We are all in relationships of one kind or another and at times, they can be challenging. Most of us are in multiple forms of the same kind of relationships. This means have multiple family members, friends, co-workers, teammates, neighbors, co-volunteers, co-hobbyist etc. Within each of these relationships, there are typically expectations of how the individuals will act and interact within the relationship as well as how the relationship will benefit those involved. As I type this I can’t help wonder if I don’t have a bit of Vulcan blood running through my veins. A relationship for individual gain sounds so cold, and simple. I suppose, if there were no emotions, relationships would be easier and if one were to subtract personalities, they would be downright simple. Life might also be rather boring. Many fall into the trap of thinking that relationships are hard because of the emotions and personalities involved but that is not the case.  The primary reasons relationships are challenging are: 1. We haven’t clearly defined what want from our various relationships.  2. We don’t clearly communicate what we expect our relationships. 3. We expect other people to be responsible for things that aren’t their responsibility, and 4. We take responsibility for things that are not our responsibility often while shirking things that are. This may sound pretty harsh. Be assured, this isn’t a judgment, just some observations. I practice authentic communication. What that means for me is that I speak my entire truth, entirely and with respect. Sometimes honesty sounds harsh. Those feeling challenged by these four points may have internalized judgment about the way things are in their lives, especially for those who cant see their role in getting there.  Communicating authentically and living mindfully have relieved me of similar feelings. I hope anyone who finds this topic hard will continue to explore and find similar peace. Let’s look at how relationships can be different if we treat them as investments rather than by products of the lives we live.

 Think about a relationship you are in. For the purpose of this conversation, let’s treat our relationships as if they are stock. Every relationship we are in is an individual stock. Some of us might have multiple interests in the same “stock” You may own a business with a family member or life partner for example. The business relationship is one interest and the personal relationship between you is another. If we can agree that relationships are stock, perhaps we can also agree that what you put into the relationship is your investment dollar making you the investor.  This includes draws on your time, your energy, your emotions or you finances. With our relationship as stock and what you put in being your investment dollar, I would like to agree that for this conversation the return on the investment is represented in the way the relationship enhances or empowers you. Are we all still together? Yes? Good! I am not an expert in the stock market and I suspect that the larger number of readers is in the same boat. Most of us know the basic principles of the stock market though.  One puts money into a stock with the hope that the business will do well and that one dollar with multiply many times. Most of us know that the stock market can be risky in that, sometimes one invests in a company that doesn’t do well. If investors are diligent they notice the downturn and re-allocate their funds, remaining solvent. If an investor isn’t paying attention, they could go bankrupt. Some will decide that this is a temporary offset and they will borrow to put a little more money behind the investment to try to lift it out of the hole. At some point though, even the most novice investor will realize that a stock isn’t going to turn around or it isn’t performing as expected and they divest completely or in lay terms take their money out. Most of us would divest our money from failing or underperforming stock rather quickly. Frequently we remain complacently, even at times stubbornly committed to emotional investments that are leaving us emotionally bankrupt. Then failing to acknowledge that we have limited emotional resources, we make emotional investments on overdrawn accounts. 

I should also mention before going much further that there are the “costs of doing business” that investors incur. These are the intrinsic demands that we each have and they vary individually. A major one of mine is that I live with Multiple Sclerosis which impacts many things, including my energy level. Hunger and fatigue are two costs of doing business that we all experience at one time or another. If one lives with a chronic illness be it physical, mental or emotional, that should be counted as a cost of doing business. We will address ways to offset t such costs as we explore deeper.  Like most people, I am well diversified in my emotional investments.   I have a career, a romantic relationship, other social relationships of varying intensity, I volunteer, I have hobbies, friends, 3 roommates, neighbors that I am friendly with…you get the idea. Unless we are incredibly mindful, our costs of doing business will increase as our portfolio diversifies thereby causing an emotional deficit. The nice thing is that managing emotional investments is easier than financial ones because the returns stabilize and become easier to predict as one gains experience.

