Why the relationship you have with yourself influences every other relationship in your life
Introduction
Relationships can be complicated. Few things in life bring us as much joy as the relationships we build with others, and few things can cause as much pain when they do not work out the way we hoped.
Throughout my life, I have experienced almost every type of relationship imaginable. I have had friendships that carried me through difficult times, acquaintances that changed the direction of my life, business relationships that created opportunities, and romantic relationships that taught me both valuable lessons and difficult truths. Some lasted for years. Some lasted only a season. Some strengthened me. Others challenged me in ways I was not prepared for.
The thing about relationships is that they directly influence the quality of our lives. The people we surround ourselves with impact our mindset, our habits, our beliefs, our confidence, and even the direction we travel through life. Whether we realize it or not, relationships shape who we become.
But before we talk about investing in friendships, family, romantic relationships, or professional connections, we need to start with the most important relationship of all:
The relationship we have with ourselves.
The Relationship With Yourself
Before we can invest in our relationships with others, we must first invest in the relationship we have with ourselves.
That may sound strange at first. After all, when most people think about relationships, they think about friends, family, coworkers, or romantic partners. Rarely do we stop and consider the relationship we have with the person staring back at us in the mirror each morning.
The truth is that relationship influences every other relationship in our lives.
I know for years I really disliked the person I saw in the mirror. After all, I knew his every thought and the reason behind every action he took. That is the thing about the relationship we have with ourselves: there is nowhere to hide from the truth. We can fool other people. We can justify our choices. We can make excuses. But at the end of the day, we know whether we are living in alignment with our values or not.
Looking back, much of that discomfort came from a lack of self-respect. And when we do not respect ourselves, we often tolerate disrespect from others. If we do not value ourselves, we seek validation from people who have not earned the right to give it. If we do not trust ourselves, we constantly look to others to make decisions for us.
The way we think about ourselves influences the standards we set, the boundaries we establish, and the people we allow into our lives.
For years, I struggled with this concept. Like many people, I spent time looking outward for things that could only be built internally. I wanted respect before I had earned my own. I wanted confidence before I had developed competence. I wanted fulfillment without first doing the work required to become someone I could genuinely be proud of.
What I eventually learned is that self-respect is not something you find. It is something you build.You build it every time you keep a promise to yourself. You build it every time you do the right thing when no one is watching. You build it every time you choose discipline over comfort, responsibility over excuses, and growth over complacency.
Confidence is not created by positive thinking alone. Confidence is created through evidence. It is built through actions repeated consistently over time. Every workout completed, every commitment honored, every difficult conversation faced, and every setback endured becomes proof that you are capable of more than you once believed.
Over time, those actions begin to change the way you see yourself. They become evidence that you can trust yourself to do what you say you will do.
It took years of hard work before I could look in the mirror while brushing my teeth at night and feel proud of the man looking back at me. On the nights I actually remembered to brush them.
The relationship we have with ourselves is also reflected in the way we speak to ourselves. Many people would never speak to a friend the way they speak to themselves after making a mistake. They magnify their failures, minimize their accomplishments, and allow a single setback to define their identity.
Growth requires honesty, but honesty and self-condemnation are not the same thing.
We should be willing to acknowledge our flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses. In fact, personal responsibility requires it. However, we should also recognize that mistakes are events, not identities. Failure is something we experience. It is not who we are. Yet sometimes it is easier to accept our failures as part of our identity than it is to do the work necessary to change.
When we begin treating ourselves with both accountability and respect, something powerful happens. We stop looking for other people to complete us. We stop expecting others to fix problems that belong to us. We stop making relationships responsible for providing what should already exist within us.
One of the best books I have read on this subject is Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima. The book explores the connection between self-worth, confidence, and the tendency to seek validation from external sources. One of its most valuable lessons is that our value does not come from other people’s opinions, achievements, or approval. It comes from recognizing our own worth and learning to trust ourselves.
Healthy relationships are built between two whole people, not two people hoping the other will fill a void.
That is why investing in yourself is not selfish. It is one of the most important investments you can make. The stronger your relationship with yourself becomes, the stronger every other relationship in your life has the potential to be.
Emotional Investment
Physical health influences how we feel. Mental growth influences how we think. Emotional health influences how we respond.
Life has a way of testing us. Things rarely go exactly according to plan. Relationships end. Opportunities fall apart. Businesses struggle. People disappoint us. We make mistakes. We experience setbacks that we never saw coming.
