The First Theory of Relativity, according to Chloe in the movie You Can Choose Your Friends, “states that time moves more slowly when you spend it with relatives . . . And the Second Theory of Relativity is that time spent with your family and time spent in the real world move at different speeds. So you could leave your family for decades and when you finally come home again, only a few seconds have elapsed and nothing’s changed at all.”Family. Unless you’ve completely cut yourself from anyone with any kind of blood connection, family is a factor in your life. They can build you up or bring you down with a word, move you with a look, connect with you in a way that no one else can. Your self actualization depends in part on how satisfied or dissatisfied you are with your family relationships. Take this quiz to pinpoint problem areas:
Respond to these statements with True, False, or Sort of.
You can probably see that the ideal response to most of these statements is “false.” You might not realize at first that the ideal response to all of them is “false.” In a conflict with your family, the goal isn’t to attain victory, or even necessarily to have a perfect meeting of the minds. The goal is to communicate, to deepen our understanding of each other and live in harmony and mutual support. In some future posts, we’ll talk about how you can move your family relationships closer to the ideals (the opposite of the statements above).
Roger K. Allen, Ph.D. is an expert in personal transformation, leadership, and teams. His tools and methods have helped hundreds of businesses and tens of thousands of people transform the ways they work and live. To learn more, visit www.rogerkallen.com.
My purpose is to teach you strategies to replace negative patterns with a positive state of mind from which you can achieve your greatest desires and live a joyful and abundant life.
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