Bridget McNulty

A cure for a bad friendship.

// September 8th, 2008 // Decisions, Inspiration, Life (and the living of it), Love

I’ll write about my lovely three day road trip soon, but for now I want to focus on something a little more personal…
I was thinking, while driving along those long empty roads (well, my man was doing the driving, I was gazing out the window and thinking!) about how to change the dynamic in a destructive relationship.

What happens when you really love someone, but you’ve fallen into an unhealthy pattern with them? I’m thinking of one friendship in particular, where we seem to antagonize each other to the point of frustration. I’ve tried being calm and zen, and it doesn’t work because I’m seething on the inside. I’ve tried arguing back, but that just makes the antagonism worse. And so, in despair (!) I’ve let the friendship take a back seat. But now I’d like to fix it….

One of the things I love most about my man is that he’s easy going. He just doesn’t seem to get bothered by little things – he doesn’t take offence and doesn’t let people’s erratic behaviour get to him. I want this! Especially in friendship. So I’ve decided to try and cultivate an easy-going attitude. Not a slacker attitude, you understand, but simply a more laidback approach to human relations.
The thing is that I can see that everyone is the star in their own drama, so everyone obviously has their own stuff going on even as they’re relating to you. But that doesn’t always help me to react in a more understanding way. It’s that reaction time that I want to improve on – instead of instantly reacting to something and letting it get under my skin, I want to be more easy-going and take a calmer, more balanced approach. This is my goal! For the next few months. I’ll let you know how it goes…

Interestingly, when I checked my email this morning I found the most amazing (and applicable) quote. Here it is:
“You don’t have to worry about what their vibration is if your vibration is one of connection. Because if your vibration is one of connection – you’re going to dominate the vibration. This is the way you learn your relationships. The thing that most people do not understand, is that you get to control the way you feel, because you get to choose the thoughts you think. Most people think that they only have the option of responding to the circumstances that surround them. And that’s what makes them attempt the impossible, which is to control the circumstances around them, which only feeds their feeling of frustration and vulnerability, because it doesn’t take very much life experience to discover you can’t control all of those circumstances. But you can control your vibration. And when you control your vibration, you’ve controlled everything that has anything to do with you.”

It’s from Esther and Jerry Hicks, check them out at http://www.abraham-hicks.com. I’m on their daily quote mailing list, and it’s really quite wonderful.
Isn’t it an interesting idea, though, that what makes us frustrated about interacting with others is our attempt to control the circumstances? When if we just accepted that the only thing we have power over is our vibration, how we feel in any situation, then everything would flow much easier… Which brings me back to cultivating easy-going-ness. If I can learn to react to situations in an easy-going way (i.e. control my vibration so I don’t get upset) then everything will flow.

What do you think? Is it doable? Can a sensitive emotional reactor learn the art of the easy going?