Ep. 40 How to Love Difficult Family Members
With the holidays coming up, it seemed like a good time for a little conversation about loving difficult family members because don’t we all deal with this from time to time! It’s just the nature of family life to have some conflict and disagreements, but there’s a lot we can do to minimize the drama and approach it from the perspective of the person we truly want to be.
In this episode we cover:
How we can handle the problems that often arise with family members and how we can be our best selves in those situations
What to do when loved ones create drama
How exactly we can consciously choose who we want to be in those situations
How to create a loving environment around yourself so you bring positivity and warmth to the table
Listen below or wherever you listen to podcasts by searching the progress project. Listen on itunes by clicking here.
Our favorite ideas from the Episode
Ways to work on loving difficult family members:
You get to decide! “It’s okay for us to disagree, of course we disagree. I choose to love you anyway or I choose to not let that inform what I believe about you as a person. Choosing to believe the best of people, that they have the best intentions, even when they don’t act like it.”
Practicing apologizing quickly and forgiving quickly. (The alternative is being mad and feeling bad for longer.)
Taking care of yourself first!! If I’m not in a good place emotionally with myself, then I can’t do those things like forgive quickly and give the other person the benefit of the doubt.
Plan ahead! If you can think about the person that you want to be ahead of time and in every situation and have that in your mind, you know how you want to respond. Then you go into the situation with that idea of yourself in mind. That makes it easier to respond with intention instead of just reacting.
Focus on the kind of person YOU want to be! When you know the person you want to be, it’s easier to make decisions based on that, because of how you want to feel about yourself.
You get to be in charge of your own emotions…. You get to decide if you want to feel full of forgiveness. I can just decide, I like feeling like I’m a forgiving, kind person. So great, somebody wants to say something rude to me? That’s fine, it gives me an opportunity to feel forgiveness.
They might not change but the effort that you make to try and understand them a little more can help to soften their heart and if it doesn’t, then it can at least soften yours. -Laura
“I want people to feel a certain way about themselves when they’re around me... Loved or welcome or understood.” We can offer that to them for them with this energy we have around ourselves.” -Laura
Women particularly are reallly great at setting the tone… for some reason in a family and a home, if the mom is feeling great and calm, everybody usually else is too. Not to put more pressure on women than they already put on themsleves haha, but just that question, ‘What can I bring to the table, what can I offer to my loved ones, just by feeling the way I want to feel anyway?’
links mentioned in this episode:
Kristin’s Favorite Thing: BookRoo - A wonderful childrens book subscription!
Laura’s Favorite Thing: The incredible book Kristin gave Laura for her birthday! If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
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