Lessons for a Lifetime

What Relationships Boil Down to

How can a blogger write a blog without talking about relationships? There are gin and platonic relationships, romantic relationships and business relationships. Who gets to write without writing about relationships at one point or another?

I’ve had my fair share of relationships. I’ve had good ones I’ve had bad ones. Even the bad ones were and are still important to me. We have relationships for different reasons. Sometimes it’s to get a head and sometimes it’s because we need a little comfort in life.

Relationships, all relationships, parent child, best buddies and the romantic relationships all boil down to one thing; being there when you partner needs you the most. We’re social creatures. Evolution has made us that way. Millions of years ago we stayed in groups for protection and you had to rely on each other to stay safe. Now those dangers are for the most part gone but evolution doesn’t undo things in several thousand years that it spent hundreds of thousands even millions of years designing and testing.

I think many of us having been on the receiving or giving end of a conversation that includes, “You weren’t there for me.” It’s what we come to expect from of closest friends and family. That’s actually the reason you chose them to be closest with you because you felt you could rely on them.

When I think back on my life, I can see a lot of times where I was let down. Friends that let me down mostly. Because of that, I now realize I’m very sensitive to people being reliable. If someone isn’t reliable, I don’t just cast them aside. But I put them in a friend container of people that I don’t rely on. They’re more people just to have fun with. It does lesson them as friends and does lesson how much I care about them because they’ve already proven unreliable. Reliability is something I look for. People that can commit and follow through are rare these days and should be held close as friends.

A good question to ask yourself is are you reliable. Do you keep your word? If you do, you’re going to attract people that are the same and have better relationships. Basically you get back what you put out.

10-10-10

We are emotional creatures. It’s part of being human. The hard part about this is logic and emotion don’t exist together. To be mentally tough, we have to learn to control our emotions. This is key, there is a difference between controlling your emotions and suppressing them. Mentally tough individuals still feel and experience their emotions, but don’t let those emotions take control of them.

Reacting emotionally can drive away family, friends and significant others. If you lose your job or get into a car wreck and flip out in anger, people aren’t going to see you as a grounded individual. These are life events and they will happen. These strong responses lead to irrational reactive decisions. On top of reactive decisions, you may also become paralyzed by fear from uncontrolled emotions. No reaction is just as bad as over reacting.

That being said, suppressing emotions is not an option either. When you’re suppressing your emotions, you get angry and irritable. Those emotions will fill up like a bucket filling up with water until it eventually spills out and overflows creating a mess that is never fun to clean up. Sometimes it even results in exploding and taking it out on innocent loved ones or co-workers.

Suppressing and holding in your emotions has physiological effects. Studies have been done on crying. Emotional tears are different than other tears such as when your eyes water from allergies or cutting onions in the kitchen. Emotional tears contain hormones and endorphins designed to make you feel better. Crying is healthy even if manly men think it makes your week.

To be emotionally and mentally healthy you have to get these emotions out. This can be done in any number of healthy ways. A good cry is just one, but journaling, exercising and meditating are all good options. It’s when people turn to drugs and alcohol or even spending significant amounts of money that problems begin to arise.

A technique I’ve learned to use when trying to control my reactivity to incidents is the 10-10-10 method. This basically comes into play when some negative inciting event happens. You ask yourself in 10 minutes is this going to matter. In 10 hours is this going to matter? In 10 days is this going to matter? Sometimes this can help you put things back into perspective. If I get rear-ended and it’s just a minor fender bender and nobody gets hurt. In 10 minutes I’m still going to be mad. In 10 hours I’m probably just going to be thankful nobody got hurt. In 10 days, I probably won’t care. Thinking this way can help me not react in extremes like yelling or screaming.