The Relationship You Have With Yourself

There is a relationship we haven't talked about this month.

The most foundational one. The one that shapes every other relationship in your life, personally and professionally. The one most leaders have neglected longer than any other.

The relationship you have with yourself.

I saved this one for last intentionally. Because everything we've discussed this month, the audit, the mathematics of reciprocity, the humility required to restore what's been neglected, the discipline required to manage what cannot be nurtured, all of it requires a foundation of self-knowledge that is genuinely difficult to build and remarkably easy to erode at this level.

In my observation, the leaders who navigate relationships most skillfully, who cultivate with intention and manage with clarity, share one quality above all others. They know themselves. They like themselves. They spend time with themselves.

And that is rarer than it should be.

What Neglecting Yourself Actually Looks Like

Self-neglect rarely looks like what we imagine it to look like. It doesn't look like falling apart. It looks like high functioning. It looks like exceptional performance. It looks like always being available, always delivering, always having the answer.

It looks like building a career that everyone around you admires while privately feeling like you're running on empty.

It looks like knowing exactly what every stakeholder in your organization needs from you while having almost no idea what you need from yourself.

It looks like being indispensable to everyone else and a stranger to yourself.

Internally, this is a relentless internal monologue that is almost exclusively focused on performance, on what didn't get done, on what could have gone better, on what's coming tomorrow, on whether you're enough in the role you're in and the rooms you're sitting in.

Very little of that internal monologue is kind. Very little of it is curious. Almost none of it is restful.

Do You Like Yourself?

This is not a therapeutic question. It is a leadership question.

Zig Ziglar famously said that people do business with those they know, like, and trust. He was talking about sales relationships. But the principle applies just as much to the relationship you have with yourself.

Leaders who don't fundamentally know, like, and trust themselves are carrying something that affects every decision they make. When self-worth is built entirely on outcomes, approval, and position, the fear of losing any of those things drives choices that don't align with values. The compromise happens slowly, not because of weak character, but because of self-abandonment. When we abandon ourselves long enough in service of performance and external validation, we lose the internal anchor that guides clear decision-making.

Leaders who genuinely know, like, and trust themselves bring something different into every room they enter. A settledness. A security that doesn't require others to be smaller so they can feel larger. A generosity that comes from abundance rather than performance.

Do you know yourself? Like yourself? Trust yourself?

Not your results. Not your title. Not your reputation. You. The person who shows up before the performance begins.

This is worth sitting with.

Do You Spend Time With Yourself?

Many of us have built elaborate systems for avoiding stillness. Full calendars. Constant connectivity. Consuming content during every transition moment. Filling silence before it has a chance to say anything.

I have done this myself. I understand the impulse. Stillness surfaces things we've been successfully outrunning. Questions we don't have answers to. Feelings we don't have time to process. A tiredness that goes deeper than sleep can reach.

I have learned, the leaders who make the best decisions, who read rooms most accurately, who build the most durable relationships, are the ones who have a consistent practice of being alone with themselves. Quietly. Without agenda.

It doesn't require hours. It requires intention. A walk without a podcast. A morning without a screen. A few minutes at the end of the day to ask yourself honestly how you're doing and to actually wait for the answer.

The relationship you have with yourself is the one you bring into every other relationship. Its quality shows up everywhere, in how you listen, in how you respond under pressure, in how generous you can afford to be, in how clearly you see what's actually happening around you.

The Question Worth Asking

If you applied the same audit framework to your relationship with yourself that you applied to your professional relationships this month, what would you find?

Where are you over-functioning for others at your own expense?

Where have you been extracting from your own reserves without reciprocity, without rest, without restoration?

What patterns of self-neglect have become so normalized that you've stopped recognizing them as neglect?

What would it mean to tend to yourself with the same intentionality you bring to your most important professional relationships?

These are not small questions. They are the questions that, when answered honestly, have the capacity to change everything.

The Foundation

Every relationship we have examined this month sits on this foundation. The audit only works if you are honest enough with yourself to see what's there. The humility required to restore neglected relationships has to come from somewhere real. The clarity required to manage difficult relationships without losing yourself requires knowing yourself well enough to notice when you're starting to drift.

The relationship you have with yourself is not separate from your leadership. It is the source of it.

Tend to it accordingly.