There are so many different relationships that we have in our daily life with home, work, friendships, clubs etc. but the most important relationship for us to take a look at first is the relationship we have with our self. Before we can even start to love someone else we must learn to love and accept ourselves, warts and all, and for most of us this is very challenging.

How many times in our life have we been told that we are not good enough in many different ways? As a child at school, the aspect of our work that got highlighted in red with a large cross by it, was the bit that we got wrong, and all the parts that we got right were glossed over. So from a very early age we learnt to focus more on what we are doing wrong than all the many things in which we do well. It then becomes quite difficult to regard ourselves very highly and the thought of actually loving and accepting ourselves seems very obscure and often misunderstood as being conceit.

However when we start to look at our many achievements and skills, each and every one of us is a unique and phenomenal being. Just look at how you came into this world, you had to be a fighter and a winner right from the word go. You were the one formed from the sperm that got to the egg first, ahead of all the other millions of possibilities, so you started off as a winner and an achiever.

As a young baby, you succeeded in enchanting someone with your smiles and gurgles so that they nourished you enough to be alive today, despite some of the less attractive aspects of your babyhood! You have managed to attract people into your life as friends and maybe even to share your life as a partner, so there is something special within you that others have found very appealing.

We all start off as a pure innocent young baby that understands that it is both loveable and loving, but sadly as we grow older and get a few rejections here and there in life, we may begin to feel less loveable and frightened of showing our love to others for fear of more rejection.

If you imagine, for a moment, that in the centre of you is a bright and shiny diamond that represents your perfection, but over the years this has gradually become covered with layers of hurt, rejection and negative life experiences like layers of mud covering your diamond. Over the top of this you then painted a coat of varnish as a shiny exterior for the world to see. This was to mask all the past hurts so that no-one else sees all your pain and fears. All of this obscures your shining diamond and you no longer radiate your brilliance to the world.

If you chip away the layer of varnish and peel away the layers of hurt and pain by clearing some of your negative emotions from the past, you can re-gain your brilliance and radiate out the amazing person you truly are – that loving and loveable special human being.

Once you start to love yourself and be good and kind to yourself, you can then offer unconditional love to others and attract relationships that are in harmony with you.

The Law of Attraction in Relationships

Whatever phase of our life we are in we will attract towards us whatever we radiate out, so the people in our life will very kindly mirror for us exactly what we are emanating. It is therefore very helpful to look at who and what you are attracting into your life to give you a clue as to whether or not you are becoming the person that you wish to be. If we keep attracting angry people into our life then it is usually because we are harbouring our own anger inside although we may be unaware of it. We will be magnetising towards us those people who are on a similar energy vibration to ourselves and are therefore in harmony with the energy that we give out. Just as a tuning fork set in vibration will cause another tuning fork at rest to start vibrating if it is of the same energy frequency or the same note, so we will attract people of similar energy vibration towards us.

If you choose to attract something different, you will need to change yourself first to vibrate at the same frequency as the sort of person that you wish to attract. The more positive, happy and grateful you become, the higher your energy vibration/frequency will be.

Start being generous with yourself. Take time out for yourself. Give yourself a special treat every now and again and by that I mean something that is good for you like a massage, going to your favourite restaurant or beautiful place in nature rather than demolishing a box of chocolates and then spending the following day getting mad with yourself for indulging unreasonably. Behave to your self as you would like a loving partner to treat you, then guess what you will attract – yes someone who will treat you with love and respect.

Begin appreciating yourself by sitting down with a pen and a large piece of paper and writing a long list of all your attributes.This can be skills lwhere we use our creativity with things like flowers/cooking/gardening/writing poetry etc or it can be your attributes e.g. trustworthiness, loyalty, generosity, helpfulness, peacemaking ability, sense of humour etc. etc. When you have finished your list so far (you can add to it later), read through all these attributes and get a feel for just how unique and incredible you are and what you have to offer to this world.

Once we start appreciating ourselves, we can begin appreciating those around us for the amazing beings that they are.

Then comes another challenge which is to be open to accept the differences in other people.

Just imagine for a moment what it would be like if we were all identical with all the same skill sets and attributes. It may be easier to accept others around us but the world would be unable to function if we were all good at the same things and lots of necessary skills were missing. Every single person brings their own purpose for being here and helps to make the world an interesting place with all our different beliefs and ways of life.

If we can only realise that all our differences are what makes us all so special and that each one of us fits as part of one gigantic world jigsaw, then we would be able to be more tolerant of one another. Each and every person has their role to fulfil and if we took the time and trouble to find out what is important to others and listen to their point of view, then we would have more harmony in the world.

Another factor in relationships is to live in the present and avoid bringing up incidents from the past to cloud your appreciation of what is happening NOW. When we harbour grudges from the past and refuse to let go of our hurt, fear or anger, we cause ourselves unnecessary challenges in all our relationships. If we can forgive people for how we perceive they have treated us in the past, and even harder, forgive ourselves for any part that we may have played in the incident, we would approach our present day relationships from a more loving space. Then we can evaluate incidents based just on the present circumstances and be less reactionary to events.

If you are having challenges in any relationship and you wish to change the dynamics of the situation, start writing down some of the factors that you appreciate about that person and aim to focus on those aspects rather than the things they do wrong. The more you focus on the good aspects, the more you will appreciate that person and the things that you don’t like will fade into the background.

I recently experienced dramatic changes in someone’s attitude after I changed my thoughts about them. My father was in hospital having had a small stroke and he had been having a few challenges with one particular nurse whom he felt had treated him rather badly. This led my mother into disliking this nurse and describing her to me as an unpleasant person which of course encouraged the nurse to continue with this behaviour in our eyes. A lose/lose situation for all concerned.

On my journey back home from visiting my father, I realised that somehow we were all involved in creating this unpleasant situation so I decided to aim to change my perception of this nurse at least from my point of view. I visualised and gave out thoughts of all the hospital staff treating my father with respect and the ultimate care and stuck to this image rather than the less appealing scenario.

The following day when my mother telephoned to update me on my father’s progress, she commented that she couldn’t believe the change in the staff on the ward and how they were going out of their way to do the best they could for my father. What a difference! I don’t know whether or not my change of attitude and thoughts had any influence on this but it was certainly quite a coincidence. If you read the book or watch the excellent DVD “The Secret”, it explains this concept of how we are creating our world with our thoughts and feelings in great detail.

We are all capable of having harmonious relationships and sometimes it just takes making a few changes in our thoughts or our actions towards ourselves and those around us to make that happen.