Taking control: How to maintain your cool in relationships!

Attaining a peaceful attitude is a virtue we all seek and must learn to maintain when we find it. We fall back because we do not have basic skills  and tend to react to our environment which in most cases consist of absent minded people who are not aware when they create negative energy around others.

Relationships in this context refer to how you interact with your parents and friends. Managing relationships is a challenge that could become a hurdle and curtails your speed towards your goals.  Let me highlight common challenges in life:

1.           Nagging parents.  If you are born into challenging family it means you are in danger of adopting their way of life or developing undesirable defense mechanisms.  If you have a noisy family you will not appreciate the importance of quite environment and its benefits of enabling you to hear when people speak with normal volume.  Nagging and controlling are cousins.  It is a tendency to constantly breaths down somebody’s neck, dishing out instructions of how to do everything.

When you feel the anger rise within you for being mistaken for a mentally disable person, the best way to ward-off such intrusion is to politely request your mum or dad to comment after you have completed the task at hand.  This will send the message that you will request assistance when you need it and that they are not empowering you to become you.

2.           Suspicious parents:  Parenting is a challenge to many parents and they approach it through trial and error because they too are the products of poor parenting.  Instilling trust in a child is a very important milestone.  For an example, when parents do not trust you  that you do have a study group after classes it could damage your relationship with them and lower your self-esteem in the eyes of your friends.  How do you handle that?

If they are approachable, ask them politely why they do not trust you? Find out what you have done that might have cause the mistrust and do your best to be a person of integrity – behaving well all the time especially when you are alone or away from them.

3.           Over-zealous partner: How do you handle a relationship partner who wants to know minute details of what you want to do daily? If you are a lady and you have this overwhelming attention how would you handle it? Would you be happy to be monitored that way? 

It is normal for love partners to want to do activities together. Should there be exceptions if for instance you are a lady going out with a girl friend for shopping then a hair salon? Be honest about needing your private time to be alone and being you; because if you are like me, I do need my time and space to read my spiritual books, listen to empowerment videos and simply enjoying being quite. I need this!

We could walk away from friends, but we do not choose parents.  Although in most case parents mean well when they demand compliance to their way of dong things, they need to be made aware that their beliefs and values have been adjusted and that you have new ones which they must respect as you exit into adulthood or other social stages of development.  You take control of your life when you do not tip-toe around your dislikes. Let your parents and friends know who you are.  They will like you for being honest about maintaining your cool.