Debbie Gail Zane

As a life and relationship coach I help many women create happier relationships…with their partner and everyone else in their lives, including the most important relationship…the one with themselves.

One reason (and there are many) it’s important to have a great relationship with yourself is that this affects the space from which you enter into a relationship.

Do you get into a relationship from a place of need or desire? From a place of lack (you are not complete or can’t create your own happiness) or abundance (your life is beautiful and you are complete and happy and have love within you)?

Having a strong relationship with yourself, knowing how to make yourself happy and meet your needs, and loving yourself fully and completely, is the place you want to be in before attracting a relationship.

Why?

If you feel incomplete and unhappy and think that the only way your life will be happy is to be in a relationship, you may end up settling for someone who isn’t right for you or who doesn’t treat you with respect and love. And overlooking red flags so putting up with unhealthy behavior.

If you don’t fully love yourself, you will be searching outside of yourself to fulfill this need but the people you attract may not love themselves either. Because we tend to attract people who are mirrors of us. And someone who doesn’t love themselves doesn’t have love to give to another…they are searching completely outside themselves to fulfill this need as well.

When you come from a place of lack or scarcity, you feel urgent to make something happen in dating and relationships…rather than allowing things to unfold at a healthy pace. Fears come up more because your insecurities will be higher since you don’t have the foundation of happiness and love for yourself within you.

And your fear and need may cause you to suppress your authenticity…and instead become the person you feel the other person wants you to be. Creating an image of yourself based on what the other person wants will not lead to happiness in a relationship. It will feel like work for you. And it will not allow for a deep meaningful relationship because you aren’t showing up as who you truly are.

No amount of outside love and happiness will replace the love and happiness you create for yourself. So invest in developing a deeper relationship with yourself. For support on this journey, reach out to me. I am offering a discount this weekend which will end at midnight tomorrow on Mother’s Day.

Have you ever come across someone who is negative all the time?

We probably all have, and we have a choice as to how much we allow their negative energy to affect our own energy, our own mood.

It’s so easy to allow it to, but you can change how you view this person and their negativity.

Although it feels like this person is critical of YOU when they are condescending or putting you down, what their ranting or complaining is really about is themselves or their inability to deal with something happening in their lives.

They don’t know how to deal with it or accept how they feel about themselves or what is happening or work on it, so they externalize it by blaming…making others around them feel bad…so they can feel better and not have to face what is happening internally or externally.

Sometimes people even start arguments over smaller insignificant things within their control to avoid dealing with the “real” larger issues that will create real change in their lives and are not under their control.

Sometimes it feels so much easier for that person to blame people they feel comfortable with, to avoid dealing with a larger problem that takes up risk, uncertainty or effort.  So they point to someone close and place blame or take it out on them.

I was in this situation many years ago, before I got divorced, where I was made to feel everything I did was wrong and everything happening was my fault…even things that a neutral person, removed from the situation, could clearly see had nothing to do with me.  I spent years “allowing” and “accepting” this responsibility of fault he put on me.  Internalizing it and accepting the “responsibility’ he placed on me.  Until I learned it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him and his inability to look at himself and accept responsibility for what wasn’t working in his life.

The thing is, we are all responsible for our own selves.  Our own happiness.  Our own bad moods.  Our own energy.

We always have a choice of whether to allow someone to make us feel bad or to accept as the truth what they are saying to blame us.

Our happiness comes from within us, and while we cannot make others act in such a way that aligns with how we want to feel, we can choose how we view and respond to their words and actions and whether we internalize them.

When we focus on how to get the other person to change, that will never lead to our own happiness.  Because we don’t have the power to change another.

When the focus is on you and what can you do…this is where you do have the power to change…changing so that you can view this person in a different light, seeing that their actions aren’t about you, their words and blame aren’t about you…you can make a decision to leave it as their stuff and not pick it up as yours or take responsibility for it.

And if you are in a relationship and your partner is starting arguments and getting angry over very small things, together you can explore if there is something bigger or more vulnerable they are avoiding dealing with.