With this Meditation, let us do something fun. We’re going to do a simple (yet profound) visualization exercise that’s going to help us to get a clear picture of the relationships in our life – and what we might want to change about them.
First things first:
If the word “meditation” evokes an avalanche of resistance within you because it makes you think of spiritual mumbo-jumbo, just exchange it to the word “exercise”. Because that’s exactly what it is. An exercise to train your mind, rewire your thinking patterns and condition yourself in the process.
Today, you’ll get introduced to the habit of doing a Relationship-Meditation.
This Relationship-Meditation is a simple visualization exercise that will let you check in on your relationships, their needs – and yours. I developed this meditation myself and it has served me greatly over the years and continues to do so.
For this exercise there are only two rules:
Rule No. 1
The first rule is not to judge, only to witness. Relationships can be a big trigger for many of us. Through this exercise we will witness certain aspects of the relationships in our life. For it to work we only want to witness, not to judge.
Do not judge, only witness.
The second rule…we’ll talk about the second rule in a bit.
For now, let’s get back to the Relationship-Meditation itself.
Here’s how you do it:
Read the following text as many times as you have to, and as soon as you feel ready, put your device aside and try it on your own.
Close your eyes and visualize a cake.
Told you this was going to be fun. Yes, visualize a cake using your inner eye. Now start to think about the most important or time intensive relationships in your life.
Imagine every one of these relationships getting one piece of your cake.
Mind you, the different pieces are going to vary in size!
Every piece represents the amount of time and energy of your life that this relationship takes up – and keep in mind that you only have that one cake, not a single crumb more.
And don’t forget one crucial thing:
You yourself get one piece, too.
This piece of your own cake represents the time you have for yourself, your hobbies, time for self-care and inner wellbeing.
As soon as you have distributed your cake to all of your relationships, take a good look and reflect: which relationship gets how much cake? Are you happy with the distribution? Which pieces might be too big, which too small? Which relationship seems to be eating up your cake, not leaving enough for others? And…who has to go hungry?
What would you like to change?
What could you do to change?
Enter second rule:
Rule No. 2
If you do judge, which is likely to happen (it definitely happens to me all the time), forgive yourself. Give yourself an internal hug and move on. If it feels aligned, forgive others too. No harm done.
Be gentle with yourself.
Keep in mind why we are doing this exercise.
We want to witness the energetic states of the relationships in our lives and what we want and (realistically) can change in order to distribute the cake in a way we want to, not have to.
Now think about what changes you want to make.
Who should get less of your cake? Who should get more? What would make you happy?
It is as necessary as it is healthy to check in with our relationships here and there. Who’s getting how much of our time and energy – and if we’re actually happy with the results. This visualization meditation is a simple yet powerful tool and habit to practice.
Relationships are one of the most important things in our human lives. We want to check in with them here and there, instead of going through our lives on autopilot only to look back with regret one day.