Relationships are tough to manage. That’s why I don’t manage them, I invest in them. That’s the only way a relationship should be looked at; an investment. If you try to manage it, you’ll end stepping all over yourself because you’re only making decisions about what benefits yourself.

All decisions you make with regards to the relationship with someone else must be with the intentions that you are investing in something else, or in other words, beyond yourself.

There are two sides to this. One is a nourishing investment, and the other is a constructive investment. Both types are evolved out of love for that person or other people involved in the same circle.

1. Let’s begin with the Constructive; of course this one is the most painful sometimes because you have to make constructive decisions that invest towards the betterment of someone’s or some people’s wrong doing or wrong way of living. Again, this type of investment is out of love and it’s not about you.

I’ve had to encounter this situation in my life before and it doesn’t feel good especially if it involves close relatives. Sometimes you run into those situations where you don’t want to make a decision because it may hurt someone’s feeling and cause them to hate you for it, but regardless you know in your heart it’s for the better on all parties involved.

It’s for the better because you see the situation as long term. The short term benefit would have you appease the situation and the individual, but it provides no lasting value for them long term, and as a result it turns out worse in the end.

So constructively investing in others is an act of love, or as my dad used to say, “Tough love”.

2. The second one is Nourishing, and this one is easy to talk about, but even still it seems so hard to do because many people neglect this part almost unconsciously. It’s seems easier to just put aside the most meaningful things in our lives, such as our own families, for short term appeasing.

Whether it’s over-working, hanging out late and partying all the time when you have a family to love and nurture, or doing anything that keeps you away from the people that truly matter.

But regardless there are those two things again, “Short Term” and “Appeasing”. The people that matter are definitely long term investments, but if we’re always appeasing something else, or living in a “got to have it now” mentality so that what matters to the heart can wait just a little bit longer, then we’re going to really miss out on the true essence that life offers. Nothing is more important than the things you can’t buy with money.

You have to ask yourself the tough questions sometimes in order to get to the heart of what is really happening in your life. One of the biggest questions to start with is, “from a 30,000 foot view perspective of my life as a whole from young to old, what and who CAN I NOT live without; followed by what and who CAN I live without?”

Let that be the start of your prioritization for what truly matters to you and be completely honest with yourself.

Once you start living from that place or real importance, your life will rise to another level of reality, and you will begin doing things that are important for others right now for the purposes of creating life lasting impacts on your relationships and in the lives of others.

 

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