Choose a moment where you calm and centred and unlikely to be disturbed.
Bring your awareness to your breathing
The tidal in and out of your breath.
This brings you into the present moment and allows you to focus
Now bring to mind someone from the past or present with whom you have experienced difficulty connecting
Someone who has never ‘got’ you
Someone who has given you the impression that you were not ‘liked’
Maybe someone who has had the ability to make you feel small or unworthy
These people easily spring to mind as they are the people who have hurt us
Whether they know it or not
Get a clear sense of that person
Now examine how thinking of that person makes you feel
How does it express itself in your body?
What thoughts spring to mind
What fears come up for you?
Not good enough?
Not clever? Not Beautiful?
Understand that none of this discord was about you for them
Rather it was all about what was going on for them
The fact that you were triggered into unhappiness only displays a need within you
For some kind of nurture that is separate from that person
That person only served to show you the way
You can provide that nurture
How does that feel?
Can you accept the teaching?
Give yourself the gift of learning about your own needs from difficult relationships
Harbouring feelings of resentment towards those who have exposed our vulnerabilities only serves to hurt us further. When we do this, situation remain unresolved. The unresolved keeps part of us forever in the past and so we are blocked from moving forwards
If you can, offer a message of forgiveness and even gratitude to the people in your life who taught you the hardest lessons. Forgiveness does not signal approval of bad behaviour, but it does set us free, cutting any cords that bind us to people who dislike us. It helps us to detach
Now picture someone who values you the highest of all
Someone who loves you or respects you
Without you having to do anything at all
Maybe someone with whom you passionately share opinions
Perhaps a partner
Or a work colleague
Or a friend
Someone who appreciates your art, your song
Your creativity
Your beauty and your kindness
Someone who really sees you
Get a clear picture of that person
How does that make you feel?
Where do you feel it in your body?
Remember that that person is evoking in you that which is already there
Those are your emotions
They do not belong to anybody else
Sit with those pleasant feelings for a few minutes and allow yourself to be graced with gratitude
These are the relationships that we treasure
By accepting all of our multifaceted relationships with others, we can begin to nurture and grow the most important relationship of all - our relationship to the Self