Today we are talking about who or what you surround yourself with? Who do you allow in your circle of influence? Before I get to that, I want to take a minute to share why this is SO darn important right now.
Who you surround yourself with has a direct impact on your self esteem and your self esteem is the foundation of your existence. It is the single thread that relates to everything else.
Self esteem isn’t about boosting your ego, creating more conceit or how you look on the outside. Self esteem is not a psychological issue either.
Others, can be catalysts to that growth. Those “others” include your relationships. Relationships with a coach like me, mentors, your partner(s), family, friends, coworkers or colleagues. This is why it is so important that you surround yourself with people who you trust and where there is mutual respect and healthy communication.
If you want to be a healthy person and live a long healthy life, and I know you do or you would probably not be reading this… then know that it begins with good mental, emotional and physical health. A good starting point for many is taking a look at how to grow your self esteem.
Your esteem impacts your entire life and every single one of your choices. It is a window into how much you respect yourself, trust and value yourself. If you know you are worthy, then you make choices about who you surround yourself with and how you take care of yourself from that place of worth.
The first step to grow your self esteem begins with taking action with physical change.
I’m not speaking about changing the visual of your body so you can look better, although this could definitely impact esteem, I’m speaking into the fact that the physical body is impacted on a cellular level with good healthy foods and physical habits. In other words, self care and good food isn’t for the privileged few, it’s a necessary boundary for all people to have good health.
When people begin working with me and they share relationship issues, I always begin with the work and practices of loving themselves first. Your relationship with Self is key. You will spend more time with You than with any other person in your entire life. Wouldn’t it be easier if you loved you completely?
The next step to grow self esteem is to take action with your environment.
To be your word and do what you say you are going to do with your life, body, home, business and relationships.
Each person falls somewhere along a sliding scale on what you allow yourself to tolerate from other people. We could chat all day about how we must be able to tolerate other people’s differences in life, however today we gotta look at ourselves first.
We cannot have a conversation about tolerating other people’s differences until we can begin holding boundaries by not allowing other people to suck away our energy. This is about you holding boundaries in your current relationships and looking at what you have been tolerating. This is about what you are choosing to put up with. Whether you are consciously choosing or unconsciously choosing is besides the point, right now. Can we agree that the most empowered thought that serves you right now is to honor that you are in charge of what you allow to impact you?
In all of my years working with people and getting to know myself, I’ve come to realize that some of us are built with a little more sensitivity. In other words, some of us can feel things quicker than others can. It’s been called highly-sensitive or known as having a greater depth of empathy. Another way to put it is being more in touch with the senses or intuition.
I’ll give you an example, I once took this personality test and it rated me as having a high “music score”, I was in in the 90th percentile. I told the person who administered the test that the test was wrong. I told her I knew this because I am not musically inclined at all, I can barely sing and piano lessons were a challenge years ago…. This woman laughed and explained that it meant that I was highly sensitive to noises, sounds and loudness, it wasn’t about my musical abilities or lack thereof. For example, if I was at a restaurant and seated next to the kitchen where it was loud with dishes and plates banging together, it wouldn’t take me long to be ready to leave due to my intolerance to the noise. This was spot on for me.
Throughout my life it has shown me how I am able to function in relationships.
Another way to explain this is that some people are considered extroverts, introverts and ambiverts (a combo of both). I don’t like putting people in boxes of how their personalities are, because I believe we can all evolve. However, it is fair to say that each human being is different with how they allow others and situations to impact them. This can be based on your personality, past, upbringing and experiences. So we have a level of emotional impact from our relations with others.
Where you may fall on this sliding scale of sensitivity within relationships with other people is very important because it allows you to begin to see where you may not be making choices that allow you to feel safe, comfortable and calm.
Although, i have no concrete evidence to prove this next statement I’m about to make to you and it’s pure speculation on my part, I would bet a lot of money on it:
Put another way, the more sensitive you are, the more boundaries you may need to learn to hold within relationships with people who trigger the crap out of you.
