How to be better

[xnez]

What resources are out there to help me have better relationships, social skills, and learn to love myself.

I would like to have closer more stable relationships with my friends and family. I just am not sure how to go about it, what i should change, how to be more comfortable about who i am.

What types of things has everyone tried? Books? Meditation?

Thanks

[RT Wolf]

Messages: The Communication Skills Book. Difficult Conversations. How To Win Friends and Influence People. The part in 7 Habits about Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

[Brad Isaac]

Originally Posted by xnez

I would like to have closer more stable relationships with my friends and family. I just am not sure how to go about it, what i should change, how to be more comfortable about who i am.

One of the best ways to do this is to spend a lot of time alone doing things YOU like to do. Take yourself out to a nice dinner, take yourself out to the movies ALONE. Become aware of your likes and dislikes on a new level. Spend some time sitting in the park on a warm summer day just taking in the sights, sounds and writing in your journal.

After 13 years of marriage, This is my perspective.

[siamesesilk]

Brad makes a good point about some alone time to get to know yourself. I agree 100% with that. Another thing I find helps tremendously is working out. I go to a gym, but you could just walk in your neighborhood. You will gain self confidence about yourself as you start to feel better about yourself and you may meet new people. Even if it's just a quick "hello" as you pass by, it will make you more comfortable around others so that you can start dealing with others at the very basic level.

[RT Wolf]

^ Brad makes an excellent point. Even if you don't believe in SR or the SR view of relationships, the concept that your feelings and/or external relationships are reflections of your internal relationships is very true. If you dig up that blog entry by Steve, some of the stuff he says is straight out of psychological therapy practices.

Improve your internal relationships and your external relationships will also improve. Forgive yourself, if you haven't and stop feeling guilty and it'll be easier to forgive others. Accept yourself completely, faults et all, and you will find it easier to accept others. Don't regret and you'll find an easier time not blaming. Love yourself unconditionally, and it will be easier to love others. That sort of stuff.

One thing to remember, though, is to learn to evaluate your relationships. Just as you have standards for your own behaviour, actions and thoughts, you should have standards for others. When I speak of acceptance, I don't mean condoning or necessarily agreement, just accept the reality of the situation/relationship, acknowledge it and change it if you wish to. So, while you may love everyone (or a particular person) unconditionally, you don't necessarily wish the relationship to continue. Acceptance doesn't mean settling.

Reflection and self-awareness are important in relationships as Brad said.

Another thing, drop your ego and become more results oriented. Your ego can cause you to get into fights and stay in fights when you actually couldn't care less, just to prove that you're right. You can find many great benefits by dropping your ego. And becoming results oriented means asking yourself what you want out of a certain situation and how exactly you want your relationships to be. Say you got into a fight and you're not talking to the other person, and you decide that the result you want is the continuation of the relationship. Obviously, a silly unimportant fight is just not congruent to that goal, so you might consider being the first to "give in". But you're not giving in, you're moving from a point of true strength when you are moving from a point of forgiveness and/or acceptance.

Learn to express your emotions, calmly and openly. And learn to control them. If someone has hurt you, instead of getting angry, let them know that you've hurt them. Your point is not to make them feel guilty, but to just let them know the impact hteir actions/words have had on you.

Let's say for the sake of argument that there's two "states" of a relationship, the normal times and the troubled times. The normal times are when everything is going good and everyone's happy. The troubled times is before/during/after a fight or a disagreement or such. You wnat to learn to navigate each well. I found Messages helped me improve my "normal" times and Difficult Conversations helped me deal with the troubled times.

Another thing, each of those "states" has a trajectory. If you're familiar with vectors, then it would be easier to imagine a magnitude (how good or bad the state is) and which direction its going in. So, your normal times may be ok, but slowly getting worse through lack of attention. Perhaps a friend with whom you can't find the time to meet up with.

And troubled times with a trajectory of getting better is also possibile. After becoming more understanding and controlling my ego and emotions more, I've found that I rarely have "fights" anymore, in the sense. There are disagreements, to be sure, but there's an open dialogue and exchange which can end in agreeing to disagree. It's a whole new world, in the sense that there's nothing going thrown around and no yelling. Its a skill, handling these kinds of situations, so practice.

Yet another thing, Stephen Covey (7 Habits) uses the analogy of an emotional bank account, in which you want to keep making deposits in, becuase if you stop making deposits, then the balance will slowly depreciate. The deposits don't have to huge, a kind word, a compliment. A sincere, "I really appreciate our friendship/relationship/whatever." I would also recommend finding a local flower shop. There's one near my place where I can get some really cheap flowers (like a dollar) which are still nice. Get them randomly for people (siblings, friends, sig. others, whoever).

Yet yet another thing, people have expectations, and people are delighted when you go above them. Around birthdays and stuff, people are expecting nice stuff, but they don't really expect to get anything on a random sunday, so if you get something for htem, they're often delighted. I prefer to be random, like that. Small, very inexpensive gifts are good. But just a kind word, a random hug are all good.

If you feel that you're not the kind of person that does that kind of stuff, then you'll have to make an effort to do that. Arguably, the people in our lives shape us the most, so I feel its very important to maintain and help those relationships. Besides, it just feel great to give.

[RT Wolf]

One more thing (heh, its like I'm writing a book here): we generally tend to think of other people as rational beings. Classical economics is founded on the idea of homo rationalis. Which is accurate, in certain spheres, but not wholly accurate in others. Human beings are emotional beings. Fundamentally, we are emotional. Even our rational decisions are hugely influenced by our emotions. So learn to become more emotionally sophisticated. Learn to recognize and label certain feelings and to understand them and yourself.

Too many people ignore their emotions, denying a huge part of themselves. Understanding that human beings are fundamentally emotional is a very empowering belief (and more accurate, to boot) because it helps you to improve your relationships with others. Understanding other people's emotions is often the key to understanding them and understanding your relationship. EMOTIONS! EMOTIONS! EMOTIONS! EMOTIONS! Emotions are the key.