Find Peace Within Yourself
“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” — Wayne Dyer
Your relationship with yourself is the most important one you will ever foster in your life.
I don’t mean to underscore other relationships, yet it all starts and ends with you.
Everyone wants to be liked and accepted. It is human nature to fit in and integrate.
If you act unconsciously without being mindful of your intentions, you are carrying out unconscious commands.
If you haven’t reconciled these thoughts, they are likely to dictate your life. If you set a software program to run at a particular time of day, it will continue to do so until you override the function.
You are the user of your thoughts.
If you are not receiving the love and respect you deserve, I encourage you to look inwards and heal those thoughts not in alignment with the relationships you want to attract.
Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len is a Hawaiian psychologist who used an ancient Hawaiian method called Ho’oponopono, based on reconciliation and forgiveness to heal an entire ward of criminally insane patients.
He did this without meeting them or being in the same room as them, but by repeating the mantra: “I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you.”
That is, he healed himself first. The premise is that when he reconciled and forgave parts of himself, the entire ward of patients healed.
Whilst I acknowledge this might sound farfetched, I’ve read many books, articles and watched countless footage of this practice and seen how powerful it is.
The point I wish to emphasise is, when you find peace within yourself, outside circumstances will reflect that.
Have you met people consumed by their victimhood and believe their relationship problems stem from being treated badly?
One needs only tune in to reality TV and within minutes you’ll overhear conversations of people being undermined.
Place A Value On Your Self-Worth
“The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To draw a simple analogy. Consider a sharp stone lodged in your shoe while you walk around consumed by the pain. No matter who you meet, whether or not they are pleasant, your focus is drawn to the pain, not your interactions with them.
By removing the stone, you realise how it was blemishing your interactions with people. The pain affected your relationship with them because it made it difficult to be fully present and engaged.
This is what many people do.
They are unaware of carrying unresolved emotional baggage and use it as a shield to defend themselves. Yet, the shield does little to protect them but discolour their interaction with others.
Author Matt Kahn explains in Whatever Arises, Love That: A Love Revolution That Begins With You that we must develop self-honesty before we can become aware of how we want others to treat us: “Before you can be honest in the presence of another, it is essential to learn how to be honest with yourself. This requires a courageous depth of integrity to become aware of how you want others to treat you, so that you can be that way for others whether or not they’re able to do so in return for you.”
I often repeat this message in seminars and when coaching clients. I don’t take credit for it and believe it was the late Dr. Wayne Dyer who first coined the phrase. I only remind people of its power: “You constantly coach people how to treat you.”
It means: if you allow others to treat you unfairly, it signifies on an unconscious level that you feel unworthy.
Whilst you realise it is unacceptable, you feel vindictive because you didn’t stand up for yourself. You might blame the other person for treating you wrongly and they may have done so.
However, a person with a strong self-worth recognises the behaviour as unjust and respectfully disallows it.
Being assertive does not involve being mean spirited, it means valuing your self-worth and upholding this as a reminder to others.
The key is to recognise deceitful behaviour and not allow others to treat you dishonestly. This happens when you maintain a healthy relationship with yourself by placing value on your self-worth.
Matt Kahn says treating others with respect because of their inability to treat you well has more to do with the relationship they have with themselves: “In the heart of surrender, treating people far better than they treat you becomes an acceptable way to live, especially because their inability to treat you well has nothing to do with you, but reflects the kind of relationship they have with themselves.”
What You Become Is Reflected In Your Destiny
“You set the standards for how you will be treated. People will treat you the exact way you treat yourself. So be good to you. Take time for yourself. Rest. Play. Shower yourself with affection, support, and gifts.” — Iyanla Vanzant
Nowadays, I appreciate the congruence of a person’s word and their actions. I assess people by their deeds and will give them the benefit of the doubt on more than one occasion.
However, if they undermine my faith, I’m likely to walk away from the relationship, irrespective of whether I aim to profit from it, financially or otherwise.
I hold no hostile relationships with people because I make it my intention to treat others as I would treat myself. And because I treat myself in high esteem, I foster this behaviour in all my relationships.
You see it comes down to values.
You must be purposeful about what you value in your life. I’m not talking about a career, relationships or life purpose but the values you live by.
“Although all values are considered worthy and important to most people, values vary in how important they are to each person. The more important a value is, the more likely people are to act in ways that allow them to express it and attain the goals underlying it,” write authors Sonia Roccas and Lilach Sagiv in Values and Behavior: Taking a Cross Cultural Perspective.
What code of conduct do you abide by?
Is it: loyalty, trust, respect or moral character?
What you uphold is what you become and what you become is reflected in your destiny. You are continually writing the script of your future via your thoughts and actions, irrespective of your awareness.
If you would like others to treat you better, firstly examine any unresolved conflicts within yourself.
“The catalyst of rejection is life’s way of reminding you how other people are not always created to treat you better than you treat yourself,” affirms Matt Kahn.
Self-enquiry and journaling are powerful methods to help you heal unresolved conflicts, so is working with a trained therapist.
To make peace and transform your unconscious thoughts means to develop a wholesome relationship with yourself. Your interactions and relationships become more relatable instead of hostile.
You are no longer at war with yourself and this is mirrored in your relationships.
Release and renew is a mantra I have emphasised in recent articles.
To change the foundations of your life, let go of the old and tired and create the ideal conditions for the life you wish to merge into.
After all, people treat you according to the way you unconsciously treat yourself.
As leadership expert John C. Maxwell writes in Your Road Map For Success: You Can Get There from Here: “If you want others to treat you more kindly, you must develop better people skills. There is no sure way to make other people in your environment improve.”
It is by making the unconscious conscious that you come to develop healthy relationships that originate from your authentic self.
Originally published at Medium