Your most important relationship 

The quality of your life is dependent more on the quality of your relationship with yourself and less on the quality of your relationship with others.

Many people feel inferior, insecure and incomplete thanks to upbringing, social media and parental and peer pressure. Hence much of their happiness and reason for existence is linked to relationships with others.

Don’t get me wrong- I’m not suggesting you become a hermit or a sociopath. Far from it. Relationships potentially have the immense power to inspire, to improve, to comfort, to heal etc. and as a former trainer and as an executive coach and mentor I have seen that many times at close range. You should have good relationships. But that’s NOT the starting point.

Because unless you’re ok with yourself, unless you’ve accepted your values, traits, beliefs & behaviors, unless you’ve accepted your flaws and mistakes, no number of friendships or relationships will suffice. You have to also understand that these are what makes you unique.

Importantly, your attitude towards yourself will show in your attitude to others.

How do you get to being comfortable with yourself? From personal experience:

1. Always seeing the big picture (short life, mortality etc.).
2. Finding and leveraging your values and strengths to the MAX.
3. Not obsessing on your weaknesses.
4. Doing something you love.
5. Repeated success based on 2, 3 and 4 above which will also give you confidence.
6. Comparing yourself with no one. You’re unique so why bother?
7. Practicing gratitude. Many of us have a good life with decent potential and we don’t even recognize it, obsessed as we are with the “positives” of others and our “negatives”.

Know your values and worth. Celebrate it even.

Above all, be comfortable with who you are.