Managing Yourself in Relationships: Part 2 – Mastering the Return to Center
In this four part series, leadership and relationship expert Susan MacKenty Brady offers some hard-won advice about how best to manage yourself for optimal relationship success – at home and at work.
As you navigate your relationships, there is good news: you CAN fully manage yourself in ways that leave you happier, less stressed, even joyful. In Part 1 of this series (link here) I shared the essential first step to managing yourself – pausing to take a time out before you speak or repair or make a request. When we skip this important step of pausing, our actions are often suboptimal.
But that’s not all you need to do (ideally) before you speak up. You’ll also need to bring yourself back to this place called “center.”
Bringing Yourself Back to the “Center”: Relationship Wellness Advice
Once you’re calm and clear (and by the way, step one might take you a minute to breathe or a much more extended period for deeper contemplation), your next move – and this is essential – is to work yourself into compassion for yourself and others. In my first two books, I called this your “compassionate center.” Call it what you wish – but your center is the best part of you. It’s the part of you that knows and honors the best about yourself and knows and appreciates the best about the other person.
You know you’re at the center when you think respectful (even loving) thoughts about yourself and another. It is calm. It is abundant. It feels good. It is kind. It is generous. It is gentle. It is where we assume the best intention – our own and others. It is where forgiveness and love live. It’s wholehearted.
Being in center is a mindful and intentional practice and a place you can return to at any time you wish. If you need more about cultivating this place inside your head and heart, this might help.
My example of being confronted by a messy kitchen after a full day of work (and after leaving it spotless) and knowing my teens were the culprits, here is how returning to center works: I had to take pause (check! I didn’t freak out and turn into the eye of my own storm– verbally or via a nasty gram mean text.) Thank you, my pause / time-out friend!
When I paused, I needed to check in with myself about the intention of me teens. During the pandemic, and after returning to physical school, students were encouraged to go home for lunch if they were in walking distance to save on risk of mask less lunches. This going home mid-day has continued, and our home (a block from highschool) seems to be a lunch spot for not just my kids – but their friends too. During my pause, I thought “they likely were in a rush to get back” and “gosh, Susan, think about what they have been through in the last year+ with not one but several quarantines resulting in anxiety and sadness from social isolation.
I got compassionate. For the teens who destroyed my kitchen. Okay, maybe it was destroyed. The sink was full of dirty dishes, the dishwasher was full of clean dishes, and the counters were covered with crumbs and used disposable facemasks (the site of which makes me nuts. Oh the germs!) I HAD to get somewhat compassionate with my teens as I took pause. While I am intentionally doing the work of getting compassionate, I am by definition returning to my best self, rational – even respectful center.
Find out in Part 3 – Shifting Demands to Healthy Requests for how I managed from here.
In what relationship might you be able to infuse in your thoughts more compassion and respect for the other?
Susan MacKenty Brady is the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Chair for Women and Leadership at Simmons University in Boston and the CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership. She was previously president of the Relational Life Institute, where she worked closely with some of the brightest and most innovative minds in relationship and behavioral science. She currently serves as emeritus board member for Strong Women, Strong Girls and as board chair for Our.Love Company. The author of two well received books, Susan is the mother of two awesome teenage daughters who are learning about love and relationships just like she is.