Using myself as an example let’s look at how viewing relationships as investments helps us to develop and hone the tools of self-care, mindfulness and authentic living. I mentioned that I have 3 roommates. The relationship with one is a great example of how thinking of relationships as investments can help one maintain peace even when the other person doesn’t practice this way of thinking. First I should give you a little bit of relevant back story. I am running a GoFundMe Campaign that, when successful, will allow me to remain in my home. The back story to that isn’t relevant to this example, so I won’t dwell on that. However, if anyone would like to learn more or make a contribution, they can do both on my Campaign Page. If one is so inclined after reading my story and perhaps contributing, I appreciate all shares and mentions on social media.  The roommate I am speaking of has been a long term guest in my home many times as we have been friends for years. In March, she approached another roommate and mutual friend about the possibility of her moving in when she re-located to San Diego, where I live. I knew that she was re-locating after some business investments failed. She has been a self-employed entrepreneur the entire time I have known her (more than 15 years) and has always been solvant. We had a room coming available so I was in a position to rent to her if I were interested. I had conflicting emotions and competing interests (I wanted to keep my rooms all rented to help with financing when I go to buy the house, but I wasn’t sure she could afford my rent long term. I wanted to help my friend get on her feet, but right now I can’t afford to reduce my already very reasonable rents.). I had a choice to make about how to proceed. I could assume that she wouldn’t be asking to rent from me if she couldn’t afford it or I could approach her and start a conversation about money that might be uncomfortable. On first thought, what would you do? There is no wrong answer, only awareness. I chose to have a conversation with her. In the financial stock market, the investments of another have no impact on the success or failure of my portfolio. The same is true for emotional investments. The only investor who has an impact on the success or failure of my portfolio is me. Others will make investments that may or may not influence the performance of my stock, but I am the one who controls the ups and downs in my emotional portfolio with the way that I communicate and interact with my investments. With that in mind I invest wisely by having an honest communication about what I needed from the relationship. I told her that I was renting to support the costs of the house and that I could not afford to financially or physically support anyone. All that was true, but I felt more clarity was necessary. I said to her that was only accepting applicants who could guarantee that they could pay rent on time every month. I explained that I was trying to buy the house and that all of my income not paying the mortgage was being directed to the purchase of the home. ( I co-own with my ex-wife at the moment). I was also clear that because she was bringing a dog with her she would be expected to help scoop the yards, and vacuum once a week at least. I did tell her that if she was unable to do these things, she needed to get an IHSS (In Home Support Services) worker to help with some things because I cannot take on responsibility for cleaning behind another adult at this time. She asked me if I wanted to be her IHSS worker if she qualified and I told her that I didn’t because I sometimes have trouble maintaining a healthy work/play balance. That would make it close to impossible. Fast forward five months. She is two months late with rent, and four months behind with utilities. When she was first late with bills, I tried to be understanding. When she was late with rent and continued to run an AC in her room despite having no money for bills. I was angry and disappointed (we had been friends for 15 years or more). I had to think about this investment. I have interests in multiple arms of the same stock. We had been friends, I am her landlord and we are roommates. I had to figure out how much of my assets I was willing to invest in this stock, if any and where that investment would be. I decided to invest for the moment in friendship and see what that yielded. I asked six times via text and face to face conversation to sit down and discuss her plan to get an income and get caught up financially. She refused, sometimes flat out and sometimes after a lot of bluster and finger pointing. After the second or third time I approached her to no avail, I had a realization. This investment wasn’t working.  After taking a self- inventory and acknowledging that stonewalling me while paying nothing to live in my home despite agreeing to pay rent and utilities, is not the thing a friend would do. I made a decision.  Realizing it was time to reallocate my investment dollar, I left some stock in the friendship but reallocated most of my emotional capital into the landlord/tenant relationship. My written communication reflected the change. I chose my words carefully to be sure, but more importantly I omitted words that indicated supportive friendship. I was polite and I removed language that gave her a choice (“…if that works for you” “If you don’t mind…” “If you could…that would be great”). Mindfulness and authenticity are imperative in creating healthy a portfolio of emotional investments. When I approach my emotional investments with authenticity as my foundation I make choices for myself that are based on my needs and goals. Incorporating mindfulness insures that I do no harm to another as I make those choices and follow them with action. A couple of weeks later when I tried to schedule a conversation with her she refused the time I suggested. She countered with a suggestion that we meet after I get off work the next day, at 10 pm, after I had worked 13 hours, because that was better for her. Clearly this stock has become unstable. It is time to divest from the business investment completely. Because I was clear in the begonning about how I expected this stock to perform, when it continued to underperform it was easy to make the best decision to protect my assets. In lay terms, she wasn’t paying rent, I can’t afford to support her even temporarily right now, she was unwilling to talk to me about her plan. I need to replace her with a roommate that will be able to pay rent. I typed a 30 day notice I was angry as I typed it but I was able to do a quick inventory of my emotional assets. I mentioned before that fatigue is a “cost of doing business”.  It was early evening and I needed to have a quiet evening and a good night of sleep more than I needed to make a point. I waited until morning to email the electronic copy and tape the hard copy to her door. Because I was clear about having divested from the business relationship, but still had stock in the friendship, it was easy for me to issue the 30 day notice and let that go so that when I had a surplus of stew after cooking for some friends I happily offered her a bowl as I did my other roommates. I was able to be cordial with her. When she started to use the air conditioner in her room I sent her a cease and desist which she ignored. I decided that friend would not continue to run up bills she could not afford while I am on the verge of losing my house. It is time to divest completely.

