How To Improve Your Relationships
Relationships are an important part of life. There can be many different types of relationships such as couples, friendships, family, work colleagues and business partners to name a few. Relationships can grow or breakdown over time. It comes down to listening, understanding, our expectations of the other person and our own outlook on relationships for how they should be which will determine for a relationship to be success or not.
Our first interaction with relationships is with our family the people we grow up with. From an early age what we observe amongst our parents and siblings will determine the kind of relationships that we will develop. We are conditioned from an early age in how we look at relationships and as we get older our experiences will lead us to change our outlook on relationships which can make them stronger or worse.
There are ways to have more effective relationships in both our personal and professional life and here are a few points in how to develop your relationships in a positive light.
The first and most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. Do you have a good or bad relationship with yourself? Are you happy with who you are? We look at the world from our own eyes and what we experience externally will determine how we feel internally. This will create our own reality for how we look at relationships. If you don’t have a good relationship with yourself, you will most likely attract people who don’t have a good relationship with themselves and overtime there will be a breakdown in communication and possibly the ending of a relationship in a destructive way.
Once you are aware of how you feel this will allow you to accept that you need to change your outlook on the world, the story you tell yourself and the reality you have created. Remember you have a choice in how you respond and the actions you take. Being aware of the triggers that cause you react in a way towards certain people can be addressed and fixed. Your response and actions in how you treat a person will determine your experience with them if it is a pleasant or negative relationship.
One of the main reasons why relationships breakdown is a lack of communication between both people. With no clear communication, assumptions can be made about how the other person is feeling and thinking without knowing. An assumption is only an answer and story you create for yourself. It is better to ask the question if you don’t know. This will allow you to clarify and fully understand the other person’s comment or the situation they are in.
Another reason way relationships breakdown is having high expectations of the other person. This could be that you expect them to treat you in a certain way or how they should behave around you. If we have high expectations of others this is a rule that we create for ourselves and usually most people don’t realise that they have these rules in place. Usually if someone feels that their outlook or rules for life are not being respected this could lead to conflict with the other person and possibly the relationship ending.
This comes back to awareness and the relationship we have with ourselves. Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People states when communicating with another person is best to ‘Seek first to understand, than to be understood’. Ask questions about how the other person sees the situation, how they feel about it and understand where they are coming from. You don’t have to agree with them. It is better to know their outlook rather than make assumptions or get annoyed because they haven’t reached your own expectation which are the rules you have created for the relationship.
There are times when relationships just drift and one person is making all the effort and the other person doesn’t give much or very little in return. Take this for an image. You and a friend are watering a plant. The plant represents your relationship between you and your friend. You might be the only one watering the plant which keeps the relationship going and the other person has no interest in watering the plant and is making no effort to keep the relationship going. A decision will need to be made about your relationship. You can continue to water the plant and feel the same way. Speak to your friend if they want to keep this relationship going and how to improve it. You can just walk away from the plant and let it die which will end the relationship.
For any relationship we have a choice. We can be assertive with our communication to understand the other person’s perspective and work at ways to maintain the relationship. We could just to get annoyed at the other person, express our frustration at them and the other person might get defensive which may lead to conflict. We can only control our own response and not the reaction of the other person. That is the power we have, to choose our response.
From my own experiences of relationships and giving relationship coaching the most common problems that arise are the assumptions that are made without knowing, creating our own rules that must be respected, having high expectations of others and not a good relationship with ourselves. We all have a responsibility for our relationship with the other person, there are two people within a relationship and no one person is to blame for a relationship that ends. Sometimes a relationship is better ending if one person feels they would be happier.
To improve your relationships, remember to always ask questions, understand the other person’s perspective with empathic listening, work towards an outcome that would benefit each person as Stephen Covey would call a ‘win-win’ situation. Take the time to improve the relationship you have with yourself first and create a reality for yourself that will allow you to have more meaningful and fulfilling relationships with others.
Apart from progressing one’s career to leave a company for a new job, a lot of people leave a company because they are dealing with difficult colleagues, managers and bosses. The main reasons are communication is poor, the expectations set are not reasonable by management and the company culture isn’t the right fit for that person. Best to cut your ties early on if you can and find a company that will respect your talent and have relationships with colleagues and management who will support and guide you.
Relationship management is a skill and can be improved. Don’t adapt a belief that you are not good with people and can’t have relationships. Understand the self-limiting beliefs that are holding you back and once you can identify these difficulties you will be able to move forward and know the kind of relationships you want to have. Life is more fun when getting along with people. You owe it to yourself to create the relationships that you deserve, your potential deserves and it our own response to the situation that will determine our experience and reality.
