DEVELOPING RELATIONSHIPS

RELATIONSHIPS: Communication and Activity.

So much of our life is centered around communication. We create and maintain our relationships using communication - verbal and nonverbal.

All life's activities follow the Universal Law of "Creation, Maintenance, and Change." All our relationships with people, experiences, places, and things will follow this Universal Law.

It is reasonable to aim to create and maintain holistic, complementary harmony in all our relationships.

We cannot leave our relationships neglected to the forces of chance, luck, or indifference. For satisfying relationships, we need to learn how to develop our relationships.

Developing and nurturing our relationships requires time, patience, love, communication, enthusiasm, respect, and a commitment to tune into and get to know the object of our relationship.

CREATION: getting to know the other

TIME: OBSERVATION: COMMUNICATION: DEFINITION: CLASSIFICATION: KNOWING: DECISION

If you want to understand others you will need to take the time to get to know them and find out about their lives.

Whether we are beginning a relationship with a person, a place, an experience, an idea, or a thing, we are required to respect the other and attempt to familiarize ourselves with the other by communicating and "tuning-in".

Look before you leap - always take time and effort to find out all you can about people who you are interested in forming relationships with so that you can avoid random relationships and unnecessary suffering.

MAINTENANCE: Testing your relationships

Once we have created relationships we will have to test them. How reliable and strong is the relationship? How good is it for us? Is the other simply a "fair weather friend" - only wanting entertainment and the good times?

It is a good practice to regularly review and test all our relationships with all the people in our life.

In other words, "Let me see what others are made of." By their fruits you shall know them, not just by their words.

CHANGE: Letting go of NEGATIVE relationships

There comes a time in all relationships (especially our intimate romantic ones) when we realize that it is over. Letting go is difficult. We are often very dependent upon that person for our emotional, physical, and romantic support and satisfactions.

CHANGE: Breaking dependency

We all require to be dependent upon certain people, places, and things to give us things we need to live.

Negative dependency:	Sometimes these things are no good for us.
Inability to accept change:	Sometimes relationships change and are no longer meaningful to us.
Co-dependency:	All people involved in the relationship might not want to or feel able to let go.

Whatever the situation, it is always difficult to break our dependency upon any aspect of our lives. We might need external help to overcome the problem.

Going for help is an expression of our health not our sickness.

The truly sick never seek help and thus remain ill.

SOCIAL AWaRENESS

Recognizing personality types and traits in others so that we connect with the right people for our lives.

Managing our relationships: Getting the right connections and the right intensity of connection for different social settings.

Emotional awareness and honesty: How do we really feel about others and the social situations of our lives? Our feelings give us important feedback about our relationships with our environments and the people in them.

Attitude and Mood Awareness.

Accepting and responding to change: Nothing stays the same. We outgrow social circumstances and people. What was great last year may be unacceptable for tomorrow. We need to learn how to adapt and respond to the changes of life. Pruning our social connections, dropping redundant and negative relationships, reducing or increasing our intensity of connection with the people in our lives according to our emotional responses (re: Emotional awareness).

Pearls before swine? Are we giving too much to the wrong people? Should we even be continuing some of our relationships? If we continual come away from a social situation feeling negative then we need to make a decision concerning that situation and the people in it.

Are you being used? Feel that some of your social connections are just "one-way traffic"? Are you always the one making the effort whilst others simple take? Be honest about your emotional responses to your social circumstances.

Are your relationships authentic? Are you being appreciated? Do you feel that you are genuinely loved and treated with care, kindness, and respect, and treating others in the same way.

"Do unto others that which you would like done unto your Self."