Loving Yourself Confidently Improves Your Relationships

Jeff Arnold Interpersonal Relationships

This Blog has been developed and written to assist people in everyday relational situations. I am the author and my interest in people, and how they relate to one another has been an interest of mine for along time. Have you ever had a time in your own life where you were dealing with someone who just didn't "get you" or you just didn't "get them either"? Well I have got news for you, you are not alone.

When we think of relationships many of us naturally think about romantic relationships. Certainly, we would agree those relationships are among the most complicated and complex. We will discuss romantic relationships and what makes them work, or fail yet this blog is more than that. The discussions here will be interactive with the goal of helping people to relate to each other better. Since no one on the planet is perfect this will help each person differently.

If your struggle is with self-confidence and being able to feel good about yourself and comfortable in your own skin, you will find that others are also uncomfortable with you and feeling good about you. Don't panic if that is a new revaluation to you. The interesting thing about relationships is that people take their cues on how to treat you from your attitudes about yourself, and how you allow others to treat you. If you want to be respected, respect yourself. When a person respects them-self they then set standards of conduct for their own behavior, and they hold others to a standard of behavior they expect, so abuse and disrespect are less likely to occur.

So why then do so many people feel bad about themselves in the first place? I sounds cliche` but mostly it comes from childhood and the messages we received about ourselves from the influential people in our lives. Our parents, significant caregivers, teachers, Sunday school teachers  and even older siblings contribute to our developing core belief about ourselves. When we are shown love and respect we learn to love and respect ourselves. When we respect ourselves it becomes easier to love and respect others. This in turn makes it exceedingly more likely that the people will love and respect us. If our parents support us in difficult times by helping us to work through self doubt we learn confidence. If parents speak to affirm the positive things we accomplish we learn to appreciate our own successes.

What about when we fail? What happens in this situation as a child is vitally important. If a child is told they are stupid, or in someway not as talented as other children, or worse yet their siblings this can arrest the child's development educationally and emotionally. Sadly, there are many people walking around with wounds from their childhood that have impacted them well into adulthood. Perhaps you or someone you know has been effected by the words or actions of others that still has negative impacts today. This is unfortunate but changing a negative outlook is possible.

Crush These Self-Destructive Beliefs
Remember that your self-destructive beliefs were developed over time and not a single event. Knowing this helps when trying to change the broken mindset we have been living with for years. Here is a list of Self-Destructive Beliefs that are common.

• I must be perfect; this belief cause the person holding the belief to set ridged and unrealistic standards for personal performance in nearly all areas of life. They tend to feel that anything short of absolute perfection is equal to failure. This often leads to feeling like a failure which overtime causes depression.
• I must always be strong; being strong has a useful purpose. When the belief goes to the extreme it is unhealthy. Examples would be for instance a person is feeling sad, lonely, or even compassionate and they feel wrong about such normal human emotions.
• I must please others; this can be one of the most self-destructive beliefs because we place our self- worth in the approval of someone else. The over emphasis of someone Else's opinion over our own can lead to great disappointment if we are unable to capture approval from that person.
• I must hurry up; this causes many bad decisions. When the person holding this belief thinks that they must get more done in a given amount of time than is reasonable they are often left disappointed and feeling like a failure when they are unable to do it. This creates unhealthy levels of stress and often happens in work place relationships.
• I must take on more responsibility; sometimes a person falls into the trap of thinking they must take on more than is expected. This can happen at home or work and is often proceeded by the inaction of others so the person who holds this belief takes on a project already destined to fail. After it fails the person often wrongly blames them-self for the projects failure.

As you can see these beliefs have the potential to destroy a person's self image and when we have the wrong self-image we are vulnerable to believe we are unworthy of respect and therefore undeserving of love or even the admiration of others.

Crush and Replace
In order to get healthy thinking we need to first recognize the unhealthy thinking listed above. The first thing is to whenever possible put yourself around upbeat positive people. In fact you should seek out nourishing people, and avoid noxious people like the plague. You can always know who the noxious people are because they are the one's who often criticize everyone and everything, and they do it to you. The nourishing people are the opposite because they lift you up, not tear you down.

When you are loading your own plate take on projects you are somewhat sure you can be successful by doing this it builds confidence, and confidence is attractive to others. Also as a person becomes confident they tend to respect their own abilities and this attitude is then transferred to those around them. Once a person has some successes under their belt, they need to remind themselves of those successes so that when adversity comes they have something to balance it against.

Try These Constructive Beliefs instead

• I'm not perfect, of course neither is anyone else so there is no reason to feel bad about it.
• It's nice to be strong when I can, but sometimes there is strength in showing vulnerability. 
• It would be great if I could make everyone happy, but that isn't realistic and I can live with it.
• I don't have to hurry because somethings take more time, and it is acceptable to pause and think.
• I don't always have to be the person who needs to do more. It is acceptable to let others carry their own weight, and for me to insist they do.