Discard disempowering relationships

There are many reasons why people become unhappy but could the dis-empowering relationships in your life be a contributing factor? These kind of relationships weaken, stress and suck life's juice out of you because they are energy vampires. We can have dis-empowering relationship with the following:

Money: To most of us, life is a perpetual struggle against poverty and money means everything. However, by making money, the centre of our lives, it is easy to give our power to it. Some people have living, giving, being happy, looking after themselves and even marrying until they make tonnes of money.

Employment: There are millions of people in Kenya doing jobs they hate and every day they wake up in terror. Perhaps the major reason for this is the biting unemployment that forces people to grab any job available just to put a meal on the table. However, the downside to this is that along the way, the initial joy of getting that job you don't really love will be replaced by feelings of stress, lack of fulfilment and apathy. It is imperative that you find a way of transitioning to a job or a career that gives you joy.

Place: You may have lived in a particular area but something tells you your time is up. Everything sends you a vibe that you need move to a new environment, maybe take a new job or transfer in a totally new area. Guess what? Persisting will create a dis-empowering relationship with that place and it is just a matter of time before you find yourself getting sabotaged in whatever you try to do. Perhaps the universe doesn't approve of your scarcity mentality. Isn't it time you moved from that house or that job or that low stimulation town?

People:In a world characterised by unprecedented technological changes, hectic life, cold neighbourhoods, broken families, betrayal in relationships, it becomes too easy to form dis-empowering relationships in a desperate attempt to recapture the increasingly elusive human warmth.

Dis-empowering relationships with people are usually characterised by excessive neediness or 'clinginess' and ends in bitterness and frustration. What are signs you are in dis-empowering relationship with others? When you are always the one who initiate a talk, a call or an SMS; when somebody visits and is always in hurry or full of excuses; when he finds missed calls and never bothers to call back; when you lack words to tell each other beyond greetings; when s/he calls you only when s/he needs some help or fails you in times of distress.

Sometimes it is those tell-tale signs that somebody is treating you with contempt. We can have dis-empowering with the boss, relatives, neighbours, colleagues, spouse and even friends. The solution is to get rid of these dis-empowering relationships because nothing good will come out of them. Some will be hard to completely do away with, but you will still need to scale down on them in a major way. You may need to consciously create a distance, delete that number, ignore the SOS etc. Persistence will only hurt you more.

As a conclusion, we need adopt abundance mentality, which essentially is based on a belief that the world is not lacking in better people, better places, better jobs and that money is not a prerequisite for us to be happy. The whole essence of life is to enjoy it and these dis-empowering relationships need not eat our happiness for breakfast.