"The measure of our health and happiness is weighed by the quality of our relationships."
-Wil Turner
Those who invest their time and energy into building positive relationships with others tend to be healthier, happier, and more successful individuals. A crucial factor in one’s success in building strong relationships is having empathy and being aware of how to get along with all people.
One of the most transformative experiences that we can have in our lives is developing relationships where there is a strong emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social connection with others. Having healthy and happy relationships intrinsically contributes to our overall well-being and success.
Included below are some essential tips to building stronger relationships :
Accepting and Celebrating Differences
One of the most difficult challenges we all must overcome or experience during the process of developing meaningful and lasting relationships is that we all are very different. According to Maslow's theory, we all have different hierarchies of needs physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially. Therefore it is a given one's perceptions of the world and circumstances are likely to differ in numerous ways.
The hurdles we must overcome as we work towards the aim of developing stronger relationships is assuming that everyone thinks or feels the same as we do. When it comes to building strong relationships with others; It is important to establish both the commonalities and differences between them. Building stronger relationships with your loved ones and friends entail communication, empathy, trust, loyalty, and the equal investment of your time.
By doing this allows one to feel much more comfortable, accepted, and valued knowing that their feelings and emotions are clearly expressed, understood, and affirmed. Life would become very dull if we all were the same. Therefore, celebrating and accepting that each of us is different is one of the most effective ways of nurturing strong relationships. Here are some tips for nurturing a healthy and happy relationship.
Listening Attentively:
Listening is the process by which we can process information while allowing the other party to share their thoughts or feelings. Listening is a silent form of affirmation that makes the other person feel valued, heard, understood, and supported. Understanding what other people around you are trying to communicate whether verbally or non verbally is one of the most essential parts of fostering positive interactions with your loved ones, friends, or peers.
Those who can actively listen know how to be good friends the best types of friends to have in our lives. While listening actively it is important to understand what the other person is trying to communicate without interjecting or formulating judgemental opinions about them. In the process of actively listening we also allow the one speaking to process their thoughts and emotions healthily. Read this week's blog on emotional intelligence.
Giving Your Time To Others:
One of the greatest gifts we can give those we love, respect, and value is our time. We are living in a world where we all are busy and time is fleeting but one should never be too busy for their loved ones, friends, or colleagues. As time ticks away, technology and social media are in tandem eroding the social structure of society. While at the same time wedging an emotional, social, spiritual, and political gap between us.
To nurture stronger bonds with our loved ones, friends, and colleagues; we must be mindful of making a concerted effort to be present and in the moment by showing those we love and respect that they are worthy of our time and a pleasure to spend time with. Understanding the love language of our loved ones, friends and colleagues will help us to form stronger emotional, social, and professional bonds with them.
Developing Good Communication Skills:
Emotional deflection is a direct indicator of one's inability to communicate their thoughts or feelings effectively. Check out last week's blog on improving emotional intelligence. Communication is a two-way practice by which the exchange of listening and the opportunity to express one's thoughts or emotions are equal.
Effective communication takes place when one is allowed to freely express their thoughts or emotions while the other listens and vice versa. One of the worst dangers that one can face while communicating with others is assuming that the listener truly empathizes or can read our thoughts. During the exchange of communication, the communicator must have clarity on what it is they hope to achieve during the process of communicating their thoughts and feelings.
Those who are unable to express their thoughts or feelings effectively tend to have more difficulty in nurturing healthy relationships with others.
In today’s world; given the use of technology and social media, many of us have forgotten the practice of what it means to communicate effectively. As a result, forging stronger relationships with others in some cases has become more and more difficult given the heightened possibility of what is deemed "communication" breakdowns. As the ever-growing use of technology and social media rises, the communication gaps between us exponentially continue to grow further and further apart.
All healthy relationships are forged in real-time and the demonstrative act of spending quality time with our loved ones, friends, and colleagues. Spending quality time with those we love and wish to form stronger bonds with should be an absolute priority. There is a much larger population of people in the world than not whose love language is to spend quality time with those they love, respect, and genuinely support. How we communicate with one another and how we choose to do so, is critical when it comes to building stronger relationships.
To that aim, we must also be mindful and empathetic of the fact that our loved ones, friends, and colleagues also have busy lives in which they too must contend with a myriad of situational life circumstances most likely pulling them in all directions. On such occasions, the principles of understanding and patience are the suggested practice. It is up to us to choose to ascertain to what degree our loved ones, friends and colleagues matter to us, need us most, and where they fit in the grander scheme of our lives.
Learning To Give and Receive Feedback
Learning to give and accept feedback is addedly important to forming stronger relationship bonds. The ability to provide and receive feedback constructively allows one to realize none of us are perfect! We all have the right to express our thoughts and feelings as long as we do it in a constructively healthy way.
Both the exchange of giving and receiving feedback from our loved ones, friends, and colleagues allows us the opportunity to assess our own emotional, and social hierarchy of needs, while at the same time communicating what we need from them. Receiving and giving feedback assists us in tapping into accepting one another for our flaws and potentials.
Thus, helping us forge not only meaningful relationships with others but more importantly also with ourselves. Some other tips to make relationships stronger include being loyal and learning to trust our loved ones, and friends more; knowing they equally respect, value, unconditionally love, and support us in our good times and bad times.
In Conclusion
As people come into and out of our lives; we learn how to effectively manage relationships. Granted, relationships are ever-evolving and in some cases cyclical; it is the people we choose to invest the time in building stronger bonds with that matter. Whenever we develop a healthy and positive relationship with others, we feel a sense of satisfaction within us. It is important to accept, celebrate, trust, respect, support, and affirm the thoughts and feelings of those who come into our lives for the reasons of helping to make our lives better. The key is to treat all the people with kindness in a similar manner as you would expect others to treat you.
Visit livingwellwithwil.com to read more about similar blogs. Nurturing healthy and happy relationships with our family and friends is important. Improve the way you think, look, feel, socially interact and live. Subscribe to the Living With Wil blog and podcast at Living Well With WiL today. You are not alone! Be healthy. Be happy, always. Keep spreading and sharing those smiles.