The question is not whether adversity will find us. The question is how we will respond when it does.
For much of my life, I allowed emotions to dictate my decisions. If I was frustrated, I reacted. If I was discouraged, I withdrew. If I was angry, I looked for someone or something to blame. Other times, I made excuses for others and accepted blame that was not mine because, deep down, I already hated myself. It was easier to believe I deserved the pain than to believe I deserved better.
Like many people, I spent years believing that my feelings accurately reflected reality. I lived a reactive lifestyle.
What I eventually learned is that feelings are real, but they are not always reliable. In fact, they rarely have been in my life.
Our emotions provide valuable information, but they do not always tell us the truth. Our emotions are tied to our beliefs, our desires, and our perspectives, not always to reality.
Our emotions provide valuable information, but they do not always tell us the truth. Our emotions are ties to our beliefs, our desires, and our perspectives and not always to the truth.
Fear can convince us that we are incapable when we are fully capable. Doubt can convince us to quit when success may be just beyond the next challenge. Anger can convince us that retaliation is justified when patience would serve us better. Sadness can convince us that a difficult season will last forever when, in reality, it is only temporary.
One of the most important lessons I have learned is that emotional maturity is not the absence of emotion. Emotional maturity is the ability to experience emotions without allowing them to control your actions.
There is nothing wrong with feeling disappointment, grief, frustration, or fear. Those emotions are part of the human experience. The danger comes when we allow temporary emotions to make permanent decisions.
The emotionally healthy person is not someone who never struggles. It is someone who can acknowledge what they feel while remaining committed to their values, responsibilities, and long-term goals.
This is where resilience is built. Resilience is not created when life is easy. It is created when life is difficult and we choose to keep moving forward anyway. Every setback contains a lesson. Every disappointment contains an opportunity for growth. Every challenge gives us the chance to become stronger, wiser, and more capable than we were before.
That does not mean we should ignore pain or pretend everything is fine when it isn’t. It means we learn to process difficult emotions without becoming trapped by them.
Some of the most important growth in my life came from experiences I would never choose to repeat. Failures taught me humility. Mistakes taught me accountability. Heartbreak taught me perspective. Adversity taught me resilience.
Looking back, many of the experiences I once viewed as obstacles became some of my greatest teachers. Pain, after all, is often life’s greatest catalyst for change.
Emotional investment requires us to do the difficult work of understanding ourselves. It requires honesty about our strengths and weaknesses. It requires us to confront the stories we tell ourselves and question whether they are actually true.
Most importantly, it requires us to recognize that while we cannot always control what happens to us, we can control how we respond.
And over time, those responses become our character.
Romantic Relationships
Few things in life have the ability to bring us as much joy—or as much pain—as romantic relationships.
Throughout my life, I have experienced relationships that were healthy and relationships that were not. I have experienced connection, heartbreak, hope, disappointment, and everything in between. If I am going to be completely honest I am not sure I can honestly say I have experienced real connection. I have had moments of feeling in sync with my partner but they were always brief and incomplete. They were based on shared moments and never true understanding. For a long time, I believed that finding the right person would somehow complete me or fill the areas of my life that felt empty.
What I eventually learned is that no relationship can do that.
Healthy relationships are not built between two people looking for someone else to fix them. They are built between two people who have taken responsibility for their own growth, healing, and happiness.
One of the biggest mistakes I made was tying too much of my self-worth to whether someone chose me. And what I have learned is that I never allowed anyone to know me well enough to truly choose me. When a relationship ended, I often viewed it as a reflection of my value rather than simply recognizing that not every relationship is meant to last forever.
Over time, I came to understand that another person’s decision does not determine my worth. Some people will walk beside us for a season. Some will stay for a lifetime. Others will leave lessons that help us become better versions of ourselves.
Investing in yourself means becoming the kind of person who can participate in a healthy relationship rather than depending on a relationship to make you whole. It means developing confidence, emotional maturity, self-respect, and purpose before asking another person to share their life with you.
Ironically, the healthier my relationship with myself became, the healthier my relationships with others became as well. I stopped looking for someone to complete me and started looking for someone who could walk beside me while we both continued to grow. IU started to want to be the one that could be there for her. I started wanting to understand rather than be understood.
The strongest relationships are not built on need. They are built on mutual respect, trust, shared values, and two people who have already learned how to stand on their own.
