When pain, misery, or anger happen, it is time to look within you. Not around you.

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Your parents, spouses, and siblings are often your most difficult relationships. You know exactly how they work, inside and out. This has caused us to create our own filters for them over the years. We’ve begun to see them through our own filters, instead of who they truly are inside. In turn, this impacts our most difficult and long-lasting relationships in a negative manner.

It’s time to let go of the past experiences you’ve had with them, and all the negative pictures you may have painted of them. Turn their canvas blank and take a new look at the people you may have a difficult relationship with.

When humans feel progress, the pleasure centers in the brain get serotonin and dopamine hit.

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The Cliff Notes:

• Productivity is “how to do more shit.”
• Productivity develops personal responsibility.
• Progress can turn into addiction due to the triggers the pleasure center receives.
• There is no “out there,” only “within you.”
• Siblings and parents tend to be the most difficult relationships.
• Experiences taint the way you see others. You begin to see your “filter” of them.
• Whatever your complaint is about these difficult people, take a deep hard look in yourself to reflect on that complaint.
• If you want a true connection in your most difficult relationships, you have to give up the picture you’ve painted of them.
• You are attached to the current state of the relationship you share with this person because it is what you’ve always known it to be.
• We act against our personal nature.
• Whatever people show you on the outside, they (most likely) feel the exact opposite on the inside.
• In situations where you get defensive, you try and make others feel wrong about it, instead of yourself.
• Anything you have that is completely about you, will not be an issue for you.

We like to displace blame away from ourselves and onto others. This is completely ineffective in creating the life or relationships you want.

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