It is a fact that a relationship blooms in an environment of love, care, respect and value for one another. Value for the person they are. When you say you love someone it calls for a commitment that goes beyond words. It is sometimes easier to earn a day’s meal for someone than to keep up to what it means to just say “I Love you”.
Here are two simple ways that could help you to be a harp rather than a horn in your family and the people around you.
Response vs. Reaction
It will be a good practice to start right at the onset. If we can get into the habit of developing our conversations by responding rather than reacting to things, then half the battle is won. This will create the right kind of zone for you to think clearly and communicate effectively. For instance, while walking on the road a motorbike touches the edge of your bag sideways and makes your bag go swinging in the air and right back to you on your face. Would you react or respond? What would you do? Would you spew out a few ugly words, run behind the fellow and try and hit him with the same bag? Or would you pause, take a deep breath, get your stuff right, be calm and start walking again. Choosing the second option will avoid you getting stressed out and will not influence the remaining course of your day. This comes with regular training of your own emotions and feelings. The more you train the better you will be able to handle a similar or a much more complex situation.
Pilots are trained to face the worst, unexpected situations so that they become mature enough to respond not react and follow instructions as required. There are of course times when you would need to react and show urgency. It is important to assess the situation and then choose your tool. The more you train yourself the easier you will find it is to respond and not react. We need to apply this first in our relationships at home and then practice with others around us. What a great home it would be where you don’t see people hurling things at one another during a fight but choose to set things in order calmly.
Appreciation vs. Criticism
Appreciation builds while criticism hinders unless one draws a line to understand how to view criticism. We don’t need an experiment to know how we feel when we are appreciated or criticized. We all have faced both at some point and would agree that we all want to be appreciated. Research has demonstrated that when you are appreciated, your heart rhythm is in harmony and this brings your heart and brain in one coherent state. Each of us have talents and are unique in our own ways. If we start taking note of some of things our wife/husband/parents/friends can do, we would be amazed to know how they can do some things way better than us. Let us work towards building one another and then see how beauty, grace and honour adds feathers to our relationships.
Let us remind ourselves that humans are not made to live in isolation but in stronger, bonding and budding relationships. John Joseph Powell said “It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
How true that is! Yet broken relationships have caused more damage to humans than wars and weapons. Many problems will be solved if we base our convictions and opinions on the right value system. Do we support a value system that only looks for personal gratification and fulfillment? Do we hold the flag of the saying “My way or the skyway”? If in a relationship both the individuals stick to this same value system, there is no way things will move or get sorted out. This results in break-ups, fights, abuse and ultimately the death of a relationship. We don’t want that to happen. Hence it is important to know what drives our thoughts, values and actions based on which we slowly begin to choose to transform our actions/reactions to responses and seek to see harmony in all our encounters with one another. This conscious decision to do things with the right intentions will allow freedom and love to grow in relationships.
“Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. … Pleasant words are a honeycomb: sweet to the taste and health to the body” – Bible
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