowing them to experience that pain or failure with all the necessary support and compassion while providing them safe space to discover their inner knowing, strength and potential is all that is needed to build others up  in such delicate moments.
3. Self Love: Can’t emphasize enough about this one. Some of the most successful people I have met love  themselves so dearly that their energies only radiate love for whatever they do.  I heard my mentor saying this once that if you beat yourself up into misery, your clients, family, loved ones will meet you at that level too, so get set to meet more misery.  Self love is that transformation tool which allows you to gracefully bask in your own awesomeness and light, no matter how others perceive you.
4. Communicate: Over communication is still ok, anything less than normal puts people in a spiral of assumptions that are always not so pleasant.  Didn’t like an output at work, say it firmly, give feedback or part ways amicably. Not happy with way things are going with loved ones, sit the other person down and talk it out without getting personal. Research says the more we communicate about our deepest expectations and desires, the better bonds we build in the long term, even though momentarily the same may feel unpleasant and awkward.  Leaving things to assumptions or displaying withdrawal behaviors with teams/people will only make others self-doubt, go into their caves or overestimate things about what is just a manageable situation.

Relationships, be at work or outside of it do need constant nurturing.  The question is what do you feed them every day as that is precisely what you reap later.  And if you are wondering what happened to the guy and girl, well they have chosen to nurture each other every day for rest of their lives, soon.