People spend enormous amounts of time and energy managing their relationships with other people. What people think of them. Whether they are liked, respected, included. The fear of rejection and the need to be approved shape entire lives.

 

Nobody tells you that the most important relationship in your life is the one you have with yourself.

 

Not in the care you have for yourself in your instagram captions. In a deeper, more fundamental way.

 

Your mind is what narrates your life and chooses your life path if you let it. Does it encourage you when things are hard or does it add to the pile? Does it remind you of your strength or document your failures? Does it speak to you with the same patience and kindness you would offer to someone you love?

 

For most people the answer is no.

 

I spent years of my life with an enemy in my head, and it was relentlessly difficult. Every mistake was evidence of permanent failure and discourage. Every failure was proof that I should not have tried. Every comparison with other people was another reason to feel behind, broken, less than.

 

That mind built nothing and cost me my mental health.

 

The work of building a better relationship with your own mind is the most important work you will ever do. Not because it makes you feel good — though it does. But because every decision you make, every risk you take, every thing you build or fail to build, passes through that relationship first.

 

If the mind tells you that you are not capable, you will not try.

If the mind tells you that failure is permanent, you will not recover.

If the mind tells you that you are different in a way that puts you down, you will not begin.

 

Change the voice and you change everything.

 

This is not therapy. This is not affirmations. This is the practical, unglamorous, daily work of catching the thought, questioning it and choosing a different response. Over and over. Until the new response becomes automatic.

 

Your mind is either your biggest enemy or your best friend.

 

Which one it becomes is up to you.

 

Ralph Wisdom