Seek to understand first, then to be understood. Seven Covey.
The quality of your life depends on the quality of your relationships. Choose the people that you spend time with, as they influence you daily.
You are the average of the 5 people you spend your time with. Jim Rohn
Man is by nature a social animal — Aristotle.
Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.― Aristotle
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. – Albert Einstein
You need to feel loved as much as you need to eat. Human relationships are a necessity. How can you connect and help others?
Love is what makes life worth living. Love is the only thing that the more you give, the more you get.
You reap what you sow. What are you sowing around you?
How do you see the people around you? You tend to see the people around you in the same way that you feel inside.
How many good friends do you have? A friend is someone that you can rely on and call at 2 am if something happened to you. Choose carefully your closest social circle because it greatly influences you. Visualize which traits you want in them. If you don't know what you are looking for, you won't find it.
How much people like you does not depend on your money, intelligence or looks. It only depends on how you make them feel. The animal inside you seeks for pleasure and avoids pain.
They avoid you when you give them pain:
They want you because you give them pleasure:
Create strong bonds with people you want to have around:
Your success and happiness depends on the quality of your relationships. Praise sincerely what you like around. Connect with people. Send thank you Notes and christmas cards to your important ones.
Praise
Sincere praise works miracles on people. People behave accordingly to what you expect from them. So why not look for the best around you? Seek and you will find the good in everyone around you. Praise is the reward for the mind, and it's free. Good parents and managers praise what they want to see, and ignore the rest. Everyone has a hidden star inside that needs to be found. In most cases, the star is buried in low self-esteem, however you can find the start in other people and once you find it, they will live up to it, because they don't want to let you down.
"When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Make people around you feel important by listening to them with your full heart.
Trust is the foundation of a relationship. Why? Because we need to trust for our survival. Imagine you leave your friend in charge of your family and go hunting, your friend must be trustworthy because your offspring and survival of your genes depend on him. The stronger foundation you have in a relationship, the more you can build on it.
How do you build trust?
You are prone to seek failure, specially in other people, because other people's faults make you feel good about yourself. What if your defects are even worse? Do you know that you hate the most seeing your own defects in other people?
There is only punishment for whom seek defects and no reward, the punishment is that you find even more defects and end up surrounded by negativity.
What happens when you criticize? The person feels attacked and defends himself. Even if you are right the situation gets worse. Why?
because your brain defends you when you are under attack. How? It makes excuses for you and finds faults in the person who criticizes you. Your brain makes you think that the other person has evil intentions against you or he is not right, even if he is.
Go to jail and ask a prisoner: Why are you here? What do you think he will say, "I am guilty and i should be here"
Not at all, you will most likely hear "I needed to feed my family so i stole that bank", "I was born poor so i could only sell drugs", "I had to protect my brother, so i killed that guy" and so on.
If someone does something wrong, they already know, you don't need to attack them. Help them find an excuse, because that is what they really need, and they will feel so embarrassed that won't do it again. They need a pretext, they are good inside, and sometimes you find right people in the wrong circumstances, so never judge them.
Have you heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy, by which bad students always do bad, and good students do well. You usually do what people expect from you. The clown in the class always acts funny and tells jokes, because that is what people expect. Treat the people around you as wonderful giants with great potential and most of them will live up to your expectations.
If there is a problem fix it. If you can't, forget about it, it's a fact. Try to see the good in every situation, don't miss any opportunities that comes with every life challenge.
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. Napoleon Hill
Complaining makes you feel that you are not responsible for the problem, and no one will come and fix it for you. Take responsibility for all your problems, and don't talk about them, because you will spend your energy talking instead of working on the solution. Barking dog does not bite. Never complain. The complain puts you in a victim mode, you want to be the responsible person to change. Repeat loud, I am responsible every time you find some negativity inside you. Self affirmations will empower you to take responsibility and start working on the solution.
It may not be your fault, but you are responsible for the meaning that you give it and you are responsible for your reaction towards it. Say "I am responsible" no matter what happens.
If you complain life will bring you more situations to complain. Say thank you instead, appreciate the good things around you and you will get more of that. See all problems as challenges or opportunities to improve your current situation, train your growing mindset to improve as a person.
If you have a problem with someone, talk about it, never with someone else. If you complain to other person, they will think that you complain about them when they are not present. Always defend those who are not around.