“Hello”: The Word That Holds the Key to Your Relationships

The One, Single Word that Holds the Key to Understanding Your Relationships and How You Can Use it to Turn Them Around.

“How did I get in this relationship?”

“What was I thinking?”

“What was I thinking with? Clearly not my brain.”

Sound familiar?

If you’ve ever been deeply troubled or puzzled by a relationship; platonic, romantic, business or otherwise and find yourself wondering, “why didn’t I see this coming?” or realizing, “this relationship SO doesn’t meet my needs,” then the answer may be closer than you think!

Maybe you don’t understand why you put effort into a romance with someone who is noncommittal, and you want a commitment, or why you chose to work on a project with someone and wind up doing most of the “heavy lifting.” Or you know you’re careful to choose friends who are supportive and positive, but “why did I pick this friend who is anything, but?”

You’re a perceptive person and you’re pretty good at sensing another person’s nonverbal cues. So what are you missing? It all starts with a simple “hello.” Yep. And here’s why:

According to principles adapted from Eastern energetic anatomy, when you initially meet someone and say “hello,” you make a subconscious agreement with them. Therefore, your “hello” and what you were thinking and how you were attributing those thoughts to another person, in psychology known as projecting, is a clear indication of where you may find the answer to the question, “how did I get here?”

Once you locate your “hello,” you can identify the associated agreement and then better understand your relationships.

Here’s some examples:

Remember the movie Jerry Maguire, when Renee’ Zellweger’s character said “you had me at ‘hello?’” It was at that moment she disclosed the “hello” and its associated, unspoken agreement she made with Jerry, “I’m yours.”

Telltale “hellos” are not limited to romance. For instance, whenever I meet another parent from my daughter’s school, I greet them with a “hello” that says, “I believe it takes a village, so let’s keep our kids healthy and educated” that’s my end of the agreement. I then use whatever intuition I have (followed by some friendly words) to make sure we’re on the same page.

One of the current, most popular “hellos” comes from the song ‘Hello’ by Adele. According to an interview she gave to Rolling Stone magazine, she explained the words,

“Hello from the other side” [stands for]… “the other side of becoming an adult, making it out alive from your late teens, early twenties” (Hiatt, 2015, para. 9). It could therefore be interpreted that Adele’s “hello” carries the agreement “I’m different now, I need you to see me as an experienced adult.”

How can paying attention to your “hellos” help you take charge of your life?

You now have a tool to help you assess, change, deepen or end your relationships. Once you locate your initial “hello” agreement, you can check to make sure you’re still in alignment with that agreement. If you discover someone “had you” at hello, for example, and you’re feeling like you’re being taken advantage of, you could begin to change that agreement with your next “hello”. Instead of “I’m yours” you could energetically project (or act as if you) “only spend time with people who give as well as take.”

In this way, it can give you the insight you need to continue to nourish fulfilling relationships. Ready to give it a try? Grab a pad of paper and pen to take notes. In a quiet space, without distractions, including your computer or phone, close your eyes and take some deep breaths.

Visualize a person whom you are having problems with. You could be in any type of relationship with this person; platonic, romantic, business or something else. In your memory, travel back in time to think about when you first met.

As you picture that person, feel in your body what’s happening. See if you can find, in your body, where you feel a cord (like a heartstring), or energy (maybe a heaviness), or an attachment to that person (perhaps you’re attached at the hip). Ask yourself, what was happening in your life when you met? And finally ask, what was your agreement? What were you conveying in that very first “hello”?

You may have a “flash of insight” in the form of a thought, words, feelings, pictures, physical sensations; maybe even a symbol of some sort. Write down whatever comes to you. Even if you can’t think of anything, write, “I can’t think of anything, I don’t know.” If your answer is “I don’t know,” then try “walking with” the question, which means keeping it in the back of your mind, until something comes to you at a later date.

Are you ready to try and identify your “hellos” and possibly change the agreements you made when you met someone? Experiment with this exercise and let me know how it went in the comments section below.

Written by Julie Schmit, MA, LAMFT

References: Hiatt, B. (2015, November 3). Adele: Inside her private life and triumphant return. Rolling Stone. Retrieved 16 March 2016.

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