Your seven key relationships. Fifth, extended family.
Welcome back. This is video number five of seven in our seven key relationships. Family
is important but not all family is created equal. We've already talked about your relationship with
your spouse or partner or significant other then we got into your relationship with your children.
Next in line is your relationship with extended family. Now, this is a fun one and when I say fun
I mean for me as a psychologist. I tell you what, after being a shrink now for 30 years you can't
shock me. I have seen some of the darndest crap you can imagine when it comes to extended family
relationships. So, I want to reassure you right up front here that whatever you're experiencing
in your extended family, it's probably normal. Now I use that word normal very loosely because what
is normal? I think it's normal to have an abnormal family. Let's just settle in on that a little bit
everybody's got some dysfunction, everybody's got some weirdness going on. You're not as crazy as you
feel and your family isn't as crazy as they look. Admittedly, those extended family relationships can
be tricky but it's a lot easier to handle it when we keep it in perspective. Your extended family is
not as important as your children to you, okay. There's reasons for that and your spouse has
an even higher level of priority. Now, that alone should bring a little bit of comfort to your heart
because sometimes the conflicts that we run into with extended family has to do with prioritizing
our time. Here's an example of that, our sons who are married have wives who have families as well.
Okay, you're tracking this? S,o where do you go for a holiday? Do you go to his family? Do you go to her
family or do you abandon both of those and just stay with your own family? Those can be difficult
and challenging situations that cause feelings and cause dynamics to happen. Vicki and I have tried to
intentionally communicate to our kids that as much as we would love to see them their family
is more important than reconnecting with us. Now, we're not saying that it's not important for us
to get together with them what we're saying is that there's a priority and I would never want
to put my married children in a position where they have to choose between us and their spouse or
their children. I want them to prioritize that the same way that we have chosen to prioritize that
and to keep it in order. You know if you take care of the more fundamental family relationships with
your spouse and then with your your children it's more likely that you're going to have a positive
relationship with the extended family. So now we're talking about parents, we're talking about uncles
and aunts and cousins and a lot of times friends fit into this category too because you'll have
family friends that are maybe even closer to you than your family is and with the exception
of friends we don't get to choose our extended family, they're sort of built-in. So I think the
choice comes down to either accepting or expecting. Did you catch that subtle difference? The words
are so similar, except or expect. When we accept we feel more peace. It's not your job to change them
or to make them different or to convince them to show up differently in this relationship. If
you can simply accept who they are the way they are right now without changing anything you get
to have more peace in your heart. Whereas if we expect certain things we're going to run into a
lot of disappointment. The more we learn to accept rather than expect the less disappointment we have
particularly in these kinds of relationships. I've got another couple of ideas for you but
before we go there can you think of someone who do you know who would appreciate having some of
these tools, like this playlist about our seven key relationships. Who comes to your mind? Would
you share this with them? There's a share button right there down below you can copy the link and
send it on over. Now, here's another tip that I've found that works really well with extended family
and also with some of our other key relationships. Seek to be interested not interesting, think about
the difference between those two words. Seek to be interested not interesting. Picture of family
gathering for example, there's a lot of extended family, milling about and nobody has seen each
other for a while so they're all reconnecting. A lot of people in that environment are going
to try to be interesting you know to talk about themselves and to share what's going on in their
life and I'm not saying that's bad but what if you were to seek first to be interested
in the other people? My brother-in-law Kyle is an expert at this. You go to a family gathering
everybody is gathering around Kyle, why? Because he's interested in all of the other people. He's
asking great questions about what's going on with you, how's your life going? It's not about
him and because of that everybody likes him. This is a strategy that you can employ in networking
events or in other key relationships but I think with extended family it's particularly useful. You
might remember in the previous video I gave you nine principles. If you want to review those just
go to the URL on the screen drpauljenkins.com/ 9principles the number nine the word principles
and you can get a copy of those nine principles. It's not just for married couples. It's not just
for your spouse or significant other. These nine principles are effective at every level
level of our seven key relationships. I would encourage you to use and apply those nine
principles in your extended family relationships. You're going to see some amazing things happening
as you do that. Remember, drpauljenkins.com/ 9principles. Let's get that into your hands because
that's the most powerful thing that I can share with you for this key relationship. I hope you've
got some ideas on how to navigate some of those tricky waters. Come back for number six
because that's where an important shift happens that will make a difference in the bottom line.