Love and Alignment

A practical lens to evaluate our relationships

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Everyone is busy and trying to make time for the people and things that give them the most energy and meaning. As we go through seasons of life and experience interpersonal changes, it can be tough to determine who to share our time with. I’ve found that the best relationships are with people we both love and feel aligned with.

For purposes of this article, let’s use the following definitions when thinking about the people in our lives:

• love: someone you care about and want the best for

• alignment: someone who makes you feel alive and inspired

The best relationships have both love and alignment. This could be a friendship, romantic partner, professional colleague or mentor. In these relationships, you feel the other person is on the same wavelength. They understand and appreciate your current life phase. You leave interactions with these people excited to live your life more fully - think of the feeling you have when you leave a great concert.

There might be people in your life that you love but don’t feel aligned with. These might be friends from a past period of your life or even family members. Just because you don’t feel aligned or inspired by these relationships, you don’t have to leave them behind although it is important to try to spend enough time with the people we feel aligned with so that we have the capacity to be there for the people we love.

Not enough time with those we feel aligned with can lead to relationship burnout, which doesn’t benefit us or the people we care about.

As we start a new year, let’s consider the people in our lives and whether we love them, feel aligned with them or both. We can use that awareness to help us make the most of our time and bring our best to our most meaningful relationships.