Your Pit Crew: Part 2
Leveraging negative relationships to boost resilience and growth
It is easy to assume that only positive relationships are good for our development as individuals. Quite the contrary. If anything, life teaches us that there is a lot of learning and growing that happens in difficult, unwanted spaces.
Two other metaphors that have helped me to process negative, but useful relationships in my past are described below:
Weights
They hold you down, they slow your pace. It always feels easier to do without them, to avoid them altogether. However, sitting in the space of resistance against these weights is how we build strength. You have to be able to push back, not wildly, or violently because that’s bad form and does not contribute to your solidity.
Weights demand engagement and intentionality. You must lean in.
Also, as I have learned from so many “lifters” — you never really know how much you can carry. We can all dig deep. However, there’s a limit somewhere.
Ovens
Another obvious but helpful metaphor. They turn up the heat on you…as the heat rises, so does the pressure ( I think there is a law in physics for this). The thing about heat is that it changes your form — the technical term is denaturing. I’ve never really agreed with the word because it carries a negative connotation. What Biochemists call denaturing, I call transformation. Seeing as raw eggs are not my cup of tea, I am glad to have them denatured all day by the heat that turns them into omelets.
The point is that all that heat (and pressure) helps transform you into a finished state. I guess the trick is to get out before you get burnt?
Again, I must reiterate that these metaphors are imperfect. They only provide a rough framework for understanding some of our more difficult relationships.
