Your guide to a healthier perspective of life
Prioritize relationships.
Don’t let your pride or ego get in the way. What’s more important? Always being right? Or maintaining a healthy relationship?
When you are on your deathbed, what is your more likely regret? Tarnishing your relationship with others over something so small that you may or may not even remember? Make sure that you are focusing on what is really important in life.
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” – Mark Twain
Joy, happiness, and laughter are contagious! Even if you are not happy, trying to make others happy can help improve your mood as well.
If you’re moping around, you may get attention in the short-term. Nice people or people who care about you will ask how you’re doing and try to offer encouragement or advice. But if you’re constantly down in the dumps, eventually people will not want to hang around you as much because you’ll drag their mood down too.
Be happy. Try to make others feel good. The more you can genuinely make others laugh or be happy, the more they’ll want to do the same for you. And you get the positive benefit of doing something nice for others, which will increase your happiness.
Always be conscious of your decisions and the long-term effects (or side effects) they may have. You can spend years doing the right things, but if you cut corners or are involved in questionable activities, it can take seconds to ruin your reputation. Once you break that trust, it will always be in the back of that person’s head on if they can trust you again or not. It could literally take a lifetime to repair that trust, but who knows if it will ever happen.
The best way to maintain and strengthen relationships is by thinking about the long-term. Don’t acquiesce to immediate gratification. You might feel pleasure once (in the short-term), but then live with regret for the rest of your life. Do yourself a favor and live with integrity. It will help others to like and trust you, but more importantly, it will allow you to like and trust yourself.
People will always want to talk about themselves, to boast about what they’ve done, to insert their opinion into the conversation. This is considered normal. But we should strive to be different. Different stands out. Different makes people notice, even if they’re not sure why.
Instead of talking about your accomplishments, lift others up. Instead of gossiping, speak only truths about situations and only say something about a person if you’ve already said it to them personally. Instead of complaining, be positive. See the glass half full – being realistic, but optimistic.
When others are talking, listen. Look them in the eyes. Ask interesting questions (showing your interest), add verbal and nonverbal cues to urge them to continue talking. Be excited and add to the conversation when it’s appropriate. Don’t interrupt them, or if you do, do it sparingly and only to show your excitement matches theirs.
Don’t dominate conversations. The other person/people should walk away not feeling like they were spoken down to or talked at, but like they had a genuine conversation and contributed to it.
Ask more questions, but ask better questions too. You already know what you think you know. Your goal should be to understand what other people know (or think they know). What can you learn from them? But don’t pester them with annoying questions.
Be curious. The more curious you are, the faster you’ll learn and grow as a person. And, hey, some additional perks are you’ll probably have some great conversations and grow stronger friendships too.