Navigating Relationships - 3 Crucial Concepts

Our personal success is dependent upon how profoundly we connect with ourselves, others, and our communities.

Yet, creating effective bonds might seem especially challenging during the pandemic. Maybe we find ourselves traversing a landscape of divisiveness or disconnection.  Or, it just may be that no one ever taught us how to engage well with others. Any of these dynamics could overwhelm, resulting in feeling isolated and lonely.

The good news is that we all naturalistically gravitate towards wanting meaningful and healthy relationships and the foundational skills to do so, are reasonably easy.

The following concepts provide guidance on how to create healthy bonds:

1. Positive Self-Love

Though it sounds cliché, it proves true, that before you can have a positive relationship with another you must have one with yourself. To experience positive self-love, one should come from a place of inner wealth and strong self-esteem.  Here you become and maintain, your authentic “true self.’  You are genuine with others.  You respect your boundaries and are committed to your values.  When you seek out others you do so in order to “belong” and not to “fit in,” making sure your values are not compromised. 

A person with positive self-love demonstrates a comfort with being an individual.  They balance a want for independence with a desire to be a part of something.  So, when it comes to their relationships with others, they maintain a sense of themselves as distinct from their platonic, romantic, sexual partners, co-workers and others.  And, in doing so, they become closer to them without blurring boundary lines. 

2. Empathy

Empathy provides a pathway to openness, compassion, and connection by developing the ability, as much is humanly possible, to feel what another feels, from their perspective. An empathetic person respects another’s “true self.”  Compassion is our ability to not only sense the suffering of others but to put our altruism into action.   Together, empathy and compassion help us see and navigate our shared humanity; everyone’s equal capacity for joy and pain.

3. Self-regulation

Self-regulation is the ability to control one’s destiny, take purposeful action, and live your life with thoughtful integrity. The empowering dynamic about self-regulation is that YOU oversee your own behaviors.  This encourages you to be present in your interactions, meaning you respond to others instead of reacting, over-reacting, or ghosting.  Those who develop good self-regulation skills act with composure, civility, commitment, and character.

Knowing these three concepts won’t instantly make you a relationships expert.  But having foundational knowledge is always paramount to developing effective skills.  Take the time in all your relationships, from the simple to the complex, to see if you are acting from a place of self-love, with empathy towards others, and self-regulating your behaviors with integrity. When you do so successfully, you will optimize your personal happiness by creating deep connections.