One might wonder how I told her when I changed the levels of my investment in her. I didn’t. In the financial market, one does not send the stock an email saying that if it doesn’t start to perform we are going to divest. We don’t make an announcement on the stock floor that the stock is a disappointment and we are moving on, we quietly transfer our money into another investment and if we have left any in this stock we monitor both. The same should be true in our emotional investments. If any of my emotional investments isn’t performing as expected, I have to decide if I am comfortable with the return on the investment. If not, I have to decide how much of my emotional stock I want to retain.  One of the mistakes that many emotional investors make is trying to convince our investments to perform at an expected level by, cajoling, promising, understanding etc. Understand this: all stock doesn’t perform the way we want and no amount of convincing, cajoling or emotional capital is going change the performance of the investment. The question is do I remain committed to this investment, diverting stock from other well performing investments to this, until I am beyond bankrupt and running at an emotional deficit? Momma thinks not! This is not to say that I should dump my “investments as soon as they fail to produce the yield I expect. What I do is I assess my “portfolio” to see if I can afford to keep capital in this investment. If I really value this investment and it is demanding more capital than I expected at the moment (this sometimes happens with high yielding stock), I decide which of my other investments I can reallocate emotional capital from. These are temporary re-allocations. A warning that a stock is underperforming is that continuously have to re-allocate investment capital from other stocks to keep this stock above water.  This might be something as simple as this: one of my investments (someone I care for) is ill and the family needs to have meals prepared. This is more investment than I budgeted for so I have to assess my portfolio to see if I have the resources (energy and time) to do this without causing harm to myself, or a resentment of any kind. If this is going to cause either, I decline the opportunity to be of service this time. I mentioned before that one of my costs of doing business is Multiple Sclerosis I also mentioned that we would talk about how to mitigate the effects of the “costs” of chronic illness in our investments. It is simple. Listen to yourself and honor what you learn. I say it is simple. Once the practice takes hold, that is true, it is simple, developing a way a rooted in authenticity can present a couple of challenges. These are not insurmountable challenges, but they exist. The first challenge is that we are often more attuned and adherent to the expectations and opinions of others than we are to ourselves. We first must discover if we don’t already know, what we need/believe/value. Again, using myself as an example with M.S., I now know that I have muscle spasms in my extremities and/or back almost constantly; that I am always able to nap because I am easily fatigued. It is important that I eat a mostly clean diet and get regular exercise. “A mostly clean diet” means that I primarily eat food it it’s most whole form. I eat organic when I am able. Both help to reduce the effects of MS, but independent of MS, fitness and healthy eating are important to me. I enjoy preparing foods and I enjoy living an active lifestyle and the many positive effects it has on my life. I am creating a lifestyle that allows me to work from home when I need to and anywhere in the world when I am able to. Because I live mindfully, I am aware of the things that nurture my well being as well as the warning signs when i am slipping out of balance. After years of practicing this lifestyle, I am able to recognize the smallest warnings and correct the balance. There are times when life is full and the challenges are intense, like my life now. t I am in an incredibly challenging time where the costs of doing business are very high.   In these times I have to be extra vigilant to insure balance. Ideally I exercise for at least an hour daily. When lifes demands require it though, I can reduce the number or duration of my workouts to create more time for other activities that are important to my well being.  It is tempting sometimes throw myself into the challenges I am walking through, leaving no time for physical activity or social stimulation. This is detrimental to my chronic illness as my muscles become harder to control and and the utensils of my spasms  if I don’t exercise them regularly. I mitigate the” costs of doing business ” by practicing mindfulness in all areas of my life.

As one can see, looking at our relationships as if they are stock can help us to clearly assess our goals within individual relationships, recognize when we slip out of balance and determine the best course of action to regaining and maintaining balance. When we consistently maintain balance within our various relationships our emotonal investments stabilize and fluctuations be one easier to predict and prepare for.