Some relationships help us grow. Others teach us lessons through pain. While those lessons are not always pleasant, they are often valuable. One of the hardest truths to accept is that not every relationship is meant to last forever. Some people enter our lives for a season. Some enter for a reason,
Some remain for a lifetime.
The value of a relationship should not be measured solely by its duration. Many relationships leave lasting lessons even when they do not become permanent.
Sometimes relationships teach us about patience. Sometimes they teach us about forgiveness. Sometimes they teach us about boundaries. Sometimes they teach us about self-worth. And sometimes they teach us that walking away is healthier than staying. And sometimes letting go actually allows the relationship the room it needs to grow.
The end of a relationship does not automatically mean it was a failure. If it helped us grow, gain perspective, or better understand ourselves, there may still be value in the experience.
Ultimately, healthy romantic relationships are not built on dependency. They are built on partnership. Two people choosing to walk through life together. Two people supporting one another’s growth. Two people bringing value to each other’s lives while remaining responsible for their own happiness, choices, and personal development. The strongest relationships are not built by people looking for someone to complete them. They are built by people who are already committed to becoming the best version of themselves and choose to share that journey with someone else
The People Around You
Whether we realize it or not, the people around us influence nearly every aspect of our lives.
They influence the way we think.
They influence the standards we accept.
They influence the habits we develop.
They influence what we believe is possible.
Human beings are social creatures. We are constantly learning from, adapting to, and being shaped by our environment. Over time, the people we spend the most time with begin influencing our attitudes, behaviors, priorities, and expectations.
This influence can work for us or against us.
Spend enough time around people who are consistently negative, irresponsible, and unwilling to take ownership of their lives, and eventually some of those attitudes may begin affecting your own thinking.
Spend enough time around people who are disciplined, growth-oriented, and committed to becoming better, and their influence may begin elevating your standards.
That is why choosing who we allow into our lives is one of the most important decisions we make.
This does not mean surrounding ourselves only with people who agree with us. In fact, some of the most valuable relationships in our lives are with people who challenge our thinking and encourage us to see situations from a different perspective.
What matters is whether the people around us encourage growth or reinforce stagnation.
The truth is that not every relationship is healthy.
Some relationships drain our energy.
Some encourage poor decisions.
Some keep us attached to versions of ourselves we have worked hard to leave behind.
Some become so familiar that we fail to recognize the damage they are causing.
Learning to recognize unhealthy relationships requires honesty and self-awareness.
Just as importantly, we must learn to recognize the people who make us better.
The friend who tells us the truth when we need to hear it.
The mentor who shares wisdom gained through experience.
The family member who supports us during difficult seasons.
The people who celebrate our victories without jealousy and stand beside us during our failures without judgment.
Those relationships are valuable beyond measure.
Very few people achieve meaningful change completely on their own. We all need relationships that encourage us, challenge us, and hold us accountable.
This is still an area where I have room to grow. Building meaningful relationships takes time, trust, consistency, and vulnerability. Those are things I am still learning.
If you want to change your life, take an honest look at your environment.
The people you surround yourself with today will have a significant influence on the person you become tomorrow.
At the same time, remember that your influence matters too. You may be the person who helps someone else recognize what is possible. Your encouragement, example, or willingness to believe in them may open a door they could not open alone.
Choose your relationships carefully, but also choose to become the kind of person whose presence makes the lives of others better.
Business and Professional Relationships
We have all heard that careers are built through hard work, dedication, education, and experience. All of those things matter. But the reality is that the relationships we form along the way can be just as important, and sometimes even more influential.
Opportunities often come through the recommendations of others. A supervisor may recommend us for greater responsibility. A coworker may connect us with someone who needs our experience. A former client may remember how we treated them and open a door years later. Even a competitor may recognize our character, professionalism, and ability.
There may be no stronger recommendation than the respect of a competitor.
When the people competing for the same business know who we are, trust our work, and speak well of us, it says something powerful about the reputation we have built. It means our character has become visible beyond the people who directly benefit from our success.
A strong professional reputation is not created through a résumé alone. It is built through consistency, honesty, reliability, and the way we treat people when there is nothing immediate to gain.
People remember whether we returned the call.
They remember whether we kept our word.
They remember whether we accepted responsibility when something went wrong.
They remember whether we treated them with respect when there was no sale, promotion, or personal advantage attached to the interaction.
That is why business relationships should never be viewed only as transactions. Every interaction contributes to the reputation we are building. A customer may become a referral source. A coworker may become a future business partner. A manager may become a mentor. A competitor may one day send us an opportunity they are unable to handle themselves.
