BUILDING LOVELY RELATIONSHIPS

A greater percentage of your happiness in life is going to come from your relationships with other people. How well you get along with them, and they with you, largely determines the quality of everything that happens to you. Someone said, “You can’t live any better than you can love and be loved.”

Everybody Needs Somebody

God had a concern for mutual human support and companionship. The first negative assessment by God of an otherwise excellent and perfect creation (Genesis 1:31) was aloneness as indicated in His statement “It is not good for the man to be alone… (Gen. 2:18). Aristotle said, “Human beings are social creatures.” I’ve been saying that “the cruelest punishment you can mete out to a person is to isolate him from other people; bring him closer to them and that will be the happiest thing you have done for him.”

Principles for Building Lovely Human Relationships

Dealing with people is probably the biggest and most difficult challenge you can face, but able to live well with them is probably the most rewarding experience you can have.

Some people have countless friends, and we ask, what is their secret? How are others able to get close and stay close to the people they like, and have successful relationships? The answer is simple: they follow tried, tested and timeless principles for building lovely and positive relationships. Learn the secrets to building lovely human relationships – between a friend and a friend, husband and wife, parent and child, manager and subordinate.

PRINCIPLE 1: Assign top priority to your relationships; Friendship is a valuable commodity!

Love is always worth it. All of us like people who admire and take interest in us. Getting closer to a few people is more significant than being popular enough to receive numerous birthday cards every year. If you want others to like you, if you want to develop real friendship, then make friendship an important aspect of your life. Significant relationships come to those who assign enough importance and time to cultivate them.

PRINCIPLE 2: Accept people; Make a good first impression!

A large part of our success at love and building lovely relationships depend on our ability to accept human nature unconditionally and without reservations, what is called in psychology, “unconditional positive regard.” Remember, the opposite of acceptance is rejection.

a.      Smile: The simplest way to express acceptance of another person is simply to smile each time you see him or her. Each time you smile, you raise the self-esteem of the person that you are smiling at. Someone said it right: “A smile is a way to write your thoughts on your face telling others that they are loved, accepted and appreciated.” If we want to make friends, let’s greet people with animation and enthusiasm.

b.      Don’t look down on anyone: Respect and regard people no matter their outlook and pedigree; their ideas, opinions and differences. Every creation of God has great worth and should be regarded and treated as such. This makes them feel worth, valued and important, and it makes the relationship meaningful. Remember no one likes to be looked down upon!

c.       Assign importance to peoples’ names: A person’s name sounds the sweetest and most important to him in any language! The average person is interested in his or her own name than in all the names on earth put together. Sometimes it is difficult to remember or even pronounce some names, but your ability to learn to mention peoples’ names right is a sure way to make friends with them. One other thing that works, especially after knowing someone for a while is assigning special names to them such that the mention of such names makes them know you are calling them but no one else, especially when there are others who bear their usual names. The name sets the individual apart; it makes him or her unique among others.

PRINCIPLE 3: Understand people are different; Similarities create friendships, but differences hold them together!

Every human being is different and unique. Recognizing this basic fact is essential for building positive and lovely relationships. Don’t be bent on changing people to suit you; demanding that they feel, think, and act like you do: with the principle – if only they would change and do what I ask, I would love them.

Ultimately all human beings are different – physically, psychologically, and emotionally. By recognizing, accepting, respecting and appreciating these differences, many of the conflicts that entangle our relationships can be solved and we will have lovely relationships. 

PRINCIPLE 4: Build bridges to people; Remember it takes two to tango, and you are one of the two!

Relationships do not operate in a vacuum; we will need people who will be closely associated with us – people with whom we work, pray and play, share jokes and laugh with.

In our relationships, we have deep yearnings to connect to others in a meaningful way; however, many at times, people are not able to connect to us or us with them well. Realizing this, you need to build bridges of love, tenderness, and understanding – so that there will be no room for walls to arise.

Building bridges is work for two but your work begins on your side.

PRINCIPLE 5:  Replace condemnations and criticisms with commendations and compliments; A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of bile!

Words have tremendous impact on our lives. Many have lived lives of fulfillment because of words of blessings, compliments, and successes that have been spoken on their lives. On the other hand, there are many who have lived lives of crippling insecurity because the words spoken to them on regular basis have been that of judgment, criticism, and failure. One of my favourite Bible quotations puts it right; “Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them” (Eph.4:29 NLT). Words are seeds. When implanted into people, they produce fruits and eventually manifest in the attitude and behaviour of the person. Believing in people and speaking words of commendations and compliments build them up and is one way of showing them love. Criticisms and condemnations however wound a person’s precious pride, hurt his sense of importance, and arouse resentment. Every successful lover employs this technique: “being hearty in approbation and lavish in praise”. If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive!

