Before you consider your New Year’s Resolutions, it may be wise to look at what needs your attention right now, this very moment. Take a deep breath and ask yourself this question:

“Am I nurturing my relationships?”

If we’re not nurturing our present relationships on a regular basis, we are doomed to break up, divorce, disconnect and find ourselves wondering why we feel so alone!

Plants die when they are not watered. Relationships do too. It’s not that people are breaking their marriage vows, “Til Death Do Us Part”, the relationship actually does die and people are leaving!

More important, if we’re not nurturing our relationship with OURSELVES, that’s exactly what we’ll attract…..PEOPLE WHO DON’T NURTURE THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THEMSELVES EITHER!!

And guess what?????

If your family and friends are not nurturing their relationship with themselves, they cannot nurture their relationship with you either!!!! It’s not brain science. It makes perfect sense!

Whether you know it or not, are aware of it or not, believe it or not, YOU ARE C0-CREATING Relationships and life experiences that match exactly how you feel about yourself and what you believe you deserve!!!!! OOOOUCH!!!!!! Maybe a few of you are cringing right about now…..

If you’re feeling unappreciated and unsupported, not getting your needs met and experiencing people that are non-reciprocal towards you, you’re in a dissatisfying relationship. And this dissatisfying relationship reflects how you feel about YOU and reflects your own level of self-care.

One of my clients, Joanie (which is not her real name for purposes of confidentiality), describes how horrified she was the night her husband came home from work, packed a couple of bags and informed her he was leaving. He’d been having an affair for over a year now and he wanted a divorce.

At the onset of our coaching relationship together, Joanie revealed to me that “She didn’t see the signs”. “I was shocked”, she told me. “The rug was pulled out from under me”, she said.

In time, I learned that Joanie spent most of her time in her corporate office or on the road for work. She confessed that her ‘workaholic ways’, a term she was initially resistant to hearing, left little time for her husband and family. Along with running herself ragged with an overfilled list of to do’s, being available 24/7 for everyone other than herself and her family, Joanie was feeling exhausted, depleted and always catching some kind of sickness that was going around at the time. She put on weight, forgot how to exercise and took fun out of her vocabulary.

Joanie told me that she firmly believed her unbalanced life and high salary afforded many things for her family and that it was her first priority. She became emotional as she remembered the vacation her family took every year, which was to the same resort in Mexico. With her Nanny in tow to care for the kids, her laptop and cell phone her constant companions, she spent most of her time on the veranda while her husband went off to island activities solo.

Joanie became emotional as she revealed how her parent’s relationship was all too familiar and that her father left her mother for another woman too.

Workaholics listen up: Have you ever considered that being there 24/7 for clients is more about an underlying fear of losing your job or if you’re self-employed, losing business to the competition???

Isn’t this what happened to Joanie?

There’s an inherent sabotage pattern for most of us that has us neglect ourselves and our needs for someone or something else we think we’ll deliver to us what it is we want.

A reformed People Pleaser myself, I’ve experienced that black cloud looming above that has us over do whatever it is to prove we can measure up. We are always seeking acceptance. For many of us, there’s unconscious, negative, limiting beliefs that has us fear the worst. You’ve all heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy. To makes matters worse, we actually train others to overly depend on us and that’s how we co-create the overly needy people we can’t catch a break from.

It’s arrogant to think that others cannot survive without us. Being overly nice is not being loving; this behavior dis-empowers the people who look to us for support and robs them of their independence and the lessons they deserve to learn.

It is great to give to others and it’s the greatest joy each human being will experience in their lifetime, but WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY WHAT WE DON’T HAVE TO GIVE.

Once we tend to our own needs and are filled up, balanced, rested and joyful, we become the most giving and loving we can be. And when we attract others that match how worthy we feel about ourselves, that’s healthy, joyful LOVE.

So where is Joanie now?

One month after her husband’s departure, Joanie was laid off from her job. She was devastated, angry and trying to make sense of why her world was falling apart while she believed she was doing the right thing.

Even though it was too late to salvage her marriage because her husband was unwilling, I supported Joanie in HEALING HER HEART and becoming aware of how she co-creates relationships in her life that are dissatisfying. Joanie gained clarity of how her own lack of self-care and feeling of unworthiness sabotaged everything she cared about. She can now see how she attracted both her dissatisfying marriage as well as the demise of the relationship. She admits too, that the job loss wasn’t surprising as the company had cutbacks all the time and owned up to her overworking for them as assurance that she wouldn’t become a victim.

Today, Joanie is grateful for these overt wake-up calls in her life, because it had her finally take a brutally honest look at her unbalanced life. Today, she is thriving at a job she feels passionate about, spends quality time with her children, feels healthier, more alive and is even dating a new love interest.

NURTURE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS NOW!!!! Make this one of your New Year’s Resolutions for 2016!! It starts with YOU!!!! Once you do, you’ll see you have more to give to others and others will give back too!!!!

Wishing you all a very Happy and Healthy Holiday Season!!