Mehmad and I have been together for about 27 years, we've been married for almost 25. We have four children ranging in ages from 10 to 24, and one of the things I think that has kept us together is the fact that we never get bored of each other, but more importantly, we try not to take each other for granted, and when we are appreciate and grateful for our relationship, it keeps the little things in perspective.
The three areas of a relationship that I talk about in the book US are, your relationship with yourself, your relationship with other people, and your relationship with the divine. And my feeling is that, those three areas of relationship are inter-related and inseparable fundamentally because you can't love God by loving God randomly, you have to show that love through love to your neighbor, and you really can't love your neighbor unless you have a good sense of who you are, and love yourself.
I talk about parenting in the book, because it's one of our fundamental relationship, the familiar relationship, and I think it's really important, and for me, it has been a couple of big lessons that I have learnt through parenting. One is that, you've got to walk the talk, if you are telling your kids to live a certain way, and you're not living that way yourself, it's going to fall on deaf ears, and it's not going to have any impact on them.
The other is to actually be a parent. I think today there is the fear that too much discipline or boundaries makes you unpopular, and I think that it actually, even though the kid say they don't want it, they really do, and actually it makes the kids more secure and safe to know that they do have boundaries. On the opposite extreme of that, this phenomenon called helicopter parenting, where you're right on top of the kids all the time. I think it's really important to make sure that your kids have room to grow, can make their own mistakes, and can become their own person.
The single biggest mistake I make in all of my relationships and I think it's fairly common, I think most of us make this mistake is to think when we don't like something in another person that we can get them to change, that we can manipulate, cajole, bribe, coax, whatever it is, that we are as in our little bag of tricks to get the other person to change.
What I have come to realize after years of banging my head against the wall with my children, with my husband, with my friends, with my parents is that, in a relationship, if we wanted to be different, the only thing that we can do is change ourselves. For me, the takeaway from this book is that relationship matters.
I think we're a product of our relationships, none of us exist in isolation, who we're, who we can become is our manifest through our relationships. And for me relationships are a state we live in relationships. It's not something we own or possess because they are a part of us they are the very fabric of who we are.
1:25
