Preserve The Relationship
I’m always surprised to see how quickly someone will cut them selves off from a family member or friend.
When an offense is made or unkind words are spoken, or even we see someone make a mistake. We wipe our hands clean and just want to be done.
Sometimes we are so focused on being “right” or being heard that we create detrimental effects on our relationships. Or even just completely right them off and be done with them.
I heard this saying once and it changed everything for me. It was a veteran wise grandmother who told me, “Preserving the relationship should be the first priority.”
Those words were everything. It gave me a perspective of loyalty, longevity and goodness.
The relationships I have in my life are my greatest treasures. I feel blessed to have connections with so many.
Especially my children. As children grow and become teenagers and young adults THIS is where the “preserving of the relationship” can become muddy.
As a mother I can imagine the difficulty of trying to establish clean boundaries but also letting our children make their own decision. And honestly as parents we don’t want them to make the “wrong” decision so then we get more involved and try to persuade them one way or another and THEN we create detriment in our current relationships.
We are so focused on being right, helping them choose, giving them guidance that we forget about the relationship as a whole.
As a female entrepreneur we talk a lot about growing our business. Whenever we are trying to make a decision in our business we always want to think about our business as if it is one of our greatest relationships in life.
We always ask ourself, what is best for our relationship with our business? Is saying ______ or doing ______ in the best interest for the preservation of our relationship?
Will doing those things bring us closer to our business or create distance.
I know this is a bit of a far fetched idea, but I use it as an example because we always want to check in and see if we are putting our relationships first? Or are we trying to protect ourselves from feeling something we don’t want to.
As a female human, I speak for all of us when I say…. Relationships are our greatest treasures. The connections we make with the people around us give our life passion and purpose. Everyday we have choices for how we prioritize our relationships in our lives. Whenever in doubt of how you should respond to a certain dynamic or challenge, I would ask you…. Am I trying to be right? Or am I trying to preserve this relationship?
