Blood is thicker than Water, but Love is thicker than Blood.

They say blood is thicker than water; the more you deal with humans, the more you realize that love is behaviour. Just because someone is your sibling or family does not mean they will show you love. Your closest relationships are supposed to be there for you during the trying times, but it is not always like that. Love is behaviour, love is a verb and not a noun. It is how you treat people and not the role you perform. The role is being a friend or family member, which is what you are – blood. The important thing is how you are being treated at the moment. As the saying goes, “A Brother may not be a Friend, but a Friend will always be a Brother.“

From a very young age, we get indoctrinated with sayings such as blood is thicker than water and family will always be there. As much as this statement can be true, the sad reality is that it is not often true. You know your true family and friends during adversity, and your family and friends would know the real you during prosperity. People will show you their true colour when you are going through trying times; few will be there for you, most will desert you silently, while others will be happy to watch you in pain. The Germans have a word for this: Schadenfreude, which is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. Dr. Maya Angelou once asserted, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Cain was killed by his brother Abel; Joseph was sold by his brothers to slavery; Jesus was betrayed by one of his apostles, Judas Iscariot, for 30 pieces of silver, which led to his crucifixion; American Singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father after he intervened in an argument between his parents. As Maya Angelou counselled, Believe people when they show us who they are, but most of us, find that hard to do because of our childhood indoctrination and programming. Your parents and caregivers would defend your toxic family members when they begin to show signs of toxicity and bad behaviour with statements such as Family is all you’ve got, Blood is thicker than water, and Family will always be there. Your definition of family should be how people treat you now.

People change over time; some people will be there for you during the trying times, while most will desert you during your darkest moments. People pleasing and an inability to set healthy boundaries for your closest family and friends could have serious consequences. People will switch on you; they will get envious, jealous, afraid of your ambitions and rise. Never explain; those that need it don’t matter, and those that matter don’t need it. American Motivational Speaker Les Brown often said, “80% Don’t Care & 20% Are Glad It’s You! One of the most challenging situations to set healthy boundaries is with our family and friends, but that could lead to severe consequences such as pain, heartache, unnecessary suffering, and sometimes even death, as the above example attests to. It is better to be safe than sorry when people start becoming toxic in your relationship; the remote control is in your hands – Optimize for peace of mind.

The Crab in the barrel mentality is a metaphor derived from a pattern of behavior noted in crabs when they are trapped in a bucket. While anyone Crab could easily escape, its efforts will be undermined by others, ensuring the group’s collective demise. It is a way of thinking that says If I can’t have it, get it or do it, then neither can you, and if you try, then I would go out of my way to bring you down.

The Crab in the barrel mentality can be observed everywhere, such as the workplace, families, friends, and places of worship. The moment you try to leave the stereotype or comfort zone, the crabs in the barrel are always there to bring you down to their level. It is not a great place to be in as you naturally expect people in your clan to be happy for you, but they usually are not.

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment—or unlearning—of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.

Meaning doesn’t lie in things. Meaning lies in us. When we attach value to things that aren’t love—the money, the car, the house, the prestige—we are loving things that can’t love us back. We are searching for meaning in the meaningless. Money, of itself, means nothing. Material things, of themselves, mean nothing. It’s not that they’re bad. It’s that they’re nothing

Toxic is Toxic

Let me be clear; toxic is toxic, and either situation is problematic and not worthy of your time or energy. You don’t owe a toxic person one more second of your time, you do, however, owe it to yourself to have peace in your life. You do not owe anything to a person who continues to cause you hurt or heartache. It’s okay to cut ties and never look back. It doesn’t matter if they are a friend, a former spouse, a coworker, or a family member. And it doesn’t matter if no one else agrees with your decision to cut ties with them. It’s not being mean, and it’s not lacking compassion—it’s self-protection, and other people don’t get to set your boundaries for what you want in your life, only you do.

Setting healthy boundaries and standards

Outside of identifying our vulnerabilities and being familiar with what manipulative and abusive behavior is, the other big thing we can do is to make sure we have healthy boundaries and deal-breaker behavior and make sure that our choices in people and in situations are filtered through those boundaries and standards. 

Healthy boundaries and having deal-breaker behavior will get the wrong people out of your life and they take practice. Be kind to yourself during this process, as it’s a lot like learning to ride a bike: odds are you will fall and get scraped up, but it’s part of learning. Keep at it, and you’ll get the hang of it.

Meditation

• Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Arguments
• Often, arguments are unlikely to sway anyone’s opinion, which will undoubtedly cause us emotional suffering. Mindfulness teaches us to examine our emotional reactivity, pause, gain some objectivity about what we are experiencing and ask ourselves, “What is happening right now?” What is happening behind this argumentative impulse?
• Shempa, they are like urges we follow when we get triggered in some ways, helping us find comfort in an insecure world that is constantly changing. When we feel unease, fear, anger or insecurity, we are particularly vulnerable to taking the baits of these hooks to follow our urges through addiction, vices, or negative emotions.
• When you get the urge to argue, Imagine yourself standing at the edge of a boxing ring within the ropes, an opponent jogs in place, humbling the air, eager for combat. Pause and tap into your practice, and scan your body, emotions, and surging thoughts. Instead of following your urge mindlessly, recognize that you have a choice. Ask yourself, do I want to enter that ring, or do I want to breathe, smile and keep walking? Retain my peace of mind and go about the business of enjoying my day.
• Arguing isn’t inherently wrong; in some ways, it is essential; it is how we hatch ideas to build a better society. But succumbing to every trivial squabble and fruitless argument, we are choosing to suffer, and like anything else, the more we fall into a tendency, the more it ingrains in us.
• Pick and choose your battles wisely; save your energy for the debates that matter.

• Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Mood Follows Action
• Even though you feel like getting started, your brain will jump in and help. The critical error we make is that we feel that we need to feel like doing something before we dive in, and that we have to be motivated first. Sure it is great when we are but we shouldn’t rely on our emotional state to get the important stuff done. Sometimes, you need to nearly begin and one way to let that happen is to lower the bar.
• Sometimes, it is more about getting it done and scoring it as a win. Take that first step, before long your brain will fall behind and you will be off to the races.

Podcast

• Love’s next chapter with Whitney Wolfe Herd of Bumble | How I Built This with Guy Raz

All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.