Relationship Woes or Cognitive Bias or Both?

I’ve been reminded of late, how difficult relationships actually are. Every way you turn, someone, somewhere is struggling with relationships. It feels to me at the moment, a lot of these struggles are being experienced within our very personal relationships, so those of husband and wife, sister and brother, mother and daughter etc.

Within the work that I do, I am exposed on a daily basis to the challenges of my clients and have very similar feeds coming through on my facebook feed, and in my striving to help everyone come to understand where they are and why they’re going through these particular difficult or dark times, I’ve become so deeply aware, that these challenges, struggles – call them what you will – are so much more multi-faceted and deeply layered, than they appear to be at first glance.

Take as an example a young married couple finding it hard to connect – she’s going through some inner issues of her own and so is he. And the big challenge here is that within the getting wrapped up in your own issues, it’s so difficult for you to see, or more importantly, empathise, with what the other person is going through. And so the feelings of disconnect start to creep in.

I’m constantly reminded by my Spirit Guide, Oshvaria, how much our perceptions create our realities. We are bombarded by our inner dialogue, daily, hourly, minute by minute. It’s a voice that does not shut up! I feel like I cannot stress enough, how important inner or personal dialogue is! I cannot begin to stress enough, how important it is to always be completely honest, both with yourself and with others. So when it is that you’re feeling left out, or unloved, or unappreciated, or under-estimated, or marginalised – whatever those feelings are – that’s when it’s of absolute importance to our mental and physical wellbeing, as well as to the wellbeing of our relationship, to speak out about those feelings! Because, it is when we don’t, that we start those inner conversations with ourselves and essentially we end up causing so much more strife and inner turmoil for ourselves, if we just open up and talk about what it is that we’re going through or feeling.

When we’re open and honest and upfront with everything, I can categorically tell you, that we actually ease the pain that we cause ourselves, we decrease our sense of being unappreciated, unloved, uncared for etc etc. And why? Because we give the other person an opportunity to tell us how they feel. It gives us both an opportunity to fact-find. And it doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to tell us, that when we have the facts at our finger-tips, we can make 100% completely informed decisions.

When we allow our lives to be dictated through our perceptions, without any known facts, this is known as Cognitive Bias. A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own “subjective reality” from their perception of the input. An individual’s construction of reality, not the objective input, dictates their behaviour in the world. A cognitive bias is a type of error in thinking that occurs when people allow their judgments to be influenced by their own personal preferences, beliefs, or feelings. Just because we tell ourselves something that sounds like it makes sense, doesn’t mean that it’s true.

When we become aware of how cognitively biased we are, then we can begin to see how easily we can become our own worst enemies. And we can begin to see how extremely important communication is. By communication, I mean speaking honestly about something. Also important to remember is to speak honestly about something bothering us, at the time that it is occurring. Not waiting for 3 years before you bring it up in a heated argument where you leave the other person feeling like they’ve been living in another universe, let alone sharing a life with you!

Whether or not there’s some fancy scientific explanation or scientific name to explain how we behave, at the very basic level, is unimportant. What is important is that we understand how important relationships are – those that matter to us first and foremost, but also those that seem irrelevant – like the ones you have with your complex security guard, or the guy who cuts your grass vs your marriage partner or mother.

And if we’re layering everything here in this conversation, then I would say that your relationship with yourself, sits right at the very core of all these other relationships that branch out from you. If you are not completely and wholly connected to yourself, if you are not satisfied with who you are, if you are not always aware of your own behaviours and take responsibility for those behaviours, you are going to struggle with relationships outside of the one you have with yourself. The relationship you have with yourself is the single most important relationship that you will ever have. It is also the only relationship that you cannot get away from! But of course, we do try to get away from the relationship we have with ourself, when we disconnect. By disconnect I mean, when we fail to show up for ourselves, we see ourselves as victims in the world rather than as someone who is in control of their choices, their decisions, their behaviours, the very way that they show up in this world.

Try disconnecting the television cord from your television and then, plug that cord into the wall and see if you get your television to come on! The only way that you can watch your television is if it is connected on one side to the actual apparatus and on the other side, to the source of energy – electricity. It’s the same with yourself and any other relationship that you have. You have to be connected both ways, to yourself and to the other person. And if one of the wires in the power cord to your television is faulty, or not completely connected, you may find that sometimes your tv comes on and sometimes it doesn’t, or you get some kind of intermittent display on the screen. Again, same with you – if you’re only somewhat connected, you’re going to get an only somewhat return. It’s as simple as that.

I want to remind you all in closing, that I am working on putting together the most amazing workshop called Finding You where we will go through all these challenges that we’re faced with every day, and how within the midst of it all, you can still find yourself and build a relationship with yourself. Please, do contact me [email protected] or +27 82 570 6473, if you’d like to get more information or book your seat right now. I estimate that within the next month, I will be hosting this workshop along with my amazing friend and colleague Mariet Pretorius, so don’t delay.