I do not believe in the permanence of any of this. With emotional healing practices, we grow our emotional intelligence, making it possible for us to evolve in how we are impacted in our relationships to others, particularly saboteurs. (To understand saboteurs, read part 1 here)
Our saboteur relationships are unique to us, but they can drain us with words, criticism and manipulations.
In some cases, saboteurs could potentially be obsessive or addictive. These people may need your attention or look to you for supply of energy. Some relationships can be addictive in nature for both parties and it triggers a hormonal response in the brain that releases “peptides”. These peptides feel good when released, it’s almost like getting a shot of a drug in our body. So even though the relationship may be unhealthy, chaotic, stressful or harmful in some cases, people will keep going back because it fuels the addiction to the peptides it triggers in the brain.
Note: this peptide addiction could even be triggered through following politics, watching the news or through a relationship such as an affair or one that may be abusive. The part that may recognize the dysfunction may be hooked more on the brain chemicals being released than the actual relationships to the person. This doesn’t happen with everyone, but it is common and if you think this could be you, please reach out to me. I can help you, this is what I do. If your case is one I don’t see myself helping with, I will refer you to someone who can and get you the help you need.
Whether we want to believe it or not, our relationships and interactions with people can cause a great deal of stress in our lives. They can drain us and directly impact the health of our body.
I call this toxic stress.
With our relationships we must focus on who we are keeping in our inner circle.
Who are the top 7-10 people you surround yourself with?
Sometimes we leave relationships and move on. If we must break off relationships, it is hard work, I know how hard that can be. Avoiding it, if you know in your gut it has to happen, only prolongs the toxic stress for your body.
Sometimes we evolve within relationships and grow together. We look within and learn how to rise above the dysfunction within that relationship by holding boundaries, which I talk about in Part 3 of this series.
I want to be clear – never, ever stay in a relationship that is abusive. Also, note that many people could be in emotionally abusive relationships and be so used to it that they don’t recognize it as abuse. This is a serious matter. Please contact me if you want to have a private phone session about your situation.
I want to stress how detrimental unhealthy relationships and continued dysfunction with a saboteur can be if we don’t make personal changes within yourself. When we endure this kind of stress, regularly, it has a direct impact on the brain, signaling cortisol. The toxic stress that we may have been enduring for years, in some cases, starts to break down our neural connections in the brain. It slowly begins to impact our neurotransmitters and impacts brain chemistry and how we experience emotions. We can begin to feel numb. We can begin to forget who we are and what we care about. We could feel more depressed, sad, addicted or find that we have a lack empathy or feel more negative on average.
There is good news. You can begin to harmonize your brain chemistry through various methods that I work with my clients on. For some, it’s emotional release and energy healing work. For some, it’s a combination of nutrition and mindset shifts. For others it’s forgiveness work and creating new healthy habits and patterns. For some, it’s all of the above.
One of the first steps to that growth is taking action through holding boundaries. I will share about this in Part 3 of this series on Emotional Intelligence For Powerful Relationships.
When we take action to grow and we become our word and do what we say we are going to do, we build our self esteem. We begin to reconnect with ourselves and our self worth. it’s from this place of worth that we can begin to attract relationships that are healthier, more inspiring, powerful and positive for everyone involved.
If you choose to stay in a relationship with someone and you are growing yourself, they will either be forced to grow up with you or they will leave your social circle.
I want you to know that you are lovable. You are loved. You are capable of healthy relationships and you are worthy of attracting them. There are helpful people who want to help you (I am one of them) and you are deserving of a happy heart, no matter what you have been through. No matter how challenging your past has been or what you are surrounded by now, you are deserving and worthy of connected, whole, healthy and equal partnerships.
I love hearing from you, please share below about any experiences you have had about a saboteur in your life or how you have evolved within relationships by growing your self esteem.
Share in the comments below.
Much love and thanks for reading,
Renee
