Relationships as a Path to Personal Growth

In this article I will explain why it’s difficult to resolve dating and relationship stumbling blocks, even when you are a self-aware person. I will then show you how I help clients work through their dating and relationship stumbling blocks, by using relationships as a path to personal growth.

Are you on a path of personal and spiritual growth and transformation, personal awakening and freedom? Are you diligently working to be free of negative thoughts and emotions, free of your past, free to determine and choose how you live your life?

If you are, you know that life improves as you work on yourself, your thoughts and your actions. And you probably assume that your relationships will get better and better the more you work on yourself. And they often do!

But at some point your life will continue to improve, while relationship improvements plateau. This happens to most of the teachers and to ordinary citizens of personal growth alike. And here’s why.

When you are working on yourself it’s relatively easy to work on your thoughts, emotions and attitudes, which means you can improve much of your life, because it’s about you. But relationships are about other people!

It would seem that in order to keep improving your relationships, you would somehow have to change other people. However, if you are in the process of your own personal and spiritual growth, you know better than that. You already know that you can’t nor should you attempt to change others.

You might consider that relationships are no different from the rest of your life and that you are probably creating your relationship experiences, just like you create your other experiences. But, because relationships are about other people, it’s seemingly impossible to see what you are doing to cause your own experiences or how to stop it.

Here’s how I help clients solve this dilemma.

I invite clients to look at relationships as the ultimate path to their personal growth and transformation. You can’t directly see what you are doing in relationships, that’s a bit like trying to see the nose on your own face. But you can view everything that happens in your relationships as a reflection of your state of being rather than the state of the world or the state of the people around you.

You can use relationships as a mirror.

For example, if you are single and you are attracting no one to date, that is a mirror reflecting what is going on internally. No one to date is a reflection of your thoughts and feelings about dating and having a relationship.

In this case what is being reflected is typically fear. This could be fear of getting hurt, either emotionally or physically, or fear of being rejected or abandoned.

In another example, if you are in a relationship and your partner calls you names and you try to soothe him or her, that is a mirror of your state of being as well. What is reflected in the mirror is that you somehow think abuse is part of being in a relationship, or you think you have no other relationship options.

Do you see that you can use relationships with others as a mirror to see where you can work on yourself and grow, unlocking more, opening more, blooming into the wonderful person that you are?

The more you use relationships as a tool for personal growth, the freer you are to be yourself, in both relationships and all areas of your life!