We rarely know which relationship will open the next door.
This does not mean networking with people only because of what they may be able to do for us. The strongest professional relationships are built when both people bring value. They are built through trust, mutual respect, shared effort, and a willingness to help without always expecting an immediate return.
The relationships we form throughout our careers can create opportunities that education and experience alone may never reach. Hard work prepares us for opportunity, but relationships are often what bring that opportunity to our door.
Investing in professional relationships means becoming someone others can trust, recommend, and confidently attach their own reputation to. When we build that kind of credibility, our name can enter rooms before we do.
Friendship and Community
In a world that has never been more connected, many people have never felt more alone.
I have seen families sitting together at the dinner table while everyone looks at a phone instead of talking to one another. We can communicate instantly with people across the world, share our lives online, follow the accomplishments of others, and remain in contact with hundreds of people.
Yet loneliness continues to affect people of every age and background.
The reason is simple.
Communication is not the same as connection.
Human beings were created for relationships. We were never meant to go through life entirely alone. Periods of solitude can be healthy and even necessary for personal growth, but long-term isolation often comes at a cost.
One lesson I have learned is that it is possible to be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone.
When we are disconnected from ourselves, we often struggle to connect honestly with those around us.
Loneliness is not always the absence of people. More often, it is the absence of meaningful connection.
We need people who know us.
People who understand what we are going through.
People who can celebrate our victories without jealousy and support us through difficult seasons without judgment.
But being known requires something from us too. We must be willing to let people in. We must be willing to give trusted people access to our thoughts, feelings, fears, and experiences.
That does not mean revealing everything to everyone. It means allowing the right people the opportunity to know who we really are.
Meaningful relationships provide something success, money, and achievement can never replace.
They provide belonging.
Some of the most important people in our lives may never receive public recognition for the role they play.
The friend who calls just to check on us.
The family member who shows up when we need help.
The mentor who offers wisdom when we face a difficult decision.
The person who simply listens when we need someone to talk to.
These moments may seem small, but their impact can be enormous.
One of the greatest myths surrounding success is the belief that successful people accomplish everything on their own.
Personal responsibility matters, but very few people achieve meaningful things without support from others along the way.
Behind most accomplishments are friends, mentors, family members, teachers, coaches, business partners, and others who offered encouragement, opportunity, accountability, or guidance when it was needed most.
Community does not eliminate hardship.
It does, however, make hardship easier to carry.
Likewise, success becomes more meaningful when we have people with whom we can share it.
As we grow older, friendships often require more intentional effort. Careers become demanding. Families become busy. Responsibilities increase. Without realizing it, many people begin investing less and less time in building and maintaining meaningful relationships.
Relationships follow the same principle as most worthwhile things in life.
They require investment.
Friendship requires effort.
Trust requires consistency.
Connection requires time.
Strong communities are built when people choose to show up for one another repeatedly.
Investing in friendship and community is not a distraction from building a successful life.
It is part of building a successful life.
At the end of the day, few accomplishments will ever be as meaningful as having people in your life who genuinely care about you and whom you genuinely care about in return.
Boundaries
Healthy relationships require compassion, patience, forgiveness, and understanding.
They also require boundaries.
For much of my life, I misunderstood boundaries. At times, I saw them as rejection or punishment. At other times, I failed to establish them because I was afraid someone would leave if I said no, expressed a need, or refused to accept certain behavior.
But boundaries are not walls designed to keep everyone out.
They are standards that define what we are willing to accept, what we are responsible for, and how we expect to be treated.
A boundary says, “I care about this relationship, but I also recognize my responsibility to protect my values, well-being, and self-respect.”
Without boundaries, resentment begins to grow.
We say yes when we want to say no.
We take responsibility for problems that do not belong to us.
We tolerate behavior that conflicts with our values.
We repeatedly sacrifice our peace because we are afraid that protecting it will make us appear selfish.
But constantly abandoning ourselves to keep someone else comfortable is not love. It is often fear.
Healthy boundaries require clarity. They require us to communicate honestly about what we need and what we cannot accept. They also require consistency. A boundary that is repeatedly stated but never enforced eventually becomes only a suggestion.
This does not mean becoming rigid, unforgiving, or unwilling to compromise. Relationships require flexibility. People make mistakes. Circumstances change. Grace is essential.
But grace does not require us to accept repeated disrespect, dishonesty, manipulation, or behavior that continuously damages our lives.
