Have you ever wondered how it is that you can love someone without liking them?

On the surface, it doesn’t make any sense at all… how could you possibly love someone without liking them?

The answer, though, is in the last sentence, right at the beginning… “On the surface”.

Personality “Layers”

We all have multiple personalities, and I don’t mean in the insane way (although that may just be a more severe form of the norm).  We have one personality, our core, that is deep down inside of us.  That personality is who we really are.  Over the top of that we have various layers of “skin” that we show to different people.

The skin that’s on the outside is no more who we are than the clothes that we wear.  When we love someone, we love them at a deeper level than the “skin” that they are currently showing the world.  We hold on to that deeper layer that we have come to know, and we instinctively understand that the layer that we love is more truly who the person is that the skin that we dislike.

The Problem

People don’t all have the same number of layers… emotionally powerful events can either create or rip off layers.  Powerfully negative events tend to build up additional layers, to insulate our core from harm.  Powerfully positive events can melt away layers, essentially healing the remainders from past problems.  Some events can do both at the same time… the death of someone close to you, for example, can rip away some of your layers of defense, while at the same time causing you to build new ones.

We present different layers to different people, too… we even have layers that we show ourselves most of the time.  We then add other layers to the ones we’re showing ourselves as we move to people we identify with less… the closer to ourselves we regard someone, the closer to the core us they get, but if we seldom show ourselves our core, imagine how much less likely we are to show someone else.  Many people may go all the way through their adult life without ever showing anyone else their core self.

It is impossible to let someone else deeper than we allow our selves to go.  If you don’t look at your core, you can’t show it to anyone else, no matter how much you love them.

Everyone else starts at the layer where you place your self and moves outward from there.

The Solution

There is only one way to consciously move someone closer to you, deeper into your layers:  spend more quality, quiet, slow time with them.

Want to be closer to your wife or husband?  Spend more quality, quiet, slow time with them.

Children?  Same answer.

Family, friends, acquaintances?  All the same answer.

Want to improve your relationships with all of those people at the same time?  Spend more quality, quiet, slow time with your self.

Remember, everyone else starts with at least as many layers as you show yourself.  If you remove a few of those layers, you move the starting point for every other person closer.

When is the last time that you actually sat down and looked within?  I’m talking about time you didn’t worry about what you need to do tomorrow (or today), you didn’t try to solve problems, you didn’t worry about someone else… just sat there, by yourself, closed your eyes, and let that core self, the real you, rise closer to the surface?

It’s hard… life sometimes seems like it’s actively trying to keep you from doing it.  You may have a wife and kids, friends, two or three jobs, etc., etc., etc.  You know how I know it’s hard?  I have those things, plus I actually know what I need to do and how to do it, and I still have a hard time taking that time for myself.

The most effective times to do this, at least for me, are first thing in the morning, before the day gets started, and right after work.  The morning goes much deeper, but the time after work lets me get enough off of the surface that my time with my family is higher quality… which helps me to keep from building up yet more layers for both myself and them.

I think any time helps, though, as long as you can do it consistently enough to make it into a habit.  Making something into a habit requires that you do something at the same time, every day (or nearly so), for somewhere around a month.

When I say “the same time”, by the way (and not just in this article), I mean in an event-driven sense, not in a clock-based sense.  ”The same time” means first thing when you get up, or right after lunch, or something like that, not 7:15 AM (though that may be first thing when you get up).

It’s easy to let good habits slip over time… I’ve let many of my good habits slip, including the time mentioned above, and writing new articles regularly.  It takes a lot of mental effort to establish, or re-establish, good habits (but very little mental effort for bad habits), but that effort pays off immensely… you’ll find that the amount of mental energy that you have to spend increases substantially once the good habits are in place (and often your physical energy level, as well).

Your Turn

Getting away from quantity time and toward quality time is hard to do, whether it’s time for your self or time with others.  Have you found anything that works for you?  Anything that makes it easier to turn quantity into quality?