Relationship Baggage – How to Maximize Space

Baggage. Not the friendliest term for relationships,or the airlines for that matter. It’s hard to carry, sometimes awkward and is always weighing us down. And similar to the airlines, you’re eventually going to have to pay for it. But there is an upside to baggage. When you arrive at your destination, you open it up and find those special things from your life, the things you always want and need with you, stuffed inside. So how do you maximize your relationship while minimalizing your baggage? As our parents always said, “Out with the old, in with the new.”

You have to get organized

Every relationship offers you something new and exciting to put in your bag of life. But if things are disorganized and crammed in there, you’ll have very little room to add anything new. So, in an effort to clean-up your relationship and emotional baggage you’ll need to dump everything out, throw some things away and neatly replace the things you want to keep. So, whether you are ending one relationship or starting a new one, you can start getting your baggage organized by making a packing list.

• Make a list of all the pros and cons of your previous relationships – the things that you tend to think about
• Be objective when looking through your list, and cross off the items, both pros and cons, that could potentially be damaging to your new relationships. Even if you don’t want to cross them out, do it anyway, be a little hard on yourself. For example, do you see a theme of anger or bitterness toward your relationships? If so, cross off what you originally wrote and write “Don’t be bitter” under your list of “pros.” Or maybe you had a wonderful relationship with someone that just didn’t work out. If so, cross out what you wrote about that person and write “be with someone who has *insert special characteristic.*” It’s important to be specific to the theme of your thoughts, not specific to your past relationship.
• Now let’s clean things up. Set aside your original list and grab a new piece of paper. Transfer all the things you kept to the new sheet. The list should be much shorter.
• Place your new list in a safe place so you can revisit it from time-to-time. That way you can make sure you’re still on track.
• Take your original list to your grill or fireplace, place it inside and burn it. Now there’s less random stuff cluttering up your baggage and you’re left with the core of what you want and don’t want out of your relationships.

A good exercise would be for you to write out a new list when you find yourself thinking about your relationship. Maybe write about the situation at hand or how you’re feeling, but before you decide to add something to your packing list, take a deeper look at the core of the situation in particular. If it’s something you want to take with you through life, then transfer the core meaning onto your packing list. Once you’re done, let this situation go up in smoke too.

The Packing List

You’ve probably noticed a theme throughout this post. In essence, your final packing list needs to contain something more important than just individual situations – it needs to contain the lessons you’ve learned from your situations. Extract the lesson and be rid of the situation. In the long run, the lesson is truly the only thing that you should carry with you through life.

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