interpersonal interactions

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Recap: Personal Relationships

People have been trying to discover the secrets to great personal relationships forever. You can find thousands of books on the topic and millions of articles online. 

But maybe it doesn’t need to be so complicated…

The checklist

When people say relationships are complicated, they’re often recounting their experiences with maintaining troublesome relationships, possibly several of them at once. 

But a small number of healthy and respectful relationships can be delightfully simple. Getting yours to this point must be one of the smartest moves in life 🙂

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How to Recognize a Good Personal Relationship

Nourishing personal relationships are vital for long term health and happiness. But bad relationships have the opposite effect, and average relationships crowd out the rest of life (yesterday’s post). 

Like so many other areas in life, a great guideline to follow in close personal relationships is quality over quantity. 

Today’s post asks a simple question: How can we recognize a quality relationship when we see one? 

Good vibrations

The first clear indicator of the quality of a relationship is the way it makes you feel when you think about the other person. 

Go ahead, think through the important people in your life. Those that bring a little smile to your face are probably those that are good for you. 

In more questionable territory are those that evoke a bland or negative response. You can certainly work on these relationships, but first, see if they do better in the next two criteria.

Coupled emotions

The next indicator is how much you feel for the other person. Does their happiness bring you joy? Do you become uneasy when they’re down, wanting to help in any way you can?

Think through the people in your life once more. Do those that made you feel good also do well in this test?

How about those that did not do so well? Maybe they just made you feel uneasy before because they’re currently going through a tough time and evoke some deep empathy within you. 

Trust

Finally, there’s your feeling of how safely you can rely on the other person. Do you trust that they will be there in times of need? Do you feel comfortable sharing personal stuff with them?

Take one last round through the people in your life. How do they fare in this category?

Based on our understanding of the effect that relationships have on health, the stress reduction potential of a few relationships rooted in deep trust can add many years to your life.

Where do you stand?

If you have a couple of relationships that do well in all three of these categories, you’re probably in a good spot. Cherish them. 

Someone who made you feel uneasy in the first test but did well in the other two tests may well also be good for you. Helping them through their troubles should be a nourishing experience.

However, if that person seems to constantly be in crisis, keeping you in a constant state of distress, you may need to make some tough choices… 

And what if you feel you don’t have enough good relationships in your life? Try asking yourself how you need to change to do well in these simple tests if they were applied to you. 

As an additional help, tomorrow’s post will share a few proven ways to sustain nourishing personal relationships. 

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Why Do We Need Close Relationships?

This week, we’ll talk about something that humanity has wrestled with for millennia: how to build and maintain healthy close relationships. 

And things are not getting any simpler now that such relationships have become optional…  

What’s the use?

Few people would argue that maintaining close personal relationships takes plenty of time and sacrifice. And for millennia, this price simply had to be paid for survival.

Indeed, in the old days, surviving alone was almost impossible. Without the protection and cooperation of the tribe, individual humans were pretty much defenseless against nature. 

But no more. In today’s world, survival doesn’t depend on close personal connections. Simply render some useful service to society and you can buy all the sustenance and protection you need. 

As a result, the nature of close relationships is changing. Many more people are choosing to live alone and stay single, but interestingly, this is not causing greater loneliness. 

And just as well, because healthy personal relationships are crucial for a long and happy life.

The benefits of relationships

There is good evidence that high-quality relationships are important for health and longevity. 

Studies suggest that stress from perceived loneliness could be the most important factor. But there are also other factors like improved health habits and reduced depression risk.  

Loneliness could be just as dangerous as smoking. Although the evidence is not as clear yet, it is clear enough to encourage anyone who regularly feels lonely to make the effort to improve their relationships. 

As an added bonus, regular social interaction also seems to make us happier. This effect is not huge, but it’s significant. 

On the other hand, as we all know intuitively, bad relationships can have the opposite effect. Quality is indeed more important than quantity. 

The takeaway

This evidence points to a simple recommendation for a long and happy life:

Avoid bad hormones from loneliness or unhealthy relationships and get plenty of good hormones from healthy relationships. 

The rest of the week will look at ways to follow this simple advice in our busy modern lives. 

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Ideal Version of You, Part 3: People

Today, we’ll define the third part of your personal constitution: how the ideal version of yourself will treat other people. 

We can probably all agree that relationships are complicated. They can bring great happiness, productivity and inspiration. But they can also go in the opposite direction, often for unknown reasons.  

In most cases, the fate of a relationship is determined by the accumulation of hundreds of little interpersonal interactions. 

If we can ensure that the vast majority of these little interactions make both parties feel just a little bit better, a good relationship becomes highly likely. 

It’s no use expecting others to do this for us. The only person in the relationship we can control is ourselves.

So, let’s take this control now. 

Special Wednesday 5-minute action Draft your own interpersonal interaction constitution

 

A good constitution segment is no longer than 2-3 sentences. It should be simple, clear and memorable. 

Here are some helpful guidelines for drafting a good interpersonal interaction constitution: 

  • Prioritize quality over quantity
  • Emphasize the importance of doing the small things right
  • Use the bucket philosophy

The last point comes from a great little book by Tom Rath (highly recommended). Basically, your emotional bucket is continuously filled by positive interactions or emptied by negative interactions.

A full bucket makes you feel awesome. And developing yourself to the point where you can regularly make other people feel awesome is a surefire recipe for success.  

From this mindset, my version looks like this:

I will maximize the quality of my human interactions, while controlling the quantity. Every interaction will fill the other person’s bucket, even if it’s just one little drop.  

Every little interaction counts. Therefore, the use of a personal constitution to shape yourself into an automatic bucket-filler is a very smart move. It certainly was an eye-opening experience for me. 

Please give this a go! The people in your life will be very grateful 🙂

See you tomorrow for part 4 of your personal constitution!

PS: If you haven’t checked out the first two parts, they are available here: health and creativity.