The Three Most Important Relationships (2024)

We are all in relationships. They can be a living heaven or hell of our own making. Getting these three most important relationships streamlined will help you live in balance and set you up for real, sustained happiness that’s unshakeable:

To Ourselves.

To Others.

To Something Greater (Nature, Love, God).

During this time, most of us are finding these relationships are what are making life meaningful, as everything else around us is being pared down. We are having to reprioritize our personal connection to all three, consciously or unconsciously, while the world around us feels somewhat shaky. We’re recalibrating our definitions of politics, health, jobs, social issues, and economics. Relationships, however, are what endure, and they have the capacity to hold us steady when the boat of life rocks around us. But if these aren’t healthy and restoring, life can be incredibly destabilizing and chaotic.

ALL relationships begin with the one we have with ourselves.

How we think and feel about ourselves dictates the quality of life around us. Knowing how to self-soothe, to trust yourself and your intuition, and to enjoy your own company is what matters above all. For so many of us, we are primed to think if we find that perfect person to enter into a partnership with, we will finally be fulfilled and whole. News flash: There is no “you complete me.” Two halves don’t make a relational whole. Your better half isn’t out there. Tag, you’re it!

Call off the search party.

…And there’s no rescue one coming, either. Maybe temporarily. But ultimately, you are that which you seek. Deep, right? You can become that person you’ve been seeking in your partnerships. What if you stopped looking outside of you, and became who you needed instead? Then you would enjoy your partnership (or anyone’s company, really) from a place of sharing all the good you already had going on, rather than from lack of trying to get your needs/wants met through them. You’d be assuming total responsibility for your stuff and you’d be free from most tangled relational paradigms.

Set point of self-love.

Once you learn to speak to yourself with kindness and compassion, creating an inner climate that’s safe and supportive, you will inevitably pull in friends and lovers and even shift existing relationships, as all will have to follow suit. When your self-love game is strong, you attract people who appreciate you the way you do. They hold up the mirror to how you feel about yourself, of what you feel you deserve. Drama falls away—it’s not a match, energetically. It truly begins with you. But it takes work to build that friendship with yourself, committing to the truth that you are the constant in your life, and you’ll never be disappointed or let yourself down again, no matter what.

Learn to love others for real.

Knowing how to love others without demanding they meet your needs, or people-pleasing them to ensure they stay, is as important as knowing where they end and you begin. Staying focused on your experience, instead of worrying about their perspective of you, or trying to control their life choices, are all twisted ways we express love, and it’s worth unlearning and releasing forever. The goal then in loving is allowing them the dignity of their path while focusing on yours, trusting everyone is doing what they need to for their personal evolution. Meanwhile, you stick to setting good boundaries, giving from overflow, and being with your triggers as they arise, as they inevitably will. These are all skills worth learning.

Grow out a connection to something greater than you.

It doesn’t have to be a traditional definition of God or Spirit, although it can include that. It can even be nature, love itself, or a group—anything bigger than your personality or ego—that fills you up in some capacity, that expands you and connects you to your own greatness. Developing this connection, deepening it through practical ways that sustain you, like meditation, prayer, mindfulness, present moment awareness, nature walks, etc., are how to grow it out measurably. Knowing what your definition of something greater is, while making sure it’s still relevant for who you are today, is vital. Creating special time designated to developing that connection daily, so you can fill up your well, and bring that goodness back to your life and the people in it. This tangible spirituality creates contentment and an inner peace that’s pervasive, even when life throws us curve balls. And it will.

When these relationships with self, others, and something greater are fulfilling, we find we can step into our purpose, abundance flows to us, and life is just more meaningful.

At the end of October, I’m offering an online course called the Relationship Triumvirate for an intimate group of women. We will deep dive into all three relationships, redefining them as we go, and moving into alignment around them over the following six weeks: with a syllabus of written assignments, meditations, mindset talks, sound baths, processes, and hypnosis to seal the learnings. This special group of women will be working together to release and let go of self-sabotaging behaviors, spinning their wheels in their love life by calling in the same unfulfilling relational paradigms, and stepping into a more authentic version of themselves so they can truly live their best life! If you’d like to find out more, please click here. Use discount code POOSH25 for $25 off the course.

Poosh Edit: Essentials for an Ideal “Me” Night

Ryan Haddon, ACC, CHt is a certified life coach and hypnotherapist. She works with clients virtually all over the world. She is Poosh’s in-house life coach and offers workshops. Her upcoming course, The Relationship Triumvirate, is about the three most important relationships in everyone’s life—to self, others, and something greater—and begins October 29. You can find out more on IG@ryanhaddoncoach.

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