Boundaries also help us understand where our responsibility ends.
We can encourage someone without doing their work for them.
We can support someone without carrying every consequence of their decisions.
We can forgive someone without immediately restoring the same level of access they once had.
We can love someone and still recognize that distance may be necessary.
Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do for another person is stop protecting them from the consequences they need to face.
Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves is stop confusing loyalty with the obligation to remain in a harmful situation.
Establishing boundaries may disappoint people who benefited from our lack of them. That does not automatically mean the boundary is wrong.
The purpose of a boundary is not to control another person. It is to take responsibility for our own decisions and actions.
We cannot force another person to speak respectfully, behave honestly, or honor our values. But we can decide what access that person will have to our time, energy, trust, and life.
Learning to establish healthy boundaries is part of learning to respect ourselves.
It also gives our relationships a better chance to grow because honesty creates a stronger foundation than fear, obligation, or resentment ever could.
Faith, Purpose, and Connection
There comes a point in life when we begin asking deeper questions.
Why am I here?
What is my purpose?
What am I working toward?
What gives my life meaning?
Relationships, achievements, and personal growth all contribute to a fulfilling life. But many people eventually discover that those things are not enough on their own.
Success without purpose can feel empty.
Accomplishment without meaning can leave us wondering why we worked so hard in the first place.
For me, faith has become an important part of answering those questions.
Faith provides something circumstances often cannot.
My faith has allowed me to navigate some of the darkest periods of my life. There have been seasons when I was in a place nobody else could reach. I was so hurt and so broken that I felt beyond the reach of anyone outside myself.
But I believe God lives within me, so even in those moments, He was there.
When I could not carry myself forward, He carried me.
It was His love that saved me, and it still does.
This is my belief, and I do not want to imply that it must be yours. But I do believe everyone needs faith in something that does not waver when everything else does.
Life is constantly changing.
Relationships come and go.
Careers evolve.
Financial situations improve and decline.
Plans succeed and fail.
When we place all of our hope in things that can change, we often find ourselves shaken when those things inevitably do.
Faith provides an anchor during those seasons.
It reminds us that our value is not determined by our successes or failures. It reminds us that our purpose is greater than any single achievement or setback. It reminds us that difficult seasons are often temporary and that growth is frequently found within adversity.
Faith also changes the way we view relationships.
When we understand that every person has value, we become more willing to extend grace, patience, forgiveness, and compassion. We begin seeing relationships not only as opportunities to receive support, but also as opportunities to serve, encourage, and help others.
In many ways, faith and community go hand in hand.
We are not meant to carry every burden alone.
We are not meant to face every challenge in isolation.
One of the greatest gifts of a healthy faith community is the reminder that we are part of something larger than ourselves. During difficult seasons, that support can provide strength when our own confidence begins to waver.
Faith also helps protect us from becoming consumed by ourselves.
Personal growth is important.
Building a better life is important.
But when everything revolves around our own desires, accomplishments, and achievements, it becomes easy to lose perspective.
Faith reminds us that life is not solely about what we can gain.
It is also about what we can contribute.
It is about how we treat people.
How we serve others.
How we respond when life becomes difficult.
How we carry ourselves when no one is watching.
Ultimately, faith provides a foundation that extends beyond circumstances.
It offers hope during uncertainty, strength during adversity, and purpose during seasons when the path forward is unclear.
While each person’s journey may look different, having something greater than ourselves to believe in can become one of the most valuable investments we ever make.
Conclusion
If I am being honest, relationships are still an area of my life that needs work.
I have come a long way, but the farther I travel down this path, the more I realize how much I still have to learn about building healthy relationships.
What I am beginning to understand is that my happiness, validation, and sense of worth cannot come entirely from another person.
They must first be built within me.
No relationship can fill a void I am unwilling to confront myself.
I cannot be something for someone else that I am not first willing to be for myself. I cannot expect someone to love, respect, trust, or understand me if I have not begun learning to offer those things to myself.
Every relationship starts here.
With me.
The relationship I have with myself influences every other relationship in my life. It affects how I love, how I communicate, how I handle conflict, how I establish boundaries, and how I show up for the people I care about.
Investing in yourself is not selfish.
It is one of the most important things you can do for yourself and for the people around you.
The healthier we become, the healthier our relationships have the potential to become.
That journey begins when we stop asking other people to do the work that belongs to us and decide to begin the work within ourselves first.