Secret to Happiness #2: Your Relationship with Yourself

Marine Corps Officer Candidate School
Way back in the summer of 1985, I spent my June and July in a special kind of hell called Marine Corps Officer Candidates School—Marine OCS.

Most people, when they hear the word “school”, think that Marine Officer Candidate School would be a place where you learned how to be an officer in the Marine Corps.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Marine OCS was all about putting you under a tremendous amount of physical, mental and emotional pressure to see if you could make good decisions and lead people while tired and stressed.

I remember getting called into the drill instructor’s office (called is the polite word) as part of a group getting commendations for scoring high on the Marine physical fitness test. That lasted about 15 seconds.

Then they yelled at us to get out.

As I ran back to my rack, I heard my name yelled again. I ran back into the drill instructor’s office as part of a second group—many of whom were in the first group—just in time to get a counseling form for poor performance on the physical fitness test.
Pushing Through Failure
That was the theme. They put you in no-win situations or gave you tasks with timelines you couldn’t possibly meet, made you encounter failure face-to-face, made you experience failure at your core, then watched to see if you fought through it. Or gave up.

They weren’t worried about being fair to us. They were focused on one question: Can we trust you to lead our beloved Marines in very stressful situations?

The OCS experience made you dig deep into yourself. OCS made you encounter yourself—your good and your bad—in straightforward, sometimes harsh ways.

It forced you to face your relationship with yourself.
Happiness is About Relationships
From our earlier podcasts, we know that the key to Happiness in life is not money or status or education. An 80-year Harvard study confirms that the key to Happiness in life is high-quality relationships. If you have high-quality relationships, you’ll not only be happier; you’ll also be healthier and live longer.

So where do we have relationships in life? Those are the areas where we should focus our lives for Happiness. The answer is simple. There are six areas of relationship in life. There is your relationship with yourself, your family, your friends, your relationships at work, as a citizen in your community and with the Creator. Six areas of opportunity to pursue Happiness.

In this podcast we’ll discuss some basics about relationships, then we’ll talk about a critical relationship—the relationship you have with yourself.
Your Relationships Are Only As Good As You Are
The idea of relationship seems obvious, but we can learn some important things from unpacking the concept.

Relationship is fundamental in our lives, with the most important relationship being the one you have with yourself. One of fundamental things that defines you as a human being is that you are self-conscious—that you are in relationship with yourself.

Our relationships with others can only be as good as we are in the relationship.

Think of relationship like a bridge. By its nature, a bridge must have at least two anchor points—one on each side of the span. Two strong anchor points makes the bridge—the relationship—strong. If one of the anchor points is weak, the bridge—the relationship—will be unstable and weak as well.

In fact, a bridge is only as strong as its weakest anchor point.

In the same way, if you are a good person and a strong anchor point, you will have stronger relationships. If you are weak or unsettled, your relationships will suffer. Your relationships can only be as good as you are.
Relationships and Trust
Relationship is also an act of faith, of trust, in the other. Your relationships are only going to be as strong as the confidence you have in each other.

When you have trust in the other, you can focus your attention on moving forward.