“Some of the greats you have to work a little harder for,” JR Ridinger.  The good doesn’t always come easily but it does come as part of flow.  In this quote, JR refers to the work of creating relationships with people who can help build a business, but like many things, this is applicable to nearly all facets in life.  There are times the things we want seem just beyond our reach, or like it’s never quite clear.  We think we have done all we can do only to find there is more.  It’s easy to forget that life is a long game—we don’t always see the results we want right away.  Sometimes we have to be patient and let things develop, we have more lessons to learn, we have more interests to seek/discover.  We need to remember that not only is this a long game, but sometimes the goal isn’t the end/destination and sometimes the goal we think we’re reaching for isn’t really the goal—sometimes it needs to be refined.  Just because something doesn’t come easy doesn’t mean it isn’t meant to be.  Sometimes we have to work our way through things and dig a bit deeper in order to find the gold beneath, to find what we were really meant to have.  Sometimes we have a goal in mind but we were really only being pointed in the right direction. 

When it comes to business and relationships, and life in general, we must learn about a certain dance.  I’ve written about this before but when it comes to working for something we must understand the purpose of interaction.  If we approach life simply trying to get what we want out of every circumstance instead of looking at what we can learn and even what we can contribute, that energy comes across as manipulative.  We are trying to control things for our own personal gain.  That will never work to our satisfaction.  Sure it gives us a sense of control but what happens the moment things don’t go how we plan or when people behave differently than we think?  We get desperate or angry or we lose faith or even simply become frustrated to the point we give up entirely—or we double down and it’s either more of the same or an outright loss.  Nothing can really be gained from controlling external forces because there will always be more to control, but what we can do is learn to dance with the energies around us.  We can learn to enter a certain flow where we look at all the possibilities of what’s around us and how we can collaborate and participate in creating something good for all rather than forcing things to be our way. When it comes to learning THAT dance, it may take us some time and we do need to work for it.

Relationships are so important and, no, they don’t always make sense.  We may feel a bit lost, feelings change, we often don’t understand people.  In short, our humanness gets in the way sometimes. It takes a lot of effort to learn to work for the sake of a relationship versus a particular personal goal.  There is far more to be gained from working with someone than there is by controlling them.  The thing is this: we often aren’t even aware of our own greatness, and as keen as an outside eye may be, there is no real way to see the full potential someone has.  There is even less likelihood that we are able to make them be some version of that potential—they have to do that on their own.  If those efforts are so likely to fail then we can’t assume that we can mold them into what we think we need for our purposes.  It takes time to form a meaningful relationship of any kind whether friendship, romantic, business, spiritual, educational, whatever.  The best approach we can have is to ask what we can learn from someone and what we can contribute.  With that energy we learn about the dance and how both parties need to contribute to be successful.  It takes time to discover the magic in partnership.  Relationships aren’t easy—but building something on a solid foundation usually isn’t easy—the work is always worth it in the end.  So don’t let hard work deter us from what needs to be done.  Enjoy the dance–you never know the magic that comes from it..