It’s no secret that many of us take our relationships for granted. Yet often we don’t realize how much it affects us personally and how a relationship can change our life for the better…or worse.
Good relationships are essential in our everyday lives because you gain a level of trust and respect, but also afford you the opportunity to build your self-awareness and inclusion with others. Stable relationships make us feel less lonely and it motivates us to be better people.
Generally, a good and healthy relationship is made of:
Trust - You can be open and honest with someone else about your thoughts and actions without feeling like you have to walk around on eggshells. You can be yourself without judgment (for the most part).
Respect – You value someone’s personal input just as much as this person values yours.
Self-Awareness – You have a sense of personal responsibility to be mindful of how you speak and act to not let the other person down by any negative emotions.
Inclusion – You welcome different points of view on a specific value or issue regardless of your position.
Having a meaningful relationship is one of the most insightful gifts that life has to offer because it gives people like you an opportunity to love and be loved. But it also does so much more than that. Relationships create healthy environments for personal growth, allow you to learn, improve your mental and emotional health, and boost your motivation.
How Good Relationships Create a Healthy Environment for Personal Growth
You can build social skills that will help you communicate and connect better with others. Social skills include getting exposed to body language and other social cues that let you know whether you’re being understood or if there is a good dynamic between you and the other person.
Gauging relationship interactions helps you build harmony in your environment because you can appreciate others as well as recognize kindness. On the other hand, social dynamics allow you to see red flags as they come that you might need to fix for yourself.
How Healthy Relationships Create a Learning Environment
You can learn so much more about yourself just by seeing how others react to you or approach you. Are you easy to talk to? Are you approachable?
What works in one relationship may not work in another, so it also allows the opportunity for you to be able to create boundaries that are necessary for your mind and soul to be at peace. It also forces you to have flexibility in your social circle.
That said, having a relationship with someone else forces you to work on your emotional intelligence. You're exposed to needing to recognize your own emotions and what those emotions are trying to tell you in specific conversations or situations.
The very same thing can be said about others choosing to be in a relationship with you. You are a crucial tool in someone else's development as well. As humans, we get the opportunity to practice mindful listening. This means relationships put us in a position where we may need to talk less to truly listen to others and understand more deeply what others have to say about us or other values in general.
Mindful listening, also known as active listening, is extremely powerful when managing conflict both in your personal life as well as in professional settings. It gives you an idea of where the other person is coming from and why.
How Stable Relationships Improve Mental and Emotional Health
Don't forget that you're human. Humans are naturally social beings. We need someone to share tough times together for emotional or moral support. But we also gain so much when we have someone else with whom we can share our laughs and joys. Relations gives us balance in our Ying and Yang.
Being part of a relationship, whether platonic or romantic, makes us feel less lonely. A study shows that people who feel a stronger sense of belonging tend to have a 50% boost in their survival rate. In other words, we live longer if we feel that we belong.
When we feel like we have a place in this world through a relationship with someone, we tend to feel safe. When you feel safe, you also feel less stressed.
Why Positive Relationships Boost Motivation
Relationships challenge us at an individual level. When you’re around others who are doing well in life or with specific goals that you're hoping to achieve yourself, it boosts you're wanting to get better, to be better.
It's safe to say that being around others who bring you positivity and optimism increases your own enthusiasm. When someone has the power to make you feel excited about anything and everything, motivation floats in the air and becomes contagious.
So... why build a relationship? As you can see building relationships it's like medicine for the soul. It brings people closer to you and forces you to work on yourself at an individual level.
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