Actions don’t always speak louder than words!

PRINCIPLE 6: Learn the gestures of love; Love is something you do!

The gestures of love are the little things done just to say “I love you.” They have ripple effects which can spread even beyond the original point of contact intended. Yes! The experts at love know this and they never get tired looking for the gestures of love, showing them in small expressions of affection.

a.      Body touch: One important gesture of love is body touch. Handshakes, holding hands, hugging, embracing, and kissing – all these gestures show love and care, and they keep the love tank full. Sometimes you are at a loss to know what to say to a distressed and troubled friend than to stretch forth your hand and touch her on the shoulder to convey how deeply you feel.

b.      Remember important days in their life: Birthdays, graduations, and marriage anniversaries are important days in the lives of people. Try to remember those of your friends and celebrate with them. They are ways of communicating emotional love to one’s loved ones.

c.       Exchanging gifts: This is one of oldest gestures of love! A gift is something you can hold in your hand, and give to your friend and say, “Take, this shows my love for you!” Gifts are visual symbols of love.

d.      Dine together: One surest way to deepen friendship is by making time to eat together. There is something so significant about dinning together. Have you noticed how difficult it is to dine with an enemy and still remain enemies?

e.       Learn to listen: Become a good conversationalist. Talk is cheap, they say, but it is an essential ingredient in the best relationships. There can be no intimacy without conversation. To know and love a friend over the years, you must have regular talks. It may seem obvious, but so many close relationships break down because people quit talking. You need not be a talkative to be a good conversationalist. You simply must know how to listen with a view to understanding the other person’s thoughts, feelings, and desires. There is a simple secret that will make you interesting; to listen attentively. “The secret of being interesting is to be interested.”  We cannot be good conversationalists only through listening; we also have to be self-revealing.

PRINCIPLE 7: Dare to talk about your affection; Being a nice guy/gal gets you nowhere!

Why are we so reluctant to declare openly that we care and love someone? Probably for fear of seeming sentimental, most of us hold back our expressions of warmth and thus miss out on promising rich and profound relationships. But those who are loved widely are those who usually throw caution to the winds and declare their love freely.

There is nothing that will turn a man on more than knowing that a woman really cares for him. Apparently, everyone loves a lover. If you wish to be loved, love! We naturally tend to fall in love with those who love us. The great “pull” to love comes precisely from his/her loving you.

It is sad though, when two people come together and like each other but because both are shy, they don’t declare their affection, and the tragedy is that the love goes unreciprocated and so the relationship dies.

Freely declaring our affection would immeasurably add a lot to the amount of love we have for people. Don’t just gush out inappropriate and artificial emotions, people will soon begin to discount everything you say; don’t say anything you don’t feel, but do express every good feeling you have about others.

PRINCIPLE 8: Cultivate transparency in your relationship; Take away the face mask!

There are people who have so many friends, but one characteristic they have in common is openness. They have a certain transparency, allowing people to see what is in their heart. If you are willing to be open, there will be people who cannot keep from loving you. Habitual pretense and withdrawal leads to disintegration of the personality; and on the other hand, honesty literally can be a health insurance policy preventing both mental illness and certain types of physical sickness.

If you build more windows and fewer walls, you will have more friends. You never genuinely know yourself except as an outcome of disclosing yourself to others. “Make thyself known and thou shall then know thyself”

PRINCIPLE 9: Create space in your relationships; Sometimes winning arguments can mean losing the relationship!

“At the heart of love, there is a simple secret: the lover makes the beloved be free”. The best friendships do not require that anyone be in control. Rather there is a mutuality in which either party is free to be who he or she is, and weak at times without fearing that the other will get “one up”. Behaviour between unequal parties is “complementary”, involving dependency and nurturance, superiority and inferiority. Let your friend be free and don’t control. Intimidation never gets friends. Neglect this and watch your friends flee.

PRINCIPLE 10: Forbear and Forgive; No one is perfect, including you!

One major reason why you shouldn’t hold grudges is to know that you are not perfect, and you make mistakes too. Make room for other people’s faults. Your friend is human, and may stumble now and then. Be ready to forgive and don’t hold grudges.

Make every effort to build lovely relationships. Be at peace with people and live well with them. You need people in your life; I need you, and you need me. A healthy professional life begins with healthy relationships!

References: 

• The Friendship Factor by Alan Loy McGinnis 

• How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie 

• Men, Women and Relationships by John Gray