An estimated 80% of people who come to our company for coaching are searching for answers on the subject of relationships. There is no doubt that human relationships are a complex interaction. We would go so far as to say there is nothing more complex.
If you are like many of our clients, you will have come to the realization that the answers to a great relationship are not in trying to change, alter or transform someone else. The answers lie within each of us.
Before we delve into that, let’s take a look at what the word ‘relationship’ really means in our society? Why are relationships so important to us? Why do we seek them in the first place?
Firstly, the word “relationship” is an abstract noun (a noun frozen in time, made to look and feel like a proper noun, but it isn’t) and literally means to relate, connect or form a bond. This means that a relationship is a process. So if you stop relating, connecting or bonding, the ‘relationship’ falls apart.
Success in any relationship, whether it is in your business or your personal life, is far more than just a desire to succeed, (although that desire does make up part of the big picture of success), as we will find out.
Most people would say that we seek relationships to find happiness, but I don’t think that is correct. Author, Trainer and Coach Dr John Demartini agrees and he postulates that we seek relationships to make up for the parts of us that are missing or in need of balance.
“This”, John says in his new book, The Breakthrough Experience, “is why we often attract partners that are so different from ourselves. They balance us by bringing us back into equilibrium”.
Many people have become very wealthy writing about this subject.
The proof of this is in any newspaper or magazine you might care to read. In fact bookshops are fully stocked on the subject. You may find though that the information contained in this article is somewhat different, as it based on the cognitive behavioural psychological sciences of Neuro Semantics (NS) and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and takes a different perspective on our ability to relate to each other.
So what is the key to finding and maintaining successful relationships? There are many facets to this complex subject. I have listed 7 key areas that I believe to be the most important, and I will expand on each in the coming months, article by article. The 7 key elements of successful relationships:
1. The ability to manage your frames of mind (your state of mind, your mood, your attitude, your mindset in any given context) is at the core of the relationship process. That’s right, it starts with you. It is from a positive framework (our state of mind at any given moment) that allows us to relate with others in an empowering way.
Our frames of mind directly affect the way we behave which in-turn directly affects the outcomes we achieve.
In Meta-coaching we call this the be-do-have equation; our state (the being) influences our behaviour (the doing) which in turn influences the results that we get in life (the having). Finding our power in a relationship then starts with our state of mind, the framework, the unconscious rules we bring to them. This allows us to effect the only thing we can take control of and that is “ourselves”.
2. The ability to establish and maintain rapport. Sometimes, it seems as though it is hard to keep the rapport going in a relationship, especially when we disagree with someone’s point of view or when our core value is violated. Rapport underpins all human communication. Without rapport, we will tend to encounter toxic relationships.
Rapport is a two way process that has an underlying structure to it. We will provide you with the secrets of that structure within this series of articles so that you may create powerful rapport with people at an unconscious level. You will come to understand the rules of rapport building that will gain you rapport even with the most difficult people in your life.
3. The ability to effectively communicate your ideas and to influence other people. When I am coaching I will often notice that many see the word influence as having a negative connotation. I find this surprising because influence is actually a very positive attribute found at the heart of the world’s most successful people. Sometimes I think people get the words influence and manipulation mixed up.
Influence is the ability to communicate how we see the world (our map of the world) to someone else, in a way that they actually understand. That should be a thing of celebration! A friend of mine once said to a girl he met for the first time at a party “I can’t believe you get it, you see the world the way I do?” which was closely followed by the words, “WILL YOU MARRY ME?” She did and they still are married.
This kind of interaction is quite rare for most of us, the main reason being that we all have different maps of the world. We all see and experience the world differently and we can’t understand how other people can think so differently to us. Once we understand that other people see the world from a different point of view, we can learn to figure out the structure of their thinking (beliefs, values, higher level thinking patterns). We can then use this to learn how to communicate to them in a way that they can understand, and in doing so we can become understood. Isn’t that what we all want?
4. The ability to take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror, to see and accept who you really are, for all your faults and all your strengths. This is where coaching comes in and why it is a process strictly for those who have the ego strength to do just that. If we are unable to do this on a regular basis, we may begin to fall into a pattern of psychological projection, projecting our faults onto the people we interact with. I’m sure you will agree this could be fatal in any relationship.
Through acceptance of ourselves, we can get a benchmark of our current frames of mind, our beliefs, our values and our higher level thinking patterns. Our beliefs and values are a high level compass, in that they guide what we pay attention to. Once we understand and accept who we are, we can begin to make adjustments to the direction of our life at this high level.
We can then figure out where we want to go and who we want to become in our life and change our frames, our values and beliefs and thinking patterns to facilitate the creation of our dreams.
5. The ability to step back and look at your relationships from multiple perspectives.
That is to take a look at your interactions from another’s perspective rather than just your own.
Just take what is going on at the moment in the Middle East. There are some people over there, all with different ideas (maps) in their heads about the same basic issues. They all see it from a different point of view – the only problem is that they are looking at the same issues from their own point of view.
If those in power were to step back and look at the big picture of what is going on, if they were to take on each other’s perspective and bring that information into their own thinking, their perception of the issues would shift.
Then, if they were to take a look at the situation from the rest of the world’s perspective and bring that point of view into their thinking, their perceptions would shift again, and they could never look at the same issues in the same way. It’s exactly the same in personal relationships. Problems only occur when we begin to look at an issue from only one perspective – our own perspective. In effect we limit ourselves by our own thinking.
6. Learn to work on your relationships rather than just in your relationships. There are many types of relationships, and they all need love, nurturing and care to grow. Often times we need to pull ourselves out of the river of our relationships, to begin working on them rather than just going with the flow. Not that there is anything wrong with going with the flow, though in the wider context of our relationships if you don’t take control of your life, somebody else will.
Richard Bandler, one of the great minds of our time, often says, “Who’s driving the bus?” Of course what he means is who is working on your life, on your relationships, you or someone else? Because someone is driving the bus!
7. The ability to accept and appreciate others for who they are. This is a big rock in the river for most people. The ability to look for the “gold” in others is a unique skill. However it is a learned skill, for when we begin to look, our perspective changes and we can start to see things that we have not seen before. Focus is an amazing thing.
Psychological research carried out by Richard Bandler, John Grinder and Dr. Milton Erickson in the early seventies suggests that our mind deletes, distorts and generalises information so that we can understand it.
With over 2 million bits of data coming at us through our 5 senses every second, it is, the only way we can make sense of the world.
Focus can also be called our intention as it guides what we pay attention to. So if our intention is to accept and appreciate others, then this will begin to show up for us in our lives.
We will explain to you how you can learn to influence your intention and therefore what you pay attention to, in coming articles.
In closing, it is the structure of our perception, the communication skills we possess, the unconscious intention that we start with, that helps us form the basis of the way we relate with others. This is what we also call ‘emotional intelligence’.
I hope you have enjoyed this, the first of 6 (bits) articles on building successful relationships.
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I am getting married pretty soon and I am not sure if she would be the ideal partner for me? what should I ask her in order to make sure that we spend a happily married life forever?