Be Heart Smart

Life Conundrum #289

Being in a relationship has the ability to build you up or tear you down no matter where you are in your life. Get into a good one and potentially flourish. Pick a rotten egg and you can end up writhing around in discomfort, and potentially wasting years of your life. It's not all chance though, you can avoid the bad with a little foresight and a lot of teaching yourself to be discerning.

Let’s go to a trusty Sex & The City example for clarity. Carrie Bradshaw is at the peak of her career, and having just published her first book she’s classified as a contemporary man whisperer in New York city.  She meets Alexander Pe-artsyfarty and in a leap of faith, follows her heart and moves to Paris for him. Petrovsky goes from strength to strength while Carrie grows lonely and risks losing herself as she walks in the shadow (of his light installations). When their relationship falls apart so too does Carrie. She’s lost her mojo, pizazz, sparkle and everything that makes her Carrie Bradshaw. The thing is, if this can happen to Carrie (of all people!) then it can happen to all of us. You can’t always predict what will happen, or, avoid mistakes but you can insure yourself before you it does. And by insure, I mean insure your heart – just like you would your home and contents.

Without trying to dissect the fine print, what this means, is that you should prioritise getting to where you want to get in your life, before you worry about the heart stuff. Get right in your career, or at least on the (right) track, imagine what shape your future might take and which ambitions you want to pursue with the fire of a thousand suns.

It’s easier said than done, but avoiding making any drastic changes to your life for your partner that will not nourish you in some way will discourage future messiness.  You need to be a happy and balanced human before you can hope to contribute positively to a relationship and to the rest of the world. Don’t remove every single aspect of your life that you thrive on and expect to be okay. Of course, relationships and love are about compromises, but that’s compromise, not complete sacrifice without reciprocation of any sort.

Without making the effort to apply yourself and consistently maintain your own personal happiness you run the risk of beginning to resent your relationship for the possibility that it may jeopardise your own light installation/fashion show/art exhibition or language program.

This is why it’s so important that before you choose who to walk through life with, you have an idea of the path you want to walk yourself.

Always be smart with your heart.