Big Idea #1: Dealing With Difficult Relationships

Sometimes it can be hard to relate to family members when we don’t approve of their life choices, or vice versa. How can we deal with these kinds of relationships, honoring our values while still loving that person?

First of all, this is something many people deal with, so don’t feel like you’re alone.

Close relationships, like those with our family, are the most powerful vehicle for growth. The universe grows us through challenge, so as uncomfortable as it can feel in the moment, a challenging relationship is helping you grow.

When someone crosses our boundary or violates us in some way, we go into a maze in our head where we obsess and think about how we were wronged. This depletes us and keeps us trapped in the maze.

The only way out of the maze is to have an outflow of love for that person. Imagine your heart opening up to them, through whatever is going on, and radiating love to them. If we can choose to overcome this person with love rather than becoming self-righteous, we can free ourselves from the depleting maze of negative thoughts.

It’s freeing to realize that you can love someone without having to understand them, or have them understand you. If you don’t feel supported by a family member, you can love them and respect your relationship without opening up certain parts of your life to them.

Big Idea #2: Facing Fear Head-On

Most people are so afraid of their fear, that they let their fear run their life. When we don’t look fear in the eye, we constantly arrange our lives to avoid it. But the fact is, our dream life is directly on the other side of that fear. So in order to get what we want in life, we have to move directly through the fear to reach it.

Once we go through our fear rather than avoiding it, we often find that what appeared to be a poisonous snake at first, turned out to be a harmless rope. The only power that fear has over us is the power we give it by not looking at it. Addressing fear takes its power away, so we are protected from our fears as long as we direct ourselves at them. Moving away from our fears allows their flames to make us vulnerable and hurt us.

So how can we face our fear?

1. Name the fear.
2. Ask yourself, “What are 3 ways I minimize the likelihood of this fear actually occuring?”
3. If the worst fear were to come true, how can I deal with it and get back to the place where I am now?

Big Idea #3: Persistence, Diligence and Growth

It can be frustrating to feel ourselves growing and changing on the inside, but not having that external result to show our growth to others. It might seem easy to feel frustrated or discouraged, and all that work might feel wasted in some way because we don’t yet see external results.

But inner growth takes passionate persistence, diligence and patience in order to reap its results. Don’t strike the rock 999 times and then walk away, because the 1000th time will strike gold. Putting in the hours and hours of hard work will result in a major payoff in the end.

Doing the work on the inside moment to moment might not create the external results you’re looking for right away. We have to keep working on ourselves and persist in rocking our fundamentals and engaging in greatness to finally see those results on the outside. And when we do – WOW! Totally worth it.

So stay persistent, stay diligent and keep on growing even if you don’t “see” the results quite yet. As we continue to intrinsically show up and passionately engage in what we find meaningful, the rewards will start to show up exponentially in our lives.

HW + Action Steps!

As always, we’d love for you to share your personal favorite takeaways in the private Facebook group.