Connecting with others is important for most people. We desire, and perhaps even need, strong relationships. Despite their importance, they don’t happen instinctively. Strong relationships take effort, and there are many features of relationships that impact their strength and health. If we experience isolation and loneliness, it contributes to anxiety and sadness. Building and maintaining meaningful relationships thus helps us master stress and anxiety.
How do we go about building strong relationships? Many blogs and books can be and have been dedicated to this topic. What follows is not an exhaustive list, but instead offers a few ideas for considering how to form and strengthen relationships.
Listen
One of the best gifts we can give to another person is the gift of listening. We often underestimate the power of listening. I’ve never had a client tell me that their significant other, “listens too much to me.” Instead, many people feel their friends or significant other do not listen enough. When we dedicate our full attention to what another person is saying, it communicates that we value what they are saying, and it also communicates that we value them as a person. This is one of the challenges of social media. It’s a medium that doesn’t provide an opportunity to hear another person. It promotes commenting and reacting, but it doesn’t promote listening.
Although listening may seem easy, in practice this isn’t the case. Listening requires the listener to be aware of the other person’s words and body language, and it also requires the listener to be aware of their own thoughts and feelings in the moment. If the other person shares an idea you disagree with or makes a negative remark, our instinct is to interrupt, react and argue our point. Taking a moment to pause, notice our thoughts and continue listening can be hard and uncomfortable work. But when we are willing to put in the effort and commit to listening, we create more supportive and stronger relationships.
Open Up
Have you ever heard the word, “woundable”? I’m guessing not, because I just made it up. However, I’m guessing you’ve heard of “vulnerable.” Vulnerable is derived from the Latin “vulne,” meaning wound. Vulnerable literally means, able to be wounded. Is it any wonder that we hesitate to be vulnerable? Because we value connection, we fear rejection. We desire to be known and accepted for who we are, but we also fear that who we are isn’t good enough. Being open and vulnerable is a building block of strong relationships, and yet it can feel quite risky. If you’ve been hurt in the past, your mind starts to put up walls and limit how open you are willing to be. But these limits to openness are also risky, because the strength of our connection is directly related to our willingness to be vulnerable.
For more resources regarding vulnerability, visit Dr. Brene Brown’s site
Encourage
Dr. Kelly Wilson, one of the founders of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, asks the following question: “Are the people in your life math problems or sunsets?” When we encounter a math problem, our instinct is to solve it. In contrast, when we encounter a sunset, we admire it. We don’t spend time analyzing the physics and light refraction that results in the beauty. We just appreciate the beauty. We often view others more as math problems than sunsets. It’s much easier to see others’ flaws and deficits. Sometimes we work hard trying to change and solve other people. But people aren’t math problems. When we view others as sunsets, we have the freedom to encourage and support them. Interestingly, when we treat others well, we often receive kindness in return. Although it takes more work to lift someone up than it does to put them down, when we encourage another person it not only increases their well-being, it usually improves our well-being.